Hello, and welcome to The Back Page, A Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, how’s your week been? Have things been good on your side? All I really do is play Xenoblade 3. Right. Like, that’s kind of my life now, because I’ve developed this mania about it that I wanna just do the most thorough review possible. Yeah. So, yeah, I’m coming up on the 60-hour mark now. Jesus, and that’s like, how long have you had it? Like, about two weeks from now? Wow, okay. Well, that is a man who really likes one specific JRPG series and no others, as far as I know. Am I wrong there? Yeah, absolutely. Am I wrong there, Matthew? Is there other? No, no, that’s right. I’ve become like a proper Xenoblade YouTube person as well. Like, I’ve started watching things I would never watch, you know, anything longer than 10 minutes where someone’s droning on about, like, I’m going to rank every bracelet that you can equip in Xenoblade 2 or something. And I’m like, yeah, I’m up for that. Yeah, it sounds like it’s got a lot of the energy of our podcasts, these videos, by the sounds of it. Yeah, I don’t know what it is. This has happened several times before. Like, when a new entry is coming out in something, I tend to get very excited about that series and I’ll replay a lot of them, which is great for this podcast because we conveniently do these big episodes where we dive into things, but also I would do that anyway. You know, like when Uncharted 4 was coming out, I played the three of them again beforehand. You know, it’s probably the only time I do replay things where there isn’t like work involved. It’s just because I get pulled into the kind of hype bubble of it. And watching YouTube deep dives is quite a good way of sort of sustaining that. Is there like a big sort of theory crafting scene with this series then? Is there like people who try to interpret the lore or is it just more straightforward than that? One of the things which is great about Xenoblade series is that they’re quite like explicit. You know, they don’t like leave much to chance. Everything’s kind of in the game. And I wouldn’t say it’s like particularly like strictly surface level, but you know, I don’t feel like there’s massive room for interpretation. Like there are some things like hilariously and I don’t want to get too deep into this because we’re going to do a big Xenoblade episode, but there’s like famously this document which came with a Xenoblade action figure, single-handedly responsible for like 90% of what people know about the game’s lore. So people are always referring this ridiculous, like basically like in the instruction manual for a Japanese like mech figure, which someone has translated and this has become sort of the go-to source for so much stuff. So people are always like, well, of course, as we learned in the instruction manual for this action figure, I’m like, this doesn’t seem like the best place for us to extract like deep lore. Like if this was that important, it should probably be in the game. The Dead Sea Scrolls of Xenoblade, you know. That’s it, that’s exactly what it is. That’s what I was looking for. I was desperately racking my brain for, oh, I know there’s a perfect term for this. Yeah, the Dead Sea Scrolls. And it came with like a figma. Lest I sound too intellectual there. Dead Sea Scrolls is something I only realised existed after watching Evangelion. So like, just to be clear, like there’s no, again, no real intellect behind me knowing that. It’s just watching anime. So, yeah. I’m worried how often I hear the word Evangelion in this podcast. I only, wait, yeah, go on, sorry. Rich mentioned it a lot in the Metal Gear one. I’ve been hearing it. I should probably watch this thing at some point. Oh, have you not seen it? No. Oh yeah, it’s legit great, but harrowing. That’s why like, that’s why people bring it up because it just burns, it sears itself into your brain because it’s just so horrible. Yeah, no, I’ve not seen it, but Rich watched it and he brings it up a few times in the Metal Gear XL for those who have listened to that. He just obsessively pushed everything through this Evangelion kind of like prism for like months and it was driving me up the wall. Like not everything is like fucking Evangelion. You know, oh, well I doubt it can be, unless it’s so profound that, you know, this packet of crisps that we happen to be eating at the pub can somehow be linked to Evangelion. Yeah, that might be a stretch, but the Metal Gear is a bit more apt to comparison because it’s got mechs that bleed and scream and sad people in it. So yeah. But yeah, that’s a good little plug there, Matthew. That’s a great episode. Nearly three hours of Metal Gear chatter behind the paint wall. So yes, but this episode, we’ve done two episodes of our Indie Games Hall of Fame episodes. We really enjoyed doing those. It’s a bit of a format break from what we normally do. They give people a chance to come on and share some of their recommendations. We wanted to give the Nintendo Switch the same treatment over time, build a Hall of Fame of Switch games because we felt like the library was simply too rammed to do a simple top 10 as we have done for some other formats in the past. Yes, this is Vol. 1. We’ll select around five games for this one. There’s technically six, but it’s meant to be five games each episode. We know that’s less than the Indie Games Hall of Fame episodes, which were like 15 games apiece. We thought that was too exhaustive for us. Exhausting, rather, really. That’s a bit of both. And yeah, we wanted to be a bit more gradual with it and sort of slowly craft a Switch library that we think is great. So, Matthew, how are you feeling about doing this, applying this format to the Switch games library? Yeah, I think it works. When we were first throwing around the numbers, like a little bit of me was thinking, like, you know, five at a time, you know, like you’re not gonna get very far with an episode. But I think that’ll let us go maybe go a bit deeper into those things. Also, the Switch is a weird one because it’s so sort of ubiquitous and popular that it doesn’t feel like there’s a heap of truly hidden gems. It’s not like surprise, there’s a Mario game you don’t know about, you know, that isn’t gonna happen in this episode. But it’s like the one platform we never talk about and we’re so far from talking about it on like our Games of the Year episodes, because we’re probably like a good over a year away from getting to the Switch years. And yeah, you know, we’re not gonna do a draft for it because it’s a console that’s still in play. So yeah, just as an opportunity to actually like talk about the console I do play the most, kind of makes sense. Yeah, I think like, you know, everyone adores the Switch really, the form factor, the, you know, the library, the just the feeling of using it. It’s just, you know, it is a phenomenal hand held and I do use it as a hand held. I have only plugged into my TV a couple of times. And yeah, I just, it’s sort of like, it is something we’ve discussed in passing, like it’ll come up every now and then and I’ll press down the road of a few Switch questions. But it’s true that we don’t talk about it that much. It certainly hasn’t had its own episode focus before. So yeah, I’m happy to be discussing it. So this is a good starting point then Matthew, because you say there’s no real sort of like hidden gems in a sense. And I think that’s, at least on the Nintendo published side, there’s nothing that’s like really obscure from them relative to some of the libraries of consoles past. So I was curious, do you think there’s a unifying identity to the Switch library in the way there maybe was with previous Nintendo hardware, like the GameCube or the N64 or the Wii? Can any console be simply boiled down anymore like that, given the quantity of games released all the time? I think at the outset, definitely in the first couple of years, you could maybe extract this narrative from Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey, that these were kind of like reinventions again. And I was thinking like, did Nintendo use the Switch to basically take a second look at everything and take things in new interesting directions? But that narrative I don’t really think exists out of that initial stretch of like Breath of the Wild, Odyssey, ARMS. You know, there was a point where I thought, oh, is Switch gonna be like the new Nintendo franchise console? You know, are we gonna be getting a lot of ARMS? And actually we haven’t really. That isn’t the criticism of it. I think what I actually like about Switch is that I don’t think it has a single unifying message and that has basically freed every individual team at Nintendo to basically do what is best for their game and make the best version of their games or some of the best versions of their games. Yeah, you know, Wii’s definitely got some like weird outliers in the mix, but there is that sort of Wii Sports casual kind of like through line that is like super obvious and you cannot deny it. But here, what’s best for the game is what happens. So you get like, you know, Luigi’s Mansion 3 can be like a super lavish production where it’s got these like incredible cinematic production values. But then you’ve also got Xenoblade can just be this vast sprawling JRPG, which, you know, really doesn’t like rain anything in. Or you can have like Fire Emblem, which goes, well, you know, we’re about how much people love these characters and we’re gonna really double down on like the fan service and the social side of this. We’re really gonna draw that out. And generally, I think they’ve made like, you know, when these teams are left to their own devices, they make the right calls. So as vague as it is, I think like the unifying factor is that like the people who manage these series for years, know best and are sort of acting on that. Yeah, I think I would agree with that. I sort of like on the Nintendo published side, yes, there are a few new things in the mix, but there’s a lot of like refining of things that existed on Wii U and 3DS. Pushed into like a more refined perfected form. So Smash Bros is a really good example of that. Like you say, Luigi’s Mansion is a good example of that. Splatoon 2 is a good example of that. Like Splatoon was like a hit on the Wii U, despite the Wii U being just not a success in itself. But when as soon as that same sort of formula gets moved to Switch with more content, it’s like a phenomenal success. So yeah, there’s a lot of through lines from previous, the previous generation that just seemed to culminate quite nicely on Switch. And yeah, I would agree with that as an assessment more than like a reinvention of things. Obviously, you know, that is only one strand of what the Switch is about. You know, it has this huge indie presence. It has, I would say like decent or definitely like interesting third party support. Maybe not like as much kind of exclusive stuff as we got on the Wii, but like really nice ports and that kind of, but again, it’s, I think it’s that thing you mentioned of like a games library now is just so varied. It is kind of harder to sort of extract that any kind of through line. And maybe like the fact that they are open, they are clearly a lot more open with indie game placement than they were before. It seems a lot easier to get games on the Nintendo platform now. And that’s a change, which is obviously further watered down the control. Not everything is filtered through the lens of like WiiWare or a particular kind of indie brand. Not a fan of bullseye the game, Matthew. I mean, there’s vast amounts of shit as well. I don’t know, I find that side of the console like slightly harder to talk about just because I am mainly well fed by Nintendo and maybe like a few big indie games. Yeah. If I’m gonna shop around and experiment, I’m still more likely to do that on PC or probably Game Pass. That I do agree with. I don’t have a massively refined library. I will just hoover stuff up on a whim. I don’t think I’ve got loads of shit, but I’ve got a few things that are like sort of like also ran indies. And then I’ve got the like real top tier of indies as well. And I say top tier indie combined with Nintendo exclusives. It’s basically where the sort of all of the good stuff in the library comes from. In terms of unifying identity, I think that is the reason, like you say, there isn’t one. Because if the gates are open like that, the library just becomes a bit amorphous. If you’re trying to say what is the PS4’s identity, you would focus in on the game Sony has made, but there is so much stuff on that console that it’s