Hello, and welcome to The Back Page, A Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined today by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, grass tacks, how are you feeling after E3 week? Oh, slightly deflated. Yeah. Is that allowed? I think that tracks, yeah, I’m pretty fucking tired of it, I’ll be honest. This is like my first year in a long time, I was just watching it as a consumer, and I was exhausted watching all those live streams. Like the proportion of like exciting announcements to hours watched was like quite small, all in all. So yeah, I’m pleased it’s over, you know? Yeah, there was a lot of kind of little hype spikes of like, oh, are we going to get excited? And then they were met with this sort of a deafening silence afterwards. So it was an emotional roller coaster. Yes, indeed, yeah. So I thought for this episode, I imagine a lot of the people at home are probably quite tired of E3 at this point. So we thought we would remix E3 2021 in a slightly more novel format. So people seem to enjoy our game developer draft episode, which was a lot of fun. But in this episode, while we’re not going to compete, me and Matthew thought we would, as the title of this podcast suggests, turn E3 2021 into a games magazine. So we’ve hatched a very silly fictional scenario, which we’ll explain a little bit later. We’re going to basically do some of the kind of like granular conference and announcement stuff first. A pretty good overview of the show. We won’t go mega granular with every single conference, just because, you know, it’s all happened now and we kind of want to focus on the more exciting stuff and, you know, some of the like low lows. So yeah, I would say in this episode, you’re going to get a kind of big mix of stuff, but with hopefully a kind of fun magazine-y lens. Have you, how did you find the process of coming up with your fictional magazine, Matthew, before we get to that? Did you enjoy that bit of it? I’ve worried it’s a bit serious. It’s not like zany because, you know, I think if you reach for zany, it can be quite misjudged. I think you need to stumble into accidental zaniness, if any. Yeah, yeah, it was fun. Like interesting kind of multi-format approach as well. I’ve never actually covered E3 as a multi-format magazine. So, you know, having the pick of anything is quite exciting. Yeah, I think people enjoy how we’ve done that. So yeah, get ready for some like, yeah, slightly kind of daft antics in that side. Like Matthew says, it’s not like enormously forced to be funny. You can’t like make Randy Newman being lowered in a car happen like, you know, without it happening organically basically. You can’t force it to be, you know what I mean? No, you can’t. So you’re saying that like you didn’t select Randy Newman as a columnist of your magazine, Matthew? Yeah, right, exactly. Like I felt like I could play to the cheap seats, but I decided not to. Yeah, exactly. Especially when you’ve got the same meme image that you can use over and over again on Twitter. Yes, let’s kick off then, Matthew. Let’s get straight to it. So E3 this year was a series of live streams. It started with Jeff Keighley’s thing and then kind of like worked its way around a long weekend basically. Yeah, I think that everyone pretty much agrees the highlight was the Microsoft conference, but what were your kind of overall views of the stuff that was shown? Yeah, I feel like this year we felt the sting of lockdown a little bit more. Last year, I remember when all the studios sort of shut down, I think it was Phil Spencer said, you’re not gonna see it. The things which are coming out this year are probably gonna still come out this year. You’re not really gonna sense it, but next year you probably will sense it. And I think that’s what we got. Just in terms of like 2021 itself seems pretty quiet. And normally I trust in E3 to kind of fill in certain gaps, basically what autumn of games looks like. And I don’t know if you put a gun to my head right now, I could tell you what autumn this year looks like, or if indeed there is anything. That’s obviously no one’s fault. Anything we say in this podcast has to be prefaced with. All these shows have been made under enormous pressure. And for anyone to achieve anything in these conditions is admirable. So we’re not dunking on any of it. Just the remote nature of it all, just is just harder to get excited about, you know? You just feel that much more removed from it. You know, even though most people do watch E3 as, you know, they’re not there in person, there is an energy to watching a room of people reacting to something which was just missing this year. Yeah, so I agree with you that it felt like it suffered from the lack of stuff. At the same time, I think publishers overreached by having shows. So all of my lowlights from the event are basically publishers who decided to have live streams, even though they didn’t really have the stuff for it. And, you know, like for better or worse, you want to highlight your game and do it your way. That’s fine. But I think that what maybe gets lost is that if you put a live stream on E3 week, no matter what your live stream is or what your goals are, people think you’re making an E3 conference, you know? You can kind of say what you like about it’s this and that, but those expectations are very high no matter what. So yeah, yeah. I echo your point about this is made under enormous stress and, you know, absolutely everyone worked hard on their stuff, but there were still too many live streams, I think, and it was, yeah. Yeah, and even the one, I don’t really know who to blame for some of them because I feel like some of the more notorious streams were very honest upfront. Let’s say Capcom, like they very explicitly said, we’re going to be looking at these things before the stream. And then when the stream and he looked at those things, everyone was like, fuck you. I don’t really know what the communication could have done differently really. Yeah, I mean, that’s a classic Ace Attorney fan speaking there, but yeah, I agree with you. It was, they did say these are the things it covers. And everyone knew this as a quiet year for them. They just released Resin Evil Village. I wasn’t expecting to see, a new Devil May Cry anytime soon, or whatever happens next with Resi, it’s way too soon. They just released Resin 3, not that long ago either. It doesn’t help when one of your announcements is like, we’re announcing that we’re going to do something. Which is just, you know, in the hierarchy of what you want to see at E3, with like a playable demo being at the top, and then like a gameplay footage somewhere in the middle. And then like a CG trailer, way, way below all that is just a black screen with the text, which is, we’re happy to announce we are going to do something more with Resident Evil 8. And you’re like, oh, okay, good. Yeah, sometimes I think as well that the conferences this year were sabotaged a bit by either you’re trying to kind of like put some kind of zany personality across in the form of quite naff jokes in between your reveals, which is how I would describe the Devolver Conference, which, you know, had phenomenal games, but all these jokes in the middle that I didn’t laugh at, and I didn’t really know who they were for, it were kind of like weird Twitter jokes, but as like live action comedy, and it just didn’t work at all for me. Then there’s stuff like the Guerrilla Collective, who I don’t really know, I mean, I know it’s a kind of collection of indie stuff, but it didn’t feel like it was packaged in a way that particularly made sense, or was that exciting to watch. But then there’s stuff like the Wholesome Direct, which is actually a very straightforward, like there’s an intent to what this is, and there’s a reason to watch it. So yeah, that’s how I felt about the most of the major publisher stuff. But any other thoughts on that stuff, Matthew? I get a little bit sort of down on this sort of ghettoization of like indie stuff into its own weird streams, and the fact that it has to brand itself up. Don’t know, there seems something sort of self-sabotaging about it, because it’s basically sort of inviting people. You know, it’s like suggesting that you’re sort of siloing off this stuff, that it isn’t of interest to a sort of general audience. I mean, that’s obviously down to that, you know, you need a bigger, some kind of bigger organization or some kind of bigger stream that lets you feature your indie stuff. You know, like where you have your little idea Xbox bit in an Xbox conference, say, or whatever. So it’s not indie games fault, but I do find, I find a lot of the indie streams packed with interesting games, but quite sort of underpowered as like a proposition for just a person to watch. Yeah. Maybe that’s just me. Yeah, I like the day, I thought of all the ones that I saw the indie shows, I thought the Day of the Devs was kind of slickest, you know, which is the double fine kind of sort of headed up thing. And you know, they’ve just got a bit more kind of pizzazz, a bit more kind of wit and speed to the whole thing. I know it’s tough to, you know, to get an airing for these things, but I just hope there’s a bit more kind of smarter consolidation in future. Cause this idea of like, you’ve got to watch 10 hours of different streams to see all these little indie games is, I don’t know. I don’t know if it serves them particularly well. There was a rampant amount of enthusiasm on the official E3 livestream for like some quite NAF reveals as well. And I found that like really exhausting. It’s like, you know, I mean, this is the E3 livestream, so sure. But I mean, at the same time, it’s not really reflective of the truth or how this is actually perceived. So I like the sort of subtle beef between Jeff Keighley and the E3 official stream. Cause he kept making very pointed remarks about how he wasn’t involved with it. He couldn’t co-stream it and how he’d been denied. And he was clearly very salty about it. Like, I don’t know. It’s probably not great to like air your dirty laundry like that, but. Where are you at with Jeff Keighley these days, Matthew? Like, you can’t really like look a gift horse in the mouth. I guess it’s where I stand. Like he gets some really cool stuff together and he does get some good announcements. Don’t person, I’m not very interested in him. Here’s the person I don’t, like I’m not really interested in his takes. Like he feels like I’m just a being of pure hype to me. Like it doesn’t, I don’t believe that he, I’ve never really heard him have an opinion on anything which has happened in the past that he’s played. It’s always the next thing, the next thing, which isn’t really, you know, that’s not how I really think or kind of care about games. You know, he’s just like a, he lives for trailers. And I don’t, he was, he’s so front and centre of it. And it is his thing and he’s put it together and he’s allowed to do that. But that seems quite self-serving with all like, you can download me as a, you know, fucking mask in among us or whatever. I’m like, well, I mean, okay, sure. It’s probably just jealousy, Sam, to tell you the truth. Well, you see, over the time, I feel like our peers kind of like, perception of him has changed quite a lot. So I feel like about five or six years ago, or maybe slightly longer, there was definitely a kind of like a real kind of like lack of sort of enthusiasm for his whole deal. I remember when I was in games media in my early days and he used to host a game trailer, the game trailer show that would have all the exclusives. And that show would never basically say anything critical about a game, even though they were part of a website that did reviews. I found that really frustrating because it’s like, well, you are part of the press, but you are kind of like cascading these like big splashy reveals down as kind of like almost promotional content. But now he’s kind of like, I think he’s very self-aware actually. And I find him quite endearing on social media. And I do think that putting together the sort of thing he puts together is really hard. Just from my brief times working on like- Oh yeah, absolutely. Like, absolute respect for the fact that he does it, that he manages to do it, that he’s cornered that bit of the market. Congrats to him. I just find it so sort of PR focused and it’s so sort of shamelessly promotional in its nature. You know, I just don’t, you know, could you name a game that that guy actually likes? It’s the fact that you get the trailer and he doesn’t even react to it. There wasn’t like a, well, that was good. It was like, here’s the next thing. Here’s the next thing. And maybe that’s just the pace that works for him. And I find it, I just find it disheartening to watch just to see this endless stream of like, the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. I guess he likes Kojima games. I imagine he’s played them, and I think he likes Valve games. But I just, any perception