The PC Gaming Weekspot: Mass Effect Legendary Edition! Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne Remaster!

[Music] hello and welcome to the pc gaming weak spot your recap of the last seven days in pc video gaming my name is colin mahern and joining me this week i'm effing sweating it's like a swamp down there i'm telling you mainly because i'm nervous about introducing this man it's the one and only mr matthew castle hello what was that reference that reference was uh the brit awards were on in the last week and maybe you didn't see louis capaldi singer songwriter um the the scottish man who writes these kind of heart-wrenching breakup songs but then his personality is that of a stand-up comedian alleged uh he is he's a bit of a legend but proper bands uh yeah he went on stage and he introduced or his opening shot was hello mother effers i'm i'm censoring myself because youtube gets a little bit cross if you swear in the first 90 seconds wait he said that or you said that he said that all right okay you didn't censor yourself he said that about i'm censoring myself but on youtube like that's a weird opening i'm i'm saying i'm censoring myself for them sorry you mixed in a quote from him and the quote from you and then said it was it that's why i got confused so yeah yeah i know that this is off to a great start fantastic isn't it yeah anyway lewis capaldi brits um yeah um matthew grab your news crank and open your cab because i have some information specs for you snacks for his gob uh yeah let's just get on to let's get very aggressive ordering of the opening of my news gob or whatever it is we call it i i felt it was necessary let's just move on from lewis japan and hoping you got that mouth you freak we we might we might i don't know he's you know he's is it his uncle is um because i'm getting the sense you're not overly familiar with the works of lewis capaldi but you would be familiar with his i think it's his uncle uh what's his own peter peter no yeah peter capaldi is his uncle mm-hmm there you go no no i found the bridge i've reached that gap i wonder anyone smell nepotism um but now we can talk about video games if my uncle was lewis was peter capaldi i would also be a pop star at the brits if it was lewis capaldi that would be very impressive uh but yes video game news uh the dream matthew the dream of having all of the big media briefings press conferences in june is dead because ea have said that they're going to be holding their ea play thing on july and also it just seems like it's spreading out again because that remember the gorilla collective which the first one was last year was this mishmash of not even just indie developers i think it was just they were like 15 hour streams as well the gorilla-cladded ones they were so long well look forward to two this year as there'll be one happening on the saturday the fifth of june and one on the saturday the 12th of june and they'll end at e3 2022 uh yeah ah i i think when we're back in a in a world where people can go to these conventions and we're back in physical spaces that's when things may be less spread out but as it stands and i uh i must admit like the one good bit of being made redundant from rps is that like i don't have to follow all that for my job because all the the fragmenting of the streams i know we've talked about this before it's very very tiresome it just feels like instead of one good show you get sort of five half bait shows and you have to watch all of them to kind of piece together the whole picture totally yeah you you get five half baked and five other ones that are just rubbish and then you get last year uh rps's indies uncovered which was amazing obviously quality quality that's the exception to the rule indeed it was exceptional uh but yes it was uh do you know what else is exceptional to some people is gears gears of war shooty men well uh developer of the coalition a developer of gears of war they put up a blog post on their website stating that they're switching development from unreal engine 4 to unreal engine 5 and the important part of this is that they also said quote shifting to a new engine is a big undertaking so we want to be clear that we will not be announcing any new projects or titles for some time uh just a little side note on the coalition as well there was a rumor going around that they were making a star wars game and like to the point where speculation was on reddit and whatever and a community manager or something had to go on reddit and be like stop stop it we're not doing this all right where did that come from i don't know i don't know one of the rumor gulps yeah yeah we don't care about rumor gobbs please but yes uh matthew if you spout enough rumors eventually you'll be right about something correct correct yeah uh speak we'll actually talk about maybe something like that in a minute but matthew remember uh scotland bones the game that had the assassin's creed naval warfare it was that was the game essentially uh it was meant to be out in late 2018 and then 2019 and then march 2020 and then between april 2021 and march 2022 well it's been delayed again uh ubisoft said it will now come out between april 20 22 and march 2023 i mean that naval combat in assassin's creed is fine but also it's like must be coming up on 10 years old now like the core fundamentals of it like black flag surely that's black flag is never 10 years old is this when was when did playstation 4 come out because that was a lot 13 yeah so next year will be no okay eight years ago but that's that's a long that's a long ass time for this this thing that's been doing the rounds um i remember being e3 and um having a bit of food with the rare team and this was the year after they they'd announced sea of thieves a year before this was the second showing of the e3 and then ubisoft had just announced skull and bones and they were a little bit like oh [ __ ] you know bones kind of like oh the the pirate scene is a little more cluttered than we thought um and they just needn't have worried because ubisoft sort of bodged it and it's just time and time again i mean and that's quite i mean even for them i mean that's it's not beyond good and evil too but it's close yeah i think i mean how good can it be i just i don't know i feel like i've seen everything i needed to see with the boat combat in multiple assassin's creeds no yeah like it's been enough it was in the odyssey wasn't it as well but and it was fine but like not to the point where oh i need to play a whole gaming of this online i don't know yeah uh speaking of games that aren't fine uh wwe 2k 22 i shouldn't say that wwe 2k 22 might be fine it was the last one that was rubbish but in an effort to be transparent i suppose and to show people that look this game is indeed fine uh developer visual concepts have committed to regular development updates uh in a kind of an opening shot creative director lionel jinx said quote we're going to ho we're going to be holding your hand through the process of how we make wwe 2k 20 22 because it hits different y'all it really would want to hit different because yeah like that i mean they took the break so at least there was uh that 12 months of a pilot cleanser i suppose between the memory of the boggy wwe game and hopefully this one which will be at least competent um you know we will see uh speaking of a developer that makes competent games very good games in fact uh remedy entertainment their ceo terrell vertala spoke to ign recently and said that they have a new game in quote very very early stages and this one is a different game to any of the ones they've mentioned before so like they're doing the two crossfires they're doing the two with epic and they're doing a free-to-play co-op game called vanguard so remedy have six games on the go at the minute it's quite a lot of games it's quite a lot of games it's meant to be alan wait two is that one of the epic that's one of the epic ones yet yeah yeah it was like the the two epic ones were like a big aaa whatever and kind of a smaller game so like alan wake two and alan wake's american nightmare too i uh i started um playing alan wake again the other day um because it's leaving game pass soon so i thought i'd give a little go on pc if you're playing weak spot bingo yes i mentioned game pass um and um uh that's a fun game that holds up good advice i'm glad you say that yeah yeah it's good like to say i i haven't played it since it originally came out and um yeah like the whole setting of it very cinematic i think the balance of like the action and the more kind of story-led bits is is strong probably like the strongest sort of iteration of that they've they've done the combat's more fun than i remember it as well shining yeah no the worst thing about alan wake is the end the end is putrid because because you want to carry on playing uh that too but also the bit where you know if somebody you know go on game pass and play alan wake it's good i won't spoil the ending uh sounds like someone else already did uh another come on uh but yes alan wake is a super game and another super game is going to be coming from sega oh this story this is so this quote is just it's the flimsy vegas thing i've ever heard i love the idea of just a super game uh so this is according to a slide that was in sega's latest earnings report it's just said to be a new game a new first-person shooter from a european studio but that'll be creative assembly right what do you would imagine yeah uh what what a super game why what what is i'm making a super game i mean all games are meant to be super like good yeah a super game superman supersonic a supersonic first-person shooter supersonic racing a supersonic maybe the gala i mean you i i just like the idea that like other games aren't super it's like we're making a super game in europe all other games not not so super they're like they're fine but they won't be super games um i i don't think there's any like cryptic clue in this i don't think it's like superman you know yeah yeah i know it's it's it's not this is purely link it's just a weird someone's like oh [ __ ] i've got a presentation in five minutes how do i wait how do i how do i make this sound big making us a super game uh and you have to wait and see how it's gonna be i think i've done that in meetings before where you're like oh yeah we're gonna relaunch each channel and uh these um amazing three amazing series that we're going to launch uh and that would be the talking point would you call them super series matthew yes i would i don't know what causes super content strands that you're really gonna like uh now it's time for another mention of xbox game pass uh because uh following on from the announcement that knockout city would be launching on game pass ea have also confirmed that knockout city their dodgeball game is going to be free to play for its first 10 days so like again use for those knockout city fans i don't know why this isn't free to play like the fact that they're charging for this seems totally misguided and it does seem like they're trying to walk that back a little bit by you know it's part of the game pass you can play it for for ten days like maybe that'll work out for them get everyone hooked it's a bit like so we've been re-watching the wire recently so i think a a lot in terms of like the baltimore drug trade and you know a classic business strategy there um especially in the low rises is to give out a lot of uh is to give everyone a free yellow top in the morning and get them hooked on the red tops then you get them hooked then the fiends come back for more and that's when you get them get them on that yellow tops red tops wmds like this it's the strategy that's that's the key that that is and it's it's good business thinking i like the idea ea watched the wire and said what is our free yellow top and it's a 10-day