PixelRift Ep3

Hello, welcome to Pixel Rift, the podcast where two best friends and video game enthusiasts battle it out to see who has the better taste in games. I'm your host Alan Cruz and I'm Jonathan Michael. Today we're going to be talking about the big issue that's happening in video games today and that is Summer Game Fest. All the games, all the companies have come together to promote their big releases coming up for the rest of the year and so it's kind of taken over E3. E3's gone, it's failed, everybody knows this, and now we have PlayStation, Xbox, and of course the summer, Jeff Keighley's Summer Game Fest replacing that and we're going to talk all about it. It's going to be a good show but before we do let's get started with a complaint that we have this week and I got the important one here so I'm going to take it over. We just ordered pizza and it was terrible pizza. How can people in this day and age, and this was not a chain restaurant where you have an excuse, you know, poor ingredients. This was a mom-and-pop pizza shop that had terrible sauce, bland bread, I mean there was no zing in the sauce. There was no zing. There really wasn't. It was very bland. I couldn't believe it. Like it made us want to go to Domino's. Right. For just a little flavor. Genesee Quad you will. Right. I know what you mean man. Nothing pisses me off more than terrible pizza I'll tell you. All right. Very important thing out of the way. The not so important thing is that I saw a movie over the weekend and it was a foreign film by the name of Silenced on Netflix. Korean movie. And where'd you get this recommendation from? Got this recommendation from this girl I've been talking to on Instagram. I had a comment on a post and she she liked it and through that we started going back and forth with recommendations. Movie talk flirtation. Yeah right. Movie talk flirtation. This video game and movie enthusiasm was about to get me some action. It's a rarity. It's a rarity. Unheard of for me. We started talking about the kind of movies she liked and she liked very truth based movies. Movies based on true stories and this is a terrible movie about terrible actions that's happening in a disabled school. A school for disabled kids I should say. And where the kids were being I don't even want to say the word but not handled appropriately. And it was it was a downer of a movie. And so it's like an expose of hopefully something real because who would want to watch a movie about abuse if it's not actually if there's not some purpose behind it. Exactly you know but uh one good thing came of this was the fact that because I did watch this terrible movie she had to take one of my recommendations and she doesn't like kind of fiction movies so I gave her the recommendation of The Fifth Element. Classic. And she at first didn't want to do it but I forced it I didn't force her to do it but I was laid it out like hey you made me watch this so you're gonna watch this. Yeah okay she watched it and she absolutely loved it. So I'm like Fifth Element helping me out. All right so it went from a complaint to a celebration. Yeah for sure. Okay so now we're gonna move on to the what we've been playing section. Definitely. And I've had oh you want to go? Okay I've had for a long time a game called what is it called Promenade I think is the name of it. I'll hold it up real quick. Yeah Promenade not a very memorable name but it's a you know what it reminds me of is Banjo-Kazooie or one of those Mario 64 games where every kind of task every quest gets you a star that can open up a whole new world. Oh yeah definitely. And so you're always kind of like collecting a reserve so like oh I can open two whole new worlds next time and so everything you do kind of becomes purposeful and fun and this game it's a 2d platformer so it's actually more like the classic Mario like Mario Brothers 3 but the amount of things you can do because it's all physics based is actually reminds me more of the the newer kind of like Mario Odyssey where in one level you'll be just doing a normal side-scroller jumping on enemies yeah and then another one you're flying a spaceship and it's almost like a physics based racer. Wow you know that sounds amazing. And it's a beautiful game too it's all kind of got a watercolor art style and that's pretty much what I've been playing the most of. I've been playing a bunch of demos still from Steam Next Fest. I played the sequel to Curse of the Golden Idol which for the nerdiest gamers out there it's actually a very popular game that came out a year or two ago it's a puzzle game where you're solving crimes there's a dead body always on the screen and you have to search through people's pockets to find out okay who's the dead guy oh I found his ID I got his name now yeah and who's this other guy because he has an ID on him but you could tell that that wallet he's holding looks more like he's ripped it out of someone's hands like it's not his he's got two wallets okay and so you're like okay so is he the guy in this wallet or this other wallet that he has and so it takes some you know puzzle solving skills yeah some detective skills I love a detective game yeah and so it's it's fun but it's a puzzle game you gotta love puzzle games and it's got a very strange art style where everyone's the ugliest every bit of it's kind of ugly in a beautiful way if you could tell it's intentional but it's horrific to look at I don't know it looks like a terribly drawn Mike Judd cartoon yes which I think the same thing about his stuff it's like it's all got the same art style yeah but it's not pleasant right yeah and so having a good time being Sherlock Holmes over here yeah and what what do you been playing them uh you know the last podcast we did we talked about first-person shooters and I battled for battlefield and they gave me the itch so I went back and I was playing battlefield all week oh man it's insane that you think Halo is better than this game. This game is ten times better than Halo. We can't re-live the game. I already won the case case ain't closed. You're gonna need to appeal if you want to come back and try to win this argument again but it was absolutely spectacular just the customization of the guns and like I'm not as good as I once was but uh I shudder to say that I had to turn down the sensitivity of the the y-axis and x-axis looking. See he told me this earlier with shame in his eyes yeah I'm like what maybe that makes you a more skilled more thoughtful player I don't see that this like lower sensitivity means you're not as good kind of lying in the sand you seem to have taken to hard. It's just I didn't need to do it back in the day you know I just I could use the the old-school default sensitivity no problem but I had to turn it down several notches but uh as the notches