I turn 44 in a week, by the way. I can't believe that I've hit
this stage in life where like, I've got a little more money
than time. And the money thing, it's not a
flex, it's just where I'm at. And I'm not choosing between
paying rent and buying video games anymore.
I'm choosing between sleep and entertainment.
So when Tears of the Kingdom, Final Fantasy Tactics, Evilest
Chronicles, Gran Turismo 7 gets plastered with 9 out of 10s and
game of the year hype, I want to believe it.
I really do. But in a few nights, reality
hits. Tears of the Kingdom wants me to
live in its world again. Final Fantasy Tactics Evilness
Chronicles punishes every bad move with perma death.
Yes, that's right, there is perma death in this game.
And Gran Turismo 7 treats, treats cartooning like a part
time job. And look it, it's not about the
70 bucks. I'm 44.
I can afford games. And what I can't afford is
wasting a few hours. I get to play.
And that's where the trust breaks.
Reviews don't fail because people lie.
They fail because they're written for somebody else,
somebody with time, somebody with energy, somebody who
doesn't have a kid to tuck in before hitting start and wait.
Like, is time even a thing anymore?
I, I, I don't even know anymore, Jesse.
Like most games require an hour tutorial just to get started
these days, to learn the controls, to learn the
mechanics. And it.
It seems like all these big games that are getting the high
ratings are becoming more and more complicated and more and
more realistic. Like they're trying to one up
each other and it's like we switched fun Press start.
Start going video games for life replacements simulations.
Do you remember when, like, we were kids and we didn't even
have to read the manuals on games?
Yeah, like we read the manual for fun.
Yeah, yeah. To get the game lure, lure to
like, learn who the characters are.
And now we read it just like, what is this control?
What is this shortcut? What does this do?
That's it, the time crunch. Anyway.
Welcome to the Gamer Dad podcast where we talk about all things
Magic Gathering and gaming. We strive to keep things fun fit
into our busy lives because gaming's worth finding time for.
I'm gamer dad, Bob, RPG gamer, MTG nerd and sub format lover
and I just can't trust game reviews these days.
And I am Jesse Hoagy, a gamer since birth, A2 time girl dad,
and a man who has trusted video game reviews as often as I've
trusted a blue player with two open mana saying I don't have a
counter style. So do you recall the last game
review that you read Jesse and actually like cared about and it
LED you in the right place? Like I knew I was going to play
Expedition 33 like before any reviews came out I was like, I
know this game is for me, but I as I was as I was thinking about
this, I'm drawing a blank. Expedition 33 was my last one.
So you read the review after I hyped it?
Yep, Yep, before that. Holy shit man.
I think it was Tears of the Kingdom actually, ironically.
As I'm as I'm crapping on the game.
But I don't Yeah, I mean, I don't really care a whole lot
about them because most of most of most of the time I read them
to like verify my views, verify how I I feel got a better view.
OK, So I'm right. OK.
OK, OK, so that's kind of what we're touching on tonight.
But before we dive in, remember this podcast is powered by you,
our listeners. And if you'd like to support
what we do, head on over to Patreon.
Most of what's there is free. It's where I post my blogs,
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bucks, it helps everything, keeps everything running.
The podcast, the gear, the time it takes to make this stuff,
right. It is completely optional, but
it's the best place to keep up with everything happening behind
the mic. So let's talk a little bit about
reviews and, and what I view as the biggest and first and
foremost problem here. And I'm calling this the
incentive problem, right? And to me, the review systems
broken, modern review systems broken.
It's not out of malice, it's just structure.
And when we look at this, from what I can tell, from what I can
glean from what I researched, reviewers usually get access to
games early access. Obviously they have to review
them under conditions set by publishers, the game publishers
pre release builds, specific embargoes, hardware that's not
always disclosed. We don't know what they're
playing on. So it's not so shady is so much
controlled, right? And you look at Cyberpunk 2077
and Jesse, you started that game before I did.
So you were in before patch release, you know Cyberpunk
proved it. Reviewers only got the PC build
where the console players waited until launch day Chaos and and
it was bad. It was so bad so for.
For a console it was bad, for PCI had no issues.
Yeah, which is funny. Well, I remember specifically in
a review that I read that like cars were clipping through the
roads, if you remember, and they were like dropping underneath
the map. Like that's crazy buggy.
So like when a game like Cyberpunk wrecks up a nine out
of 1010 out of 10 before release, those numbers make
sense inside that bubble. They don't match the version you
or I download on day one. They just don't.
So we're dealing with massive patches, overloaded servers,
quest bugs, even when these outlets mean well like IGN and
others. The race to first kind of kills
perspective. IGN posting review and progress
right now. Have you seen those?
Absolutely blows my mind. Like how are you scoring
something before you even finished it and how is that even
fair to anyone? Like the first time I saw review
and progress was Scarlet Violet Pokémon.
I feel like that one and and they were like, well, you know,
until they fix the frame rates, we're not going to give this a a
fair review. Why not?
Then then you never did, at least not until I was at least
on Switch 2 and now the frame rates are fine.
But it's like going back to cyberpunk, like thinking the the
nine out of 10's and stuff. I I got to think because the
videos I watch a lot of, I'll watch a lot of video, watch a
lot of video reviews. That's hard to say.
And a lot of people get flown out to certain locations to play
it, like a lot of the people that play the Nintendo Switch
Two were actually flown to a Nintendo event to play it.
And it's in a lot of, like you said, controlled environments.
And the hardware is the top tier hardware with stuff that they
already have day one patches on and stuff they already have game
ready drivers on, like talking PC specifically.
You're talking like beta drivers that are released ahead for the
the devs and everything. Yep, Yep, and you'll see too a
lot of like the end game footage that you're seeing on stuff too
says it's you're looking watching APS 5 review of it's.
APS Pro. Well the in game footage will
say in game footage captured on. PC, yeah.
So it's like a lot of the early access crap is just like that's
I see where a lot of like review and progress comes from is early
access or games that are so massive that are like they're
Mmos or they're like massive RPGs, They can't actually give
you a full review of because they didn't finish the game.
I don't think they should be able to put a review out until
they finish the game. Like call the review early
impressions or something like 1st 10 hour impressions or
something. Not because like Mr. Maddie
plays as a guy I watch and trust a lot.
He does that exact thing and so does Co Carnage.
They'll say early access or early impression review and
they'll come out and say I played eight hours of it and
these are my impressions. When I finish the game I will
put a full review out and sometimes, like Maddie doesn't
do it for two weeks because it takes them that long to finish
it. These are creators.
These are. Us.
These are creators. These are US, right?
That's kind of what we want to see, what we want to signal and
everything. And when we talk about Game
Informer or whoever else is out, like Kotaku.
Kotaku. Not Kotaku.
I could go for a Taco. That sounds good, Kotaku.
What are the other ones? Is the Verge?
Do they do game reviews? Verge.
Does game reviews? Yep, a Game Informer.
GameSpot. We're talking about those when
we talk about, you know, all of that.
And to me and you, the stuff that Co Carnage talks about and
Maddie, the stuff that matters the most to us is how's the game
scale? How grindy is it, how the
sessions flow? None of that even shows up in in
these these big reviews, You know, like I'd be Ghost of Yote
in 55 hours and I flew through it, but it respected my time.
Like I didn't have to grind. I didn't have to min Max.
And to me that's worth a higher score because in that 55 hours I
played that game, not once did I go, man, this is just so, so
janky. Oh, I have to go back and I need
to fetch stuff or I, I, I'm under levelled for this area or
anything like that. That kind of scaling is
important to me. You know it respected my time.
It's funny that you mentioned Ghost Yotai because I just
literally last night got the chapter 2 and I put 30 hours
into the into the first chapter where you finished the whole
thing in 55. Well, did it?
