Hello, and welcome to The Back Page, a video games podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, welcome to July. Shall we tell people what lovely podcast we’ve got coming up this month? Yeah, go for it. Didn’t put that on our podcast plan, did I? Yeah, that’s why it threw me. Bit of a surprise there for you. And yeah, I probably should have put that in there. But yes, because it’s the beginning of the month, and we like to kind of tell people what’s coming up, whether they’re kind of backing the Patreon, or if they’re just one-pound folks or no-paying folks. That’s okay, I mean, that’s allowed. Yeah, exactly. So people would know that the first episode we had this month was Gamescourt, Judge Big Sammy Edition. Matthew, were you quite surprised by the response to that one? Because I don’t remember previous Gamescourts getting like that much kind of like discussion and enjoyment. Was that a surprise to you? Yeah, a little bit. I just, yeah, I also saw like the most negative feedback I ever see for an episode is always Gamescourt. Yeah, it’s like a proper like love or hate, I think. Yeah, and I get that. But I think the people who don’t dig it, like, they are quite one-offs and I know they’re self-indulgent, but I think we strike a good balance the rest of the time. So I don’t feel too bad about it. No, I feel very similarly. It’s kind of a case of we know it’s daft and we don’t do them that often, just because we don’t want to upset people. No one has no opinions on gamescore, I think is why I’m taking away from this. So yeah, that’s done and out. July 8th is this episode, which is what we’ve been playing, slash Mailbag. We’ve got loads of listener questions to go through this episode after we talk about some of the stuff we’ve been playing, which will be fun. July 11th, we’ll see the release of the XL episode for the XL tier patrons, Backpage pod, patreon.com/backpagepod, top 25 Metal Gear moments. May or may not have a guest on that one. It’s unclear at this point, but we’ll see. Either way, it’ll be good. I’ve started the planning for it. It should be decent. July 15th, the Nintendo Switch Games Hall of Fame, Volume 1. Anyone who listened to our indie games Hall of Fame will know the deal for that one. Matthew, you must be pretty pumped about that one. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, there’s something that’s just a slight way to even begin really is the challenge. Yeah, it’s like codifying what the kind of essential Switch games are. If you had to save them in some kind of nuclear apocalypse, what would you kind of like salvage? Like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or whatever, or those movies they put in a time bowl in America. There’s like 10 of them. I don’t think the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame exists specifically because of an apocalypse scenario. I was specifically thinking of the film preservation thing they do in America for like… Right, okay. It’s like West Side Story is like in a vault somewhere in case like, I don’t know, there’s like a hydrogen bomb is dropped tomorrow or something. That would cast a bit of a bad vibe on the ceremony if they’re like, and you’re this year’s inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which let me remind you is here to save you in the case of a nuclear holocaust. That’s right. John Bon Jovi, we’re now sending you many miles underground into a titanium vault, where you’ll be stored for the rest of your days. I tell you what, that vault would be wild to find in Fallout. That would be a great bit of world building, wouldn’t it? Yeah. Just all the famous rock stars have just built this crazy, hedonistic palace down there. Yeah, vault 69. Bethesda, we are available for dialogue punch-ups. July 22nd is the best games of 2013. Been a while since we’ve done one of those. Since we did 2012, so two top 10 lists from both of us should be fun. July 25th is the second part of our best TV shows of the century list for our XXL episode. So again, anyone at the £4.50 XL tier on Patreon gets that, which is cool. And finally for the month, a big Matthew Castle episode. July 29th, Xenoblade Special and Catherine Castle will be rejoining us, which is exciting. Yeah, Matthew, you’re going to have to power us through that one and I’m just going to have to sort of sit on the sidelines and go, hmmm, yes. Enjoy it. Play like three hours of Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition and pretend I know what I’m talking about, which is, you know, hey, I’ve been in that position before in this podcast. It still makes some solid content. Yeah, so exciting month, right? There’s lots of good sort of like, I don’t know, a bit more Nintendo leaning, I suppose, as a month. But yeah, you excited about it? Yeah, it should be. It should be good fun. I’m looking forward to digging into it. Okay, good. So yeah, this episode is a what we’ve been playing episode and mailbag kind of combo. Bit of a strange one this month, Matthew. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a bit of a comfort gaming month where I’m not playing anything like massive. I haven’t been like trying to kind of conquer a like 20 plus hour thing. And it’s the first time in a while that I’ve been in that position. So everything this month is a little bit like games I have a sort of casual relationship with. And I think gaming definitely will fulfill that purpose sometimes. I can’t always have something big and sort of big on the go. How about you? What was your month in gaming like? We’ve been a bit sort of all over the place, like sort of traveling wise for various family matters. So like we’ve been I’ve been playing little things sort of here and there. I’ve also got an absolutely massive game to review. So that’s basically like eaten up all my time. And I’ll talk a little bit about it, but you know, I’m still very much like in the kind of middle of that and we’ll be so it’s like goodbye to everything else. But yeah, just out of necessity being a very bitty month for me. Yep. Fair enough. Okay, cool. So we’ll dive into it, Matthew, because I think actually, like, the quality of listener questions this month is really high. So I’m quite excited. I’m quite excited to get to some of those. So I don’t think this will be like a super long what we’ve been playing section, unless you secretly got another 20 minutes on the Centennial Cakes to bust out. I don’t think there was anything wrong with that audio. You’re the one who wanted to get rid of it. Oh, Matt, you know, I just don’t want to talk about the Centennial. Sets the tone there for the rest of the podcast, I feel. First up there, Matthew. So I’ll go with one of mine. So I’ve been playing Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity. So I’m not much of a muso slash warriors guy, but I thought it was a good conversation starter. These games have become like critically acclaimed and like kind of events in themselves. And I was trying to track in my head how we got from me playing Dynasty Warriors 3 and failing my AS levels in 2005 to like the point they’re at now where they’re kind of like really revered spinoffs of popular series. These games are always dunked on for kind of being the same thing over and over again. But now they’ve kind of got this strategy of like, we’ll make a really good spinoff, prequel, sequel, that just happens to use our mechanics, but we’ll work really hard to make sure it feels kind of authentic in the universe of that thing. So I say that because it’s just been a, you know, a fire emblem, three houses follow up from the Warriors series. I’ve not been playing that one, but it did remind me, I bought this a little while ago, the Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity game, which is a prequel to Breath of the Wild. And I did kind of forget that like, this game was a bit of a step up from Hyrule Warriors, which felt kind of like, it felt more of a reskin of Dynasty Warriors and a little bit cheaper, whereas it felt like there was extra special effort here to make it fit into the universe of Breath of the World. And I was curious what you made of the whole Warriors Musou thing and how these games are like, there’s like a Persona one and you know, they’re just really well liked and it’s kind of unusual. I do wonder if, are people like really into Musou games, or are they particularly into the licenses they’re working with? Like they’ve been quite canny in terms of like who they’ve worked with, you know, like Zelda, you know, Fire Emblem, but particularly now Fire Emblem after Three Houses, which has this very like, sort of fan-service-y relationship with its anime characters. And then Persona, which also has like an absolutely rabid fan base. So you know, I do wonder like, who’s playing it because of the core game and who’s playing it because it’s a spin-off of the thing they like. And that’s, that’s, you know, probably like a key part of their strategy. Like I don’t, I don’t feel like, and maybe this is me just not paying attention. This might be wrong, but I don’t feel like there’s like a vast amount of buzz around like the core Dynasty Warriors games. Do you think that’s right or wrong? Yeah, I think that’s right. Yeah. Because I think there are like more Musou games that still release alongside these, but I’m not as aware of them. But these are like, you know, Nintendo published games or Atlas published games. And like you say, I think the license is the thing. It’s almost like each one, the quality of each one is determined by how many niceties they can layer on top of a very predictable formula. And in the case of Age of Calamity, it’s like, you know, really good fan service in terms of like the different powers that the different characters have and how it looks. And the fact that it’s got loads more story than Breath of the Wild does, which is a bit strange, and almost frames itself as a kind of like narrative action game that just happens to have sort of like warriors’ mechanics in them, and like Persona, I think, was the same where it’s like, do you want to spend more time with Joker and friends? And it’s like, yeah, of course people do. Like it’s like a road trip that one, isn’t it? The Strikers game that’s like the kind of the framework for it. But underneath, it is the same old crusty formula, but like you can apply a lot of layers of polish on top. And I think that makes it kind of go down smooth, you know. I would imagine this has been a gateway drug for people into the series, because there is the core loop of hitting hundreds and hundreds of people to power ever madder powers and combos. And the fact that it’s quite easy to make these games look spectacular, like the actual input is not massively complicated, and using characters and moves who you’re more familiar with to get you into that loop. And I imagine this has lured some people. I mean, they were always built, you know, even the original games were kind of built on like a love of characters, albeit historical figures who people kind of obsessed with, you know, if you ever read, I think there is an Awata Asks on one of the Dynasty Warriors games that was on 3DS. They talked about people sending them like on Valentine’s Day, the studio is like inundated with presents for the heroes in the games, the historical figures, like the fan base is so rabidly into them that that does happen. So you know, that they have a kind of a gameplay model which is designed to make individual people feel like legendarily powerful, combined with like characters you are really into from Zelda, Persona, Fire Emblem or whatever. You can see why it’s like so crazy potent. Like, you know, I was quite into both. I didn’t mind the original Zelda one. You know, it was a little bit bare bones and the way they kind of crammed it together was a little bit, you know, different elements from the different games is a little bit crude. But there was still kind of fun in seeing what each new character and each new unlock did. But yeah, I think the Breath of the Wild one just felt like a much more kind of complete package. Yeah, for sure. I think the Breath of the Wild one’s just like, I was just surprised by how many mechanics from the main game get transferred over. Like right down to the flurry attacks and like the gliding. The gliding is pretty useless in it, but you know, the different powers and how they work the same as they do in the main game. And then the fact that like it maintains that very soft appearance, that soft, beautiful art style, and the kind of the flavor of it, which is quite tough, like even down to individual buildings, you see in the feel of the places, it’s just such a step up. But I think, like you said, on previous episodes, like performance wise, it does occasionally get in handheld mode, particularly gets so low res, that it sort of looks like you’re playing on PS1 or you’re looking at through like a Vaseline lens or something like it does get a bit dicey. But for the most part, I’m just surprised by how much I’m enjoying it. And I think part of that comes from the fact that I haven’t played one since the original Hyrule Warriors. And so to come back and sort of like find one of these games in this moment where they are quite revered, where they are like, there is an extra special effort made to make them fit into these different universes, it’s kind of a surprising treat. And just like, there’s enough of a guided hand in terms of like the level design in this as well, like it is a little bit set pieceier than Disney Warriors, it’s fundamentally the same thing moving around the map and guiding different characters, but they thought hard about how do you make you, you know, kind of like encourage you to play as the different heroes in the game, and how to like differentiate them, and how to like create objectives that are more than just batter like 400 dudes. It’s almost like the stuff I consider the traditional Musou stuff just kind of exists as a kind of like base layer of a thing to do, and then they’ve kind of built a nut half of another game on top of it to make it feel different. Have you got to the stuff with the Titans or whatever they’re called? I’ve forgotten the name of them yet. No, not quite. I think I might have just reached one of the bit of the like maybe the first one of those. Yeah, they’re handled in quite a fun way. You know, like that’s that’s like a good bit of fan service. Like if you were, you know, if you were particularly into the sort of story and iconography of Breath of the Wild, like that you can like play with the giant. What the hell fucking they called? Divine Beasts. The Divine Beasts. That’s it. Yeah, that’s that’s that’s that’s definitely like a cool little addition. Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, just a bit of a surprise. I just yeah, I mean, I kind of I just I knew this game had been reviewed well, but it was it was just a bit I was just kind of curious about this whole operation that Ko-I-Tecmo has and it’s like, I don’t know, I have a bit I have quite a lot of I don’t know, like respect for it because, you know, like you say, there are still Dynasty Warriors games coming out that series still exists. But these just feel like the I don’t know, they’re just they’re treated with just real care. And it’s just surprising how much longevity they have because there are so many games where the mechanics remain the same where people get tired of them. But somehow it’s not happened here. I think it’s because like you say, there are different ways into this. It’s based on what series you like, which one you actually want to play. I think the fact that the person they’re working with is Nintendo for obviously Fire Emblem and Zelda or Atlas for Persona. They are game makers themselves and the expectations are probably higher. I think where they seem to be a little flakier for a long time anyway was all the anime spin-offs where they’re just buying the rights to One Piece or Fist of the North Star or something and then just sticking it on top. But I think once you have the quality control and the expectations of a Nintendo or an Atlas, maybe it just holds them to a higher standard. Maybe that’s the magic ingredient. Yeah, I think it might be right there. So yeah, very enjoyable. I just honestly just needed a little bit of reheated Breath of the Wild to get me through to Breath of the Wild 2. So that was why I started playing it really, I just wanted a little taste, a little sniff of Breath of the Wild, just to keep me going. And I did increasingly come out of it thinking, I really hope this next Breath of the Wild game is tied to a new Nintendo console release. Like it probably won’t be, but I would really like it if it would be. I just would be nice to play on some shiny new hardware. I don’t know how you feel about that, Matthew, but just because it’s like, what, six years next year? So yeah, feels like about time to me, but I don’t know. Yeah, no, it’s just not an unreasonable demand. Okay, fair. So what’s your first game, Matthew? So I’ll talk a little bit about Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Oh yeah? Are you not shattering embargoes here? Is it not like a Nintendo lawyer? No, no. So by the time this episode is out, you can read my preview on VGC and I will point you towards that. That’s obviously who I was covering it for. I’m not going to spoil anything, I’m only going to talk very briefly about it. What I really like about these games is that even though they’re part of a series, they’re pretty much standalone in how they feel. Each one’s about quite different themes. One and two are literally set in different worlds. This is set in a new world as well. And the tone of it is a little bit more low key than the other ones, it’s like super soulful. How much do you know about the game? Um, almost nothing except you have a bigger party and you may be suggesting that elements of the first two games would collide in this one, I think in a previous discussion. Well, sort of. It feels like mechanically, I think what I was getting at when we were talking about this in the pub, I think like mechanically it feels like a best of Xenoblade 1 and Xenoblade 2, which I really like about it. It’s kind of quite close to Xenoblade 2’s combat system in that there’s a lot of stuff about like timing your moves so they sort of combo together and like the more you combo the faster certain meters rise and those meters are what unlocks like the mega powerful stuff in the combat system. Which is like, that’s sort of Xenoblade 2 through and through, it’s about like trying to kind of like dig into this huge reserve of power you have as fast as possible, like that’s its whole deal. Where one was a bit more about like controlling a specific character and like mastering their specific moves and each class felt different. This is kind of a combo of the two in that it’s got all that kind of move cancelling stuff to kind of speed up various meters and dials and whatnot. But also it’s very big into classes. You can kind of like recalibrate all the characters to lots of different classes. Each class handles very differently, whether you’re playing as an attacker, a defender or a healer, it feels different in battle. If you’re a healer, you’re physically running around planting nodes near characters to kind of power them up and obviously trying to keep them alive, where if you’re an attacker it’s a lot more about where you position yourself around the character to kind of get directional hits on other things, so that I really like, it’s like my favourite two bits of the combat system together. For the purposes of this preview, because it’s embargoed up the wazoo, what we were able to cover barely scratches anything that is in this game. It’s ludicrously complex, but paced in a really nice way, it’s something that both one and two did really well, they gradually introduce mechanics, they also do a really nice job of tying that pacing into the storytelling, so there’s a lot of people discover deeper power within them and they kind of power up into the next form and that unlocks the next layer of mechanics which the game will then tutorialise. It’s just very elegantly done, so if you’re into that stuff in Xenoblade 1 and 2 I think people will really really dig it, but like I said I don’t really want to spoil it a huge amount, we’re going to go into it in huge detail in the standalone episode, but I think I’m having such a good time with it, it’s really really good, but it’s eating up every hour of the day. Yeah, it’s very much this year’s Great Ace Attorney Chronicles where you played like 60 hours of it in like a month or something. Yeah, I’ve played 35 hours of this now. But like the preview covers maybe like my first four hours. Wow. So it’s one of those, I just want to be really really thorough in the review because it does have this gradual unlocking of ideas. You never know if it’s going to like do something really crazy and like just take the whole thing up a notch. So you really want to kind of see it through it’s very very compelling. So I found like in my experience with JRPGs, like I’m often pulled through more by the story than the mechanics, this is quite a rare example where I actually I love the kind of power curve of like how these characters behave as well. I think that’s that’s like a real special thing about this particular series. Okay, all right. Well, interesting. So yeah, I think like when we do the episode later in the month, I’m going to lay out. So basically, if you don’t know Xenoblade, I’ll have Matthew and Catherine do a really coherent basic explainer of what it is versus other JRPGs and stuff like that. And then how the three games and X differentiate from each other. So yeah, I’ll try and make that as accessible as possible. Much like the Destiny episode, Matthew, you never know what might happen by hour three. But we can try. Okay, great. Well, yeah, I look forward to hearing more about that later in this month. My next game, Matthew, is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shredder’s Revenge. Right. I’ve heard a lot about this, but haven’t played it myself. AKA the perfect game pass game, you can finish it in about three hours. It’s got a lovely combination of a story mode, and you can scale the difficulty down to easy. So you can basically just bash through it and enjoy lots of beautiful looking 2D pixel art because this is a game that riffs on the classic arcade and SNES. Turtles and Time in particular is the one that I think people have had the most reverence for. Wasn’t there for that, really. That’s the thing, I’m not really much of a turtles head, I missed it all by about a year or two. For your shell head. Is that what they’re called? Turtle head is something else, isn’t it? This is like A2M again, we have to move on. Oh dear. Yeah. So basically, but even without that experience, it’s a really, really fun game. So it’s made by these developers who I think most of them worked at Ubisoft on the Scott Pilgrim game. I think that’s like the lineage of these developers basically. So they’re like, they may, you know, they’re specialists in these kind of, you know, side scrolling beat them up arcade experiences with really nice sort of pixel art. And so here it feels like a perfect sort of fusion of their skill set and license where, you know, obviously there’s a huge amount of like turtles nostalgia. Truthfully, I don’t entirely get why they were so big. So there was this like independent underground comic, which I think it all comes from. I’ve never read that. But like, and then obviously there are these films, but people are just so into them. I saw a very sincere post about what all the different weapons the turtles carry represent about their personalities on Twitter the other day. And I was like, this is really bizarre. But then I suppose that is weird. That’s like get a life, like, consume some actual art, you know? Yeah, there’s a little bit of that. This is like the sort of MCU episode all over again now, isn’t it? So but yeah, but this is, but what is great about this is you do have like the different turtles and what’s their rat pal called? Their little guardian dude. Splinter? Yeah, Splinter. Their own rat pal. Yeah, and the April. And they all have different movesets, different skits, like they’re slightly different in terms of like range and combat and stuff. And then like kind of like fire, a baffling array of characters at you. I’ve at one point, there’s a lot of like disembodied legs and torsos in this game that just sort of are carried around by different guys. And like, I see this as a reference to a very well known character, but you’ll just see some legs carried off by a dude and then it’s like after those legs now, and I just I have no context for any of it. Or like there’s a man who’s like, can you go around collecting newspapers for me? And like, he’s a journalist, I’m like, why were the turtles working with a journalist? So I have a lot of questions about the lore of the back of this. I think April is a journalist, isn’t she? Oh, is she? What’s the jumpsuit for? I’ve never seen a journalist wear a jumpsuit. That’s just like her sort of 90s or late 80s style. Yeah, fair enough. I don’t question it that much. Like, it’s just, it was just lots of odd little things like that where I’m sort of like, what the hell’s going on? But the kind of level layout is really nice because there’s, I think there’s 18 levels in total and you select them from a, I assume that one of the other Turtles games had this, but like that Mario style map and so you’re kind of like selecting different parts of the city to go through them. The music is fantastic. I understand this is very deep on sort of references to the music from the previous games and other sort of Turtles fiction. So a really rich bit of fan service and to be honest, one I probably wouldn’t have played if it wasn’t on Game Pass, but because it was, a three hour side scrolling beat-em-up is like the perfect Game Pass game, Matthew. Do you have much of a Turtles affection? Is this on your radar at all? Not really. Like it was, it was massive when I was a kid. My mom wasn’t big into like gimmicky toys. Like we didn’t have a lot of like action figures when we were kids, which kind of soured me on quite a lot of, you know, like I was never, Transformers is actually a little bit before my time by a couple of years. But Turtles, yeah, Turtles was obviously absolutely like massive when I was, yeah, when I was like seven or whatever. Yeah, it’s fine. I really love just how baffled you are by like all these characters, because they’re so dumb and basic, but this idea that you just don’t know who they are. I love the idea of like Crane turning up and you’re like, he’s this Crane guy. He seems interesting. Yeah. Is he the guy who’s like a head in a telly? He’s like the brain. He was like in the man’s tummy. And then, yeah, so there’s that. And then there’s like, there’s one lad who I think was like a big sort of like Rhino man. Bebop and Rocksteady. One’s like a boar and one’s a Rhino. Yeah, that’s right. It just spammed a few special attacks to take those lads out. But that, but like, I feel like each one’s meant to be an event and it’s just like, I don’t know. It’s like they’re like Rick and Morty characters to me. I just don’t really know what I’m sort of faced with. But yeah, it’s. You’re like, well, you know, good luck to you, Crank. I’m sort of there going, I’m sure this means something to somebody. And then kind of like. You know Shredder, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That guy is the. Was he voiced by Uncle Phil from The Fresh Prince in the cartoon? I think he was. Oh yeah, that sounds right. Even I know a tiny bit enough about that to, about Turtles to kind of understand that bit. You know, big James Avery fan here, RIP. That’s the other funny thing, Matthew, is I think they’ve got some of the original voice actors to play the Turtles again, right? But, let me tell you, they do not sound teenage. That’s like, they sound like sort of 60 year olds playing them. And I don’t hold that against them because, you know, time happened and I think they were in their 40s when they made the original series, at least a friend told me that. That was, that’s a bit like, do you remember when they redid DuckTales, one of the big heartwarming anecdotes they kept telling about that was like, well, the original game didn’t have voice acting because it was obviously before, before that kind of era, but they got the like original voice actor of like Scrooge McDuck. But they were like, he basically like recorded it from his hospital bed because he’s so old and dilapidated. And I remember thinking like, give that fucking guy a break. Like that anecdote isn’t as cute as you think it sounds. It sounds like a really old as fuck guy on his hospital bed. Like it doesn’t sound like cute at all. Just go get any Scottish guy. Like the American playing audience will not notice if it’s a different Scottish guy. Yeah, that’s kind of… And in this one, like, the actors are like giving it their all and stuff. But like the one I’m playing as, I think is Michelangelo. He’s got a red bandana. I may be wrong about that. I’m really sorry. I don’t know anything about these characters. Maybe it’s Donatello. It doesn’t matter. No, it doesn’t matter. It’s like one of his little bits of lines of dialogue he says when you don’t have enough power to use a special attack, he goes, I am one tired turtle. But because it’s an old man saying it, it’s like, I am one tired turtle. He just sounds like he needs a proper, like a proper lie down in real life. Maybe I’m casting too much judgment there. I appreciate his effort, but yeah, it’s just really baffling to step into something steeped in fan service when you know nothing about what’s going on. But absolutely rock solid is a sort of side-scrolling beat-em-up. I wish there was a game like this based on a license I like. That’s what I came out of it thinking. I wish there was a Batman game like this, do you know what I mean? Like where you can have a different Batman villain in each thing, but obviously you kind of need that heritage to tap into to make a game like this really, otherwise it’s a bit strange. There must have been a Batman side scroll and beat him up at some point. I think most of them were like versions of that or like at least, you know, action platforms. Yeah, I’ve got like a definite image of like Batman Returns and like the SNES or something being like a punching clans in that kind of style. Yeah, I only ever played the Megadrive version, which I understand is a lot worse. It was quite a rancid game actually. But yeah, so, no, I don’t know. It’s cool. I definitely think this is spot on. This is more and more what I’m going to going for on Game Pass. Less the 20 hour games and more the three to five hour things where I move on with my life