of him as just a gamer with tastes, I find very hard to grasp onto. But I don’t follow him on Twitter, so maybe that comes through there. Well, he says he likes Forza Horizon, Matthew. So, um. Oh, well, well, then we’re best pals, because I also like that. Yeah, so, yeah. I take it all back. I thought there was loads of like, stuff in his show that I was kind of like, and a lot of men are rage dunking on Weezer as well. I have no real opinion on Weezer, but it was very bizarre considering there were all these like, really terrible looking mobile game characters on screen at the same time. Very strange. At that point, it took on more of a like, Star Wars holiday special vibe. But yeah, so yeah, E3, it was a bit stretched out. It doesn’t have the same impact from home. It never could. But at the same time, I think everyone was just trying to make reveals, a kind of like, a scant amount of amazing reveals work really hard. And I think that was always going to be a bit of an uphill battle. So that’s my verdict on E3, Matthew. You got anything more to say on the subject? No, I’m roughly with you. And again, you know, it’s tough that there is anything is to be admired. Absolutely, yeah. So Matthew, we’ll go through some of our like, we’ve got a few categories here just to kind of sum up E3. So who for you won E3? I felt like the answer to this is really obvious so we’re gonna have the same answer, but who won E3 for you? I think Xbox won. Yeah, I agree. Okay, that’s good. For you, I didn’t know that was gonna be a. No, it was a really, really confident showing. I feel like they had a really good understanding of what people wanted in a show, which was a really great mix of like actual new reveals, information about games you already knew about or cared about, like release dates, and kind of showcasing of stuff where they’d made some really good partnerships, including some cool indie games. And like the pacing was really good. That’s another thing I’ll praise Jeff for actually, is he understands that your whole thing just has to be reveal, reveal, reveal, reveal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that the through line as well of the Xbox have that no one else has is the, it’s all coming to game pass, you know, or pretty much all but four or something things they had. It’s just, that’s so potent. And it’s really exciting because you’re looking at it and you’re not looking at it like a, well, maybe I’ll get this. You’re like, great, I already own all this. It’s kind of like, here’s what you have like already. And I know you are paying for it monthly or whatever, but you don’t really think of it in that same way. It’s, you know, really an embarrassment of riches. I saw during the show, like in my Twitter feed, when they announced like Hades is coming to Xbox and it’s in Game Pass. And then just seeing a kind of slightly sort of mealy mouth tweet from Sony of like, Hades going to PS4 and PS5. And it’s like, yeah, but like what I’m going to have to pay for it there is like three months of Game Pass. You know, when you put them side by side like that, it’s the difference is so stark of like, hey, you can buy it from us. Or you can just kind of have it as this sort of rolling thing with these people. That it’s the clearest that message has ever felt to me, which was really exciting. Yeah, I particularly felt that this year as a player, as someone who, you know, I don’t work in full time games media anymore. I don’t get free games. Like I, you know, this, I would have to pay for this stuff and, you know, stuff like Sable, for example, or Yakuza Like A Dragon, which is just released on the day of the U3 conference. And I’ve now downloaded like, you know, the range of stuff is amazing. And like some actual honest to God, Xbox Game Studios, Microsoft Game Studios games coming out this year as well. That was what got me fired up is that I actually wasn’t expecting Forza Horizon this year. I thought we would see Turn 10’s Forza first. So when you see that that’s out and it’s just coming out this year, that’s incredibly impressive. Yeah. And like, unless something goes horribly wrong, like that’ll be banging that game. So like they’ve just got such a good run of it. You know, the criticism that is thrown at Xbox is that they don’t have the absolute sort of AAA, the mega sort of Sony polished sort of, you know, the kind of naughty dog sort of rivaling type things. And maybe that’s true in this particular lineup. It’s, you know, the, you know, the shiniest things they have are maybe not quite, don’t have that, quite that same buzz. You know, they probably are as good, I would say, you know, you know, I think you can put Forza Horizon up against most games. You know, what stood out was, this is a really, really rich lineup of stuff. And lots of their studios they’ve bought are totally unaccounted for at this moment. Like they are obviously working on stuff, stuff is coming. There was a lot of stuff they denounced previously that they didn’t show again, they didn’t have more to show. Okay, that’s less sexy in the short run, but you’re thinking, well, I feel like I’m going to be quite well catered for in like two, three years. And this year, I think they’ve done a really good job of like plugging the gaps with some third party stuff that the Warner Brothers sort of left the dead thing, like being able to say, boom, that’s in Games Pass. That’s nice, that’s fun, I’m down with that. Yeah, absolutely. I think that all of those kind of like Game Pass reveals were just really, really strong. I mean, I was kind of sharing the image with my partner and just saying like, hey, these are all the games coming to Game Pass. And she was like, well, there’s at least three things I want to play on there coming out this year. And you know, I think I agree with you that the super polished Xbox stuff, I feel like Microsoft is going to keep throwing money at studios until it has its version of like a Naughty Dog kind of game or something that has that weight. But yeah. I mean, it’s tricky because, you know, they’re so far off and there’s such sort of unknown kind of sort of quantities, you know, things like, you know, Perfect Dark, Fable, I guess some of like the, well, Starfield, I guess it probably fits into that category as well. You know, they’re just, they could be, you know, they have the shape of being, you know, big open world games are, you know, an exciting place where Sony have done some good stuff. You know, they could be great, but just impossible to tell at this point. Yeah. I absolutely can’t underestimate as well what an absolute shot in the arm having Bethesda Worlds for Microsoft. So I think Starfield was like an amazing reveal to kick off with. I think that like they just showed enough and said enough about it in like interviews around it to make that reveal feel kind of weighty. The fact that they kind of came with a release date as well was just a really kind of like good message of intent and the very important message, of course, of like, you cannot play this on PS5, which is, you know, the kind of like, as you’ve kind of said in the past, is a good bit of like an obnoxious play by Microsoft. You’ve got to admire the hustle. And I think it was the right thing to do for them. But I say that as someone who has, you know, a PC and an Xbox, so, yeah, yeah. But yeah, so I liked all of that. Generally speaking, extremely strong conference. The only thing in there that I looked at and thought, is this definitely a real game, was Stalker 2. The reveal for that felt a bit like vertical slicey to me. It felt like someone selling a publisher on making that game. I didn’t feel like I was seeing any really continuous footage of it. I felt like I was seeing very small percentages of little bits of the game. I didn’t feel like I was looking at something that’s going to be out next year. That’s maybe an ultra cynical view of that. But yeah, I don’t know. Something about that one. But was there anything in that conference that you weren’t convinced by? No, not really. I was disappointed they didn’t show more of the Halo campaign, or really any of the Halo campaign. I think they showed another cut scene, which is just the bit of Halo I do not care about at all is basically the story. But the multiplayer montage I thought looked quite fun, but that’s still a bit of a mystery, that one. Yes, here’s something I noted. They didn’t show any aliens from Halo, did they? They just showed Master Chiefy characters with that Mjolnir armor. You didn’t see any of the, you know, Craig or any of the kind of meme aliens. Yeah, they just don’t want to be memed. They didn’t want to. They’re under strict meme control, which is probably good. I also thought it was funny. They rolled out Joseph Statton and they were like, Hey, look, it’s that guy who worked on some old Halos. And like, yeah, okay. We won’t talk about the people who left the project last year and how that made it seem like it was in quite a lot of turmoil. Who lost E3, Matthew? Oh, it’s just… Who did you think lost it? Koch Media. So, I tuned in to Koch Media’s livestream very briefly, and there were loads and loads of long, boring interviews with developers. So I’m going to say this about Koch, right? They have an amazing range of developers. That Embracer Group has been hoovering up amazing talent. They own everyone from obviously the Saints Row developers, Volition, to the Metro developers at 4A, right up to like Julian Gollop Studio and the developers of Satisfactory. They own Valheim. I only realized that the other day. They own Valheim, Embracer Group, and the fact that they couldn’t turn all of the stuff they built, like billions worth of like studios, into one good live stream, I found like immensely frustrating. I was like, it’s eight o’clock on a Friday and I’m watching this like really disappointing live stream. So all the publishers, to various degrees, either like had disappointing live streams or, I don’t know, like had challenges in their live streams. I will say this. I will say this for Square Enix, right? Their live stream had like actual games in it and I didn’t think that was nearly as bad as people said it was. I did think that, actually I’ll save the criticism of the Final Fantasy game for the next section, but I thought they had like, they had actual games. They had a Final Fantasy game you hadn’t seen before. They had Guardians of the Galaxy. They had Life is Strange and, you know, a quite big update for the Avengers game. I thought it was perfectly fine. Not amazing, but fine. Yeah. Absolutely. You wouldn’t. Yeah. That wouldn’t have like, that would have been fine any other year as well. That’s kind of what you expect from them in terms of the number of games that they had stuff that was kind of a surprise and ready to show off and talk about in depth. Always good. Yeah. No problems. Yeah. So yeah, so it’s cotch for me just because of all of those, I was there thinking, I don’t know why this live stream exists. I feel like the fundamental premise of E3 has been misunderstood. And I just thought with all that money, surely you can turn it into like one good live stream. And so, yeah, not very good. But do you have a nominee for this category, Matthew? It’s more like the absence of Sony feels like feels bad to me. The fact they didn’t have anything, you know, unless I’m mistaken and they’ve booked something in for like a month’s time, just to sidestep it just feels kind of, I don’t know, weak. You know, everyone else had their shot. Everyone else had their go. It just felt very underwhelming. Like, I feel like I know the Xbox story for the next year. Don’t really know what I’m meant to think about PlayStation 5. Yeah. So I actually like hard disagree with that. I think I do agree that like them not being there, this is a point I saw made on Twitter, but by Jeremy Peel, I think that not having Sony there means that you kind of like miss the wow factor of drawing loads of attention to E3 at one time and being like, this is the center of games happening at once. That I agree with by not having Sony there, you miss out on something for sure. As you know, this kind of gaming’s great moment. So I kind of understand that. At the same time, I would say the burden was really on Microsoft to prove it had any games. Like Sony has released Ratchet and Clank, Returnal, Spider-Man, Demon’s Souls, Astroids Playroom. There are things you can play on your PS5, exclusive games that you will enjoy and get excited about. They have Horizon, they announced Horizon, they’ve got God of War, they’ve got Gran Turismo, they’ve got Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo. Those are just some of the games that we know about from them. They are the games we know about. Yeah, but those are like… Yeah, they are. Does Microsoft have as many games as that? Maybe it’s just a lot. I don’t know. I’m not in a honeymoon period with my PS5, I think is the problem. The games they’ve released I don’t care about. I don’t care