free trial of knockout city um city would be a good a good uh drug brand we got that knockout city we got that knockout city and people are like nice and you're like wait is that the truck or the dodgeball game and you're like i'm afraid it's the judgment game just open the recordings just loads of chords for knuckles knockout city what about some rocket arena anyone have you have you got any hyperscape on you um that sounds that sounds like a drug from cyberpunk um these hyperheads on their hype escape uh matthew i mentioned this earlier about you know rumors and leaking and whatever else well the the man the games leaker himself jeff grubb leaking all over the place recently went on a live stream and said quote starfield is exclusive to xbox and pc period this is me confirming that he also added that he expects it to show up at e3 this year and he said it'd likely be out in 2022 and all that scans for me you know like we've talked about bethesda's like it doesn't really affect us i suppose like like whatever please do is going to be coming to pc uh so that's good um but when it comes to like if you're xbox you want to protect your acquisition and you're going to say well yeah you can have elder scrolls because that's always been on playstation or you can have maybe if there was a new prey or a new dishonored perhaps or whatever else but like new stuff i would only keep something if i knew it was like a knockout like 10. knuckles city 10 out of 10. i wouldn't like you can sit the thing is you can sit on a starfield by all means but it does have to be amazing because otherwise like all the playstation fans will just be dunking on it because it's bad like you give you give everyone the bad stuff keep the really good stuff i'm sure it'll be fine i'm sure it'd be fine i'll tell you what if i was xbox the confidence of this quote like i am confirming this like i am an official source when they're not i would now put that game onto ps5 just to spite jeff grub just be like you cocky [ __ ] i'm putting it on ps5 just so that you are now wrong but that is why i'm not in charge of games companies because i am incredibly uh despiteful and churlish and that is not a good foundation for a business uh so those are your information snacks for this week so let's get on to some other hot hot news i'm confirming that sega have a super game is a super game i am confirming it right now oh you heard it here first folks how exciting hello i'm hugh edwards working in news is exciting yes headlines and hot takes is the part of the pc gaming weak spot where we take you through some of the bigger stories of the past week and quite a bitty week matthew you know a lot of information snacks but there was one story that i did want to talk about and it involves the people behind that pirate game skull and bones and it is ubisoft because you know it's that time of the year where's a lot of earnings reports and investor calls and all that stuff and in a recent investor call chief financial officer frederick i'm going to go with duguay of ubisoft he said that ubisoft is going to be focusing more on quote high-end free-to-play games he said that the company's focus on releasing three to four premium games every year quote is no longer a proper indication of ubisoft's value creation dynamics um he added that uh ubisoft see free to play as an opportunity to quote meaningfully expand the audience of our biggest franchises we've taken the time to learn from what we did last year with hyperscape we're also learning with the launch uh with the launch we'll be making on roller champions we've been learning a lot with brawlhalla that is rapidly growing and we think it is now the time to come with high quality free to play games across all our biggest franchises across all platforms now this caused a bit of a star so they did have to clarify the following day because people were like they're cancelling assassin's creed but ubisoft said quote our intention is to deliver a diverse lineup of games that players will love across all platforms we are excited to be investing more in free to play experiences however we want to clarify this does not mean reducing our aaa offering then they went on to say you know we have far cry we have rainbow six we have writer's republican skull and bones but to name a few i mean do you i suppose this is kind of a more of a wider conversation about the viability in 2021 of an assassin's creed a far cry versus say a war zone because when you do like when you look at ubisoft they don't have a war zone like activision they don't have an apex like ea i know a fortnight like epic or rock i mean for epic have loads um so like they don't have a knockout city they don't have a knockouts well who does really apart from ea so i i don't know like yes matthew the viability of your fair craze your assassin's creeds in 2021 discuss yeah i i think that's that's still perfectly viable um you know i think there's a big audience for them i think what this is recognizing is that there are now lots of people who are pretty much exclusively like free-to-play gamers you know there are people who get served enough stuff by you know your fortnight your war zone they're they're you know they they play that one thing and so trying to build that one thing makes perfect sense they're kind of impossible to predict and make i think you know like that lots of different things have been tried like you can see from what they kind of have in the works that they're looking in you know different directions they're you know they're trying to do the you know the hype escape i guess is the i don't know what that would be closest to i suppose you're you know your shooter like um yeah it's not now now battle royale um you know in their role of skating game they're trying to go for the rocket league um spot a lot of people seem to be doing that with me i think a lot of these weird colorful uh cartoony sports games from like knockout city is another oh it's a hundred percent right yeah that's really wanna be but it's interesting that like quietly you know all the noises around battle royale but i think a lot of people have their eye on them then secret rocket league uh gold stashes um yeah i mean i guess it's tricky for them in terms of like the straight-up battle royale in terms of they don't have a like a big first-person shooter franchise that naturally translates so i was it no better time to mention this than no uh so i i i don't if you're watching the video version i don't have footage to show off this um mainly because a lot of it has been taken down but some of it is around and i don't know i don't want that heat uh so i'm not showing any of it but yes um sometimes you've gotta run away from the stash that is something else the wire taught me um heartland which is the tom clency division thing uh the the free-to-play thing um over the weekend some footage of that leaked like a 20-minute demo or something like that and that like that is free to play and that has the name recognition of the division which is what um what's his chops here dugay was on a boat like that is that it's that first person thing is it's still third person like division so from the footage it's still third person right and looking at reports it appears to be like pve vp so it kind of just looks like the division like it's not about royale it's not not whatever um so yeah i i don't know but i i don't like this i feel like they tried multiplayer with assassin's creed and it didn't it didn't work well that was different that was like that was like old-school multiplayer though i mean it was good it was good i actually like i did like the multiplayer mode assassin's creed but that's like like uh late naughtiest thinking you know where like every game had to have a multiplayer mode and some of them were good some of them weren't but none of them really stuck but everyone felt like i i guess because it was like the you know trying to fight the kind of pre-owned scourge at the time that you know the the logic was he had to have a multiplayer mode so people didn't just hand the game back in and he lost all those those other sales um i don't know i feel that we're past that a bit you know i think people can confidently not many people do bear big on single player but i think you can you know we we don't see as many like crammed in modes you know like i i always come back in my head to like jedi fallen order for example as like the model of what can work and you know that's that's just pretty straight i mean admittedly it had the miter styles behind it so that's you know it's not that does help yeah yeah it helps a little bit people kind of like star wars um but yeah i i don't know like so i thought foul hala was absolutely massive like it was as big as anything that you know i thought they were shouting about it being as good a launch as they've had um and i think that's why they came out and you know clarified we're not canceling all the single-player games don't worry but i'm just i'm not entirely sure when you look at their catalogue like it's it's a lot of it is down to the fact that they say you know whatever it was about uh having free to play games using our existing um uh properties like yeah i i don't know i i and that makes sense like you know some sort of brand recognition you know jumping in you already kind of know what you're going to get um and you can launch this stuff completely afresh i mean and that's the thing that's the mad thing with fortnight you know fortnight is a before the battle royale mode remember is a an actual failed game it's a it's a thing they've played i i remember uh yeah i remember code being sent in i was like i'll give it a go i'm like yeah it's a horde mode zombie thing whatever i never think of this again that goes to show that actually the right the right you know the right mode can can succeed even in something which is already you know failed um so you don't necessarily need the far cry thing and it's it's a bit hard i don't know maybe maybe it just speaks to caught it like that hype escape has made zero impact on me uh it's made zero impact on anyone matthew but that might just be the like i don't know if that's necessarily like it's impossible to launch something without you know a recognized kind of trappings to it it's more like the trappings there were not particularly interesting you know i think it's possible to come out you know all guns firing with like an amazing roster of characters that people instantly take to like you can overwatch it basically where everyone's just like goes for the interest goes from like naught to 60 incredibly quickly um agreed like i know i don't know it's just is it possible to make any generalizations about this because everyone what works for everyone isn't completely different um i'd say ubisoft though i like the last people i'd worry about like their single player offerings like they make loads of them like they just they have so much more productive than like the other big publishers like them yeah yeah like if you compare them to your ea activision i think the fatigue we feel around some ubisoft ideas speaks more to the fact that they do make so many games compared to other people you know you look at activision who basically every month seemed to sort of not shutter a studio but turn the studio into just another content pipeline for call of duty and you're like well that's another chunk of stuff we're not getting you know like with the tony hawk stuff you're like well that's no more tony hawk stuff we're getting you know they're getting smaller and smaller yeah i wouldn't have those spheres with ubisoft at the moment i mean they're massive they're designed to make massive stuff at speed as well because they've got that just huge like international sort of factory mentality yeah i mean it's it's ludicrous the amount of in-house it seems like yeah