afterwards. So yeah, if you enjoy sort of like baffling body parts being carried around by various dudes, you will enjoy this game. What’s the next game, Matthew? A little bit of Card Shark, which I think you also played. Yeah, I did. And it was too taxing for my little brain. What did you find? What was taxing about it? It’s the fact that it asks you to learn. So it’s like a card trick game made by Nerial, is that right? The developers of Reigns, who’s, you know, I enjoyed those games a lot. But it asks you to learn a new mechanic pretty much every level, or at least like all the levels I played. And you don’t really master the mechanics before they move on to another one. And I feel like I’m constantly like a real life hard drive on my PC, deleting space in my brain to make room for more mechanical sort of like knowledge of this game. And it just got a bit overwhelming. And I think I just found it more of a chore than fun. You know what I mean? Yeah, I just felt like the path through the story, like, it only teaches you what you specifically need to know. And if you return to something, I don’t know, I kind of cottoned on halfway through that like, if it was going to return to an idea that it hadn’t revisited for a bit, it would basically tutorialise it again. You could ask it, you know, you’d say like, do you remember this? And you’d be like, no. And he’d tell you again. So I felt like I only ever had to learn like the trick I was specifically using for that specific chapter. I think where it kind of goes a bit wrong is if you actually mess up and start losing. So in this game, you’re going around France, basically playing a load of card games where each one you’ve got a specific con you’re trying to pull. And you’re doing this to kind of you bet money and you take money from people as you beat them. But if you lose, you can basically you can die and then like resurrect. But maybe with like less money, you know, the various things can happen that you could basically put out where you have to then go and like earn enough money to buy back into the to the game. And it has a few locations you can go to. And at those locations, where you play for just general funds, it can tap into like any of the mini games that you’ve done already. And that’s where it does come unstuck. Because if you go there and it serves you up, it gives you a choice of three and you don’t remember any of them. You’re going to lose, which means you lose further money or you die again. And then you just get trapped in this cycle until it basically serves you up, like enough games you do remember. And I don’t know why it has that, that like gamey resource management in it, because it’s a linear story game. Like it should just be like you died. Well here’s a checkpoint. You just keep doing this mission again, because that’s what’s fun about the game, is going around doing the cons. Like trying to simulate the life, however lightly it does it, of a con man. That isn’t what this game really is, so it’s daft that they’ve even tried. So that’s the negative, but I do, when you are like in sync with it and you’re charging through the story, I really got into this. What I like about it is that it’s teaching you these individual cons, which are kind of a mixture of like memory tasks, quick time events, maybe some like timing, button presses, that kind of stuff. And I didn’t find them like individually too complex, but I think it does a really good job of using the framing to make them feel like quite high stakes and dangerous. So it’s the fact that someone’s teaching you this thing and in the kind of comfort of like you’re sort of travelling between places in like a horse and carriage, and he’s kind of teaching you and you can keep redoing them over and over again, but it’s quite kind of soft and gentle in that environment. But like, you know, they’ll say like, oh, we’re going up against this person like they’re they’re they’re really shit hot and you know, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble. And when you like walk into these scenes, it does like elevate it that there is this kind of like, sort of dramatic charge of like, watch out for this guy, we’re going to be in trouble like that, you know, can you do that thing that you mastered in the carriage? Can you do it like one time perfectly here? Which gives it, yeah, this sort of sense of like, you know, quite thrilling drama, which I actually really, really liked. It reminded me a little bit of like, you know, like in a Mission Impossible film where they explain the plan and then they have to do the plan and part of the thrill is like, you know how it’s meant to go and you can sort of see it going wrong or you can sort of see the wrinkles coming in that are going to make certain bits of it more stressful and that happens here, like maybe someone will accuse you or something will happen and you have to like modify the trick halfway through the round. I think it does quite a good job of serving up like twists like that, which that stuff I really, really clicked with. Yeah, I think the resource management thing is what I was getting at of like it makes the stakes of losing too annoying, too frustrating to like when really I kind of I just want a narrow to fail state and to start again really I think, which people might disagree with but I feel like I think this game auto saves when you lose as well so it’s like you are permanently stuck with your progress if you’re losing money and I just hated that, which is a shame because I did really love that beautiful art style, the presentation is lovely. Like you say there is the tricks themselves are really well sort of like well designed I suppose they’re just there’s like a mixture of complexity there’s like a simplicity to each one in terms like how they work mechanically but then sort of doing each one sort of like efficiently requires genuine skill so each of the tricks themselves are great in terms of like real events that you have to learn and you have to be quick thinking and like you say Amy Lake’s that mission impossible thing of like on the spot reacting and excitement for sure so yeah that part of the game is really good. Yeah I don’t know it’s just I just I just got bummed out by the money part so much early on that I just haven’t really gone back to it and I played about four hours of it I think and then I was just like ah this is just just slightly too hard work but yeah I can only play it for like two cons or three cons at a time right like it’s not like oh you can lose yourself in it there is something slightly I guess because it’s endlessly like you do the thing there’s a big tutorial section you do the thing there’s a big tutorial section it is kind of like repetitive in that sense but there are definitely segments where it all flows I think when it all clicks together and like you learn a thing and then something goes wrong during the con but you manage to pull it off without like failing once those moments I’d say are like good enough to make it like worthwhile playing for sure and it And it ticks the box of like, I like it when developers try to make a game based on a profession or a skill or a discipline that you haven’t seen in a game before. It’s a bit like, the simple appeal of papers, please, is kind of like, can you imagine a game where you play on border control? And you’re like, oh, well, I kind of want to see that. I like the idea of, can you imagine a game where you play as a really shit hot card shot? Like, yeah, I’m into that. So just for not being like, about, you know, boring things we’ve seen a thousand times before, it gets a few bonus points from me, I think. Yeah, I think that is the other thing is, when games have like, action games have such a simple core loop to them, you know, the combat is satisfying and gives you things to get excited about. It’s a lot harder when you’re doing something like this, where, you know, it is just some cards that you’re shuffling around, essentially, or, you know, you’re doing something around the tables and things like that. To make those mechanically interesting and dramatic takes genuine effort, you know, it’s not easy to do that. So yeah, I agree with you, they’ve done that really well. I would just say that people should probably, I reckon, like, if you are on the fence about it, I’d just wait till it’s, like, half price or something, because if I paid a tenner for it, I don’t think I would have thought twice about it much. But then, like, in the case I paid 20 quid for it, I was a bit there thinking, I don’t know, should I have bought Neon White instead? But, hey, that’s on me. Neon White looks too online for me. It does just- That’s my verdict. It does just look like horny Instagrams I’ve seen turned into, like, a shooter. Yeah, I’m like, nah. And I’ve seen people celebrate it for that fact, and I’m like, I’m just too old. Not everything has to be for me. Are you 36? You’re not that old, are you? I’m too old for, like, that kind of, that kind of internet culture, for sure. Okay, yeah, fair enough. Well, I still want to play a sort of card-based, sort of a fast-paced, shootery thing, but I did have a similar thing, for a thing of like, I don’t, I’m not really into like, anime, porny, skull nonsense. That’s not really where I’m at in my life these days, so. Yeah, that’s, yeah, maybe it’s not an age thing, it’s an attitude thing, but. Yeah. I just, yeah, that’s fine. Yeah, the valuable perspectives of two men who live in Bath. Okay, good, in their 30s. So I’m going to bundle two together here, Matthew, because these are replays I’ve been doing on Switch. So I blasted through Hotline Miami 2, wrong number again, and I’ve been playing a lot of Red Faction Guerrilla on Switch as well. So I think I played Hotline Miami 2 once a year at this point, and every year I play it, I become more and more certain it’s better than the first one. I think that’s because all of the things that people found annoying about the second game versus the first. So, you know, top-down action game, we’re just kind of like trying to combo together as many kills as you can while swapping between sort of guns and weapons and using doors to knock people over, throwing items at people to knock them over, and just keeping that combo going. And this very bloody 80s aesthetic. The first one feels more and more like a proof of concept to me. And the second one is like the real shit. And the things that people don’t like about the second one, it’s got quite an obnoxious amount of baffling story. And some of the levels are super big, which doesn’t necessarily suit the mechanics. I’ve like, the story bit I still don’t really care about. But the actual gameplay, I’ve come to terms with more and more as I’ve mastered it more and more. There are these sections in the game, like a lot of them are just set in Miami and you’re going through these little rooms and just killing people as quickly as possible, quick restarting when you die, and then just trying to get a high score. There are these levels that really frustrate the people where you’re in these gigantic army bases and for the first time in these levels, I’ve unlocked the flamethrower and I’ve never used this weapon before, and that has completely transformed those sections into like, I’m going a bit apocalypse now brain playing it. I’m going in and being like, fucking yes, burn and like set fire to shit and like getting the really high scores I was never able to get on those levels of regular guns because the levels are just too big. But here it’s like, because the fire spread so fast and because it’s so satisfying to watch enemies burn, I feel like I’ve finally got the DNA of why those levels are actually good. I finally see why those levels are great. And so, yeah, I just really, really just so such a cathartic game to play, so nasty and cheap in a lot of ways. But like, I just, I think like it got sevens mostly at sevens. And I think it’s like a nine for sure. I just, every year I’m more and more certain it’s like a masterpiece. And yeah, it’s just the first game just gives you like a third of what this game gives you, I think, which is just that extra level of mastery, different approaches you can take, characters who are very distinctive in terms of like play style, some are like non-lethal characters, some characters are like two characters and one’s got a chainsaw and one’s got a gun, some’s like a big fat dude who’s got like a nail gun and can kill people with his fists and stuff. It’s like just a lot of different things going on and fantastic for the Switch, of course. This is always like a PS Vita sort of heritage series, but makes sense on Switch. So I don’t know why I’m continually obsessed with this one, Matthew. I love that it was said human flesh that finally awoke your love for this. I think it’s because I never saw the animations of what happens to the different dudes when you set them on fire. And it’s so nasty, but like, I don’t know, it just suits it quite well. And like just the flame effects are just lovely, sending them down a corridor and watching three dudes burn. That’s I mean, I sound terrible. I sound like a war criminal there, but I promise you it’s good shit. God, I do sound a bit twisted there, don’t I? But, you know, I have these different sides to my brain. Sometimes I’ll play mutant ninja tales and laugh at a man’s pair of disembodied legs. And then sometimes I’ll set some dudes on fire and have a great time. I’d rather you had these thoughts in a video game than in real life. Now, in real life, I’m much more tepid. I’m just a bit like annoyed that people are taking too long at the self-service checkouts. But I’m not there thinking I wish I could set these people on fire. Just to be very clear about that to anyone listening. So yeah, there’s that. And then the other one, like I said, is Red Faction Guerrilla, Matthew. So I installed this for the first time on my Switch. I’ve talked about this before, I think, in the 2009 Games episode. This is the game where it’s set on Mars and you can destroy buildings with weapons, basically. And that’s kind of a big part of the fun. It’s a shooter, but the structure of the different buildings is the real appeal of it. And the best thing about the game secretly is Wrecking Crew mode, which is essentially a score attack where you’re given a series of buildings, specific tools, and then told do as much damage as you can as quickly as possible. And then there’s like online leaderboards you can go check afterwards. And that’s really, really fun because you’ll have things like a singularity bomb, which basically creates like a black hole. It will pull two different buildings towards it and then literally spin the buildings in midair and then blow up and then throw the different buildings outwards and then they can smash into other buildings. And it’s just beautiful to watch this kind of granular destruction. Shocked by how well it runs on Switch actually, because sometimes you see these ports on Switch where you’re like, what’s that, Half-Ass? Especially for a game this old. But no, genuine love got into it. I hear not as good if you’re plugging into your telly, but on handheld it’s perfect. And I’m now third, second or first in the leaderboard for every single map in this game. So that’s… What, online? What? Yeah, the caveat is there aren’t that many people playing it. Some maps only have like 12 people playing them. But I will say to the listeners, if you want to get