about Ratchet and Clank, I don’t care about Returnal. I haven’t bought either of them, they’re too expensive. I can’t spend that much on something I am only 50% sold on. Going forwards, Horizon, I don’t care about it. Maybe this is just me personally. I need a reason to care about what PlayStation 5 are doing, because Deathloop and Ghost War Tokyo are the two things I’m looking forward to. And even them, I’m thinking, well, I’m going to own them on Game Pass because they technically belong to Microsoft. That’s the challenge. All right, so what was your most disappointing reveal of E3? I didn’t really have mega high hopes for anything particular. I guess it pre-beat that this new Switch didn’t manifest. Does that count? Because it’s not a reveal. Well, it’s been so heavily talked about that you kind of just want them to get on with it. There’s too much smoke for there to be no fire as we’ve discussed before. That was a shame. I’d like there to be something Nintendo-y in the next year that I’m really excited about. I mean, it would probably get me booed on Twitter, but a lot of the stuff like Nintendo’s thing was cool and surprising, but I wouldn’t say it was like a knockout hit of stuff that I really love. It’s like an Advance Wars redo, and I’m not a big Advance Wars guy, I’ve talked about that before, I think. And also, I didn’t really like the look of it. The visual style of it didn’t really appeal to me. The WarioWare games, I’ve reviewed the last almost 15 years of WarioWare games and they’ve all been quite bad since the GameCube. Unfortunately. And so it’s not, you know, I just saw people being like, yes! And you’re like, these aren’t necessarily like the teams I’m incredibly excited about. Metroid Dread, great. Breath of the Wild, absolutely stonking. But it wasn’t quite the hyperventilating smash that some of my peers seem to think it is. Yeah, I think it was a rare example of Nintendo playing to the crowd, like having Monkey Ball there, having Advance Wars there, Metroid there. I am the crowd though. I’m like the very definition of that. That’s true, but I don’t think like, I think you’ve got quite specific tastes within like Nintendo stuff. Like I don’t think you just lap up any old Nintendo stuff. No, no, no. And again, I think they were just unfortunate, they happened to hit some things which are either series that I’m not like mad about personally, but I can admire, or I’ve just played too many bad WarioWare games from the WarioWare team to be like all in on WarioWare anymore. Which just feels like terrible that you say that out loud, you feel like you should hand in your badge. But I don’t know, I hold Nintendo to a higher standard, you know, I need the stuff to be exceptional. I just wanted the new glimpse of like a new Mario or a Mario Kart or something. Yeah, sure. Yeah, so I think I agree with you about the Advance Wars art style. I was looking at the I’ve put on the DS, one of the DS games last night just to look at it on the kind of screen and be like, oh yeah, these games really did have like a beautiful art style. It looks a bit sort of mobile gamey. I just if you if that was like an original Nintendo game, you would say it doesn’t look very nice for a Nintendo game, I would say. Yeah, but I just I don’t know. I don’t know if just you’re not allowed to say that in this day and age anymore. I don’t know, like the can’t be canceled for not liking it in Advance Wars art style. What was the name of the what’s the kind of Advance Wars sort of Wargroove homage that like Chucklefish did? Yeah, Wargroove. Yeah. Wargroove. You know, that’s what a modern version of Advance Wars looks like. You know, that in my head, it’s been done. And you see this and it just looked a little a little static, a little flat. Yeah. Oh, I’m so sorry to the people. I bet there’s some people listening to this are like, fuck, fuck you, man. You’re meant to be the Nintendo guy. Now, you’re the discerning Nintendo guy. That’s like, yeah, very much so. I feel like you have to be. Yeah. I think that’s fair enough. I actually I found I thought it was about as good as the Nintendo Direct gets, like, which is probably more of a comment on the on how Nintendo does stuff and the variety of the reveals. It was cool that all the Danganronpa games are coming to Switch. Yeah, that’s yeah, that’s that’s good. Yeah, I shouldn’t sort of. Yeah, forget about that. That is cool. And that Zelda footage is like, I mean, that’s that’s my favourite thing at E3 by miles. Yeah, that was our next category then. So your favourite surprise reveal of the show. So it was Breath of the Wild 2 for you. Yeah, absolutely. You know, just to have any idea of what they’re doing with it and that they’re, you know, taking it to the skies. It’s it’s just so exciting to me. I think it’s it’s for all its flaws, you know, Skyward Sword obviously had the ground to air split. It was very limited, very mechanical, but like that even just the idea of it and, you know, skydiving and all this, it just feels very adventurous and exciting to me. And like the idea that they can sort of deliver on that appeal for real. That’s that’s super exciting. That that also feels like a team that’s like, you know what? We didn’t quite do this right in Skyward Sword, but this is a great idea. Let’s let’s make sure we do it this time. Yeah, I can’t wait. I thought it was a good reveal. I thought it was about half of what it should have been. Like it felt like the gameplay kind of cut off at a point where I was ready to see something really new and exciting. And if someone told me it was like a quite a like a 20 quid expansion for Breath of the World. And it’s like, oh yeah, we put some new islands floating above the old world. I’d be like, I’d kind of believe them. Except they’ve done 20 quid expansions and they were a lot less ambitious than that. That’s true. I guess I’m comparing it to, you know, your sort of shivering isles sort of like science expansions. I am like, I do think it’s fascinating that the continent, the original continent is still there or appears to be there. And you still, you seem to be exploring the same landmass because to me, you know, I feel like I have kind of exhausted the topography of that world. You know, I know that world inside out, you’d have to do something like pretty substantial to make it new again. So I don’t know if that means like the majority of it’s up above or, you know, I always assumed they’d expand it in some way and upwards is interesting. But you know, there were a couple of clips in that trailer where you thought, well, this could be the first game when the rock monster comes out with the goblins on its back and it’s just on a bit of grass, you’re like, oh, that’s that place. Interesting. I mean, God knows what they’re doing. Yeah. I was sort of, I think my mind would be changed on that if I saw something like different with the powers going on. So it’s sort of like, I’d like to see, you know, are they adding any kind of like new abilities, that sort of thing to kind of mess with the world and the systems? That’s the stuff that’s, you know, really exciting about Breath of the Wild. So yeah, I really liked it though. And I won’t deny that when I saw it kick off, but I was I was like incredibly like buzzed, like, oh, here we fucking go. Here we go. Here’s the right. Yeah. So I definitely got that feeling. But yeah, I felt like there was about a minute of like really cool footage. And then it was sort of over before I could get really pumped. And considering they announced it two years ago, I thought they’d have slightly more. But, you know, hey, you know, it’s a Breath of the Wild sequel that I would absolutely play to death. So yeah, no qualms there for me. So is there anything that was missing from the show, Matthew, that you were waiting to see for the rest of the year? Uh, no, not really. I mean, you know, all the Microsoft stuff that they announced last year, you know, your fable, your what’s the obsidian sort of elder scrollsy looking thing about about Perfect Dark, like I’d obviously love to see all these things. I’d like to see next gen games set in new franchises. I’d love to see what the Mario team are up to, but that’s basically, I know isn’t true of E3, that’s true of pretty much every day of the year. There isn’t a day that wouldn’t be improved by that. So yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s sort of fine. I don’t know. I feel like as a punter, I don’t know, slightly less invested in E3 than I was as a journalist, because there it felt like it was going to define my working year. And now I’m just like, okay. Yeah, I also wondered if a lot of the really like sexy Nintendo stuff was maybe being held off for this whenever this console is revealed. Yeah, you know, maybe that’s putting too much hope in Nintendo, which is always a dangerous thing to do. Yeah, like when they announced the original Switch, you know, and they came out with like, you know, obviously they’d shown bits of Breath of the Wild, but they went heavy on Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey and all this kind of, you know, the Smash Brothers. It was really exciting when it was super, you know, Nintendo can kind of pack it in when they want to. And I shouldn’t undersell like the pleasant surprise of Metroid, you know, you went into that show with no Metroid on the horizon and you left it with a Metroid coming out in, what, three months? I mean, that’s pretty good. Yeah, so I guess we’ll see what happens the rest of the year. For me, I was kind of hoping to see the rumoured, this game that cannot possibly be as good as it sounds on paper, which is the Marvel XCOM game coming from 2K and rumoured to be coming from Firaxis. So that was rumoured via kind of a Reddit leak that was correct about the Wonderlands reveal, the Borderlands spinoff. So that probably is a real game, this Marvel XCOM thing, whatever it is. Yeah, in my head, that’s the greatest game of all time. So yeah, I’m really curious to see what that looks like when it finally emerges. But yeah, that missed the show. Cool, in which case we’ll take a brief break then Matthew and we’ll come back with our hypothetical magazines of E3. Welcome back to the podcast. So, in this section, me and Matthew have hypothetically built a kind of multi-format magazine. A kindly billionaire has given us both the money to start rival magazines. This is the same billionaire, so he’s kind of a psycho. He’s a bit of a psycho. He just wants to see us kind of have a fight to the death, I think, in the form of print media, our chosen form. So yeah, and while the thought of making a magazine for E3 2021 sounds a bit too stressful for me right now, it’s basically a launch pad for a kind of like new pretend magazine. So me and Matthew have, later in the podcast, we’ve come up with a name for each of our magazines. We’ve come up with like what the kind of cover game is, all that stuff. So people kind of get an idea of what it’s about. Obviously it’s not to be taken that seriously. I recommend that you go out and buy real magazines like Edge and PC Gamer and Retro Gamer. They are made by very talented people. And the following kind of like cheap nonsense is not to devalue the fine work that they do. So with that caveat in mind, let the fun begin. So what we’ve basically done is like, it’s basically like a top 10 of our reveals in the show. So there’s a cover feature, which is like first place. There’s a secondary big game feature, which is second place. And it kind of goes down from there. So I think Matthew, what we do is, what we just say is we say it’s like first place, second place, and then we kind of read out how much space it gets in your magazine. That way I think people can kind of follow it home as a kind of simple one to 10 thing. So unlike some of our other lists, we’re not counting down. We’re gonna start with our most exciting thing and then count down to some of the stuff we’re less excited about, but you know, we still made our magazines. So, you know, we’re kind of excited about that. I’m looking at my list and it’s bad. I don’t know, I cross checked mine with a bunch of like best of E3 lists. And there’s actually quite a lot of crossover in what people think of the good stuff from this E3. It’s not like, it’s quite hard to have a really radical choice, I think. So, okay. I don’t think it can go really wrong, you know, unless you’re gonna, I don’t know. I don’t even know what a bad choice would be. Well, I think I’ve got a few of them. So, what’s your cover feature, Matthew? What’s some first place for you from E3? Yeah, so my cover feature is, surprise, surprise, the sequel to Breath of the Wild. I’m going big on Nintendo. I have a vague theme to a lot of my games, which is that we’re going big on worlds and the concept of exciting new worlds in this issue. And I think just a shot of a, well, I was going to say a shot of like a skydiving Link or a Link heroically flying through the air is really great. I forget that the