went down the the killstreaks went up and I was doing some damage man. Plus you gotta take into account these people have been playing the same game I mean what's the it's been like three years at least or four since the last release yeah these are four-year veterans you're coming in as you know a brand new kid with a new leg right you can't expect to do well sure but did you do well on any of it? I did I did well on a lot of it you know I mostly played the support I was reviving a lot of guys man it was one of the first times in my life I I took advantage of the smoke grenade because I never really used it but uh I was using it to revive like a group of guys that have gone down to throw a smoke grenade and I was able to revive three or four guys. All right all right now you're getting a little too braggadocio. The skilled medic master of the smoke grenade. It was awesome. And he had to maybe lower his sensitivity a little bit but of course he's a master in these other areas. It felt good, it felt good. All right so as we mentioned at the start of the show it is I guess the biggest time in for for game media definitely right now definitely and so everybody is watching these things we're going to talk about so there's not really anything new we're going to say about them except of course for our wonderful opinions which are unique to us. They're unique to us and they're valuable to you. Let me tell you right now. Okay I don't know about that. I think mine are just stupid but here we go let's see what they are. So we made a list each of us of our top five games definitely that we're excited about and we're hoping because we never agree on anything that this might lead to some arguments in itself here. Sure you know they will. Okay so I'm going to start it out with my I mean they're not really in order but I'm going to start with what I'm calling my number one which is Star Wars Outlaws. Heyo. All right it's an open-world Ubisoft game which to me is actually a little worrisome. Sure. But it looks great everything I've seen about it looks awesome. It looks really good the trailer looked amazing open-world Star Wars I mean come on how long we've been wanting this. Right I mean that up front was kind of open because you could go on the ground and it's in space. You could yeah. But no it wasn't really an open world it wasn't a living world. No you couldn't explore the world. So hopefully this is that that's what we want from a Star Wars game and hopefully it is what a Starfield was supposed to be. Right and it's developed by Massive Games who made the Division 1 and 2 which yeah yeah had good combat good shooting. There's a lot of guns in what I've seen for this. Yeah yeah. I'm like okay well they did a good job with the shooting in the division I'm not a big kind of multiplayer gamer so I didn't play them a lot. Okay. But what I did play felt good. Yeah. And so I'm hopeful here that they're gonna they actually made way back in the day Ground Control which was like the only real-time strategy game I really loved when I was a kid. Oh really? Yeah you probably haven't played it. I have not. Let me tell you right now when I was watching the trailer for Outlaws I was like okay we're talking about Outlaws where's my boy where is he at and no I'm not talking about Han Solo. Windu. No I'm talking about the coolest man in the galaxy Landau Calrissian and he was in the trailer I'm like sign me up if I'm gonna have a conversation with Landau I'm there. Okay okay. See what I thought you were gonna say was actually you but you never had a Nintendo 64. No I did not. So you never played Shadows of the Empire. No I did not. Which was like a 64 release title which I loved and it actually had you were like a bounty hunter. Oh wow. In that game I forget the guy's name I want to call him Mace for some reason and I was like oh if he's in that game that will shoot it up a couple more notches. For sure. So what's your first game? Okay my first game that really caught my eye that if I might have to invest into a meta quest 3 would be a Batman Arkham Shadow. I mean okay we got a first argument here. You're gonna give me a VR Batman game I mean the the way VR has been going has been it's been mind-blowing to me because it started out so whatever. It's incredible. Absolutely incredible. Most experiences I have on there I'm thrilled with. Exactly. But here's the Rat King seems like a stupid character. Sure. The writing from that trailer seemed kind of weird and whack to me. Just everything I've seen so far has not gotten me hyped for the game. If I'm gonna be able to snap spines of regular guys it's gonna be awesome. There was a VR Batman game a couple years ago but there was almost no combat. It was almost like you were there in first person and you had to throw your batarang to solve like help me I'm falling from a window and you throw your batarang. It was like a scripted event. Okay. That game was beautiful. It looked great. Okay. It was fully immersive but it didn't give me a lot of hope for the future of VR Batman. It wasn't what it wasn't Arkham Knight. It wasn't Arkham City in VR. But this is an Arkham game though. Okay. You can't get away from that. But it's not the developers. Oh really. All right so. The sacrilege if you're gonna have an Arkham game you're not gonna be able to take out 50 guys. And who's the Rat King? Do you know this Rat King? I have no idea who the Rat King is. I mean I'm not the biggest Batman fan. I love those games. Sure. But I've never heard of the Rat King. Jeff Keighley when he announced it he was like the Rat King I guess is who you're fighting in this entire game. Hey man but he looks like he's doing some damage. He's getting everybody all dosed up. All turning on each other. I mean the whole city's turning on everything around it. You gotta love that. It also felt to me a little derivative of the other Batman games. I think one of the Arkham games starts with you in a diner. Yeah. And starting to hallucinate. That was awesome. And it almost seemed like oh am I having like. It seems like they stole their game idea from that scene. Definitely. And so I'm like none of it has gotten me excited. Well maybe that's the thing is like because that game's from Arkham Knight. And so and you never really got that in the game. It was like the whole city wide masses panic and maybe you're going to get that in this. Maybe it's just going to be battle zones all day. Hey I'm always hopeful for a game. This one didn't get me too excited. Okay so the next game I bet for you you won't even remember it but it's called Neva or Neva and it's a side scroller. Almost looks like it's a Metroidvania game where you grow up with a wolf deer creature. It looks spectacular. Visually it's actually a spiritual successor to another game. Same developer made another game