Hello, and welcome to The Back Page A Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, how’s your week going? It’s very good. I just watched Unforgiven, the Western classic starring Clint Eastwood. How did that make you feel? Do you feel like you’re kind of like a veteran content man, sort of like coming out of retirement to do like one last job, whatever you’re drawn to, like a freelance review assignment? I mean, if that film has told you anything, it’s that old men shouldn’t hold on to their kind of glory days. It doesn’t end well for many people who do. So, you know, maybe it’s time to move on and just become a pig farmer and accept my lot. Isn’t Clint Eastwood basically making that film again this year as well? Like he’s got some film with like maybe Baby or Crying in the Tile or something like that. And I think it’s a great film, Unforgiven. Really good. I think he just thought, well, I’m still alive. I’m still old, so I’ll just make another old cowboy film. So I think that’s what he’s doing. Yeah. It’s funny because back when they did Unforgiven, everyone was like, wow, he’s old. But he was only like late 50s. And now he’s like, you know, literally like a walking skeleton. He is so old that in Unforgiven, he looks quite young. You’re like, yeah, it doesn’t hold up as much. Yeah. My partner was constantly pointing out how handsome he looked for an older man. I was like, yeah, all right, I get it. You know, but yeah. Yeah, good stuff. So Matthew, before we get into this week’s episode then, which is we’re doing another Mailbag this week, it’s partially brought on by the fact that we had a delay in getting audio for our planned episode. So we’ve pushed that back a week, our E3 Memories episode. But we thought we’d do another Mailbag episode because we had a few questions built up. We put out a call for more questions and inexplicably, our last Mailbag episode is one of our most downloaded to date. It’s a very popular episode. People really liked asking us a bunch of questions and having loads of answers in quick succession, I guess because you can cover loads of topics at once. But we’re doing that again this week, Matthew. How are you feeling about it? Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I think we’ve got a nice range of questions, quite broad, there seems to be a theme to some of them. There seems to be a lot of interest in us dishing dirt on games reviews. I remember that from last time as well. Lots of people interested in the reviewing process and the weird baggage that comes with it. Yeah, there was one question that I didn’t put in here, which did literally ask about ethics in games journalism and I was like, nah, I’m not litigating that on the podcast, can’t be bothered. So I left that out. Basically someone asked, do you know any instances of people being recorded under desks without their consent and stuff and I was like, no, it’s like, no, definitely not. This isn’t like all the president’s men, it’s, yeah, anyway. It’s not The Wire, which I’ve also been watching. How is that treating you? Now you’re on season five, very evocative for you as you recall your days as a man in the print mines. Yeah, back when I tried to also convince everyone there was a serial killer in Bath to try and spice things up in NGamer somehow. That doesn’t work anyway. There was that guy who, well, I don’t know if it was a guy actually, I don’t know why I said that. There were those missing feet that turned up all around the place. Yeah, I guess that is, The Bath Chronicle had its The Wire season five moment with the missing feet. Everyone was so excited for the missing feet and didn’t it turn out to be a load of medical students chucking feet over a hedge or something. I don’t, I think you might have boiled down some of the details there, but I think it was something, it was expected to be like medical waste or something like that. So yeah, I’m not sure. I’m not sure it will, you know, make… They were basically vox popping people who were walking near where the foot was found and going, do you think this is like a mad murderer? And you just had people going, yeah, I guess it could be. This is not super valuable news coverage. But that’s what basically counts as news in Bath, isn’t it? It’s like, you know, lorries are loud on this street on like Thursday mornings. That’s like a headline. Yeah. You know, if a feet, if like some rogue feet come along, you just take what you can get, you know, and you run with it. Yeah, I mean, man, you must be like, this is my ticket out of here. This is the ticket to the big leagues. If you hit the foot story. Yeah, there you go. We’ve the fine work of the people at the Bath Chronicle there. We’ve boiled down very nicely. So one other thing, Matthew, before we get straight into the questions, we’re going to do what we did last time, fire through. I think we’ve got 21 or 22 questions here. We’ll just go through them in quick succession. The results of the draft, Matthew, last week’s episode, the Games Acquisition Madness episode. So the poll has not closed yet, but it is looking like it’s going to end in my favor. Yes. And by the time this episode is out, people will know the results. I feel like reasonably confident I’ve got this now, unless you get your entire family to vote for your picks in the next 24 hours. No, I wouldn’t do that. I thought we should play it nice and honest. The weird thing was, in the episode I said, please don’t use my terrible E3 to kind of like, you know, don’t judge me based on that. And yet the people who have come out in favor of me have done it purely because of the E3. Like they don’t care for the game studios I picked at all, but they’re just like, I just want to see that mad conference. When I actually think my studio selection isn’t that bad, I think that’s pretty strong. Yeah, I think that you’re, I actually think apart from Sing, which I thought was a slightly worse choice than mine, I thought your choices were on a par. I think it’s because maybe when you pick something like Playground Games, which is obviously an amazing studio, they’re a bit like maybe less in the vein of the types of games we’ve talked about on this podcast, whereas- Yeah, that’s fair. I’d say on the weird like Venn diagram of stuff I’m interested in and stuff I talk about a lot on the podcast, Playground Games aren’t really in the crossover period section at all. Well, the good news is neither of these companies are real. Matthew Castle Productions and Big Sammy Holdings Limited, it’s not like they’re going to be hitting the stock market anytime soon. Yeah, we’ll put that to bed. Thank you so much for voting on that at home because we’ve had over 200 votes for it, which is like way more than I was expecting for such a daft premise. So people definitely got engaged with it, it gave us a feedback. It’s greatly appreciated. Yeah. Yeah. So Matthew, let’s get into the questions there. Should we do what we did last time and alternate in asking? Maybe you start and then I’ll do the next one. So we’re going to start off from, this is from Anders Badd via Twitter. There’s an accent on the A so I might be pronouncing the bad wrong. What are your thoughts on having to complete a game before reviewing it? Is it a must or a case by case scenario? Should I go first, Matthew? Yeah, go for it. So this comes up quite a lot. There’s a lot of questions about whether you should be doing this for a game. And then it’s one of these things that people argue about on Twitter. But no one would ever talk about it in real life. That’s what I think of this kind of discussion. But I honestly think it depends on the game. So obviously, there are some games like FIFA where you can’t actually complete it. So what are you basing it on? It’s a whole bunch of stuff, I imagine. Maybe you play a whole season of games or you test out all the different modes or whatever. But I was actually thinking about Ghost of Tsushima, which I played earlier this year. If I’d have reviewed it after playing, let’s say, 30 hours rather than the 60 hours that I eventually put into it, it might have been longer than that, actually. I think I would have given it the same score and pointed out the same things because that game doesn’t largely change from beginning to end minus a few upgrades and stuff. So that is a game where I would feel comfortable in doing that. Yeah, I would say that that’s my stance on it. It depends on the game. Obviously, it’s like a narrative indie game. Ideally, you want to see the back of it. If it’s a really obtuse game that could take hundreds of hours to master. I don’t know. At some point, I personally think it’s okay to say, I have played this enough to know whether you should play it or not, and therefore, I can make it all based on this. I think that’s what it comes down to more than ticking a box of have you completed or not. What do you think, Matthew? Yeah, I feel roughly the same. When you’re playing something, you get a read, you get a feel for how consistent it is in what you’ve already played. I mean, I do try and finish stuff. There’s some things you just can’t. Like, I guess it’s kind of a case of setting myself a certain amount of time that’s feasible or possible. Sometimes it’s set for you by review events. You’re like, well, I can only play what I can play here. And sometimes it’s based on like, well, I’ve got other stuff to do. I know what else is going on. I’d say most games I review, I do finish, but then I don’t play, you know, I try to avoid like massive JRPGs. They’re the main candidate for games that don’t get finished, I think. You know, it’s just because they’re hundreds of hours and that is just not possible. Service games, obviously very, very hard to review in that sense. I always live in fear, though, of something like massively shitting the bed at the end. And that is in my mind. Like, sometimes I feel weirdly like on RPS, they’re often quite honest about how much of it they’ve played. Like, if they haven’t finished it, the reviewers aren’t embarrassed to say, like, after 20 hours, kind of here’s where I stand on this and that’s kind of giving it a bit of flexibility. Generally, though, it’s a case-to-case basis. I do try, I mean, the stuff I tend to review and the stuff I like is quite short, cinematic, single player games. So that’s not always a problem. Yeah, I think that covers it there, Matthew. So, question two. You have to put together a dream squad of companions for the Mass Effect 2 finale, The Suicide Mission, but they can be from any video games ever. That’s from Mike on Twitter. I’ve made notes for this, Matthew. Why don’t you give me your answer first? I just, I made a general observation that it’s a very combat-heavy mission. So you need people who are like fundamentally good fighters, which kind of limits you to not an amazingly exciting selection of people. You know, like, you know, it’d be a laugh to say, oh, bring along Phoenix Wright. But I think he’d be murdered quite quickly. Like, he’s just got no, there is no role for him on that mission. I think you also need people who’ve got like, you know, the suicide mission angle of it. You need people with like an amazing will to live. So they’re either like got big like motivation, like they’re like a mercenary or bounty hunter, like financial motivation. So I was thinking like Samus from Metroid would probably be quite good. Good value for money. Plus, you know, spaceships. Or just someone who’d been through so many harrowing adventures that they weren’t just going to give up now at the last hurdle. So like, I was thinking of that, the poor bloke from like the Metro games. Artyom, yeah. Just because he’s had such a rough life, you know, he’s like, I’ve made it through these horrible things. I’ve now been taken to this suicide mission on the space station. I think he’s not just going to like give up the ghost. I think he’d fight. So yeah, I guess my party at the moment is just Samus and Artyom, which is pretty weird. Yeah, I’ve actually like assigned someone, people to do different roles. Oh wow, okay, you went much more hardcore than me. Well, I had to like, you know, kind of like, sort of give my memory a jog of what the different roles are in this suicide mission. So I actually decided to keep a couple of the Mass Effect characters for the different fire squads. There are two different fire squads. I’ve kept Garrus because Garrus rules, obviously. He’s a fire team leader. My intergalactic waifu Miranda also remains. So she can be the distraction fire team leader. I’ve also decided that I’m going to send Mario into the