assets for Breath of the Wild don’t show his face at all in any of them, which some people think is because they think it’s going to have interchangeable Link and Zelda as playable characters, so that they’re kind of holding back that reveal. In fact, I think in the trailer, there are a couple of shots where I think it is quite clearly Zelda and not Link who’s in the action. So I think this is going to be a great game to celebrate by I’m also absolutely dreading making a cover for it. What if it’s Zelda on the regular ground continent and there’s Link in the sky and that’s how they delineate it. So she’s got different powers. Do you think that might be how they mix it up? Yeah, that could be a thing. Yeah, definitely. Weirdly though, the shot where I think it’s clearly Zelda, she is in the sky. She sort of warps up, you know, there’s a sort of shot of like a puddle of water getting pulled up into a crystal. I wonder if you’ll be sort of like warping between the two. I hope it’s seamless. I hope that you can jump from up above and skydive down because that is like, that’s amazing. That’s a 10 out of 10 moment for sure. If it’s a bit, if it’s done a bit vague, if it’s a bit fake, that’ll be depressing. But yeah, I think Breath of the Wild 2, I mean, listen, I just want to, I want to do a Nintendo cover. If I’m going to launch a magazine, I feel like I have to. You know, brand castle demands it. That’s fair enough. Yeah, I think that was always going to be on the card. So I deliberately didn’t pick this game because I thought you would pick it. It actually wouldn’t have been my main pick for my cover game anyway. But yeah, I can’t deny it’s sort of a majestic reveal in terms of like, you know, finally we’re seeing it and people are getting excited about it. Yeah, it feels like we’re going to have to wait another year till we see it again now, which is kind of a bummer. But yeah, I mean, it’ll be a nightmare cover feature to write because it’ll be like, well, we’re doing 10 pages on this trailer. I doubt we’d have any access. Yeah, it’d be like the NGamer days of like dissecting Mario Galaxy levels, you know? Yeah, it’s like we have to do this, but also we are doomed. And so I apologize to my theoretical staff writer. Yeah, I like it’s just you and one staff writer. That’s I could just picture that. Okay, good. So yes, my cover feature then I’ve picked Elden Ring is my number one. So yeah, that was this this I thought was a fantastic reveal because it’s a game that’s not that far away from being released. It’s out early next year, in theory. Hopefully there’ll be no delays on that, but you never know. And yeah, I think that even though it definitely looks a bit more Dark Souls-y than Sekiro, which kind of bummed me out. Sounds like it’s got some RPG systems, which might make me fall into the old Dark Souls trap of, oh, you literally picked the wrong type of weapon to complete this game. And I’m like, oh, great, one of the best games ever. Which is why Sekiro is perfectly balanced because it’s all built around one build and all you can change is your abilities, which I much prefer. You were meant to pick the spoon. Oh, if you didn’t pick the spoon as your sub item, you’re basically fucked. And you’re like, oh, great. Yeah, I will say for this one, the cover art is not very good. Like everything I’ve been taught about cover art, that you need eye contact and a big character and all that stuff. I guess a man very solemnly like plonking a sword in the ground and then like that. I thought that was the cover. It’s exactly the same as the cover of Dark Souls 3 because we did a Dark Souls 3 cover on official Xbox and it is a knight in that position. Yeah, I think I’d still have to. I mean, what I’d hope is that the PSD is fucking massive and I can zoom right in on him and then like, I don’t know, stick the kind of like the Elden Ring logo thing in the background somewhere. But oh, and it’s got loads of layers so you can basically turn everything off except the amazing monster. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So yeah, I would I would force a very stressed out art designer into fashioning this into a good cover. So Elden Ring. Yeah. I mean, for all of like the things I didn’t care about at the Summer Jeff Fest 2021, the closing out with the Elden Ring reveal was a big swing. So well done to him on that. So what’s your number two, Matthew, your secondary big game feature? My secondary big game feature is Elden Ring. Yeah. Do you have anything to add on the reveal? No, but I thought I like that it looks like it’s going to be a big world. I thought that was exciting. A little bummed out how Dark Soulsy it looked. I thought the George RR. Martin connection was going to mean this was going to be a more accessible game because I thought they’d be like, oh, let’s get all the people who like gamer phones to buy it. But actually, it looks like it’s going to be as like rock hard as anything he’s ever made, as uncompromising as anything he’s ever made. And so all the people are like, oh, I like Peter Dinklage. I’m going to get it and then get their ass kicked and it’s going to be such a rude awakening. So that’s that was interesting. But I just I love the imagery of it. I love the look of the world. I just thought it looked just super, super exciting. Yeah, great. Yeah, it was one of the best reveals in terms of like stuff they actually showed of the game. Oh, yeah. Like the pot with arms. There’s a pot with arms. That’s amazing. That was good. Yeah, there’s that big boy who’s got like a bell underneath him. Oh, the big guy with the bell for a tummy. I was trying to work out if that was a reused bell asset from Sekiro and I don’t think it was. Yeah, it looked a little bit. I saw some people saying because of the horse and the size of some of the bosses, it had a little bit of Shadow of the Colossus vibe, which should be exciting. Yeah, that would be grand, I’m sure. Yeah, but instead of being able to kill a boss in 10 minutes like you can in Shadow of the Colossus, it’ll take you 10 fucking hours. So yeah. Oh, that’s hilarious when they were in the IGN interview who was like, oh, how long is it? And he’s like, oh, it’s probably about 30 hours, you know, getting there like, oh, yeah, about the same as in other games then. It’s like, yeah, not when I’m playing them. Yeah, I think you’ll find that’s very variable, sir. So yeah, I thought that also if this was my cover feature, he was doing some good access around actually some good. Yeah. So yeah, it was nice to see him be so comprehensive about it. It was a really good reveal and I’m glad they waited actually to do it the way they did. So yeah, good stuff. So, my secondary feature is Breath of the Wild 2, Matthew. So we’ve just got, we’ve just traded places there. So you know, lots of heated competition between the two magazines. I have nothing further to say on that reveal, but I look forward to seeing more of the game down the line. I think that weirdly they’re tapping into the same sort of thing, the same sort of sense of adventure, but how they do it is just very different. And Zelda speaks to me a lot more than Miyazaki making me look like a just completely inept. In terms of the kind of quality of reveals, you do have to… there’s at least five or six things on this list I’m really excited about. So yeah, I think it’s hard to say it was a complete failure of E3 really, it was just a mixed affair. So yeah. So what’s your number three Matthew, which is your main preview, like a four page preview? So my main preview is Forza Horizon 5, which I’m just a huge huge fan of this series. I think Forza Horizon 4 is just absolutely sublime. They make games that make me like racing games. They are all the fun bits of cars, none of the boring bits of cars. The idea of just driving impossibly sexy, shiny machines, but in this open world where you can just throw off cliffs and things rather than just around boring tarmac tracks like in Forza Motorsport. You know, the whole spiel of it being set in Mexico and the kind of variety of terrain it gives them and the stuff that they’re going to do with the seasons and just how unbelievably good this looked. Yeah, I just thought this is just everything I love about Forza Horizon, but kind of turned up a little bit more. Yeah, it’s gonna be great. Yeah, I am. I thought it was a great reveal. There was a kind of exactly what you sort of hoped for from a reveal like this. Just you know, here’s loads of the game. Here’s all the stuff the game does. Here are loads of different environments. And also it’s out this year. Like, well done. Yeah. Great reveal. Well done. Playground Games, I think, are absolutely amazing at demoing their games at E3. And weirdly, they normally do it with the opening to the game because their game is sort of famously open with basically a tour of the game in like 10 minutes and whips you through lots of different tracks and stuff. And you know, it’s designed to be a great intro to their game when you buy it. But it also makes for a killer demo at E3. This wasn’t quite that. It was a bit more abstract, I thought, what they were doing. But yeah, they’re just a real showman, I think. So yeah. I think it was a great reveal, too. So yeah, good stuff. And I agree. I think they’re probably going to cycle in a lot of Microsoft’s, like other games that they revealed last year, next year. So you’ll see some of that other stuff in action. Been a long time since you’ve seen Hellblade 2, so I’d be curious to see some of that. But yeah, my main preview, my number three game is Starfield. So I think this was like borderline thin as a reveal in terms of like the amount of stuff you saw of it. It was basically a teaser trailer. But I did think they talked a good talk around it in the couple of like exclusive interviews they had. And it was like the promise of a new big thing from those developers. Like it looked quite nice in the footage they showed as well. I was there thinking, hopefully this won’t just look like Fallout in space, like it won’t look like Fallout 4 in space where I feel like I can see the strings going back to like oblivion, for example. And so I’m hoping it’s kind of like a big step up in that respect. I will say, quite hard to get an image in my mind’s eye of what it is. If you’re kind of exploring these worlds, I don’t quite get how you go around getting quests and doing stuff. I couldn’t quite picture what like walking around a planet looks like, for example, or what you fight or what you do most of the time. So there’s a lot to be done. Have they said if it’s like set on a planet or if you fly between planets, is there space in it? I think they’ve said that it’s like, it’s very strongly suggested by the trailer that you can fly a spaceship, right? So I think you’re going to have to have like multiple areas. But honestly, a lot has happened this week, and I can’t remember what Todd Howard said. Yeah, I’m intrigued because like, you know, Outer Worlds does that, but it’s very self-contained. You don’t actually get to do the fly and you just move between smaller sandboxes. Yeah, and that would be the obvious hurdle of like how you represent space with their level of like detail that they want to do. Yeah. It’s actually on my list, which is really bold and magazine suicide to not put any Bethesda game on your cover anywhere. Yeah, I mean, but then, you know, this is like we have been given money by a billionaire here like we set the rules, you know. I feel like he’s basically paying us to be a little bit experimental. He hasn’t outlined, you know, does he want the mag to be a huge success? Is it a vanity project? We don’t really know what his motivation is. Yeah, like, we’ll get the sales back for week one and whoever’s got the lower sales, their throat is a slit immediately and that’s like… Oh Jesus! You didn’t say that. If you’d said that, I would have thought more carefully about my list. Or indeed not taken the job to begin with from the billionaire. Yeah, those are all things to think about. Yeah, are there any perks? He pays very well. It’s like… He pays very well, but it’s like all the stress of deadline and also you might be murdered. One of you will be murdered, in fact. It pays 80 grand a year and that Cafe 84 place that you like, it will deliver free pizza all year round. Yeah. So are you pleased by that, Matthew? That kind of won you over to the role? Yeah. Yeah, that’s… I’ll eat well for the 40 days before I definitely am the one who dies. Yeah, there you go. Luckily, mag sales figures take like 15 years to materialize. So, I’ve got a bit of a stay in execution. Good stuff. So, yeah, now we’re down to our two page previews, which is like four, five and six place, Matthew. So what have you got done before? I’m going to put Stalker 2 there, the impossible Stalker 2. Like you say, trailer, hard to get a gauge on like what we’re actually looking at there, how kind of real this thing is. To me, like the visual quality looked up there with something