called Gris. Oh okay. Which looks similar. Okay. It was almost like it was a piece of animation. Yeah. Yeah it looks amazing. Like when the wolf jumped over it and he like couldn't make it and you had to pull him up. My only fear is that I'm going to get too attached to that wolf. I 100% agree with you. No game has a greater potential to make me cry than this one coming up. Especially now because you got Nala you know. Oh yeah I got my dog. Bro like you're going to ugh. If you kill this wolf at the end of this game I'm going to be pissed. You're going to kill me. Exactly. But it did look good. And the greatest part is that Gris had no combat. Oh okay. It was just a puzzle platform. Yeah sure. But this one has the same beautiful art style with what looks to be almost like souls like combat perhaps. Yeah. Or at least Metroidvania. Sure yeah. Where enemies have interesting moves you have to dodge. Oh yeah. So it looks great. It did look good. I really liked it. I'm surprised. I'm surprised that you. Because it kind of reminded me of like Insides. Yeah. Did you play Insides? I didn't play Insides. I played the demo of Insides and I liked it. Insides is great. Yeah. It kind of reminds me of that kind of game. As far as non-combat games. Yeah. Insides is my favorite. You know what I mean? Like I just see it like that but it's like a 2D beautiful animated style. You know I mean the backgrounds look spectacular. Right. I thought this one might have more potential for you because you don't really play the story only kind of walking simulators. No no no. 2D games like Insides. You probably wouldn't play something like that too often. No I don't. And but this one has all that. Yeah. And the combat. Yeah. So I was like oh damn. I think I'm going to be able to share my fandom with my buddy. Yeah. I liked it. I was definitely impressed by it for sure. All right. What's your third game? My third game I have on the docket is the Fatal Fury City of Wolves. Oh that's the fighting game. That's the fighting game. Yes. It's it looks like the King of Fighter games that came out. It's very it's all 3D but like 2D type shaded. So it looks it looks very. Almost kind of like the new Street Fighter games. No the new Street Fighter games are straight up 3D games. OK. Yeah. I mean they don't play 3D games. They're 3D models on a 2D surface. But this one actually is it kind of looks like the animated. But they're all 3D. OK. It looks good. It plays good because I haven't played the King of Fighters because that's what this game kind of looks like. Right. But King of Fighters is a team based combat. This one's going to be more of a one on one type combat which I that's the reason I don't really like King of Fighters too much. Right. The team based combat. OK. So they're giving me it with the one on one action and hopefully Andy Bogart shows up because they like to diss my boy Andy. But if he shows up I'm all in. OK. Well I just skipped this trailer entirely for this trash. This is the fighting game trash. Honestly that's not true. I just didn't quite have time to get to this one trailer. And if you're going to skip one skip the trash. Just kidding. OK. Third game is Black Myth Wukong. It's based on a journey to the West which I've seen a bunch of media based on a journey to the West which is I think a Chinese folklore. OK. Of this monkey god. Yeah. This monkey man who rises up to challenge the gods. Yeah. And I've never understood the story. I think Jackie Chan starred in a version of it which was made for American audiences. It had a white kid going with Jackie Chan to become on the journey to the East or a journey to the West. That's crazy. You never saw that movie? No. It's one of his like more recent Jackie Chan movies. I actually like the movie OK. But the lore still confused me there. I'm hoping in this one I can actually finally understand this historically significant. It's a fable. It's one of the oldest stories that we have. Oh yeah. Definitely. And also it's a souls like which is my favorite genre. Yeah for sure. It looks great. I mean we've been seeing this game for years. There's been trailers coming out for years and years. And back when it first announced the first trailer came out it was so far beyond anything else graphically that it seemed unreal almost. Yeah. At this point games have caught up to it. It's kind of just running with the pack. But I'm still four years of hard work by these guys. I'm excited to see what they've done with it. And I always love a souls like. Yeah. It reminds me of that kid from Jumanji. Running in the morning. Oh that kid's all grown up now. He's facing God. As far as we know Jumanji was inspired by A Journey to the West. 100% right. My next game was a game that really caught my eye was Dragon Ball Sparkling Zero. Oh. Oh my gosh man the idea that you can. Because we've all. Anybody who loves the Dragon Ball series knows all the stories that the Dragon Ball has. You go and fight Frieza. You know Vegeta shows up. Cell and Buu and all that. But they're like tweaking it around and you can have new outcomes with these old stories. Right. And you can kind of make your own fighting event. Yeah. Like I'm like oh you're putting a little spice on my favorite stories here. I love it. Here's what again for me it does nothing. And it's because I've played the last two Dragon Ball Z combat games. Do you know what I'm talking about? What the names of them were? What was the one with Kakarot? Did you play that one? Kakarot. That's the most open world one. And before that there were two other versions of games. I think one and two they were like direct sequels with each other. And they all look graphically identical. There's something about the art style of Dragon Ball Z that wasn't too hard to master. I think we've had almost a perfect recreation of the look since like 2005. And so visually it's like oh is that the same game again? There's no improvement. There's nothing for me to get excited about visually from these games. And then the actual combat is for me it's a little better than a 2D fighter. Yeah. Because you have a little bit of where you have to position your character and that adds a little. Although on the other side I think they're simplified in terms of the move sets compared to 2D fighters. They are for sure. It's almost you just have to press B or A a bunch or like time it in certain ways and that does the whole move set. What I love about that is like anybody can pick up the controller and learn how to play. And you can have little epic battles with a brand new player. I think this is a similar disagreement we've had multiple times where then it becomes a game where it's almost more you're watching a movie play out than playing a game. And I'm watching the Dragon Ball Z movie play out. I've always said I'm not a fan of the art