Did it feel like your 30 hours were grindy?
A waste of time. Or not at.
All or or was the adventure part of it?
It respected? It was hours you spent in the
game. I I made a specific choice to do
what I did. I went around and got every
piece of armor that I could possibly get and I get every
sword variation or whatever they call them, like the different
kiss that I could get. And I purposely ignored the
story just because I wanted to do all that and I wanted to get
all my armor the right color. I wanted to get everything like
my fit and then I did the story, but that was my my choice.
Yep. I, it wasn't like I didn't feel
like I wasted my time because I didn't have to do that.
It's not like armor in a in a way affects your gameplay
because it has different. Perks armor is way less
important in this game than than Ghost of Sushima.
Right, so like now I can I feel like I could get a certain piece
of armor and not and really ignore the purse.
It doesn't really matter. Whereas I didn't have to do
that. I could have just flung to the
story. But a game recently that I feel
like is wasting my time, and this is a weird one, is believe
it or not, Fallout 4. So that game came out 10 years
ago, but. Was it only only 10 years ago?
10 years ago, but what was released is the anniversary
update where they bundled every like they always do.
They bundled everything, all the deals which I already had and
then it bundled a bunch of creation stuff from the creation
club and it is jank City. It was broken.
It's been broken for over a year because they did like the next
Gen. update on it for like PS-5 and stuff and it's been broken
and hasn't been fixed since. Now it's broken even more and
it's used creations that are absolutely a time waster cuz
it's like go here, view this tape, go here, kill this guy,
get weapon that's it. Didn't you say that was the
problem with the 76 also to start?
When it first started, it was that too.
And it's like this game's been out for 10 years and that over
those 10 years all the motors fixed it.
Yep, and now it's broken again and all the motors are fixing it
again. Like it's like they they don't
respect your time at all. All they care about is getting
the cash, getting the check in, and they're owned by Microsoft.
They don't need the cash, but it's like all they cared about
is getting us out around the same time.
Fallout season 2 comes out in a couple weeks just to ride the
hype on that. So question on that because I'm
not paying attention there. Did IGN or anybody give that
anniversary edition a review? None of them gave it a.
Review. None of them gave it a review.
So that's interesting. That's also telling, right?
So certain remasters get reviews and certain ones don't.
Did they not review this for a reason?
Because. It was.
So it wasn't a remaster. It was like an anniversary
edition. It's like a rerelease.
Yeah. So I don't think they review
those. Because I, I was going like full
conspiratorial here, right? The game is so bad that it would
be damaging for IGN to review it.
You know what I mean? Like.
Right so I am wrong a games radar plus gave it a review OK
or they gave it a story of the steam reviews?
OK. Which are mostly negative,
actually probably overwhelmingly negative right now.
It's all stories on how bad it is.
It's not actual reviews. OK, so it was covered, but not
in an official review sense. That's interesting.
And we've seen plenty of hype launches fail.
You know, we we've seen them fall apart once players get
their hands on them. Proof that review bubbles,
right? They don't always match reality.
I can think of countless overhyped games that that have
burned us. Is there anything that comes to
mind for you? Like specifically where you're
like, I was all in on that review and Oh my God, Starfield.
Starfield. 100% Starfield. I was so hyped for that game and
the reviews were incredibly positive and it's like this is
just a shell of a game that has no soul and no purpose.
I didn't even finish it and I don't even play the DLC.
Like granted I don't finish games often but I probably put
30 hours into it, didn't even get halfway through the story,
dropped it, the DLC came out which I own because I bought
like the deluxe edition and I didn't even install it and play
it. Oh no.
And I don't plan to. Oh no.
Yeah, and the reviews? Lettuce astray.
Yeah, the reviews are great on it.
What I want from reviews is discourse and information.
So you even touched on this, your reviewers.
I've played for 8 hours so far. This is my review so far.
I want to see in all of these reviews, how long did you play
the game? What, what build, what plot in
the game did you skip? Did you go full story?
Was it stable? Were there bugs?
You know, we, we learned that with Cyberpunk, there were bugs
and reviews feel like so sanctioned.
Now publishers decide when coverage drops, what can be
shown, what's off limits. And it's not even journalism at
this point. It's, you know, PR with
adjectives. So back on Starfield, IGN gave
it A7. GameSpot.
Gave. It.
A GameSpot gave it A7. Games Radar gave it A5 out of
50. Metacritic has a 83.
Those are those are good reviews objectively.
They're not great, they're not amazing, but those are good
reviews objectively. So if I'm looking at that and
I'm on the fence, right, for Starfield, if it's not below
like a 50% rating or something like that, if I'm on the fence,
I'm probably going to lean toward those reviews and get the
game. I just am.
Those are a net positive review. So, you know, but like, where's
the pro publica of game reviews? Somebody who doesn't care about
early codes preview perks, like right now, nobody wants to bite
that hand that feeds them. And people are paying the price.
They're paying the actual price for these games and and.
I mean the $80 price. And look at that, the return
window restrictions for games and stuff these days, it's
virtually impossible. There's so much metadata
attached to digital games now. If you buy it and you left it on
accidentally while your kid was having a meltdown and the clock
keeps ticking and you forgot to come back to it and you realize
the game was dog shit, guess what?
You're not getting a refund. Yeah, I can't replace it.
You're not getting a refund. No.
And like you're talking about like pro public and stuff.
I've seen it with hardware reviews too, where if certain
people like Jace 2 cents for example, is a hardware guy, I
trust and watch he, I think, I think he still is, is on the
blacklist for NVIDIA because he gave him a better view.
So like these people get these games and they feel obligated to
keep to give him a good review to keep getting the stuff in the
future to create more content. So it's like they're scared to
actually speak their mind because they're going to get
blacklisted and then their whole livelihood is gone.
Because like if Jay, I mean, Jay is big enough now where he
doesn't care. But if he was new and he
suddenly got blacklisted for getting tech early, he can't
make these early reviews and he can't be one of the first people
to publish the review. Because like these people that
publish reviews first get all the views and then they get all
the money from the ad revenue from all the YouTube videos and
they're scared because they're not going to get them because
they're going to get blacklisted.
All this person give me a bad review that gave us a bad
review. We're not going to give them a
review. Yeah, I I mean, do you do you
feel like true independence, a true independent pro publica,
right. I keep going back to them
because they're one of my favorite news outlets these days
in the world that we're in. But like, do you think true
independence could survive financially like modern games
and media? Not unless it's someone who is
financially independent already and doesn't need money.
Like if they can just do a review and still get get their
money in their views without having to deal with getting
review codes. So that's the issue is you get
these people that get the review codes early.
Now I guess you could buy like the deluxe edition and get get.
You got like 3 days. Three days, yeah.
That's not enough to properly review a game.
So honestly, I don't think they really can unless they're
already independent and already financially stable without
having to worry about that. Would you donate money to let's
say an organization existed that did this, would you donate some
of your money to keep them going if they were giving unbiased
reviews on games and stuff? I would pay for a subscription.
I probably would too, in all seriousness, if they could prove
that their content and stuff is unbiased.
And that's really simple as well.
Full disclosure, like we just talked about, this is the system
I'm playing on, this is the hours, this is the quest lines
that I skipped. This is the content that I did,
blah, blah, blah. I'd pay a subscription to that.
That would feel like a trustworthy source.
Jesse, maybe we should spin up a side company.
I mean, this is this feels untouched here.
I I don't know man. I was just going to say kind of
related, like right now, I went through all my Twitch Subs and I
only subbed to one person other than my Prime, which goes to you
and it's it's guest gaming. And I subbed to him because
yeah, he is really high up with Marvel, but everything he does
is honest. So he doesn't care if he gives a
card a better view and has never get to do it again.