vents, which is obviously meant to do with Legion because vents are basically pipes and I think he’d know what he’s doing in there. However, I think your Samus answer is better because obviously she can just morph ball and go straight through it. Oh yeah. So I think Samus is a really good call, very versatile. So I’m bringing along Junya from Final Fantasy X to do the kind of like protecting everyone with the biotics role. She’s like a sort of defense but also can do like offense if needed so she can call in like a summon if things get a bit dicey. And finally, I’d bring several of the cheeky engineers from Red Alert, Command and Conquer to take over the Human Reaper at the end. So they would basically all like jog into him, try not to get killed and then like take over him. So he’d be like on my side at the end and then I’d get him to blow himself up. And that’s how we’d finish the mission. Oh, wow. That’s such a better answer than Samus because it’s a bounty hunter in space and a rather frail, fragile Russian guy who’s kind of got lucky. Yeah, well, I’ll give you like a little sort of glimpse of my process, Matthew. I took 40 minutes last night to basically make notes for every single one of these answers to give a full-bodied response to each one. So, you know, who knows? I mean, if you’ve done the similar level of prep, you’ll be fine. If not, then… I mean, the pressing thing is this is with prep. With prep, I brought a man who would actually probably just have a heart attack from being on a spaceship. This is a man who’s lived in a tunnel his whole life and all of a sudden he’s having to deal with space. I don’t know. Well, I mean, I don’t know. Like, I mean, I don’t know if writing off Phoenix Wright a bit prematurely is unfair. This is the man who fought Galactus and put him on the stand in a court of law. Oh, yeah, you are right. I forgot about that part of his personality. I mean, he’d definitely be there to kind of help litigate. Like, if we were accused of any war crimes or anything, he’d probably help us out. Not that I intend to do that, but… I feel like the word litigate has slipped into our vocabulary as a result of listening to too many of the same podcasts. Yeah, I used it in a review the other day, and I thought, that isn’t one of my words. Yeah, that’s it. I can go on the bingo card now. Liam Richardson’s bingo card. I’m trying to avoid saying the V words. And I’m going to lean right into it. This podcast is going to have big Samuel Roberts energy. People are going to love it. So the next one is you to read out, right, Matthew? Yes. How demanding are publishers slash editors on journalists to beat a game before reviewing it? Quite similar to the first question. It’s a slightly different tweak. From Robert Augusta Mayer on Twitter. Yeah, so in my experience, editors trust you to make the right calls when you decide to assign a score to a review. That’s always been my experience as a professional. I’ve been trusted to do it. I think a few editors have asked, oh, did you finish this? How far did you get? Or whatever. I think generally speaking, that’s a pretty professional relationship. How about you, Matthew? With editors, I’ve always been trusted and I’ve always trusted. You hear a few horror stories occasionally. Not editors, but when a review is out there, you sometimes get developers saying, I don’t really think you’ve played as much of this. I trust my peers and I trust the people I work with. On the publisher front, I would say that there’s no demand with review code. Actual conditions on what you can cover and what you should cover never really extend to, ideally you should finish this. I don’t know if it’s just because it’s an unwritten thing, ideally you would finish this. Something you do sometimes get with review code is not pointers, but you should maybe check this stuff out, or we’re proud of this stuff, or we like this stuff, which I think I see a bit more of in the last couple of years, where you get like, especially with open world games, it’s like if you haven’t got time to finish this, why not see X, Y and Z, because we think that’s the game at its best, which I sometimes think is odd because, you know, if you’ve got content that should be seen and you’re particularly proud of, you should maybe surface it in a better way than having to give someone a document to find it, or go here to see the good bit of the game, like, ideally it should all be amazing. Yeah, I think that review guides are fairly common for some big games. I can’t say I recall any by memory. Usually the tone is very friendly. It’s like, hey, you know, these are the basics of the game. This is like the world and stuff like that. This is stuff you can see in the game. Sometimes it’s pointed out, don’t spoil this particular part of the game, which I’m completely fine with, sympathised with, like, not spoiling bits of the story or key moments from the game, necessarily. You can review a game without talking about those, I think. And, yeah, I think it’s not… But no one… I guess, like, just to answer Robert’s question, no one’s, like, saying you need to do this, this and this before you review it. No. That doesn’t exist. I’ve always keen to be very, like, frank about that side of things, because that, when you see people staring on Reddit about games journalists, it’s like it’s the same old bullshit that comes up, you know? Yeah, I don’t mean to suggest that is the case. I mean, the closest thing you get is, hey, check this out. Like, we recommend this in the review guide, but it’s, again, nothing compulsory. Yeah. All right, cool. Let’s move on to another question, then, Matthew. So, this is from Oodlesodim on Twitter. Hope I pronounced that right. Tell me that one single player game that you just can’t stop coming back to. What’s this for you, Matthew? This is quite tricky, because as I’ve said on this podcast several times, I tend to move on. You know, the nature of the job, I’m always playing something new. There’s very few things I just keep coming back to. In recent years, if there’s anything, it’s probably Breath of the Wild, which is a game which, you know, I definitely haven’t 100%ed it. I haven’t done all the… I don’t think I’ve done all the shrines. No, I haven’t done all the shrines. But it’s a world I’ll just keep coming back to and dipping into, and it’s a game I really like starting from the beginning again and just sort of working my way through that little kind of plateau and then breaking to the main thing, obviously. That’s probably it for me, like, probably my most replayed single player thing. Yeah, I think that in recent years I’ve actually been trying to replay stuff less because I think 2016 or something like that, I had a period where I just… I replayed a bunch of, like, really long games and then felt slightly behind suddenly. And so since then, obviously, game releases never stop now and games are, like, longer than ever or more demanding time-wise. So the time to replay stuff is more limited. I would say that… I actually just the other day I picked up… I mentioned this game earlier, but Final Fantasy X, I have on the Nintendo Switch. I own basically every Final Fantasy game that released on Switch that I already own and other formats I bought on Switch as well, because, you know, I’ve got problems, I guess. I’m not sure. But X is one that I can just always pick up, because it’s a game that I know inside and out. I finished it at least five times. I’m just a huge fan of that world. And, like, I was about four hours into the story and I just picked it up and, oh, yeah, I’m on Besaid Island and I know after this, you get on the boat, you go to Killaker. And I know all the different beats of that game and I find it a very comfortable world to step into. So that’s a single player game I come back to again and again. Over the years, I’ve replayed all of the Uncharted, I think, like, three or four times the PS3 ones and then twice the Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy. Played all those with my partner a few years ago. I find those very enjoyable to replay. I’m not saying that they’re, like, the best games ever, but they’re very significant games in sort of, like, my lifetime of playing games. And I find them, again, extremely comfortable to come back to. They’re just nice to pick up. Obviously, they’re nice characters to spend time with. There aren’t that many games where characters give you that feeling. That’s an underrated part of why Uncharted is so good. Yeah, definitely. That answers the question, I think. So it’s one of your questions, right? Yeah, next up we’ve got, are there any demos slash games played at press events that were wildly different to their finished product? That’s from Supreme Sonic on Twitter. I actually found this difficult. I struggled to think of anything which had changed substantially, beyond maybe a power up placement here and there, like when we did those deep dives on Mario Galaxy that I’ve talked about. In the final game there were some coins in different places that we only noticed because we literally drew the levels from the E3 demos out as maps. So, yeah, I don’t know, have you ever seen this? I can think of a few examples that I haven’t played necessarily, but I have got one that I have played actually that is not out yet, even though I played it years ago. So, interestingly, Biomutant was just released. That was a game that we had playable, the PC Gamer Weekender, in like, I think early 2018, and then the game came out like this year. So that is like a massive time jump there. So I am not sure what happened to that game in that period. Anyway, a more interesting example is I played Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones, the multiplayer. Really? Yeah, the Assassin’s Creed Boat combat game. I played this at E3. I want to say E3 2017, because I wasn’t at 2018, so it must have been 2017. I played this. I had like a hands-on demo. I played it with Sam White, actually, who listens to this podcast. Like, he was stood next to me, I think. So unless I have kind of like manufactured that memory from a year of like pandemic madness, which is possible, that’s a game that’s like not out, but I have played it. I mean, you know, if you want to know anything about it, just let me know. But it is basically like a multiplayer version of those fun boat combat encounters in Assassin’s Creed 4. So, yeah, that’s like an interesting one. I’ve got another one, though, Matthew, which is Dead Island 2. I saw a demo of that that I don’t believe was shown publicly before it was like canned and then given to a different developer. I believe it’s Free Radical making it these days or whatever they’re called, the old Free Radical. That’s right, yeah. So I think they’re making it now for Koch Media. So, yeah, I saw this. It was a demo where you were doing a lot of like manufacturing weapons in the back garden of I think like a neighborhood in San Francisco. I think or Los Angeles. One of those. I think it was like set in different bits of California originally. And yeah, I saw that and I’ve got a fairly vivid memory of it. I thought it looked pretty good, actually. I was quite taken with the setting and I thought it was a nice looking game. But yeah, that has never materialized. So, you know, that’s another sort of oddball sort of game. But in terms of directly playing stuff, I couldn’t think of any examples, really. Actually, no, I have one final one here. So you’ve got loads. Great. Yes. Question. It really is. Yeah. So again, this isn’t a game I played. It’s a game that was demo to me and they cleverly cut the demo to have a different meaning. So Batman Arkham Asylum, the first time I ever saw it was at this press event in, I think, 2009. And it was an event that also had like mini ninjas and something else there that wasn’t that remarkable. And I remember just being like not entirely sold on this Batman game that was not based on the Nolan Universe. And, you know, but nonetheless had these classic animated series actors in it. And they cut this demo very cleverly. So when in the game, you might remember that when you’re hit by the scarecrow toxin, Batman finds Jim Gordon’s dead body. And I think that like it’s suggested to you with a cough. But in this demo, my memory is that you are Batman walking down these corridors and then you find Jim Gordon dead. But they don’t give you the context of the scarecrow thing. And then the demo ends. So you’re like, oh, this is like a massive story meant where Jim Gordon dies. But you’re actually being spared the spoiler of knowing that