every other week you discover of a like yeah ubisoft sheffield and you're like well that's like i was playing i'll talk about it later it's playing that assassin's creed dlc and that's like more substantial than some games in their entirety like just in itself and you're like this is preposterous you know they're able to do this totally totally uh yeah so don't worry your single-player games probably aren't going away and maybe ubisoft will make i don't know heartland might turn out to be absolutely incredible division two is really good i think uh i phoned a quite yeah i mean i thought i i thought it was a very competent yet boring uh game but again at the same time i recognize it's not for me it's you know it is for people who enjoy the like that destiny style loop which is why but it was pretty i was just playing something called with catherine when it came out and it was fun you know we had a really good time with it fair yeah that that is an important caveat to make like uh can i pull it pulling it's keeping it on ubisoft like uh the division what was the other one the oh it's gone break point ghost recon that's another game where like playing solo versus playing co-op just whirls apart of just experience like yeah i mean these are games more as like a space to hang out with your pal you know yeah it's kind of background noise for you to chat yeah and it becomes yeah exactly it becomes a much better game then uh but matthew that's enough game chess i want to know about the technology behind those games because yes it is time for a lovely bit of tech corner and this week it's all about virtual reality htc have announced the vive pro 2 which is the successor to the 2018 vive it has a 5k k resolution display it's 120 degree field of view 120 hertz panel the goggles themselves are going to set you back 719 pounds when this one comes out and the full kit the headset the controllers the little boxes you place around your room that's coming on the 4th of august and that's going to cost you 1299 pounds it really looks like some torch device from saw doesn't it oh it's going to snap in 60 seconds it's going to crush your head no yeah uh but yeah so my question to you matthew is what is the best thing that you can think of that cost you between 719 pounds and 1299 pounds oh man have i ever spent that much money in all my life um care insurance uh something that's been this we've got uh uh i guess i think our bed was ex was was probably roughly there we bought a nice bed because you spent so much time in bed don't you if you wanted um so we bought a nice bed um it's not the most exciting story oh you know it's not like i haven't bought like a statue of sonic or some kind of like but but but you know what i i story and appreciate all i want that's all i want yeah a bit of furniture i mean it's middle aged but there you go that's life what about you um i mean not a bed the most expensive thing between 700 and 129 a pc probably would be at the higher end of that yeah actually that makes yeah that makes perfect sense um boss you know not a bed i've never have i ever bought a bed in my life i don't think i have well i can't wait though i'm really looking forward to it you know you're going to the furniture shop you get to lie down in all the beds oh it's yeah it's nice get that memory foam you know yeah get your eave mattress oh yes not sponsored by them um no the other mattresses are available indeed uh but yes those are your headlines and heartaches for this week so now have a crazy idea a wild idea matthew let's talk about the games that we've been playing over the last seven show days tell we can't afford a proper jingle jingle it's meant to be jingle yes show and tell us the part of the piece of gaming weak spot where we tell you about the games that we have indeed been playing over the last week and my oh my we have played quite a lot in the last seven days and the first game that i would like to tell you about matthew is i mean i suppose it's the biggest game this week even though it's an old game but mass effect legendary edition oh my god look at your look at your um shepherd my shepherd i well i modeled him after david sushee oh well of course because because yeah what else are you going to do and i'm actually quite impressed i'm quite happy with them to be honest it may i can't wait to have sex with loads of aliens as hercule poirot i'm really looking forward to it but uh so yeah i've played about eight hours of mass effect the original mass effect because i've seen people share clips online and stuff on saturday night and i was like you know what i'll get a month of that ea play pro uh plus or whatever it's called and i'll give this a go and uh see what it's like and like i mean people some people have had problems at launch like for example the graphical options on pc are very limited i mean regular listeners and viewers will be aware i'm not one to mess around with graphic graphical options too much but i might tweak a few things you know if my pc is struggling or i think i can get a little bit more out of one or two things like some games go into granular detail like uh resident evil village being a recent one which is i mean the level of detail and that is ludicrous but yeah this one is pretty poor it's resolution frame rate and one or two other things but yes or no do you want aliens in this game quantity of alien uh like but for those who want to tinker around with this i i get why you'd be bothered with the lack of customization here like it feels like a console experience first right oh yeah one one thing i did go into the graphical settings to see if i could tinker with was a field of view slider that would have really been appreciated because when you pull out your gun i don't know it's proper claustrophobic like the camera's right up against your back but thankfully the pc community have answered the call of others and someone's made a mod already for you to to increase the the field of view some people had like issues with mouse sensitivity the game in a plays in ultra wide but the cutscenes are 69 if you're on an ultra wide monitor some of some have been finding bugs like i went on or slash mass effect over the weekend to see and it's not cyberpunk buggy or anything like that but some people have had uh some things that have hindered their progress like deputy editor alice bell said this was pre-release now uh she said that whilst in com some combat sequences she just outright couldn't fire her guns sometimes i i went to one planet and there were these huge bugs everywhere um called the rachni very good very good bus right i mentioned all this to point out that i didn't come across anything basically there there were there were occasional frame rate drops when the action got a little bit hot and steamy but so you were saying basically you're saying those other people are liars right a hundred percent yeah right good hundred percent on the same page but like he's here's the important question mass effect one um like is it is it any different have they changed because that's the one they've done the most work on right so that's why i played it like i've mentioned on here before that i didn't play the original mass effect i played it via that little comic book that you could play at the start of mass effect 2 when mass effect 2 came out it's not it's not quite the same thing it's not it's not ideal no it's not ideal you do miss certain little touches is the combat different like well you see i can't tell you exactly because i haven't played the original mass effect but from talking to people who have from talking to people who have it's like not really it's a bit shinier they've changed the ui to make it more in line with the sequence because when they talked about it it sounded like you know it's basically giving me the combat experience from mass effect 2 which is sort of substantially different i mean yeah i can't compare it exactly like for like with the original right but i can say that it sort of plays like a game from 2007. okay right like you know this is a remaster it's not a remake like it's it's it's a bit awkward and fiddly when you shoot the cover is unreliable the map is absolutely oh it is terrible and you know like story-wise like our are just dialogue and character-wise some of the delivery is a bit ott the paragon renegade system is you know in hindsight like going back and playing it now it's like this is it's very black and white and you sort of like there are zero shades of grey however it is still mass effect and its world building is exceptional and it's even with the delivery that is sometimes over over the top yes it's power to make you feel something for these characters and these stupid monkey aliens is maybe the best in games and their control bioware's control over their plot is fantastic like it does i don't know maybe they've covered this in documentaries and whatever else i i'm not sure but just it like it really does seem like they weren't making it up as they went along you know like going back and playing the first eight or nine hours of mass effect like the way that they're introducing concepts like the shadow broker very early on or the rachni or whatever else and i know they mean they mainly pop up in one but it's just yeah their their plotting is is terrific oh i love that yeah i think mass effect one is a little underrated because everyone's sort of nuts for for two but i think one does like introduce you to this world a pretty good pace i love the opening the opening couple of out first couple of hours most of that one are pretty strong i think in terms of like giving you a villain you want to go after and yeah um you know establishing you like you meet the in my memory i haven't played this one yet um like you meet the crew quite fast as somebody who came into the series with mass effect 2 and where a new squad mate is a big deal here it's basically you walk around the citadel and you're like all right rex want to be friends yeah cool garrus want to hop in yeah why not like it's very it just it gets you in quite quickly and just goes here's your squad go have fun i mean who who wouldn't want to be squad mates with david sushay i mean i mean he'd settle all disputes anyway if there were any mysteries of sorts i suppose this is something maybe more for console players because i don't know like with mods could you make the old games look like the legendary edition perhaps i mean i often feel like in in in these redos and remasters whatever pc does often get the short end of the stick i think i'm probably going to play this if i play it i'm probably going to play on xbox um just because i i don't know i associate the series with the console experience sitting on the couch it's quite cinematic um i play it with a pad um had good fun with it back on 360. so if you're not want to mess around with mods uh and you you play on pc like i suppose this is the best way to play it because it has controller support which i know is like only like a a minor or like a major thing but like a small thing you wouldn't think of going back to the first one uh but like yeah this one it makes it easy for you to just jump in and play so i get that but if you do like customize uh customizing your games then sadly this doesn't really have an awful lot for you but yeah it's mass effect mass effect is a very good series there's some very good games in there so you know like i i've played about eight hours i will probably play more it's a shinier version of the old old games crack on get it if you want children matthew you haven't been playing mass effect uh but a series that you know maybe is a storied in some cases has been going on for quite a while anyway at least uh you have been dabbling in that assassin's creed dlc um so i'm just going to say for starters this footage is actually on the xbox series x because well