He does it because he shout out says I want you to make an
informed decision on what you're going to buy using your money or
Indian currency. I'm going to be honest with you.
Whereas 95% of the people out there are just going to hype the
card because Marvel paid them to do it.
Yeah, but it, it feels very dishonest these days with this
stuff. And look, I'm not saying that
every review is garbage. Like some of them get it right
for about 5 minutes. They, they can tell you how a
game looks, how it feels, you know, swinging a sword.
They can tell you how the soundtrack is.
But what they almost never capture is what it's like to
live with it. The grind, the patch cycles, the
systems that either respect your time or waste it.
You know can you? What was a a recent game path
path 2 right? Wasn't the skill tree absolutely
absurd? Path to Exile, Yeah, yeah, it
was absolutely massive. Like does that feel like it
respects your time? It caters to a certain gamer
that wants to do that, whereas if someone wants to just go in
and and play it and try it out, you're not going to have a good
time, right? Right.
So, so that's what I want to hit next is what reviews actually
get right. And when they completely miss.
Yeah. So that's the issue with these
reviews is again, they try to rush them out and get them out
as soon as they can. It's not no matter how much time
you spend with it, you're not going to get an accurate review.
You're just not because how many games these days are designed to
be in 10 to 20 hours? None of them.
None. None of them.
Like how in the hell are you going to get a Ghost of Yotai
review out if you hit the game for three days?
You're not sleeping. You're not sleeping.
You're not sleeping, no. Or you're you are going full
plot skipping side content and other fun stuff that you are
completely. You're not hitting all the
bamboo strikes right, which were fun as hell.
Like have you gotten to the lightning rod one?
Yeah, I just got that today actually.
Like a couple hours ago actually.
Did that mess with you for a little bit?
I I, I did it for like 3 times. I'm like, what the hell is going
on? Yeah.
And I look around, I'm like, why can't I pick up these weapons?
I'm like, I picked them up through them and then did it.
Exactly. Exactly.
And and these reviewers, if they're rushing through things,
probably don't have that fun aha moment.
And that's a really nice touch in a game like the lightning rod
stuff. So, you know, are reviewers
missing that? I don't know.
I'm wondering how many of these cuz these you're talking giant
companies that play hundreds of people.
I'm wondering if they have like a bunch of people play a chunk
of the game. Jeez.
And then they just talk to each other.
Just talk to it and kind of mold the review, you know, man.
How can you do it? It's like, it's like a stable of
sitcom writers, you know? Yeah, Shows aren't written by
one person anymore. They're written by like 6.
Just like music, music isn't actually written by the artist,
it's written by a team of 10 people.
It's it's crazy, but I'll give credit where credit's due, you
know, some reviews serve a purpose.
They confirm hype. We touched on that a little bit,
you know, or they just pop the bubble.
Like Expedition 33 is a good side of that.
I hyped it to everyone. Jesse can vouch for this.
Everyone I knew and could talk to about this game, like
Expedition 33 mentioned, Hi, I'm Bob.
You know, I've seen this game. I think it looks awesome.
And then you looked at the reviews and everything and they
backed it up and I was like, oh, thank God.
And not only the reviews, Did you see the Golden Joystick
Awards? No.
It won every single award that it was in.
You're kidding. It swept it good every single
award. Good, good.
It deserved it. And that, my friends, is is when
the system works. And then, and then look at
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet and I, I talked about that a little
earlier. The frame rate disaster of that
game was awful. And reviewers who called that
out, good on you, You did your job.
But others like hesitated. They waited for patches instead
of being honest. And that's when it starts to
feel like pandering to me. And that issue with that
specific one is the patches didn't fix it.
Nope. Like nothing changed.
And you can't really, like with Scarlet and Violet, you can't do
a review in progress because it's just going to sit there and
be waiting and you're at the mercy of Nintendo or Game Freak
actually putting out a patch for it.
Yep. Whereas like I said before, I
didn't see any meaningful because I kept trying it because
my kids love Pokémon. I didn't see any actual
meaningful change with that game until I went to Switch too.
Yeah, I, I powered through it on on the Switch.
I, I mean, I just did bad frame rates and everything and it just
never got better. That, in fact, is probably the
worst Pokémon game I've played, bar none.
You guys haven't played the new one?
Oh no, don't do this to me. Lisa I haven't played it either,
but I I don't have any good reviews that I've seen about it.
Well. We'll have to see if Santa
brings it this year because my kiddo is going to like it too.
Oh. That's right, because you
haven't opened your switch to yet.
Haven't. No, good thing he doesn't listen
to this podcast. He's only 5 1/2 years old, you
know, But yeah, I mean, my switch to is sitting in a closet
right now. We've got what, a month and and
four days so. Oh man, yeah.
What, what we're going to get there soon.
But like, you're right, I, I just powered through the bad
frame rate and if I were giving that game a review, it would
have been bad. It would not have been well, I,
I guess I should pull some punches guys.
It's just it's going to get better.
I, I, I'm so hesitant. Like for me, though, for me, the
biggest issue is who sits in the reviewer's chair?
Who, who, and and I sound like an owl.
This sounds so interesting though, and, and I want to cover
this because I think this is an untalked about topic here.
Outlets give the game to genre specialist.
What do I mean by that? These are safe, predictable
people. Imagine pairing every expert
with a casual voice. You'd get perspective and not
just proficiency. So you get, I'm an RPG expert.
I wrote this review, so now let's move into someone who's
not in their comfort zone, Jesse Hoagy.
Jesse, can you review Final Fantasy 16 for me?
What's your take? Without playing it, obviously.
What's what's your take on that game from 2023?
A casual who walks in and may or may not be interested in this
game. What would the casuals take be?
What would the casuals review be?
You're getting an RPG purist reviewing that game, and to an
extent that makes sense. But what if?
What if? So I would like if I looked at
it, I would look at it from does it explain the story and try to
catch you up from someone who's doesn't know the lore of Final
Fantasy. And then I would just go to
basically how the mechanics, you know, how is the combat, how is
the story, even though I don't understand it.
So it wouldn't be the same review at.
All right. And the story, I mean to, to
clarify things for you, the story in Final Fantasy is not a
continuous timeline. Almost all the games are are
individual worlds and universes. So that's kind of helpful,
right? It's self-contained.
That would be helpful. Yeah, I would.
I would expect it not to be. I would expect it to be a very
long story. Yeah, that's right.
Except this is the Final Fantasy.
But we have 16 of them. I don't, I don't know.
But like right now, the review crowd, everything leans
hardcore. I am the best Guitar Hero player
in the reviewers. I am the best RPG person.
I am the best fighting game player.
I like, could you imagine being a casual trying out a fighting
game like the newest Tekken game and, and you have to review this
game from someone who's never picked up a Tekken game and you
might be interested in fighting games.
I mean, granted, those kinds of people are kind of unicorns at
this point. If you're in the gaming
industry, if you're writing reviews, you you play games.
But like, what if you don't go into your specialty?
What if, what if you're out of your specialty?
What if me, Bob is being asked to review first person shooters?
I'd give you a different review I think.
Yeah, if you could even get through it, motion sickness.
But it it would, I think, at least from what I see of social
media and stuff, if someone came from like a casual angle, they
would probably get like made fun of in the comments and stuff and
nobody would take him seriously because they're not an expert on
it. Yep.
Like all those, all those reviews and videos are not
geared toward the casual newcomer.
They're geared toward people who already know it and want to know
if they're going to spend their time in it.
Yep. And I know this sounds goofy
and, and maybe in the comments, people are going to be like, you
guys are out of your friggin mind.
Like I don't want a casual reviewing a game.