almost not as neatly packaged as a thing to discuss as like the PS2 was for whatever reason. Yeah, yeah, that’s fair. Yeah, and that’s all consoles now, really. So yeah, it’s just a different world. Matthew, here’s something I was curious about. So if you deducted the Switch games that count as Wii U ports or remakes, would this console have the strongest lineup of Nintendo published games ever? I’ve been humming and ah-ing about this one when you put it in the plan. I find the consoles quite hard to rank in that way because I guess like what they’re doing at different times is a lot of it’s down to like personal tastes. You know, you’ve got the fundamental like 2D era versus 3D era. I feel like there’s been like bigger revolutionary leaps on previous consoles and that in a way dominated the stories of those consoles. So like N64 is the birthplace of 3D Nintendo and because of that, it takes like a hugely important place in like the Nintendo console history. You know, they’re sort of riffing on that. Arguably, there’s no other leaps. I wouldn’t even say that there’s kind of leaps on Switch but I think the thing that does define Switch and it goes back to what I was saying about like these teams having the kind of leeway just to make the best games they can. Like it feels very comfortable in its own skin. Now that might be because the Switch is a huge, huge sales success. You know, it is so vast and it has the kind of audience which does buy kind of quote unquote core games which means that basically any core game Nintendo does make is guaranteed like enough of a success to justify itself. And maybe having that safety net has allowed them to just like relax and really like just get into the kind of nuts and bolts of what makes each individual franchise tick which I think is the thing which really defines Switch for me is this sense of like everyone’s doing like exactly what they’re meant to be doing. But you know, there’s not a lot of shared philosophy between those games. You know, it’s a real crying shame. We don’t have like the Iwata Asks anymore because one of the reasons we maybe have this sense of we or definitely why I have this sense of like the Wii library’s identity is I could see the shared thinking through those interviews. A lot of that philosophy is now like hidden or like lost to us annoyingly. In terms of things I’ve just like enjoyed, it probably is the strongest line up. You know, I think other consoles have games I’ve truly loved. Like, you know, I still think I love Mario Galaxy more than I love any Switch game, but there’s so much more out of it. Like I’m really envious if people get to cover it. I mean, this would be like such a beautiful console to make a magazine about because there’s lots of games. They’re super dense with like playful ideas. They seem very like mag friendly. Like the kind of person who’d be into a games magazine, I think would be into Switch. A little part of me sad that like they didn’t do it in 2014 when I’ve just become the editor of a failing Nintendo Mac. Yeah, for sure. I’ve got a few thoughts on this. So I think they’re like, I mean, as a Wii U owner, I don’t really mind the fact that the console has just been used as the basis for all these ports because to most people, they were fresh, they were new. Like the only kind of caveat is that like, it hasn’t had a fresh Mario Kart, you know? So I suppose like that’s where it makes it tough to do a sort of like apples to apples comparison. Yeah, that’s true. And so, and there’s a few games like that where they are like either enhanced remakes or ports or there is like a, there is no kind of quote, quote, new version. So it is quite hard to make that comparison, but I do agree with you. Like there’s a few things I love about the Switch. The one is the price of the games has, that is like spot on that. I really love that Nintendo is holding the line on 40 quid games. Just because I think that that’s what a lot of people want. More than like 70 quid games, as lavish as they get. And like as amazing as many of those games are. 40 pounds versus 70 pounds is like a massive difference to a lot of people. So I love the fact that like I can basically, basically always get a Switch game I want for about 35, 36 quid. That’s really good. It’s allowed me to build like quite a nice little kind of library. Physical games are still really nice to own on Switch for sure. But yeah, like it also means that you just feel a bit less self-conscious about taking chances on a first party thing you might not think you’re interested in. So yeah, I think that is good because that unlocks the kind of like impulse purchase, buying element to it. And like you say, it means that everything Nintendo has published has somehow sold more than a million copies, no matter how weirdly kind of like targeted the game otherwise seems. One game in our Hall of Fame we’ll discuss, I think fits that category quite nicely. And it has also proved to be a place where certain types of games I didn’t think would return have kind of thrived in unusual ways. Again, that describes one game on our list that we’ll get to. So yeah, I don’t know. It’s okay to just see it as a collective. Most people missed out on the Wii U. There’s no benefit to those games just being left on Wii U and not salvaged. So as an overall kind of project, the Switch is just an enormous success and fun to be a part of. Yeah, the only thing I want is a more powerful one. That’s the only thing I want. I suspect it’s the only thing you want too, Matthew. The only other thing I’m a little bit sad about and we’ve definitely mentioned this in previous episodes is that Nintendo have merged everything on Switch. Basically everyone they’ve got is making Switch games. They’ve merged their handheld side of the business and their home console side of the business. And I feel like there is a tier of portable game development or portable design thinking that they’ve mastered over like 30 years that isn’t necessarily represented. They’re obviously making loads of great retail home console experiences that you can also play portable. But considering how many teams they folded in, if you think of like how many Zeldas you’ve got between Wii U and 3DS, and we’ve not had one since launch, oh, I have Link’s Awakening, sorry. But that’s an external group. Does that bother you at all? I think it’s a fair point because if you think about things like Street Pass, Nintendo was massive on these ideas that were built around portable play or even things like their pedometer for Pokemon Heart, Gold and Soul Silver. Like they thought a lot about the experience of taking a console with you and what that means. And yeah, undeniably shaped the design of a lot of those games. And so they kind of instead, all of these games sit in this slightly odd space between like handheld and home console, which I don’t think is like a massive issue, but I do think it does eliminate a tier of games or it makes some games like A New Wario where seem a bit weird when you’re selling for 40 quid. Yeah, that’s maybe like a better representation. It feels like everything has to be slightly lavish. Everything has to justify itself as a home console game. And they largely have. Like, I don’t think there’s many like big, big missteps in there, but even like the, you know, the kind of the tentative steps they were making with their own like digital download games, you know, your kind of pull blocks and all that kind of stuff. We haven’t seen like smaller things from them. Like, we’ve only really seen lots of very good 40-pound games and maybe like the kind of, you know, how you make lots of 40-pound games is you basically nuke the people who are looking at those, those other tiers of games. I definitely feel like something’s lost, the kind of time-waster games. I don’t want to be so crude as to call it like Tetris, the Tetris games, but you know, things like that, you know, I feel like they haven’t made like a proper, like amazing puzzle game at all this generation. Box, Box Boy and Box Girl, does that count? But that’s probably it. Yeah, there’s arguably no real connection back to the game and watch sort of heritage on Switch, which is this is the first Nintendo console where you could say that is the case. Yeah. So that is a sea change. I could believe they don’t need it because they have opened the gates to indie games and like why compete with what is itself an incredibly vast and successful industry. If you are looking for a load of 15 quid gems, you are well catered for, like Nintendo did not need to do that, where in the past, they arguably did need to supply those games because they didn’t have those kind of strong indie lineups. They needed stuff to kind of convince you that their digital shops were worthwhile. It does feel like a little bit like looking a gift to us in the mouth to kind of complain about it because I’m fundamentally not disappointed with what we do have. Yeah, I also think that like this, even with new hardware potentially on the horizon, I do think there’s probably 30, at least 30 games from Nintendo. We haven’t seen yet that it’s made or that it’s making. There’s a big rumor that they’re way ahead on development of a few of these games that Xenoblade got brought forward, of course, the third one. There’s a rumor there’s a Fire Emblem game that’s just done, and just waiting in a box somewhere that hasn’t been announced but exists and it was leaked a few weeks ago. There is no other games publisher on Earth where I think this is the case where you’ve got a game completed and sat in your back pocket. But they’ve invested big time in software this generation. But I think that a lot of maybe a lot of its key moments are still to come. Hence why it’s nice to do a kind of an evolving Hall of Fame. In assembling a Switch Hall of Fame, Matthew, what factors must we consider? What boxes do you think we need to tick? I’ll give you my sort of like take on this. So it’s like I said earlier, I think it has to be a mix of those big Indies and those big Nintendo exclusives. Those are two prongs of what I can use to make this list. Like I was thinking less about ports from other consoles that maybe would run better on those consoles just because some of those ports are really impressive, but like you, this isn’t necessarily the destination I go to to play those games. So instead I focused on, yeah, like I say Indies that are a perfect fit for the hardware. And then yeah, kind of core Nintendo exclusives. I think that’s where the Hall of Fame has to come from. How about you? I’ve definitely forced an entry that kind of breaks with that. But I think it’s one of the very rare third party games where it is just so beautifully executed and such a perfect genre fit for the console. Like it feels like a Nintendo game that Nintendo didn’t make to me, which is why I made the case for it. But yeah, outside of that, I think, yeah, that roughly feels right, you know, particularly in curating the huge Indie space. There are some things which just are such a good like form fit for this that, yeah, they really jump out. Obviously, we’re only covering five. There’s loads of these to come. So please don’t be like, where’s X? You know, it’s probably gonna come in the later list. Yeah, that’s the other thing is that with the big Nintendo exclusives, we’re portioning them out. So we’re not doing all the obvious ones at once. So I would say we’ve got a couple of obvious ones and then the rest is a bit less predictable. So yeah, I think it’ll be good. But yeah, I think that’s what it’s got to, that’s essentially what it’s got to tick. I think it doesn’t necessarily matter if those games are like multi-format games, those indie games, as long as they fit the Switch well, which so many of these games do, because they are the kind of like handheld friendly, highly quaffable, kind of like play it for 25 minutes. Put your console on standby experience. There’s a lot of that category, like you say, is very well taken care of by indie. So yeah. So Matthew, any more to add on the Switch? Or shall we take a break and get into our Hall of Fame? Let’s get into the Hall of Fame. Alright. Welcome back to the podcast. So in this section, we’ve selected our first five games to be going to the back page, Nintendo Switch Hall of Fame. That’s a very prestigious title. So if me and Moto wants to put that on the boxes of any of his games, just get in touch. We’ll sign off the licensing rights on our logo for 10,000 pound a pop. I think that’s a good deal. So yeah, drop me a line. So yes, Matthew, as you say, we have got probably some more obvious classics to come down