79: Game Fest, Next Fest, Demos Reviewed!

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Yeah, yeah, you know what time it is.

It's time for the geek in this podcast.

Mega Rand, Jesse, and Dodger.

What up?

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Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, scream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow, number one, geek podcast.

Without a doubt.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Geekenders.

A fancy game.

Oh, we got a dance, yeah.

Fancy game-filled geek enders.

We have so many games to talk about today.

It really is.

Um,

summer game fest, play days, next fest, all games, all the time.

All games.

So many games.

I have more notes than I've ever had for this show ever.

Ever.

It's ludicrous.

What do you want to talk about first?

Do you want to go into order?

Yeah, I mean, whatever floats your boat.

I'm down to clown.

I'm your freak.

I'm also

a clown, so.

I've heard that about you.

Let's start with Summer Game Fest then.

Okay.

Summer Game Fest.

I'm sure if you watched the show, you saw all the different thingus that are coming out.

You saw the PlayStation State of Play or the Xbox Showcase or Jeff Keely's Key 3.

A lot of stuff coming down the pipeline.

A lot of really interesting games.

Did you see anything?

Because I assume we still have to do a normal podcast time.

Did you see anything?

that you said to yourself, wow, that looks neat.

You know how last episode I was like, I'm going to watch watch some stuff.

Right.

And I trusted you on that.

And you trusted me as your friend to not let that fall through my little grubby fingers.

I did trust you.

Yep.

I didn't watch anything.

So,

but I did play like 30 demos.

So when we get to the demo part,

I got you.

The rest.

Get her chat.

Getter chat.

Slipped through my grubby finger.

I'm sorry.

It's

these guys.

I'm sorry.

Well,

you'll be fine to know that while I thought it was a fine state of play and I was very like, oh, well, that was, there was stuff for everyone.

The internet informed me that it was hot trash.

They hated it.

That's what the internet told me.

Okay.

They said it was garbage town.

And I was like, I don't know.

I thought there was something for everyone.

Everyone got a, we got games that looked kind of artsy.

We had games that looked scary.

What did people not like?

What were they upset about?

I think it's mostly because the trend right now, one of the things I noticed about State of Play, and I mentioned it, you can go watch the VOD.

It's Crendor and I watching it.

So if you want to Cox and Crendor watch it or the thing, it's over on Coxclips.

But also,

that thing got mega flagged, which I knew it would, which is why it's on Coxclips, because they were just dumping copywritten songs.

Anyway,

the vibe of it was essentially,

you know, how, like, when WoW came out a few years later, suddenly there's a ton of MMOs that are emulating WoW.

And when League blew up, suddenly there's a bunch of people trying to make MOBAs.

And then when you had, like, you know, PUBG and Fortnite, suddenly everyone's trying to make, you know, their own sort of like

Fortnite game.

Well, apparently...

Everyone's trying to make this, you know, it's the same thing where now everything's like a looter shooter or extraction shooter and everything's starting to look the same.

Yeah, there was a lot of that.

And the funniest one, of course, being the split-gate guy who came out with the make FPS Great Again hat.

Oh my God.

I laughed so hard because I couldn't believe it.

And he was like shitting on other games.

And then the footage they showed was just another version of that.

And I was like, what are we doing?

Really, if anything, it just means, yo.

Not everyone can be Joseph Ferris.

Like, that's what that means.

Not everyone can come out there and swear and be cool.

Like, you just can't.

There's one guy, and that's his thing, and everyone else is kind of like

we have exactly one edgy guy, yeah.

And you, you don't need to be the second edgy guy.

And the thing is, he can back up the edginess.

All of his games rock.

So, like,

you know, we let Ferris do his thing because he's that guy.

Yeah.

Right?

We're allowed, but you can't, not everyone else can come up there and do that.

So

a lot of that.

Kojima showed up again, and uh, we got got to see, you know, just, it was a weird, it was a weird vibe.

I, again, was pleased because I got Final Fantasy Tactics remake, which is

so good.

And as we've discussed before in the pre-show,

I just have that universe's music in my head now, and I'm pre-ready to jump back in.

Yeah, it was a weird experience.

I think a lot of people were like,

trash.

I don't know, I'd call it trash.

I'd say the show was strange, but

the games and stuff that they featured were fine.

And

thankfully, I got to then play a lot of them.

So Play Days is kind of the follow-up.

GameFest is the big event that takes place on Friday.

And then Game Fest Play Days is Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

I usually only do Saturday, Sunday.

I cram every game into those days.

because I have stuff to do on Mondays.

And so I went and just

had a blast.

I, sadly, for some reason, some games are like, you can't talk about us until August, which is weird.

But

most of them I'm allowed to talk about now.

So I'm just going to talk about some of my favorites because

I had a blast.

Good.

One.

This is my favorite game, hands down.

I must stress to you, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Before we begin,

there was a story I wanted to tell you.

It might be the most embarrassing story ever for me.

For you?

So

day one of Play Days while driving downtown, I'm in the back of a lift.

And usually if I'm driving on the highway, I'm focused on driving because LA traffic is just the worst.

Well,

driving downtown and on the 10.

As which as anyone who lives in LA knows, that's the way downtown.

Driving on the 10.

I'm just staring out the back of the window, looking at the world.

Life is good, it's bright and early in the morning.

I've yet to have my coffee.

I'm still like, I got to get downtown.

We are starting early.

I look out on the road, Dodger, right in the middle of the street.

Police clearly just got there because they're trying to set up a thing around it.

Was a mangled corpse.

A poor woman.

I don't know who she was, dead in the middle of the 10.

And I was like, holy shit.

What the sh.

Yeah.

So,

now, mind you, never seen a mangled corpse before.

That was a first.

So

I don't know if I,

by the way, there was no cars.

I don't know if she wandered out there.

I don't know any information.

I have no information.

But what I do know is

at some point up here, like I was still registering what I had seen.

Not five minutes later, I arrive at Playdays.

And the first people I see,

fellow podcaster, video game reviewer Skill Up,

and one of the heads of PR at Epic.

And now, I don't, I'll be real, I don't remember if I've met Skill Up in real life before or just online.

But he's like, hey, Jesse, it's so good to see you.

And he like dabs me up

and he introduces me to the PR guy.

Now, any other time in my life, I would have been like

the smoothest criminal ever.

I would have been in there.

You know me, I would have been like schmoozing with the best.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The first words that come out of my mouth are, I don't even know what's happening right now.

And I walk away.

I walked to go get coffee, took one sip of caffeine.

I was like, what did I just say?

What did I just do?

What just happened?

When I go back to look for them, they're gone.

And I was like, oh.

I don't think that you need to be embarrassed about that.

Oh, they were probably, they were probably very confused, but like

from your

look I saw on their faces was confusion.

Right.

But like from

the sequence of events leading up to that, I think it was understandable that you were not done.

You were clearly not done processing, right?

You were like, oh, yeah, oh, completely.

I was still.

But it was hard for you to to just say, like, hey, I just saw something really horrifying and I need a minute.

So it came out, it came out kind of weird, and that's fine.

That's okay.

I mean, I understand that.

Sure.

But the part of me that says, you just look like a, I'm a big first impression guy.

So like

immediately was like, well,

they definitely thought you were high.

They definitely thought you were on something.

And that's cool.

So

I really, I was like, I got to go find him.

I got to go find him again.

And I could not for the rest of the time.

And then I kind of like, you know, like normally my ADD kicked in and I totally forgot.

And then I saw the thing and was like, oh no.

And so,

yeah, that's it happened.

So if they see this clip, Jesse would love to have another shot at that.

Next time you guys are in the same place.

Yeah.

Or, or

come on the podcast.

Yeah.

And I

will pool a Felicia Day.

We'll do candles.

I'll bring out Tim Tams.

I know you like the Tim Tams.

That's Australian.

I'll bring out Tim Tams.

We'll do the whole.

I'm just saying.

And I can woo you back to my side.

Let me have this.

We should.

Oh my gosh.

Should we start doing like podcast trades?

Like a like.

I think we should podcast trade.

I think we should do some podcast trades, you know?

I'll lend you out to the podcast.

Yeah, likewise.

I will sell.

I just meant I'll lend you out.

Yeah, I got stuff to do.

I know that.

It'd be fun, though.

We could be like exchange students, you know?

Oh, and I'll go to other podcasts and make them realize that they don't want to listen to us.

It'll be great.

Can I say, as a side note, one of my friends from college, shout out to Gavin, I guess, saw, do you post clips from this to Facebook

or is it Facebook or is it just Instagram and whatever Instagram will post it to threads automatically I see but I don't even use threads we just have an account because she'll be posting there sure yeah I'm not sure where he saw it but I got a message from this lovely man for the first time since 2018 and he was like hey i saw that you shouted out mystery of edwin drood on the podcast i was like hell yeah buddy.

But the clip that you posted didn't include the part where I was like, yeah, we did that play in college.

So he was like, I can't believe you didn't admit that you were in it, but that's fine.

And I was like, no, you didn't see it all.

That part was clipped out.

That's not my fault.

Anyway.

Yeah, we will say

that

short TikTok, whatever, is doing very well.

On YouTube, it has like 780-some thousand views already.

And musical theater kids are like, holy shit.

They love it.

Yeah, the kids love it.

Anyway,

video games.

Back to video games.

We need to focus.

We need to focus.

The best game I played by far.

Even though I'll say I played a lot of amazing games, the one that connected with me the most that I was like, yo, this game rocks.

Annapurna's mixtape.

It is.

Basically a love letter to the 90s in the best way possible.

The music, the vibe, the characters, it just hit me in a way I don't know how to describe.

So the demo

was basically

me being like, I remember this, or, oh my God, that happened to me.

And I don't know what nostalgia they tapped into, but

it was great.

Like a good example is the opening scene is straight up, essentially, this is my last day here before I leave to go to new york which by the way when i was in high school yeah senior year i cut my summer short to go to new york so already i'm like

oh my god this is me like yeah i'm like this connects to me and all of her friends are like um you know why are you leaving she's like one last day one last thing to do we're gonna get nuts by the way i made a mixtape for my last day here because like the main character is big into music and is going to new york for music to go like, basically ambush some executive and get become like a music,

I don't want to say producer, but you know, like one of those people.

They're going to force a situation where they can get discovered.

Exactly.

Literally, the girl's like, I know she goes to this coffee shop every day, and I'm just going to be there.

It's like, and her friend's like, so you stalk her.

She's like, oh, I'm stalking her.

So

it's this last day, one perfect mixtape on CD, which I love, by the way.

And then from moment one, you're skateboarding downhill to Devo.

You can do tricks and stuff.

It's kind of a chill vibe.

The rest of the game, there's some very life is strange elements where, you know, one scene you're in a room and you're checking out different things.

You're having flashbacks to different moments that the friends have together.

One scene is a party where the cops show up and you have to escape, which, by the way,

not only have I been there, but to this day, I will say, again, I'm me.

Let's be very clear.

Yeah.

In order to escape a party where the cops showed up, I jumped like a six-foot fence.

I don't know how.

I had the willpower.

I had the power.

Jesus.

I don't know what was going on.

I was like,

did it, ripped my pants, still made it home.

So what I'm saying is I've lived this life and I was absolutely feeling it.

The music's amazing.

The gameplay's super fun.

It isn't too serious.

It's more of an experience.

And loved every minute of it.

My only question

is if you're born, let's say like 98, 99, early 2000s, will this even resonate with you?

Because it is so supremely, I was a kid in the 90s game.

I think it will.

Not for the same reason, but because we are at the 20-year point where the aesthetic of the 90s is the aesthetic that people want now.

Yeah.

So I think aesthetically vibes-wise,

it's not the same as feeling nostalgic for it, but I think it still

vibes with people now.

Yeah.