like Metro Exodus and the idea of delivering that with like a proper open world to explore because Metro Exodus kind of sort of has smaller sort of self-contained sandboxes, so it’s not like a full massive map. But the promise of a full massive map with that kind of level of execution, I guess, is very, very exciting to me. I was super into it. I haven’t played the original Stalker, so I don’t bring to it any particular sort of expectations. I did see some people on Twitter saying like, oh, it’s almost a shame that they got rid of all the jank because I think people sort of, I don’t know, it has a special place in certain PC gamers’ hearts. It’s this sort of weird oddity and it kind of bums them out to see it kind of go legit. But if it has gone legit, then I’m interested because I don’t like jank. Yeah, I would say wait and see on the jank. Let’s see what the finished game looks like first. Like I say, very limited showing, I felt, for a game that doesn’t seem that far away from release. But at the same time, if it’s part of Game Pass, I assume that Microsoft would have vetted it quite closely before making the deal. So I guess we’ll see. But yeah, not a bad choice, but not in my list for the reasons I mentioned earlier. I’m not yet convinced it’s a real game, just because that series has such a weird, like checkered recent history that it’s hard to tell. I don’t even know. I don’t really know much about who’s at GSC Game World anymore. Like I don’t know what the state of that studio is, for example. I have no idea. All I know about that game is what I saw in that trailer. Yeah, that’s fair enough. Okay, so my number four is Forza Horizon 5. So I’m less of a Forza Horizon guy than you. That’s because I’ve not really played that much of it. And I really should remedy that because I know I’d enjoy it. It’s exactly the kind of racing game I would enjoy. But yeah, I know what a great E3 show looks like. And that was a great E3 showing. I can just sense that if that was on the show floor, they’d have a nice chunky demo, a good bit of the map to show you. Yeah, right. You know what I mean? Whereas a lot of these games, I was like, that’s just gonna be a trailer and you won’t see it on the show floor at all. Or you might see a version that’s slightly two minutes long or something like that behind closed doors. And that’s all you’ll see for the year. But this was like, yeah, well done. You did the thing you do, which is make really good accessible racing games that look fucking beautiful. So well done. I think it was Forza Horizon 3. When that was at E3, I was there that year. And it did have a really great demo. I think it was the opening to the game where it kind of whips you through several short races in sort of quick succession. I was so sort of amazed by it that I managed to wander away from the demo station and leave my phone wallet and bag there on the demo station. And I walked away and then about five minutes later, it was like, oh shit, where’s all my stuff? And I had to run back and I’ve never been so scared of like, if someone’s nicked it, I’m so fucked because it’s got my passport, all my stuff. And they hadn’t, it was still there just sitting on top of the Xbox, couldn’t believe it. So I felt like the luckiest bastard ever. So yeah, there’s a little story. Yeah, it’s a shame we haven’t had time to really go through more of our E3 memories yet, but you know, I’m sure we’ll find time for that down the line at some point. Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. So what’s your number five, Matthew, your other two page preview? Metroid Dread, which is obviously a fascinating story, like long rumored. I think it was meant to be on DS way back when, you know, we’ve known the name for ages and they’ve obviously sort of gone back to it as a cute little nod. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t really have anything to do with whatever was long rumored ago. I mean, it’s made by Mercury Steam who made Samus Returns on the 3DS, which I thought was very, very solid. Opinion is split on it. I’ve seen some people who are like, I’d be into this if it wasn’t for Mercury Steam, which I think is sort of unfair. Cause I think they proved themselves sort of worthy custodians with that version, with that previous game. Looks like he’s got some interesting ideas. This whole thing of like escaping or being pursued by this like mad robot dog thing is kind of interesting. Not like, I wouldn’t say it’s most like visually spectacular like powerhouse thing, but I thought it looked very solid and nice and the movement on it looked decent. I’m sure it will just be very playable and fun. Those 2D Metroid games, like they haven’t really messed that up. You know, there’s been a big gap between them admittedly, but they’ve always been rock solid. I think it’s kind of hilarious that it’s this sort of weird stopgap because whatever’s going on with Metroid Prime 4 is going on with Metroid Prime 4. But yeah, you know, who wouldn’t be excited for a surprise Metroid? They at least mentioned Metroid Prime 4 as well. They were like, hey, development is ongoing. Ask me again in four years kind of thing. Yeah, I saw someone saying on Twitter, this is 50 quid this game. And I was thinking, it probably shouldn’t cost that much. I mean, I have not verified that, I should say. Like it looks like, you know, you can sort of see that being a 3DS game three or four years ago and costing 30 quid, which is sort of like spot on, I think. Yeah, that’s maybe fair. I mean, it doesn’t help that they haven’t done, you know, they haven’t done a sort of a mainline 2D Metroid, not on a handheld for so long. Maybe you just look at it and you think handheld and that puts you in a certain price point. Yeah, that is true. But I just won’t tell our readers about that price. Well, as for the game itself as well, like I say, I think it’s time to give like a bit of a break to Mercury Steam for the, you know, doing some like cool sort of premium 2D games for publishers in an era where like those kinds of games aren’t that popular. So yeah, I think good for them. I’ll be really curious to see how, you know, there’s a very sort of, there’s a fucking like ton of Metroidvanias you can play on Switch. So I’m curious to see what people who have enjoyed stuff like Hollow Knight and Axiom Virgin, you know, Ori and all these other kinds of games kind of make of a modern version of that sort of thing, an original modern game in that series. Yeah, curious for sure. Yeah, that will be interesting. Yeah, so okay, cool. Well, my number five is Halo Infinite. I put that down because I thought the multiplayer show was very strong. Like you say, I think there is a real missing in action sense with the campaign. That’s kind of a bummer because that game’s out in, you know, probably about five months and we still haven’t really seen much of that campaign. It’s become a really kind of mixed, weird sort of story. But what they did here was they focused on something that 343 has always been good at, which is the multiplayer part of the Halo experience. It’s running at very high frame rates on Xbox. It just looked really fun, I thought. Like really, like something I would definitely play and enjoy, the fact it’s free to play as well. The fact it’s gonna be on PC and it’s gonna be free to play. That’s like a bit of a game changer, I think, in terms of getting people interested in Halo again, because I do think that Halo is a little bit out of time as a multiplayer experience. Yeah. It’s like… It’s a shame as well, because I think the multiplayer in Halo 5, the traditional kind of death match, is absolutely brilliant. Like, when you’re playing it proper… Like, I wasn’t digging it, and then I played a load with a friend of the show, Rich Stanton, and some other friends who are kind of more into it. And when I saw like how it was meant to work and how it worked when you were kind of playing it, quote unquote, properly, it was just absolutely magic. I was like, oh wow, this is like seriously good stuff. Like, I kind of feel like Halo isn’t as like pick up and play as it maybe needs to be. Like it’s a game that has a certain rhythm to it that’s quite different to other death matches. You know, it’s so different from Call of Duty, for example. And it’s a shame because when it works, it is super potent. And it’s why there are people who are… Just go wild about their Halo memories. You know, it is as precious to them as a golden eye or whatever, you know. And it’s how you kind of make sure people kind of experience that or find that. How you kind of surface the magic of what Halo multiplayer can be is a bit of a challenge, but you know, grappling hooks probably do it. Yeah, I think the grappling hook made it look a lot of fun. I think that I echo what you say there. Even when I was playing Halo 3 in 2007, I was playing Call of Duty and Modern Warfare at the same time. Like those are the two big multiplayer games that year. Side by side, Halo 3, the rhythm of it, like you say, and the structure of it and the kind of everything about it felt so different and of its own type of thing that compared to a Twitch shooter like Call of Duty, it does struggle to not seem out of time. Yeah, I hope it’s good. So what’s your number six, Matthew? So this is where my list gets a little wonky. I’ve actually picked Ubisoft’s Riders Republic. That’s on my list. Oh, oh, great. Okay, that’s good. I feel less weird about it. Purely because it’s like, it looked like Forza Horizon, but for like downhill sports, I really miss fun arcade-y sports games. It’s kind of, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone situation. There was probably a period 15 years ago where I was like, oh God, there’s so many BMX and skateboarding and surfing games. And then all of a sudden there were none. And it was quite sad. This looked like great fun. Like chucking people down hills is always good. Doing it in a variety of different kinds of sporting styles and having them interact. Super colourful, super jolly. Yeah, so I liked this a lot. We didn’t really talk much about Ubisoft’s conference. Like I thought that was a, definitely one where it felt like they were kind of punching with one hand tied behind their back. They kind of went deep on their reveals, which I don’t think was necessarily a bad approach, but I think that most of the types of games they had weren’t necessarily traditional, endemic, exciting E3 reveals. And this was one of them, but you could kind of see that it looked really fucking fun just from watching it. It looked really like intense, some of the first person stuff you can do in this game. Like I thought, am I going to be sick playing this? Because it’s definitely- I was sick watching the E3 conference, just hurling up burgers against the TV. But I looked at it, yeah, and I thought, oh, it’s really cool that someone’s making a game like this. And I was there thinking, it’s actually, the bummer is, I know that my friends won’t play this, so I won’t be able to have the kind of leaderboard experience that I really want in order to bring this to life. But at the same time, like, you know, just look great. I really liked it. I’m with you on that one, Matthew. I think that’s not a bad chance. Nice, that’s nice. That’s good. Yeah, so my number six is Age of Empires IV. So, this was actually my favorite surprise reveal of the show because this was announced many years ago, back when I was on PC Gamer, the early days of me working on the website about 2017 or something, that they announced that they were making an Age of Empires IV, that it was Relic, the Dawn of War and Company of Heroes people making it. Yeah, nothing had really been heard from it for a long time. And then they just showed it off and it looked like a modern Age of Empires game. And yeah, coming to PC, coming to Game Pass, and it looked really full featured and fun and like a good continuation of that series. And I’m glad they took the time to get it right. And it’s just out this year, I can play it. And yeah, I like seeing old real-time strategy games come back from the dead. See also last year’s excellent Command and Conquer remaster. So yeah, pleased to see it. Like they actually did it, Microsoft spent loads of money making a new Age of Empires for probably quite a small audience. And I have to applaud that. But yeah, the dads of PC Gamer, the print reading dads of PC Gamer will fucking love it, I’m sure. So yeah, so that takes us to our one page previews, Matthew, which is seventh to tenth place. So what’s your number seven? So I figure this is the place where we can do some slightly weirder stuff. I’ve actually picked that Trek to Yomi from Devolver. I’m going to have to be reminded of which one that is from the Devolver. That’s the 2D samurai kind of limbo alike. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That did look cool. Yeah, cinematic, you know, very, very cinematic 2D side on, basically like if Inside had a baby with Ghost of Tsushima. Actually looks like it’s delivering on the kind of black and white kind of Kurosawa filmic kind of look a lot better than the kind of the slightly gimmicky mode did in Tsushima. Yeah, I like the setting. I really like these 2D cinematic games. I actually thought this looked more interesting to me than Somerville, which is the one which is made by X limbo and Inside people. Yeah, I just just thought it would. I mean, it might look a little flat on the page because it’s black and white and 2D. And, you know, it’s got quite fine levels of detail. Maybe this would be like a big screenshot. Like, oh, no, it’s a single page. That wouldn’t work. Well, anyway, this you got to think about these things in magazines. Let’s say an ad drops and you have to find an extra page. You’re like, I’ve got no problem. I can sort that out right now. But yeah, Tretchiomi, like I dig it. I’m up for it. Yeah, I thought that looked really cool as well. And yeah, Devolver had some good stuff there. I thought all of their stuff looked variously interesting. I thought I’d probably play most of what they showed. So yeah, I think this probably was to highlight good stuff. Cool. So my number seven, I went with Guardians of Galaxy. So I kind of watched the reveal and I wasn’t like massively overwhelmed by it, I’ll be honest. But I do appreciate that it’s single player only. There’s no live service stuff. The character designs variable, but I would say that people seem to, they seem to go down better than the Avengers ones did for Scrapers’ game. And yeah, I just, I looked at it, I thought, you know what? Like it’s a game that’s coming out this year that I can play like with blockbuster production values. And I’m kind of curious, kind of curious to see what it’s like. It looks a bit like it’s had multiplayer hacked out of it. That’s a friend of mine made that observation. I can’t unsee it now. I’m like, yeah, these look like quite well-developed characters. I’m sure at some point they probably thought, you know, do we do a team sort of thing with this? I’m glad they did it the way they did it. So, it’s all single player. But yeah, I wasn’t overwhelmed by it. But I thought, you know what? That would be a really fun seven out of ten. That’s what I thought looking at this. What did you make of this one, Matthew? Yeah, I mean, this was sort of rumored before the show that the kind of the Deus Ex studio or the modern Deus Ex studio was going to be making it Guardians of the Galaxy. And, you know, that did raise questions of, is it going to be a kind of immersive sim where you’re somehow playing with it, you know, tapping into the powers? And I think it was you who tweeted about, like Rocket Raccoon going through vents or something. Yeah, I was joking, but you know, like, I hope you think that’s what the game’s going to be. It does sort of look like that, you know, in that you play Star Lord and then you’ve got all your mates who sort of sort of do whatever they need to do at required bits. I thought the action of this looked a little bit like the kind of the modern sort of action Final Fancies with the kind of the control of the sort of, you know, drop down menus for the other characters to sort of trigger effects and slightly RPG tinged. Look really colourful. I mean, the trailer looks like it’s going to whip you between lots of interesting colourful worlds. You know, I don’t know the Guardians of Galaxy outside of the film, so I don’t know how true it is or not to the comic book tone or whatever it’s tapping into. I’m not that bothered when people base character, you know, when they make their own versions of the characters. You know, I thought actually, I said this on Twitter, but I thought one of the few strengths of Marvel’s Avengers was actually, I thought their characters were fine. Like when I actually played the game, once you got over the very initial, okay, it’s not Robert Downey Jr. and it’s not Chris Elmsworth or whatever, they were perfectly valid interpretations with, you know, full bodied voice performances behind them. So I’ve kind of got faith on that front. Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be a very entertaining seven out of 10. So I’ve got some thoughts on the Guardians of Galaxy generally. So the thing I don’t like about the trailer of this is that what they’ve done in, what James Gunn did in his films has now stuck to the characters a bit, where it’s always got to be some fucking 80s music playing. And I find that just a bit like, ugh. And I think that- Oh, is that not what Star-Lord’s about necessarily? Well, no, he’s just a dude. I think he’s been around since the 70s. He’s an old character. No, it’s like, certainly not the vibe I get when I read the comics. I think that there’s a bit more of a, like, ticking clock on their appeal, The Guardians of the Galaxy. I think that, I think we’re well into the second half of people’s interest in those characters as well. Like, I think this game is kind of like, cashing out just as people are beginning to burn out on them. Just because they’re a bit more gimmicky than the other Marvel heroes, you know? It’s the wacky tree guy and then the little raccoon guy. And then, you know, the sort of like, the stuff that’s in the films has kind of carried down here. And to be fair, they’ve got Dan Abnett writing it, who, you know, wrote a lot of the stuff that inspired the films to begin with. So, you know, Scronix did their homework for sure. Right. Yeah, I just think that, yeah, I just think that their whole thing has like a ticking clock on it. And I think their version of Rocket Raccoon as well has like big poochy in the Simpsons energy. So, yeah. But, you know, yeah, like you say, an enjoyable seven out of 10 waiting for us, I think. I’m definitely going to play this, so… Yeah, I mean, I don’t think there’s anything else coming out that month, so… Yeah, exactly. In the notoriously quiet video games month of what, October? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. So what’s your number eight, Matthew? I’ve gone with that replaced, that super mad looking 2D thing from the Xbox conference. It’s sort of, I say it’s 2D, it might be sort of voxel-y. On a 2D plane, and I guess the reason I’m including it is that when I was watching the trailer, it took me the whole trailer to work out exactly what it was done doing visually. It was so kind of, so sort of dense, so rich with like effects and tricks and weird things going on to disguise that it was just a sort of 2D plane, you know, with the lighting and everything. I just thought, wow, it just looks at, you know, one of the best, you know, visual showcases, I thought, at the entire of E3. Yeah, I was, you know, God knows what the game’s actually about or necessarily how it plays, but as a thing I want to see happen, yeah, I’m really up for it. My number eight, is that right, Matthew? Yeah. So I’ve got Riders of Republic here, so yeah. So that’s, I’ve got not much more to say about that one really, like I say, like it’s cool that a game like this still exists and has some big Ubisoft budget heft behind it. I did think about putting the Avatar game on my list. We just don’t see enough of it. I was thinking actually, does Avatar make more sense as a video game world than a film world? I think it probably does. And so I’m kind of up for seeing what that looks like, particularly with some first-persons it kind of alludes to in that trailer. Well, here’s a perfectly apt time. I actually picked that as my number nine. Oh, perfect. So yeah, for this very reason, I was looking at, I was like, this, I don’t know if Avatar is a massive bust because it’s just such a weird franchise. Like, I think there are like 20 people out there who are obsessed with Avatar and we’re getting really upset on Twitter that people were like dunking on Avatar. And I was like, it’s not necessary for me. It’s not a world I am invested in, but it’s also, just in that trend, like divorced of all the Avatar stuff, the idea of an open world, which is a much more fantastical landscape, just visually so vibrant, so exciting. So I kind of put the Avatar stuff to the side and thought, yeah, you know what? That is a world I wouldn’t mind exploring. I’m interested in that. I’m interested in the visual density of it, the verticality of it, the flying around on those things. By all accounts, people who are into Avatar are like, that trailer is stuffed with stuff which Avatar nerds are going nuts for, because they’re like, oh, it’s super, it really, really knows it’s Avatar stuff. Yeah, but that’s the thing. It’s so weird, I don’t want to dismiss it because of, you know, it’s not a film I’m kind of crazy into, but yeah, I just, as a big, shiny, next-gen looking thing, I like open world games, I guess. Yeah, I’d like a poke around what the Ubisoft version of that world looks like. Yeah, I thought it was- And a massive, massive, like, I think they’re not just part of the typical Ubisoft production line, you know, that, you know, obviously this isn’t anything like The Division, but it has a, they have carved out their own sort of thing there a little bit, so I think that’s interesting. Yeah, I’ll confess, I have no idea how Ubisoft actually works in terms of the sort of studio line-up and what it means to lead your studio versus having probably loads of other supporting studios feeding stuff in, but, you know, certainly I know The Division games to be massive games, so, yeah, I mean, and those are like the two of my favorite, you know, games as a service games because they have these dazzling worlds and they’re fun to spend time in and the shooting’s really good and, yeah, there’s actually, you know, a few cool fiction bits to dig out as well, so, yeah, I’m fond of their games and I hope that’s good, so, yeah. There was a rumor doing the rounds today that it was, the story that they were putting out is that it was Avatar that kind of convinced them that the Massive should have a pop at Star Wars, apparently. Oh, okay, it wasn’t EA’s ability. They showed it to them and they were like, oh, wow, look what you’ve done with Avatar. Yeah, let’s do that with Star Wars kind of thing. That might just be bullshit. It wasn’t EA’s failure to actually make some Star Wars games over the last 10 years, but. Yeah, and they offered, Disney offered me to make one. I think they were so desperate for something, anything to happen. I was there thinking, I bet now someone will like, do a remaster of Fate of Atlantis because surely they will be well up for that sort of thing now. Those kind of scales of projects. It’d be really rad to see someone do that with Indiana Jones. I was thinking about the other day as I was considering playing it. I was trying to impress my partner by saying, look how nice this pixel art is. It was like she was looking at a shoe or something. She just wasn’t impressed and I was deeply hurt. But yeah, so we’ve gone through your number nine. So we’re down to your number 10, right Matthew? What’s your number nine? My number nine, yes, sorry. So my number nine and 10 actually are both from the PC gaming show, which obviously full disclosure I used to contribute to when I was working on PC Gamer. But I put Death Trash at number nine. Have you seen this game? It’s like… Oh, this had some like weird meat creature in it. Yeah, that’s what I think. Quite like gnarly sort of 2D, kind of like original Fallout infused, kind of like post-apocalyptic role playing game thing. I just, it has really nice artwork. I’m kind of think that I’m gonna play it and it’s gonna be too hard for me and then I’m just probably gonna be upset and never play it again. But I really like the look of it. I thought it was just a, it’s something I’ve kind of seen doing the rounds on Twitter is like in like GIF form for about three or four years. So it’s nice to see it turn into a game. You can actually play it in early access on the 5th of August, which isn’t far away. So yeah, just a bit of a, I didn’t want to just pick big shiny things. So I thought I’d pick an indie here. So yeah, what’s your number 10, Matthew? My number 10 is Shin Megami Tensei V. So yeah, I thought I was quite, I thought it was quite a muted. Is that your 10? No, I thought it was quite a muted reveal, to be honest. Yeah, I recently played the remaster of 3, and I kind of struggle with elements of it. I hadn’t played it before, but there was a sort of central loop to it and a vibe to it I was really into. And I’d often seen it as kind of like, you know, the weird older brother to Persona. And actually playing 3, I was like, oh, actually, no, I get this is doing something different and it’s got this sort of different energy to it. And I was quite into it. And I just felt it felt very old, you know? And this just looked like, you know, clearly all the systems and ideas that you kind of, that make Shin Megami Tensei what it is were there, but just in a much more like visually, it was much more appealing. And just looked a lot more modern in its kind of execution. And I