I can't trust that. But what if you're a casual and
you need to trust that, you know, they, there could be two
reviews for every game. I I know I'm asking you guys to
do a lot reviewers, but like there could be two reviews.
And and let's look at I just talked about Final Fantasy, but
let's look at Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and the disconnect
there. I played this game, Jesse, you
didn't. That's OK.
But like that game showed a massive disconnect.
Critics glazed it. I'm using the word that the kids
use. I'm cool, right?
It was like gospel. It was a masterpiece, epic, you
know, pure cinema, the the Scorsese meme, you know, all
these buzzwords. And underneath that game, it was
bloat city. It got the Ubisoft treatment and
somehow, somehow fans were even praising the bloat.
And I'm not going to lie, that's when I check out like, I'll,
I'll treat reviews like weather reports.
At that point, they're going to tell me.
They're going to tell me if the air is clear or stormy, not
whether I should buy an umbrella.
Like, how in depth were they? Like the reviews, like these
critics, again, are probably just glazing Ubisoft.
And they're just, yeah, look at their their perspective can't be
trusted. Assassin's Creed Valhalla, that
was another bloated game that was an actual Ubisoft game.
This was Final Fantasy Square Enix, but it got the Ubisoft
treatment. Like your points still valid.
Yeah, like they're, they're glazing it because they want to
get a review copy. They probably didn't do an
actual deep dive of it to expose the bloat.
So, but at the same point, could they even have done that in the
short time frame that they had to review it?
I was just going to say, I think I had to spend 80 hours in that
game just to finish it and by hour 50 I was like, what am I
even doing with my life anymore? Yeah.
And then I did 30 more because I had to just I am very different
from you. Jesse is wired differently.
He will put a game down when he doesn't like it.
Oh yeah, I still haven't beaten so many games.
Just haven't beaten Fallout 4 and I've had it for 10 years.
It is insanely rare for me to put a game down that I don't,
that I don't like. The last one I can think of that
I did with that is for Spoken, which I hyped the hell out of.
I was so wrong about the critics killed it too, so I yeah.
Luckily that the critics got that right.
Yeah. But like, I don't, I don't put
games down. So I wasn't going to let Final
Fantasy 7 Rebirth get to me. I powered through those 30 hours
and I'll tell you at that point, man, I am skipping dialogue like
you wouldn't believe. I'm like, this is blow.
Get me to can I, can I continue the story, please?
It was just, it was wrong. You knew the story already,
right? Well, here's the thing.
No, because they completely rebuilt the story for these
games. They, they kind of decided that
the original PlayStation game was not canonized enough.
So they kind of rewrote the Canon and it tied into all of
the other sub sub games like Dirge of Cerberus and, and other
things that had side stories and they kind of rope them into
everything. But oh, by the way, if you
didn't play any of those side games, they got the Kingdom's
Hearts treatment here, right? If you didn't play any of those
games, you had no idea what the hell was going on.
You're like who was this guy? Why is he important?
Why is he in my Final Fantasy 7 game?
He was not in the PlayStation One game like the entire first
Final Fantasy remake. Final Fantasy 7 Remake game
takes place as you're in Midgar, the main city at the beginning
of the game and leaving it. Total gameplay time if you're a
veteran is about 5 hours in Midgar.
Like if you've played RPGs and it's the first time you're
playing it, you're in Midgar for five hours.
They turn that five hours into the first disc.
Jesus. They turn that into 5060 hours
of gameplay for remake and people were like.
They probably this is. Great.
If they want more content, let's give them more content.
Yep. And the reviewers ate it up.
They they thought it was the best thing ever.
And and to me, again, as we say, as we've said, that is not
respectful of my time. I've played the first game, have
some respect. So I mean, that's that's when I
start start to check out, you know, you know, is there value
in deep dive critic perspectives?
It's so hard because by the time you have the top, like actual
experience to do a deep dive, you're talking weeks or months
after the game has been released and nobody cares anymore because
the cycle is just just like magic releases, something comes
out and then a couple weeks later something else is up.
Yep. So nobody cares anymore to do a
deep dive because that time has passed.
Our attention spans are so short that it's like, what's next?
OK, I played it for the weekend. What's next?
Yeah, there's got to be some kind of a tipping point or value
prop on reviews, like on hours spent playing these games and
then cranking a review out because you can't get a deep
dive in. A lot of times when I look at
reviews like on Steam, I'll look at time played because Steam
actually tells you the time played.
Yeah. So that's where I review like
input actual stock in some of those reviews is the way the
time played. Is now are those professional
reviews or user? Reviews.
They're not. They're user reviews.
Yeah, see. We're funny.
I love seeing. I love seeing user reviews that
says 4000 hours. Don't waste your time.
It's terrible game. Yeah.
It's like you have 4000 hours a day, Claire.
It's not true. Yeah.
Yeah, where where reviews could evolve is post launch, you know,
quality of life patches change everything.
But you know, very few of the outlets revisit things.
Cyberpunk 2077, but we're touching on that again, right?
1.5, that patch that saved the game for me.
That was when Jesse said, yeah, it's it's super stable now, Bob,
you're probably safe to try it. And that's when I actually
entered the cyberpunk universe. I didn't get through.
A lot of people didn't like. Right.
A lot of people didn't. And I have no regrets, like we
got the right information there and and if I were reviewing my
checklist checklist, God I cannot talk tonight is simple
playtime, optional content difficulty patch version,
stable. And above all, I've said it
respect for the players time. Because honestly, at this stage
of life that's the only currency that matters.
Respect for my time. I would add what platform it's
meant to be played on because a lot of these games are ported to
other platforms just to get it there and usually the port is
terrible. And I would like to know what
the road map looks like for content down the road.
Like is there DLC planned, you know?
Ghosta Yotek Yeah, we're getting a new Game Plus, but we didn't
know this a month. Ago what?
Expedition 33? Yeah, a whole bunch of new
content coming out soon, right? Yep.
So yeah, Yep. Whereas like Starfield released
the the DLC, the one they did and then I have no idea what's
coming now because they got to fix anything.
I have no idea. It's almost like these studios
sometimes when they succeed, they're like, we have money.
We should probably give the fans something else what they want.
And and that's like now we have a road map.
Jesse. We didn't actually have one a
month ago, but you know. Let's talk about DLC real quick.
Like how many of these games? I can't.
I can't think of the names of the games now, but a bunch of
them were previewed. Like the game's not even out
yet. They previewed the game and then
they previewed the DLC. Just released the damn DLC with
the game. Yep, like you clearly made it
already. Yeah, we're getting.
Like Stranger Things releasing 4 episodes next week, 3 episodes
on Christmas, and the final episode of New Year's Day.
Just release it all at once. We're getting, I know you're not
into the Dynasty Warriors games, but Dynasty Warriors Origins was
actually decent last year last last January.
We're getting DLC January 2026 like a full year.
Maybe it was this Jan, No, maybe.
No, it was it. It's still nonetheless we're
getting DLCA year later. So once you know what kind of
player you are, you can kind of filter reviews through that lens
instead of fighting them. So I want to talk about next is
building your own taste map right?
And how to figure out what actually fits for you.
Now, and that really changes how you're going to read the reviews
too, because what your tastes are, if you're reviewing or
watching a review in a game that you already know isn't your
taste, you're not going to like the review.
Nope. Or if you're you, if, like me,
if I read or watch a review, anything CDPR does, I'm
automatically going to like it because I like the studio.
Or like that Blood of Dawn Walker game that's coming out.
Soon the CDPR studio spin off game.
Yep, I'm obsessed with vampires, so I'm going to love it.
Well, just because they're like vampires.
Do you remember when when we were watching that and we were
like, God, this looks like a CDPR game, What's going?