that's why i played assassin's creed originally so with all my character and everything uh and so and then i only use the on console capture so it's a little bit it's a little bit low res and uh artifact so apologies for that um but the same contents there so it should be fine um this is uh listen it's more assassin's creed um if it sure is if uh if you got to the end of assassin's creed valhalla and you spent 100 hours um clearing out every region and finding all the mystical stonehenges and um fighting all the legendary wolves or whatever um you get to go to ireland and do a whole lot more um quite a chunk watch it it's big uh it's it's like the island itself is is split into sort of three or four regions of three big regions and small regions which are kind of like the regions in the main game like they're quite you know each one's got loads of treasure to find and and little side missions and some new activities um like these uh like uh druid fights where you like these torches and then it all sort of gets a bit sort of um sort of you have hallucinations and you have to fight with demonic druid characters um so just on a purely like if you if you know if you had exhausted somehow valhalla um here's just a load more um wrapped up with a story about ava going to ireland turns out uh her cousin or something is the king of dublin um and she goes over and meets figures from irish history which i'm going to put my hand up and say i know absolutely nothing about you might know i don't know did you get taught this in school uh well like it kind of figures king flan i assume he's real it feels real we we have we had a few kind of kings in our in our uh in our past yeah it's the high king of ireland apparently like well i was gonna ask you because you know being and this may shock some listeners and viewers but like being irish myself i i when media is set in ireland i will have a greater interest in it purely out of a sort of a morbid curiosity because a lot of these you know media is created by americans and stuff and their perception of what ireland is would be a lot different to mine for example so like everyone you meet do they greet you by saying no i believe you have referred to this as paddy wackery paddy wackery indeed yes uh no it's it's mercifully short on that um there's a lot of um obviously a lot of people speaking in irish accents some of them i like more convincing than others i'd say um like it's it's pretty soft and gentle like it's it's all very like easy to pass i'm not saying that i struggle with the irish accent what i'm saying is it's very like clean polite irish accents if that makes sense right okay a lot of posh d4 heads right okay um um but yeah i mean so the thing i would say with this is like this there's not there's not much like massively new about it there's nothing that really separates it and it really does feel just like a chunk more valhalla and the problem with the game is that you know it only has like a limited number of like gameplay mechanics it can work with so you know by the end of valhalla you've seen everything it can do and now it's just trying to kind of repackage them so you know there's a bit where you go and storm a castle there's you know a bit where you have to sneak around and free a hostage there's a bit we have to go into a cave to get a key and a treasure like everything you've seen it's just endlessly remixing the same 10 mechanics and like they're fun enough as a stealth game but it's it's like they haven't really added anything new to it i would say you know in in and this was this was a problem too i thought with um valhalla's uh not the odyssey's dlc which would kind of took you to mythical realms and there they balanced out the fact that you'd kind of seen everything the game had to offer by just putting it in these like mad fancy landscapes it was a bit more like the immortals phoenix rising they were like you know you were literally in the world of the gods and they were pretty kind of you know they're the kind of crazy scale to them um you know which obviously helped because then you were like well okay it's more of the same but it's somewhere interesting here like ireland has a sort of topography that's different you know it's a bit more kind of craggy there's a lot of kind of like some some very nice like rolling hills but again like you could probably show me screenshots from this and other places in valhalla and i wouldn't be able to tell you what which was from which you know it's not that different um the big thing it has is the druid angle which is like this there's this sort of druid cult um that comes with like a little network of druids you have to assassinate uh allah kind of hunting the order in the other games um so it kind of does that again also the druids have like this funky gas which makes you hallucinate when you fight them so the druid enemy types are a bit more kind of supernatural you know they they are just people but they can like breathe fire and like you fight an actual werewolf i didn't know you had werewolves in ireland one or two but i i um cause yeah i was gonna ask you like when it comes to these hallucinations are we talking scarecrow and batman like kind of like what you can see right now it's like it all goes a bit yellow and they've got glowing eyes so you know it's not like you know you're whisked away in some other world it's still the world it's just a bit yellow and spooky and you know the enemies can do sort of supernatural things okay um and that's fine like it's a different enemy type but you know you've kind of seen it after a couple of hours and like i say there's like three quite big regions of this um is it nice to go back to valhalla like i know you're like i find it very easy to play like it's a good kind of like you can kind of pop a podcast on in the background and collect things while you're chomping around you know i like the vibe of it i like the you know you know it's one of my preferred versions of the ubisoft map cleaning thing you know i like going around ticking off all the gold from the map you know there's some little puzzly bits there's some you know there are some moments of little striking kind of beauty of you know you go across a hill and you see like a rainbow or whatever and you're like oh that's nice um it just uh it really it just doesn't have a lot to separate it out really um you know felt like i guess actually the big mechanical thing they have added is this you're setting up this trade network across ireland by um going to like uh kind of like farms or places that formerly made so produced kind of cloth or books or whatever and you have to clear out the enemies from there then you have to go and find the deed to the place to kind of take over it and then you can invest money in that to kind of increase production of these resources they then get sent back to dublin and from dublin you're kind of like using those resources to buy kind of rewards and things so really it's all done in menus and to call it a management game it would be very very generous i mean it's it's basically like if you've played valhalla it's what you do in the hunting hut but kind of turned into like applied to this sort of like retail network that you're building in ireland um but it's meant to give the game this sense of like you've gone to ireland to you know it's it's this sort of uh land of opportunity compared to england where you can make stuff at you know they're like you know precious resources to tap and that's kind of the that's kind of the vibe of the story um but really it just it just involves kind of going into a place and once you've bought the three upgrades to each trading depot or whatever they're called um you know your relationship with that place is done it's not like you have to go back there and like manage it or like protect it or whatever it's just you know it's it's just more taking stuff off a list it's just another way to dress up the kind of in-game economy but you know it's more assassin's creed it's more assassin's creed part of me was happy to have an excuse to go back you know i've got this character i've leveled it up through 100 hours of playing valhalla have unlocked all this stuff it's quite nice to have something to do with them you know it's quite nice to take that character and absolutely batter some druids um there's just not a lot of um you know big irish energy they do say um the irish what's the irish word for cheers wash law answer yeah they say that uh and it says in brackets cheers and they say what you say at the end of it what sounds a bit like what you say at the end of this podcast or do they say sloane orwalia well they just say slow by itself which is like goodbye right yeah yeah yeah yeah alice deputy editor elizabeth was saying that she played a little bit and one of the characters was talking in english i believe and they said blah blah blah it'll it it will be great crack and in the subtitles it crack it said brackets fun or something yeah it does but it does it does that with it does that with with like keywords throughout valhalla as well like there's viking terms where they're like you know whatever and they'll say this means alcohol uh but uh good so i'm glad you you enjoyed revisiting assassin's creed has this made you mo more or less excited for say like future because i think there is more there's more dlc on the way isn't there i believe yes you go to france as well but i just imagine it'll be like this it'll just be more more of this i don't know it's it's a massive thing i mean i've been like i think i've seen other people say that it'll like take 20 hours to do it all which is like pretty fast um by these things standards um that is yeah i don't know i just thought the i thought that odd to see dlc was a bit more sort of spectacular and it helped disguise the fact that it was quite repetitive um uh it's uh i don't know like i think i've got a bit of stockholm syndrome with assassin's creed valhalla like i played so much of it that like i i kind of invested in it and i can't see its faults necessarily i'm just like oh okay you know when you've collected 90 of a game world you just feel compelled to get the last 10 otherwise that previous 90 was a waste of time um which isn't probably a healthy relationship um i don't know like i just more than anything i hope somehow i don't know how they do it or what this would look like that the next assassin's creed just has a bit more depth mechanically that it can stretch out and feel a hundred because the problem is it's it's it's got enough ideas for like a 20-hour game but you repeat them endlessly for 100 hours and that's a problem in a lot of open world games like once you reach a certain level you've got the you know you know you max the character out or you max out your understanding of those mechanics you're like uh you know this sorry to keep going on about this in there is the in the main campaign of valhalla there's a bit where you go to america and for some [ __ ] reason you can't take like any of your equipment with you so you basically go in and you're sort of stripped you know you have nothing and then it's quite self-contained area but within it you have to kind of go through the kind of power arc of the kind of rest of the game again if that makes sense right so you're kind of equipping you have to kill some smaller animals but actually the sudden drop to like being vulnerable for a couple of hours having to kind of work your way through the food chain again to kind of have any kind of standing in it but that felt like uh that felt like quite a fun take on on the like the same what was the same mechanics set but they kind of come at it from a slightly different angle and i kind of wish they'd done a bit more of that in the deal like dlcs feel like a place where you can be a bit more experimental um oh i see what you do