style of Dragon Ball Z. How dare you solely cure Toriyama's name. You know rest in peace. Honestly. And he's made Dragon Quest which I love those games. Even still the art style has never been my favorite. Although. A bonus. A bonus. I'll give it to you because that seems to be the consensus. So I don't know where I'm at what's wrong with me. But just the idea to play these stories and to be able to tweak them up a little bit really kind of makes you fun and have a good time with it. I'm sure I'd have fun playing it with you. Oh for sure. But myself it's going to be a pain. A hard pain. A hard pain. Never done that voice in my life. Don't know what that was about. My turn. Yes sir. All right well I will say something that you will not understand. Metaphor re-fantasio. What the heck. That's the new game from the makers of Persona. Yeah that looks really good. And it looks like it's the biggest budget thing on earth. For sure. And so I just got to be there for it. Persona's not even one of my favorite series. I've always enjoyed my time with them. I've never beaten one. I've never even really gotten deep into one. Even though I've probably put at least 10 hours into the last three most recent. And I have a good time with it. The stories are interesting. I get overwhelmed by some of the choice. So hopefully there's I don't want to say less choice. It seems to be a little more streamlined game. Maybe that. Maybe just something different. I like it. I love their art style. And I'd like to see all that passionate design put into a new gameplay style. It's still going to be a JRPG. And I'm cool with that. Seems like you have a lot of character selection. Seems like there's a lot more characters in this one. And it seems like you're going to be turning into giant Power Rangers style morphemons. Yes. Exactly. She doesn't love that. I mean everybody loves that. Kaiju. Kaiju fights. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. I'm all about that. It looks. The trailer was just about as nonsensical. Like I couldn't figure out what was going on. Sure. Just about as much as the name of the game is nonsensical. Definitely. But imagine if it would actually come into a cohesive sensible thing. That could be vicious. What kind of a great thing it would have to be to do that. That would be nice. That would be really nice. So we'll see what happens with that. And speaking of Power Rangers. Go go Power Rangers. Go go Power Rangers man. They're coming out with a game. Wait. Halfway through this trailer I was like I know Alan's going to pick this one. And come on. Old school beat em. They're too simple. I'm sure we liked them as kids. They're too simple. And then all of a sudden this game turned into a first person shooter. Yeah. And I was like whoa. Okay. I'm on board now. 100 percent man. First of all it is that 2D old school style beat em up game just to start off with. But it's done in that beautiful sea of stars where the animation. You can see them breathing. And every move is crisp. Realistic shadows based on the sprites. Yeah. And part of it is to the max. And it's a five person beat em up. It's just like the old school Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It's just like the old school X-Men. It's just like the old school Simpsons. Okay. So while you were watching it. If it were just simply a beat em up without all that weird kind of first person stuff. I'd still be there. You'd still be hyped. I'd still be hyped. And then you want to throw in three headed putties. You want to throw in like the first person. The neck fight. The neck fight bro. Like this game. It's going to be spectacular. I cannot wait for it. The nostalgia is going to be just dopamine hits all day on it. It's going to open up new gateways of like how a beat em up should be. See I don't. Talking about nostalgia. I don't really have any for Power Rangers because I never liked or watched Power Rangers. Did you watch that as a kid? I did watch Power Rangers as a kid. Sure. Did you play with G.I. Joe's? I did play with G.I. Joe's. For me it was G.I. Joe's and Power Rangers. It was just no no G.I. Joe's and Power Rangers. What are you talking about? I don't know why. I just wasn't into those two properties. I mean. They were two kind of just like action only with no. I don't know. Yeah. Action only. But you know a lot of it is just really the. Just the fact that they're bringing out that five. The five person beat em up. That itself. It could be whatever. But if it's a five person beat em up. I'm there. I love that kind of style of gaming. But now. You gotta play Splinter's Revenge. That came out last year. Yeah. Exactly. That game looks legit. But like. Now you're giving me Power Rangers. Now you're gonna give me a game that we've been wanting to play like that for a long time. I mean think about it. Was there ever a beat em up for Power Rangers? I don't think so. Not like that. No. No. I mean there were several games where there was like maybe two characters where you side scrolled beat em up. But not like a straight. Not a straight up. Yeah. All five Power Rangers on the screen running through putties. It looks great. Putties. I think I've watched enough to know what putties are. Right? Those little ninja guys. Heck yeah. But um. I'm. I'm hyped for it. I love the way it looks. I love that 2D sprite animation that's just next level. It's beautiful. Alrighty. So. My next game is going to be Wander Stop. Wander Stop. Wander Stop. Like wander. Wandering around. Um. This game. Okay. There's a lot of games that are called cozy games. I bet you've never played it. No. Cozy games. They're like farming games. You farm and. Yeah. Okay. It can be like addictive. Sure. I get it. I try to play these games and I. You know. Stardew Valley. I probably put 15 hours into it. And I enjoyed my time with it. I always burn out on them. Okay. Mostly because I don't like the time pressure that they use. Oh yeah. That's definitely right. They call them cozy relaxing games but it's the most strict time pressure. And if you like miss someone's birthday they like will hate you in real life. It's like losing a real relationship. It's too stressful for me in real life. That's why I don't have friends. You're my only friend. And I keep these games. But anyway. So this is kind of one of those. Except. It seems that the character in the game. Is saying the same things I did. He's saying the exact same things you're saying. It's like come on let's go back to fighting. You know. You can tell that she's a warrior at heart. Oh yeah. Boring life is stressing her out in fact. It really is. And so the developer of this game made two other games. The Stanley Parable and The Beginner's Guide. Which are both really philosophical games. They're about being introspective. One of them. The whole thing like is teaching