the line. We plan on making this the first of many episodes of this type. I would say probably even more frequent than the Indie Games Hall of Fame because we’re very much in our element here. So yeah, should we talk a bit about the fact that we’ve decided to just pick five games instead of 15? I don’t know about you, but I love the Indie Games Hall of Fame episodes, but they were a real mad rush to get through them. And it’s a bit exhausting to talk about that many games so quickly. I think so too. Looking at the list, yeah, we’ve not really talked about any of these games before. So just a chance to kind of like weigh in on them before we get to the games of the year episodes where we do get to talk about them. Yeah, having a bit more space, a bit more room to breathe. Let’s dig into what makes them really special. Would you like to reveal the first inductee, Matthew? It’s a daring, controversial choice. It’s Super Mario Odyssey. Probably one of two obvious picks, I would say, in our list here. But Matthew, why don’t you do your big pitch on Odyssey and where it fits into the overall Mario canon? Before we get to Odyssey, a very quick point about Mario Galaxy. Part of the brilliance of Mario Galaxy for me was that it made me realise that what I wanted from 3D Mario wasn’t Mario 64 or Sunshine, which were these large land masses with maybe more of a focus on exploration freedom rather than actual mechanical doing. I even said this in my original Mario Galaxy review. A lot of the Mario Galaxy levels feels like once you just took the actual bits you interact with in a Mario 64 level and just chopped out all the boring grass in between, there’s a lot of walking between interesting things in Mario 64 and Sunshine. Not to do them down, obviously Mario 64, incredibly important game, but it kind of rewired my brain a bit. But then what happened with Super Mario Odyssey and why I think it is so special is that actually I think it did justify that idea. It kind of flipped me back. Not so much. I still think Mario Galaxy is where it’s at for me, but I think this is a game which gives you these large sandbox levels to explore, but also never loses sight that fundamentally Mario is a platforming action hero. He isn’t a guy who’s meant to walk around boring expanses. It shows that you can do those bigger levels as long as you have a density of playful ideas that’s sort of high enough. And more importantly, I think it finds solutions to the scale of the level in its central mechanic, which is that Mario can capture enemies by throwing his magical hat at them. There’s a hat called Cappy, and then he takes over them, and he basically becomes that character. And it just happens that in lots of the levels, there are captures which transform movement and speed up movement and take an expansive desert or a huge ocean of water or a vast field of flames and turn them into something which, you know, visually can impress with the size, but doesn’t ever get boring to move around. Like The Luncheon Kingdom, which is this big food world. There’s this huge ocean of like pink lava. It’s got a really weird art style, this game. Like every level is kind of like, almost feels like it was made by a different art director. So it’s got this like really garish pink lava, but you can turn and possess a fireball and then swoop, you know, bounce around this thing. And, you know, so that kind of like negates some of that. Or when you go into the Seaside Kingdom, you can take over this thing called a, I think it’s called a gusher, or maybe it’s a gushen, which is like this sort of like blowfish, which sort of shoots water out, sort of squirt itself around levels. And all of a sudden, you know, what would have been like a vast expanse of water that you had to very slowly swim through becomes, oh, it’s this huge playpen for throwing around this amazing kind of like puffer fish thing. That’s really cool. Or likewise, Sand Kingdom, which when I first went into this, this is one of the earlier kingdoms in the game. It’s the big desert kingdom. It’s got this like Mexican Day of the Dead vibe to it. I saw all this empty sand and I thought, oh no, they’ve Mario 64’d it again. Like I’m not into this. But then very quickly you get to possess bullet bills and fly them around the airspace. And then all of a sudden you’re like, well, I appreciate having all this space that I can like throw around this bullet bill and really enjoy this character. So I actually think the game manages to like zoom right in on like really specific platforming challenges, but at the same time find something to do with all that space, which Mario 64 and Sunshine didn’t. It comes close to Galaxy. Like it’s probably a top 10 game of all time for me. Yeah, I mean, one thing I think is funny is like, before we get into the list, I have to talk about Mario Galaxy. I feel like you’ll, everything with you comes back to Mario Galaxy one way or another. I just wanted to explain the backstory of like where my head was at. Yeah. The other thing with Odyssey and one of the great pleasures with it, it’s probably the only big Nintendo fast party game that I’ve had no professional involvement with. I didn’t write a single word about this game. I only appreciated it as a punter. Like they announced it after ONM had closed. So I only ever saw it from afar. I didn’t get to preview it. I didn’t get to review it. I remember reading the Edge 10 review of this and getting so excited in a way that I hadn’t, like literally since before working on games magazines, it really took me back to being like, you know, a teenager reading N64 and reading the Mario 64 review and going like, oh, holy shit, this is going to be so good. That Edge review is absolutely amazing, by the way. Secret who writes these things, but Edge Mario Odyssey reviewer, you are seen, I would say. I remember there was a very specific detail in that review, talked about. This is back when like the HD rumble on the pad on Switch was like a bit more exotic and people were kind of still quite into it and they didn’t really like, you know, it’s kind of faded over time. Like no one ever talks about HD rumble, but he talked about in the Seaside Kingdom, the waters are like fizzy, like fizzy pop, you know, they’re kind of bubbly. And there’s this very light like fizz when you’re in the water in the rumble. I remember reading that and being like, this game is going to be the best game I’ve ever played. Like what a beautiful tactile Nintendo thing. You were like, oh, if it’s good enough that it’s stuck with the reviewer, like I have to like feel that. So that’s, yeah. And more broadly with this game, I think the other thing that’s like absolutely like amazing, apart from like them really getting their head about how to do this kind of like more free form, open Mario is the capture system itself. Basically an opportunity for EAD Tokyo to show off that they can build like infinite mascots and make them all amazing. Like these are standalone characters, basically. When you take control of them, they each handle differently, but they all handle like so beautifully. You think, oh, well, you could make a game not out of all of them. Some of them are pretty basic. Like you can possess like a rock or a cactus and it just like bounces around a bit. And that’s more just like a visual gag. But I would say even like just hopping at a cactus around is like 10 times better than like any PlayStation platforming mascot has ever been. What a surprise that you think that. Lol, lol, lol. Well, the funny thing is, Matthew, sorry just to cut you off there, but like I was gonna say that that was what gonna be my big question actually was that famously like the philosophy with Mario 64 was that Mario must feel comfortable to control, fun to control even if you’re in an empty room basically with just some like random objects. So here, have they applied that philosophy to every single character you can possess in the game essentially? Does each one feel like it’s had that same level of care? There’s definitely a scale. Like none of them are like howlers. Some of them are just, they more, you know, there’s like a taxi you can possess and it’s basically just a cut scene. Like you possess this taxi and it drives off. Like you don’t really control it. Or there’s like a space rocket that you possess and then you just press B to like charge up the launch and then it fires off. Not all of them are like fully thought out, but there’s a couple which are absolutely amazing that I wanted to pull out, which I think in themselves, you’re like another platforming company would be incredibly lucky if they hit on any of these. Right. So there’s a thing called a tropical wiggler, which is, you know, like the wiggler, like with its long segmented bodies, but it basically accordions out, so it kind of stretches its body. So its front paws can hit a new platform and then it kind of pulls its ass back across. So you can basically use this like sort of stretching mechanic to sort of move around the world. But what makes it is it’s got this like, like literal accordion sound to it. You know, when it kind of stretches and then retracts again. So there’s this really lovely sense of it being this like physical like wheezing thing. That’s a beautiful touch. There’s a thing called an uproot, which is like a sort of like an onion thing whose legs stretch upwards. I guess it’s quite like the Tropical Wiggler except it’s like a vertical version. But then there’s all these puzzles about like scaling these towering platforming gauntlets where you have to stretch up and then bounce into it. It actually reminds me of the… Did you ever play James Pond where he stretched? And if something touches his feet or body, he’s like, fucks. That’s sort of the mechanic here, except like it’s in 3D and feels like really lush unlike James Pond, which feels horrible. The standout is this little bird called Pokio. When you first get him, you’re like, oh, I don’t really get this. Cause he’s got like a long beak. And when you press the attack button, he just sort of like jabs forward with the beak. And you’re like, eh, you know, it’s just a guy with a big spike basically. But then you realize that he can embed his beak into soft surfaces like wood of this big Japanese pagoda type level that he’s based in. Once his beak’s embedded, you can like elastically flick him down and then send him pinging up, embed his beak again. And so you get into this rhythm of fling, embed, fling, embed. That is a standalone platforming game right there. It’s not quite the same as this, but there was a game on DS called Donkey Kong King of Swing, where you were like climbing 2D walls by like swinging between grab points. Like Pokeo is, I would say, like a versatile and tactile enough thing that it could be the standalone star of like a smaller download title maybe. That it’s just like one idea in a game of many, I think is just an indicator of like, how fucking wild this game is. Like it’s just mechanically sublime. Like I don’t think there’s like a really like jarring Duff note in it. Yeah, I suppose like the question is, when are we getting another one, Matthew? Because unlike Breath of the Wild, there’s no sequel to this on the horizon. You know, they obviously did the 3D world port with Bowser’s Fury, the expansion, which is obviously like a new chunk of game that they worked on. There is a lot of celebration about that game and a lot of buzz about it. And I think the expansion is wonderful, but I hope that doesn’t indicate that that’s the exact direction they’re going in. Odyssey is much better than that. So, you know, I would take an Odyssey 2 for sure before I took another, I don’t want another 3D world Mario. Like that doesn’t interest me. It feels like there was a sort of statement of intent of having this and Breath of the World, like lead the charge on this console, right? Like these are the generation defining sort of big brain sort of like games that Nintendo is sort of putting on this platform, these signature games. So I can’t see like another Mario scaling back. Like I feel like this strain of Mario game will always exist. Like this sort of push it further in 3D in terms of like ideas and worlds and abilities. And yeah, like I don’t think that will go away. I think Nintendo like must enjoy that. That innovation must be as important to them as it is to you. It’s just maybe like not the only thing they’re focused on, you know? The thing with Bowser’s Theory is that some would say, oh, that is the next step in that it’s the whole game in one world. These are open worlds with which you can sort of, you know, quote unquote