And then you looked it up and you're like, so this is a spin
off group of people from. It's literally the same people
and it's the music is the same. Yeah, I, I was watching side by
side comparisons of how the lead character looks like a role.
They look almost exactly the same.
It's it's pretty, it's pretty crazy.
Yeah, You can definitely tell it's the same trivia.
So we're going to, we're going to take a quick break for our
game trivia of the evening. So in our game podcast, we do
video game trivia. Mine is review adjacent, so I
tried to kind of theme it in there.
I'm giving you mine. Is also themed on reviews.
Awesome, I'm giving you. Oh God, please tell me we didn't
ask the same question again. I'm giving you multiple choice
because I think that's only fair.
When I thought of this question I got it wrong.
Off the top of my head I was, I was off.
Do you want me to read first or do you want to?
Read first because last time we both had the same question.
I read first. OK, in what year was the first
issue of Nintendo Power published?
A 1987. B 1988 C1989-D199087 through 90
are your choices. So think about that as we keep
going, as we go through. In what year was the first issue
of Nintendo Power published? And I can say I had the first
issue and then I sold it to a video game shop and that was the
end of that. They're worth decent amount of
money if they're in good condition right now.
Not as much as Superman #1. I saw that today.
You saw? The $9.4 million.
I saw just found in an attic in pristine condition.
My mom put it in the attic and it was been there since 1939.
Yeah. So my question, it's not
multiple choice. What is the highest rated PS-5
game on Metacritic as of today and what is the rate?
I'm just going to Google it while we're doing things.
Don't. Google it.
PS-5 game. PS-5 game.
No, I'm I will tell you it is not, it's not PS-5 exclusive,
but I did PS-5. Race, OK, I'm never going to get
this because I guarantee you it's like a shooter or something
that that I don't play. I will tell you that you were
wrong, OK? That's good.
And my first guest for yours was
1986, so I hope clearly was off. That's not even on there.
That's not even on. There that's why you get
multiple choice for this. I was trying to keep it fair I
mean so that means our first guess was both wrong on on the
Nintendo power as well. So let's talk a little bit about
our, our, our tastes and, and how we, we should be dialing in
these reviews because everybody's going to say, yeah,
take a review with a grain of salt.
But let's talk a little bit about a process that you guys
can, can come up with as you come up with your own review
sort of thing. So my process is
straightforward. Do I trust the brand?
The publishing company? CDPR, Square Enix?
Ubisoft. And Fall Interactive.
Yeah, yeah, Ubisoft has kind of fallen off for me.
Secondly, is the game a sequel? Have I played the first game?
Is it a studio or series that I trust?
Right, they are going to give first crack.
Then is the genre that I like. RPG, fighting game, sports game,
racing game, tactical RPG, stuff like that.
And then the story hooks, right? You can get that from previews,
from PlayStation events, Nintendo Direct, stuff like
that. You can get the story hooks by
watching those previews and then reviews.
That's like #4 on my list. So I'll kind of combine all of
those things that I know and then and then I'll get things
and my red flags for me personally.
Now remember you the the the listeners are curating your own
list. So Bob's red flags are if I see
the word sandbox in the review, if I see the word souls like in
the review, anything bragging about graphics, nothing but the
graphics. The graphics are amazing.
Open world is a yellow flag, Not a red flag for me, not a full
stop, but open world. I have a little bit of a pause
because I need to see what that means.
And the important thing is everyone's list is different and
you need to go into things with that in mind.
That's the point. What about you, Jesse?
What are your red flags? So mine are almost identical to
yours. I personally look at the studio
first only because so many students have burned me in the
past even with genres that I love like Fallout.
Next is the I don't say the brand but the the world.
Like The Witcher, Fallout, that type of thing.
If it's a sequel or not, that doesn't really matter to me too
much because like The Witcher 3 is a good example of, you know,
it's the third installment in the Witcher series, but it's by
far the best. And it doesn't really even play
like the first 2 so. No, it doesn't.
Like if I don't know if you've ever played the first one, I
played the second. It is.
And the first is even worse than
the second, like. Second was.
Bad. I stopped playing that.
Yeah, I played the first one and then I put the second.
I put the first one when the second one came out, and then I
put the second one again and then I put the 3rd.
For me, open world is also a yellow flag because it really
depends on the type of open world.
These checkpoints or these check whatever have changed as I got
older. Yeah, like before an MMO would
not be a hard stop for me. Now it's a hard stop because I
don't have the time. Microtransactions is orange if
you want to get there because I say that when the main game I
play now is Marvel Snap which is microtransactions, but I played
so much to the point where I don't have to spend.
Money, the in game economy for you fixes the microtransactions
and that's why it's not a full on red flag for you.
But, but, but the amount of money I spent to get here, it's
a it's a red flag. But microtransactions almost 99%
of the time is going to be a red flag for me.
Anything with a battle pass is a red flag.
And I say that when Marvel Snap has a battle pass or what they
call. Season pass.
Season pass Season pass there. You go, well, that that's that's
a weird one, right, because it entitles you to free DLC, but
not like for the life of the game, only like for a year.
It's shady. I agree right.
And I've bought so many of those.
It's and games to me it's kind of goes along the MMO route is
something that doesn't have an actual end to it.
Most of the time is going to be red flag unless I specifically
am playing it like Marvel Snap or and I was not going to like
Ghost of Yota is a great example.
There is an end except for DLC, there's no microtransactions at
all. I I think you got a special
armor if you bought so that's another red flag is deluxe
edition, which is almost every game out there.
I'm tired of those man. But the games that give you an
advantage if you spend more money out front, I hate those.
I've done that way too much, admittedly.
Whereas Ghost of Yotai if I remember correctly, it was just
cosmetic, it wasn't actual. The snake armor, it doesn't, it
does stuff, but it's it's so worth.
It's not an archetype that you would even build.
No no, so very similar to yours and and those red and green
flags have 100% changed as I got older.
Yeah, so switching over to green flags, right?
My green flags type pacing, immersive narrative, relatable
characters, relatable characters, relatable
characters. I care more about the story and
respect for my time than technical flexing.
And honestly, a friend who knows your taste beats any algorithm.
Jesse's a really good example here.
He knew Starfield wasn't my jam even before I asked.
He's like Bob, don't even bother, bud.
He was just like, don't even, don't think about it, don't look
at it, don't even bother because he knew that was not my thing
and. And that that came from knowing
a, first Russian shooters aren't your deal and B, it's a sandbox
game, just like Tears to the Kingdom.
I told you not to. Well, I think I maybe tried to
get you to buy it only because I think it's.
I had. I bought Breath of the Wild.
Right. And I remember you hated it
because it was sandbox. But you can, you can kind of
play those games like a sandbox, but you can play them like not a
sandbox if you want. It's a lot harder to do it that
way because they don't really give you like a direction to go.
That's something I need. I need Rails.
Right. Yeah, it's very off rails.
It's very off rails. But like if you same thing with
you like Expedition 33 would not be the type of game I usually
wouldn't play because I'm not a trend based type guy and one of
the best games I've ever played. They just nailed every single
piece of that game to appeal to a broad audience.
Someone who who wouldn't play a turn based game?
Now imagine if Final Fantasy was like that.
They they need to do something Square Enix needs to do.
I honestly Sandfall put them on notice with this game.
I. Hope so, I mean hopefully the
the rewards are the reward shows are are showing that too.
When are the the actual game Awards?
So the actual Game awards have been announced.
I think it's next month. For some reason December 15th is
in my head, but Exhibition 33 was nominated for historically
as the most amount of nominations in history.
Very it. Got more than any game and it
got the most out of any game in history.
Very return and yet it got snubbed on some other rewards
for like sound mixing and other like what?
Really like the sound was amazing in that.
Game. You're not kidding.