think it’s mainly just because I played three and was thinking, oh, I wish there was a slightly better version of that I could play. And that’s what this looks like. A big old massive JRPG to get lost into. Because there was a little light on JRPGs, otherwise this show, I thought. Yeah. If I like Square Enix has given it a bit of a break to its other stuff, probably because it’s like, it takes it needs a little longer to come along before they’re showing it some more. Yeah, that’s, that’s probably fair. So yeah, again, probably too much of a personal heart choice to put in the magazine, but you know, whatever. Well, that’s the Matthew Castle approach to print, isn’t it? It’s like one for you, one for me. I mean, I should, because you hadn’t explained the whole death sentence thing before we did this podcast. That’s very Shin Megami Tensei though, isn’t it? Oh yeah, that’s, I mean, like, oh yeah, that is the mysterious billionaire, like that weird dude who lives in the prison in Persona 5, that makes you, gives you all the monsters. Yeah, certainly he’s, he’s what I’ll look like if I go back into print media, basically. Yeah, so I was a bit unfair on this on Twitter. I said it kind of looked like, just like a more boring version of Persona, which it’s kind of just, they’re a bit gnarlier, the Shin Megami Tensei games. Yeah, definitely. And I think that that’s in difficulty and as well as tone. They are very kind of like grim sort of games. But I confess, I enjoy playing Nocturne or whatever you call it, the third one that just got re-released a lot on PS2. Like I bought it because it featured Dante of the Devil May Cry series. And he does egregiously feature in cut scenes early on to try and get you excited. Even though he plays such a fucking tiny part of the game, it’s kind of hilarious. But yeah, I thought it was the game that actually got me interested in Shin Megami Tensei. So I was probably being a bit harsh on it. I think it’s because I didn’t like the 3DS one, Shin Megami Tensei IV. I think it just looked- But that’s quite like super traditional. That’s like, you know. Yeah. A lot kind of like older feeling weirdly. Yeah, I just, I don’t know. I think it also speaks to just the fact that like, there’s a bit of a soup of other games which I’m kind of interested in. And I kind of plucked this one out for number 10. Yeah, that’s not bad. Not a bad call. I thought about WarioWare, but then you sort of talked me out of it. I was like, are you? Well, I don’t know. I’ve been burnt by a few too many mediocre WarioWares. That’s, I do love WarioWare. That’s the man who’s been in the WarioWare mines. You know, I’ve got to like, I’ve got to respect the time you’ve put in. I just remember playing the Wii waggling version of that at the Wii launch in the Wii house. And that was a nightmare to review because, you know, it was in the big room and they had all that, you know, it was the room where they had the celebrities coming in to play Wii sports. And then I was tucked away in a corner, just wobbling my weird gangly frame to make a strange cartoon man scream at me. Yeah. A weird time. I love that David Lynch film. Yeah. Good stuff. Right. So my number 10 and Matthew to close us out is the game Gloomwood, which was also at the PC gaming show. I like the look of this. Yeah. So this is basically, you know, Thief, but done by the developers at New Blood Interactive. It’s not fair to say it’s exactly like Thief. It’s basically like in the same way that some of their previous stuff is like Dusk is kind of rift on 90s, first person shooters. We’re now seeing basically the Thief version of this. And to be honest, any developer who wants to make like a modern version of something that was really fucking cool on the PC in the 90s, I’m all for it. So yeah, I thought this looked really, really good. Just yeah, if I have to depend on any developers to plug the immersive SIM gap, then so fucking be it, I will do it. In which case then Matthew, we have picked our magazines. So we now go to the bonus categories where we kind of fashion a little bit more about what each magazine is. So first of all, Matthew, like you reached near, it’s near the end of deadline, right? And then you just had basically like something dropped from the magazine and you’ve got to put in a two page house ad. So what preview are you going to get rid of from your section? Basically what I’m saying is, what’s the game that you were kind of like had reserved interest in, but then were kind of like, eh, out of the E3 review? I have a definite answer for this, but I wonder if I’ve made this category too confusing for you to pass. No, no, I understand. It would probably be Shin Megami Tensei V. That’s the one I’m kind of unwilling to drop. Toying with Trek to Yomi, just because I think it looks a little flat on the page. But yeah, probably Shin Megami Tensei. I don’t know if there’ll be a gnashing of teeth if that’s not in there. Yeah, I suppose. Yeah, so interestingly, I actually, like I did probably not explain this clear enough because I’ve actually picked one that didn’t make the top 10 that I booted out of the magazine. Preemptively. So this is where I put Battlefield 2042, which I found completely uninspiring as a reveal. I was like, oh, it’s like this first person shooter is on an endless cycle of like, are people bored of World War II? Yeah, yeah. Okay, modern warfare. Are people bored of that? Yeah, yeah, okay. Right, move forward to like futuristic warfare. And there’s like obviously amazing artistry going into making the game happen, but it’s just theme-wise really dull. Just having some weather turn up in the middle of a battle doesn’t make it fun to me. I would just confess, considering this is like a full-price game that’s just an online multiplayer experience, just did absolutely nothing for me Battlefield. Do you have any sort of thoughts on it? Yeah, I watched the trailer once and then it kind of it sort of passed through my head straight away. It’s sort of a shame that the last one I really liked was what was Battlefield 1, which, you know, while it was all soldiers, this is World War 1, it’s really grim and hard work, just like World War 1 was. It was also like a little bit kind of like giant blimps and trains with cannons. It was a little bit silly in Indiana Jones in places, which just made it super cinematic and fun to play, where this one looked a little bit like I’m here to really bum you out and make you kind of fear future warfare, which isn’t necessarily what I want from an evening, because I have that fear anyway. Yeah, just a really uninspiring reveal. Yeah, obviously EA, they weren’t at E3, but they’re doing their thing next month. So I’m sure we’ll talk about that when we get to it. So let’s fire through to the actual bonus questions then Matthew. So what’s your magazine called? So I warn you, it’s not it’s not Megalogs, but I’ve had a thought about this. I can’t tie it to any particular platforms. I’m going to call my magazine Hubworld. All right. Interesting. But do you want to kind of explain your choice there? Well, it’s the classic thing of taking a video game terminology and attaching it to a video game project of some kind. And also a hub world in games is like where you go to to get to everything else, which is kind of what a magazine is about. It’s like your hub world for gaming. Yeah, I quite like that. Quite poetic. It’s death on the shop shelf. Now that I know that I’m going to get my throat cut, I might actually change the name of it to Official Roblox Magazine. Roblox versus Minecraft. That’s the new magazine from Matt Castle. And none of the preceding games will actually feature in there. No, they all will. But it’s just, yeah, no Roblox. It’s just to get Roblox under control. Cool. I have a name for mine as well. I gave it a lot of thought. It actually reminded me of when I was at Imagine they were trying to come up with names for the website that they had. I think like section editors and above were invited to give ideas and I was a staff writer at the time so I felt a bit left out and I was just like briefly considering running into the meeting room and going, let’s call it Game Gazebo. But then I chose not to do that. So the idea that I had like briefly was game geared. But then I thought that was terrible. So I actually came up with the more elegant. I think this is actually pretty good. New Game Plus. I thought it was pretty good. Yeah. You’ve gone down a similar route, taking a bit of gaming terminology. I mean, I do have the word game in the title. I will give myself that credit. Yeah, I mean, Hobworld requires you to know quite a lot about games. Maybe it’s like Hobworld in brackets, like Peach’s Castle. Is that a very small font underneath the logo? Well, that’s like the slogan underneath the title. You know, it’s like the unofficial Nintendo. It’s like NGamer, the unofficial Nintendo magazine. Hobworld, like Peach’s Castle. Brackets from the Super Mario series. And then square brackets from Mario 64. Amazing. And then halfway down the cover, the artwork can begin. That’s really good. They say that games magazine titles should need to be explained at great lengths on the most premium bit of the cover. So yeah, New Game Plus is mine. I thought it’s about new games, and it kind of suggests like, hey, we’ll give you a little bit of something extra on top of the new games. There’s no more thought process than that. What is the plus? That represents the analysis that people get in the magazines. I’m going to choose not to put that underneath the title of the magazine. In brackets, the plus represents the analysis. I think that could go on the editor page or the review intro. I think mags should be more explanatory under their mastheads. It should be like official Xbox magazine. Brackets, so not official PlayStation magazine. Or Edge. That sort of thing. Okay, cool. What’s your main cover line to go along with your Breath of the World 2 cover, Matthew? Well, I haven’t written one out exactly, but it would probably be something, some terrible joke about cloud gaming because it’s him jumping through some clouds. So it would be like, Nintendo reinvents cloud gaming or move over cloud gaming. Because if you remember from our previous cover episodes, I love to tell things to move over. And so move over cloud gaming. You know, here’s this. It’s also difficult because it doesn’t have a name. Move over Breath of the Wild. It’s the sequel to Breath of the Wild. It’s the as yet untitled sequel to Breath of the Wild. With a target release date of 2022, maybe 2023. That’s in brackets. Brackets are very much a theme of my cover. I feel like I’ve talked you into a corner where you have to make yours naffer than it actually is now, which I feel bad about. No, that’s good. I like that. Cloud gaming is very good. The move over thing is so funny. After you pointed it out to me, I just can’t unsee it now. Okay, so mine then is the Elden Ring cover. It’s an Elden Ring or Smelden Ring. Oh, nice. So if you thought New Game Plus suggested something quite classy, this immediately undoes it. To be honest, you’re going for mid-90s games master with that. I was thinking, I could have gone for something like, will Miyazaki be the new Lord of the Rings? But I just thought, oh God, I kind of hate myself just for even thinking about it. There’s got to be Game of Thrones and George RR. Martin. I don’t really want to talk about George RR. Martin. I don’t feel like he’s a selling point. Every time I see his name on something, I’m like, why aren’t you finishing that fucking book? That’s all you have to do. That’s all anyone wants you to do is finish that fucking book. You couldn’t do it in time for the TV show to end. Elden Ring, a winner is coming. Winner is coming. Oh, dear. Is the T crossed out and then the end kind of like hastily drawn in? Yeah. Oh, God. I love that. It’s so awful. Oh, wonderful. Okay, so next up, Matthew, who’s your monthly columnist in your magazine? I was always very envious when people had game developers as their columnists, but I want a game developer who can write. So, of course, I’ve got Shutokumi as my regular columnist. Okay, great. He can be a bit like Sakurai in Famitsu. Just kind of like he can basically muse on anything he likes from the month. I think that would be good. Did you ever read the Kojima columns from Official PlayStation? The Official PlayStation 2 magazines, like really early on, those ones? Yeah. I did, yeah, they were very… I remember picking up my first issue of Official PlayStation 2 magazine and being incredibly impressed that they had it. Yeah, it’s impressive, but it’s also a little bit like… Obviously, there wasn’t a lot of like, can you kind of maybe talk about this? Because it was just him wobbling on about like any old nonsense. It was like his film opinions, basically. It wasn’t much about games. I heard a rumour that it was one gigantic piece that was cut into different bits. Oh, really? That’s interesting. That makes sense. When