get you get a um you guess you can summon you get a new a special attack where you can summon a irish wolfhound oh [Music] um but i mean it's it's just like a re-skin of the the wolf you can summon back in england so [Music] you know but yes i'm glad you you've been enjoying revisiting assassin's creed um to a point i suppose uh a video game that is very different is the invisible hand right so it's one of the more compelling and very odd games that i've played in a while so so it's it's a first-person game uh where you play as a stock broker okay that has been they've been brought onto this company called ferios and your goal is to make as much money as you can between the hours of nine o'clock and six o'clock every day and there are points where you will be in competition with other people who work at ferry us and uh your your objective will will be like you know reach x amount of dollars before they do in a set number of days yeah and yeah it's just it's it's kind of oddly compelling i played a lot more of it than i thought i was going to like i probably put in a good four or five hours but like you know i think a lot of us have a very very very basic understanding of how the stock market works thanks to things like the big short you know you buy the stocks when they're low you sell when they're high for profit you can short company stocks so on and so forth i still don't understand shorting even after watching the big short i i i i understood like enough to enjoy the big short but anyway the the more you play of this game the more options open up to you because it's not just about um buying and shorting it you you can actually like fudge the markets as well and artificially raise or lower a company stock by using uh lobbyists but at the same time then you have to be careful because if you abuse that power let's say you inflate the prices of like weapons because you put you've lumped on weapons and you'll benefit uh yeah if you do that and you're using like loads of people then you will actually raise the suspicion of the general public and you might end up in a situation where you will either lose your job or you might get the attention of the cops is it like simulators if like does it feel like it can go either way or does it feel scripted like a visual it's not like a visual novel no no it it totally feels like it can go whatever way you know because because what you have to do basically is you have to observe the markets like you have when you're sitting at your desk you have this little social feed where you'll see tips about you know dark roast coffee is on the rise lump on that so you're like oh [ __ ] right okay but i better do that quick uh but then you have to sort of decipher who is reliable and who isn't and what is reliable information and what isn't a lot of that does come down to like this is a social feed so these posts will have little hearts little likes next to them and it's typically whatever has the most likes is the correct thing you should do that but there's also this business newsletter paper thing that you can have a look at most mornings and sometimes you have access to this dodgy dark web application called geistnet that is story related so you you don't always have access to that that depends on where you are in the actual game i suppose it yeah it it sort of sucked me in like i'm i'm a very nervous gambler anyway so playing around with fake money is quite tense i suppose i found uh like if i put anything above like a fiver on a match or something i'm like oh no no no i can't i i'd be freaking out how are we going to eat tonight so if you do put like 50k on a drinks comp on like a water company aqua farmer firma or whatever and then you see you look to your social feed and you see like p bateman says cut like oh water prices are plummeting pull out you're cautious and and that added with the playing against an opponent it it can actually be like relatively exciting you know as exciting as looking at kind of numbers and going up and down are um you know so some people are into that but i've kind of mentioned it a few times the story aspect it isn't subtle and for that reason it does fall a little bit flat but at the same time without us i don't think i would have bothered playing it because that was the hook to get me in the door so like without spoiling things this game you know it's not celebrating capitalism it's using it as its tool to you know criticize that i suppose uh because you know you're playing with money your goal is to get as rich as you can but it does the whole like but what if your actions are like how are your actions affecting others around the world it reminded me a little bit of papers please right uh like you know that that type of angle where you're playing and then you're just playing this little stock market game and a story is comes into play and you're learning of this country that's being affected by what you're doing your movements on the market it's not horrendous or anything it's it's just it's a little bit clunky money bad so yeah yeah that's that's fair uh but it's still at the same time really enjoyed it actually the invisible hand quite enjoyable matthew you have been not playing on the stock markets but in a a post-apocalyptic torque or i believe yes i'll be playing some [ __ ] megami tensei iii nocturne hd remastered samoaf which is an hdv master of a 2003 ps2 jrpg in the shin megami tensei series are you familiar with this series i am matthew i am a number one fan after really enjoying persona 5 strikers earlier this year yeah it's like it's a series i've played like i've dabbled with on like ds and 3ds from my time in those magazines but i've never really thrown myself into into one of these games um shimagami tensei being the mainline series of which persona is a spin-off of if that makes sense what's kind of interesting about this one is that and this may sound like really obvious because it you know because persona is the spin-off it's you know is arguably like the evolution of the idea i would say um this is this feels like playing a bit of a persona game as it not you're not getting the whole persona experience yes so it doesn't have it's like if you had a persona game there was only the dungeons and didn't have like the social aspects okay um this is kind of that there's a much bigger focus on um the kind of collecting the monsters kind of capturing the monsters to join your side you know in that in your party you have the the main protagonist the demi fiend he's called and um and you capture the other monsters or rather you kind of lure them to work for you um and then they become your three other party members so you know it's a bit like a sort of pokemon human teaming up with three pokemon and then going into lots of turn-based battles so the monsters are much more like front and center than they sort of are in persona where they obviously have the kind of human avatars that they kind of act through or personas yeah so like and maybe that first on you know is that criticism like sort of depends depends on how well you kind of gel with the game like yeah if you come to this of like oh i [ __ ] love persona i think you may feel it's like quite bare bones compared to that i mean story-wise it kind of whips along you know we're talking about sort of 40 hours as opposed to kind of 100 hours of persona i'm going to believe it's quite darker than persona is there yeah it is i it's strange because the demons themselves have to say like it has the same kind of monster pool as the persona games so they're quite silly colorful creatures and they themselves look very characterful and i would say that they kind of lift the tone of it into something slightly jollier than it could have been i mean it does end with the end of the world which is obviously like a bleak place to start basically this you sort of off you've got this little prologue it's about 20 minutes and then you know the world is basically destroyed and becomes tokyo becomes the kind of um this sort of hellish wasteland where like a new society is going to be born like in order to birth this new society you have to sort of destroy the world first and then the rest of the game is basically like the battle between different ideologies to be than the new world that gets reborn and you as the kind of player character you go around kind of meeting the people who kind of you know represent the different kind of viewpoints of the world the different kind of leaders and you know there's an element of like talking and teaming up with different people there's multiple endings based on like which the which of the worlds you sort of see to you sort of see you know come to life um based on kind of conversations you have but mainly it's like a super traditional 3d jrpg over world map dungeons random battles like constantly as you sort of walk around very there's actually very little in the way of like cut scenes and story like you can talk to monst you can talk to some of the devils and some of the ghosts of like the former occupants of tokyo who have a bit of like color to it but really it's it's very kind of like i'd say it's very focused on the kind of the action the kind of grinding through dungeons collecting monsters so it's it's persona without like a lot of the kind of the characterful cladding around it but that's okay i i actually think that's okay because i mean if anything it made me like appreciate i like the battle system i like i like the battle system in persona which has similarities in that it's based on elemental weaknesses um the whole sort of thing here is that every time you hit an elemental weakness of an enemy you gain like another half turn every time you hit a critical attack you gain another half turn so in theory you know you you have four turns for your you know in your in your go there are four actions for your four monsters if you hit people with the right combination of stuff you can double that up to eight so you can actually you know strategically kind of do quite a lot of damage likewise um if monsters attack you and and if they hit you with something that you're not vulnerable to elementally they lose a turn if you dodge their attacks they lose a turn so if when everything's going well in this game you're piling up extra moves they're not being able to lay a hit on you because they're missing and you can absolutely rinse them and that's quite fun that's actually as a core rhythm of the turn-based battling you really get a wallop people which i like a lot i mean the flip side to that is that's all true of the monsters attacking you as well but if they hit your elemental weaknesses or land a critical hit they get another turn um if they dodge your attacks you lose turns so like while you can steamroll things the downside is that it can all come back to haunt you and the monster can absolutely steamroll you so you know it's surprisingly how fast things can go to [ __ ] if you've got the wrong combination of enemies well it was famously difficult apparently yeah i mean i'd say i'd say that difficulty it's more from the fact that you know as i just said like they can pile on you they can hit you far quicker than you can imagine if things go wrong i mean the whole thing is you basically just have to get ahead of that and you know once you've been in a dungeon for a bit and you see the kind of monster elemental types that are in there you know not to have any you know not to have people in your party who are weak to those elements you know it's interesting as well like this this whole focus on like dodging and evading means that like buffs for like agility and defense buffs actually feel like way more pertinent here than they tend to in jrpgs like i often feel that like a lot of and this is a generalization but in a lot of jpgs a lot of the kind of support magics it feels like they only really come into