you how to build a game. You play through this game where it's like. So I made this level and I decided to do this. And you're walking through the level as a narrator is talking to you. And then eventually the narrator starts to break down because he's getting so stressed about the criticisms he's receiving for making the game that you're playing. I didn't love The Beginner's Guide. It didn't quite land for me. But then Stanley Parable also has a narrator. Except he's like this jackass that's mocking you the whole time. He's like. And he turned the wrong way. You'll turn down a corridor. And everything you do. He'll react naturally to it. You're allowed to pretty much go anywhere. Do anything. And he'll tell a story. And each turn you make. Each door you enter. Up in a new area. A new ending to the story. You might discover a secret basement where there's people planning to end the world. Or you might just sit in your office. You start the game in your office in Stanley Parable. And you can just sit there. And he'll be like. And he spent his days simply doing his work in his office. And then he'll say end game and give you the credits. And then start over again. Anyway. So this guy likes to do very thoughtful, deep things. And so I'm excited to see what he does with a game with a little bit more actual gameplay elements. You know. Something. Instead of just. The other two are walking simulators. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. This one's gonna have. Hopefully RPG mechanics. Farming mechanics. It looks like it has the same art style as Tina's Wonderful Adventure. Okay. Like it looks almost exactly the same. I thought it was from the same thing. It's more like Wonder Stop. Right. Which is like Tina's. I can see that a little bit. But. I imagine the combat's gonna be dope. Is there combat? It's gotta be combat. Who knows? It could just be the farming simulator. It's a farming simulator where it mocks farming simulators the whole time. Wow. I think I could be down with it. At least my views would be expressed while I'm playing this. Like this is the most stressful thing. That's funny. I'm gonna miss this guy's birthday. You're like that person who's like I'm doing this farming simulator. Where's the action? Right. Where's the rogue-like action? Right. The souls-like action. That is pretty funny. There was a game that came out and it was a huge underground hit. It was, as far as I know, never released on any major gaming platform or even Steam. And I completely forget the name of it. But it was a Japanese shop simulator where you ran a shop during the day and at night you would go into a dungeon and it played like Diablo 3. Where you're fighting monsters. You're getting new weapons. You could sell the weapons back at your shop. No, yeah, yeah. But you'd keep your best weapons. Yeah, sure. You'd get deeper. Beat a boss. You'd take his meat. Sell that in the shop the next day. Oh, wow. There's been a few games that have tried to... Portal to hell in your basement that you just use in front of your business? Right. That sounds amazing. It was a great game. And I don't know why they haven't made a sequel. I guess maybe rights issues. I don't know. Anyway, this could be something like that. Dude, that would be really cool. I would play that for sure. Was that it? Have you done? That was just my last one as well. Come on now, guys. You know me. You know me by now. You know that Street Fighter is my jam! And they had a nice little trailer talking about Season 2 of the characters they're bringing out this next year. Starting off with Terry Bogart and Mai from Fatal Fury Games, the SNK series. Oh, my gosh. Let me tell you right now. Capcom vs. SNK, Mark of the New Millennium was one of my favorite games growing up. I had a blast playing it. I loved being guile and just showing the world. Hey, I don't care what universe you're from. I'm going to take you out. I'm not even sure I'm familiar with this game. It's a crossover with Street Fighter and all SNK games. When did this come out? It came out at the beginning of the millennium. That's when I saw Mark of the New Millennium. Was it after Marvel vs. Capcom? They were right in that same kind of era. Was it a similar art style? No. It had both art styles. Was it more like Street Fighter 2? It was more like Street Fighter Alpha and some SNK. You could actually choose which art style you wanted. They had both sprites for each character. Whoa. Exactly. It was amazing. They even had special intros if you fought different people from different games. Ryu and the character Ryo, they've always been silent successors to one another. When they finally meet in the game, they're like, what's up, man? Finally, here we meet. I'm excited that both Terry and Mai are going to be in the game. Elena from Street Fighter 3 is coming into the mix. It's also given that. Bison is back in the mix. I'm not too happy about Bison being back. We got rid of him. He's supposed to be dead. How many times do you have to kill this guy? How many times? What I'm really excited for is that maybe in Fatal Fury, there might be a Street Fighter crossover coming out. If those guys are coming over, why can't a couple of guys go over there? I'd really love to see some Street Fighter characters in that Fatal Fury art style. That would be cool. That would be pretty nice. I keep expecting them to go back to a 2D Street Fighter. Sure. Almost like we were talking about Niva. Yes, exactly. But Street Fighter. That clean of animation. That would be pretty. That would be cool. I wish I could... This passion you have for fighting games, I wish I could have even a sliver of it. All right, man. They're my jam. Nothing like... It's the arcade, man. It was like the original arcade. Wait, so you were going out to arcades? You were a big arcade guy? Back in the game, yeah. I don't think I was a big arcade guy. Really? Maybe that's why. Because in the arcade, the Mortal Kombat and the Street Fighters, they always had the crowds of people around just waiting to get in and play. I was buying computer games from the first opportunity. Really? Yeah. It was just such a better deal. You got to own your games. That's why it's such a bummer to me that people have given up their right to ownership in these free-to-play games. It's like going back to the arcade where you have to pay piecemeal. They just gave it up for no reason. Sure. They said, no, we don't want the rights to our games. We don't want to own these games. We'd rather buy clothes for our characters for the rest of our lives. Sure. Anyway. But I loved it. I loved going to the arcade, even when not having any money and just watching the sprites. The lights? Yeah. It was always my favorite part about going to the mall. Of course, we haven't mentioned he lived on the street. But I love Street