Like they definitely do a lot of stuff where if you grew up, like if you were in high school in the 90s or you were in elementary school in the 90s, you have this,

there's some jokes that just land and they don't explain them.

So a great example is one of the things they talk about in the game is she has VHS.

And when you look at them, she's like, oh yeah, I record MTV every day, three to five.

No comment on why.

But if you grew up, then you're like, I know exactly what was on three to five every day on MTV.

And that's, that's, it's kind of like that vibe of just,

I don't know, pure nostalgia.

And it hit me.

I was smiling and laughing the entire time.

And three main kids are just like, the main girl is,

she just like, hey, I'm from the 90s and I sound like this and every time i talk this is how i

right the friend the the the guy friend is like whatever you say man and then the other girl is like the neurotic one it is like every 90s comedy everything just landed for me yeah

and i i loved it i was having a blast so what is the gameplay like is it over the shoulder is it first person like so when you play i don't want to call them mini games like the different things that happen in the character's life.

It's, you know, over the shoulder, not over the shoulder, it's like a third-person, like, zoomed-back view.

Yeah.

And then, when you're inside the house, for example, like the whole point is, it's really funny.

They're going to go to this party and they have stored up some booze in this girl's bedroom.

They've hidden it.

Okay.

Which who would do that?

Who would do that?

So they go to the bedroom and they're like, let's get this booze and get out of here.

And she's like, no, we can't leave.

if we go into my bedroom and then leave everyone's gonna know that we just took booze from my bedroom we have to hang out here for a little bit so people think we're just hanging out and i was like

who would come up with such a sneaky thing it was yeah so

You uh you go around the room and then that's very life is strange like directly over the shoulder You're clicking on things that glow you're putting pictures up that remind you of the year you just had and you're that kind of stuff and then when you talk to different people you get sort of flashbacks to certain things that have happened.

Then you also, you know, at the party have a fun little.

I don't want to spoil much, but the Escaping from the Cops scene is hilarious because it's one friend who's very drunk and thinks it's all a game.

Okay.

And one friend who's freaking out and then you trying to get them out of there.

Hilarious.

It is.

Like it has the vibe of a 90s movie, like a comedy, like a growing up, you know, coming of age tale.

Big fan.

Big fan.

That's great.

I wish listed it.

Yeah.

So

then a completely different, and I will also say one of my favorites, completely different

game.

I got to play Resident Evil 9.

Okay.

I'm not sure what I'm allowed to say exactly because I was told, Do not reveal the way you defeated the monster.

And I'm like,

oh, okay, so what do I even talk about here?

When we first got there, we got to see

a

demo of it.

It was very spliced up.

It was very clear that no one was playing it.

It was kind of a,

you know, here's what the,

if you saw the trailer, you remember the scene where she's hanging upside down and she's got like, you know, an IV hooked into her.

And she's like, what's going on?

The part that we saw takes place right after that where she gets down and she's now in like a weird crazy hospital thing that either is a psych ward or i don't know what

and

when

you start playing and i'll i'll i'll the reason why i'm bringing up the video is because i saw the video and then immediately got to play so any scares of oh what's behind that corner what is that have already been spoiled for me i saw the video so i know exactly where stuff is so when i was playing the person who was in the room with me was like, you're really good at this.

You kind of, you kind of just running through everything.

You don't seem scared at all.

And I was like, I'm not.

I've already been, you guys spoiled every scare for me.

I'm not, I'm not even remotely afraid.

I know what I need to do.

All I'm thinking about is exploring places that the guy in the demo didn't.

So there's a lot of things where, for example, The dude in the demo would walk into a room and there's straight up just be a thing to click on, and he would completely ignore it.

So, the part of me that's like a game player is freaking out.

Like, what was that?

Why wouldn't he show that?

What's that about?

So, when I got to play it, that's all I did is I went to the places where this dude did not go.

I got you.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But other than that, I kind of knew what to do.

So I wasn't afraid.

I was just running into rooms, grabbing an item, running out of a room.

I will say

that

the thing that's interesting about this demo is that

it's Resident Evil.

You would think that there would be zombies, some sort of T-virus or Las Plagas or whatever.

No, no, no, no, no.

There's nothing.

It is just creepy and weird.

And there are no lights, except for in three spaces, there are lights, and they're usually flickering.

And you play as the new girl.

And she's like, what the hell's going on?

Like, where is everyone?

This is crazy.

And then you have the greatest reveal.

Honestly,

I don't want to spoil the reveal, but I will say this.

The creature that exists in this building eats zombies.

Okay.

And so clearly has eaten all of them.

And now is trying to eat you.

And I was like, yo,

so this thing is out to get you.

And it is cat and mouse the entire time.

You have no weapon.

It feels very much like if you played Resident Evil 7,

after you defeated, you know, Big Mama, after you defeated all those things, you were just put in that house with the weird baby.

For anyone who played Resident Evil 7, you know what I'm talking about.

You're putting that.

No, no, eight.

I'm sorry.

Resident Evil 8.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Resident Evil 8.

You're put in the house of the weird baby.

And

it's a weird experience.

So, same same thing,

same thing here, where

this creature is hunting you down.

And

over the course of the gameplay, you have, boy, this is tough.

I'm trying not to spoil things.

Like you will find a book.

There's a children's room you can discover and there's a book.

And the book is literally one of the scary, I was like, why would a child have this book?

It's one of the scariest looking books.

It's like a creepypasta, but it gave you a hint on the monster.

Once I found the book, which by the way, we did not see in the play demo that was done for us.

So I was like, ah, this explains every question I had about what I was shown in the play demo.

And so once I figured that out, I knew what to do.

But basically, it is Resident Evil.

Like the flow of the game was, you need to get out of the hospital.

Okay, well, how do we do that?

Well, I need to find a key.

All right, I found a key.

Now I go to the door.

Oh, I need to find a fuse for the fuse box.

Okay, well, I need to find a fuse.

Back and forth and back and forth.

While this thing is like bursting through walls, coming from above, chasing you around.

And you have to, you know, do the whole cat and mouse rope-a-dope nonsense.

But I loved every minute of it.

Normally in Resident Evil, you do have weapons, though, correct?

Yes.

Oh, yes.

I'm sure we'll get them, but I think I was just curious if this was like a change of...

form, I guess.

They do want to focus on the fact, and they said this many times, that this is a brand new character and while she is an fbi agent she's trained with guns they really want

to make it about fear so this character the entire

dukes the entire time in your ear you hear her going

no

bro

that shit drives me crazy

Yeah, so she's freaking out the entire time.

They definitely play with darkness a lot.

A great example is the monster will shatter lights.

So if you think your ass is safe, you ain't.

If you think you can see things, the monster's like,

I'm going to get you, bitch.

It's awesome.

Well, good.

You played all of them, I think, right?

So yes, I've played.

Oh, no.

The only one I haven't played is the one that was multiplayer.

Oh, I think.

That wasn't one of the recent ones, though, was it?

No, no, no, no, that's the old one.

Sphere Hunter said it was an existing character.

Maybe I feel like I've never heard of the new girl before, but not a girl with that character you've ever played, maybe a character that was introduced but never playable.

I don't know.

I don't think so.

I don't recognize her at all.

Okay.

She's not related to anyone that I'm aware of, but I could be very wrong.

I would say Suze knows more than me about Resident Evil.

So just,

you know, I'll let y'all deal with that.

You're one of the scary game men, so I

would defer to you.

So if you're daughter of the outbreak reporter.

Interesting.

Okay.

Well, see, there you go.

That is a thing that,

yeah,

I had no clue.

All right.

See, now I know.

Yeah, I had no idea who that character was.

But again.

Suze knows so much better than me about the world of Resident Evil.

So I defer.

But

very cool.

Loved every minute of it.

It felt like, again, my favorite part of Resident Evil 8, which was that weird dollhouse scene.

Was 8 hot mommy game?

Yes.

Okay.

So the flow of 8 was crazy because it was hot mommy for the first, I don't know, half of the game, maybe let's say a third of the game.

And then defeated.

And you're like, all right, well, where the hell do we go from here?

But of course, there's other people in the family you have to deal with yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and so eventually you end up in the dollhouse with the creepy doll who's like yeah yeah yeah yeah like that guy that's go watch the footage that's that the doll goes yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the entire time and so you end up suddenly with no weapons nothing And you are in a totally different vibe of a horror game.

And they did it really, really well because

most games that are horror games at about the halfway point immediately stop being scary, and it's all about just like, okay, how the hell do I figure out this stupid monster?

They changed up all the different things in eight so much that it kept the length of the game kind of fun, which I loved.

And so,

big fan of that weird dollhouse scene, terrifying.

And this has the same vibe.

What I played, exact same vibe.

Okay.

So, big fan of that.

While we're in the horror genre,

I also got to play some Blumhouse games, and Blumhouse

ready to go.

Sleep Awake.

Sleep Awake.

Yes.

It's a

psychedelic horror game.

So it's a game where it's in the future.

I'm going to say 500 years really kind of seems undefined, but it's far enough in advance that, you know, its technology has significantly changed.

A strange illness has

appeared.

Before I was aware.

But

it's not even an illness.

It's hard to describe.

It's like a plague or

it's called the hush.

And what it does is if you sleep and enter REM sleep, you vanish.

And in your spot is a weird, you know, kind of like

post-atomic bomb, the like shadow images.

Yes.

That.

That.

Oh, that's so creepy.

What?

Yeah, and you disappear.

So society has collapsed.

Humanity is on the brink of extinction.

Everyone's in one final city, and it's run by a government that is like a corporation, and they are selling drugs to keep you awake.

And other people are forming weird cults.

Like one cult is about pain, and so they've got like strapped themselves up and they hurt themselves in order to stay awake.

All sorts of crazy stuff.

But the main character.

You can sleep.

You just can't enter REM, correct?

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

So,

like,

it's very strange because everyone's trying to stay awake, but, you know, they'll pass out, right?

But then they'll snap awake again.

And so the main character,

her father, I guess, was making drugs to keep you awake.

And so she's doing the same.

But, of course, it's not.

going to keep you awake all the time.

And suddenly dreams start to meld into reality and what is real becomes a thing.

So a great example is early in the game, you are going to your kitchen to go make some more of the drug, except there's an earthquake.

You go in the kitchen, there's glass everywhere, it's completely a mess.

You suddenly pass out.

When you open again, the room is completely clean.

Did it happen?

I don't know.

Right.

That kind of stuff.

And so, what's brilliant about it is it's not just a scary game.

They've mixed in a lot of,

I don't want to say say remedy-esque style, but it feels like you're playing a first-person remedy game sometimes where it's live action, there's psychedelic visuals, there's a lot of like eye close-up, like

they're using real footage.

They very clearly are using the Blumhouse media apparatus to create something amazing.

And then

the music is straight up by one of the Nine Ish Nails guys.

So, like,

it's awesome.

It sounds sounds really cool.

And

it is visually stunning.

Like, when you fall, when you pass out, you'll see

the character live action in a desert or curled up in a fetal position.

There's a woman who keeps talking to you who's like, come on, we got work to do.

And you're like, who the hell are you?

You'll go through weird dreamscapes.

In fact, one was a series of dreamscapes.

And she's like, come on, come with me.

Let's go.

And I was like, well, what if I turn around?

They're like, I don't know.

What if you you do?

So I turned around.

I was like, no, I'm not going to follow you.

Walked away.

And like Goop started to attack me.

I was like, I think I made the wrong choice.

I genuinely don't know

what this game's going to be.

But my God, it was a Jesse game for sure.

It was absolutely a Jesse game.

I loved every minute of it.

Here's the thing.

It cannot be.

Actually, none of that happened.

It was all a dream.

Oh, no, no, no.

No, I don't think.

Yeah, I think there's something else like weirder going on.

Because if they're like, no, it's inception, but but creepier, that's not fun.

Like, uh, I will say

I was picking up some like eldritch horror vibes.