Red Faction Guerrilla, go into Wrecking Crew, go to Challenge Mode, come fucking get me. Let’s start like a thing here because I’m well up for it. I like that there’s so few people playing, you can treat the online global leaderboards as your own private leaderboard. It’s like a friend’s leaderboard, but around the world basically. Oh, that’s so good. Were you good at this back in the day or… Yeah, I was. was this like a new discovery? No, I was always good at this. Me and my friend Andrew have been playing this over and over again over the years. When I went to his house recently, two weeks ago, we were hungover and we were just playing this mode over and over again, competing with each other to try and get the highest score. The good thing is that the leaderboard thing is almost like a separate mode within the thing, because normally you can choose whichever weapons you want. If you think that throwing remote mines at the base of a tower to blow it up is the most fun thing, you can just do that. You can have an all remote mines round, or there’s a gun that melts different beams of different buildings, so you can just granulary melt different supports until the whole thing just collapses like a pancake or something. It’s just such a nicely done system that hasn’t really been replicated anywhere else. Over the years, I’ve come back to it a couple of times. When they last did the remaster, I played it a bit on PC, but on Switch, it just seems to be a perfect home, and I did buy it for about three quid, so I’m pretty happy. Yeah, it’s really good. So, yeah, to the listeners out there, if you want to join me in challenge mode, come get it. There’s a guy called Mr. Ox, I think he’s called, who he’s been the one I’ve been trying to unseat on every leaderboard, and I like the idea of him coming back to his Switch and just being fucking furious and going like Tony Montana in his apartment because someone has gone and meticulously knocked him off of every single leaderboard in this game. So everyone should name themselves like variations on Mr. Ox, or like messengers to Mr. Ox. Fuck you Mr. Ox kind of thing, yeah, yeah, eat shit Mr. Ox, etc. But yes, it’s been really satisfying to do. I spent all night last night trying to like get up on these leaderboards, Matthew, it’s preposterous. And like the deeper into the list of these maps you go, the fewer and fewer people can even be bothered to like log leaderboard scores. And so there are some, there’s like one level that’s particularly bad, but I think there’s like six people around the world who have logged scores. But if you want to join me, get involved because it’s fantastic. So yeah, that’s what I’ve been playing on Switch. Those are my comfort games, Matthew. I hope you enjoyed that. So what’s your next game? I’ve played a few levels of Sniper Elite 5, which I don’t think we’ve talked about before. No, it had this surprise spread of reviews from kind of like, yeah, it’s fine, it’s more Sniper Elite, to like, holy hell, this is amazing, got a Eurogamer essential. So which was kind of enough to get me to download something. A series I haven’t had a huge amount of love for in the past. You know, they’ve always been sort of fine. I think the big problem I have with the Sniper Elite games is that, you know, the sniping and the x-ray kill cams and all that jazz is sort of fine, but there also comes a time where the game isn’t about sniping. You know, the levels have like a range of like sniping and close combat stuff, and I’ve always found that quite unsatisfying. And the fantasy of just like, you know, basically completing the whole level with just a sniper rifle, a bit like I imagine like the sniper mode in Hitman. It’s kind of like what I actually want Sniper Elite to be, but actually it’s a game which I feel like undermines the fun of sniping at every turn. But what, yeah, from what I’ve played of this one, like it’s definitely a lot more comfortable at like mixing up the kind of scale. So there’s lots of stuff where it feels like, oh yeah, this is like sniping time. But then the close combat stuff is feels that much tighter and the way it kind of slips between the two modes feels a bit more elegant. Like I saw some reviewers throw around like Phantom Pain saying it was like Phantom Pain esque, which is the main reason I played it. I was like, well, you know, that kind of sandbox stealth, I think is a dream. That’s why I downloaded it. Yeah, I don’t think it’s quite as freeform as that from what I’ve played so far. Like there is definitely some like in the first few levels, like a lot of like bullshit hedgerows kind of forcing you down certain routes. Like it feels more like, you know, maybe there are there are like smaller clusters, which you have kind of complete freedom to approach from any angle. But like around those clusters, there’s a lot of map where there is it’s a bit more kind of prescribed. So it hasn’t hasn’t quite ticked the the oh, my dream of like more Phantom Pain, which is what I’d hoped. But in terms of like feeling quite like, like I say, like quite a nice sniping game, quite a nice stealth game, quite a nice up close action game. That to me feels like a big improvement as someone who hasn’t played a huge amount of the other sniper elites. I also wonder if I’m just like the appeal of like the X-Ray cam and stuff just like I’ve just, you know, once you’ve seen them being extremely horrible, like three games ago, it’s kind of harder to kind of like really surprise or dazzle with that stuff. You know, I never thought there would come a time, like when I was a kid, you know, teenager playing games and you could, they started introducing options to like tone down like violence or turn off kill cams and he’d be like, who would ever do that? And now I realise I’m like, I’ve got to a point where I’m like, yeah, I, you know, this is more probably, you know, I’d rather be surprised like once every 20 minutes rather than seeing kind of just like livers pop like five a minute, you know? Yeah. It’s also a slightly kind of a time saving thing as well. It’s like, you know, I kind of want to get on my day a little bit. Yeah. I mean, I remember like, was it like Charlie Brooker who got put in one of these games and it was like, that was like a thing, a skit he did on one of his various TV shows. Look at me and Sniper Elite playing a Nazi or something. Something like that happened. So yeah, like that’s been around for a while. So for me, the interest is like seeing people compare it to something like Phantom Pain and being like, you know, just in videos, you know, snapshots of it, it does look a bit like it and it’s, it is exciting to watch. But yeah, like you say, there is only one Phantom Pain really. So yeah, it just, it just shows you actually like just how sophisticated Phantom Pain is and how they really thought like every gameplay mechanic in that game is tuned so beautifully. Like here, there’s just a little bit of roughness to like everything kind of like whether it’s something like, you know, a button cue like appearing like a microsecond too late or a particular animation not feeling as nice or like the fact that you can mantle this and not mantle that. Like it just, you know, I think that they nail like, Kojima’s crew like nailed every single bit. This is kind of like, you know, it feels like, oh, you know, like another, another, well, I don’t even know if more time would do it. I just don’t know, you know, if you just have to have like the insane eye of Kojima to actually notice this stuff, but it just shows you like the general like feel of the thing is just ever so slightly kind of not as good. Also there’s still problems with like alert phases in this game. Like I had a thing, there’s the second level, it’s got this like big castle in it, it’s like the centerpiece and you kind of walk around this big sort of stately manor thing. And like I did a loud gunshot at one point and you’ve got like a sort of you know x-ray vision type thing where you can kind of go into like hyper awareness and see people like moving about through walls and stuff. And I could just see every guard in this castle, so probably about 30 guards, like all running up the same staircase toward me, like it just alerted everyone. And like I would say outside of that it is pretty good for like localized alert phases. Like it feels fair, like if you do a gunshot in a particular area it’s like in ear shot of these certain characters and then maybe one will radio in and then the sphere will kind of increase and that all makes sense. But like in this one location it was like every mistake brought like an entire castles worth of people to a single room which is just bad, like that stuff still happens. So yeah like not quite feeling you’re a gamer essential personally but it’s certainly like diverting enough game pass download. Yeah like that’s exactly the thing with game pass isn’t it, I wouldn’t have bought this probably but it’s spot on for that. And I do like the idea that they have committed to making one type of game basically Rebellion, they’ll make this game and they’ll refine it each time and then add things each time and it has an audience that’s cool. Yeah, so yeah. I will buy the level I’m at now is like the level all the reviews go nuts for which is like a kind of like St. Michael’s Mount type thing. It’s like a big building on like an island that you have to cross like a tidal causeway type thing to get to, which apparently is a bit more open and interesting. So we shall see. That sounds cool. Love a bit of St. Michael’s Mount. Isn’t there a French? That’s what it’s called. There’s a French one too, right? Are they like, is there two very similar ones? Is there one in France and one in like Cornwall or something? Yeah, the one in Cornwall St. Michael’s Mount. Yeah, it’s like, yeah, well, this is the front. This is the France one. Yeah. Why are there like two of them? I never really looked into that. I don’t know. What’s the French from out? Yeah, it’s Mont Saint-Michel. Yeah, okay. That’s weird. I should look up why there are two of those. That’s weird. We’ll just have the same thing but in two different countries. That’s strange. I suppose it’s Disneyland. They just had to localise it for the British. I feel like, does the British one have a Greggs on it? I feel like that’s going to be the difference. Yeah, okay. Very good. I’m going to play that now because I want to see that level. That’s, that’s, that’s. Yeah. It’s like how I almost played through Call of Duty World War II to play the level where you were like undercover at some Nazi base or something and people were like, oh yeah, it’s the one good level in this game. Yeah. But it was interesting, like, Rix, you’re a gamer review. Like I think this level like, like is what got the game in the essential. Like most, a lot of the reviewers about this specific level. Like he’s just like, this level is so good that, you know, you’re like, well, I obviously have to play that. That’s like a recommendation you can’t avoid. Right. Yeah. I will, I will, I will endeavor to see that before I die on this planet. Okay, good. So last up from me, Matthew, it’s God of War 2. PlayStation 2 games. So listeners might know that one of the episodes we’re doing this later this year, whenever Ragnarok comes out, is we’re going to do the God of War games ranked. We’re going to do a complete thing on that series. So I’m knocking through the three games in the series I’ve never finished, starting with this one. I’m right near the end of this one now, God of War 2. And I played the original God of War a few years ago on the HD remaster they did, because I was always a bit bewildered by why my peers were so into this series, but I didn’t really click with them. And I think it’s partly because I was looking at them the wrong way. I think I thought of them as versions of Devil May Cry, alternatives to Devil May Cry, 3D action games. And they are a little bit, but they’re mostly meant to be blockbuster games. And that seems so obvious playing this one, which is so set PC, so big on like monstrously large QTEs and, you know, boss encounters and just lots of general kind of silliness and spectacle. But you realize that these are kind of like more like the Uncharted to their day, really. That’s what these games were kind of for. And I think they are best enjoyed when whacked down to easy, you just blast through it, ripping dudes apart and enjoying the different powers. This one is so, so good, though. Like, and I think that one thing I’ll probably I’ll save it more for the podcast. But what I think is interesting is I think that maybe there’s a sense that these games got a little too puerile or they were too basic for like to exist in the modern age or something like that. But I feel like they were never bad. They just probably did a few too many of them too quickly. So the formula got a bit tired. So they did need a kind of like a reset. But this is, you know, probably the peak of these, this this version of God of War. And I just absolutely loved it just it really is like it turns basically Greek mythology into WWE, like just lots of post mad posturing preposterous dialogue, silly voice acting, the voice acting really a lot of them do sound like wrestlers, I’ll be honest. And like, I think I just really, I think I found the first one a little bit dry when I played it at the time. But this one just takes it to the next level of like silliness and spectacle. And like, it’s just so comically violent that it’s very hard to be offended by, I think. So yeah, I’m absolutely loving it. But I’m guessing you played this 15 years ago, Matthew. I replayed one to three just before the reboot came out. Okay. But because I played them so close together, they tend they sort of blur into each other in terms of like what the big set pieces and sort of thrust of them are. What’s the big opening of this game? This is the Colossus of Rose. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. That’s great. That’s amazing. That’s really fun. I like a box that’s also a building. You have to climb inside. That’s good. Yeah. I’m completely with you. Like, I think playing these through on like easy and just getting rid of things. I think the combat’s fine. I think it like, you know, holds up well enough when I replayed it then. But yeah, I think like, you just want to enjoy like the momentum of this thing and like the mad thing it does next. And it’s quite well paced in terms of like, you know, here’s a great boss. Here’s a great set piece. Here’s a little puzzle. Here’s a new area or location, you know, that it’s it’s it definitely doesn’t like waste your time, which I like. Yeah, it’s sort of it’s big on like, what I like about these games as well, they were very big on easy to understand mechanics, like quite chunky feeling puzzles in terms of like, everything’s very tactile. It’s like, grab a thing, push a thing that you use, it uses Kratos’ strength most of the time, those kind of puzzles or like, you know, really nice feeling climbing mechanics and platforming and stuff like it does everything very, very well. I think maybe these original God of War are just slightly underrated by today’s sort of modern standards of what we consider good action games and stuff. But yeah, I’m absolutely loving it. The second one is clearly better than the first. The first one is the Hydra at the start, and then there’s a boring level in the desert. That’s all I remember about the first one. The first, I remember playing the first one when that first huge quick time event kicks off with like the big flaming button queue above the Hydra’s head. Yeah. I was instantly like, oh, this is, this is really cool how they’ve presented this. Like that felt like just a big, you know, game changer of a moment. But you’re like, oh, I get why people are nuts about this. Yeah. So, yeah, I’m excited about third one and climbing Olympus to go beat Zeus up. That should be. The third one starts so hard and then it’s like, I just don’t remember the rest of it. No, it’s the third one is like kind of has three peaks, if I remember. And then it’s not really that it’s kind of just a repeat in between. But it does look very, very nice. He goes to hell a lot in these games. He’s like always falling down to hell and then climbing back up. Yeah. It’s funny, his version of like Samus losing her powers is like Zeus being like, no, fuck you, you’re not the god of war anymore. And like different versions of that happening basically. So yeah, it’s funny, but very, very enjoyable. So did you have one more thing you wanted to discuss here, Matthew? The tiniest of shout out for Point P. More of a, hey, if you have Netflix, you also have Point P. It’s one of the Netflix games games, which is like a very easy part of Netflix to have not seen because it’s like in the app on iPhone or Android, like, you know, they’re not part of the TV service, but they’ve added games which you can download and play through through Netflix now, including this, which is the new game from the person who made Downwell. This one is kind of like reverse Downwell in that you’re going up. You play as this little thing that’s collecting fruit to sort of feed this giant, like, angry blue monster who’s at the bottom of the screen, and the blue monster kind of shouts out recipes for fruit that he wants to eat. And you have to collect that combo of fruit in the given time, or he goes mental and sets everything on fire. And that can only happen a couple of times before you die. So you’re constantly sort of jumping upwards, ricocheting off walls and like angling your jumps to try and collect these fruit chains to feed this guy. I’m absolutely terrible at it, I must admit. But it’s very, very sort of like charmingly drawn. Like Downwell was a bit kind of sort of spooky retro. This is a lot more kind of like colourful and sort of friendly looking. I must admit, I saw Joe Scribs talking about how good the ending of this game was. So I just went and YouTube it because I’m incredibly lazy. And yeah, it’s like quite, it has got quite a spectacular end. Isn’t just an endless climber forever. Like there, you know, there are, there is an end in sight. Also, like, you’re not always having to do it from the bottom. Like as you make progress, it’s kind of checkpointed. So if you do die, you start higher up. So you’re constantly kind of chipping away at it, making progress. If you’re into those kind of time wastery sort of, you know, it’s not a breakout game, but kind of bouncing a thing at angles game, you’ll probably get a kick out of this. Yeah, OK, good. I have installed this and I think I only really, you know, obviously I’m quite plugged into what’s going on with games. So I know this exists, but I do wonder how a regular person would know to go and find this. Yeah. Because, you know, it’s a Devolver published game, right? And it’s sort of like that, you know, Netflix spent a bunch of subscriber money getting this made. So they must have thought it was important. Yeah. So yeah. They’re getting San Barlo’s things launching on there as well this year. Yeah. That’s what it was. Immortality, right? Yeah. So yeah, like I assume I’ll only have to be able to play that on my phone, but I would like to play on my TV if I could. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, like, I think it’s interesting that you do have like access to these games. It could be like an Apple Arcade type thing, because I like that. But I think the thing that the big box it takes for me is it’s like more stuff in a subscription I already have, but it’s not asking me to sign up for something else. Yeah, for sure. Like I very briefly had the Google Play Pass, like as a free trial, and I played like one game on it. And I was like, well, I just this is no reason for this to slot into my life. But Netflix is something the one thing I pay for by default every month without really thinking about it. So yeah, like that is good. And you know, it’s already like, it’s not like a formidable lineup, but it’s getting there. It’s like, it’s all right. And there’s an okay amount of stuff on there. And they seem very committed to growing it. So we could a year from now, it could be quite a good little. I don’t want this to be like a situation where like, to get your new favourite game from your favourite creator, you have to sign up to like Paramount Plus. You know, like that is, I am not in the mood for that. I’m pretty annoyed I have to fucking pay for Paramount Plus to watch the Halo TV show, to be honest. Couldn’t you get that done in a free trial? Yeah, I’m going to have to wait till it stacks up because they’re releasing it weekly of course even though it’s fucking out in America. So the Halo TV show, why is that not something that you can watch on Game Pass Ultimate? That should just be like a perk of that. Surely that would be spot on. Yeah, what a miss. That’s mad. Yeah, instead of have to go and sign up to Paramount Plus. I’m not going to watch Yellowstone, Matthew. I’m not interested. Not all of us get excited by it. I want to watch new Star Trek with the incredibly handsome Captain Pike. Yeah, Space Starship Daddy, as my partner called him. That was good. Okay, good. In which case, Matthew, we’ve done the What We’ve Been Playing in record time for us, one hour, ten minutes. Which is good, because we’ve got a lot of questions here. So do you want to read out this first extremely long one from Danny Mann, villain of the Discord? Not really. Danny Mann, our arch nemesis. Hello, Bath Boys. Late last year I completed Resident Evil Village. It was my first ever Ressie game and I enjoyed it immensely. The game seemed to get a lot of credit for two of its bosses in particular, Lady Dimitrescu and Donna Beneviento. I won’t mention Dimitrescu because, as we’re all aware, this is not a horny podcast, correct. However, Beneviento hit me a little differently to most people, I feel. I started playing the game in November last year but in December I was due to become a father to our baby girl. This being our first child, I was somewhat bricking it with all the usual new parental anxieties, constantly wondering, will I be a good dad, am I going to fuck up their lives, how can I justify to my partner buying Sims expansions instead of nappies, etc. In one of the final weekends before the due date, I reached the Donna Beneviento boss fights. Already subconsciously worried about babies, I was now being actually attacked by an actual giant talking waddling foetus in a game. It had literally manifested the thing I was most worried about in the whole world and forced me to confront it in an unwinnable game of hide and seek. What makes this even worse is that it constantly calls out daddy, which doesn’t sound too different to my actual name Tanning. This felt like the giant foetus equivalent of Psycho Mantis scanning your memory card to mention other games you play just to freak you out. But in the end I eventually killed the giant baby and now have my own real life giant baby to look after. Everything ended well both in game and in real life. Which brings me to my question. Has a game ever affected you on a personal level for reasons you didn’t expect? I mean, congratulations to Danny Man who has tricked us both into reading a GameStat op-ed. That’s everything I stand against. How about you Matthew? Personal level for reasons you don’t expect? I think one of the reasons I’m so obsessed with Last Window, the sequel to Hotel Dusk, is that I reviewed it over an August Bank holiday, if I remember correctly, and I used to always go down and see my folks at August Bank holiday weekends, and they’d often have like quite big gatherings down at their house that lots of their friends from home would come and visit as well. We’d have like quite big do’s or whatever, and I remember being in this place with lots of people and playing this game and feeling like a little bit sort of sorry for myself that I was, you know, being like anti-social. I was obviously very happy playing the game, but it’s a bit, yeah, so I don’t mean this to be too depressing, but just feeling like I remember like in my life at the time, like a little bit unfocused, you know, I’d been bathed in for quite a while, been single for a long time and just thinking like, oh, you know, not like a huge amount going on. And that game is about kind of loners in this building and the kind of something coming to an end. It’s got quite this like, like melancholic air to it. And I just, I don’t know, I just, I feel like I just really kind of, it like, I was, it was on the same wavelength as me at that particular time. So which is probably why it’s like so ingrained as this like Castle favorite. Hmm, that’s a really good answer. I like that. Actually, I think one of the reasons I have struggled to get through Red Dead Redemption 2 is because I think the ending of Red Dead Redemption is so powerful, the first one. And like, this insists on continuing that story or finding new ways to like tell that story. And like, that story is done in my head. So I just played the first mission again recently where you go and rescue John Marston off that mountain. And like, they’re all talking to him like, oh, he’s kind of like the younger brother of the group and stuff like that. And I’m like, why is why am I seeing John Marston again? Like, his story was told so perfectly. Why do I have to hear that story once more? And so I kind of like, in that respect, I thought I think I bounced off of the idea of like, we couldn’t tell another Western story. We just had to like, continue telling the story of this gang. And that’s not to take away from the many amazing things that game does. But I just leave John Marston alone. Just like leave it alone. Because in my head, that’s a perfect moment of a video game. And I know how you feel about hanging out with your kids and shit in the final chapters of that first game. But like, I find that weird. The obsession with going back a bit strange with Red Dead Redemption 2. I don’t get it really. I understand the main character in it. They do a very good job of bringing him to life. But yeah, I don’t know. Sometimes I think these things affect you and it’s okay to just leave them and move on. And so I get bummed out seeing John Marston again. There’s no more light needed to be shed. Yeah. I mean, it’s sort of a game about like, legends and reputation as well. You know, as are many tales of the West. So I can sort of see why it might want to like, analyse that particular period. But I do get what you mean. Like when you’ve got a perfect ending, it seems like, well, I say perfect. When you’ve got an ending that lots of people seem to think is good. I can understand why it would be jarring to go back, but I don’t know. It feels like a genre where you can have those kind of thoughts. Yeah, for sure. But I think it’s just you can use a different set of characters to tell that story, I think. Yeah. But yeah, hey, you know, I should play more of it before I make a proper judgment. But yeah, it is weird as a big Rockstar fan that I’ve never managed to conquer that game. I don’t really know why. It’s a bit of an oddity. But I went a bit off topic there, Matthew. So let’s move on to the next question. I don’t think we read this one last time. Dear the big arsed of us, part 2. That’s a reference to a previous gag. So can Matthew please clarify the difference between games that are a bit la-de-dar and those that are a bit diddle-dee. I can’t be alone in my need for the podcast lexicon to really be nailed down at this point. Keeping up the good, etc. Andy Humphreys. Did we talk about this before, Matthew? I can’t remember. I don’t think so. No. So yeah, go ahead. Well, I mean, it’s pretty obvious. La-de-dar, as pretentious. Yeah. That’s Gorogoa. So Gorogoa is very la-de-dar. Oh, that’s so harsh. That game’s so good. No, you can still be good. And la-de-dar. That isn’t like absolutely damning. It’s just a fact. It is la-de-dar. And it’s actually D-diddle-y-dee, rather than diddle-y-dee. D-diddle-y-dee is twee. Like that game about that dog that does the paints, painting. What’s that? I’ve never heard of that game. What’s that? There’s that dog that paints. He paints the world. It’s like black and white and he paints it. Oh, is it Chicory of Color? Yeah, Chicory. Any game which is about being friends and being a good person. Lots of games about, I’ll tell you what’s very D-diddle-y-dee, all these games about running coffee shops, or games about how nice it is to write a letter to your friends. They’re D-diddle-y-dee. And it’s not for me. It’s like wholesome direct. It’s not really aimed at me, but it’s fine. It’s fine that these things exist, but let’s not pretend they’re profound, that they are extremely la-dee-da, or D-diddle-y-dee, and that’s fine. There was some good stuff for the wholesome direct this year. I was like, that game Terra Nail looks rad, actually. That’s going to be good. But yes, D-diddle-y-dee, that’s so good. It’s like, oh, yeah, I get it. You’re a doggy, Paints. I do sort of get what you mean. Yeah, so it’s sort of like, it’s pretentious versus tweet, essentially. Yeah. But like I said, like Animal Crossing is a bit D-diddle-y-dee, but that’s fine. That’s fine. I like that. Yeah. Yeah, there’s room for that in Matthew Castle’s world. He reserves the right to make fun of it for amusement on a podcast, which is what we’re here for. So that’s why I always say it’s a bit one of those things. It’s not fully that. If it was fully that, if it was only pretentious, or only twee, then I wouldn’t be interested, but it could be a bit lardy da. Never go full diddley dee. That’s my think-art’s advice. Okay. Next one. You’ve got another really long one to read out here. People are sending us whole op-eds here, Matthew. Dearest greetings, podmeisters. This is the right one, right? Yeah. I went out for a walk while listening to the most recent mailbag, and at the time of writing I am literally lost in the middle of some woods in the West Midlands. To stave off thoughts of starvation or of getting harangued to death by Slender Man’s Staffordshire based equivalent, I thought I would send any mail in. Really wish fast travel was a real thing right about now. What game mechanic would you most want to bring into your everyday lives? Keep up the pod and please send help, says James. I hope you’re still alive to listen to the answer. Yeah, yeah. It’s the next one that’s really long. That was my mistake. So yeah, I thought about this when reading James’ question that the escape rope in Pokemon would be so, so good. I’m lost in a location or I’m quite far away from anywhere else. I’ll just use an escape rope to get back to the nearest Pokemon Center. Or I don’t know what the equivalent would be, like Sainsbury’s in Bath or something. Yeah, home probably makes sense. Yeah. But weirdly, they take you back to the Pokemon Center. So instead, I