open worlds, the individual kingdoms. That’s a game where like every level exists in the same world, which arguably is like a step along from this. But the actual world that joins them, like it’s basically like a load of 3D world levels floating above a big lake. Instead of loading screens, you have Nessie. Yeah, right. And it’s like, well, you know, great. That isn’t really what I want. If there’s somehow a mad thing where there are like land masses of the complexity of a Mario Odyssey kingdom and you don’t fly between them, but they’re all part of like some mad open world, maybe you combine the two. But the density invention and I would say difficulty and challenge as well of Odyssey’s higher are really, really important. You can get to the end of it relatively easily in terms of like the number of power moons you need to collect is quite low, but really to mine the levels of everything, it does scale. There’s some really juicy challenges in this and some really great platforming as well. It has plenty of secret areas which basically are self-contained galaxy levels in a way that galaxy would often whisk you to quite an abstract, platforming landscape. There’s tons of that here and here it also has all those different captures for you to play with. So it can go, well, you’ve learnt the bullet bill for this level and you’ve done the stuff you need to do for the kind of core kind of story mission of this level, but then let’s have these abstract levels where you have to really master the bullet bill and, you know, I really, really appreciated that. Like I think if anything it’s probably a better balance of difficulty than galaxy, which you know, is never a screamingly hard game. But this has got some really nice stuff. An amazing end game. I mean the levels that unlock at the end are like super, super challenging and the way that you’re constantly harvesting these moons to unlock more stuff is really satisfying. One thing I don’t like in Odyssey is there’s a little bit of padding where every level has like a handful of power moons you have to buy from a shop with the currency. That’s where this feels more like Mario 64 or Sunshine. This is just busy work. You’ve just filled this landscape with coins because you’ve got all this size and you need to put something everywhere. Making me buy power moons? That’s a bit lame compared to like how fun most of them are to unlock. Well okay cool. So the challenging element is a key thing to pull out I suppose because 3D World isn’t that challenging. It’s like the opposite of challenging really. It’s just incredibly simple, especially with two people. That level of like escalation, which I think is like the big gulf between Galaxy and 3D Land and World is that I don’t think 3D Land and World… The levels seem to be missing the really wild third act that I kind of hope for them they always end with the flagpole, which is just a real downer for me. Odyssey definitely has a sense of… Every level has a couple of like really wild things or like some crazy bosses. I mean, there’s a really mad kingdom in this game, which people jokingly refer to as the Dark Souls Kingdom because you go to this like evil dark gothic castle and you fight like quite a photorealistic dragon, which looks like something from a from a from a software game with almost like lightning and everything. That’s odd. There is a slight incoherence to this game, but that’s also part of the fun of like, what the fuck is this thing going to do next? Yeah. Well, hey, Mario 3D World had a cake world, Matthew, so, yeah, you Philistine, but that’s interesting. Maybe that maybe that was a deliberate homage. I don’t know. Maybe they just, yeah, I don’t know. It sounds like the that is the role of the dice you take where you just change everything on a dime. I’ve got nothing to back this up, but it feels like the work of a slightly like younger, like more energetic team, you know, a key thing that is happening is that, you know, you’re beginning to see the transition from like old management to new management. You know, the people who were directing the Mario Galaxies of yesteryear are now running the overall teams. They’re now, you know, Kazumi, you know, Mr. Mario Galaxy, is basically the head of their first party development. His skills are kind of being applied to everything now, which maybe explains this general like step up in quality across the board. It’s a really wild game. So dense with ideas. I think it’s really replayable, which probably should be a factor in this Hall of Fame. This is a game you could come back to like every couple of years and you will have forgotten like half of it just because it throws so much shit at you. Different things will sort of stick with you every time. The ideal first pick then Matthew. I feel like I’ve talked at you about Odyssey a lot. No, it’s okay. Like it’s a game that like I have played but just hasn’t just hasn’t clicked with me on that level yet from the few hours I’ve played. But I think like I did have the sort of the slight question of what is the scale meant to be with some of the levels I played where they did feel expansive, but I hadn’t really properly interacted with them in terms of like possessing these characters and exploring them in that way. And that’s obviously what you need to do to get the most out of this game. I’m not going to pretend that the scale is my favorite thing. It’s more that they like fix the problems they had with it. This game is best when it’s super, super focused, a single platforming gauntlet or an amazing boss encounter. Like the bits that are good in this could basically be in a galaxy game, like the very best bits, but they justify the whole package, and you get a funny cat with eyes, so that’s good. Which seems like the sort of bullshit you’d normally stand against, but when Nintendo does… And one of the greatest bosses of all kind, according to my boss list, old Knuckle Toe Tech. Remember him? Yeah, that was… What a duffer. It was funny hearing you trying to describe Mario bosses on a podcast. It seemed phenomenally duff, but I thought you did a good job. Okay, great, yeah. So this is why we had to do 5 games and not 15, because if all the entries are that long, this would be an 8 hour podcast, so that’s not my mind. It’s always good to hear Matthew talk about Nintendo stuff, it’s one of the things that keeps those Patreon bucks rolling in, I’m sure. Okay, so second game in the Hall of Fame is Metroid Dread. This is one I pushed for, but Matthew didn’t stand in my way, which is nice. Oh, I love it. Yeah, it’s so, so good. So it was both of our Game of the Year last year, eventually. It wasn’t in the podcast they recorded, but afterwards I was like, oh no, this should have been number one, instead of Ratchet and Clank, whatever I had at number one, I can’t remember now. It wasn’t Ratchet and Clank, but it was a while ago. So yes, this is Mercury Steam’s first attempt at a proper original 2D Metroid game, after making the Castlevania games for Konami, and then making the Samus Returns on 3DS. So this was the next step along. I’ve not played Samus Returns, Matthew, but if there’s one thing, from playing some of the older Metroid games off the back of playing this, the thing that, there’s a few things that really kind of stand out, but obviously the level of detail they can put in the environments in terms of sound design, visual design, and small things going on in the background, and really kind of bring in identities to these places, that’s one thing. The other thing is that in terms of how Samus plays, it feels like 2D Metroid has never felt like an action game in the way that this does, like a really athletic action game and precise action game. This feels like a 2D Metroid game made for an analogue stick, whereas the previous ones were made for a D-pad. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think that makes perfect sense. Yeah, so yeah, I think that as someone who has never massively clicked with this genre, this was the one that got under my skin and I think it’s because these games are typically about you lose, Samus lose their abilities at the start and then you go around getting them back and then you accumulate this vast arsenal of stuff and as you do, you can unlock new places, new paths to different locations and you’re steadily progressing by finding new ways to navigate the environment. This does that too, but there’s maybe more of a guided hand, but not so much of a guided hand that you don’t feel like you’re still achieving things when you do it, but it’s not a game where you ever really get lost and I actually think that’s quite a feat of design when you think about there’s so many different interconnected parts of this game, different tunnels and things like that, but it never overwhelms you if this is your first Metroidvania, but I think it’s still really satisfying even if it’s your 20th game in this genre. I think that’s fair. The big criticism, if there is one that you hear from people, is that it’s too linear for a Metroidvania, that people really want to be filled, like they’ve just been dunked and left completely alone by both narratively and also by the guiding hand of the designer. There are definitely more linear stretches of this and it kind of pushes you around, but within those stretches there’s plenty of reason. So like every time you get a new ability there was always a handful of cubbies that I had in my mind that I wanted to return to, to then explore and could. So I felt, it ticked the box in terms of like, I felt like I was an evolving character at all points. I think it has the difficulty, particularly in like some of the boss encounters, that I felt finding the power-ups and finding things actually was worthwhile. Like a big, big beef I have with Metrovanias is where exploring for all the hidden doodads is basically just there to justify exploring, you don’t really need them. Here I felt like the challenge was such that I did want to find everything, which I actually think is true of most Metroid games, definitely true of Metroid Prime, which was like brutally difficult when I first played it, I thought. And if it does have a more linear eye, I think it is also a very cinematic eye, so it knows to kind of like how to mix up certain areas, like when you return to them, I kind of recontextualize by like changing conditions, or like limitations of what you can do, or the fact that you need to find a new power, which then suddenly kind of transforms that area again. I think they are very, very good at finding variety within what is basically like jumping around a load of sort of sci-fi corridors. Yeah, I think like that cinematic eye, certainly you get it during the Emmy sequences, of course, where you’re chased by these killer robots, which as someone on Discord pointed out, this game sort of lifted from Shadow Complex. They had a very similar sort of thing. When I saw a screenshot of it, I was like, oh, yeah, that does look extremely similar to the Emmy actually. But hey, you know, that game only exists because it’s Super Metroid, so it’s basically just returning the favour by lifting that idea. But that adds a slightly horror-based element to it where you’re being chased and you know that you’re going to be instantly killed. But then when you do finally find a way to stop the Emmy, that too is a cinematic moment, isn’t it? It’s like the camera moves as you’re firing the cannon to destroy these extremely powerful synthetic beings. When the camera like shifts into the world in like, sort of over the shoulder, sort of semi 3D, I thought that was such a beautiful touch. Like it really puts you in her shoes and in her shoes for the coolest specific moment of the game. Yeah, for sure. It really kind of punctuates each kind of like part of the game, I think. Just gives you this massive action moment that you kind of carry on exploring. And I think that the other thing is that this game feels lavish because the environments look nice, but the animation is phenomenal. So the way things move and the way Samus moves is like, that’s where it looks like a blockbuster, even though it’s a 2D game. I’ve always loved the way Samus moved. The challenge with Samus is that she’s meant to be this incredibly reactive bounty hunter, but also like she looks like a tank. So you’re kind of you’re thinking like weight and speed. And the way the game like the game different games capture that is always different. There’s lots of different interpretations. There’s a real sense of like clanking armor to her old like SNES sprite, particularly like the way the way it just sort of connects and moves