play in like very tough boss battles or very specific like you know you can undermine this boss by like negating this particular power that he has we're here it feels like those powers are actually really really powerful you know like if you can increase your whole team's agility you know or defend you know their dodging attacks left right and center and your turns are just accumulating because of that so it has really got something going for it it's definitely got a rhythm of its own and like if you get into that and if you get hooked on the kind of collecting the monsters um you know playing it strategically making sure you've got the right party makeup at different times you know there's definitely enough here to keep you occupied and keep you happy i was i was really really digging it um which isn't necessarily something i take away from persona i think because there's just a bit more like pizzazz persona you don't always you don't always dig into and also persona 5 is like very easy you don't necessarily like have to dig deep into the systems behind it uh this puts those systems front and center and they hold up really really well um and you know i like the monster design i do like the tone of the game like the contemporary tokyo thing you know it's not just relying on quite tired rpg tropes or weird fantasy stuff that i'm not necessarily into does feel old i will say not a very sexy portrait right yeah cause i i was gonna ask you about the port like they added a new difficulty like a sort of an easy difficulty i know that and that that's an absolute piss take that difficulty or is this that difficulty is actually quite misjudged in that there's definitely a place for an easer difficulty in this game like it's reasonably stiff on normal i would say um but that easy basically like it negates all those systems so you don't really have to worry about the weaknesses where you can just you can just steamroll everything just by basically auto attacking you level up so fast that you get ahead of the curve i would say it's an example of like a bad easy mode in that it it kind of guts what makes the combat system interesting of course if you just want to play it for the story by all means bang it on rinse it that's fine but i don't know i i think it's i think it's a little uh it's a shame there's not something between easy and normal um for people who want that more like lighter experience but still want to kind of engage with it and this also has voice like fully but again like there's not a lot of cuts it's not like personally you're spending all the time in these characters like it's kind of it's very old school you go through a dungeon there's a cut scene at the end of the dungeon you go to the next dungeon there's a cutscene again that's how it deals out story it's very like bit by bit by bit um you know it's well voiced satisfying that's fine but i wouldn't say you know in this day and age saying something's good voice acting does it's not you know maybe would have been sexier in 2003 but here you're like yeah um technically it's kind of a weird because it's quite an old sparse game so having this big hd remaster of it there's not actually like a lot going on with it you know you could say like persona is almost like a triumph of like art style over like you know actual graphical complexity this doesn't quite have that style like it's it's very bare i find it more often more bland than anything um also and i i'm like i'm pretty sure this isn't just my computer being an [ __ ] but it's um it's like capped at 30 frames on pc which is baffling oh for something really yeah that's odds i can't i don't really know what that's about uh but it just naturally it moves like a ps2 game still like it just doesn't i don't yeah i that's odd um considering it's like you know everything else that sega and atlas have bought pc recently you know they may have not been like absolutely crazy polished they haven't done much to them but they play you know they they play nice on quite low power pc you know thinking of like yakuza the pier persona 4 port last year um this doesn't have that and also it's like way more expensive than those like a lot of those games came to pc and they're like 20 quid for like the yakuza 0 or 20 quiv 74. this is like 50 quid which it's it's it's their i would say it's their least sexy port and it's their most expensive port and that that for me i have got beef with that um think that's i don't think that's particularly compelling i think it's quite misjudged um given that it's an older game even though it just has so much less going on in it then i know i know that sounds a stupid kind of criteria to judge things like oh there's less in this than there is in persona but it feels less sophisticated and yet i'm paying a lot more for it so would you be inclined to tell people to maybe you know even if you are a persona fan and you want to see where the series began or whatever would you be like maybe leave it off or yeah i would say that like it's shaped like i've really been enjoying this like genuinely i really like the combat i kind of like the vibe of it i like the weird demon designs i just think that it's like it would be much easier to recommend for 20 quid yeah yeah um yeah yeah wait for a sale i just don't really know what like it's so different the strategy behind this is so different from you know they're treating it like a new game because this hd remaster but really it's less technically impressive than persona 4 which itself really wasn't anything special and was cheap to reflect that uh yeah was it persona was like yeah that was like 20 like yeah 15 20 odd when that yeah i just i don't really get it like i just yeah it's weird especially you know an interesting game like it's widely held to be like it's the good intro game to shin megami tensei you know there are loads of these games like traditionally they're like um sort of first person perspective dungeon crawlers bit more you know much kind of a like or older feeling i would say um so this one being in 3d and if it's it feels a bit sort of uh sexier a bit more kind of glamorous um you know a bit more sort of accessible and friendly on that front um yeah it's i've very conflicted on this one like i i had a really good time with it but it's also hugely flawed and a bit more of definitely more of an acquired taste than persona but like weirdly it has got me interested in playing more of them you know like i want to go back to the ds and 3ds ones and like dig into them because it's it's got a central loop it's compelling i i like i do like turn based combat for all the grind i i like turn-based combat systems especially when you can like absolutely rinse them which this one is kind of built around so yeah just like a bit of a bit of a weird port for quite an interesting game yeah yeah probably the least interesting part of clothing that people wear on a daily basis right oh my god these segues are for the ages outstanding aren't they our socks and i recently played a video game called sockventure uh where you don't play as a sock yeah i know it seems odd but you don't uh you play as somebody that i checked the steam page beforehand because i wanted i was like are you what are you are you a soccer you what are you you're just the steam page says you're you're like you're superhero so i don't know but either way uh socks are still very important in this world because you are searching the the innards of a washing machine looking for a child socks this washing machine has become cursed it swallowed all the socks that's all you need to know it doesn't really matter because this game lives and dies on its levels so yeah it's a platformer where you have to deal with you know lasers razor blades whatever it is um as you go from left to right often and as you play through the game you're opening up new skills like wall jumping double jumping dashing and before long you realize that you're playing a very colorful cartoony version of celeste and i mean that's what they're going for at least because this is this is attempting to be your hardcore platformer where lasers are shooting around all over the place and spikes are shooting off from the ground and all that but i like i'm not trying to be a bastard but like like the reason i say it's attempting the celestial platform or purely is because i do think it's a it's a touch for giving you will die i'm not saying you're not you're not never going to die you will die and i do want to point out as well that they they're very good at like when you die getting you back into the game really quickly which is paramount in a video game like this but to get back to comparing it to celeste which i understand is very unfair because i think celeste is one of the best games in the last few years like celeste or just twitch 2d good twitchy 2d platformers are are tough but never unfair because that's what like that's what makes or breaks these types of games they need to be challenging but every death needs to be the fault of the players not of the game and yeah sock venture is just it's not a complete piece of piss or anything but it is just lacking a bit of oomph in its challenge right you sort of get into a a rhythm it's just it's a bit formulaic jump over the blade hang on to the wall dash to the other platform and and that's even as new elements are are being introduced and you know i suppose again to unfairly compare to celeste like you know a zero heart in this story like like you're you're going around chasing socks but whatever it it again it lives and dies on its levels it's just yeah it's it's a bit kind of uninspiring really it's it's it's completely adequate but i did want to mention it because i i played a bit of it and i was like you know it's fine it's it's all right so yeah that's sockventure uh so those are the games that we've been playing over the last seven days so now it's time to test the knowledge of one another it's something we like to call mystery steam reviews [Music] yes mystery steam reviews is the part of the pc gaming weak spot where i call my heart and he matthew castle test the knowledge of one another via steam reviews that are a mystery and listen up right because the rules are as follows but they have changed ever ever ever so slightly so both i and matthew bring three steam reviews to the msr arena but we admit the name of the game associated with each review our opponent must correctly guess the game attached to each review one correct answer equals one point while both of us have 90 seconds on each msr we both also have help in the form of three lifelines these lifelines can be used at any stage during battle and they also pause the 90 second timer they can only be used once and they are as follows and this is the bit that's changed slightly publisher where the hot seat have her learns the publisher of the game second opinion where second review is given to the fiery chair sitter and genre where the genre of the game is revealed to the one with the warm ass so yes we have swapped out the much maligned i like to think under appreciated question uh for publisher because we acknowledge the fact that question when it was being used uh if it wasn't really shedding much light i'd maybe publisher will make things too easy i don't think so though it's an ever-evolving rule set uh also for people playing weak spot bingo yes there has been a change to uh rules which i believe is on the bingo cards um so yeah that that's your housekeeping now the other thing i need to mention is the theme which is single-player video games with multiple playable characters now that that isn't gay single-player games where you get to choose the character that it is games where the game will you know you'll be playing as this character for 10 hours and then for the next two levels oh wow you'll be playing as another character or whatever