these like really elaborate scarecrow hallucination sequences are coming. So that was quite an interesting example of how like a demo can be edited to have a different meaning. Oh, yeah. How interesting. Yeah, some solid answers there, I thought. Yeah, that’s good. But mine terrible. Yours was all this juicy stuff and mine was, I think they moved a coin to the left in Mario Galaxy, which absolutely blows as an anecdote. Well, I think it’s partly because it’s actually very rare for a game to get into the like public eye now before being like, you know, hidden from view and rebooted. That’s quite an unusual thing to happen. So yeah, good stuff. So next up, Matthew, this is a really good question. This from John Cheatham on Twitter or Cheatham. I’m not quite sure which, but very loyal listener. Messages us a lot, which I really appreciate. You can set a Yakuza style open world game in any city. Which one do you go for? So Matthew, why don’t you kick us off? I mean, is it really boring if I say Bath? I’ve got Bath as one of my answers, so go ahead. Yeah, I’ve got two. So I was thinking Bath just because it’s got quite a small city centre. So it’d be quite easy to walk. It’s quite easy to walk Bath in real life quite fast. So it would suit it quite well. You could get to a lot of different stuff. Bath’s quite a kind of like touristy town, especially in the day. It’s kind of got that buzz of, you know, lots of people who aren’t normally there. And it’s all kind of cafes and restaurants and sandwich shops. It’s very geared to visitors. But you’ve also got the historical element, which is kind of interesting. I think what may be Scuppa’s Bath is that at night, basically all the tourists leave, and Bath is incredibly quiet in the town centre. I don’t know if you felt this when you first moved here. I was always amazed walking home at like just how dead it was like after six o’clock. You know, it doesn’t feel like a massively studenty town. Like I imagine most people would go to Bristol for their thrills as well. As a nighttime place, it’s not like bustling. You know, it’s not a great opportunity for lots of like thumpings as there is in Yakuza. The other place I was thinking of, I was trying to think of places which had loads of good food, because that’s something I associate with Yakuza is basically having loads of places to go and eat and look at all the food and the nice menus. And probably the best eating I ever did in a short amount of time was when I went to Glasgow. Amazing density of restaurants, a great interesting city, like real, you know, you just meet all these kind of really interesting characters there. I found it like a super charismatic place. I think, yeah, like a Glasgow Yakuza would be alright. Yeah, I went to, I’ve only been to Glasgow once. That was when I briefly worked for Comic Con and I had the same feeling. Like the city centre is really nice there. You get some obviously rough sort of characters around every now and then, like you do in any kind of British city that isn’t Bath, because Bath is very coddled and full of posh people. They’re kind of like High Street where all of their restaurants are. It’s like a beautiful district. There’s so much good stuff there. That’s quite a good call, I think. So I picked Bath as well because I don’t know what the side quests would be, but I feel like that would be a really fun thing to come up with. It’s like a back page of a magazine kind of idea of like, you know, some hoodlums are like harassing the hot dog stand man and then you go and beat the shit out of them or like, I don’t know. Like you say though, there’s not that many opportunities. Who do you fight necessarily? Do you fight like rich hippies or like… It’s quite an elderly population. It’s like basically going around sort of decking quite old Tories. I would never encourage violence, but it’s a video game premise. It’s not bad. You could do some great environmental takedowns in the baths, dunking people in that like fetid bath water. That is a great call actually. That is good. Hitting them with the audio tour guide stick, which you can hear Bill Bryson giving you a tour of baths while you’re hitting them with it. That would be great. Yeah, that’s really, really good. Oh, man, that’s very amazing. Yeah, you could do stuff like which kind of eateries would make the cut? Would JC’s Kitchen make the cut if he turns up that day, Matthew? For those listening at home that don’t know what JC’s Kitchen is, which is everyone listening to this podcast, there’s an incredible food stand, which Sam’s quite upset that it seems quite sporadic when it appears based on the weather. The first hint of bad weather it doesn’t turn up, which is quite heartbreaking because it’s quite out of the way to go there and see that it’s not there. I often joke that it’s a bit like a persona restaurant in that it’s only open on certain days based on weather conditions, but you don’t level up if you go there, you just have really, really nice chicken. Yeah, so that was a serious in-joke, I referenced there. But basically when I was at Matthew’s house last time, because we could legally go to each other’s houses again now, I went on quite a long rant about how you can never guess which days he’ll be there. And when I tweet his Twitter account saying, hey, are you around today? There’s no response. And there’s nothing on the website. It just says, these are our operating hours, weather permitting. And it’s so frustrating because it’s slightly overcast, but it’s not actually raining. So maybe if I go there, there’ll be a chance he’s there. So yeah, it’s a really rare spawn. It’s like getting, you do a raid in Destiny, and then you might get the shit-hot gun at the end, or you might not, and your mate will get it, and then you’ll be like, oh, fuck. It’s like that kind of vibe. Well, that got way too granular. But anyway, that would make the cut. That nice falafel place, that would make the cut. What’s that place you go to for breakfast every weekend, Matthew? Would that make the cut? Kingsbury Kitchen. Yeah, I think that’s pretty good. Oh yeah, that would 100% make the cut. All of these places, though, I’d often, I’d ask to be able to, in the game, you should be able to ask to sit inside, because if you sit outside, you get attacked by seagulls. That should be a key part of it. Yeah, like a big text flashes up on the screen, it goes, seagulls. And then it’s just like you fighting some seagulls. Yeah, that’d be good. So Bath is good. The other one I had was, I think you could pick, there’s a big chunk of London that I think fits this quite well. So if you go from like Soho to Leicester Square, you’ve basically got quite a good grid-based Yakuza style environment there, because you have like, there’s like one massive, one like massive kind of main road in between them. But there’s loads and loads of good eateries around Soho. So I think that, like that is a, that’s a good place. London is a very boring suggestion, but I feel like you’d have a good variety of locations to go. It’s even got an arcade, Matthew. So you could have a fight with a load of human statues. That would be good. That is a great shout, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I think, I think that kind of works. I think Bath doesn’t quite have the like, I don’t know, like, obviously, the kind of whole thing with A-Koozer is you encounter with these kind of wacky characters. And I just don’t think it’s quite got the diversity of like personality types Bath to make it happen. Like you say, after 11, it’s basically dead apart from the odd students. So, yeah. So next question, Matthew, way too much talk about Jacey’s kitchen there. But they do do great meat, I must say. Yeah, so where were we? We were on favorite video game related playground rumors. I remember everyone at school believing the naked Lara dancing to the beat of Spice Girls wannabe because it was written in an April issue of CVG. So Matthew, what are your favorite video game related playground rumors? That’s from sulking honky via Twitter. To tell you the truth, the big one which dominated playground chatter probably was like various Lara Croft nude cheats, which I know sounds terrible in this day and age. But, you know, when you’re a dumb teenage boy, that’s kind of, I know, that’s the level of conversation. There was loads of rumours about, it sounds so seedy when you say it out loud, of various routines you could do in the mansion, the kind of training mansion, which would make Lara Croft be nude, which when you look at like that era Lara Croft, and she’s just like this origami person, she’s like so sharp, the polygons, the idea that you’d be like, yeah, that would be sexy. Yeah, what’s very sinister, she’s basically a load of triangles. Yeah, I don’t want to get turned off by triangles, then by all means. But there was loads of stuff about like jumping in and out of her swimming pool. And that was like the key. And yeah, I’ve like, listen, I won’t say I personally did it, but I’ve definitely been in rooms where people have tried that. I mean, I can’t say I ever really like had the sort of, I mean, we, you and I are from that generation that’s on the very back end of like, you could feasibly go into a public park and see pornography in like a forest. Oh, yeah. And that was like, so that sounds really grotty and sort of like serial killer-y. But that was the kind of like, we were like right at the end of that age before you had like the internet in your hands, basically. So they’re kind of like, you know, there are only so many destinations for this, you know, for appalling straight young man holiness. So, yeah, basically video games, video game Easter eggs and films on Channel 5 late at night. I mean, how bad do things get where, like, you know, to get your rocks off, you have to see triangular Lara Croft naked in front of her butler in her mansion. So fucking weird. You’re like, oh man, this butler is really harsh in the mood. I wish he’d leave. That makes this whole lot worse. Yeah, the butler is what I think about when I think of the mansion. I’m like, oh yeah, there’s that really fucking weird butler there with those strange choices. I don’t want to be naked in front of him. So, yeah, good stuff. Were there any others, Matthew, apart from Tomb Raider? There was that thing in Banjo Kazooie which was allegedly going to be connected to the sequel or some slot in cart. There was like a weird ice key or something, which I think was like a cheat that didn’t ever really amount to anything or like the subsequent bit that it would relate to never released. I can’t remember the exact story. I’m sure someone will correct me on it. I’ve got a couple here. So, the first one, I may have… I think I mentioned this on a very old episode of ours, by very old I mean like November. So I went to school with this kid. I won’t say his name, but he was a bit of a bullshitter. And he said that you could save Aerith in Final Fantasy VII with something called gold materia. And he found this information out by falling through a curtain at a games convention, like inverted commas, where a wise old man told him that information. So that was like… I don’t think he told me that directly though. I think my friend Andrew told me that. So that’s a hilarious one, is the wise old man detail that like obviously outs it as bullshit. I love the idea that like E3 you accidentally fall into like an interview room in Nintendo, and then Miyamoto just tells you like some deep dark secret about Maro. It’s so implausible. Yeah, but the one I heard about that was real was that I heard about it from a kid, like the missing no Pokemon thing that allows you to basically clone any item in the game. So you can clone rare candies and stuff. And makes because of some kind of like maths error within the Pokemon red and blue cartridge, it makes like a really fucked up looking barcode monster appear, which I think is a great like kind of almost like horror tinged Easter egg in that game. But I remember hearing about that from this like quite nerdy kid in this park, and I went back and tried it and it blew my mind that actually worked because I’d obviously played Pokemon for tens of hours at that point. And it was like, oh, I can’t believe there is still this big secret that I just had no idea about. So that was one where it was true. Years later, I was amazed to find out you can also do something specific to make Mew appear in the game and then just catch it like you could do that in the 3DS versions of the game. And that blew my mind actually. I felt like I knew Pokemon