We didn't see any sign of it, but I was picking up like I love that shit.

And I think

you now look for it everywhere.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I will say it was really funny.

While playing the demo, I was there with like a bunch of people from Blumhouse.

It was really fun.

I played on a giant movie theater screen.

It's incredible.

It was so cool.

Yeah.

And while I was playing it, oh, by the way, while playing it, I was drinking Guy Fiati Flavor Town sparkling water.

So it just made it even better.

It was sparkling water.

So it was, you know, sparkling water.

Sure.

And

while I was playing it, I

spent most of my time looking around, checking out all the notes, looking at the weird stuff in the world, really trying to invest myself in it.

And it was so funny because at a certain point, a PR person whispers in one of the dev's ears, and then he looks at me and goes, I'm really enjoying you playing this.

I like you watching and looking at everything.

However, you have five minutes to beat the demo.

I was like, all right.

So I just started cruising to the end.

But

yeah, I was playing it like I had just bought the game.

And it was absolutely what I want in a video game.

It was so cool.

Again, very excited for that one.

Solid horror game that isn't

like jump scare, but also what the hell is going on.

Scary.

I have to say, the visuals are way creepier than I expected.

When I

look, it looks like a horror game.

It is uncomfortable, is the best way to put it.

Again, again because it wants you to feel like you haven't slept yeah

so it really starts to give you i don't it's i don't remember what it was but remember there was a movie

hopefully someone in chat knows this there was a movie where they kept adding a tone that only the human ear could recognize but it was like not audible

and it would make you feel uncomfortable And they just like had it in the background.

That's the vibe here.

Like it just, you feel uncomfortable, but I was so amazed with the world and what they were doing like visually and musically that I

loved that.

I was so into it.

Big fan.

Sorry, I started laughing because the three things that were said immediately after you said that were irreversible, hereditary, and finding Nemo.

Obviously, finding Nemo is the correct answer.

I think it was Finding Nemo, yeah.

I think so too.

Yeah.

Then I I played another Blumhouse horror game that I think is a you game.

Okay, 100% Dodger game.

It's called Grave Seasons.

No, I have been following Grave Seasons since the person who made it was like, I have an idea for like a little game.

I don't know.

Maybe I'll make it.

Is this anything?

And now look at us.

Anyway, keep talking.

Yep.

So.

For those of you who don't know, Grave Seasons is a narrative farming simulator.

Except let me just, I'll just tell you the first five minutes minutes of playing.

You're a young person who goes to a farm.

You either inherited or bought it.

I'm not quite sure.

They ask you and you can say either.

So I assume, I don't know, you can lie to people.

But basically, you meet a guy or any character.

I don't know.

There's a lot of randomness in this game.

Like, hey, welcome, welcome to the town.

Everything's cool.

You know, hope you have fun.

This place is weird, though, right?

Like this farm?

Anyway, I'm going to go now.

You should probably dig up all the dead plants.

Like, okay, I'm a farmer.

I'm going to dig up the dead plants.

Start digging up dead plants.

You find a hand.

And you're like, what the hell is this?

Or you find a weird ring.

You're like, what the hell is this?

Spoiler.

This

is a horror game.

It is a game about.

A random townsperson, every time you start, so it's going to be different for everyone.

A random townsperson is a supernatural killer who will proceed to kill other people in town.

And you can help stop that from happening.

Or you can just be a farming simulator and not give a damn.

You can just let everybody die if you want.

Yeah, and that's amazing.

And I was like, oh, what do you mean, supernatural killer?

I saw the first kill.

I don't want to spoil it.

I was like, oh,

oh, I thought it was going to be a dude showing up and stabbing you.

Not at all.

It is way crazy.

Can you date the killer?

Potentially.

From what I understand,

yeah, it is also a dating sim or has dating sim elements.

Go look at the characters.

They're all hot.

And one of them,

because it's randomized.

So 100%, you can start trying to date the killer.

I would love to know the ending where you date the killer and don't interfere at all is.

Yeah, you're not.

That sounds hilarious.

You know what, boo?

You keep doing your thing.

Yeah.

It looks, it's so funny because it looks, sounds, everything about it is like, hey, we're having a good time.

It's a farming simulator, but

it's like, meet me at night in this particular spot.

And you're like, oh, okay, I'll do that.

And it's like, why are we out here?

It's creepy.

It's like, don't worry.

I just like practicing the occult.

And you're like, okay, well, you're cute.

So I'm here for this.

And in a normal farming simulator, you'd be like, that's fun.

But in this, you're just like, am I going to die?

Yeah.

Oh, it's so cool.

Plus in your, in your farmhouse, there's locked rooms, but you can get crowbars and different things to pop them open.

But sometimes it's like, the crowbar won't help.

I wonder what's in there.

And I'm like, what is in there?

It's really cool.

Solid mystery.

Also, when it's like a demo or something adjacent to a demo, sometimes you're like, are you just keeping me from going in there because this isn't the full game?

Which is it?

I asked them.

Yeah, I asked them and they said, well, you are being railroaded a little bit so you can get to the big kill.

And I was like, okay, all right.

They're like, it won't necessarily happen like this in the real game.

We're having characters show up to kind of guide you.

And,

you know, it's like, you basically have a day.

However, if you're like, but I like farming simulators and I don't want to be scared.

If you're curious, what I was doing most of the time was picking up trash around my farm, cutting down trees and planting crops.

So a farming simulator

is what it is.

Except there's just like another layer.

And this goes back to something that you and I have talked about before, where sometimes just taking two things you love and mashing them together into a game can be really fun.

Yeah.

There's a demo that I played that 100% was that sort of vibe.

Yeah.

It's very cool.

Love that.

And then the last Blumhouse game, which I will say

was genuinely probably the most Davis game,

but it featured one of my least favorite things in a game.

Not that I hate it, but it's like too scary for me.

It's called Crysole Theater of Idols.

I think it's Crysole.

I think that's what it is.

Basically, it's like first-person Spanish lies of P, I guess is the best way you can describe this.

You are in an abandoned town where most of the populace, or at least the things that exist there, are doll-like mannequin monsters that you can, you have like a gun that uses your own blood.

When you reload, it sucks your own blood to shoot.

Okay.

And you can blast off body parts.

You can blast off their heads.

But very much like a Resident Evil, they keep coming for you until you kill them.

And it's this abandoned, it kind of has an eldritch vibe to it.

There's definitely like a

something with mermaids.

And anytime mermaids are around, I'm like, no, that's Cthulhu, but there's definitely something going on.

However, there is a giant robot mechanical monster that has like a Virgin Mary face that keeps hunting you down the entire time, but it talks to you.

Okay.

And it does the thing I hate where it's like, I'm going to find you.

You could be five blocks away, and that thing is so loud, you don't know if it's behind you or five blocks away.

Right.

And so the entire time I was stressing because it also does the thing that Resident Evil does, which is you got to open that gate.

Well, in order to open that gate, you have to start to crank and you got to keep cranking.

And when you start cranking, you make noise and that thing's coming for you.

So it better be far away or else it's going to get you.

Oh, that's my least like, I hate that in horror because it jump scares me every time.

Yeah.

Every time I think, I'm going to do this.

And it's like, gotcha, bitch.

I hate that.

Oh, so I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.

I had like blumhouse execs behind me watching watching me play, and I was like, please don't do this, right?

The dev is cracking up as I'm like running from this thing.

Not like genuinely scary.

But with that said, when the monster wasn't chasing me and you had to fight the people in town, love that bit.

Got a shotgun, blasted their asses with my blood bolts.

It's great.

And kind of the way it works is you have to just keep.

So you can go around and anything that's dead, be it town person or chicken, you can drain their blood

to then refill your own so you can refill your gun.

There is clearly something there mechanically in the world that allows you to do this.

I don't know what it is.

I couldn't tell you what it is, but very cool stuff.

Love that.

Blumhouse has got like some bangers coming.

So if you're a fan of horror, you know, I like Fear the Spotlight.

I thought that was an incredible game.

So

excited to see what is coming down the pipeline from them.

Oh, speaking of scary, I cannot talk about this at all for a while.

Okay.

Phasmophobia.

I got to see the new stuff.

Oh, okay.

It looks awesome.

I definitely think that we should jump back into that whenever the new stuff comes out, but I can't talk about it.

So I will say quality of life improved 2,000%.

They got picked up for a movie.

I think this is all leading to like

that.

And sort of a phasmophobia universe, but

pretty cool.

But I can't talk about it, so I won't.

Also, wow, there were a lot of horror games.

I got to see the new dark pictures game, Directive 8020, which is,

you know, another game that you'll probably kill everyone in.

What the?

This time, the premise is essentially...

What now?

It's a space game, correct?

Yes.

They're in space.

Yeah, you're in space, and it does my favorite space trope, which is there are creatures on the ship that can morph to look like like us.

And so

in very, you know, dark pictures-esque quality, you got to figure out who's real.

And a lot of the characters are like, I'll kill you.

I know you're fake.

And then you have to make the choice whether to pull the trigger or not.

And is that person a real person you just killed?

Is it a monster?

You also have to, you know, escape from them when they reveal themselves.

They're very noise-based creatures.

And they're terrifying.

They definitely have thing aspects where they're like, you know, like crazy monsters.

Yeah.

And,

but they, you know, they can't be killed with just like a gunshot.

Pretty interesting.

It is kind of Among Us-y.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Except it's a dark pictures thing and it has a ton of great actors in it.

And you can get them all killed.

A lot of

repeat actors that they've used before as well.

Yeah, I think the main character is, oh, God, what is her name?

I forget her name, but if you watched Obi-Wan, she's the

Inquisitor who tried to kill Obi-Wan

and fought Darth Vader and lost.

Not her.

I can't remember her name at all.

But yeah, she's in it as well.

And

it's super intriguing.

I don't know what

the big

time to beat or how long it's going to...

You know, it's a dark pictures game.

So it could be massive or it could be very short.

I don't know.

But they do have a rewind feature now.

So you can

go back and check your choices.

I did say

they were talking about that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So very excited for that one.

That'll definitely be a scary game score.

I guess as an alternative.

As an alternative to like chapters, right?

Because in their past games, it's been like, do you want to play it, replay a chapter?

But instead, in this one, it'll be, I want to go back to that

choice and go from there to see how it branches differently.

Yes.

I guess.

Oh, I was wrong.

I got my Disney properties mixed up.

Is she

the actor from Marvels?

Marvels?

LaShauna Lynch?

Or Captain Marvel?

Boy.

Girl, I have no idea.

Yeah, I don't watch.

I don't want...

Look, I've fallen off of.

If you ask me, Jesse, did you watch Obi-Wan?

Like,

clips on the internet.

So I really wish, like,

if you're asking me, do I know for sure?

No.

No, because I did not watch any of it.

Yeah.

Because I did not care.

But

yeah.

Very interesting.

Very cool.

Excited for that one.

But I'm sure it's a ways off.

I don't remember.

Anyway.

Then

I played a game that I'm just going to say for the record.

I'm ready for it, Dodger.

I'm ready for you and I to play.

Okay.

Escape Academy 2.

Yeah.

I'm so ready.

Escape Academy 2 is back.

It's just as good, if not better, the puzzles, the room escapes.

But

in between the room escapes, you remember last time it was like,

I'm the sassy one.

By the way, she's back and I love her even more.

She's like, I'm the sassy one and I'm attracted to Jesse and I think he's so sexy is what she says in game.

And before there'd be like little, little, you know, interstitial story bits and then you go into a puzzle.

Now,

when a puzzle is complete, the door opens and you're like in the school hallways and the hallways have puzzles of their own.

So it is, it's like all puzzles all the time.

Nice.

The demo that I played, there's an escape room thing that you did.

Not going to spoil it because it's probably in the game and I want to do that with you.

Yeah.