don’t know if I would get sent to a building I go to a lot, but I don’t live there. That was kind of how I saw that mechanic in my head. But yeah, the other… Jason’s kitchen. But I couldn’t guarantee it’d be there. I couldn’t guarantee it’d be there. That’s the problem. Oh yeah. It might be bundled up in the back of his van, which would be awkward. Yeah, I’ll just wake up in the van. He should just manifest in his garage. Yeah, very good. Or just like crammed into that little hut in the Thai hut. That would be a bit awkward. It’s closed. You’re banging on it. Let me out. You’re like, wait, am I locked? I’m locked inside the Thai hut with all the Thai hut food. Yeah, they take the food home with them, sadly. But yes, not that I’ve been breaking in or anything. How do you know? You always see them bring the food because they’re always lifting it out of the car when they get there. I would assume that they don’t leave anything there. Maybe they leave some peanuts there or something. Oh, you’d eat those. You’d eat the toppings, peanuts and coriander. Well, especially if I’m stuck there till the next day or like Thursday or Wednesday when they reopen. If I’m in there on a Sunday, I’ve got to survive until the next Wednesday. They’ll come in and they’ll just be like basically just a pile of turds in the corner and lots of like peanut shells. You would just coriander all around your mouth. About a stone lighter. Well, that’s what would happen, isn’t it? I mean, I would hope that if I banged enough, someone would let me out. But there’s that slightly bewildered looking man next door who’s always wearing a scarf and has some kind of like smoker’s cough. He might let me out, I don’t know. So yeah, but also what if I got there in January and where they didn’t reopen until March? That’s like, I’ll be dead. I mean, that’s a film. That’s whatever that film was about. Stuck in the gorge. Like a man got stuck in a tie hut for three months. Yeah, like a localized bath version. Yeah, so I suppose that would be, I would like an escape rope because I like the idea of going for a walk, but I sometimes don’t like the idea of walking back. So, you know, I just walk into the middle of a bath countryside and use the escape rope. That’d be pretty good. Or using fly in Pokemon. That’s kind of like the escape rope, isn’t it? It’s like, I’ll just fly off somewhere or diglet. Diglet’s like also an escape rope. So yeah, yeah. Those, I think ways to get out of situations is my whole deal. How about you, Matthew? I’d like an auto sorting inventory. So like anything you need to organize, you can just say like, I want it in alphabetical order. I want it in size. Or if you’re doing your shopping, to just be able to put like everything in any bag and then for it to auto sort like this is frozen, this is meats, this is fizzy drinks. That would make for very good unpacking. So I’d like that. Resi 4 inventory management. Yeah. Like I hate rooting around in my bag when I can’t find like my keys or something. But this way it’d be like, I imagine it being like the inventory in Resident Evil, like with a grid. Yeah. Just you can look at a thing and you instantly know what you need and that would be good. You have handguns here, two eggs here. From Final Fantasy 15, having like a friend I can just hand like raw ingredients to and then they cook me like Michelin-starred food like instantly. That would be good. I’d appreciate that. I get that you could actually have that. That’s something that could happen in real life. You just have to find the right person. Yeah. He kind of gets away with it because he’s like royalty, isn’t he? So that dude’s got to cook for him basically. That’s his job. I’d also like, my last one is I’d quite like to be able to like, I wish the real world had like, like personality meters or meters that let you see your standing with people, just so you could look at them and know if they were like genuinely like, yes, this person has a lot of affection for me or like this person is like just they’re so clearly like pissed off so I’d know to avoid them for a bit. Just a very, yeah, just like very kind of clear cut kind of like way of reading people’s like inner, inner minds. Basically, Matthew wants a fable situation where he can just start farting to increase people’s like impression of him. Just like, oh, you know, you’re great to spend time with because you do hilarious farts and little dances and stuff. Yeah, basically, that’s what I’m going for. I’d like, I’ll tell you what I use it for. You know how in like Pret a Manger, apparently, they can they can give free stuff out like X amount of free stuff to people. Yeah. I’d like to see which people get the free stuff. I’d like to see like what they have that I don’t have. So it’d be like a comparison thing too. I’d like to compare my stats to theirs. I’ve had it twice. See why I’m not making the cut. I’ve had it twice. Yeah. You’ve had it twice. Yeah. I had a free cookie and a free sandwich. What? Yeah. It was like the two different ones in Bath. So the small one I got in Bath and the big one I got in Bath. I don’t know if it still happens after the pandemic. It feels like maybe that was a pre-pandemic thing. But yeah, I went in at a quiet moment and this nice woman let me have a cookie for free. I went to prep every lunch for two years when I was on NGamer and I never got anything free. If there’s one RPG style stat I have in real life, I call it food pity. It’s like a perk. I think that it means that I get given extra portions when I go to places because I just look like a hungry motherfucker and I think they’re like, whatever it is, it’s happened. Over and over again, it used to happen at the Future Cafe. I think I get more chicken at the Thai Hut sometimes. I honestly think people take food pity on me and give me more food and it is like the start of Fallout New Vegas. You select this perk. I swear I have it in real life. People just take food pity on me. Really? Surely you take food pity on people who are abnormally skinny. Yeah, you would think so, but an overweight man who looks like he really needs a sandwich all the time, for some reason that just works. You know what I mean? There’s like a neediness in your eyes. I really do think that this is the case. Or like recently we got like a lot of banana bread from the coffee shop we go to. I think I just get that impression out of people. So yeah, that is a real life RPG style. I think I have food pity. Yeah. So that’s good. Yeah. I wish I could have thought of a more inventive answer to this now because you had quite a lot there, Matthew. But yeah, an escape route is all I could think of. I would happily exchange the things I asked for for an escape route. Like the idea of only having to walk like one way to a place and then just teleport home. I often fantasize about like building a bridge from like my my flat to like the location I’m going to, like a direct bridge or like an underground tunnel or something. Well, I’ve got a child’s brain and I’m bored after the pandemic, basically. That’s just, it happens like probably once a month, I think about that. But yeah. Okay, next question, Matthew. I think we dwelled on that one long enough. Hello to Yushinaka’s greatest nemesis and their accomplice. Congratulations on making the best video game podcast to listen to. I’ve had plenty of work afternoons perked up by your fun and insightful chats about the ideal mini consoles, retrospectives and looking into the future. Really well done, pals. That was before the last GameScore episode, though, so who knows if he still feels this way. I’ve been an avid reader of gaming magazines since an early age. Take that, The Gruffalo. It’s Edge magazine for this boy. I don’t get that reference, but I’m sure someone does. And I remember… You didn’t read The Gruffalo as a child, the child’s book. No, I was too busy reading Monty the Dog that Wears Glasses and then the various spin-offs of Monty the Dog that Wears Glasses. Monty goes to the supermarket and stuff, so… Waste a pair of glasses on a dog. It’s a good question. The author follows me on Twitter, actually. He’s a really nice guy. He just posts quite NAF rhyming couplets every now and then. That’s his whole thing. Colin West. He’s a good dude. And I remember the cataclysmic change when Nintendo Official Magazine changed its name to Official Nintendo Magazine from NOM to ONM. That’s when it became good. I would agree with that, yeah. And also, they started binding it properly so it didn’t just fall apart when you got it back from the supermarket. The early noughties Nintendo Official Magazine was the most collapsible magazine other than Games Master. The mornings when the new copy of ONM arrived, I would find the quietest corner of my school library to sneak a read at the latest DS games, since being found out to be a Nintendo fan was equivalent to stamp collecting in terms of lame hobbies at the time. What? This is like the early noughties. That’s just not true, Matthew, is it? This is like me saying no one had an Xbox. Yeah, it’s just this happened. One person one time said something, so this was what all people were experiencing this. One day, someone in my year caught me with a copy of O&M with a great big Animal Crossing Wild World cover, and it turns out he was also an O&M subscriber too. We instantly became best friends, had lost days to brawl rematches, and raced to finish to crossword in Shoryuken Saduko. I wonder if it’s Jay Bayliss, I wonder if he knows Jay Bayliss, and that’s what this story is about. Alas, my friend moved away to Madrid, then London, and we’ve lost touch for seven years. He’s got off social media, and I have no means of contact. But with a lot of luck, I’m wondering if he has discovered your podcast too. So, Alex Butler, if you are listening to the brilliant Backpage podcast too, my name is Joe Hollingworth, and give me back my copy of Pikmin, you bastard. My question for you gentlemen is which game have you let a friend borrow and have been most heartbroken when they never returned it? All the best, Joe Hollingworth. Okay, a long one there, but yeah, Alex Butler, if you want to get in touch, Joe does follow us on Twitter, so just tweet the Backpage podcast account and I’ll put you in touch, and we’ll make a two-hour documentary about your reunion, it’ll be great. So Matthew, do you have one here that you… Oh, this is such a long question, I don’t have a very good answer for it. I think Rich Stanton still has my copy of God Hand. This has come up before? Yeah, I think he thinks he gave it back, but I’m pretty sure he has it, because I don’t know where it is. I would say his life is slightly more chaotic than mine, so it’s more likely to be lost at his house than at my house. I would say that both of you should, whoever is in the wrong, should buy the other one, a copy of God Hand on PS3, like give them 8 quid PSN credits so they can go buy it. I want a sealed new copy. Yeah, that’s a lot more expensive is the thing, so yeah, I would want that copy back if I were you. I must admit, not to take sides on this Matthew, but I’m kind of with you on this. I feel like it’s more likely Rich hasn’t returned it than… Right. No offence to Rich. So, I don’t really lend people games anymore because I hate this happening. I remember I lent this kid, this really annoying guy in sixth form, I lent Final Fantasy VIII and he borrowed it for the entire year and he barely played it as well. He was like, oh, I love Final Fantasy VIII, I’d love to give it another go. I was like, yeah, sure, I’ll lend it to you. He took the entire year to give it back and then I asked to ask him more than ten times to get it back, which I hate doing. And then after that I was like, right, I’m never lending any motherfucker a game ever again. And so that was my kind of experience of that. I let someone borrow a copy of Game of Watch on Game Boy when I was in year six and they lost it. But I was really mad about it and but I managed to like swing like basically he had the James Bond 007 game we’ve discussed in the podcast as of last week and the James Bond episode. And I managed to negotiate me getting that instead of the game that I lost. I think I got a far superior game as a result. So that was a that was a bit of a blessing. I was a bit sad though because it was like one of the first two games I ever owned. I owned that. That and Kirby’s Dream Land were the first games I ever owned. So it was sad to lose it. I’m pretty mad. But James Bond was a much better deal. So I won out there. But yeah, I don’t know. Otherwise, yeah, that’s just I think I’m worse for doing this to other people. And my my mate Dave Scarbrans, he led me Spec Ops the Line in 2012. I never returned it. I’ve still got it on 360 in my in my flat. Likewise, I think I still have Steve Burns copies of Kane and Lynch 2 and Bioshock. I think I’ve still got those all these years later. So yeah, and Metal Gear Solid Special Missions. I think I’ve got Steve Burns copy of that as well. So I think I’m actually the villain here, Matthew. Am I the bad guy? I think Ben Griffin’s got my original copy of Persona 5. Okay, yeah. Yeah. Well, you don’t need that anymore. You got the royal edition. Yeah, but even so, it’s the principle of the thing. Yeah, that’s true. Well, I hope you were satisfied by that answer, but more importantly, I hope that Alex Butler, the bastard, gives you back your copy of Pikmin. I’d love it if Alex Butler had listened to every episode of this, but turned off because of the last game score and didn’t listen to them. Yeah, or just when, in this episode, after you talked about Point P, not really much of a male bad guy, then just turn it off, that’d be good. You want to read the next one, Matthew? Yes. Hi, both, and probably everyone else who can read this. Is there a game that you wished you had played earlier on, i.e. I didn’t play Chrono Trigger until last year, and completely bounced off both Minecraft and Spelunky in the past, but revisited due to GameVee nominations? This is still the only podcast I follow religiously, thanks for the service to humanity. That’s from Slipdiggers. Games you came too late, or you regret coming too late? Yeah, like there are a lot of JRPGs I wish I’d played when I had more time on my hands. Like Final Fantasy 6 is one of those where I owned a copy in like the mid-noughties but then didn’t give it a proper try till much later on, and it’s like, I wish when I was in sixth form I just spent my time playing that, because now as an adult I struggle to find the time for it. So RPGs is when that most commonly happens for me. Chrono Trigger is one I came to a bit later because obviously the DS version released here, but I was still young enough for that game to really click with me, I absolutely loved it. Earthbound, Matthew, I suppose a little bit too, Earthbound feels like a game that would have been my favourite game when I was like 13 or 14, but playing it in my mid-20s is a bit stranger, it feels like a thing that was meant to be played in the 90s a little bit. I’m glad you’re not like, had you played it in your 13, 14 though you would have become an earthbound guy, which is faintly annoying, so I’m glad you’re not. I think for me, there’s so many of these, when you start on a magazine and up until that point, your game buying has been quite limited because you can only get a couple of games a year or whatever and you’ve got the knowledge you’ve got and then you suddenly realise