You're not. Kidding, it's good to the point
where I might buy it again for PC just to play it on.
PCI was tempted as well, for what it's worth, because.
It's Black Friday and Steam has sales so if it's on sale I
probably will buy it. Oh man, I'm going to pop steam.
No, I need to go to bed after this so.
I'm looking right now. If I wrote a gamer dad taste
card, gamer dad us old folks. For me in particular, Jesse,
can, you know, add or subtract for his taste card?
I need a game that respects my time, is playable on easy, has a
story worth finishing and is fun without grinding, and is stable
day one. Expedition 03 is 20% off.
I've I've cancelled pre-orders mid hype once I realized the
game wasn't for me. Like I forgot that a game was
souls like and I pre-ordered it. And then I kept seeing previews
and, and everything and I was like, this game really looks
like a souls game. And I started Googling it and
Reddit feeds and everything and they're like souls like game
souls like. I'm like, shit, I got to cancel
this pre-order. I mean, I, I have goofed because
things look good, but I wasn't paying attention to my red
flags. And you learn fast when time
matters. Like let's take an example from
from the end of September for me, Final Fantasy Tactics,
Evilness Chronicles. I had a whole plan.
I was like, I'm going to stream this.
It's going to be on my, my Tuesday night retro RPG turn
based Tuesdays. And I played one stream of that
game and the game looks so good on paper.
It was like, this is the remake. It makes the game friendly.
And guess what? It still wasn't for me.
I missed the game back in the 90s when it came out.
The remake didn't change things enough.
I didn't have institutional knowledge that everybody coming
back to the game had. You can do a lot of busted min
maxing I guess. And I don't know, I didn't know
anything about it. I was playing it from a complete
blank slate, no knowledge or anything.
And that's OK. Once you know your taste, you
stop chasing meta scores and you start chasing experiences,
experiences that matter, stories that move you.
Horizon 0, Dawn, Ghost of Sushima.
I mean, who who struggled to to keep it together at the end of
Ghost of Sushima? Yeah.
I mean Expedition 33 who struggled.
Oh my God, you know I. 10 minutes into Expedition 33, I
was tearing. Up.
I warned poor Jesse on that one. I was like, this is the best
game I ever played, but be warned.
So like for me, the most recent, I didn't actually pre-order it
because I don't really pre-order games anymore, was the new
Pokémon because it was Pokémon Legends.
And looking back at Legends of Curious, however you say it,
yeah, yeah, was a great game. It was fantastic.
And I'm like OK, it's going to be, it's open world just like
the other Pokémon legends. It's going to be amazing.
I can't wait. And I'm like OK, I don't
pre-order games anymore so I'm going to wait.
And then the reviews started coming out.
I'm like, oh God. It's literally just like Scarlet
Violet, except it takes place just in a tiny city instead of a
giant world. Except I think they like made
the city bigger for the purposes of the, you know what I mean?
Got more? Verticality to it, I think, but
it's like, oh God, this is just like, yeah, I'm not going to buy
another one. I almost pre-ordered because I
don't think you played in was the outer worlds.
No, this is the first person shooter.
It's from the same studio that made Fallout New Vegas
subsidium. Now I like the outer worlds, but
it it was kind of janky and I'm like, OK, you know, the outer
worlds should be a lot better. You know, it's, you know, a
continuation of it. They improved stuff.
Well, they have improved stuff. It's not enough where I'm going
to spend 70 bucks on it. So that like I was going to
pre-order it and then I saw the price.
I'm like, oh God no, I'm not doing it.
So that's another one of those. I'm going to wait until it's on
sale and then I'll wait. Jesse inadvertently transitioned
us to the next topic, which is perfect.
So Speaking of experiences that matter, let's talk about buying
smart. And I'm not talking about like
cheap smart. I'm talking about smart.
I'm talking about practice, money, and time, two things that
reviewers never account for. Do you ever see the cost of a
game mentioned in an IGN review? Not a single time and they never
will because they get paid to review it and not mention the
price. That's right, so I still
pre-order games, but only when they pass the vibe check, you
know what I mean? Like the stuff that Jesse and I
just talked about are green flags.
Are there a ton of red flags? Trusted publishers, good track
record. Ubisoft used to be automatic for
me. Now it's a question mark like
Valhalla bloat. I just like Final Fantasy
reboot. I was skipping dialogue so much
toward the end of the game because I'm like does this game
end? Assassin's Creed, Shadows Mirage
all misses for me. Like the last good Assassin's
Creed game that I played was Odyssey, the Greek one.
Publishers earn and lose trust, one launch at a time.
For me, I mean, I, you could probably already hint that it's
Bethesda. Like I, I was automatic with
Bethesda. Like Fallout 3 came out in 2008,
absolutely loved it. Fallout New Vegas in 2010,
absolutely loved it. Skyrim in 2011, absolutely loved
it. Then Fallout 4 in 2015 and it's
like, OK, it's OK. But they're they're leaning too
much into the action and not into the story.
Whereas like that, like the Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas,
New Vegas specifically the action and stuff isn't really
that good, but the story more than makes up for it.
And then Fallout 4 comes out and it's like, OK, it's the action
is great, the graphics are great, but now the RPG elements
are missing. Like the dialogue is yes or no
answers. It's not really in depth.
And it doesn't have like the same impact like Witcher does,
right? You, you, you choose the wrong
dialogue. We talked about this in a
review, right? And it and it has it doesn't
matter. Yeah, it doesn't matter.
It didn't matter at all in Fallout 4.
And then, you know, I, I mentioned Skyrim came out in
2011, 2018 they say Ellis Scrolls 6.
So begin to work in Ellis Scrolls 6.
What fucking year is it right now?
Yeah, I know man. It's it's 20252026 is around the
corner. Not out yet.
Yeah, and it has been 2011 is when those trolls 5 came out.
So in between that there was Fallout 76.
So it's like, OK, Fallout 4, you'd think the next one would
be Fallout 5, but they went to Fallout 76 and it went
completely in a completely different direction in a live
service game. Yep, that's another one of my
red flags. I was just.
Going to say that's, that's turning into a red flag for me
too, Jesse. That's, that's a scary, scary
slope that that game companies are really starting to get knee
deep into at this point. They're no longer dipping their
toes in. I don't like it.
And then Bethesda comes out with Starfield and it's a complete
mess. It's like it's like Fallout 4
got bad and then Starfield got even worse.
So it's the point now it's like, I don't know if I ever want to
play Elder Scrolls 6 when it comes out when I'm 50.
Like it's going to be another eight years, but by the how long
they're going, like, do I even want to attempt to try that
because it's going to be terrible.
Who do you still trust in the gaming space?
Who's the publisher that today you would just buy a game
without reviews, sight unseen or anything?
I think I know the answer because I think mine is the
same. Yeah, not even a question even.
God, what was throne breaker is that like the one that was the
Gwent? Yeah, yeah, like there was Gwent
and then there's Storm break of those kind of Gwent with an RPG
element. Even that I tried that, it
wasn't bad, but I even. For it.
Yeah, but even even with how bad Cyberpunk launched, it was still
the story was still there. Like yes, the game was jank, yes
there was graphical issues, but the story was absolutely
phenomenal. Like you could tell they cared
absolutely immensely about that game and that store and that is
100% going to carry around everything else that they do.
There's no question in my mind that Witcher 4 is going to be
Witcher 4 is going to be absolutely phenomenal.
Cyberpunk 2 is going to be absolutely phenomenal.
And I will 100% as soon as you can, I will pre-order those.
Those are games that we that's a studio that's built trust over
years yes you know and they haven't broken that trust yet
maybe the next name they but. Sandfall Interactive is probably
going to be on that list too. Yeah, their next game I'm
probably buying sight unseen. Unless it's a first person
shooter, then I'm screwed. You know, like, you know, maybe
it's just. 33 Battle battle, what do they call them?