But then the door opens and now you're in the halls with all the lockers.

And the first thing is you have to find your locker.

So you need to know which character you are because you're in first person, right?

So you don't know which person you are.

And then you have to identify your student number and then your locker and figure out how to get into the locker then once you do that you need to go to your room well where the hell is your room so you have to find your room and because it's escape academy everything's a puzzle yeah so now you're walking around trying to figure out where to go and then there's side quests so someone will be like man you know what i need a soda and you think okay cool go to the vending machine out of sodas where the hell do we get one Well, we can break into the cafeteria, like that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

And so,

big fan loved it that sounds that sounds like a natural progression right if you were gonna do a second one and what's really funny is at play days they had a wall of everyone's notes and most of the notes were like a few scribbles

i came in i had two full pages of notes with like this is goes here i wrote there's one area where it's a classroom and all the desks have stuff on it so rather than write down just what was on the desks I gridded out all three rows of desks and wrote down all the clues in the grid and then like was doing lines between them all.

And they must have looked like I was, they looked at me like I was a crazy design.

I'm sure they loved that.

Yeah.

The lead dev and the puzzle designer were there.

And so I got to see both their reactions as I was going through it.

And I was like, what is this?

There was one puzzle.

That seemed so obtuse to me and I couldn't figure out.

And I was like, this makes no sense.

And he was like,

have you tried doing it the simplest way possible?

And I was like, what do you mean?

Like, just time of day?

And he's like, yeah.

And I was like, God damn it.

So, you know, overthought it is a classic overthinking moment.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, so that was very fun.

Man.

Oh,

really quickly, I got to play new Dark Tide.

Okay.

Dukes.

Yeah.

Shout out to my boy Mathis, who has like 120 hours in that game.

There is a new, I believe, man, I believe it's the arbitrator class.

Okay.

Where you're basically, look, they're not going to say this.

They'll never admit it.

But you're basically 40k Judge Dredd.

You have a riot shield that you can get.

A riot baton you can get.

But more importantly,

you can get a shot pistol.

Okay.

It's basically a pistol shotgun.

And it's amazing.

Now, you might say, Jesse, tell us about the class.

Tell us about everything that, like,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Ignore that trash.

Ignore that.

The class, screw it.

Don't I don't want to even talk about that guy.

What do you want to talk about?

You get a mastiff, a little doggo,

and you can a baby giant dog.

And as you build out, as you build out your, your build,

you can put all 30 skill points into dog abilities.

Yeah.

And so, of course, and so, of course, while sitting next to Kriken,

we both put all of our abilities, except for maybe one or two that we had to put in certain things, put all of it into dog skills.

When I say it was the single greatest dark tide experience I've had, and I've played that game a bunch.

When I say it was the best experience,

you sit there with your riot shield and you just start picking off guys, and in the background, your dog's like,

And you can target, like, you can make it so the big dudes that show up your dog will jump on them and hold them down you it is one of the greatest things I've ever seen watching this dog destroy chaos units is hilarious I told the devs the only thing that that I dislike is that all the skins for the dog are like you know robotic parts you could almost have a full robot dog right and I was like The only thing missing is just a dog with zero robot parts.

It's just a dog.

Like, that's the scariest thing.

If you live in a universe that is constantly at war and your dog has no robot parts and has a grandstone cold killer.

Yeah, that's a killer, man.

100%.

I was like, I want that.

I want that dog who has no injuries and he's just destroying every, it was so funny to watch.

Every moment was a laugh riot.

I was like, I love this dog.

This is the best thing I've ever seen.

He's like, I'm telling you, it was like watching the flash.

He's like, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, like flying around the screen, murdering everyone.

I was like, yes.

It was great.

It was so good.

Crikey and I were laughing so hard.

We had two other people playing with us who were, I assume, online somewhere.

And they were, um,

you know, they were playing the old classes, but like, they were missing out.

Four dogs would have been amazing.

That would have been the single, like, it would have been the best campaign ever.

I laughed so hard.

I was like, When it goes live, we can do four dogs.

I oh, we can four dog it the thing is i was at max with my skills so i probably need to go in and have like mathis power level me you know because that man's got these guys he's got the ability i want to hit max level with the dog because at first you don't get much dog skills you have to like you know make your way down and then it's all dog all the time But what's fun is that basically the builds you can do are one's a tank, one's sort of a you charge in with your shield, and one's kind of like a support class.

So basically, I went tank so I could stand there and hold my gun, you know, and my shield, and then I just let the dog do all the work, and it was,

it was great.

It was beautiful.

That sounds lovely.

Yeah, and then because, you know, we got to probably hurry this up so I can get to stuff.

You played, I played Pedal Runner, which is a very fun, kind of like Game Boy-esque game that's imaginative Pokemon could talk.

And it was kind of like, actually, it's more like Digimon.

Okay.

Very cute, very fun.

Love that.

uh i played king of meat can't talk about that for a while uh

i played exoborn and it was fun but definitely not like a jesse game very like uh extraction shooter i played the new dying light that was great i uh am excited to play it i love the dying light games except i played it on a controller at the event which i knew not what any of the buttons did i felt so bad because i was like can you what is this dude it was like old man plays game i was like look I play on PC.

When I play, half my buttons are to my mouse.

So when I'm jump kicking dudes, I'm pressing mouse buttons.

I don't know what the hell I'm doing on this.

So I felt bad because, you know, that was rough, but I loved it.

And I love Dying Light.

So I'll play that.

And then, of course, they had Firebreak, which comes out next week.

So, you know, I'll play that for sure.

But the two that I think

really were kind of like treats

out of words is a epic game.

Basically, it's a co-op game that's similar to kind of like all the other co-op games we have to work together to achieve goals, except this one is stop motion and everything's handcrafted.

It's one of the most beautiful games I've ever seen.

Plot-wise, it's about two characters who are going to confess their feelings for each other before whatever happens that sucks them into this world where they have no mouths.

So they can no longer express themselves verbally.

Oh my god.

And so it's that kind of, it's very cute.

It's definitely one of those play with your significant other kind of games.

But it's also hilarious.

Like

there's a bunch of, I'm not sure, again, I don't know what the real plot is, but you're in a world where there's like a flying Mantoray cutie pie that's your, you're kind of your pet that leads you around.

There are people made of clay.

And some of them aren't formed into things yet.

So they're like, oh, I wonder what I'll be.

Like that kind of thing.

There's one part where there's this guy and he's peering over the edge of a cliff and he's like, oh, I don't know what I'll be.

So many choices.

And you can push him and he'll grab onto the other ledge and you walk across him.

He goes, I'm a bridge.

Oh, lovely.

Very cute.

Cute.

A lot of that.

Very impressive game.

I was telling the devs how much I enjoy the fact that like it is so very clearly a game created by people passionate about creation

and doing something.

It seemed like it had not the the touch of a ceo on it and i loved every bit about that

very fun then i played infinitesimals which is the game if you saw the game award or not game awards the summer game fest looked like ants but ants in the year 3000 where they were all like it was

dudes with guns and they looked kind of like ants but they they were you know in the backyard ish kind of thing yeah played it here's the plot it actually makes a lot more sense you're aliens who have come to earth and it just so happens you're very, very small.

So

you are little tiny aliens in a jungle that is straight up just grass.

It is great, super fun to play.

It's not open world.

It's like a series of maps that are big and you can explore around in.

Then you move to another big map and you can explore around.

I love that.

It keeps me kind of focused and contained.

But there's a lot of stuff in it.

One, there's a bird that keeps showing up and it's hilarious because the guy in your ear, you talk to him and you're like,

this winged creature is attempting to make contact with me.

It's like, I would have voted at all costs, sir.

That thing has been, you know, loved it.

And it's just a bird.

At one point, you find another alien who's one of your friends and he's like, come on, sir.

And he jumps on your back.

He's like a little backpack alien.

I love him.

If anything happens to backpack alien, I'll be so upset.

Oh, it looks really cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mechanically, though, it,

you know, you have guns and you have basically witcher sense, which all games started doing.

But, you know, you can sort of track things.

You can see in an enemy base, you can kind of see where all the wires go, so you can cut power to different things.

Very cool stuff.

I was absolutely enthralled with it, but it wasn't that long of a demo, so I didn't get to like do a lot.

But

pretty neat stuff.

Again, very creative.

I love what they're doing.

Yeah.

And I would have gotten to play a few other games, except I was straight up.

If there's any indication of where I stand on the totem pole of video game importance,

it is low, my friends.

I was kicked off of demos for both Miyamoto and Phil Spencer.

So, like,

they were just like, we're so sorry.

It's like, you're not, but it's fine.

It's all right.

Don't worry about it.

Just have too much of an attention to detail.

That's all.

Yeah, yeah.

That's fine.

I was not upset.

I was like, it's, trust me, I understand.

You don't.

They're like, we're so sorry.

I was like, it's fine.

You don't need to say anything.

I remember vividly years ago at E3, Crendor, and I playing Cuphead, and they're like, you guys got to go.

Kanye West is here.

And we were like, can we play with Kanye?

And they were like, no.

So it's, it's fine.

I'm all right.

It's, it's happened to me forever.

Yeah.

But yeah, that's kind of uh, I played a lot more things, but I feel like we should

move.

Oh,

yes.

I will say

another game that I think I don't have answers for yet, but it seems like a very Dodger game.

Okay.

Because it's called There's No Ghosts at the Grand.

Okay.

It is a narrative-driven

hotel

repair

mystery

spooky British seaside town musical.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, that's a lot of things, but it still feels like I'm in in that Venn diagram somewhere.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Basically, it's a musical, but you play as a character who has come back to fix up an old hotel that may or may not be haunted.

And the town itself is so welcoming during the day, but at night there's clearly something going on.

And then it's also a musical.

So you are building the hoe.

Like you can tear down stuff.

You can repair things.

You can rebuild the hotel, place things in different places.

So it's like a hotel management game, but first person and also a musical and also a mystery.

I genuinely don't know what the final product's going to be, but it was, it was super interesting.

Like it was,

there's straight up just a musical number where ladies dance in and telling you about the history of the hotel.

And I'm like,

what is this game?

I kind of love that feeling.

So many games like, you know, have maybe a different aesthetic or a different, you know, sort of plot than you're used to, but mechanically will be identical to another game that you've played.

It's so fun to start playing a game and be like, I have no idea what the fuck is going on.

Yeah, there's a talking cat.

There's all sorts of stuff.

It's one of those games that I almost feel like can't exist.

But if they pull it off, it's going to be amazing.

But also, I don't know how they're going to pull it off.

You know what I mean?

Like, there's so much going on.

I can't, I can't tell.

Oh, oh my god, oh, speaking of going on, this is there's so many games I have.

I'm trying to make this easy for you.

I'm trying to get to demos.

No, I love it.

Crimson Desert.

Yes.

It's a game that I thought was going to be hot trash.

It's a game that I was like,

it's going to be, yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

That demo

was

fire.

Yeah.

It was so cool.

Now I got to play only a like slice of what the game is,

but

it's kind of like

Dynasty Warriors meets Middle Ages, meets magic and dungeons and dragons.

Like,

I'm just going to rattle off some things I could do in this.

So it said, okay, you need to, there's a massive battle map and it will give you objectives.

It's like, okay, you need to go up up there and destroy these two towers because they're raining hellfire down on our troops.

And it's like, okay, I'll do that.

So you're a guy who you can jump on horses, you can battle guys, right?

The combat's really cool, but you also have magic.

So you can send lightning to kill guys, you can burn guys alive.

And then

you also have ice.

And the ice ability can freeze men, it can freeze horses, it can freeze the water.

Like literally, if you want to skip across the battlefield, you can make ice cubes in the lake and go across the ice cubes, right?

When you attack guys with the sword, when you swing, it leaves a trail of ice that slowly melts behind you.

So you can see the like murder you're causing.