they did a big Metal Gear Bookazine, when I was still there, and I did some like freelance prodding on it, and that was the bit I had, was all those columns. And it was like editing these things from like years and years ago. And they were, they were, yeah. It felt like someone was scared to kind of give him any kind of notes. Which you probably would be, because at the time, you know, he obviously was like the shit hot guy. Yeah, I think just the feat of having it was really impressive. And the fact is, it was 20 years ago, I was reading official PlayStation 2 magazine. And I still remember that column all these years later. So yeah, yeah, it’s great. I mean, Shichikumi probably doesn’t have the instant like wow factor, but it’ll be, it’ll be a good read. Yeah. That’s, you know, I would expect nothing more or less from you, Matthew. So I picked Amy Hedig, actually. I thought, oh, that’s good. She’s a great thinker. I mentioned the Design Notes, or maybe it was Designer Notes podcast from Soren Johnson, the Civilization 4 lead designer. And he had a few really, really good episodes of Amy Hedig, where she was like totally honest about her career and talking about working crystal dynamics and stuff. And I just thought I would like, I totally read a thing that she says every single month. Like I think she’s, I think she’s brilliant. So yeah. Oh, that’s really good. Yeah, I did actually put like a kind of like emergency one in brackets in case you pick someone like Wario and caught me off guard. So I just, so I just put Crash Bandicoot in brackets. What does that idiot have to say? It’s like, oh, look, here’s Crash Bandicoot with a searing hot take about the pre-owned games market. Yeah, exactly. Crash Bandicoot is not happy with the ESA. Yeah. So yeah, but then you didn’t. So I didn’t have to resort to that. It was like my emergency break glass option. Well, that’s the thing when you get these questions. I don’t know if I’m just meant to be like, you know, slamming custard pies in my own face for people’s entertainment or if I’m actually meant to make the case. No, I don’t want you to feel that way because I think if we’re, I think it’s like you say, if we’re being too performative, then it won’t be funny. So I think it has to come from a kind of like a profound place. The truth is, I wouldn’t do a cover with Elden Ring or Smelden Ring. I just briefly amuse myself with that. And I wouldn’t put brackets under my mask. Wow. Okay, wow. Suddenly this is a viable magazine. Fucking Hubworld. I can’t wait to subscribe to Hubworld. Hubworld is, that could be a legit Patreon magazine. Yeah, exactly. Not Patreon. You could kickstart a niche games magazine called Hubworld for sure. What would be your financial target, Matthew, for issue one? 40 quid? Oh, well, we want it to be classy. So like, I don’t know, 50 grand. Okay, yeah, that’s good. Cool. Alright, that was far too granular. But yeah, so next question. So what’s the free gift that comes with your first issue? So even though we’ve been paid all this money by this billionaire, for some reason I’ve still got ties to NGamer and future in my scenario. And so I’ve still got some of the terrible broken NGamer ice cube trays to give away. So I’m going to go back. I just got to get rid of them because they’ve been sitting in a warehouse for over 10 years. At this point, something has to be done. Are you aware of this ice cube tray? I think that you’ve told me a bit about it on background, as it were, but not on the air. We infamously gave away a Nintendo ice cube tray as a free gift, but we made it out of really brittle, hard plastic, which you can’t… it shatters when you put it into a freezer. So it was a gift that automatically broke itself and turned itself into quite sharp, razor sharp shards of plastic, which was actually a dangerous gift. You couldn’t get the ice cubes out of it without breaking it. It was just horrible. It was a gift and it was so bad that we then gave it away again, like six months later. And it was like round two. Any of the readers we didn’t finish off the first time, we came back with a vengeance. So this is the last go. This is the last roll of the dice for the ice cube train. Yeah, I think if you’re picking a free gift, you have to summon some of that old kind of like magazine energy, which is why I’ve gone with a very cheaply made frisbee that has Sonic Colors remastered on it. And it’s so badly sellotaped to the front of the magazine that when you kind of pull it off of there, it will rip off most of the Elden Ring artwork, leaving a hole where you can see my face on the editor’s intro page. So yeah, that’s what I thought I’d go with. And we couldn’t clear the Sonic Colors rights with Sega fast enough, so they weren’t happy about it, but they ultimately let it go in exchange for a bit of coverage on Sonic Colors Remastered next issue. Oh, that’s nice. I’m glad you managed to turn that one around. It’s turning into like fucking Editor D&D or something. It’s really weird. Okay, so, final one, Matthew. What’s your back page gag for this issue? So during the Jeff Keighley show, he did the Among Us Jeff Keighley mask drop, and I was thinking we’d probably do a page of like other Jeff Keighley DLC for games that he announced, and it would just be like his face photoshopped into loads of shit screens. Yep, I can sort of, I can see that, yeah. Is there any kind of like specific example was he wanted to sort of pull out there to give us an idea? I’m really, it wasn’t that, it really wasn’t that sophisticated. It’d be like that Korean MMO that he showed off, except it’s like his face on a samurai. Yeah, it’s every member of Weezer but with his face. Yeah, that kind of stuff. I mean, honestly, if you’ve ever been in a magazine planning meeting, which you obviously have, but many of our listeners won’t have been, like, that is how a lot of back page ideas start. You know, no firm examples, just like a, we’ll fill it out. It’s something along those lines. Yeah, Matthew, I’m really keen that our 50th episode is us tackling how back pages get made in magazines. Because I think I can bring Phil back on for that one and talk about some of our infamous PC Gamer ones. So that would be fun. But yeah, so back pages of magazines are usually, like, comedy produced under duress, which is not really the best way to make jokes. It’s like this imminent threat of a deadline. So a joke must happen. Can you please make the joke happen? And it’s like, it ends up being a deadline day thing where, I don’t know, it’s just quite stressful. So I picked a good old-fashioned bingo card. I was thinking, I’ve got to pick something that, when I hand it to my art editor on deadline day, at 3 p.m. which I inevitably will, they’ve got to be like, okay, this is something I have to get done in about 45 minutes. And so, yeah, a bingo card, spot on, you know, maybe there can be a little images to go with it, but one square is like Jeff Keighley introduces a dad band who are embarrassing now. This is for like E3 2022. Another is that Tom Clancy’s grave starts spinning at high speeds after another sci-fi game is announced in his name. It’s that sort of thing. Whenever a trailer does a really overplayed 2001 Space Odyssey riff, which that happened again with Super Monkey Ball. Yeah, what’s your sort of take on that Monkey Ball reveal, by the way? I’m there thinking I kind of just want to be able to play the old Monkey Ball games I’ve got and not buy a new one that does largely the same thing. That was kind of my take on that. What about you? Yeah, I mean, I feel about Monkey Ball the same way I feel about WarioWare, really, in that I used to love it, but it’s just been so rotten for so long that I’m sort of surprised that people are like, oh, yes, Monkey Ball. I’m surprised people have a take on Monkey Ball, I guess. It just hasn’t been relevant for a long, long, long, long time since GameCube. I mean, they’ve been bad since the Wii Forward. So, hmm. Yeah, I was, I feel largely the same. What people have is nostalgia for, you know, Super Monkey Ball 1, 2 or Deluxe. It’s just diminishing returns, really. I think there’s only so many times that that idea in those mini games can kind of delight you, you know. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I’m sure it’ll be, yeah. Based on the older games, it’ll be fine. But yeah, so the bingo card, Matthew, what’s the verdict from my rival editor? Yeah, I’m bingo cards classic. I think you’re right. The art of The Back Page. You know, half of it, or not even half of it, 20% of it is, is it funny? And 80% is, can I get the art editor on board to actually make it in the time required? We’ve had so, I just have, I remember having so many conversations with art editors over the year where you give them some bullshit and they just look at you like you’re scum of the earth. And you’re like, just put Jeff Keighley’s face on all these screens. And they’re like, why? That’s terrible. And you’re like, just do it and maybe it’ll work. And you’re like, look, mate, my life is on the line here. Like, you don’t seem to understand. I’m going to be killed by a billionaire if you can’t make this happen. And if the mag doesn’t succeed. Yeah. Okay. Good stuff. Yeah. I think there’s some solid ideas there. I suppose you do need the context of knowing who Jeff Keighley is for yours. I mean, the thing I always try to do on PC Gamer is to pretend that like the outside world didn’t exist so much. So you didn’t have to like know other cultural references coming into the magazine. The magazine was its own like closed off world, which I feel like your magazines were to a large extent as well. They were. I mean, they were. We were often at the heart of the jokes. It was very, very self-indulgent. It’s kind of hard to imagine what they’d be without the rest of the team. A lot of our back pages were like leftovers from photo shoots that we’d done elsewhere in the mag. And then we just, you know, if there was a picture of me testing a balance board, the back page would be some daft, you know, like my exercise tape or whatever. It would be like, well, you’ve got this image. Let’s just write some jokes around this. But it’s, yeah, I don’t know where the photo shoot would come for this particular E3 issue. Okay, good stuff. Well, there we go. Then I’m suitably exhausted, which is how I used to feel after making a magazine. So we’ve done E3, Matthew. Any more thoughts to wrap us up before we say goodbye? I’m slightly miffed that in this period where we’d normally go to the pub and just chill out because we’d finished an issue, there does hover over us the threat that we’re going to get our throat cut in Damaline. I thought you were going to say that a respiratory illness could kill us by going to the pub. Oh, no, no, well, and there’s that too, but it’s more like, I don’t know if I can enjoy my pie at the Raven, knowing that it may be my last ever pie. That’s how Keir Starmer felt when he walked into the Raven. Ha ha ha! More niche jokes about the eateries of Bath. Ha ha ha! Oh, good stuff. I did feel like that was pretty sharp, though. All right, so the podcast is over, Matthew. Where can people find you on Twitter? I am at MrBazzle UnderscorePesto. I’m Samuel W. Roberts on Twitter. We’ll be back next week with an episode about good god, Sonic the Hedgehog. We might still get cold feet and cancel it, but I don’t know. I feel like I’ve made Jay commit at this point, and I can’t really cancel on him without feeling really bad about it, so I think we just have to go through with it and talk about Sonic for about an hour and a half. Let’s just pull the trigger. Yeah, so if you think you can stand an episode about Sonic the Hedgehog, you know, come back next week. If you don’t want to listen to that one, which I completely understand, there’s an episode after that about cover features that we’re doing and writing those and a bit more of the kind of like magazine-y craft stuff that people might enjoy listening to. And then I think it’s the week after that that we’re doing Best Games of 2009, right, Matthew? Yeah, that sounds great. I cannot wait. What a year! Yeah, it’s a big year. And then the week after that is Best Zelda Games, so we’ve got a really good run of episodes coming up. You just have to bear with us through Sonic the Hedgehog. I’m so, so sorry, people. So if you want to follow the podcast, it’s BackpagePod on Twitter. You can also email us your questions at backpagegames.gmail.com. Email us your questions. We’ll read them out when we get a bit of a break at the end of an episode. And then if you’d like to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, our podcast is like regularly updating on Apple properly now. I don’t know what the problem was briefly having some issues. Now it’s fine. Apple’s a really good platform for us to find some new listeners. So if you’d like to leave us a review, it’d be much appreciated. Thank you to those who have already left us reviews. And we’ll be back next week.