together. It feels it feels very, very mechanical to me here. There’s this like liquid grace at times, like the way she like slips through gaps or like mantles platforms is incredibly like live. But then when she smashes something, you are like, fuck me, I would not want to be hit by that. Yeah, it’s this this game, the the Rockets feel really good when you can have the homing version deeper into the game and you’re just sort of selecting multiple targets and unloading them. Like they’ve they’ve has really good gun feel essentially. The analog aiming arc as well, where you can kind of control her gun on for like real precision. That feels like a modern vital touch. And probably that, like you say, needs an analog stick to work and feels like a evolution of that character for like a modern control scheme. Yeah. And I think as you were saying about how you remember these cubbies, you come back to some of the like optional challenges in this game involve quite absurd combinations of abilities like sprinting into like dropping a bomb into, you know, sprinting again and just all of and then like wall hopping like it asked you to do some quite absurdly specific stuff to some of these optional areas. And like that’s where there’s like quite a high challenge ceiling. I couldn’t do all of those. Yeah, I had to watch loads of YouTube videos. Because some of them are like the starting point for like where the manoeuvre begins is so far from where you’re trying to get. You’re like this cannot be right. Like there’s no way I can sustain a move that starts what feels like several screens across. It’s a wow moment when you realise the kind of level layout that you kind of took for granted is incredibly specifically built for like this one purpose. That wasn’t a long atmospheric corridor. It was the exact run up needed to trigger her sprint to then fire off and begin this like insane combo. I think it could maybe tutorialise those a bit better is the only thing. I agree with that. Yeah. Like some of the phrasing on like how those moves link together is a little vague. And some of them you kind of forget that you have or you don’t use as much. Yeah. And so yeah. And how they can you can kind of change some of them together is that’s where there’s some real like it’s real finger gymnastics going on to do that. Yeah, like, but that is like that is interesting. That is action game DNA. And I’ve only I’ve been playing Zero Mission, but Zero Mission is not that at all. Really. It’s where I think there’s that difference maybe comes from from this Mercury Steam game, like I played Super Metroid 2, Matthew, it doesn’t feel like that sort of combination of athletic kind of movement stuff is as much in the DNA of those earlier games as it is in this one. Maybe I’m wrong about that. But the most buried secrets require true mastery of like all her physical moves. Right. And there will always be a tier of stuff in those games, which re-contextualize some of those moves or makes you realize like, oh, I haven’t really mastered this move at all. And it’s quite daring that like the actual kind of core story journey of these games doesn’t tap into that hidden layer of impressiveness in both the level design and the moveset, which is like, I think you could feasibly just like never notice it or just not know it’s there. Okay, fair enough. Yeah. So that’s always been part of the DNA. Go on. How do you feel about the balance of difficulty outside the bosses and in the bosses? Because it’s one of the interesting things, I think, in that there are these real spikes and then in between, I feel like you don’t really run into anything nearly as difficult. I just wonder if, is there a better version of this where the pressure is more constant throughout or do you think the balance is quite nicely struck? It’s true that you don’t outside of bosses and sub bosses. So like when two of the, is it the possessed, is it the chozo warriors? Those things, when there were two of them at once, they were, I guess an example of like a non-boss that was actually like quite tricky. But outside of that, it’s true, it’s not especially challenging. I don’t feel like I was ever like troubled by the platforming or the regular enemies so much. But I didn’t mind it so much because I think the bosses, which I didn’t think were as tough as, they weren’t as tough as I thought they were going to be. The last boss is easily the toughest. And even then, I think it was actually quite elegantly designed, that boss. I think it’s okay to draw some of those spikes to those moments because then you’re not frustrated when you’re backtracking or… I don’t know. I was completely fine with the difficulty, honestly. Because like you say, there is still that extra layer of mastery if you want it. And the enemies too were hard. They were like, they’re kind of bosses, kind of not, I suppose. But they punctuate these moments, they punctuate these long stretches of the game with basically a movement and sort of stealth challenge, which is quite, quite unusual, but works well. And they’re challenging in their own way. So I think like the variety of ways it is difficult, not so bad. Maybe it could be more frequently challenging, though. I don’t know. Yeah, no, I didn’t have a big problem with it either. And you’re right, like the bosses are, they’re the hardest thing in it, but they’re also incredibly fair. And like, they’re really old school pattern learning and recognition. And actually, you have such good control over Samus that they feel very fairly balanced to me. We all have to die a couple of times to learn the phases, but once you have learned them, you know, you are often defeating these things without taking like any damage by the end. You go from like dying to like the exact opposite of dying. And that feels very old school, but in a way I really, really like. Yeah, I didn’t have a problem with difficulty otherwise. I just think it’s interesting that everything you’re doing to better yourself really feels focused in on like you’re making yourself better to improve the odds in specifically boss fights rather than the everyday world. Or maybe it’s because I am thorough that the everyday world doesn’t feel quite as intimidating. There might be a bit of that. Yeah, it’s like I, you know, I would like more missiles, please. So I will go and get some more missiles. There is that is true that that is how I can have approached those those optional challenges. Like do I think it’s worth it based on what I think I need to overcome the bosses? Do I tell you about how I thought I had to, I defeated the last boss in this. Now I thought that because I fucked the like one fire your gun QTE that happens after that, that I would have to do the entire boss again. And like I screamed at my switch because I think you’re meant to just like press one button. Then she fires that final beam to kill the bird thing. But I hadn’t I didn’t do that and it failed. And I just thought, oh, fuck. And I was so I was so mad because I had perfectly done this boss. Like you say, I only really took damage in the last phase. And I was like, oh, my God, I’ve done the Sekiro thing where my brain is completely wired into what this game is now. And then to lose on a basically a QTE, I was like so upset, but it was OK. Mercury Steve had my back there. But there was one moment of horror. I kept playing this before bed and hitting these like horrible bosses just before bed. And so I’d go to sleep in like a really angry mood, unless I could sort of stay up and get through them. Oh, the angriest I ever got in this game was always when trying to time the fucking Emi counterattack and then hearing that noise that jing as it kind of like the little needle shoots into you. Like, yeah, well, while just Samus is kind of like flop, like does the slowest, like slap in midair and misses it completely. Just like that noise is like the sound of my sort of frustration. That’s the sound I would hear when I went to sleep at Christmas last year. But yeah, but just just the right level of challenge, I think. And the future I want for Metroid, Matthew, is Mercury Steam 2D games every three or four years. And then a new Metroid Prime, like two years after that, basically every single time like that. That would be the dream sort of like path for this series to me if they could somehow make those two coexist. And it feels like this was a bit of a breakthrough game in terms of popularity for the series. Like I think it’s the best selling one in the UK ever. And it won the Game Award, of course, for best game, which is completely fair. So is that kind of where you’re at with it as well? Do you think we’re ready for more, a higher quantity of these games as a species? Yeah, absolutely. And you think like they’ve done the hard, they’ve done a lot of like the heavy lifting, like making like the core character work. So it’d be kind of like mad not to put her through the ring or more. If they do do more, the Metroid story stuff doesn’t really do it for me. No, no way. It’s like super tough and like it’s it’s it’s fine because it’s like contained to the cutscenes. Like I don’t think it really impacts the game at all. I felt the same about Other M actually. This this one I feel like yeah, that’s stuff I don’t need. But yeah, it would be mad if like Nintendo didn’t like continuous relationships. It’s clearly like working really, really well for them. And if they do make a new Switch or an advanced Switch or a sequel to the Switch, you can just make an even prettier version of this. This feels like quite a traditional like upgrade path ahead of it. Yeah, for sure. Well, the other thing I was going to say actually was that on the story side, a friend of the show, Jay Bailey, has made a good point, which is the way you can tell this is not made by original Nintendo Metroid devs. I think the Chozo are treated to this like unknowable alien race throughout the series. And then in this game, like you just they just turn up and you fight a load of them. And like, that’s where he thought there was like maybe that lack of sort of care over the mythology that maybe existed more at Nintendo. But I mean, the story is so sort of naff anyway. Who really cares? Yeah, it’s odd because I think the story like is the bit that like Nintendo mainly control. Like, I think the story is like Sakamoto’s baby. He’s like Mr. Metroid. I think he’s responsible for why the story is as bad as it is. Right, because he did a you can find, I don’t think you can find the talk itself, but you can definitely find reports of like he did a GDC talk years ago, which was the one where he was saying that how inspired he was by Dario Argento films. He’s Famicom Mystery Club, Detective Club as well is another of his. Admittedly, the Argento stuff is like a bigger influence on Detective Club than Metroid, but he talked about like kind of tension and thriller design and wider narrative theory in a way that you never hear a Nintendo dev talk about. It’s clearly a thing for him. So I think it is his baby. I think he is in charge of the story for better or worse. Okay, good. A new Twitter thread, Matthew, is Metroid Dread a Giallo. That’s like… Okay. That’s a good place to sort of like leave off then, I think. I fucking love that game. I love it so much. And so, yeah, this is the game of this genre that cracked me, much like Metroid Prime did years earlier, actually. Just like didn’t think I was wired for these games. And it turns out you just need the right one. And considering how busy this genre is, it is amazing this managed to stand out even among the absolute, you know, the monstrous amount of competition even on the Switch. Okay. Next up, Matthew, this was one that you selected and I think is a really cool one. So why don’t you go ahead and talk about it? Yeah. So I’ve picked Astral Chain, which is a Platinum Games action detective sci fi thriller. I think it’s notable for being in a line up of games, which is kind of getting shakier by the year or not shaken by the year. Like Platinum seems to be sort of going off the rails a little bit, I would say, since their kind of original kind of glory days, like they’ve been hits along the way, like Wonderful 101, I absolutely loved obviously their involvement with Nier Automata and this. And this to me, I think is like the last truly great Platinum game, but also the one which gives me like big hope for Platinum’s future, because it’s directed by a chap called Takahisa Tora, who is a designer there, he’s the lead designer on Nier Automata, he worked on Wonderful 101, basically worked very closely with Kamiya, and he directs this with Kamiya supervising