uh so matthew let's let's kick it off here is your first mystery steam review i originally had a sword then i had magic motorcycle chainsaws and became michael jackson that's from jack it is a recommended 9.7 hours on record your time starts now right i mean i mean instantly i'm thinking i'm thinking devil may cry 5. i'm not going to lie to you that's that's i mean magic motorcycle chainsaws be honest like that's that's that surely that's that i mean there's no other game with motorcycle chat is there game we it's got three characters that you play us michael jackson um the thing is the michael jackson's saying like i don't necessarily know what that is or i can't remember how that relates to devil may cry 5 but the motorcycle chicks i have played through that game so but the motorcycle chainsaws that is so devil may cry 5. i think that's got to overrule the michael jackson thing so yeah i'm going to say stop the clock my final answer devil may cry 5. don't need to ask that man twice very confident you recognized motorcycle chainsaws that surely devil may cry it's the michael jackson thing you were like don't remember that matthew i can tell you that the correct answer is devil may cry five remember when dante does his little dance towards the end of the game oh he moon walks he moon walks yeah oh yeah very there well there we go that's a a nice a nice start quite generous review i also point out to the people who think that i'm getting an easy ride of this i don't think so i've just got like a mega brain for this i mean that in a humble way no you're a wedding cake matthew embrace the wedding cake matthew could i have my first mystery steam review please the third best game in the franchise the story is amazing and it's an amazing series finale apart from the repetitive tank fights our hero gets pushed to his limits in this game and it's amazing says tokyo they say amazing a lot is it amazing tokyo they recommend this amazing game after 35.8 hours on record okay time starts now so i know it's amazing but also it is the third best game in the franchise so the other games must be absolutely incredible repetitive tank fights our hero gets pushed to the limit in this game and it is amazing repetitive tank fights that's the old clincher there and the third best game in the series so maybe that you know it might be the third best game in the series out of seven but i'm gonna have to think about this like it's a trilogy trilogy with tank fights where you're in a tank or you're controlling a character that is tank like oh i'm trying to think of either now um [Music] we're heroes your hero's amazing the game is amazing i mean you could describe yes it's a car is it a car tank-like you could describe the batman mobile as sorry sorry yeah sorry yeah uh as yeah i'm gonna say batman arkham nice because there's loads of like that the batman mobile was very controversial batman arkham knight yeah is that your full answer that's my final answer chris so you were hooked on the tank also third best game in the franchise made you think this was a trilogy it is a series finale i mean that would describe batman arkham knight it's definitely about the finale but do the repetitive back tank fights refer to the batmobile batman mobile the batman bill the correct answer is batman arkham knight yes get in because you played as um you played as jason taj didn't you and lots of different people there's a little bit where you're commissioned as well yeah yeah yeah yeah um i will say for the people at home i can't hear the sound effects this week and it is definitely sapping the drama for me like having to go to silence is like matthew let's uh let's give you your second mystery steam review imagine if a final destination had pretensions of artistic merit and that's from rios rios it is not recommended two hours on record your time starts now oh sh jesus final destination so people dying in accidents but it has pretensions of artistic merit so a sophisticated game where people die from chain reactions maybe what the hell would that be hit me up with that publisher oh so this is exciting uh so matthew has used his publisher lifeline yeah uh the publisher of this video game is annapurna interactive oh interactive so restarting the timer at 112 no well they've not made that many games they're all a little bit like you know where games are a little bit detailed oh yeah yeah a little bit like ah yeah you know um oh jeez what are the annapurna games uh all i can think of is gorigowa and it's don't think it's that um uh hit me up with the genre oh we're gonna pause the timer at 36. uh so the genre of this video game is please don't be a d diddly d and a purna game because that is a genre it's this game um it is according to wikipedia.org an adventure game yes and i don't really know this an adventure oh i will i'm just going to jump in here and say just for cl like not an adventure game in a double fine or point-and-click way i'll give you that right restarting the timer now ah [Music] give me a second review this is over 29. this is unprecedented i have to i have to get i have to get this one right because i've used two i can't have two clothes and have no answer uh all right we're going all in so the second opinion of this it's a beautiful tale that follows the titular character as she returns to her family home their graveyard house with its boarded up rooms and melancholy half-finished design hides a secret this family is tragedy incarnate i'm restarting the timer 29 seconds no i mean that's a super generous second review i know what it is i mean that's what remains of edith finch your final answer that is my final answer i mean god damn it that cost me if that cost me if i why didn't i go for clue first i would have got that from that clue i forgot that was annapurna adventure game sure saw all i could think of was gorogawa you went all in on that one there excitingly getting to see what the publisher lifeline looked like in action uh revealed annapurna it was an adventure game but it was the second review that really clinched it for you you've gone for what remains of edith finch and i can tell you matthew that the correct answer is what remains of eda finch i imagine it went something like that yeah you could have played just a cacophony of farting sounds and really undermined my moment but i wouldn't know matthew could i have my sec second mystery steam review please this game caused a real earthquake in the gaming industry after nine years you can now play it again in a more modern form although she still has fun and looks much better the tooth of time is still visible on her this is great god jesus get like killer this guy recommended 46.4 hours on record okay time starts now okay nine years is obviously important don't know exactly when this review happened but still this is odd you can play it again now in a more modern form although she still has fun she still has fun right i think you're just telling me this is a like yeah predominantly a female protagonist maybe who plays oh no i i actually honestly think they're talking about the game as a she for no reason oh oh uh [ __ ] that's totally throwing me now oh sorry this one's this one's a bit of a dud ah that's f ah oh no um hold on so what did it say the game is blah blah blah um i'm just gonna have to pause the timer uh can i have my second opinion please okay 50 000 players used to live here now it's a ghost town our so-called publishers prostituted us to the micro transactions they destroyed our optimization the online economy our nostalgia okay restarting the timer now no that's uh nine years fifty thousand players used to live it now it's a ghost town oh that's a reference that i'm not getting it um oh no i i i i just published yeah no oh god i feel bad now no and so you should um i uh just i don't know the division oh i feel bad about that one quan put a bullet in my head is that your final answer yeah christmas the correct answer is call of duty one warfare blasted [Music] rice okay that was stuff i'm so that was i was thinking my hands up that first review actually i'm looking at it now i'm like i was thinking because i was going to raider and i was like it caused a real earthquake because it was massive like call of duty was absolutely massive nine years i mean okay got remastered i thought you might think down the remastered route the last bit's a bit it distracts you from the clue that's the famous line from the start of call of duty x number of people used to live here and now it's a ghost town talking about the the gorilla yeah oh that was that was shitty well i appreciate that you recognized that it was shitty that was that was bad my bad anyway uh matthew onto cheerier topics let's see if you can get a clean sweep here oh i don't want one because it won't boo if i get it let's see if my you should throw it intentionally uh let's see if my review is shitty uh so here is your third and final mystery steam review it's a four hour action game with more timed action scenes than actual scary moments the cinematic factor is great but honestly there is no suspense game has like two puzzles it's mostly a run and gun shooter no subtlety at all and that's from ft ftg bro uh it is not recommended 7.8 hours on record your time starts now i mean for starters they say it's a four hour action game but they've played it with 7.8 i noticed that too yeah a cinematic fan is great but honestly there's no suspense it's got like two puzzles it's a short short shooter game it's a four out of timed action scenes what does that like against the clock actions it like you have to yeah it's mostly run and gun short shooters tend to be long longer than that okay oh i wish i had any of my clues can't believe i wasted them all on edith finch um oh tight an action game with timed segments uh i have night running gun you're running in just saying words from the review hopefully it will spark something it's quite cinematic cinematic run and gun time segments it's not it's not doom am i gonna have to do that no oh i've got i've literally got no other game other than doom in my head and it's not doom uh the ultimate loss uh like like come on some break that's not the time set [ __ ] doom doom [Music] so there's a lot to pass in that review for our action game it mentioned timed action scenes uh it said yeah more action than scary it said uh there are there are like two puzzles in it run and gun blah blah blah you've gone for doom [Music] and i can tell you that the correct answer is resident evil 3 oh god damn it will you play as carlos for a bit oh if i'd had my if i'd had my publisher clue oh maybe redemption is on the cards here and i might be able to guess maybe red dead redemption is on the cards oh it could be is he trying to trick me oh dear let's find out with my third mystery steam review funny blue suit man point that funny red suit man says the boy they recommend it after 96 hours uh starting the timer now funny blue suit man pointed funny red suit man oh okay oh well i have quite a lot well all right then let's just start taking the the boxes pausing at 117. matthew because i'm like yeah could i have my publisher please because it kind of sounds a bit yakuza-y but also like neither majima or kira i'm thinking of zero but they don't wear red suit or blue suits although they're pop they're powers they're gone so this is apparently this is published by capcom all right well it's definitely not uh yakuza could i have my genre please uh this is a visual novel adventure game oh dear okay uh restarting the timer now visual novel adventure game capcom a visual novel adventure game from capcom oh [ __ ] um the ones that you like he wears a blue suit doesn't he there's the other ones that you i do i know nothing about those games i don't know what it's called oh why do you have to listen to me talking about it uh the ace attorney is is