Battlegrounds or whatever, like it's going to be like Fortnite
but battle Royale. There you go.
I mean. That's another one of my red
flags, Battle Royale. Sometimes I have I have skipped
games and Jesse's like Bob, you missed this one.
You definitely missed this one and.
Like which? Which one?
What just had the sequel? Why can't I think of the game?
It came out last year the IT was action RPG Dragon's Dogma 2.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So about that game, it's it was
very janky. I'll just say it's very janky.
But I think it's something I probably would have enjoyed.
Janky. You would 100% would have joined
it and Hades. I like Hades, I haven't played
the new one. Yeah, Hades too.
You would, absolutely. Love.
Yeah. And that because?
It takes Hades 1 and improves it on every single.
Part that'll be in my short list after Santa.
It's a $30 game. After Santa dogs I'll be getting
it for the switch. I feel like the switch is going
to be is the best way to play Hades.
I don't know why. Like I did not enjoy I.
Haven't tried it on PC. I didn't enjoy playing it on PC
in particular or play state. I have Hades in like 3 places by
the way. I mean it's cheap game.
Yeah exactly. So like to me the rule is
simple, buy what you like but buy it for you not because
marketing told you to. pre-order bonuses.
Here it is. Total scam.
I agree with you, Jesse. And yet sometimes I grab them
just to support the studios I like.
Yeah. I mean, the difference is like
I'm honest about it. Not that CDPR needs our support,
but I'm 100% going to support them.
Yeah, I'm going to do a pre-order bonus on a game to
support a studio like Sucker Punch, for example.
Now Ghost of Sushima, Ghost of Yote.
Yeah, I'm, I'm probably going to pre-order and, and do the bonus
and, and the Ultimate edition and other stuff.
What about the Ghost of Yote multiplayer when it comes out?
I don't like those. I didn't like the other one
either. Yeah, I probably won't do it
either. If it involves interacting with
other humans these days, at 4:00, almost 44 years old, it's
just not. That ain't it for me.
AAA games, by the way, don't mean too much anymore.
We've we've seen this. Sandfall Interactive is
definitely an example like that badge.
That AAA badge doesn't carry that much weight anymore.
Delivery of a game does. When was the last time a AAA
company actually released a unique original game and not a
spin off or a sequel? I I'm sure we could find one but
I can't think of anything off the top of my head.
Like look at Concorde. Oh my God.
Oh, there you go. There you go.
Like. How did how did Concorde do
guys? It was dead within a week.
AAA studio, unique game, live service.
There's people who who made Bioshock.
Is that BioWare? BioWare.
There is one by BioWare game that I actually played it for a
bit. God, what was it called?
Was it BioWare? It was by Anthem.
Anthem was a new original game and it actually had a really
cool premise on it. You were like kind of like an
Iron Man type thing and you would fly around in these suits
and do battle in these suits, but it just, it did not come
across very well at all and it died.
It's like it's been shut down. I did play it when it first was
released. I did try it, but all these
games that are original stories are just dying.
Well, that and they're. Just not.
They're not hitting. Let's talk about Concorde for a
second. Even though this isn't in the
script, but like that looked like it had a story in the pre.
It looked like it was like a spin off kind of janky Guardians
of the Galaxy. And it had a story and it was
fun and everything. And it's like battle Royale.
And I was like, Nope, we're done.
We're done here. And, and I guarantee you that's
what hurt it. They marketed it completely
wrong. Yeah, so and it, it died I think
within two weeks. I think it was 2 weeks.
Yep, two weeks after his launch, it died.
That's. Funny, I can see the reflection.
Also, copy is being refunded. I can see the reflection of
Jesse pulling the article up in his glasses here.
That's hilarious. What?
What makes the game worth it? Again?
I've said this a billion times, respects my time.
Gosiote did that. 55 hours, Tight scaling, strong story,
perfect sequel formula. I waited on Cyberpunk 2077.
How many hours do you think I have in that, Jesse?
I mean it says in the script how many Bob a. 100 hours plus,
worth every minute, right? My buying tears are easy.
Instant buy. I know it'll hit.
Wait for patch, let the community shake it out.
Wait for sale. Curious titles outside my lane,
right? So if there's something that I'm
kind of leaning toward getting, I'm going to wait for a heavy
sale and I still keep up. I buy what I know I like.
I stretched down then and I miss maybe still about 1/3 of the
time. Final Fantasy Evil is
Chronicles. I'm looking at you and that's
fine. I, I think if 44, like batting
600 is pretty good. You know, I don't need to play
everything anymore. I just need to play something
that sticks. Now the one of the positives
about like PlayStation Plus and all those other things that you
can actually try these games without buying.
Yeah, but you're streaming them, aren't you?
You're but I mean, you're still, you're still paying for them, I
guess. And to hit on your cyber funk
thing that is one of the I can't think of another game other than
Breath of the Wild. Or I could turn that game on and
just walk around in the game and not do anything I've.
Done that in Cyberpunk. I've just walked around and
watched people. Or just drove around and just
just like act like there's times where I actually drive and try
to be pretend like I'm actually driving and try to obey the
rules and not like trying to gun it.
I actually drive and go with the traffic and just because the
world is so good. It is so good.
Every detail. Now for me, like I'm trying to
think of games that I have bought because so many of the
games I get on like a Game Pass nowadays, I cannot think of the
last game I regret buying. Fallout 4.
Starfield. There you go.
It was Starfield, yeah. Man, I but Fallout, we are
dragging Starfield tonight, let me tell you.
Fallout 4 was the creator stuff that I bought that was 20 bucks
for all the creator stuff so it's not really a game.
Avowed. I haven't mentioned Avowed.
A lot of people absolutely despised Avowed because it was
like. Wasn't it short?
It wasn't, it was 30 hours. It was written by Obsidian, but
it was very tongue in cheek and very like PC, very woke type
stuff. Like the way the rest of it, I
don't know if you ever watched or were big into Buffy, how they
kind of their whole thing was like it kind of defined that era
of how people acted and they talked and stuff like that.
They kind of tried to do that and try to be hip and cool and
it didn't come across very well for people.
I personally ignored that and I love the game plan, I love the
story, but 100% start for it was the last time I regret actually
buying something. Everything else you know, that
I've bought has been like, Osteotype was a sequel.
God, before that I don't think of the other games I bought
because they were all battle pass stuff From Hades was a
sequel. I did buy that, Yep.
So would you say that the battle pass or, or the the game pass or
whatever you have, would you say that you're getting your money's
worth out of that though, right? So you're paying for that no
matter what, which means you're skipping games that you probably
don't want. And it's not really costing you
to buy games that there might be misses on.
But what's the ROI on that? I'm thinking of a way to spin it
to because your point is really good here in the sense that I
don't spend money on game. I mean, you do, but like I do.
What's your ROI? Really it's funny because if you
take out my kids the ROI is not worth it because honestly the
games in the battle pass I end up buying and actually continue
to play throughout. Like say a year is 1.
My kids on the other hand is like 10 because they see a game
like I literally will show them what is on there and say
anything on here you guys want to try and they'll buy it.
They'll try it for like 20 hours like Stray.
The game Stray was on on there for a while and then I ended up
buying it because I wanted it because it left both Spider Man
games 100% were on there. And guess who beat it before I
did? My kids.
Wow, they beat it both of them before I did.
So kids. They're the reason why the ROI
is there for me anyway. I'm trying to think like on the
Switch because I said PC, you know, steam and stuff.
On the Switch, again, it's the kids.