him and there’s quite a weird interview on VGC with Platinum Games, Andy Robinson over there has a really good relationship with Platinum and seems to do these big yearly interviews just about the state of play. They’re so good. Yeah, they’re absolutely amazing. It’s one of the most, yeah, what a great relationship to have, I mean, it’s really interesting. And there, the management in those interviews have called out Tora as their superstar developer. He’s like our main guy, which if I was the other director, I’d feel a bit sad about. I don’t think managers are meant to play favorites so publicly, but whatever. That’s like me saying like, my favorite staff writer was Joe Scribbles. Obviously, I loved all my staff writers equally. I wouldn’t do it because it would be mortifying for the person. Yeah, that is funny actually. But anyway, so that isn’t why it’s good, but it’s interesting. This game, which is made in partnership with Nintendo, I actually think there is way more Nintendo influence in this than any of the other games Platinum has made with them. So Bayonetta 2 and Wonderful 101 feel like, for better or worse, Platinum games which Nintendo published. This feels like something where they had more of a hand in it in terms of where it lands and stuff. Nintendo definitely had a big hand in the story, which is why it’s one of the more kind of coherent worlds which I will now explain to you. You’ve played a bit of this right? Yeah, I’ve played a couple of hours today. I was quite surprised by the tone of it actually, but go ahead. So it’s set in this futuristic city where you play as a cop, one of two twins, you can play as a male or female character. They’re a lot more dialed down than your usual Platinum protagonist because they’re basically like a blank slate. I think Platinum’s characters can be quite obnoxious outside of their amazing action chops, so I actually don’t mind them in this mode. I think less of that is actually okay. And in this world these cops team up with these sort of giant demons that they have leashed to them on these mental chains. These demons are called legions. And so what the game basically is, is a tag team action game where you control a policeman and the legion they’re chained to. You yourself are very weak. The legion is very strong. So on a basic level, you can send it out to fight things. It kind of auto attacks for you. You can take that up a notch and you can like do combos with it where you’re hitting things with your baton and then you summon the demon to kind of like take part in your combos. That’s like the next step up. But what really elevates this and makes this like truly spectacular is you can take manual control of the legion. So you’re controlling the policeman on one analogue stick and then you steer the legion on the other analogue stick a little bit like kind of what you did in the Wonderful 101 where you kind of drew patterns onto the screen to summon different things. It’s kind of got a similar pat on your head and rubbing your tummy kind of vibe as that where you can take more direct control of the legion and set up like even more complicated moves. And for me, it really comes down to the brilliance of the chain that connects them because it’s like, a visual metaphor for how the two things are like, you know, connected. But it’s also a physical item in and of itself. So when you’re controlling the legion, you can do things like swoop the legion around an enemy so the chain kind of goes around them in a circular motion. And then it locks that character down, it sort of leashes them to the floor and then you can really wail on it. Or you’ve got other characters who would like to do these great big charges at you. And when they do this, you see this big red track on the floor, which shows where the monster is going to charge, and you can stretch the chain across that like a trip wire to trip and stumble the boss. All kinds of things. You can fire a legion up at a monster and then pull on the chain to pull yourself into the air. So then you’re into an aerial combo, which feels like a very kind of cameo-ish touch. You can’t jump otherwise in this game, but you can get into the air that way. It’s used for all these like navigation puzzles in these like big dungeons. So it’s not a crazy deep combat system. It’s definitely not like a bayonetta where you’re mastering these basically like limitless combos. But it is completely original. It doesn’t really feel like anything else. Takes a while to get your head around, but I think it introduces it in steps in a really elegant way. I think it tutorialized it really nicely. You can kind of go into this sort of like VR training room to really get your head around it and kind of practice things. So it kind of gives you a bit of room. It doesn’t just throw you into fights. That feels like a bit of a Nintendo influence. It’s like a Platinum game where you’re given a bit of space for things to like bed in. It kind of feels like a best of Platinum. Like there’s loads of ideas lifted from other stuff. Like I say, there’s a bit of the wonderful 101 in the way that you steer the Legion around. There’s different Legions with different powers. One of them has a sword and he literally has Raiden’s blade mode from Revengeance where it goes into slow motion and you control the blade chops to like slice through shields or cut monsters along seams. So that’s quite interesting. It has the chip RPG upgrade system of Nier Automata in there as well. So it really feels like this guy’s basically harvested all these stuff that he’s worked on in the past and brought it together with this very odd control scheme which feels like nothing else. It’s a true original in that sense. Maybe I value that more than some others, but just the excitement of the new and seeing something that’s so brash and different instantly got to me and the way it blossoms over the course of the game. By the end I was just so completely won over by this. I think it is one of the best Switch games. Yeah, so playing this today in preparation for this episode, I was actually like… I was there thinking, oh, this is where the Blockbuster Platinum game minds have been since Nier Automata, which is the last game of theirs I played. When I see them doing… That Babylon’s Fall game doesn’t quite look like my sort of thing. I realised that this was a… I had this experience in my Switch collection the whole time and just not played it. And then it’s got a lot going on, but it is steady at introducing it. And it also, like you say, as for the kind of new player experience, it kind of puts you… I think it puts you in casual mode by default. And then if you want to switch on platinum, literally platinum mode, that’s the name of the difficulty setting, to turn it into more of a kind of challenging action game, you can do that. But it’s designed to be gentle when you kick off. We have a kind of like weird slave element to the chained creature, the Legion, like a slight element of that to it. There is. There is. I mean, like… Underlined by the opening cutscene a bit. It’s tricky. I think it’s specifically like the chain imagery, like really like hammers that home. I still see them working in unison. And as a result, like, you know, I didn’t specifically think of them as like a master and a slave, you know. It was more like someone’s bodyguard, like a protector, I think, is more what they’re going for. But there is definitely that. Like, I can understand where that thought comes from. It did cross my mind at several points. I was like, hmm, I’m not sure if I’d have gone with chain because it’s so, so charged an image, you know? Yeah. That was the thing. It’s like these relationships, these symbiotic relationships exist in everything from persona to, you know, like Final Fantasy. But there’s never a chain. And they’re cops as well. So all of this is unintentional. I know it is. But like, that was, it’s just weird that, yeah, it’s just oddly charged in a way that I wasn’t quite expecting. But not to dwell on that too much, Matthew. But yeah, I think like, I’m sort of steadily getting used to how you make the most of the Legion. Because when you start, it’s a bit more like, like you say, the basic level is it will just fight for you. And so the kind of mastery emerges later on. Like the core aspect of controlling your character is not that exciting by itself. They are underpowered, like you say, but it’s all about how they work together in unison. And yeah, it does actually, it’s actually one of the nicest looking Switch games as well, I would say. Just really nice cyberpunky art style. They work with a particular manga artist on the start, maybe not for everyone, but it’s got this sort of like slightly sort of cell shaded anime influenced, but you know, when it wants to like throw around mad stuff, I think it can it can do like the Platinum God in Space scale without like breaking the Switch, which I think is like fundamentally important. Yeah. And it also has like quite a big variety of like other different types of action set pieces, like vehicle sections and times you’re dodging things. One of the one of the kind of cute things about it is, you know, you are like a working police person in this and the idea is that you’re uncovering this sort of conspiracy in this city. But there are levels where you go to regions of the city and basically perform your work as a police person. Now a lot of that work is a monster turns up and you have to use your Legion to fight it. But there’s lots of like story beats where you use the Legion for all kinds of like weird stuff like eavesdropping on conversations, tracking people, you know, it kind of functions as a sort of all singing or dancing kind of Batman detective mode. And so it has these very slow story stretches where you’re basically doing side quests which are about like helping the public. You know, there’s one where you’re like trying to deliver ice creams to people and stuff where you’re collecting trash and there’s periods where you forget that it’s an action game at all. And as a mixture of different styles, it’s way more successful than they’ve been in the past with this. You know, I particularly think of like Bayonetta when it’s an action game, fantastic, but when it is a bit of a platforming game or there’s a bit of like exploration around like a weirdly empty environment, I always feel like they’re a little bit kind of uneven. You know, it’s sort of like I get why you want to have pace changes in here, but just walking around trying to find like a health upgrade is a bit basic. This feels this feels quite kind of coherent and complete as like a fantasy vision for this character. And it’s also like might be the only platinum game that sold more than a million copies because this is weird cases where again, because it’s a Switch exclusive, people just went and bought it. Right. So this was a success, even though like these games are never a success. That’s the whole thing with platinum. It’s hard not to see them as being spot on for Nintendo as collaborators just in terms of like, you get the sense that with HD games, it’s slightly out of their grasp in terms of they’ve just not been able to crack them. But this scale of game for this kind of hardware, they are perfect for. So what I’m saying, Matthew, is you should just buy platinum Nintendo, that’d be good. That would be the best outcome ever. I would absolutely love that. I mean, the whole thing is that they’re meant to be this like amazing independent outfit and I get that. But their best work is with Nintendo now. I don’t know if their processes are similar. But I think in Astral Chain, the few interviews that there are with the director get some sense of what Nintendo’s role in this is. Like I say, I think Nintendo was quite big on like the story. Like I think the story may have even been written by someone at Nintendo and also like their involvement every step of the way. Is this landing? Is this working? It’s like Nintendo quality control. And you know, it’s a thing I’ve either said about Xenoblade, I’ll definitely say it in the Xenoblade episode, that is a vast JRPG that goes through like the Nintendo quality control process and like what that brings to it is maybe what elevates it. And I think it’s the same here. I think they sand off like some of the rough edges in a way that I don’t think they did. Like The Wonderful 101, as much as I love it, is not a particularly user friendly game. Like that felt like Nintendo leaving Cameo to his own devices. This doesn’t. And while I don’t know if it’s I don’t know if The Wonderful 101 is maybe like slightly pure and