it called the ace attorney trilogy or is it no it's the phoenix right trilogy bollocks oh if only you listen to me droning on no i get them mixed up which is ace attorney's the man with the hair and any points and phoenix writes the lab with the top hat i'm pretty sure [Laughter] it's i literally it's like the phoenix right trilogy the ace attorney trilogy is that your final answer yeah so you had capcom you heard visual novel this puts you squarely in the territory of the ace attorney games but what is this one called i would actually have given to you either way it's a saturday trilogy yeah phoenix white does not wear a top hat does he not who wears a top hat i mean again the original game is called phoenix right ace attorney okay so so hang on so who's the guy with the the quiff hidden phoenix right he's not quiff it's a reverse thing he's got like hair that sticks back who wears a top hat um apollo justice's sidekick trucy has a top hat but i that's quite a that's i'd say that's quite deep cut for someone who doesn't know the series who am i thinking of maybe i'm just mixing that's the lads that's the lad with the tapas mystery solved uh right okay well i tell you what if it wasn't for my shitty cod one i think you would have won that so uh oh look no i i i no no hard feelings no no no no no no no hard feelings no all f all feelings are soft and good and all that uh so that's another mystery steam reviews done so now it's time to turn to your correspondence you lovely people and your burning questions yes burning questions is the part of the pc gaming week spot where indeed we turn to you you lovely viewers and listeners for your burning questions you can email us at any stage throughout the week weak spot at rockpapershotgun.com so let's try and barrel through as many of these as we can and we start off with the wonderful mug who uh gave us 10 english pounds on the youtube premiere of the last episode of the weak spot so thank you very much mug you're an absolute stare and mog asked sorry i'm getting a case of the windy pops uh mug asked a bit emotional there who are your favorite games developers and why as always great work chaps thank you very much mark so yeah favorite games developers matthew because i feel i don't know saying like i actually don't know why because it's in my head because we were talking about him earlier you be like ubisoft and it's like well that's kind of unfair because like ubisoft toronto make this one and ubisoft montreal make that and whatever else so like yeah i don't know is there any any developers coming to your house what's nintendo for me i mean again it's a bit of a generalization i don't love everything they do but you know or if you're talking about individual developers um nintendo e-a-d um i mean i like i like catcom's vibe uh capcom make what are in my head very video gaming video games which i like you know i like ace attorney i like resident evil i like big dumb silly games that capcom make um i love the yakuza team they're good um yes uh rio gagatorco um uh i i feel like i see i'm trying to think of developers who like haven't just done a series yeah i mean like some more samogo is a developer that i will always be interested in what they do because everything they do is feels quite different to the previous thing like they did year walk which i think is one of my favorite horror games of the last god that's probably like 10 years ago now was it uh yeah device 6 which i don't think came to pc but uh is a absolutely marvelous game cyanera wild hearts which is a very sweet like really like you talk about a well kind of put together product like it is everything is working in tandem like visuals like the the the game itself the music really really terrific game um [Music] so yeah them i like lucas pope um like other other like single games that have completely won me over to people uh outer worlds mobius digital um like whatever that team does next how to watch dlc apparently um i'll be up for that i don't know i i like so many developer you know it's tricky this there's not many who are it's all tied to the game you know if every game i like i guess in theory i like the developer is the does that work like hundreds of games i mean i do whatever you want to call it a midas or slash crystal dynamics uh but i think you know human revolution i think is great i think the tomb raider reboot has its ups and downs yeah marvel's avengers but i i like if they announced their next game tomorrow i would be interested i'd be talking about it i'd be yeah i was say if there's a developer who like not just i love their games but i like i love their vibe their deal and how they carry themselves like if i like the whole package i would probably say that like larrion jumps out you know i love divinity original sin two um really really enjoying the early access supporters gate three i just like how they kind of carry themselves i like the their sort of community focus facing thing i like their weird little videos their sense of humor you know in the times that i've met developers from larry and they've all seen like super nice people um you know but there aren't many other developers i can think of where i like like i just dig their whole kind of vibe um yeah i mean yeah that's that's fair i could probably think of more but i should have prepped this before so sorry uh dog diamond gave us five us dollars during the youtube premiere thank you very much doug diamond and dog said even though like i'll read their email out but dog did say in their youtube super chat thing my question for next week ran long so i'm just going to email it keep up the good work thanks for distracting me from the work i should be doing right now thanks very much doug and doug's email reads as follows recently i was playing a jrpg that had a surprise time travel twist halfway through the game you defeat the main bad guy but one of your party members sacrifices himself in the process the entire second half of the game is meant to be you going back in time undoing your victory for a chance to save your friend this is ridiculous no way i'm going to risk the millions of lives of at stake just for a chance of saving one person it'd be completely unethical instead i decided that i had quote beaten the game and called it over with have you ever stopped playing a game before it was truly over not because it wasn't a good game but because you felt that the narrative arc had completed to your satisfaction also let me just say that i loathe time travel as a narrative device there should be warnings on games that use it so that right hanging people can avoid them properly dog thank you very much dog so uh yeah a game that you got to appoint in matthew and you were like you know this makes sense imagine you watched did you watch dexter yeah so i so i always say to pete because i'm one of the fools that stuck with dexter until the very end and i say to people if they ever show any interest in watching dexter watch until the end of series four and then bow out and pretend that that is the you have done dexter you've completed quite still quite an unhappy note to end on oh very no like i'm not saying it's happy but but it is satisfactory like you know you go on i mean if you're looking for a happy ending then yeah i suppose then maybe watch i mean i struggle with this because i finished most things through i mean a game where like you know if you didn't progress in it and you were still having a good time and you could just kind of like freeze it as a happy moment i'd say like maybe the first half of final fantasy 15 when you're all bombing around in your car with your mates and you're all young and it it becomes like more linear and cinematic after you get to a certain point you have to get to the city you go to but you go to the city and then it it basically puts you on a kind of collision course with a bleak future after that point um but that game is at its best when you're just sticking around in your car doing side quests the fact that you can actually travel in time like back to that moment just to carry on like that's that's how it kind of you know you can jump from the end of the game back into the earlier open world game um which is where i had my happy times for final fantasy 15. um but in terms of other things where i have you know see mostly through to the end i'm typically the same the the best i could give you is games where it's like with games where the the true ending is hidden behind collecting 250 feathers in an assassin's creed or batman actually you're like you know you'll get the true ending if you collect all the riddler trophies no i won't the true ending is the one i get at the end of the game thanks very much goodbye like it's no no way i'm doing that so that's the only example i could give where i'm satisfied with that ending like if something yeah if something hi hides the true ending behind however like an insurmountable amount of uh uh collectibles i'm like nah thanks i'm all right um and uh let's do one another one very quickly just because kind of run along uh let's do what i'm trying to find a quick question let's do brimack brymack asked uh which early video game made you the most happy play uh made you most happy as most modern games don't seem to provide happiness love the weak spot braymack that's a bit of a shame brian mack stop projecting a bit there's a lot of a lot of modern games that provide well depending on what you're into um but yeah so give me in a sentence or two matthew for you mario for me sonic end of move on uh yeah early yeah so uh if you if you want to get your n164 goldeneye smash brothers perfect dark about as happy as i've ever been playing games i don't go back much i don't really go back to like nudes and snares um some things i feel a little bit too crusty and old for me now uh so thank you very much to everyone who asked a question yeah we kind of ran a bit long and show and tell uh but keep sending them in um you can email us weakspot at rock paper shotgun dot com thank you very much as always for listening for watching for consuming however you consume if you want to consume more well there are ways basically you can follow us on social media i am at column underscore hearn matthew is at mr basil underscore pesto you can talk to some like-minded people on discord discord.gg forward slash rock paper shotgun uh over on youtube you can watch the video version of the pc gaming weak spot where you can like come subscribe ring the bell all that stuff but if you prefer the audio version subscribe to the pc gaming week smart podcast via all your podcatching apps including but not limited to apple podcast spotify stitcher tuning pocket casts etc etc but for all of your pc gaming needs keep it on rockpapershotgun.com matthew another weak spot in the can we will find video games to play and talk about for next week's show and we'll all have a great time i am sure of it but matthew now is not a great time now in fact is my least favorite part of the show because this is indeed the paradise showroom's bid the listener the viewer adieu say goodbye matthew castle goodbye and say goodbye colin hearn sloan [Music] gufford [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Rock Paper Shotgun

Views: 2,791

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: mass effect legendary edition gameplay, mass effect gameplay, mass effect legendary edition pc, mass effect legendary edition, shin megami, megami tensei, shin megami tensei, nocturne, smt, shin megami tensei 3, nocturne remaster, valhalla, ac valhalla, assassins creed valhalla, wrath of the druids, valhalla gameplay, pc gaming news, pc gameplay, gaming news, video games podcast, pc video games podcast, pc gaming weekspot, weekspot, mystery steam reviews, rock paper shotgun

Id: -KvRUP1lkm4

Length: 113min 53sec (6833 seconds)

Published: Tue May 18 2021