And if you want, you can also be like, F it, I'm gonna hook shot on to that mountain and scale the mountain over, or I'm gonna use these trees and swing from tree to tree, or spin myself around and fling myself towards the enemy.

Right.

I was like, what the hell?

Then

you have the ability to call in cannon fire yourself so you can mark units and then suddenly a barrage of cannons come

it is one of i was it was one of the craziest things i was like this game is amazing i don't even oh my god i thought it was gonna be trash wrong i openly admit i'm wrong that was awesome and then there'll be other missions so like once you take the two towers down it'll be like one of our men are trapped behind enemy lines if you go back and get him it's like okay you can do that.

But if you are pushing with your army and you're going from south to north in this battlefield, you can come across that guy anyway, save his ass.

And then when the mission comes up, it's like, good job.

You saved that guy's ass.

And I was just dumbfounded with how much I enjoyed this game.

At one point, there's a tank that shows up, and not a tank tank, but like a bunch of shields around three cannons that are slowly moving through the battlefield.

Okay.

And there's like 10 ways to kill that thing.

The best way is you can climb up at the top of a tree,

glide down, kind of like

it's a very DD spell, that raven cloak thing that lets you, you know, has feathers and lets you fly.

Yes.

You can fly down on top of it and drop a thing into it and then jump off and it explodes.

Like that can, or you can try to freeze it, or you can loop-de-loop it and run around it.

You can, there's battlefield things you can use.

You can

horse jump, like, you can jump on one guy's horse, ride the horse, knock another guy off his horse, keep riding that horse, knock another guy.

I was blown away.

With that said, I don't know what the game is outside of that.

Sure,

an embarrassment.

The battle was amazing, but I don't know what else there is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I have no idea, but man,

that was cool as hell.

I was blown away.

I almost forgot about that one.

That's what I'm saying.

Like, I played so many games.

Yeah.

Apparently, we both played Ninja Gaiden Rage Bound.

Hell yes.

How did you feel?

Did you play hard mode?

I just booted it up and played it.

So I don't know.

So, yeah, I mean, I played, I beat the demo.

So, it is, it's Ninja Gaiden.

It's Ninja Gaiden, and it is in.

It's by the people that did the blasphemous games.

So, kind of a

different thing for them.

Yes.

Looks great, feels great.

I was a little worried because when I started playing the demo, everyone was like, there's a reason it's called Rage Bound.

And I thought it was maybe going to feel like Volgar, right?

And I was just going to be like pissed the whole time I was playing.

But it was really fun.

Yeah.

I really, really enjoyed it.

It's

the normal version kind of walks you through.

You get to meet the new characters.

You learn mechanics.

You do kind of that stuff.

You fight a boss.

But then when you beat it, it gives you the like hard mode.

This is Ninja Gaiden.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

Gave it a shot.

It's ruthless.

It is just like playing the old games.

It is unforgiving.

I was like, nah, not ever touching that.

But I gave it the old college try.

I did not beat the first level.

Proud of you.

I just, everything was killing me.

Everything is even more of an asshole.

Yikes.

It was tough.

But I wasn't raging because I knew what it was.

You know what I mean?

Sure,

yeah, but man, it was

there was definitely like, okay, I've learned my lesson.

I'm not doing this again.

Yeah, it's it's fun.

It's a side-scrolling game where you're a cool ninja.

I'm curious what hard mode is like, though, because I didn't realize that was a thing that I could do.

Give it a shot.

Yeah, when you beat the demo, when you, I think it's like level three, four, whatever it is, you're about to go fight a, they do a mean thing where you finally make it to the second boss and then it's like, see you in the real game.

And I was like,

yeah, of course.

But once you beat that, then it's like, okay, now hard mode.

Here's what I'll say.

In the first level, remember how it's like on fire?

Yes.

There's more fire.

There's more exploding rocks.

The enemies are more mean.

You have like the damage is higher.

A lot of it is same mechanically, just cranked up to 11.

I got you.

Ruthless.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You'd probably be able to do it, but I could not.

In that first level most things you kill with one hit.

I assume you can't kill everything with one hit in the hard,

so you know those guys who have the spears and

like they like flow a lot of that nonsense where it takes a few hits to kill them unless you have the power-up that will one-shot them.

Okay, it's it's one of those things where while I was playing it, I could see the matrix code where if I was better at these games, I could do it.

Which the entire time I was like, oh, this is gonna be a solid games done quick game.

Yeah.

Like the hard mode of Ragebound will be really cool to watch.

Someone who just knows it.

Because the thing about it is as I was playing, and you can see it in the footage on Coxclips, it's kind of like

as I was doing it, I would die, restart, and get a little bit further every single time.

And it was kind of like, you know, the memory of old games where, yeah, you're going to have to learn when to jump, when to do, you have to play the game, do the dance.

Same thing.

And eventually I got to the point where I got so far,

but didn't find another save.

So it sent me back.

I was like, nope.

Nope.

I'm good.

I don't want to go through all that again.

But I could have if I wanted to.

I think it's the point.

Another, I think, very anticipated demo that I played.

that you maybe played as well.

I would be surprised if you hadn't issues.

By the way, this is all NextFest stuff, yes?

So people can play these right now.

These are all available to play right now.

It's not like me with the other games I was talking about, which were at Play Days that are not available to play yet.

Everything that

is, you can play right now.

You can just play on Steam currently up until Monday at the very least.

At this point, I've played 30, I think, but

I just made a list of the ones that I think are worth talking about.

Cool.

Dispatch is the one that's the superhero themed one that's that's by the people.

I played Dispatch as well.

Yeah, they made Wolf Among Us, or some of the team that made Wolf Among Us and Walking Dead and like Tales from the Borderland.

And those you can see the inspiration when you're playing it.

You're like, right.

Yeah, same people.

It's got a cool game loop, it seems like.

Very funny writing, good characters.

You're playing like an ex-superhero who is now essentially a 911 Dispatch officer, except for superheroes.

And you are given like kind of a suicide squad sort of group.

The suicide squad of superheroes.

You're given a group of superheroes that were super villains and were arrested and told that they could be part of the dispatch system and work off their time, essentially.

So your job when you're not in the game, like, you know, doing

the fun, meeting characters, choosing how you respond, et cetera, et cetera, which is all very funny.

The actual dispatch game is you're looking at a map of the city, you get pings, you click on them, it tells you, this is what's happening.

We need to dispatch somebody who is good with people and isn't going to scare anyone, right?

And then you go through everybody and you're like, okay, well, this person isn't going to scare anybody, but their charisma is dog shit.

But this person has like really high charisma.

They're, you know, it should be okay.

And then you send them out there and maybe it procs more.

Sometimes it's like, while they were there, this happened.

What should we do?

Sometimes you have to be more hands-on as the dispatch officer.

But most of the time, what it does is it gives like, it looks at their grid of their personality and then has its own built-in grid of like what this situation was.

And it's kind of like the DVD icon.

There's like a little ball that bounces around.

It bounces around, yeah.

Yeah, and where it lands, you hope that in the overlap of the person that you sent out there.

So, say that it made it pretty clear you needed someone with charisma.

You send someone out there with charisma.

Hopefully, there's a lot of overlap in what was expected, what was necessary for this mission.

And the thingy bounces around.

And as long as you're in the overlap,

it's green.

It was a successful mission, and you're fine.

So it's a lot of that.

But, you know, they are ex-criminals.

And sometimes

they get a little bat shit, and they do something, and they get in trouble, and you have to decide.

One of them's a bat.

One of them is a bat.

That's true.

I didn't realize there were follow-ups.

So, for example, one of them is they have to break up a bar fight, I think.

And I literally just didn't know that you had to click on it again in order to continue that story.

So, a bar fight just erupted, and my characters are like, Well, that was trash.

And I was like, What do you mean?

So, now I understand there's follow-ups to some.

Mechanically, there's a

it's a lot of choice so like dodger was saying if you send two people to something those two people can't do something else so if another emergency pops up you now have only four people to choose from to solve that and you may have just sent the person who was really good at solving that particular thing yeah and so you have to do that it's one of those things where i realized that this game will be the death of me because I know it wants me to play and just experience it.

But the part of me that is like, but I want, I want,

I would really like to win is going to have a game FAQs right over here.

Like, what is the best place to send my people?

Like, I just will be very upset if I don't get it correctly.

And I know that's not the point.

I'm aware that's not the point.

But the part of me that wants to do it correctly is going to be in the back of my head like, you've, you messed up, dude.

You messed up.

You sent the wrong people at the wrong time.

Yeah, I know that's going to, there's going to be a meta of how to do it.

But, like, the more that you use someone and the more that they're successful, you get to upgrade them.

So, even if you send somebody on a mission and maybe they're not perfect for it, if they're successful at it, then you can look at their stats and be like, okay, how can I, how can I like maximize what you're good at?

You know,

I feel like you had a lot more successes than I did.

Although, a very important question: do you dab up the dude at the urinal?

No,

That was my boy.

He's lovely.

He's lovely.

He's a lovely man.

Did he touch any of his body?

No.

That man's dog was so big, he did not.

I was two-handing it.

But he wanted.

You didn't try to dab somebody up at the urinal.

He wanted the dab.

He wanted the dab.

He wanted the dab.

He wanted the dab.

He wanted to.

Guess what?

It's a terrible thing.

Picariously touch your dong.

I don't care.

I don't care.

I was going to let him have it.

Both people have to be.

Hey, man, do you wash your hands?

I was fine with it.

No, it was fine.

I did think it was very

funny that

he had a decently long sequence of explaining how he does everything without touching it.

Yeah, without touching his dick.

Here's the thing, though.

That meant, see, this is,

this is the problem.

Remember when we played Life is Strange and everyone was telling us that one guy's a bad guy.

Don't listen to him.

And I was like, maybe he could pay off.

Let's go down this path.

I'm telling you, 50 hours into that game, touching that man's hand while he's peeing is going to be like, hey, remember when

you touched my hand and you dabbed me up?

I'm here to save the day, man.

And I'm going to be the hero because all it took was touching that man's hand while he took a piss.

Look, if setting boundaries with the lovely Samoan man is going to make or break my game, then I guess

I don't know how I feel about this game anymore.

I feel pretty good because that guy's gonna, he's gonna burst in at the last minute and be like, Dab brother, I'm here to save you.

And I'll be like, don't worry, I knew you'd come.

You touched me with your ding-dong hand.

And that's how I knew that we were close.

We were tight.

Yeah.

Yeah, damn right.

Damn right.

Look, the rules were off.

Like,

you know,

it's your first day on the job.

You got to make make good friends.

Yeah.

And that guy wanted to be your friend.

It's prison rules.

It's because he recognized us.

We have a secret identity chat.

You'll have to play the devil.

I don't think it's prison rules.

I don't think it's prison rules either.

I don't think it's prison rules.

I was trying to move on from that.

Yeah, that was a fun demo.

It made me laugh a bunch.

Very funny.

Very excited to see it.

The voice acting is very natural and funny, and everybody has very good charisma.

Yeah, I think the characters are

going to shine.

I will say it's really fun.

I'm not going to say this is the Jesse Cox School of Voice Casting.

However,

they are pulling from the Monster Prom theory of let's cast people from all walks of internet life who definitely have a following because we got games to sell.

When I saw the cast, I was like,

when I saw the cast, I was like, ah, they are devious.

Look at them.

I was like, they try to sell copies.

Yep.

Yep.

Speaking of voice actors,

we got a demo of the voice actor game, Date Everything.

Yes.

I haven't played that.

What was it like?

Oh, my gosh.

It has everybody in it.

What the hell?

So the.

Are you in it?

I'm not in it, but I am not a voice actor.

Are you in it?

Why aren't you in it?

Why aren't you in it?

No, I'm not in it.

I can't act to save my life.