Like everything I bought is mostly because of them except
for Hades. Animal Crossing was me to begin
with and now my my daughter Cordea puts at least an hour
into Animal Crossing every day. OK, making cut our own customs
designs and stuff like that, but that's not a battle pass.
But for Battle Pass, why it's it's without my kids, it
wouldn't be worth it, but it's definitely worth.
That so that that's kind of something that to keep in mind,
right. So what Jesse is saying makes
sense, but then when you boil it down to if I was only paying for
battle pass just to have, well, I'd only buy one game a year off
of it. And that that may not be a good
batting average because. Yeah, like last year.
I'm trying to think in the last year I have played two games on
Battle Pass, WWE24 and NHL 25. Yep, that's it.
Everything else has been my case.
Like I've claimed them like in P.
You can claim them in PlayStation and put them in your
library. I I claim almost everyone just
to have it. Yep.
But actual ones I've installed and played myself are just those
two. OK, All right, let's let's get
back to the trivia. Jesse, in what year was the
first issue of Nintendo Power published?
A1987-B1988-C1989-D1990. 88. That is correct.
Nice. My first instinct when I was I
was creating the question and I had to look up the answer was
89. The first issue was the Super
Mario 2 issue with the claymation on on the front.
Mario's on the mushroom grabbing the star, right?
Yep, that came out in July August 1988.
See, I knew it was Mario 2 and I was thinking, I'm like, I think
it was 88 when Mario 2 came out. I thought it was 89.
That's where I goofed up. Mario 3 was 89, right?
Or was that 90? 9 I don't remember.
Yes, one of those years you named.
Isn't it? All right.
PlayStation 5 top Metacritic score today.
Am I gonna get him? I'll give you a hint, it is tied
between two games and they are not PlayStation 5.
Am I just going to get in my own head on this or should I just
say like what? What I feel like the obvious is,
is it? One of them is incredibly
obvious and the other is something you 100% would never
play. I feel like the first one's
Expedition 33 no credibly obvious.
Think before Expedition 33. Fantasy Rebirth.
No, we, we streamed it together, Bob.
Jesus Christ, Bob, really? That's still scored really high,
Balder. 'S Skate 3 and the other is
something you would never play because that's souls like.
It's got to be Elden Ring then, right?
Yep. Yeah, and can you guess what the
Metacritic scores were? 98.
Close. 96 is the highest rated one.
It's 96. There's nothing higher than 97.
Interesting, that's a really good score.
Baldersgate deserves it. I've never played Elden Ring
because souls like obviously is one of my red flags but
everybody I've talked to loved Eldon Ring.
Yeah. Same here.
Same here, I did play it for a bit, it is very high fantasy
type stuff but I cannot play games where I get hit once and I
die. I just does not do it for me.
Man, we we got traumatized by that when we were kids playing
Mario. That one I.
Mean or like the Ninja Turtles, the stage where you're in the
water and you have like the tentacles in the water and if
you touch them, you die. That first Ninja Ninja Turtles
game was horrible and punishing. Or go back all the way back to
You probably don't remember, but ET on Atari, it was an absolute
terrible game to the point where they they buried a whole bunch
of. That's the one that they put in
the landfills. All right, so let's bring this
home. At the end of the day, it's not
about reviews. It's about what you want out of
a game, not expectations. What's the reality of what you
want out of the game? For me, my gut still wins.
I'm batting around like, like I said, 607 hundred and that's
fine. I know what I like, I know what
I don't, and I don't let FOMO make my choices for me.
Case in point, I have two two Switch twos sitting in a closet
right now waiting for Santa. I believe you've done that.
Honestly, that's very impressive.
And like when I was a kid, Nintendo Power was Canon.
They had game reviews in there. I I remember distinctly that
and, and it balanced hype with gameplay and imagination.
And now things like that are clicks in revenue.
They're. Now those but think too those
those antenna power games or reviews.
How much after the game released would you get it?
It wouldn't be instant. It'd be like the month after.
It would be either. Well, sometimes it was the month
before, OK, And other times it was the month after.
Like I remember distinctly getting the Final Fantasy 1
strategy guide, Nintendo Power before the game was on sale.
Like I specifically remember I got that game for Christmas and
I was like, wait a minute, I've seen a strategy guide for this
and I'm like digging through the Nintendo Powers in my closet and
I'm like, aha. And I was able to follow that.
But it, it was just, it was a different time, right?
Their revenue generation was on subscriptions, not clicks, not
ad revenue. And don't get me wrong, they're
still good writers for these things, but it's really hard not
to be cynical. So fun fact, I never actually
bought those type of magazines. Oh no.
No, Game informers. No.
I bought some game informers, but most of the stuff I got was
strategy guides, and it wasn't really for strategy, it was just
for more game lore. So back when we were kids, games
came with instruction manuals. Yeah, I would read those.
Yeah, they had the character BIOS in them, by the way.
Yeah, and they had pages for notes that I would fill out.
Like I still remember having a instruction manual for Mortal
Kombat where I wrote down all the finishers, then the
fatalities. Oh, I had that on like a
notepad. Yeah, I wrote it in like I had
like a page for notes and I wrote it in there.
So review wise for me it was it's more word of mouth than
anything. So I was like super poor as a
kid and all my friends would get stuff before I would.
So a lot of my games were hand me downs where they would beat
it and they would give me the games.
Yep. And then as I got older, I never
really read reviews. It was all word of mouth.
Still, even as I got older, I still remember in college I kind
of played Warcraft 2A bit, but not enough to really know what I
was doing. And then a friend of mine,
actually my roommate, had work of three, was obsessed with it,
and I got into work of three. And same thing with Counter
Strike. I never actually played Counter
Strike before and then a bunch of friends of mine were doing it
and then I got. Into it.
My God my roommate played Counter Strike and it was so fun
to watch him rage playing that game.
Yeah, yeah. And then it got into World of
Warcraft. But.
For me, my metric's simple, right after the kids asleep and
I've got maybe 90 minutes to play.
Can I pick? Up fall asleep on the couch.
Right, can I pick up where I left off and stop when I I need
to without punishment? That's the test.
It's it's that simple these days at 44 years old.
Right? If I could tell younger gamers
one thing if any of you are listening, FOMO is fleeting.
Graphics only shine when the game is good and you vote with
your wallet. Trust patterns, not promises,
and trust yourself more than any review.
It's funny that you mentioned pick it up and stop whenever you
want. The the one of the main things
to look at now with games is can I pause it?
No kidding. And that came about with World
of Warcraft and my wife because she would be upset that I
couldn't pause it to ask me something or want to do
something. So it's it's quite funny.
So if you're looking for other our other content, a gamer dad
Bob and myself, you can catch gamer dad Bob on twitch and
YouTube under the same name posting gamer dad rule shorts
gamer rules of thumb. Some Pendragon content, which is
a magic the gathering format on that uses a commander, which is
a common and a legendary equipment, which is a could be a
rare doesn't have to be rare. And then everything else is.
And you can catch myself, Jesse Hoagie also on twitch and
YouTube under the same name where I mostly play Marvel snap
these days. And sometimes if I imagine the
gathering, Bob and I will do our sealed Fridays.
And I have done a couple shorts on YouTube, but I haven't really
gotten into the swing of it like Bob has.
Yeah, I just, I have my Pendragon deck of the week.
Just dropped it. It's a poison dart frog and
grasp grasp mask of Grizzle brand.
I love Mask of grizzle. Brand I do too.
It's so good. It's a fun one.
So, Jesse, any words of wisdom this week?
I do remember in a world full of game reviews, sometimes the
truest wisdom comes from ignoring them completely.
Play what you want, love what you love, and don't let a
stranger with a username like XX salty critic 420 XX decide your
happiness. Those are good words to live by.
Hey, be awesome out there and we'll see you next time.