so well and to see a new Pokemon turn up was kind of crazy. I have no real relationship with later Pokemon games and like gold and silver, but with red and blue, I played them nonstop. So that kind of playground rumour blew my mind. I just spent the whole time trying to make Mr Mime’s clothes fall off. In front of his butler. Okay, next up then Matthew. How much are you looking forward to not being able to procure a Switch Pro? Asks Twitter Critter via Twitter. Yeah, I feel like the very name Switch Pro is going to be out of date by the time this podcast, either like a week or two after this podcast is out basically because it’s been widely reported that a Switch, not a successor, but like an upgraded Switch is going to be revealed. I mean, it’s actually been really hard to follow the details of what this is, like a slightly more graphical heft, apparently 4K just output, but then, you know, like these next gen consoles can barely do like 4K sort of 60 frames. So I don’t know what a handheld Switch is going to be. The whole thing is quite perplexing to me on paper. Maybe the graphics will just look very 1080p, but, you know, output of 4K. But I will probably buy one of these, Matthew, but not for a few years yet. I feel like I just I don’t quite get enough Maya Jammer Switch to make the upgrade. What about you? Oh, I will definitely be. This is this is the thing I want. Like, I feel kind of bad that I got a PS5 and an Xbox One X Series X quite easily. Like I didn’t have any woes kind of pre-ordering them. And I feel like Karma is going to come back and make it quite hard to get this, which is something I do want this because I don’t play a lot of Switch at the moment. If it can like punch up Breath of the Wild even a little bit, it’s already a great looking thing, but I’d happily see an even shinier version of it. I’ve played some stuff on Switch recently where like performance has been a bit of an issue. The Hyrule Warriors 2 was on paper, like really fun, really great, characterful game, but it just runs horribly on my Switch anyway. So I would happily have a shinier version. Yeah, I just desperately want whatever this is. I don’t even know what it is and I want it. I feel like the upgrade needs to be quite meaningful. If it’s games that don’t quite run at 30 frames, suddenly running at 30 frames, that won’t quite do it for me. If someone says Breath of the Wild is 2, it’s 60 frames. I know I do this all the time on this podcast. That’s really embarrassing. If there was a substantial visual difference in that respect, then I would consider the upgrade for sure. I guess we’ll see what it is. I think it’s exciting that there’s new hardware. I’m not against them doing it. I think it’s quite an interesting thing for Nintendo to experiment with. It’s weird because it’s the portable mentality. We wouldn’t be at all surprised if this was just a straight portable and they were doing a new version of it. That happened all the time. They released about 18 different versions of the 3DS. So it makes perfect sense this is what Nintendo does. I think just because it’s a home console, because it also has that one foot in the home console space, it feels a little more unusual. But I guess we’ll find out when there is a Nintendo Direct a couple of weeks away now, I think. Yep, but that’s going to be games only. So whenever this gets revealed, it will be outside of that either before or after. So yeah, but too much smoke on this one for there not to be fire, I think. But yeah, so I’m curious to see what it’s all about for sure. And yeah, like welcome Nintendo doing it. Personally, I would be entirely comfortable with the next like 20 years of Nintendo hardware was just like iterations on the Switch. That’s really all I kind of personally want from them. Because it’s doing everything that I want a Nintendo console to do. Obviously, the kind of argument against that is that Nintendo is big into like innovation when it comes to like controller input and you know, basically like a different sort of interesting things it does with the hardware. But personally, the Switch has given me everything I want from from that kind of games console. So yeah, next up then Matthew, this is a good one. This is from Jeremy Peel, a writer, very, very, very talented games writer. And so yeah, we appreciate having the question from you, Jeremy. The more we hear about Death Leap, the more it sounds like Hitman’s structure applied to Arkane’s mechanics. We’d like to hear you two talk about that for obvious reasons. Do you want to kick off, Matthew? Yeah, I mean, the Hitman connection definitely came out in the recent previews. I don’t know how closely you’ve been following it, but, you know, the kind of way the game works is it sort of splits the island into sort of self-contained locations. And then you visit them at certain parts of the day. It’s not like you have the full Rome of the island and it’s, you know, times just ticking forward and you have like 12 hours before it loops or whatever. It’s quite kind of split into quite clean segments, which instantly makes you think of Hitman. Like if you go to this location in this time segment, the same activities will always be happening. So that kind of ticks a big Hitman box, which I’m all up for. But what’s more interesting is the idea of going to certain locations and like manipulating people so that they, so it changes other locations at other times. I think certain times of the day, certain parts of the island will be like radically different, like in how they behave. And I think the kind of the pitch of it is trying to get a perfect loop where you manage to get everyone in the right place to get them all at once, I think seems to be the vibe of it. So it’s kind of like a, it sounds like a Hitman game where the Hitman levels kind of interact with each other on this kind of grander scale, which is like, that’s super exciting and interesting. Yeah, that’s about as good a pitch for us specifically as you can sort of hear. I love the idea of that. Actually, I did some reading into this. I’ll confess, I’m not following Deathloop forensically because I really, really want to go into it fairly fresh and to kind of unpick it and discover it. But I did read a couple of previews just to try and get my head around the premise of it. And I do very much appreciate the idea that it is these eight targets. They have this looping day routine. And then every other NPC has their own kind of routine. And it’s about how you interrupt it and play with that. I think that’s got enormous potential. It actually makes me think about how what I thought Assassin’s Creed was going to be the first one. I thought, oh, is it this game where you’re not necessarily getting them all in one place, but you go kill this target however you want, knowing these things are going to happen. It kind of always sounded a bit hit-manny, the original Assassin’s Creed, until you actually played it. And it was like, OK, I’ve got a knife and a sword and my fists, and that’s all I can do in this entire game. But yeah, I really dig it. I think that, like Jeremy points out, it’s Arkane’s mechanics. So it’s a very specific feeling, first-person action, which adds another layer of complexity and simulation than you’d get in Hitman, where the actions are, I don’t know, I don’t want to say binary, but they’re a bit more straightforward, I would say. A bit less precision needed. I’d say the one thing which does give me slight pause at this is that everything they’ve shown and the way they talk about it, the moveset seems like a lot more geared towards action. Like, stealth isn’t as, I don’t know, as key a thing in this game, or it doesn’t look like it’s a kind of corvo where you could go in like massively all guns blazing, or you’ve got a skill set which is basically about ghosting through the game. It sounds like it doesn’t really do that or have that to it, which would obviously be quite different to Hitman in that sense. So I’m kind of interested to see how that kind of action side of things holds up and impacts it. You know, it still sounds super cerebral in this sort of like overarching structure and the way the kind of narrative plays into that, and you like learn narrative clues to kind of manipulate the wider island. So, you know, I’m sure it’ll be great. I just, I don’t know, I just need to kind of get it in my hands, see for myself. I personally think that a lot of that, I mean, again, I’ve not read about as about as much as you, but I think that the kind of like a sort of very action heavy stuff they’re promoting is very much like to make the marketing seem kind of approachable. So, you know, if you play Call of Duty, you might consider buying this game, basically. I think that’s what the that’s the heavy lifting the marketing is trying to do and presenting is all our action and all this kind of like, you know, sort of like big music and, you know, you wouldn’t look at it and think of Dishonored necessarily unless you kind of know Dishonored like we do. And so, yeah, I think that’s part of it. It’s like it’s being positioned as this big PS5 exclusive, you know, one of very few for the year. Like they just just before we record and start recording this, Sony just said that Horizon 2 might not come out this year. They’re not entirely sure yet. So this could end up being like the big exclusive that Sony has this year. God of War as well definitely isn’t this year now. Yeah. So, you know, after Ratchet and Returnal, it’s basically down to like Deathloop. So that’s, you know, it’s significant for sure. So I think they have to make it look very like approachable to people, which it’s something that, you know, Sony did with Returnal actually, which is a very hardcore game at its heart. So, yeah, I think that, yeah, that I can’t wait to just pick it apart and see how it goes and like have lots of failed runs where I kind of see how the different like dominoes tip over. Like that’s it’s really appealing the idea of all of these different dishonored levels like existing in tandem and then interacting with each other like that. Like you say, it’s just like that’s a killer premise. And I was quite pleased to see that some of the environments in the screenshots do look slightly dishonored, actually. Like it’s not it’s not all contemporary looking necessarily. It’s sometimes a little bit more kind of like run down on this island setting. So, yeah, good stuff. Next up is what are yours, Matthew? What’s your most embarrassing piece of gaming tat? Says David Lynch via Twitter. I’m assuming not film David Lynch. Nope, that’s my buddy David Lynch who I used to work with at Imagine. So I am afraid I couldn’t think of an answer for this one. I’ve had loads and loads of tat, but most of it is quite mediocre. Lots of like very mediocre t-shirts that I’ve only ever worn as like pajamas. Like I said, I think it was slightly embarrassing when I was going around wearing rock star t-shirts in like 2010 thinking I was like the coolest guy alive. That was possibly slightly embarrassing. The shirts were cool, but I was not cool. So make of that what you will. You weren’t cool enough for the shirt. Do people shout that out at you? You’re not cool enough for that shirt. One guy stopped me and went, hey, where did you get that shirt? And I thought, oh, fuck, like I’m the coolest guy alive. That’s very good for my self-esteem. Bad gaming tat. I often think about like NAF figurines and stuff like that. The best bit of gaming tat we got was it’s not really tat. It was the bathtub girl statue we got on PC Gamer sent to us by CD Projekt Red. PC Gamer’s very famous in-joke come to life basically. That was the best thing we got from a publisher. How about you Matthew? I didn’t get massive amount of tat. You didn’t get much from Nintendo. Nintendo weren’t big on tat. They didn’t really need it. The games spoke for themselves. When I saw the cyberpunk demo at Gamescom a couple of years ago, I got one of those cyberpunk statues of the lady with the blades coming out of her arms. It was mostly because I couldn’t fit it. We were flying back I think and we just couldn’t fit it in the bag. You know, you didn’t want to have that at the airport because it would look weird. And also partly because I just didn’t really want it in my house. Though I did think I could probably sell this online, but you’re not really meant to do that. So I just left it in a Gamescom hotel room. My cyber babe, as we called it at the time. So that’s kind of naff. But yeah, I don’t know. I’m not a big gaming statue person. So I don’t know. I