Why would they put me unless they had us in it as two incredibly awkward, non-good acting styrofoam cups?

Like, I don't know.

I don't know who would be in it.

Maybe they'll do DLC.

Whoever's making date everything, can Jesse and I be two Styrofoam cups?

Thank you.

Please reach out.

Okay, the concept of the game is you are hired by this company.

You log onto the computer to start your first day of work and they're like, actually, we've replaced you with a computer, but we, we just, we literally just hired you and we'll get in a lot of trouble if we try to fire you on the first day.

So I guess you're in limbo.

So have a nice one.

And you're like, okay.

So get up from your computer, you're putzing around your house and suddenly there's a drone.

that drops off a package,

breaks your window to drop off the package.

You get like a weird message from somebody.

He's like, I'm going to give you something.

Don't ask questions.

You're like, okay.

You open it up and it's a pair of glasses.

You put on the glasses and suddenly you can see this lovely lady who I believe is voiced by Felicia Day.

You see this lovely lady

and she's like, hi, I'm your glasses.

And you're like, okay.

And she explains that she is a magical or or technological I'm not sure that it's been explained very well but I don't need it to

a magic set of glasses that allow you to speak to everything in your home that every single thing in your home has a personality point of order hold on hold on hold on yes

my assumption again I have not played this demo Yeah, my assumption was that this is a game where everything just was alive and it was the world.

But you're telling me that in this demo, it is established.

You're just a person who puts on glasses and the glasses tell you everything is alive.

So in reality, you are making out with a hot girl, but everyone else sees you banging your refrigerator is what you're telling me.

Maybe.

Yeah.

Yeah, this is not like.

All right, cool.

Please continue.

100%.

This is not like, ah,

you go to talk to the front door and the front door becomes a person that other people can interact with.

This is like the second you take the glasses off, front door, hot front door man is gone.

So you're just a crazy person.

Maybe.

We don't know yet.

No, no, maybe.

No, maybe.

Maybe.

But what I want to stress.

Because I wasn't sure what the gameplay of this was going to be aside from just trying to chat up everybody in your house, right?

First of all, you really can

talk to everything.

I only brought a couple of things to life because

I realized how fun it was going to be and I kind of just want to like save it for when it comes out.

But it looks like the gameplay is that you have to kind of build up rapport with the things in your house.

So there are some things that, for lack of a better word, there are some things that are going to be really easy.

They're down to talk to you.

They're very excited to be brought to life and have a conversation with you, and it's fine.

But not everything is accessible to you yet.

And some

things that you can talk to are hidden, and you need to figure out how to find them.

So, it's kind of like a weird, like, creature collector,

Dodger.

Yeah,

what would you say say is the easiest household object?

I don't know.

The bed.

The bed is one of the...

I hate how good of an answer that is.

I hate how good of an answer that is.

Literally.

Of course it's the bed.

Of course.

In the first day, the like tutorial day, everything that you talk to, you have an option to be like, do you want to date?

Or, you know, to like try to...

come on to them in some way.

And then the game has you talk to the bed and the bed is all innuendo super sexual the whole time so you've been sleeping with the bed for years so like yeah you're basically already a couple yeah

and you have a lot of lines that are like i don't know how i feel i don't know how i feel about the fact that i've now brought you to life and realized that there's like that i'm like sleeping on someone who looks like you essentially but again yeah let me just point out yes this is not the plot I thought this game was at all.

I thought, again, you just existed in a world where you could date everything.

No, no, no, no, no.

You're a crazy person who puts glasses on.

And Felicia Day says you can date things.

Now, here's the thing.

We've had Felicia Day on the show.

I know Felicia.

I wouldn't trust Felicia when she says you can date anything.

That seems like a setup to me.

And I'm just saying, you put on the glasses and then you're like, everything's beautiful this that's

that seems that seems like a trap that's not good this is gonna end badly for you so

this game isn't you in an asylum of some sort I don't know what's happening so there are there are two things that I want to point out for um okay for people to know that has nothing to do with what you're saying when you start the game you have a corkboard

and on the corkboard there are like two sticky notes one of them is like make friends make enemies.

And this game establishes really early on that

you can pursue a romantic relationship with whatever you want, but you can also just be like, I just want to meet everybody.

I just want to be friends.

Or you can be like, I want to see how many of these things I can piss off.

You can pursue like a hate run with everybody.

Different characters, different items in your house are going to set boundaries with you.

So like the very first character that you meet is Front Dorian,

the personification of your front door.

And he's really straightforward about, like,

I only have an interest in a friendship.

So, if you are somebody who feels really like likes the idea of the game, but you feel really uncomfortable, like, doing anything sexual or pursuing a sexual thing with anybody, you know, wherever that falls, you can just be like, no, I just want to be friends, or I want everybody to hate me.

You You can absolutely do that.

The other thing is, can I ask you a question?

Yes.

How it, so

this is going to sound crazy, but I feel like it's very true.

Okay.

So

when you

one, let me ask, are there sexual scenes in this game?

I don't know.

I have no idea.

Do we?

Okay.

Because I'm very curious what even that would look like.

But more importantly, I'm not sure.

There's so one of the things I've learned about video games is that if there's a relationship aspect to it, like Baller's Gate 3 is a really great example of this, where

it's about connecting with the characters over time and feeling like you kind of earned it.

A lot of players want that.

They want the idea of I've earned this, we've done stuff together, we've been through things, we, you know, our relationship is forged in fire, and now I am really connected to this person.

In a world where everything is datable,

I'm curious

what

people will

think when it finally, you know what I mean?

Like, it seems like it almost might be too easy to get the date.

I absolutely do.

And if you're playing a porn game, bless, I'm pretty sure that's what you want.

But if there's no actual, like, doing it scenes,

then I, then I'm curious how much time, like, front door in, if I'm just for some reason, not that I would be, but if for some reason I just really want to spend time with Ben Starr, what,

what's the pain?

Like, you know, how much time am I spending?

What's the, like, for as many things as there are,

is it going to be mile wide, inch deep?

Like, what, I'm so curious what the final product is.

Yes.

So I, I totally understand what you mean.

Um, so from what I played, which again was not very much because I, I wanted to just experience it once it's fully out, But I stumbled onto a conversation with an item that was like, oh, next time that we talk, we should do this and we should see if anybody else wants to do it with us.

And so it starts to establish like, okay, this is kind of a side quest.

Like you can try to find people to join in on an activity.

And I'm sure that activity is different depending on who's there.

Right.

Yeah, every conversation that you have has like follow-ups.

that are sort of established in the conversation of like reasons to come back or something to pursue.

Sure, sure.

The other thing that I wanted to mention earlier is that there's a system built in that I think is really clever, which is basically there's

the first time that you come upon a character where this applies, Felicia Day will pop up and be like, Hi.

So you're about to start a conversation with a character that might have

some elements and topics that you are uncomfortable with, but we don't know.

So, if generally you just want to be surprised, you're not really concerned about it, I will never pop up again.

But if you want to be warned ahead of time, I can pop up and you can ask me specifics.

So,

an example is in the demo, you can talk to your diary.

Your diary has been affected by years and years and years of things that you've written in it.

Okay.

And so Felicia Day pops up and is like, hey, when you talk to the diary,

we're going to stumble onto a lot of topics.

And here are all of them.

You can say, like, what topics exactly?

And then she'll tell you.

And you can decide whether or not you want to skip it.

You can say like, I don't really want to delve into that.

And she'll be like, okay, well, how would you like that to have resolved?

Essentially, and you can just skip it, but still have that as part of the game, if that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess, like,

I'm putting on producer hat right now, yeah, and thinking about the game, like conceptually, sounds hilarious.

It definitely sounds like every VTuber on planet Earth is gonna play this game.

Yeah, it sounds like a very spot the voice actor game, yes, but like conceptually, from a producer standpoint, I'm trying to figure out, like, okay, we hired a bajillion voice actors, but for some reason, not Jesse and Dodger, who would be great styrofoam cups.

We would be.

And we hired a bunch of voice actors.

How

do we

like you?

There's, I keep thinking of, like, you know, when we talk about making games and the string of all the different connectors, and, you know, we have to bring in all these people.

Well, you know, how much money do we have for a bunch of voice actors?

And how many lines do they have?

And how many, like, I keep thinking, okay, you talked to, you know, the fireplace.

So I just saw his Dante

Bosco, and that's hilarious.

But how, like, one conversation, two conversations, three conversations?

Like, when does that stop?

When does it become sort of like an RPG where after,

you know, a certain number, they just say the same thing over and over and over again?

I have no idea.

Yeah, that's my big question.

Like, I genuinely don't know.

It's hard.

It's hard to tell at, yes, it's hard to tell at this stage if really the pull of this game is going to be,

oh my gosh, the art's fantastic.

And the way that the characters are dressed to reflect the item they are is so clever.

And the voice acting is obviously amazing.

And it's just really fun and goofy.

If that's as deep as it's going to get, or if it will,

with so many characters, if it will give you something

substantial to enjoy and latch on to.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, I absolutely get

as a streamer, this being a hilarious game to play.

You and your audience can spot the voice actors.

You can do a like, I get that.

I think that's an easy sell.

However,

Johnny game man

on the street, your average gamer, I still don't know what the end game of this is.

I don't know what the objective is.

Like, I don't, there's a lot of questions I have about the game that I just don't quite understand.

And I feel like I have to play a demo, but I don't, from what I'm hearing, I don't know that the demo even gets into that.

So, like, there's a lot.

I, you know, I don't know.

Um,

again, like I was saying with Balls Gate 3, the objective was I'm going to form a relationship with this person, and I'm going to get a few sex scenes along the way, but really, this is about me falling in love with Carlak or Shadow Heart or, you know, like that kind of thing.

And then this is like, you can date everything.

Like, okay, cool.

I think it's hilarious and it's going to be absolutely funny as hell.

And I still don't trust Felicia Day in those crazy glasses, but I think it's going to be a funny experience.

Yeah.

But

does the funny last?

You know what I mean?

Like, does it last?

Does it?

Yes.

Because it seems like there's when you say date everything, I'm like, awesome, hilarious.

However, how long will I care about dating everything?

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

A lot of questions.

I'm expecting that in the end, I'm going to be more interested in finding all the items because that seems to be one of the game goals: is like, where is everything in the house?

What all can you bring to life?

Can you actually bring everything to life?

What does it take to bring everything to life, you know, etc.

I will say, if this is one of those,

oh man, what was that game where you went on the island and everything was kind of like food creatures?

Uh, oh my God, what was that called?

Chat, you got to help me out.

But it was like, there was like a hamburger man and a French fry guy, and they were all like food creatures.

Bug snacks, yes.

I thought for the life of me that game was going to have like a weird horror element to it because it seemed like it had a weird horror element to it.

It absolutely did not.

And while the game was fun, I was waiting for it to pick up.

Yeah.

This is like, if this is a game, if we find out that Date Everything is like, what was that?

Hatafu boyfriend?

Where there's like something?

Where there's like something weird going on?

Yeah.

Then I'd be like, yes.

Now I get it.

Now I understand.

I'm wondering, though, if we've come full circle now, where like that's too expected.

And it's better to just have a game that is exactly what it says on the tin, but done really well.

Yeah.

You know, Bug Snacks does.

Not in the way that I was thinking.

What I'm saying is,

sorry, I got distracted by people saying Bug Snacks was horror.

I'm like, it's not horror.

No.

Yeah.

But yeah, I definitely, like, if they, yeah, if they do

us or did something like that, I think that would be, this is a game that would be one of the biggest selling games of all time.

You know what I mean?

Like, if it's like, you did everything and then it's like, oh no, this is terrifying, you know?

I think that'd be very cool.

But

yeah, at the moment, I'm trying to figure out beyond the initial goof of like, ha ha ha,

I didn't recognize this voice and I'm flirting with the voice.