that you’re on a magazine and you’re expected to have all the knowledge. Every month on NGamer, for several years, it felt like I was playing catch up with something because there’s so many Nintendo series you don’t play or you didn’t play or you didn’t have a natural affection for. So the first couple of years was just a mad dash of like, oh, why didn’t I play? If I’d known that one day, and obviously how could you have known, that you would end up working on a games magazine, I would have spent way more of my childhood being thorough with games rather than being kind of casual. But more broadly, the thing which specifically stands out, I didn’t have a Game Boy Advance when they originally came out. I had actually had a Game Boy Advance Micro, was the physical thing I finally bought. There’s so many great Game Boy Advance games that I really loved, but I missed that whole generation as it was happening and that kind of fills me with regret. But at the time, it was a choice between buying a GameCube and buying GameCube games. You couldn’t have both really, or I couldn’t afford both, so something had to give. But that’s a pity. Controversially, I would say the Game Boy Advance was barely a generation. It was like four years and that was it. But yeah, it’s a fair point. Yeah, but there’s like 20 stunk old classics in the mix. Yeah, for sure. No, it is a great lineup and also some of the best looking 2D games that were ever made on that console. So no, I totally get you. In fact, on the Nintendo side, I would say that not owning an N64 was my big one. I was so jealous of people who got into that perfect dark, unlocking loads of shit in the game to play. That progression-based multiplayer thing, their version of it. I just really wish I had access to that as a kid because it was so the N64 shooters seemed so much more accessible to me than the shooters you could play on PC and I just really, just envied people who had golden eyes so much, then perfect dark was this very highly coveted object. So yeah, a lot of N64 games get caught up in that, I would say, but particularly perfect dark for me. And when I played it on the HD version they put on Xbox in 2009, it was still really good, but I don’t know. I just know I would have absolutely adored it in the late 90s, you know, or the early 40s. So yeah, sometimes you’re going to miss out. Yeah, okay, cool. Yeah, Game Boy Advance is a good one, Matthew. Was there any particular game that you were like? Well, I went on to absolutely love the Castlevania games from that era. But like I played Dawn of Sauron DS first and then, you know, I only really properly, properly revisited the previous ones when they brought out a collection last year. You know, I’d sort of dabbled with things on like emulators and things like that. But you know, I would have loved to have, you know, gone through the progression of those games as they happened. Yeah, I get the nice reverse effect sometimes where I think that like Yakuza is a series that I could only have got into by coming to it when I did. Right, so playing Yakuza Zero last year was the right time for me to play it because I did try and play the first Yakuza several times. I didn’t really like it. And then Yakuza Zero is a much better, more kind of personalityful version of that kind of thing. And then when you play, you know, Kiwami, you realize the original Yakuza isn’t actually that good. It’s not all that. So it’s like, yeah, that almost I almost had to wait for. Or another good example would be me playing like Sonic CD for the first time last year for that Sonic episode. Like that to me is like a lost Sonic game. Like there was a Sonic game from an era that I really liked that I just happened not to play because it was never quite available in the right form. And then just for the podcast, I made a special effort to play it. And it was great. So sometimes it’s nice to come to things later on that you probably would have enjoyed at the time, you know. And yeah, you can never have played every game anyway. So you’ve got to be kind to yourself. There’s only so much time in the day, isn’t there? Okay, next question, Matthew. Evening, Gentle Giants. As I recently received my Volume 3 of Lock-On, Lost in Cult’s Kickstarter-funded gaming journal slash magazine, I was wondering what your take is on the recent success of these premium publications like Lock-On or A Profound Waste of Time that don’t focus on news, previews and reviews, but rather collect features and essays. With a declining interest in print media and games, journalism is just the way to maintain the existence of physical magazines that offer interesting writing and look gorgeous, albeit for a smaller niche audience. Or do you see them as a bit snooty or pretentious? We’d love to know your thoughts. Thanks, Dalrath. Yeah, I mean, you know, I won’t mention specific names because people are into these things, they’re into these things, that’s fine. I will say coming from a magazine background, I find the few of these things that I have looked at quite baggy from a magazine craft perspective. And, you know, I think they often, where they triumph, they have these incredible art spreads and the art of them is really hard hitting when you see it online. They look really luxurious and that’s great and they almost function as coffee table books because of that. But as actual magazines, and like I say, this is purely coming from a magazine background, I feel like they’ve missed, a lot of them don’t feel like they’ve been through magazine production editors or even traditional magazine designers. I actually find, and this is super nerdy, page layouts, things like column width, font choices, the hierarchy of the page. I find that quite unsatisfying. I think people don’t understand that there is a real art to making a magazine work on the page. There’s decades of craft that go into making modern gaming magazines. Maybe that is too snooty and la-di-dar for people’s tastes. But that stuff, I find it very hard to get over. A lot of the things that I have read from this genre of magazines, I’m like, man, if you cut a thousand words from that, that would really sing for me personally. But maybe that’s just me being sad and bitter that I don’t get to work on mags, and these other people have made mags work for them, so you can maybe ignore that, but that’s sort of my stance. There’s invisible craft in mags that I think people who read mags and didn’t work in them don’t necessarily know about, and it’s really, really obvious to me when I read these things. And yeah, it’s just jarring, but they are lush, the art’s amazing, and I get it why they’re huge. Do you want to read the next one? Yes. Hello Samuel and Matthew. I have a question that Mr Castle might consider faintly cursed. It refers to my enjoyment of the subspace emissary campaign from Smash Brothers Brawl, a take that the aforementioned described in the Back Page Discord as Castle Bait surely, correct, and can’t deal with this right now. Me, I like the expansion of Melee’s adventure mode and the spectacle of crossover cutscenes enough to look past the iffy platforming and the bobbins enemy designs. Plus you can twat Rayquaza from Pokemon in the face of the baseball bat. Anyway, before this reaches Danny Man anecdote links, I’ll get to the point. Are there any multiplayer focus games or series that you feel are missing a trick with their campaign modes? Either they could have been done better or they don’t exist and should. And of course, what do you wish they’d done instead? Love the podcast and everybody involved with it. Cheers, Balladeer. Yeah, so I would say it’s probably fair to say that the single player fighting game has never really been nailed properly. Even with stuff like Injustice or Mortal Kombat where they do have like a proper story mode. They don’t feel very nutritious to play. And I’ve never played a game that’s really cracked that. You know what I mean? It’s funny because I think people see the Netherrealm games as the games that have cracked that. But for me, they’re still just playing for five hours and move on. Like, it’s not that interesting to me. In terms of games that don’t exist and wish they had, I do play Apex Legends and wish there was like a great respawn single player mode to it that maybe like involved the different characters and had more of a narrative element to characters. I find it a bit bogus when games are like look how kind of wacky and cool these characters are in like MOBAs and stuff when they don’t actually like have any story except like a video they’ll put on YouTube and stuff. Apex Legends, if it had like a, yeah, like the Titanfall 2 team made like a campaign of that quality involving these characters and the brilliant character mobility and the different abilities in the game and stuff like that, it would be really, really cool. As it stands, the only PvE stuff I’ve played in Apex Legends is let’s go to a field and fight some dogs. And I’ve done that a lot in Apex Legends, so it’s not very interesting. So, yeah, that’s one for me. Is Overwatch 2 got a campaign, Matthew? Did I imagine that? I think they, yeah, not a launch though, isn’t it coming later? There’s like, isn’t it packaged more as like PvE modes? Well, in theory, I like the idea of a campaign. With narrative framing, I think is the deal. Well, I quite like that as an idea. So, yeah, I suppose that’s like one example. But otherwise, I guess I don’t need more single player from my multiplayer, really. They’re a bit binary in my head. Like even Halo, I barely played Infinite’s single player, but I’ve played loads of multiplayer, you know? So how about you Matthew? Yeah, I just, you know, I think the craft that makes a multiplayer game work doesn’t naturally speak to good single player craft and vice versa. You know, there’s no reason why one thing should work. I mean, I was thinking particularly along the lines of fighting games, you know, you make it work as a multiplayer fighter, you know, which is the purpose of the thing, and then it’s more about ingenious framing. I really did hate Subspace MS3 mode. I think it’s, like, actively bad. I think the game is worse for having it in it. Like, I’d rather they didn’t make that mode and had instead made, like, character-specific, like, target tests, which they took out of Smash Bros. Melee for Brawl. You know, it was very baggy. Like, it had a control, you know, it’s a control scheme that’s made for a fighting game, and yet it tried doing some, like, almost side-scrolling platforming. It’s very, very rank and unpleasant to play. Very, very bad, I think. Sakurai’s worst thing ever, which is why I’m quite passionate about it on Discord. I actually, I love the single-player mode in Smash Bros. Ultimate. The world of light, I think it is. Yeah, it’s a thumbs-down from me, dog. But, you know. Really? Yeah. I just, I mean, like, it’s just sort of, like, kind of what are these different characters, cosplayers, characters from all these different series while you’re walking along this very boring map. But didn’t you like the wit of, like, how it matched different, like, characters and conditions to try and, like, channel some of the games it was based on? Sometimes, but a lot of times it just felt like a stretch. I mean, like… I thought, like, as an event mission mode, I thought it was great. Like, I’d much rather that than they try and revisit subspace. The progression’s also a complete headache. All those different little sort of card thingies that give you different characters and, like… They’re just, like, a million of them. And, like, I just… Incoherent. Yeah, I’m not a fan, unfortunately. Yeah, I don’t entirely agree with that. Like, I could follow it enough. I just thought that was, like… I thought that was an elegant repurposing of, like, what that game naturally is. You’ve got a game with lots of characters, lots of modes which you can adjust with different criteria. So, the idea of having a mode that’s, like, showcased, like, the breadth of that. Um, and did it in this witty way, where I, you know, like I say, I liked how they connected, you know, oh, this character, you know, this is a character who isn’t in the game, we’re gonna represent it this way or that way with this particular combination. I thought that was really cute. Um, like, I didn’t really follow the discourse around Ultimate, so I don’t really know what the standing of it is, but if I was reviewing it, I would have… That is a thumbs up from me. Well, I think it’s better than Subsea’s Emissary mode. I think, like, what I’m saying is I don’t think that single player has ever been properly cracked in Smash Bros. Oh, no, no, no, no, not at all. But, like, I don’t know, just the sheer, like, content. I don’t like the mission mode, because isn’t that, like, Mortal Kombat also has that kind of stuff, right, where there’s, like, the… Isn’t it that thing where you’re walking around, like, an endless crypt fighting lots of different matches as different characters with different conditions, and it kind of, like, using the story mode to kind of tease you into, like, all the corners of what the game has to offer, I can kind of see that as a, like… You know, as a take on how to do those modes. Yeah, like, endless single player with kind of different, sort of, like, yeah, different sort of ways to shake it up. Yeah, but, yeah, you know, I mean, to be honest, I’m not, like, hugely invested in fighting games, so it doesn’t bother me to teach them how. I feel like they used to… all of them used to do these mission event modes, and it’s, like, gone out of fashion a bit. Yeah. Maybe Street Fighter, whatever the new one is, will do it, because that’s got, like, a big campaign element to it, I think. Well, the people on my Twitter feed will sure make sure I hear about it, so that’s good. Can I suggest muting Street Fighter? Yeah, that’s not valid here. OK, good. So next up, Matthew, a very simple one here. Got an important question for you, gents. If you were to accuse a character, what would your big back tattoo be? A dragon, a tiger, an egg mayo sandwich? That’s KH2698 on Discord. What would yours be, Matthew? An advert for the Patreon. And I’d just be whipping my shirt off all the time. So, like, whenever you… Because you’d basically see the back of that character a lot in the game, so it’d just be like a URL right up in your face the whole time. Yeah, but like it only shows up when you tense your back, otherwise it sort of droops slightly, and it doesn’t quite say anything. Yeah, I don’t know. I quite like the idea of a food one, but I think it’s just a bit too cursed. And I’ve seen my weight fluctuating quite a lot over the next few years, so I’m kind of worried about back fat and the image distorting. I don’t know. I think I’ll just go with a PS2 platforming icon to annoy Matthew, and like Jack and Daxter on the back, and then Matthew can see that, and then we’ll just start fighting, like in Yakuza, and we’ll just, you know, it’ll be the source of our rivalry, really. He’s like, I’m trying to get people to back the Patreon, and you’re not taking this seriously by putting characters from shit platformers on your back, and I’ll be like, well, what are you going to do about it, mate? And then that’s when the brawl will begin. So yeah, that’s my answer to that one, Matthew. Practically, I might also put just like a move list for Yakuza button combos on my back. So like when I’m in the fight, I’m like, I always