think my idea of naff and embarrassing probably doesn’t align with most people’s. I wouldn’t want to step on, hurt anyone’s feelings. There was obviously the Saints Row dildo bat that we’ve mentioned in a previous episode. Oh, those were horrible because there were so many of them in the office. They must have sent a couple to each relevant mag because I swear one of those things was in my eye line for about five years in the future. Wherever I sat in that office, you would definitely see a massive dildo, which isn’t ideal. I imagine it’s like that scene in The Dark Knight where the Joker comes in and just throws a dildo baseball bat at your feet and another star fryer and says whoever beats the other one to death can come work for me and then walks out again. Yeah, I’m afraid I don’t have any other examples. I also got the Cyberpunk woman, but I think I left mine in the demo booth or I might have given it to another future writer. Are you telling me that Catherine wouldn’t want that on your mantelpiece, Matthew? No, definitely not. She’s got quite a lot of Final Fantasy figures and things like that, but I think a woman would like blades splitting out of her arm. It’s quite a horrible, violent scene. I just don’t know why you’d want it. There’s some cool stuff in Cyberpunk, which does look cool. It would look cool as a statue, but that’s just a bit, I don’t know, it’s a bit unpleasant. There’s really that really old art where she’s in her knickers as well, right? Yeah, it was, yeah. Oh well, okay, that’s enough about that. So next up, Matthew. Hi Sam, I’m loving The Back Page:. Please could you, Matt, tell us about your other favourite podcast? That’s from Ian Chain on Twitter. So why don’t you kick us off, Matthew? What other podcast do you listen to? Well, I’m pretty treading on your toes a bit here because we listen to a lot of the same stuff. I’m a big fan of The Big Picture and The Rewatchables, which are two film podcasts made by The Ringer. I think it’s fair to say The Big Picture is, we’ve taken quite a lot of inspiration from it for this podcast. We both got into it last year and they’re kind of a… I think, well, what they are traditionally is maybe a bit different to what they currently are. I think traditionally they’re just sort of covering the news and the latest releases. But with cinema kind of going to shit a bit last year because of lockdown, they started doing loads of retrospectives and lists and just sort of drilling into, like, best of various directors and actors. And it just showed off this, like, awesome, like, knowledge of basic, you know, largely focused, I’d say, in the last 40 years of cinema, which is kind of what I’m, you know, really into. And, you know, that show is always great for a good recommendation. I really like their band, so they’ve got some great guests. They do some interesting interviews. Yeah, that’s a definite recommend. I agree. I mean, if our podcast, like, has DNA, it’s from, like, first of all, Chet and John’s Reassuringly Finite Gaming playlist. That’s, like, you know, that was two top tens every week from two hosts who knew each other very well. And, you know, I went on that podcast myself as a guest host. I love listening to it. So that’s definitely part of it. Matthew doesn’t listen to this, but I do. I listen to RetroNauts, probably the most famous of the retro gaming podcast. They’re very, like, Japanese leaning in the games they cover, much more than we are. But that’s those are their sensibilities. And they’re kind of following through with that, which I always respect in a kind of podcast. The Big Picture is another part of it. And I would say, like, the old PC Gamer UK podcast that some of the listeners listen to this also enjoyed, that’s another part. So those are all the kind of inspirations for me anyway of, like, what this podcast is. And The Big Picture is the one that me and Matthew share the most sort of interest in. That’s a great podcast. Just like, even if there’s one episode I’m not interested in, there’s like another one that week where it’s like an instant listen. So, yeah. But they also do the rewatchables, which is like a deep dive into a great film, but specifically something with a rewatchable quality. So often they are amazing films, but they can also just be kind of comfort views or the kind of films that you always recommend to your friends. So it actually avoids some of the cliches of like classic films, or the greatest films of all times. And they get quite deep and serious about, not so serious, but certainly very deep on some things which are maybe more entertaining rather than important or profound. And it’s quite nice to hear it kind of dafter stuff treated with some reverence as well. So I like that. Yeah, the rewatchables is really good. It’s hosted by Bill Simmons, who I understand is very well known, like sports personality pundit in the US, but I came to that podcast with no knowledge of him whatsoever. He’s a very funny man who like is, makes some borderline inappropriate jokes that just fall the right side of it tonally and ends up making the podcast like slightly more endearing and a bit magazine-y, I think. The dynamic between him and the hosts reminds me a bit of like working with like Tim Weaver back in the day, where you have someone who’s, you know, senior, been doing it a lot more, you kind of look up to, you know, can really deliver, really knows their shit, but is also just very funny, very good, affable people person, draws out the best of, you know, in the people around them. He’s got that similar kind of quality. Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, that’s, those are kind of like a bunch of them. For the rewatchables, actually, when me and Matthew have kind of kicked around ideas what a Patreon could look like for us, we thought about the idea of doing like individual podcasts on different games as part of like a big top 100, you know, our favorite games of all time. And then we went through a different bunch of different categories for specific games. That’s something we thought about potentially down the line if we ever do a Patreon. So who knows, maybe that will come up down the line. But yeah, the other ones I noted here, I did want to give a shout out actually to David Turner of The Computer Games Show, who was one of the first people to tweet about us and talking about us on his podcast. So I definitely want to give a shout out to them because they’re one of the big UK games podcasts. And there aren’t actually that many around UK specific ones. I was kind of quite surprised when we were able to find an audience. But I think there’s not loads and loads of big ones. But they’re one of them. The other ones I got here, you must remember this, the Classic Hollywood Movie Podcast, loads of stories about basically men being complete bastards like 80 years ago. If there’s a drinking game for that podcast, it’s like, oh, Howard Hughes is inappropriate towards a woman. And it’s like, you’ll be fucking wasted by the end of each episode. Well, ours, it’s a famous video game character takes their clothes off in front of a butler. Yeah. So yeah, I like that one. Finally, the one I was going to mention, I have listened to a lot of The Simpsons podcast, Hawking Simpsons, which is from some of those retronauts people as well. Very granular Simpsons podcast because I really like The Simpsons. Did you have any others, Matthew? Any gaming ones? Yeah, a couple of shout outs. I really like The Director’s Cut, which is by the Directors Guild of America. And it’s always like a director of a new release talking about their film, but they’re interviewed by another film director. And it’s sometimes really interesting just hearing a director, like in the interviewer chair, because it reveals a lot about their process. Like, for example, a classic episode I always point people towards is Christopher Nolan interviewing Edgar Wright about Baby Driver. Because Christopher Nolan, you know, has this kind of certain kind of seriousness about him when he’s presenting his own work. But actually hearing him talk about comedy and appreciation of action films and the kind of stuff Edgar Wright does just reveals a lot more about the man than probably an interview with him would do. You know, and there’s like Spielberg interviewing Scorsese and various people interviewing Quentin Tarantino. Some absolutely killer episodes when they interview anyone interviewing Spike Lee because he’s just such good value for money. Like he’s so kind of impish one second and then incredibly like serious and angry the next. He’s like a fascinating kind of presence. So yeah, a big fan of that one too. Yeah. On the game side as well, I wanted to throw in the AIAS Game Maker’s Notebook, which is Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, I think, in the US. It’s hosted by, I think, Robin Hunnicke and Ted Price from Insomniac and has loads of good big interviews with people who basically as journalists, you would never get the same access because these people are obviously closely guarded. Ted Price asked some quite searching questions about being a leader in games and that sort of thing, so you can hear him talking to people like the lead designer of Spider-Man and the creative director of Ghosts of Shuma. It’s a level of insight for blockbuster games you don’t get elsewhere, so I like that one. I also like, this is the last one from me, but Soren Johnson’s podcast Designer Notes. I think he kind of hosts it regularly, but Soren Johnson, the lead designer of Civilization IV, has made a couple of games since then. Offworld Trading Company and Old World, I think, are his games. And here’s the podcast. He kind of talks to a load of people basically about their process. There’s some really good Sid Meier episodes. And another really good one with the guy who, the lead designer of XCOM, whose name I can’t remember. It starts with Jake, but yeah, Designer Notes. Solomon. Yeah, Jake Solomon. That was a really good episode, so yeah, I recommend tracking that down. But I was glad to be asked that one, actually, because that is not something we talked about much on this. So thank you very much. So is this what I read out, Matthew? I think it is, isn’t it? Yeah, go for it. I’d love to hear more about the relationship between press and PR. It strikes me that both sides need each other. PR needs the press to promote their games, while the press needs review code from PR. But if the relationship is too close, then it could lead to allegations of undue influence and review scores. Yet too much antagonism could end up with review code being withheld. How have you both dealt with these issues in the past? And what happens when a journalist’s colleague passes under the velvet rope to join a PR company? That’s from Lewis Packwood on Twitter. I’ve found with most of the things I’ve worked on, you inherit kind of existing relationships with certain PR. You know, like, you join a mag and they already have a relationship with certain companies, and you kind of pick up the baton on it, and it’s kind of predefined in a way. I wouldn’t say like I’m massively chummy with any PRs. These are people you can sort of end up spending a weird amount of time with, like if you go on a press trip, say, you know, or just going to events or whatever. So you can sort of, you do strike up sort of friendships, but I feel like when it comes to the work, it’s pretty kind of, I feel like I, you know, I’ve managed to keep it pretty kind of strictly business. Yeah, I would say that I’m kind of a similar position. I feel like maybe the generation before us, Matthew, were like a little bit more kind of like personally friendly with PRs, and I feel like it became a bit more of a machine by the time that we sort of like entered the industry, a bit more turnover and a bit more like a bit less kind of like a face to a name and all that stuff, you know. We arrived just at the end of the kind of like the big age of like massive press trips and stuff. I think there just used to be a lot more of that stuff, which is where, you know, you just spend so much time. It’s like going on holiday with someone, but you’re going to naturally bond with them. It’s quite, you know, it’d be quite weird to spend five days in a foreign city with someone and like not try and get on. So it wasn’t a huge amount of that. Also, like a lot of the people I, you know, I… It’s just changed so fast. Like there seems to be a lot of movement in that particular industry and people move on, you know, their PRs and then they move on to other things. You