What is there?

Yeah.

And I just don't know yet.

I literally don't know.

Yeah.

There's like little nods toward there being, you know, more of like an overall story.

I just don't know how deep that's going to get.

So,

but if we want to move on, sure.

A couple of weeks ago, I played, I don't remember if you played this game or not, but I played Siege in the Sandfox.

I was talking about how

I was talking about how people have been wanting with like Prince, all these Prince of Persia games coming out and stuff, people have been wanting just like a pure stealth game.

And I think I found exactly what I would be looking for with that, which is Eric's home.

Eric's home.

Eric's home.

E-R-I-K-S-H-O-L-M.

Eric's home.

I spelled that completely.

The stolen dream.

Yes.

So I thought, I thought you had, I was like, Eric is home.

Okay.

Eric's home.

Eric's home.

yeah this is a demo that you can play right now it is a pure stealth game and it plays so well it drops you right in the middle of a story so you're a girl I think named Hannah you wake up your brother's at your bedside you have like a tearful hug And they sort of allude to the fact that you were sick with something, but you've finally woken up.

You were in a coma or something similar, but you've woken up and you're fine.

And your brother has been trying to like make do.

You're both obviously very young, but there's no adults.

It's just the two of you.

And your brother's been making do however he needed to.

And

he says, I'm really sorry.

I do have to go to work though.

And she's like, of course, I get it.

He says, I'll be back by nightfall.

And of course, he's not back by nightfall.

And then the police show up and they're kicking your door down and they're like, where is he?

And she's like, at work.

I don't know.

I literally just woke up.

And they're like, well, we're going to need to take you to the precinct.

And

sneaky little cutie pie, you're like, okay, just let me get my bag.

Slip into the vents.

So the whole beginning of this demo is you avoiding the cops.

And it becomes very clear that it's a the common people versus the cops situation.

Everybody else in this building is like, you're hiding from the cops.

Go this way.

Like everybody's trying to help you out yeah and you the the the stealth mechanics are really nice it's an isometric view you're able to like put the camera kind of wherever to really get an idea of your surroundings the game is really good with icons to show how sound is working in the room So if if there are people that you want to be discreet around, you are always sneaking.

The game doesn't make you decide if you're sneaking or not.

Instead, it says, if you want to take a chance and run, you can,

but otherwise, you will be sneaking if there are police around that could possibly hear you, right?

So you're, it's auto, like you aren't, it isn't one of those you walk normally and then you have to choose to sneak.

It's you're sneaking and you can choose to.

Check that you're in a situation where you should be sneaking, you're sneaking, which I appreciate so much.

So instead, instead of worrying that maybe you're not sneaking when you should be, Instead, your focus is entirely on, okay, watch the police.

What's their pattern?

When they walk on that specific part of the floor, does an icon pop up that shows that they're making more noise than usual?

Maybe I want to avoid that part of the floor, right?

So you can really observe them and figure out the best way to get to, to get from A to B, like wherever it is that you need to go.

Once you're like out of that first building, you can use like animals and like items to make noise, to like draw attention and stuff.

It's so good.

And what I really love

is it does not have a

someone saw you someone heard you but if you run long enough they'll stop chasing you this is this is pure stealth the second you're seen it's like you got spotted start over and it kicks you and it kicks you back to like whatever your last checkpoint is which all every checkpoint felt very fair it doesn't cool it doesn't kick you back too far where you're like well you know yeah yeah yeah yeah

i loved it awesome yeah it feels so nice to play, really responsive.

I loved how the camera works and everything.

I had nothing bad to say about it.

I really, really like it.

Hilariously, it says, is this game relevant to you?

Similar to games you've played, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Plague Tale.

Yeah, all right, I'm already in.

Nailed tooth games that I love.

Tonally, tonally, you could say it's like Plague Tale a little bit, maybe.

I'm not sure.

Oh, yeah.

I don't think it looks like it, but tonally, yes.

It very, even the key art.

I'm like, that's very plague tale-esque.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So.

Neat.

It looks cool.

I'll play this.

Yes.

Definitely recommend that.

Possessors is another one that I played, which is a Metroidvania.

Interesting.

The art on this one is also great.

The animations are beautiful.

You are...

A girl whose town is being destroyed by demons.

And

I will tell tell you, the intro scene to this game is a little gruesome.

Hell yeah.

But you are basically put into a position where you're going to die unless you make a deal with a demon who is also dying.

So it's like a mutually beneficial sort of situation, but obviously you're very resistant to it for a long time.

Oh, it's devolver.

Yeah.

All right.

Suddenly everything makes sense.

Okay.

Never mind.

So I gotcha.

Yeah.

So he, you agree to the deal.

He's like, as long as you take me home, I will fix you up and you can do whatever it is, find whoever you need to find, do whatever it is you need to do.

But of course, he's a demon.

So what he doesn't tell her is once he's fixed her up,

three years have gone by.

So he's like, everybody that you loved is probably dead now, but you know, that's not my business.

She's like, what the fuck?

Right.

So you get sort of like kicked back out into

the world that to you feels like was just a moment ago, but three years have gone by and everything's gone to shit.

It's beautiful.

It feels really nice.

It looks gorgeous.

It's another game that feels great to play.

It's got that like exploration Metroidvania aspect to it, you know, which I love.

Yeah, I think that that game is also going to be great.

I have no idea when that one's coming out, but.

Yeah, it looks, I mean, like visually, pretty stunning.

Love that.

Yeah.

I think that those were really the number ones.

Absalom was another one that I played that's

kind of Hades-like.

The art on that one is gorgeous.

If you want another roguelite where there's clearly lots of characters to develop relationships with and lore to find and all of that.

Full disclosure: a friend of mine is working on this game, but I played a game called Ambrosia Sky, which is one that I was going to bring up when you were talking about melding genres.

It's basically

a power wash sim game, but mixed with a sci-fi horror game.

So

that's cute.

Yeah.

So you've got like a power wash gun, but it dissolves fungus.

So there's like this fungus that's taking over in this area.

You're a person who works for a company that's working on what's called the Ambrosia Project, I believe, which is trying to like find the secrets to immortal life or to the next stage of human development because this fungus is killing everything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's a cool concept.

The art's beautiful.

Movement-wise, it needs some work for sure.

I, there were a couple of times where I was trying to get from like one spot to the other and I was like, ah.

So if they tighten up the movement, because they've got like a cool grappling hook and all sorts of stuff in there, but I kept getting stuck on stuff.

But you know,

it's a demo, so it's fine.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In that same vein, you should check out Little Rocket Lab.

Very small team, basically like a factory building game mixed with with the farm sim.

You're a young woman who goes back to live with her aunt, and there's like, you know, years ago, her mom and aunt were trying to build a rocket, I assume, to the moon.

And

mom dies, it's been years, and now you go back and you are going to factorio your way into creating, but also, you know, there's people in town who need stuff and there's people who, you know, you have to build out all the conveyor belts and crap.

It's a very fun demo.

Pretty good stuff.

Did you play Rue Valley at all?

No.

What's that?

What's the game that is you love and you made your guy really stupid on purpose?

Disco Elysium.

Disco Elysium.

So imagine Disco Elysium.

Okay.

You are a character who, in the demo at least, has been sent for some crime.

We don't really know yet.

Okay.

Sent to go see a therapist who works out of a motel in the desert.

So all of his clients stay at the motel.

And he does this to separate them from society, to like get into what's going on with them and to treat them.

Well, while you're there, you can make all the dumb choices.

You can spec out your character.

I made my guy a drama queen, which was hilarious.

So all of my answers are like, oh, no.

You can, you know, it does a thing where at one point you see a puddle of water and you see your reflection.

You hate what you see.

So you can stomp it.

And I kept stomping it to the point where my sock got wet.

So now I have a wet sock and it hurts my stats, like that kind of thing.

Great.

Yeah.

And

premise-wise is you go to therapy and you're like a hate-bing here.

And the guy's like, well, all right, go check your room, go check in, get some rest.

You go, you meet the lady at the counter.

She's on the phone because the internet's down.

And you can sit there for a long time waiting for her.

Or you can play on, play games on your phone.

You can yell at her if you want.

You can do whatever.

Then you go to your room and you're like, man,

what an absolutely terrible damn day.

I'm just going to rest.

And then you have a screen where you can piece together events from the day, which pays off later.

But at the moment, you're kind of like reflecting on the things that happened.

And then you have a terrible dream based off those things that happened.

In my case, there were snakes in my suitcase.

Like that was my dream.

I was freaking out.

Wake up because there's a car crash outside.

You go outside.

There's a guy in a sports car.

He crashed into the light pole.

You think, oh, maybe he's he's another one of the people here who's for therapy.

He drives off.

You're like, damn, I need some water.

We're in the desert.

I'm going to go down and get some water.

It starts raining.

You get your water.

You dodge a lightning bolt and you're like, damn, what the hell was that?

And then the sky lights up red with fire.

I assume a nuke.

I don't know.

And you wake up in the doctor's office again going through your therapy.

Except this time, you start to recall, oh my God, this has happened before.

It's a time loop game.

And now all the pieces of your memory, when you think on it, you're piecing like, wait, that happened before.

And now you have new additions to it.

And you're piecing together, like, wait a minute.

I need to figure out what happened.

That sounds so fun.

Yeah.

And it's because of the different stats, you have different experiences every time.

So now when you go see, you know, when you talk to the doctor, the doctor can be like, oh, yeah, I'll talk to the lady at the front desk.

You shouldn't have any trouble checking in.

So now, instead of waiting, she gets a call and you're like,

Okay, come on, let's get you checked in.

When you go upstairs, you're waiting for the car crash, but you don't hear it this time because you accidentally slept through it.

So, when you go downstairs, you find parts of the car that have been destroyed, and you're like, It did happen,

and then the lightning crash happens, you're like,

right?

And it's a repeating time loop game where you're trying to solve the mystery while repeating time over and over and over again.

And basically,

the game game starts at 8 o'clock p.m.

and the time loop ends at 8:47.

So it's 47 minutes back to back to back to back.

And you have to figure out what the hell's going on.

Awesome.

Very, very cool.

Interesting.

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah, it's definitely a game that I think you would love.

I love a time loop.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Weirdest game of all of Next Fest.

Yes.

Hell is Us.

Dodger?

I dare you to play Hell is Us.

Okay.

A dare?

Goodness.

I'm still not sure what this game is.

It is a game where you play as Elias Tefexus.

You play as

Adam Jensen with weird curly hair

who has snuck into a war zone in a place called Hadia

where everything seems like it's hell-named.

You're being interrogated by a guy who looks like a demon, but is just a dude, I think.

And in this world,

it is like, imagine you're playing a game where you're a dude behind enemy lines in a world where, you know, the UN, except it's called the ON in this game,

has gone in as peacekeepers, but then immediately left for reasons you don't know.

You meet people who live there.

Like, there's this guy, all of his sons were killed except for one, and he's missing.

And he's just this old man who lives on a farm.

And you could do like a quest for him to go, you know, learn stuff.

But while there's dead soldiers around or injured soldiers to help, and there's a frontline battlefield, and you can go through the trenches, there's also, for some reason, a weird, mysterious ruin.

And in that ruin, if you go inside, there's cryptic words that you cannot read that are from an ancient language.

And then there's just white, no-faced looking like squall from Final Fantasy with the no-face thing, demons.

Okay.

And you lose, your gun doesn't work, but you get a magic sword, and that magic sword can kill the demons.

And

Dodger,

I don't know what the hell this game is.

It might be one of the craziest games I've ever played in my life.

It is absolutely

bonkers.

Okay.

I just don't.

I'll I'll try it.

I've been dared.

I'll try it.

I would love to hear your reaction because it's in everything about it is crazy.

But also, there's no mini-map and there's no directional tools.