know what I’m meant to be doing. That’s true. If we wanted to be in unison, like we could have like the other person’s combos on the other person’s back. And then you’re like, you hold still for a minute. It’s like, OK, that’s how I do a throw. And then I’m like, OK, that’s how I do a dragon punch. Like that sort of stuff. Yeah, very good. Do you want to read the next one, Matthew? Uh, hola a los dos grandes muchachos. All this chat of theme tunes. I guess that was related to something in the Discord. Probably. Has gotten you a spot on Radio 1 in a video game’s theme tune mixtape battle. Maybe it’s because I was saying there were no good theme tunes in Marvel films. You each get three tracks to put forward before the winner is picked by Demographic, who are 12 when Snapchat was cool. What three theme tunes do you each pull out to bamboozle a youth and win the public vote? I’ve got the main Persona 5 theme tune. I think that’s a good one. If we’re talking about Radio 1, that’s one that I don’t think young people would be alienated by. I think they think I’m a pretty cool dude from that. I’d play the Vice City theme, the one that plays over the open credits to Miami Vice-style 1. That rules. That’s good. But then to mix things up, I would play The Poet and the Muse by Old Gods of Asgard from Alan Wake. They’d think what the fuck, but they’d think this man’s got a lot of layers to him. That’s my strategy, Matthew. How about you? I don’t know if these are main themes. They’re character themes. They’re really niche. I’ll have to put links to them. I actually quite like… One of the lawyers in Ace Attorney Spirit of Justice, Athena Sykes, has got a theme called Courtroom Revolutionnaire, which is like the rockier end of Ace Attorney, which I think is really good. I really, really like King Dedede’s theme in Kirby and the Forgotten Land. That’s the one which goes surprisingly hard. We’d like this… I’ll put a snippet of it somewhere in the episode, hopefully, because you should be able to hear it, because it’s absolutely awesome. And mainly because we’ve been playing a lot of Xenoblade recently, there’s one of the battle themes from that, which is called Monster Surprised You. These are all quite niche and probably don’t mean anything to anyone unless they really know the games, which again, just like a very kind of rocky battle theme, but it starts with this like big trumpet that goes… And whenever that happens, I’m like, oh yeah, we’re gonna have a great fight. It’s like this is the start of a great fight, this theme tune. So yes, those are my three, a bit more obscure. Very good. The idea of like, hey everyone, it’s King Dedede on fucking Radio 1. Yeah, that is quite baffling. I think the persona I’d get away with a little bit more that… You’d hear that and be like, oh yeah, this is funky. This guy is fellow kids in it, but he’s doing a half convincing job. It’s a bit too funky. That’s more BBC Six. Oh, yeah, maybe it is actually, yeah. I can’t knock it. I’m really baffling things. Yeah, okay, fine. Do you know what? It is hard to explain music on a podcast. People ask, why don’t you do the best soundtracks for a game? The answer is because explaining music is really fucking hard. The best that we’ve done it is Matthew dissing health. That was the best discussion in music that’s ever happened on this podcast. Matthew’s saying, that’s just one fucking drum. Emperor’s New Clothes, that’s one fucking drum. That was the best we picked there. So yeah, you’ll never hear us do that podcast, unfortunately. Okay, do you want to read this? Oh, I’m reading this one. That’s me, isn’t it? Question for the two big men. What is your opinion on crowdfunding for games? Personally, I now avoid it. Like The Plague, I was burned by backing DBG, then SOE crowdfunding for a new EverQuest game, which then got cancelled. I did sync a smaller amount to Star Citizen. We all know how that’s going. Obviously, these are the risks of any form of investment, and I’m aware of success with this model too. Interested in your thoughts? That’s from IronEddy. I guess we are technically crowdfunded, but the key thing is that we give something back for what people are paying for. We make it very clear what they’re paying for, and we give them what they’re getting, and we tell them what time they’re getting it. I think that when you’re buying anything, you just have to have that certainty, and that goes for crowdfunding too. I too got burned by this. I think I had three games on Kickstarter that never came out. They just took my money, and then nothing came back. At one point, one guy was like, I’m going through some tough times right now, but he did disappear with my money. So it’s like, well, that put me off Kickstarter. So I’m quite dubious about it, honestly. The only good thing I really got out of any of these was probably Shenmue 3. That was a game they actually made, and then I got a copy of like 20 quid or something, and I thought, that’s okay, I don’t mind that too much. But yeah, truthfully, I think these things are more like marketing pushes than they are actual like crowdfunding, because a lot of these things take more money than they ask for. And then Kickstarter takes a big cut too, and that’s an Amazon company, so Amazon are getting some of that money. What the fuck do they need that cash for? So yeah, a bit dubious, honestly. How about you, Matthew? Yeah, I think it’s right. Maybe there was a different time when Kickstarter was less of a big thing, but now it just feels like, you know, it’s more of an announcement beat. You know, you’re making it one way or another, and you can give it the whole kind of, oh, well, we need proof that there’s interest, and that’s what we’re really looking for is proof, rather than, you know, we need the money specifically. And I’m like, well, I don’t know. Yeah, I think I’ve only supported, like, two things ever on Kickstarter. A weird… Do you remember Beasts of Balance? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that Jengary thing, which came with, like, the iPad peripheral. Yeah, that’s a very early Kickstarter. A very early Kickstarter. I got behind that, mainly because, like, former edge pal Alex Wiltshire was involved with it, and I wanted to, like, help support him. And that’s a sweary game about the good life, which is absolute dog shit. But I knew it was going to be. I don’t know what I, like, I just, I don’t know why, what I was thinking. It was like, oh, imagine that would be terrible. He made it, and it was. And it was on, like, Game Pass anyway, so. Like, what’s the point? That’s kind of how I felt about them, too. Like, it was just, they’re just like, there are tons of games made by people who have gone out and actually, like, made the game. Like, they did it, it’s done now. You can go play it. Like, why back a Kickstarter where you can go buy, like, Kaiju Wars on Steam or something? But, you know, a game that people actually made and, like, is actually good. So, yeah, I’m very down on it. I’ll be honest, I’ll never back anything again through crowdfunding. Okay, next up, Matthew, are you gonna read this one? I feel like over the last 80 or so episodes, we’ve learnt a lot about Matthew’s music tastes. Randy Newman, Divine Comedy, not health. But very little of Samuel’s. What are some of your favourite music artists, Samuel? And Matthew, any surprising faves as yet not mentioned on the pod? Do you have a fondness for Norwegian black metal or a Wu-Tang Clan tattoo? Thanks, guys. That’s from Sean Lin. Yeah, this came up. Someone pointed out that I did discuss Dr. Dre’s The Chronic on a previous episode, which has now been taken off of the streaming service I use, which is annoying. But, yeah, I got very into… I got very into Outkast last year. I was, like, always a bit of a, like, oh, Outkast’s just a sort of hey-yah, Miss Jackson sort of guys. But, like, I listened to the album Aquemini, which people said was legit amazing, a slightly earlier album, and that was fucking unbelievably good. So that’s, like, something I got into recently. Part of this is spurred on by there’s 60 songs that define the 90s podcast I listen to, and it gives, like, the background behind a lot of famous songs from the time, so that set me down, like, a rabbit hole of listening to these whole albums I hadn’t previously listened to. But, truthfully, the music I listen to is mostly, like, what people would describe as, like, boring 80s old man electro music, so you had Depeche Modes and New Orders and the like. Big into that sort of stuff. A lot of the music I listen to these days is, like, sort of synthy things that have, like, an old anime gif looping in the background on YouTube. That’s, like, a music genre I’m into. There’s a channel called Soul Search and Destroy on YouTube. Saying that aloud is embarrassing. But that’s full of, like, amazing playlists of, like, you know, kind of synth poppy stuff that was big around the 2014 time, but I still really like. So, yeah, I don’t know. You know, you’re kind of chill wave, vape, wavy things. I’m quite into that shit. And then lots of embarrassing pop songs from the noughties that I will never discuss publicly. How about you, Matthew? Any more to like to share there? No, it’s literally just divine comedy and Randy Newman. I like Ben Folds. I must… Did I tell the Ben Fold story on here? You did, yeah. But, yeah, in brief? When I went to see him and the person came up to me and went, oh, you’re Matthew from NGamer? And I said yes, and he went, I didn’t know you liked Ben Folds. As if I only existed in the mag. Just really made me laugh that I was just like this total fucking cartoon figure to him with no more psychological depth than he got from my profile. We have more questions here, Matthew, but I feel like we should maybe save some of them for next time just to keep things fresh. So, shall I read this last one, then we’ll call it there? We’ve got like six more for the next one we’ve been playing. So, fret not, Discord. We will read those out. There is a podcast questions channel on the Discord, so go to our Twitter feed. If you want to join the Discord, you’ll find the link there. Hey there, Back Page Pod, I’m typing this after Ron Gilbert has said he won’t share Monkey Island info after being shouted at by nasty fans. My question is, are the best games the ones that ignore their fans’ demands, or can fan engagement be good sometimes? Keep up the good work. That’s Bob Bob who said that. He’s got a longer name on Discord, but Bob Bob made me laugh, so I’ll just put that there. What do you think, Matthew? Listen to fans or ignore them? Ignore them. Always. And I say that I want to be surprised by everything that I read or play or engage with in any way. Surprise is very, very valuable to me. I hate it when things are predictable. The idea of me asking for something and getting exactly what I want from my entertainment fills me with dread. There’s definitely stuff comes out where I’m like, oh, I didn’t want that, but it comes from the same surprise space. So, you know, I may not wanted them to go into like 3D Mario World after the Galaxy games, but then the same them doing their own thing is what gives us Odyssey. So I’m a happy boy again. Yeah, like, what are fucking fans? No, give me a break. Yeah, I mean, you know, the most famous example of this, of course, is that Mass Effect fans harassing Bioware until they gave them a longer ending for three. And that was shit. That kind of broke the floodgates on people being entitled assholes on social media. And so we’re stuck with them forever now, unfortunately. And people who like games, well, there are already lots of toxic, weird, stupid console fanboys out there. So, yeah, I think a lot of the time, like, I don’t know, a lot of the things that players need to, you know, people need to, like, learn from players is like, you can probably learn from data in terms of, like, how do people play a certain game? Do they use one weapon more than another? Like, that’s how games like Apex Legends are, you know, that’s how they’re refined because they see what the patterns are of how people play. You can do that without needing to listen to people scream on Twitter about things. Yeah, it’s like, I’d say the good version of fan interaction is a well-run early access campaign, where you, you know, like, borders gate, like, a lot of the stuff, you know, there is feedback of, like, I don’t like this or tonally I don’t like that, but the valuable feedback and the stuff they act on is the subconscious stuff you don’t even know you’re doing. It’s like heat maps of, like, where people are getting stuck and dying a lot and things like that. And that makes for a better game, you know, the kind of fan feedback you don’t want is people who are like, make it like old borders gate and you’re like, well, there’s no value to that. They’re not going to do that. Yeah. So, yeah, I’m into, like, by all means, mine your fans when they don’t know any better. Yeah, it’s I think I think like social media can be a good barometer for how people maybe feel about a certain thing or like areas you might want to polish that sort of thing. But yeah, generally speaking, like, it’s just an awful void of people shouting. And like, I think a lot of the games you love would have been ruined by fan feedback. Like, imagine Kazuma was obsessed with fan feedback. Like, there’s so much of his games that wouldn’t be, that wouldn’t even exist. In fact, like, you could argue that Metal Gear Solid 4 is an example of of listing too much to fan feedback and giving them all the different fan service they want to very little effect versus like, you know, Firelina games like Metal Gear Solid 3 and 5. So yeah, like, I don’t know. I don’t think there’s loads of value in listing to people on social media. Social media generally, I’m sort of like quite down on these days because I think that I think that people think a tweet is activism and it’s not like it’s just not a hashtag. It’s not activism. That’s like, that’s not that’s not real action. It just isn’t. And like, I think more and more I’m just down on it. So yeah, no time for them really. There was there was one bad Justice League film and then because of social media, there are now two dog shit Justice League films. But dog shit in very different ways, Matthew. But equally dog shit. They made more dog shit happen in the world. Thanks, fans. That’s a nice dower note to end on there, Matthew. Of course, the fans of this podcast, we really hear you. We hear you. Some of you love Games Court. Some of you think Games Court is terrible. We’ll keep doing it anyway. So yeah. But yes, we will, you know, the hate as for the like draft votes, we’re not going to get into that. So it’s all good. So let’s end the podcast there, Matthew. Next week, then we will talk about some Nintendo Switch games next week. I’ve forgotten already what we’re doing next week. It is, isn’t it? Hall of Fame, Nintendo Switch Hall of Fame. So that should be fun. Yes. Yep. And yeah, in the meantime, if you want to follow us, I’m Samuel W. Roberts on Twitter. Matthew, where can people find you? At MrBazzill underscore pesto. patreon.com/backpagepod. If you’d like to support the podcast, there’s like a one pound tier, which is like a tip jar tier and a four pound fifty tier if you want to get the two bonus podcasts a month. And Twitter, BackpagePod on Twitter is where you can find the Discord as well. Links to all of our stuff, that sort of thing.