know, there’s someone who I’ve worked with, you know, for years at Nintendo and then they work at Lego now, for example. You just never ever encounter them ever again. And I don’t have any problem with peers who decide to go the PR route at all. I mean, it’s kind of a quite… It is one of the kind of career paths for a games journalist, you know, because there is a natural limit on what you can do in games journalism. And, you know, some people want something different. And that is an obvious thing to step into. I agree. Like I think that, you know, games journalism to PR is absolutely like a viable, a viable route. And there’s no like, you know, there’s no kind of iffiness to doing that. There’s a very much a sense that like once you’ve passed under that, it’s not the same dynamic. You don’t have the same kind of like relationship in terms of how you talk about, you know, professional sort of matters basically. So, yeah, no, absolutely no problem with it whatsoever. OK, so next up Matthew is one of yours. Yeah. Hello, gents. Hope all is well with you. Loving the podcast, ideal for working from home or for the background during gaming sessions. I agree. Thank you for that. So thank you very much. My question is, that’s terribly self-serving. I should have cut that bit. No, it’s not even now because it’s funny. Yeah. My question is this. Was there a game that you were unhappy in reviewing but eventually grew to love, or the reverse, a game you really liked and enjoyed while reviewing but haven’t played again? Thanks for a great podcast and informed chat about the games industry. That’s from Ryan Cobain via email. Yep, Ryan. Why did I say that? Well, I appreciate Ryan’s correspondence. Thanks, Ryan. Big into the podcast, so thank you. So I actually don’t have an answer for the first one, like a game that I didn’t enjoy reviewing but eventually grew to love. I’m quite… When I’ve made my mind up about something, that’s kind of it for me. Very rare that my perception is sort of turned around. Yeah, I can’t think of… There are some examples like I mentioned on the game review scores we got wrong, like Nier, where I feel like I just missed what it was that people thought was the magic of that game. But my relationship with the game still hasn’t changed. I still reflect on that as a game that I wasn’t massively into. I will play that Replicant at some point. But the other way around… So games I played a lot, I reviewed and enjoyed, then didn’t play again. The Division 2 is one of those. That’s simply because it’s a live service game. I played it for like 60 hours, reached the end game, and none of my other friends were playing it. So it just kind of like died on the vine for me, even though there’s a bunch of stuff I wanted to do in that game, including the raids. But the problem is, when you’re playing live service games with people in their 30s, it’s a big ask when people are already playing Destiny to start playing The Division or another game like that. So that’s one case where I stopped playing it, not because I didn’t like it, but because the circumstances didn’t allow it. Do you have any answers for these, Matthew? Yeah, weirdly I was going to say with Nier, you know, the same. I didn’t really dig it back then, but I have been replaying the re-release recently and enjoying it a lot more, and mainly just digging the music and the kind of vibe of it, and I don’t know why I didn’t click with that as much the first time round. I don’t think that Nier Automata kind of unlocked some appreciation of Nier that I didn’t have before. I just don’t know where my head would have been when I wrote that review, that I didn’t gel with this stuff, which now seems very appealing to me. Yeah, so Nier weirdly is one of those. Things like, another one jumped out was Smash Brothers Wii U and 3DS, which I loved when I played them for review, but I just didn’t carry on playing them, and likewise I don’t really play Smash Brothers Ultimate. I have it, but I don’t care, you know, they are definitely the Smash Brothers I’ve played the least, even though they’re fantastic Smash Brothers games, for whatever reason, I’m just not playing a lot of local multiplayer, but they would have been, you know, if I was, you know, 17 again and living at home and had my brother around, we would be playing those games and having an awesome, awesome time, but yeah, it’s just like with you, my gaming habits don’t always align with what I naturally enjoy. Yeah, time is like a huge part of it. I had the same relationship with Smash Brothers Ultimate too, where it was like, I know this is a game that I would have played to death when I was like 15, but now it’s just, you know, a new DLC character comes out and I’ve not even downloaded the update to pay them yet. Yeah, that’s just the way it is, unfortunately. Question 14. Hi guys, loving the podcast so far and it’s an absolute blast every week. Thank you so much for that. Any intention of doing video episodes at some point? Would love to see Matthew chuckling at something miniscule while rustling with a packet of Renny’s. Also, when will we see the fabled Rich Stanton make an appearance? Keep up the good work. That’s Owen Christie via email. So when are you and I going to launch our Hot Tub channel on Twitch, Matthew? That’s going to be any day now, right? Oh, jeez. I don’t think anyone wants that. Yeah, I think, like, the point I was saying to get there is I’m currently too fat to be on video. I may or may not lose weight in the future, but yeah. Yeah, I like doing this as a podcast. Like, we may start uploading to YouTube just for convenience sake if people happen to enjoy listening to podcasts through that, but as an actual video element, I don’t know if it would add anything to see, you know, two slightly sweaty faces, maybe a few too many chins. I think I’m up to about three chins, Max, at the moment. Oh, nice. Keep leveling up. That’s the stat you’re investing in, chins. I’ve always got two because I’ve got quite a small chin. But I feel like if I can cut it down to two from three, then I’d be a happy man. But I thought about, again, we thought about streaming before and stuff like that. But it’s, I don’t know, it’s that thing if I personally just podcasts really fit my lifestyle well. So I’m basically making the form of media that I enjoy, which is, you know, how I prefer to work. I don’t necessarily think I’ve got the skills to kind of like operating video. Like I don’t know how to edit video. There’d be a lot of cross wipes if I was doing it. But yeah. Nothing wrong with a good cross wipe. I’d love to do things like video essays and stuff. I see some really good ones out there. I could definitely apply my sort of publishing expertise to that, but it’s not a field I’ve really been trained in. But yeah, I think I agree with you, Matthew. Not sure what the upside is. What about the Rich Stanton part of the question, Matthew? That requires you to send a message, right? Yeah, I’m sure we’ll get Rich on at some point. I mean, he is a very, very knowledgeable man. He’s worked pretty much the same kind of period that we’ve worked in games. Likes a lot of the stuff we’re into. We just have to get something that really… You want to apply that as best you can, all that knowledge. So you want to channel it into the right episode. But I’m sure we’ll tempt him on at some point. Plus he’s got kids, so that’s like another factor. Yeah, there is that. The other thing is that we do have the 20th anniversary of Metal Gear Solid 2, Sons of Liberty, coming up late this year. And that might be a good way to get Rich involved. I like those absolutely brilliant series of articles about Metal Gear for… I want to say you were a gamer? Yeah, they were amazing. I would love to… Basically, I think my dream of this podcast is we would eventually have an episode on each of the different Metal Gear games, and Rich is on each of those. But we’ll see. That’s a good one. Okay, next up Matthew, one of yours. Hi chaps. Thanks so much for doing the podcast. I could listen to anecdotes about chain-smoking Japanese game developers, unpleasant knee injuries and Renny’s ad infinitum. Yeah, that’s good. That’s what we’re good for. I’ve just got a new PlayStation 5. Having skipped the PS4 and the Xbox One in favour of a Switch, I’m now in the position of having an entire generation of great, but more importantly, dirt cheap games to catch up on. So if you were in my position, where would you start? What would be the first couple of games you’d pick up? That’s from Theo, who emailed us. Yeah, so first of all, Theo, I would say if you haven’t listened to our Best Games of the Generation podcast, that’s like two top 30 lists over two episodes. Still our most popular podcasts and people are always downloading that one. You know, that’s as comprehensive a take on that generation as you can get really from us. So yeah, but to directly answer the question from my end, Matthew, I’ve got a very simple list here, Dishonored 2, obviously. Spider-Man Remastered, which you can get on PS5. If you’ve not played Spider-Man on PS4, then this is a shinier version of it. You get it with the deluxe edition of Miles Morales on PS5. Uncharted 4 I’ve put here as well and the Nathan Drake Collection because I just really like the Uncharted games. Yeah, I think those are good starting points. And the Shadowgloss Remaster I put as well. Quite cheap, but a very nice way to show off a very old game with nice new graphics. What have you picked, Matthew? Yeah, I was just thinking if you’ve got PlayStation 5 and you’ve got PlayStation Plus, the little kind of collection of free games you get with that is like a really good starting point. You’ve got like Uncharted 4 in there, Resident Evil 7, Final Fantasy X. It’s like a good laugh for free. Monster Hunter World I really liked. I’ve also put Batman Arkham Knight. Pipped out from that list. Looks absolutely still absolutely super cutting edge. Looks amazing. There’s like 20 games there that are basically free with plus. So you should just give those a go. I really really like Persona 5 Royal as well. Feels like a bit of a definitive PS4 game for me. Just Persona 4 in general, but Royal is the best version of it. But yeah, so if you’re into JRPGs, get on that. But I mean, it’s quite exciting, isn’t it? The idea of like being able to delve in. So I remember I didn’t have a PlayStation 2 and I bought whatever the last iteration of it was, the very slim one, and just emptied out the pre-owned section at Game Station in town and had just an amazing time playing the best hits of PS2. It’s a really great way to enjoy a console, I think, coming to it late and buying everything for 99p. Yeah. What did you pick up on PS2 during that time, Matthew? The Metal Gears, definitely played 2 and 3. What else did I play on it? Well, that’s when I played Tomb Raider Anniversary as well. That might have been new. Final Fantasy XII. Oh, loads of stuff. Oh, Bully. Oh, that was great. Silent Hill 2? The Kami. Silent Hill 2? No, no, not that. Too scary for you, that one. Too scary, yeah. That’s cool, though. Yeah, I’ve not had this for a long time now. The closest I’ve got is I got given, or I’m borrowing a VR headset from someone on TechRadar team who I work with, and that was a thing where I was like, okay, there’s actually at least 10 essential VR games now, and that was quite cool to come to. I’ve still not plugged in the VR headset, despite having it for six months, but I will someday, damn it. But yeah, I empathise. It’s a cool thing. You’re in for a good time, I think. Some of those upgrades for the PS4 games are really good, too. I agree. That collection of PS Plus games or PS5, really good starting point, and you get a persona fire for free with that. Oh, yeah. All right. Next up, Matthew. What’s the game or series where the two of you are widest apart in terms of your opinions? Have you ever tried to persuade each other that your own point of view is the correct one? And what theory do both of you have for your friend’s obvious wrongness? That’s from Mike Grant. I actually really struggle with this one, Matthew, because I feel like you and I, even if we’re not closely aligned on something, totally understand where the other person’s coming from. What do you think? Generally, the only thing I could really think of is that you’re more open and into service games than I am, and I have no interest. I keep saying it’s because I’m always moving forward and I’ve always got to play the next thing. Well, I don’t know if actually I had all the time in the world. I would play