Fighter. Any warm place would. And if you looked at a game with doe eyes, maybe somebody would give you a quarter to play. All right. Actually, that's probably not funny to make fun of poor people. Okay. So, that's five and five. That's five and five. Not too many arguments. Not too many. Except maybe three out of five games you picked are pure trash. No way. No way. They were all super amazing games. I'm just talking about the fighting games. How dare you. Tea syrup. How dare you. Okay. So, I got a few more that I want to talk about. Go ahead. These are in my top five. Skate. Skate. Oh, yeah. You know, they didn't go into it too much. This game has been in a kind of private beta for, I don't know, years maybe. Yeah. Where, like, online celebrities have been playing it and no one else gets to. Yeah. Who knows if it's going to come out even. That's really why it's not at my top. But I love Skate 3. Yeah. That game, you know, for me it was better than Tony Hawk in every way. Disgusting. Go ahead. It was a simulation instead of an arcade experience. I actually like Tony Hawk Underground. When it had all this quest and the wacky stuff that you were doing. Yeah. Sure. I like that more. Skate was kind of like that because everything you did built up your character where I think you could buy new gear that actually affected how well you were going to, like how much air you were going to get. Oh, yeah. For sure. And so it almost was like an RPG. Yeah. Where everything kind of mattered. I'm not so into the classic Tony Hawk games where it's just trying to get a high score. Yeah. Sure. A high score for me doesn't, it doesn't motivate me. It motivates the rest of the world so that's the number one skating game. All right. I need in-game motivation for me which is why RPGs work on me so well. No, you're right. That was definitely one of my favorite things about Tony Hawk is when you were able to create your own character because you couldn't do it in the first two games. The third one was like this is my game, this is my guy, and I'm trying to get into the mix, you know. My guy was dope. He's doing the cry stare flips. It was awesome. Did you play Underground though? Yeah. The newer Tony Hawk games? Yeah. I stopped after Underground. I stopped after Underground. Okay. I didn't play it after that. Yeah. But my next, my honorable mention that really looked crazy to me was Splitterhead. Oh! Like what? Yeah, I saw the original trailer for this which was not in-game. It was just like a real woman turning into one of these plant monsters. It was horrific and disturbing. I was like I'm into that. It's the maker of Silent Hill. Oh, yeah. Okay. Seems to be a little more. The actual gameplay trailer looked a little jank to me. Oh, really? Did you watch the gameplay? I did, yes. It looks a little bit like, I don't know, it doesn't quite look smooth. Sure. It looks almost like an Xbox, original Xbox kind of game. Sure, yeah. It looks like it's from 20 years ago or something. Sure. But I love all the strange monsters. I love the idea of kind of being a horror creature. Yeah. Hopefully it's a survival horror game which I love those games. Right, right. It looked great to me. I almost put it on here. I just didn't have enough room for it. I'll tell you what was the most jarring thing for me was like when the guy did the jump and he wasn't going to make the jump and so he just like teleported into another guy. Right. He was like what happened to that first guy? He just like just fell out of the sky and he died. Just like Mario used to do to Yoshi. Right. It's the same concept. Just like no you're all just usable bodies. Right. I'm just going to do my will. Like that was crazy. Yeah. That really got me looking at it like oh this is crazy. And then you can possess other people and do other things. I was like yo this guy is crazy. I wonder watching that trailer how much of it is going to be horror versus more of a superhero action game. Like I thought from the original trailer it was going to be maybe the scariest game. No. No. It looks more superhero action for sure. Who knows? I mean it's a little hard to tell from that. There were horror monsters but I was never really like. It's up here. It's up here. Yeah. No. The trailer wasn't up here. The Silent Hill trailer was. Silent Hill the remake? Yeah. Yeah. Woo. Any game where the flashlight is your only visual light it's always just trippy. Right. And where most of the game your only weapon is a stick. Yeah. Against monsters from hell. I know. Yeah. You're not having a really fun time. Alright. Now Blumhouse Games came out. There you go. And gave a clip with like five games that they're coming out with. All of them look kind of great to me. They look like all survival horror games in different level of classic horror style. Like maybe one was from the 90s. Like almost like an SNES kind of game. One was from the PlayStation original PlayStation era. Yeah. All the way up to where one of the games which is called. Let me see here. Chrysal Theater of Idols. A real game seller of a title there. Yeah. I know right. But this one was. Looked like a Resident Evil. Like a modern Resident Evil first person game. Almost like Resident Evil 8 Village or something. Yeah. So this one takes place in Spain. And it's based on Spanish folklore. So you're fighting monsters from Spanish folklore which are creepy things. Statues come into life. And what you do is you sacrifice your own blood to make ammo. So you have to take your health down if you want to kill any of these monsters. Oh my goodness. Or maybe it's like a trade off between running and sacrificing your health to take them out. Sure. I'm not quite sure. You know it was a short little clip. Yeah, yeah. And a description that I read. But it looked great. You got some twisted guys over there blowing up. Let me tell you man. Each one of those games is trippy. And Spanish horror can be. I'm more familiar with like Spanish horror films. But they can be really disturbing stuff. Oh yeah, sure. A lot of. What's it called when like a bunch of movies come out on the same. A bunch of short films are like in one package. I forget the. Like a double feature or something. No, when there's like ten short horror movies in one movie. Oh, like a creep show anthology. Anthology. I just couldn't think of the word anthology. Yeah. A bunch of anthologies have a lot of Spanish horror films that are really great. Anyway, in the same vein another game from the Blumhouse is called Sleep Awake. Sleep Awake. Okay. And it's another first person shooter survival horror game. But it takes place in like a cyber punk future. Although it's kind of more like cyber grime. Yeah. It's like this creepy kind of past with future melded art style. Yeah, for sure. And people are disappearing in their sleep in this game. And