better for it. This one, I think, is like very coherent, given that it is like quite a balmy control scheme and action set up. Like it’s really unlike anything else. But I think that they managed to make that work is a really cool indicator of where they’re at with Nintendo. They absolutely want to crack the one there’s like one player and one AI companion combat system element. But they are they are like laser focused on that. Yeah, I know. That’s how I open my VGC review is like, you know, Scalebound is dead. But like the dream of Scalebound is something that obsesses them, I think, because I’ve always when they announced Scalebound way back when I remember thinking, oh, this basically feels like Bayonetta and a playable Wicked Weave from that game. Yeah, he’s always been into the scale of something small and something big and what happens when they work together. This is, I think, their first and, you know, like, probably most successful attempt to harness that. It’s weird how that idea kind of continues because it’s in, you know, not Platinum, but like in Devil May Cry 5, you obviously have the character who fights with the summon the big monsters. Is this like just a big idea from their Capcom days, which is like never gone, it’s just like stuck with them? I find that very interesting. Yeah, excited to see the next form of that in Bayonetta 3. Yeah. Yeah. Here’s the other thing, Matthew, is that like Tora is not working on Bayonetta 3, so he’s making something else. And I think they teased out in one of those VGC interviews, right, that he is working on something special or something big. So yeah, whatever the next step along is from Astral Chain, it’s a mystery. It feels like there must be another Nier at some point, right? You would hope so. And he was one of the senior game designers on that. That’s the thing. I think it’s either Astral Train 2 or it by I just I don’t know. It feels like it would be in there, but you know, well, I’d be happy with either. Yeah, for sure. No, this is a cool game. Like, also, actually, this is a game, Matthew, where I saw this running on a Switch OLED and I was like, oh, that’s what it’s supposed to look like. Like they just I just because I haven’t really seen much of the Switch OLED, but I saw the the colors just of this game in particular because it’s quite dark, sort of like cyber punky art style. But that just looks so, so good on that screen. I did feel immensely jealous as I went back to my OG Switch. Okay, great. So the next one, Matthew, is one I forced into here. So fourth game is Into the Breach. So this is from the makers of FTL, Subset Games. It is essentially a rogue-like sort of series of board game style advanced wars-like challenges where you control three mechs in this turn-based setup on a variety of different maps which have different sort of features on them. And it’s basically a game of like pushing monsters around, these kind of kaiju-style sort of like big creatures. And the objectives can vary from like defender building, from something happening, defense and missile silos, from being destroyed. Try not to kill a certain type of enemy so you can capture it for research. The challenges vary and the game plays out in just a few turns each time. You just get like several turns and then like the mission is over. And then you kind of have permadeath off the back of that. And the mechs vary massively in sort of styles. So the first few you get are kind of like your basic, they’ll fire missiles and then kind of like attack, to damage these aliens. But the sort of like, the wider thing you’re trying to achieve in this is to push them around the map into either each other or into different obstacles. So let’s say like you sort of pushed one monster into another and you kill both those monsters at the same time. Sometimes you have to do that in order to actually like complete the map just because there’s not enough turns to kill everything otherwise. And you might, one of your objectives might be kill everything on this map inside the next few turns. And so you sometimes get these incredibly elaborate set ups where you’re getting like artillery fire from miles away to nudge an enemy right. And then you send your big mech lad forward to do like a power punch to knock the enemy back into another enemy. And it’s this whole thing of like thinking strategically about well, how can I push these enemies together and do the right amount of damage? Sometimes you’ll fire a missile into the middle of three enemies that will knock all three of them out in an outward circle in different directions. So it’s really clever how deep that system is. And like the way the different types of mechs do that, is some mechs, all they’re really built for is to like push enemies across the map. And you’ll get one that can basically push one enemy from its square to the other side of the map completely. And then you get some who are like, aren’t really big on pushes, but can set fire to the environment. And so that will like do progressive damage to different enemies, but it will also spread chaotically across the different maps. You’ll get some enemies who have like beam attacks that fire through an entire line of enemies. So if you can nudge all the enemies into a row, you could potentially kill all of them with one shot if you were like clever enough to do it. So there’s a real like really high skill ceiling to this game, underpinned by this quite mournful sort of tone. And like just the tiny little bits of writing that bring the world to life. Pilots who kind of recur, you can level up the mechs as you play. Obviously progress is not permanent, but it is cool that you can sort of like add different weapons to your mechs and give them sort of health boosts and things like that. When your pilots die, the mech will be like automatically controlled and that person will be gone. That can be a bit bleak. If you’re failing a run, you can surrender at any time and then send one of your three pilots out of that reality as you’ve basically lost to these aliens and into your next game. So they’ll turn up again with their individual bonuses intact. So there’s quite a nice continuity between them. It’s like Edge of Tomorrow-y a little bit. It works really, really well. It has this beautiful art style that kind of, I think the reason I picked this Switch is just it looks so perfect for a Switch. It’s almost like a kindred spirit to Advance Wars or something. Thoughts on this one, Matthew? Yes, I’ve played some of this. I’ve never finished it. And I know it’s one I really need to return to. But a question about the sending the pilots on, sending a pilot on and retaining some of its stuff. Would you say that that is like integral to the game? Is this a loop game where gradual improvement is what eventually wins the day? Or do you think you could win this regardless? I think that like it sometimes helps because it’s like you will never have that much continuity because there’ll just be times where you fuck up and then that pilot’s just gone. And you were just in one turn, there’s like a massive wipe and you’re like, oh shit, that happened. So you can’t bank on always taking one pilot along with you. So you’re not gradually chipping away at this game other than mastering your systems, I guess. Yeah, and also unlocking the new types of mechs. So you are accumulating this background currency. And so you see the silhouettes of the different mechs you can unlock. And then as you get more coins, you basically take a punt on the silhouette. You sort of look at the silhouette you want and you’re like picking from a storefront, you go, oh, I’ll take that. And then it’s like one where, yeah, like basically all the mechs can like do physical attacks to knock people around or they can do frozen beam attacks or whatever. I like the idea. You’re looking at a guy and he’s got a huge thing, and you’re like, oh, that’s gonna be an amazing rail gun. And then he’s just holding a massive baguette. You’re like, fuck, fuck, it’s the baguette bot, shit. I knew I shouldn’t have picked by his freaking silhouettes. The other thing is that like those pilots have like these, that the key thing about the pilots is they have different abilities that are just incredibly useful. So there’s one pilot who’s got like an extra attack every single turn, and that’s really useful or an extra move every single turn, or basically one enemy that can sort of like, well, if you push back an ally, you will repair with like one of your attacks, you repair that ally when you knock them back. So that’s really useful. If they’re in close proximity to a monster, you fire some artillery fire and it knocks the enemy back into, I don’t know, let’s say like some water so they die, and it knocks your guy back, so he’s further away from the line of fire, your guy will heal and that other monster will be gone. So there are some really useful ones. There are like tier lists out there of like the different pilots and which ones you want to kind of get and take with you across playthroughs. But yeah, like I say, because it moves too fast, I think it’s tough to like try and plan around having them. Really, it’s about finding the approach that you actually like, because there are just, there’s so many different variations in terms of like elements and styles of attack and how powerful the different mechs are, that it’s really, the loop of the game is figuring out which combination of those suits you the most, and experimenting with those new mechs and seeing if they work for you. I do really love that. I’m super drawn to games where they respect both what’s fun for you, but still maintaining challenge. It’s like whatever you pick, it’s probably gonna be doable, but it’s gonna be difficult, but you also get to express yourself rather than, there’s so many games you can boil them down to, these are the winning parts and the rest of it’s kind of trash. What I have played of this, it’s like my favourite element of strategy games, which is where in like a turn-based game, like a XCOM or Gears Tactics or whatever, is when it does play out more like a puzzle scenario where you kind of know exactly how things are gonna play out. Obviously a lot of these games have like a big element of chance, which like messes with that, but one of the reasons I liked Gears Tactics, say over, not over XCOM, but I definitely like, had more fun with it, was I felt like there were more parts in that which you have full control over their behavior. And so you can like ring together these really amazing kind of combos. And this game feels like the purest version of that, you know, it’s just like, if you could guarantee X, Y and Z, what would you do with X, Y and Z? And I think that’s so compelling. I’m amazed no one had done it before really. Yeah, you even have things like flying units, they perform airstrikes and stuff, or you’ll have some that are like, some squads are just built around artillery fire purely, but they’re up close, they’re kind of in trouble. And you can even do a randomized squad where you actually just pick, it picks different types of units from across the various squads for you, and you can kind of go along with them. So yeah, there really is, it encourages you to, it basically gives you medals and like extra currency for completing the game with these different squads. So you are incentivized to try each one, see if you can actually do it. The other key thing is, you can enjoy this game if it’s on easy mode, like no problem. Like that’s a lot of the time I played this was on easy mode because I just found normal way too hard. And like, it’s really fun to play on easy mode. It’s still tough enough, it’s yeah, challenging enough, but can be quite empowering still too. And it’s satisfying to kind of make the end of it. And the finale is in this like collapsing volcano environment where you fall through like one sort of like layer of it down to another and the tiles are disappearing but lava is appearing. So it’s a bit like risky for your squad, but also you can potentially take out loads of enemies if you use the lava properly. So this really good mix of like, what abilities do you have versus what environment are you in? There’s like one map type where there’s like a conveyor belt. So you’ll plan an enemy shot, you’ll plan a shot at an enemy, almost like a turn ahead where it’s like, where will it be in like one turn or whatever. Or there’ll be tiles where you can sort of teleport between different parts of the map. Or you can sort of like collapse mountains and that will do damage to enemies too. It’s just loads and loads to think about, but it’s a