Destiny 2, for example, and you’ve played a lot of that. On an individual game front, I’m not mad about Rocket League. I don’t really like it. Do you think that Rocket League is bad, though? Or do you think it’s just not for you? No, it’s totally not for me. This is the problem. There’s very few things which are beloved or critically acclaimed, which I think are bad. Normally I’ll play them and they’re just not for me. Horizon Zero Dawn, for example, is just not for me. I don’t think it’s bad. I know what doesn’t click about it for me and it’s fine that it does for other people. Yeah, it’s tough. I think we’re just too reasonable to have major beef over games. Yeah, I think so. I don’t play many things I truly don’t enjoy either. There’s a bunch of stuff Matthew’s played that I want to play that I don’t have opinions on. But nothing that strongly I think is bad or anything like that. So yeah, I’m afraid we’re just too agreeable. You definitely like Super Mario 3D World much more than I do. That’s quite a good one, yeah. Because I brought a very specific experience to play in that game. Where I kind of like lionize it. But I think that might be you more against the grain on that one than other people. Because you’ve got such a specific idea of what a great Mario game looks like. Or like what the true greats of Mario are rather. That it doesn’t necessarily fit that lineage. So I totally understand where you’re coming from with that one. So yeah, again, not a major disagreement. The game that I have this most with other people and people, you know, I’ve got friends who I could tell for a while were tiptoeing around it, but have since been a lot more frank about it is Skyward Sword. Which I really, really like. I really rate it. But I’ve got friends who at the time were like, and I could tell that they didn’t completely agree. But now they’re very much like, fuck you! So it’s nice to have it out in the open. And I’m looking forward to round two of that when it comes out in July. Oh man, yeah. If there’s a podcast I’m excited about recording, like an episode of this podcast, it is the best Zelda games episode that will encompass the Skyward Sword chat. That’s going to be really fun. So yeah, people can look forward to that in July. I’ll be buying that remaster as well, Matthew, so we can relitigate it. Go on then with the next one, Matthew, number 17. Have you played It Takes Two? If so, who did you play it with and do you rate it as an early game of the year contender? Says PikminD via Twitter. An easy one for me, I have not played it at all. But you have, haven’t you Matthew? Yeah, I have. I played through this with Catherine. I had a really good time with it, which was a pleasant surprise because I really didn’t like the last one he did, the co-op one, the way out. I thought that was absolute garbage. But this one was very sweet, very imaginative, super colourful, mechanically really varied. Had a little bit of the Nintendo magic in terms of taking an idea and really like pumping it for all it’s worth. So, you know, in this show these two little puppets who are kind of going through this world, trying to turn back into people, basically. But every stretch of the game kind of gives you each sort of a unique kind of gadget, which you have to use to help the other player. So it’s got some nice sort of asymmetrical stuff in terms of your abilities. The gadgets you get are actually pretty varied and have quite fun use. I don’t think it is quite like Nintendo tier in terms of like how it feels as a platformer. And I don’t think the gadgets are quite like while they’re really like imaginative and they find lots of uses for them. I don’t know if they’ve just got like a like a freeform playfulness to them that I think like the best ideas in like a Mario game has, for example. But that some people have mentioned this in the same breath as Nintendo is like, I mean, that’s a huge compliment to that to that team. And definitely a sign of like how good the work is. Yeah, I don’t know if this is a game of year contender for me. Like, it depends how the rest of the year goes. It’s definitely some of the most fun I’ve had so far this year. It was let down a bit by it’s very overwritten. It’s got really long cutscenes. I didn’t really like the characters. And so every time they’re blabbing away, I found like it really sort of sank. It should have had more confidence to just barrel on in its levels and just have them chatting away through the levels. Although there is one bit where they sort of assassinate a cuddly toy, which is genuinely one of the most, like, one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in a video game. It’s like a really rare moment of dark humour that’s like perfectly executed. Like not even Rockstar have nailed the kind of grim comedy of something in this way. So you should probably play it just for that. Hmm, interesting. When it comes to Game Pass Ultimate, the EA play thing, I will give that a go with my partner, I expect. Yeah, it’s good. It’s quite substantial. So it’s like a decent like 10 hours and it, you know, it does rattle along lots of it’s gorgeous. And yeah, a lot to like. Yeah, interesting stuff. Yeah, I heard that the writing was not the best thing about this game, but the gameplay was very good. It’s just too much of it. It’s a self-indulgent. Okay, fair enough. There you go. Good answer. So number 18 Matthew is, What unique gimmick would you like a next generation console to have? PS6, etc. That isn’t just more power. I’d like the next Nintendo console to force all games to use exaggerated Wii motion controls, whether they are useful to that game or not. So that’s from Danny Man. Do you have an answer to this one, Matthew? I was struggling to think. I don’t know if I just got no imagination. Like the things I want are kind of present this generation in terms of like super fast loading, you know, little kind of quality of life things. I really like the motion slash hand controllers that you get with some VR headsets. And I really like what they allow you to do in game. And I don’t know if it’s just part of the VR magic, which is why they feel so good and work so well. But I’d be interested to see someone do that kind of controls, maybe in a non VR, you know, some kind of motion controller, which isn’t like motion wands, but it’s kind of finger led and grip controlled. I really like that stuff in VR, which I’d maybe like to see on console. But PlayStation might do that if they revamp their VR headset and come up with new controllers. So who knows? I think that could be massive this generation, you know, Sony’s VR thing. I think that they were just on the cusp of it last time. And we’ve seen the Oculus Quest become a bigger and bigger deal. That’s an actual successful platform, as far as I know. So I think that could be big, yeah. I agree. In some ways, I think it’s kind of a shame that motion control has been basically reduced to VR, because what we saw in the Wii and the Wii Motion Plus has basically been perfected in these VR controllers. But people don’t really talk about it like they’re the same thing. And personally, I really fucking miss light gun games, not necessarily like Resident Evil light gun games like Matthew. Although, you know, hey, if Matthew Castle Productions want to make more of them, I’m not going to stand in their way. We shall. But yeah, I kind of feel like we didn’t get everything out of motion control. I feel like it just came and went too fast, because like everyone kind of got really excited about the Wii on a kind of like mainstream level. But then, you know, hardcore players deemed it a bust and therefore it kind of went away. And now we just don’t have it anymore in the same form, which seems like kind of a shame, because I don’t know. There was more to do, like you say. But yeah, the only other thing I had here was like I’m sort of like moderately curious about what something like remote play looks like if it becomes more like Airplay on like you watching on YouTube or something where you hit a button and then maybe the game’s on your phone and you have one of those like Razer grip controllers around your phone and you just go consider continue playing somewhere else and it’s instantaneous like game streaming stuff. I was reading a thing like 5G mobile networks might make a big difference in terms of like the sort of you know response times I guess of streaming games and how that might be more viable. So, you know, I’m curious for that stuff, but I agree with Matthew. I think the PS5 like apart from the wacky way it looks, this gigantic thing with like a big collar. It is like a really fucking good console. I love owning one. And yeah, the bigger hard drive. That’s kind of all I need. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That was a boring answer for me. But yeah, why don’t you read out our next one, Matthew? Hi both. Amazing work on the part. I genuinely look forward to my Friday mornings when the latest episode goes live. Good to hear. First of all, if you could bring one game magazine back from the dead, what would it be? Secondly, what’s your favourite games mag that’s still published? Finally, what’s a new games mag you’d like to read in a hypothetical future? Also, draft idea for a future episode, you could draft a squad of mag employees with bonus questions around type of games mag, regular features, free gifts and how you’d launch the first issue of the mag, says Zach Evans via email. That is a potential draft idea. I might end up going into the weeds a bit as we sort of pick apart. Is this, like, fictional people for the magazine or real people? Because it might hurt people’s feelings. It might be a bit wacky if one of us is like, all right, well, I picked Rich Stanton, and the other one’s like, well, I picked Ciaran Gillan, and it’s like, that’s a really fucking odd draft to do. Yeah, and then I’m like, Wario. Like, Wario is a production editor. Yeah, and there aren’t that many journalists in games either, so you’d struggle to pick a few of them out of there. That’s a tough one. But Matthew, why don’t you kick off with yours? Because I feel like you’ve surely got a very direct answer from bringing one games mag back from the dead, haven’t you? Well, yeah, if I bring games mag back from the dead, I’d obviously bring back NGamer, because I really like making it. And also, I feel like Nintendo, the games it’s making now, we’d just be able to have so much fun with it, and it’d just be a perfect match for that mag. There’s loads of, like, interesting, kind of weird Japanese stuff on there as well. I don’t know, it’s just perfect. It’s perfect for that magazine, so I would love to do that. Yeah, NGamer. In terms of my current favourite games mag, probably Edge. We still subscribe, we still get it through. I mean, there’s not many mags these days, but, you know, for my money, it kind of… it covers all the bases. I still love their reviews. I think they’ve got some really great people writing for them. Really great, insightful features. If anything, because, like, there are so many kind of interesting people sort of floating around, not necessarily all game freelancers, but people who used to work for Edge as well, who don’t work for it now, who are available, it has quite an interesting pool of people to tap into. So, you know, every once in a while, you’ll still get a feature from, like, Alex Wiltshire, who used to work on Edge, and he does some really great deep-dive stuff. He gets some amazing access to developers and puts together these really interesting kind of, like, insights on kind of various weird corners. And then, you know, they give indie… you know, they elevate some indie games as well and give them, like, the kind of coverage and depth that you would normally only see mags give into, like, AAA games, and they still land the big AAA covers as well. I think Edge is still a great mag. And as for a hypothetical mag, probably something kind of retro-gamery, but that has a cut-off pretty much pretty the same kind of period that we cover on this podcast. Probably cuts off at 2005, and just tells stories and retrospectives and celebrates kind of sort of contemporary games, games of the last fifteen years. I’m not really interested in like proper retro. When I say proper retro, I mean like thirty years ago, forty years ago. It’s just not an era I particularly grew up in or cared for. So, yeah, those would be my picks. Well, it’s interesting Matthew, because that, for the third question, finally, what’s a new games mag you’d like to read in a hypothetical