so everybody who's still alive who hasn't disappeared is trying to find ways to stay awake. Like more and more disturbing ways. Like fighting to the death to keep you awake. Yeah. Coming up with weird drugs to keep you awake. Oh yeah. And so there's like cults that are maybe going around murdering people to stay awake. Yeah, yeah. To get the thrill of it. And so who knows what the actual gameplay is going to be like aside from that it's first person. But it's another interesting thing. It's from the makers of Spec Ops The Line. Okay. Which was a kind of standard third person shooter from the Xbox days. Or maybe Xbox 360. I'm not quite sure. Yeah. You find out that you've been drugged the whole time and that you were killing your own guys. And the weird part about this game is it's a very realistic modern kind of Call of Duty game. Yeah, yeah, for sure. The whole way through and then it's this huge twist at the end. So these guys know how to make something interesting is my point. Okay. That's pretty nice. You know one game that caught my eye that I'm not sure how good it's going to be but it looked absolutely spectacular I don't know how you actually say it but it's Karn? Karn. Karn. Yeah. The climbing game. Yeah. Yeah. That looked absolutely amazing. I was trying to figure out how those animations they are clearly, oh what's the word, where it happens based on the situation. Sure. Anyway, I couldn't figure out how it was that they could program the toes to fit into every crack no matter where it's positioned up near your head and still the toes go in perfectly in these little crevices. Seriously man. Each toe seems to be animated perfectly. Right. Procedural. That's what I was looking for. All the animation seems to be procedural in a really impressive way. Yeah. Other than that graphically it maybe wasn't the best but it didn't need to be. For me that was enough to really impress me and make me want to play it. For sure. The graphics and the views in the game are going to be absolutely spectacular. And there's a little clip where there's like a tent hanging from one of those little spikes that you see on the wall. And I was like is that real? Do people climb mountains and sleep in a little tent hanging from one of these spikes in a wall? Oh my God. I mean I have no idea. Right. I have no idea how rock climbing, mountain climbing actually works. So as far as I was like it could be real. I have no idea. It looks like a fantasy clip from a fantasy game. For sure. But anyway. I love games you can traverse big obstacles. You know what I mean? You can do that in Skyrim. You know what I mean? You can go to the top of a mountain and stuff like that. It was not actually climbing physics but you can hop your way up. It looked great when you got up top. Yeah. And this game looks to be just that. One of these days I have to show you this game on the VR that's called Climb. Okay. And it's all just first person mountain climbing. Oh Jesus. Holy Jesus. And it's a little stressful because you're looking down. And it actually feels real because you've got to hold on to it with your hand. Yeah, yeah. It's a very good game. Oh my gosh. It's graphically very impressive as well. I think it might be why I said the graphics weren't so great in Cairn. Okay. Because I actually think they're a little better in Climb. Okay. But that's not to say Cairn's not going to be awesome. Yeah. I think it's going to be real nice. And it's also, I feel like it's going to be a nice calming kind of game. Where it's like you play it and you're just like. I don't know, man. I don't know, but like. How long can you be hanging off of a mountain? Well, I don't know. I just feel like it's not going to be like a roguelike where you're fighting freaking all these things. You're just kind of. Right. Slower pace. Yeah. A nice slower paced game. Just calm the nerves a little bit. Calm most of the time. Yeah. Except when you're falling through. Exactly. I don't want to see some nice death animations after this. I don't want to see this girl tumbling down the hill. That might be too disturbing. No, I'm just kidding. With that technology. It's like one finger gets caught into a crevice and breaks. Imagine that. That's like. Demonstrating. Okay. So. Oh, wow. You know what I did? My most anticipated game, period, somehow got kind of mislabeled and is down here at the bottom here. Okay. This actually should have been at the top. Okay. So it's a little bit of a cheat for me. This is going from honorable mentions back up to number one. Okay. Perfect Dark. Perfect Dark. Yeah, it looked beautiful, didn't it? So good. It looked so good. That trailer has me so anticipating this. And I wasn't before because there was another remake to Perfect Dark. I don't know if you know this. Either Xbox One or Xbox 360, a release title for it, was a Perfect Dark game. Really? Made, I think, by Rare. Wow. The original developer of Perfect Dark. And it was truly bad. That's terrible. Like five out of ten bad. No, geez. That's bad. Yeah. And so when I heard there was a new Perfect Dark coming, I wasn't really too excited about it. And then I watched the trailer, and it is kind of like a Dishonored-like, it's a Deus Ex-like. Yeah. It's a living world. Looks like it's an open world game. Oh, yeah. It does. Where you can kind of tackle things in either a stealth or an action way. Oh, for sure. All kinds of tools available to you. For sure. And graphically, it's... Spectacular. It's a whole new level. It looks... And also, everything looks procedural, which is my kryptonite, where it looks like the enemies are all physics, have like almost a euphoria physics system, which is the one that is from Grand Theft Auto 3. Yeah, yeah. Or, sorry, Grand Theft Auto 5. And Red Dead, where it looks like you can, wherever you hit them, they'll react to it realistically. And there's a lot of melee combat in that trailer. Yeah. Like, all kinds of moves. Oh, yeah. Who knows how that's going to work out? But the actual gunplay also just looks solid. It looks different. It doesn't seem to be copying other modern shooters, like, where everything has to feel like Call of Duty, this kind of snappy... For sure, for sure. It seemed like bullets had weight, and the way that you aimed just felt different than a standard shooter. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I'm thrilled about it. It kind of reminded me of Halo a little bit in that way, where I feel like your body is actually a part of the game. You can see yourself in the game as you play, and you actually have to kind of feel where you are in the world while moving. There's a lot of parkour as well, which kind of plays into that. Crazy, right? Yeah. People are going all over the place. Yeah. Mirror's Edge is a parkour-only game, and it reminded me of that. 100%, yeah. Yeah. I'll tell you what this game did. First of all, it made me pissed off that the Hitman series doesn't play like this. Right. If this were a Hitman game, I think it would be next level. So it also makes me hopeful that Hitman takes a little couple of notes from this, because it looks so good. See, Hitman to me, the world has never been that interesting, and so I'm actually glad that such an interesting looking game is in this sci-fi alien world. Sure. It reminds me a little bit in terms of story like The X-Files, where it's a realistic spy thriller with aliens and conspiracies in the background that become more of an integral part of the story as you go play through it. For sure. I'm almost thinking, it seems like maybe aliens aren't in the beginning of this game. Like, it's not a direct sequel to Perfect Dark. Yeah. It might be either a remake of the story, or it takes place before Perfect Dark. Yeah. If there's any connection at all. I have no idea. Yeah. But, well, if you want to talk about showcase games that came for the Xbox, how can we not talk about Metal Gear Solid? Snake Eater Remake. Snake Eater Remake. Spectacular. It looks spectacular. It's going to play spectacular. I mean, the original Snake Eater played levels above any other game for the PS2, and now you're going to give it the PS5 Xbox engine? It's going to be absolutely spectacular. I'm looking forward to playing this game. It will be the first time I complete Snake Eater. Which is disgusting, right folks? Absolutely disgusting. Maybe we can have an argument over which is better, because I always think that they improve with these remakes. All I know is that I better be able to climb up a ladder and Snake Eater better play in the background. If it gives me that, we're good. And, I got one last game to mention here. Astro Bot. Astro, oh yeah. Which is almost a direct spiritual homage to Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, those classic platformers, 3D platformers, except with a budget and a graphical fidelity beyond anything else that the Switch could do. All the Mario games have been stuck on the Switch, this outdated platform. Yeah, sure. Now, with the most powerful platform, this game's coming in, with, you know, like I said at the beginning, I've been playing Promenade, and that game has me hyped for platformers like this. Where each map, each level has a whole new gameplay element. You know, maybe in one level you got like a jetpack. Yeah, oh yeah. And in another level you're just jumping. Yeah. And in another level you're driving a car. Exactly. And all these different gameplay elements add on top of each other to where the final world is like... How come other games can't give me so much freedom and option? Seriously. I'll tell you what I love about the game was the fact that all these bosses are like super massive. Yeah. Shadow of the Colossus. How great is that they show like five bosses in a row. Yeah. Each one's more badass than the last. Exactly. Until that like bird is shooting machine guns down on its back, you're flying on its back and it's like turning. It's just spectacular. It looks so great. Oh my gosh, man. It does. And it plays so well. I know you haven't played the kind of predecessor that came free on the PlayStation 5, but it plays, it feels beautiful to play those games. That's what I'm talking about. And it works with the controller so well, it was designed to show off the PlayStation 5 controller. Oh yeah, okay. So like there was a bow and arrow and you could perfectly like feel the bow string and as you released it was like. Oh. And so it's all, feels great, it has great feedback on your controller. That's awesome, man. I'm very excited for the state of video games for this next year. It's going to be spectacular. Yeah. Everyone seems to be saying the same thing. Thank God all these people lost their jobs. It truly seems like it didn't hurt the games at all. No one's saying that. But people are saying that the showcases have been exciting this year. Yeah. And of course, truly, the fact that all these people lost their jobs at Xbox, you know, getting rid of all these companies, shutting them down for monetary reasons is a big bummer. But thankfully games, video games in general are surviving. They are. So there's something positive that we can say this year. Not only are they surviving, they're thriving, man. Right. Because they look absolutely spectacular. All these indie games. Thriving to a certain, yes, to a certain degree. I don't know why then they claim they have to, you know, shut down all these companies, but maybe some companies are thriving more than others, who knows. Sure. We're not really informed enough to know what's going on. Sure, yeah. All it takes is one game to shoot you to the top. Yeah. You know. So. All right. So we're coming here to the end. We've talked about a lot of games. I feel like I've never talked quite so much in my life. And it is time for the thankfulness corner. The appreciation. The appreciation corner. What are we enjoying in life? What are we happy about? And I haven't planned anything. You got anything you're happy about? To be honest with you, I am unbelievably appreciative of not being addicted to watching movies that are like real life story movies. Like that I am a fiction fan. Because that is a bummer, getting into that world. Yeah. Geez. I've said it. I don't understand sad movies. Like dramas, straight dramas. Yeah. Why put yourself through that? Life is sad enough. Exactly. Let's have some escapism in Armenia. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you there. Let me see. What am I happy about? Two, two, two, two, two. Boy oh boy, just nothing. Okay. That's not true. I'm generally feeling quite happy. I'm happy with the state of the games coming out. Yeah. And I want to say this. I'm very happy that my dog, this is another dog one, is finally getting some confidence. Yay. She has been living in a world of fear for some reason. She's a small dog, that could be it. But she's finally walked all the way around the block with me. There you go. Without fear. Yeah. And when we got home, and usually she's pulling and she's like, let's get back in there quick. The enemies are coming, the night is falling. Exactly. But this time she's like, are we going this way again? And she started walking down the street again. And I was like, oh no, you're filling my heart with joy, with warmth. That's awesome, man. Yeah. Look at you rubbing off. Yeah. Well, like I said, I'm just holding her back. I'm terrified. You're putting on a brave face for her. Exactly, I am. So I am learning how to pretend to be brave, and it's working for me. There you go. There you go. All right, well, thank you for listening again to the Pixel Riff Podcast. For Jonathan Michael. And Alan Cruz. Thank you for listening.