very steady learning process. You start with your one squad, see if you can do it. And then you kind of go from there. And it’s my most played Switch game by miles. It’s like more than 80 hours I’ve played this. And there’s an advanced edition coming with new squads and new difficulty settings and stuff. So that’s, it’s cool. It’s frequently on sale, just phenomenal, perfect. And the controls are really nicely done for the Switch. She was probably like a PC game at its heart, but yeah, really nicely done on the handheld. Okay, Matthew, we come to the final entry for our Hall of Fame. So this was one of yours, but I could see why you went for it. Yeah, so I’ve kind of bundled together the two Ori games, Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Willow Wisps. These are two originally like Xbox published games. They are Metroidvanias about a little forest spirit called Ori who walks around this absolutely the most gorgeous animated movie. There’s so many layers of scrolling and little details and animation touches. It just looks phenomenal. Quite unlike the other games on this list in that, it is available elsewhere. The case for it and why I think it should be in the Hall of Fame is that it is the most impressive port I’ve played on Switch. It’s an absolutely stunning feat of engineering, getting something which was made for Xbox One and could trouble that console in places. And they’ve committed to getting it working on Switch at 60 frames per second. It is a game where animation is key, so it being beautiful and smooth is very important. I usually don’t get hung up on this, but I do appreciate what a feat it is, getting one of the best looking Xbox games to run on a Switch like this without sacrificing its visuals. Not hugely into the tech behind these things, but there’s a really, really good Digital Foundry article on Will of the Wisps because they were like, how the hell did you get this working? And they do all this mad stuff where because the world is made of all these different layers, all the different layers are dynamically shifting resolution, so it can maintain its pace at all times. It’s super, super clever stuff. If you are into that side of things, if you are not, you can just enjoy it as this really gorgeous Metroidvania, which is the other reason I’ve picked it, is that I feel this is a sort of genre born from Nintendo thinking this is one of my favourite Metroidvanias outside of Metroid and Castlevania. I think it’s such a beautiful fit, particularly on handheld, like this game is mesmerizing on an OLED Switch, even more so because it’s got this really lush colour palette, which with lots of contrasts between kind of shade and these bright shearing sparks, which obviously an OLED really draws out. So that’s all great. Have you played the Ori games? How familiar are you with them as what they actually are? So I’ve played Ori and the Blind Forest and it’s probably the kind of like widest gap between cute aesthetics and how fucking hard it is. I was like, how can a game this cute be this tough, essentially? Because it does not hold back as a Metroid game. It’s probably one of the harder ones I’ve actually tried. What’s interesting though is that a lot of its challenge comes from platforming. It’s got combat in it and the combat is definitely the weakest part of Blind Forest, the original game, and then they basically make combat much bigger focus in the second one, which is where the two differ. Yeah, a really difficult platformer. Just very demanding. It asks a lot of you, but I think it gives you in Ori this amazingly flexible character. I’d like an… I think she’s a she, but it gives her this very maneuverable jump. I’d probably liken it to the new 2D Rayman’s Origins and Legends. Lots of steerable aftertouch, but it’s also a slight floatiness, but I would say you have a lot of control over it. And then it marries that to the skill progression through the game, which gives her all kinds of like wall running and dashes and things. Most importantly, it gives you what I think is one of the best platforming abilities I’ve seen in a game, which is the bash move, which is where she can launch herself off of, you know, certain grip points, but more importantly, enemies and their projectiles. And so she can kind of like, if something fires a big glob of toxic spit at her, you can activate this batch and it kind of freezes in air and then you choose your trajectory of where you’re going to fire off. You then fire off in that direction and you fire the projectile behind you. So it’s both a jump and can be an attack in the way that you send these things around. And what it basically lets them do is build these sort of seemingly impossible platforming gauntlets where all the things you’re going to be leaping off of aren’t there until you start jumping and things start firing at you. So it could be like a big tunnel of spikes and as you enter it, things start firing kind of homing projectiles at you and you’re then climbing between those homing projectiles. So it feels very, very like reactive platforming. It’s like incredibly pure. The only other game which has the kind of platforming combo element to it is what they do in some of like Guacamelee. I think it’s quite similar, except here I just much prefer the feel of the character. Like it has a bit more of like an organic kind of touch to it. It also knows that this is where the strength of the game lies. In the first game, it doesn’t really have boss fights. It has like boss platforming sections where you escape from these dungeons as they sort of flood so they’re chase sequences and you basically have to pull off this perfect chain of moves to get out. You will die tens of times, you’ll probably swear at them and find them quite frustrating, but when you pull them off, it’s just such a great feeling and they look absolutely amazing, like all these churning waters kind of ripping stuff up. I can’t understand what good looking game this is. And then in the sequel they bring in a lot more combat. It has everything the first one has, it has a lot more combat. I would say the second one, while like prettier and like denser and probably smarter in terms of its move list, I think it’s less of a Metroid vein. I think it draws more from Zelda in that it has these like big dungeons and the game is built around you tackling four dungeons in an order of your choice. And that kind of introduces some of the problems I had with Link Between Worlds where if you’ve got four things you can do in any order, it’s quite hard to escalate those things. Also in each dungeon you get a new power, but it doesn’t know which powers you’re going to have. So each dungeon is only really built around the power it knows you’re going to have. So some of the powers go a bit unloved, which, you know, if you’ve played Link Between Worlds, you know that was the case there too. So they’re reasonably evenly matched. I think for the purity of the Metroidvania, I prefer the original, but the sequel is still still absolutely, absolutely majestic. I think it’s really the genre fit for me. Like I feel like if you are into Metroid and if you played Hollow Knight, maybe on Switch as well, you should give this a go. It’s not very Hollow Knight-y, it’s less about combat, more about good platforming. Yeah, okay. I should definitely, because these are on Game Pass as well, right? Maybe that’s the case against them, like that they’re available in even prettier, better versions elsewhere, but everything that’s good about it is in the Switch version and playing it on a handheld and like chipping away at that world. I mean, I would say Nintendo fans owe it to themselves to play these games. Good, a good, a good wreck. That’s the, that’s, that’s the case for it. Probably the weakest of the five for the Hall of Fame. I hope I haven’t already destabilized the foundations of the Hall of Fame in this, in its inaugural opening day. No, it’s all good. I think that like, I think it’s good to give people that wider picture, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that probably loads of people played this on Switch as well. Like, and you know, it’s, it’s on a handheld versus your TV. Metrovania is just particularly perfect for it. Yeah, gorgeous looking games. Yeah, I should really play these properly at some point. I just got so frustrated by that first Ori game when I put, when I gave it a little go, but like, it was just because the character was so small and the platforming was just so demanding in terms of sort of how it plays. But there was a high level of precision to it, which I do like. I do like with a sort of game. I just think if you’re into platforming and it’s like a genre you’re super into, I know that you get like the ultra difficult super meat boy torture approach where you just die a hundred times. And I don’t think Ori is ever as quite as difficult as some of that, and it’s getting there in places. It’s nice to have a game in a genre you love, which does escalate things and is more challenging than others. But you know, it’s nice to have a range of experiences. You got like your gateway drugs of like your new Super Mario Brothers up to things which are a bit like a bit more tense like this. I think I think that’s quite important. Yeah, for sure. Okay, great. Well, there we go, Matthew. We have laid out our first five slash six games for the Nintendo Switch Games Hall of Fame. So I think those are solid foundations. I think they’re like this actually good template there for like how we keep doing this as well in terms of like, maybe two to three Nintendo things, then two to three big Indies, like all Indies we think are important. That feels like the way to go, doesn’t it? So yeah, nice. So yes, as kind of like stated, there will definitely be more of these episodes. So there are some big obvious ones that will come up in the future. We just don’t want to do all the obvious ones at once. So yes. I think we could probably factor a guest into it at some point as well. Yeah, I think so. I’m sure we’ll have. Get a big switch head in to help us pick the next five or something. Any excuse to get Joe back on is good by me. So yeah, that sounds good. My favorite stuff, right? He pretends he’s joking, but he’s not really. I am joking. I’m not joking. He’s one of the best three. Okay, good. On that note then, Matthew, we come to the end of another Back Page Pod. So if you’d like to follow the podcast on Twitter, Back Page Pod, you’ll find us on there. We’ll tweet about new episodes and some of the strange nonsense that our Discord users make. That is also where you’ll find the link to the Discord, if you’d like to join our community, where you can submit Game Squad entries, questions to the podcast, or just join in with the chatter. It’s very wholesome most of the time, so it’s a pretty good little community we’ve got there. Closing in on 500 people there now, Matthew, it’s very intense. We have mentioned it before, but patreon.com/backpagepod, if you’d like to financially support the podcast. We are getting closer to our stretch goal, we’ve got quite a way to go, but we have each month been incrementally increasing, so thank you so much for the support, we really appreciate it. Backing us on there unlocks two additional podcasts a month, including the Metal Gear one we mentioned earlier, and another episode about TV shows this month. There’s lots of stuff here, backpagegames.gmail.com if you’d like to send us a longer question and you can’t be bothered to go on Discord, that’s fine. Can I add a quick shout out for something? Yeah, go ahead. I appeared on a podcast called In the Deep End where I talked about Ace Attorney with two very nice chaps. I will put it in a tweet or something. You should check that out. If you enjoyed our old Ace Attorney episodes, that was quite fun chatting to them. Yeah, for sure. So yeah, if you can’t get enough of Matthew talking about Ace Attorney and Shootakumi on this podcast, he’s done it elsewhere, which is good. That’s cool. By all means, check that out. There was one more thing I wanted to plug. What was it? Oh yeah, that was it. I was just to say that if you use Spotify or any of those platforms that have a rating system just dropping us a review on any of those iTunes or whatever, always appreciated. Oh, that’s everything Matthew. Where can people find you on Twitter? MrBazzle underscore pestle. I’m Samuel W. Roberts and I believe next week is the best games of 2013. So yeah, it’s another monster Matthew. We’re both going to be very tired at the end of that, especially if it’s going to be fucking 27 degrees when we’re recording it again.