future? That is basically the exact same thing I came up with. Which is, I think I’ve mentioned in a previous episode the idea of a millennial retro gamer. It’s basically My Dream magazine. It’s like, like I said, a lot of the values of this podcast, like, in the form of a magazine. So, yeah, it’s basically, it’s a magazine that starts with the, it has a hard start in the 16-bit era and a hard end when the PS4 launches. Like, that’s basically the period. Because it’s just, I mean, maybe, like, it has to be 10 years ago or more to count as retro. Maybe that, maybe that’s the cutoff. But basically, it covers 16-bit to, like, early HD. That’s kind of what I’d be interested in, sort of like seeing in a mag, just because I feel like Retro Gamer, like, does, Darren does, like, loads of amazing stuff with that magazine, has a really loyal readership, and I, like, massively respect what they make. But I’d love to do stuff like, you know, having Silent Hill 2 on the cover one month, and next month it’s like The Simpsons hit and run or something. Like, yeah, it basically looks like… I mean, they do. I feel like more and more games are entering what retro gamer can cover, and they’re doing more covers where you see things, you’re like, oh yeah, I guess that counts now. I’d probably be brutal and cut off. I probably wouldn’t include the 16-bit era. I’d probably start 32 forwards. Do you not have much relationship with the 16-bit era, Matthew? No, I do. I’m just not particularly interested in hearing about it, because I feel like I’ve been reading about that stuff in retro columns in games magazines that I’ve written for. Like, I feel like, oh, here we go, it’s Link to the Past again. Here’s all the anecdotes. You know, there’s just, I don’t know, it feels a bit tapped out, that particular period. Like, I’m much more interested in hearing, you know, newer stories about slightly newer things. Yep. It’s definitely sort of a no-disrespect of those eras, all the people who enjoy… Oh, no, not at all. All the people who cover… I mean, you know, they’re covered brilliantly by retro gamers, so… No, what I was going to say was actually, Matthew, is that I feel like the idea of what retro is has been, like, maybe preserved in amber a bit by gatekeepers on the internet. Like, I feel like SNES was retro ten years ago, and it’s still retro now, but if you talked about a 3D game, people might be like, oh, that’s too far, and it’s like, well, maybe you’re just old now and it’s fine, you know? But yeah, Millennial Retro Game would be one of mine. This is a really weird one, but I kind of really… To bring a mag back, I would really like official PlayStation 2 magazine to just release, and it’s like in full across multiple years, exactly as it was, and I would like to go and pick up a magazine and read previews of TimeSplitters and Unreal Tournament, and then pick up the Devil May Cry issue, and then play the WWE SmackDown 2002 demo, and I would really dig that. The idea of, even with Edge as well, I’d love to buy issue one of Edge and issue two of Edge completely reprinted and just do that every month. That would be cool. Let’s move on to the next one then, Matthew. Is it me reading out now? I think it is. If you could take any modern game and add a Dreamcast portable VMU minigame aspect to it, what game would you pick and what would the minigame be? That’s from Alex Hater on Twitter. Do you have one, Matthew? I’ve got a couple of suggestions for this. One would be doing it for a Yakuza game, like if you did one in the mid-90s that’s set at the height of Tamagotchi mania and he just has a Tamagotchi in-game and you have it on the VMU, because that’s pretty much all those things are ever used for, isn’t it? With virtual pets. I thought you could use it in Ace Attorney and have the VMU as the Magatama as it lights up. It kind of makes noises when people are bullshitting in-game. Like, have it as a real-world prop for something that exists in-game. And then when you’re not playing it, you could have a little virtual pet kind of gumshoe on it, and you feed noodles to him and basically look after him. That’s my pitch. I like that. Yeah, that’s good. I really like the Yakuza one. If they ever do a Yakuza Zero sequel, they should totally have Tamagotchis in it and set it in 1998 or something. That would be great. They should really do that. My more boring Yakuza suggestion was that you do all of your nightclub management on your VMU and then you plug it back in and any money you’ve made goes back into the game. It might be a bit complex to do on their little screen, though, but yeah, selecting Miracle Johnson to manage your nightclub or whatever. Yeah, so there’s that. And I also thought you could do planet scanning from Mass Effect 2, could go onto the VMU. They were quite boring suggestions, I’m afraid. Well, I was looking at what it was used for and I was scrolling down the Wikipedia page and I was just like, man alive, this was not good value for money, this idea. Yeah, it felt like all of the people who had a marketing agreement with Sega were forced to find ways to use it and did it begrudgingly. That’s what it felt like and then otherwise it was just Sega doing it. A cool idea, probably not very well implemented, but seemed exciting to me in 1998 anyway. Cool, so next up then Matthew, that’s one of yours. You often talk about the times you’ve worked with fun, talented and inspiring people, but what’s the longest period you had to work closely with someone you could not stand? And as a follow up, how did you survive? Love the podcast, refreshing to hear two good friends with such a genuine respect for each other. Thanks, says Benji via email. Yeah, to be honest, thank you very much. I have to go back more than a decade to think of a time where I worked with someone I can’t stand. It’s like been a long, long time. So I think a big part of like working in, you know, being in the workplace is learning to work with people you don’t like. But yeah, I don’t know, I can’t, I actually don’t have, you know, I wouldn’t talk about anything this sensitive on the podcast anyway, even though I think the question is quite funny. What about you, Matthew? Yeah, it’s huge, yeah, it’s hugely indiscreet. And if you ever went out with like games journalists, you know, to the pub, you’d probably hear a few people get slammed at some point. But yeah, in a podcast, probably not. I would say I’ve generally lucked out and on the teams I’ve worked on, I’ve really liked everyone. I’ve gotten really well. I mean, there’s sometimes a bit of probably the most tension I ever had was like joining O&M just because they had, you know, their team in London the whole time and just kind of getting used to everyone and everyone getting used to you. And it’s always strange when someone gets like bust in, you know, because on a lot of mags promotion happens like within. So it’s quite odd when like a complete outsider comes in. And if there’s going to be any tension, it tends to be around that person. But, you know, I won them over by being my usual charming self. Yeah, I had a similar thing with PC Gamer, like in no way like, you know, you know, sort of any of the stuff that Benji describes here, like, you know, I got on well with everyone, but I was an outsider too and I was coming in and editing and have, you know, wanted to prove that I could do it and stuff like that. So, yeah, yeah, but no, like, no sort of big grudges or anything like that. And as Matthew says, wouldn’t say those on the podcast anyway. Generally speaking, the teams are always like the best thing about the job. It’s always about like, yeah, even till now, like the TechRadar team will work with like a team of completely like lovely people who I really enjoy working with. So like, you know, I, yeah, and PC Gamer was the same. And yeah, I miss a lot of the people I used to work with at Imagine. So yeah, yeah, people are good in the industry, generally speaking, in my experience. So last question, Matthew. Is there a quote from a game that you can’t resist declaring under certain circumstances? I find it impossible to leave the house alone without saying good luck in the style of General Pepper from Star Fox, despite my wife and kids being way too cool to get the reference. That’s from Jolly Nice Soup on Twitter. I maybe should have said that in the way that Pepper says it. Is it like, good luck? Is it like that? Is that how Pepper says it? Actually, if you put a gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you how he says it. Yeah, me neither, to be honest. Even though I have played, you know, Star Fox 64, but I don’t remember. Yeah, I just don’t remember. So, yeah, do you have any quotes, Matthew, that come to mind, or that you quote often? Sometimes, like saying thank you, like Beedle from Wind Waker, the guy who runs the shop, he goes, thank you. Meow! But that’s not like, that’s just irritating. I don’t say it, I often think when something doesn’t work, I think that there’s a quote in the Discord pointing clip games, when something doesn’t work, he goes, that doesn’t work. And I always think that in my head. And I played those games so much at home, that I sometimes hear my family say that quote at home when something doesn’t work, that doesn’t work. Yeah, those are the two that’s jumped out for me. Yeah, there’s a few sound bites that get wedged in your brain. Obviously, like the Resident Evil 4 merchant lines are all burned into my head from playing that game. That is obviously an extremely iconic voice, an iconic character. The way he says it is so distinctive, it is like, thank you. The way that’s all burned into your brain, what are you buying? All that stuff is on the tip of my tongue. If I’m out with my friend Andrew at a pub, back when that was a thing you could do in civilized society, those lines would inevitably come up. In everyday life, not so much. The thing that me and my partner quote to each other is, in Super Mario 3D World, when Mario picks up an item, he goes, excellent, like that. I will sometimes say that to each other, and that’s it. That’s sweet. I’ve got another quote stuck in my head. It’s from an Indiana Jones game. It’s a bit like Tomb Raider. I think it’s the Infernal Machine, it’s called. Whenever he picks up a health-giving herb, he goes, ah, medicinal herbs. And I think of that a lot as well. That is vintage indie, that is. He’s always picking up herbs. Medicinal herbs. Yeah. The one, weirdly, the one from the most years ago that’s stuck in my brain is, there’s a dude in like, I think it’s like South American Soldier and Graw 2, the Ubisoft game. I’m afraid I don’t remember where that game is set, but when you ask him to like, move his tank to a certain location, he goes, no say, cannot do. And he says, no say, cannot do, every single time you ask him, and that is stuck in my head. So, yeah. What a weird note to end on. But those are the questions, Matthew. It’s been fun, though. I really enjoyed firing through those. Yeah, good Mailbag. Nice mix of stuff. Sorry for people who are looking for us to be a bit more indiscreet on certain questions, but you know what we’re like. We’re square and we’re scared. We’re scared of getting sued. I didn’t start a podcast to basically bring up old grudges. That’s not the reason I did it. That’s why I’m… That would be a Patreon reward. That would be the one-off grudge cast that we do. Besides, Matthew is my worst enemy in games video anyway. We’ll be back next week with our E3-themed episode with our special guest. That will be fun when that’s edited together. People can look forward to that. I’m not sure what this does to our Game Boy Advance games episode, but we can maybe pick that up. We got a bunch that we tweeted out that we were going to do, but our schedule has been messed up a bit now. We’ll figure out some good stuff, though. We’ll definitely do Zelda next month. In a few episodes’ time, we’ll likely do Best Games of 2009 as well, so people can look forward to that. We tend to do those every 10 episodes or so. That will come up inevitably. Matthew, where can people find you on social media? I’m at MrBazzill UnderscorePesto. I’m Samuel W. Roberts on Twitter. If you want to send us more questions that we’ll read out on the podcast, you’re absolutely welcome to. Backpagegames at gmail.com if you want to send us a longer question. Backpagepod on Twitter if you’d like to send us a short one. Either way, we’ll throw them into a big Google Doc and then read them out when we do a future episode. Thank you very much for listening, I will be back next week. Bye bye!