So a great example is the farmer's like, oh, in order to get further into the forest, I would let my sons know where to go by jingling wind chimes.

So follow the wind chimes that will get you there.

However, if you don't want to follow the wind chimes, you can discover little micro puzzles that will get you items that can help you.

Okay,

but if you follow the wind chimes, it'll take you where you need to go.

Okay, but there is no map, there is no, like, there is no kind of compass thing, like a skyrim or whatever.

It's purposefully meant to make you get lost in the world.

All right,

and at the same time,

there's crazy demon creatures that

there's no face choice.

Yeah, I just don't know what's going on in this game.

It's truly insane.

Like, you will

talk to people and they will be like, I'll never forgive that enemy faction what they did to my boys.

Right.

You're talking to a soldier and he's like, we came here, we killed them all, right?

And it seems like a normal, this is hell, right?

Hell is us.

We are in a war zone and we're causing all of our own problems.

Right.

But then there are demons and a man man who looks like a demon interrogating you about fighting demons.

And he's like, why did you come to Haitia?

I'm like, you live in a place called Hades, bro.

And all these demons, like, it's,

I, it's crazy.

Yeah.

Absolutely, totally bonkers.

I'll have to check it out.

It looks.

It looks like a soul's like.

Kind of.

Does it feel like that at all?

So there's one of the the things that you can do, I mean, a little bit.

So it's a lot more forgiving.

So a great example is you have a drone, and the drone can literally put guys in stasis.

You can run up and zap them, but it has a cooldown.

So you can't do it all the time.

Then some enemies, when you fight them, they have an additional part that you have to kill first before you can kill the enemy.

So you're being attacked by two guys instead of one.

At some points.

You unlock the ability to if you land a hit or you land a block a little white thing appears around you for a split second.

If you press, I think it's either L1 or R1,

you heal a little bit.

Okay.

So you can, if you're good enough, you can just heal through anything.

So a lot of the fights, I just walk up and start swinging wildly and I'm like, heal, heal, heal.

Try.

I'm sure it'll be harder later on.

Yeah.

But

yeah, it's a.

Yeah,

it's not a

rogue-like, or not rogue-like, but a souls-like.

Souls-like, yeah.

It's not that.

There's something, I don't know.

I don't know how to describe it.

I think I saw it.

I was saying it's just an action game.

Yeah,

it's not, it's not particularly you have to dodge a bunch.

Yeah.

You just have to be smart about how you attack.

But for the most part, at the end, I was just running past the enemies because my objective was to go back to the farm.

And I'm like, oh, all right, gonna run back there.

And the enemies would be like,

I'm like, no, dude, I got places to be.

Bye.

But it is, it is weird.

And there's clearly something going on.

Like, you find a whole

tapestry or like a stone carving that's just like, long ago, the queen would gather the enemy and sacrifice them in front of the tower.

We'd all go to watch because it was a pretty cool show.

And I'm like,

what the hell?

So weird.

I'm obsessed with it.

Amazing.

Yeah.

But I don't know.

It might be too weird.

Like, I just don't.

Yeah, it's, it's out there.

Just inaccessibly weird.

Maybe.

It's very strange.

Okay.

We've reached the point of baby run.

So

can you

blitz through the news?

Of course I can.

Okay.

Of course I can.

First, really quickly in the news, PS5 players, for the first time ever, are more than PS4 players.

There are more PS5 people playing, which is hilarious because we are roughly two years away from having a PS6.

So that should tell us all something very important, especially for game devs, that the vast majority of people do not care about the hardware or the tech or the whatever.

All that's really just for CEOs and business guys.

Players just want a good game.

They don't really care how it looks.

It doesn't need to be ray traced to hell, is what we've learned.

Confirmation that Silent Hill 1 is being made by Bluber team.

They're remaking it.

And that's pretty interesting considering what perfect timing to have Ash the Roboto on Tell Me About to talk about Silent Hill 1, 2, and 3.

So very lucky there.

Excited about that.

I never played the first game.

Then, Creative Assembly announced that they're going to start a new era of Total War games.

And you'll find out more in December, I assume, during the Game Awards.

But as a longtime fan, let me just say that

I hope we can move on from them literally just gouging consumers because lately they have been

pure trash when it comes to that.

And so hopefully the new era is them being like, oh, we're just going to make good games again.

So

we'll see.

Speaking of, we talked about this earlier.

But the Split Gate guy, Split Gate 2,

apologized for his attention-grabbing stunt.

Again,

weird choice to go, we are not like the others, and then show us a clip that just

literally is exactly like the other games.

Yeah.

Yeah, but okay.

So he apologized for that in the most corporate way I've ever seen.

And

yeah,

the reviews are mixed.

Online, most people are like, it's exactly what you would expect, which is that it does nothing new.

Then we saw the release of Mind's Eye this week.

And

it turns out that a game that wouldn't let you play or review it before launch had weird marketing, never actually showed any real game footage, and as a CEO for basically being like a guy who be scamming players in previous titles, turns out that was bad.

What?

Yeah, weird.

Weird.

My favorite clip on the internet.

If you haven't seen this, go look it up.

It is incredible.

Our boy Co-Carnage

goes to play for a brand deal and gets contacted as the game is booting up, canceling the brand deal.

I've never seen anything like that in my life.

It's crazy.

That's so funny.

Yeah, yeah.

So it turns out that game not good.

Who would have guessed?

In other news,

just kidding, it's still shitty CEO news.

Embracers CEO Lars Wingafors, who oversaw them buying all these amazing games and franchises, you know, like Saints Row, Deus Ex, Tomb Raider, Time Splitters, more than I can think of,

and then doing nothing with them, or shutting down studios, or making terrible games with them,

is being replaced as CEO.

Here's the thing: it's not a full replacement, he's just no longer CEO.

Instead, they're moving him to like another.

We don't want to hurt his feelings, corpo bullshit thing, where it's like he'll he'll be another role here.

So

yeah, Embracer, still don't trust them with anything.

They had all the goodwill in the world and squandered that.

And then, of course, today, we saw the release of the alters, which I'll definitely check out later today.

Very cool stuff.

They sent me stuff.

Ooh.

The alters, it looks so much fun.

I have decided if there's an easy option, I'll probably play on easy mode because I don't want

to

create shelter the story

than I do about the spaceship management part of the game.

Exactly.

Yes.

Yeah, I want to see the story.

It looks amazing.

The demo was so much fun.

So I really want to check that out.

And then next week, Firebreak comes out.

And so if you want to experience that, I played it at

Play Days.

I would love to play that together.

Okay.

I bet I can get his keys.

I know the guys.

I have a key already.

Oh, shit.

Okay.

I know.

We should play together.

We need to find one more person.

It is

so much fun.

I played with, you know what?

I'm not going to put them on blast.

I played with other influencers.

And because I played before, I was really like the guy.

And I felt awesome.

Oh, my gosh.

And it was great.

Were you side-eyeing them?

No, but I was giving them hot tips on how to play.

It was awesome.

And then Phil Spencer showed up and they were like, you got to go, Jess.

You've played before.

You can give him a a spot.

And I was like,

you need to leave.

Yeah, it was funny because they're like, it's, we don't want to do this.

Like, it's fine.

I'm going to play it at launch anyway.

Like, I don't care, guys.

It's whatever.

But it was very funny.

And I was like, I hope Phil enjoyed.

So

that comes out next week.

And that is the news.

Jesse, what's going on with you this week, my dude?

You're finally

not going to cons.

You're home.

You're doing

your thing.

Yeah.

I mean, obviously, Father's Day is this weekend.

And so I'll spend time with the parents on Sunday.

But

yeah, I'm going to do alters.

I am going to finally get back in Expedition 33 because everyone's like, Jesse, where were you?

I was like, I'd be working, people.

So I'll do that.

And then next week will be FBC.

I'm very excited.

It's a crazy week of games.

And yeah, I'm back.

I'm back, baby.

He's back.

He's back.

Yeah.

I never left.

So

hee hee.

You left me here in L.A.

Oh, brother.

If I could teleport,

if I could teleport, I'd come out there and hang out all the time.

Yeah, but then I wouldn't have time to play games.

I'm fine.

I'm fine.

That's so funny.

I got stuffed.

I'll stay out of your hair.

Stay out of my way.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't want to make your life more complicated.

Right.

Unless we're two

styrofoam cups.

Unless we're two styrofoam cups in the date everything DLC.

We're connecting them.

And we're,

and we talked to it.

We're just making their game for them.

Bro, if I play this game and there's already styrofoam cups, I'm going to crash out.

I'll be so upset.

This feels so unique.

We're so smart.

We're so smart just right now.

Anyways, yeah, I've been playing demos.

I played a bunch of A-Ram last night at like midnight.

It was a nightmare, but it was lovely.

It was very fun.

And yeah, I don't know.

A bunch of stuff's been coming out.

So I'm ignoring them to play demos right now, but I would love to play alters.

I want to see what that game is all about.

Tom.

I don't know.

What's going on?

Yeah, I mean, literally we have till Monday, so get as many demos in as you can.

I get it.

Yeah.

Play all the demos.

But thank you so much for watching, everybody.

We're here every Friday.

I mean, sometimes we change the day, but that's if somebody's traveling or what, but mostly we're here on Fridays.

We exist on Fridays in like a metaphysical way.

We do.

That's true.

You could always watch this on Friday, even if we didn't record it on Friday.

And you know what?

If you wanted to watch it on a Friday, even though we recorded it on a Thursday, Wednesday, or Tuesday, you could find all of those on youtube.com slash jessecox where all of the previous geekenders are stored.

Also, we're on all of the podcast apps.

So if you just want to listen to our voices make goofs, you can do that as well.

Have a fantastic weekend.

Have a fantastic week.

And we will see you next Friday, everybody.

Take care.

And goodbye.

Yeah, yeah, you know what time it is.

It's time for the geek in this podcast.

Mega Rand, Jesse, and Dodger.

What up?

Let's go.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it be kid.

Go on, stream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow and see what the geek enders are all about.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, scream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So, give them a follow.

Number one geek podcast without a doubt.

Yo, another end of another long week.

Got a job and a kid, I know that you all beat.

So, take a second, grab a drink, and vibe.

While we catch you up in just a matter of time on gaming, comics, whatever you're doing.

If you're nerdy like us, then you know you should tune in.

Thank you for sharing our world with us.

Now, follow, subscribe, and turn this up.

Yo, it's the weekend.

weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, stream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow.

Number one geek podcast without a doubt.

Elite Basketball returns to the Elite Caribbean destination.

It's the 2025 Battle for Atlantis men's tournament happening November 26th to 28th.

Don't miss hometown team St.

Mary's along with Colorado State, Vanderbilt, Virginia Tech, Western Kentucky, South Florida, VCU, and Wichita State playing 12 games over three days.

It's basketball at its best plus everything Atlantis has to offer.

Aqua Venture Water Park, White Sand Beaches, World Class Dining, and more.

Get your tickets and accommodations at battleforatlantis.com.

This fall, let your home smell as good as it looks.

Pura's app-controlled diffusers bring you premium scents from brands like Nest New York, Capri Blue, and Anthropology.

From Spiced Pumpkin to Whitewoods, your fall favorites are just a tap away.

It's home fragrance that feels as elevated as it smells, and right now, it's the perfect time to stock up.

Visit Pura.com and bring home the best scents of the season.

Elite Basketball returns to the Elite Caribbean destination.

It's the 2025 Battle for Atlantis men's tournament happening November 26th to 28th.

Don't miss hometown team St.

Mary's, along with Colorado State, Vanderbilt, Virginia Tech, Western Kentucky, South Florida, VCU, and Wichita State playing 12 games over three days.

It's basketball at its best, plus everything Atlantis has to offer.

Aqua Venture Water Park, White Sand Beaches, World Class Dining, and more.

Get your tickets and accommodations at battle4tlantis.com.