Hello, and welcome to The Back Page, a video games podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Ooh. Hello. Just keep changing that up to throw you off a little bit. That was a bit of a Matt Berry-ish role on that. Matthew Castle. That’s a bit more Zapp Brannigan, that one, but yes. So, it’s a plain old, simple, what we’ve been playing episode, but guess what, Matthew? The games are off the fucking chain this month. There’s so much good stuff to talk about. I don’t know about you, but I find it very exciting. It feels like Christmas has happened quite early. does it feel that way to you also? Yeah. I mean, to have some interesting, good, cool games that we’re both into and that we both had a chance to dig into, that’s always exciting. I think we may also psychologically be responding to the fact that we’ve done two incredibly long, chibi podcasts over the weekend which come out after this one. So I think there’s like relief that this is just good old games chat. Exactly. yes. We’ve done the Nintendo Top 50 XL episode, which people on patreon.com/backpagepodwill be listening to several days after this goes live, coming out on the Monday after this one. So that was a big undertaking talking about 50 games in one go. We’ve also recorded next week’s draft episode, PC Gaming Draft 2010 to 2019 with Jeremy Peel. That too was a three-hour monster. There’s a risk of us being podded out, but I think this will be good because like you say, it’s a break in form, Matthew. We’ll just talk about some cool nice games. Also, the latest of the Famicom Detective Club series. Sorry, that was an unnecessary burn really. That’s not a burn. That’s a suitable response to this exciting continuation. Well, let’s start then with Astro Bot, PS5 exclusive by Team Asobi. It is the follow-up to Astro Bot rescue Mission, the very much acclaimed VR game from a few years ago. Then after that, the launch pack-in game Astro’s Playroom, which still arguably the best way to show off what the PS5 can do in terms of features, particularly the adaptive triggers on the DualSense pad. So it’s a much anticipated stand-alone 3D platformer, building on the bones of what Astro’s Playroom had, but also expanding it much further and really being the closest thing we have to a kind of 3D Mario. I don’t want to say competitor because they’re not really, but it very much exists in the mold of a 3D Mario game. They’re so few and far between these days, these kinds of games, you’re going to get many games like this, and maybe that’s because the idea of the platformer mascot died out a little bit in the 90s and noughties, and they’re not as persistent anymore. Obviously, Ratchet and Clank still exists, Matthew’s favorite franchise, but otherwise, there’s not too many of these games around. This game though has been widely acclaimed. It feels like an absolute sensation on PS5, feels like a particularly significant success. It feels like a sign of what people want. A not overly long, but spectacular and idea-packed 3D platformer single-player game, Matthew. Where do you stand on Astro Bot? I mean, it’s sort of funny. This game’s come out, it’s had massive scores. I think it’s like 94 on Metacritic or whatever. And instantly, there is a lot of arguing about where it sits in the pantheon of great 3D platformers. And different platform fans don’t like it when other platforms get any kind of critically acclaimed game. And so you get all that usual bullshit. Where actually, when you think about it, this is a genre, like you say, that’s really, really underserved. So any good example of it is to be celebrated. I think this is a great example of it. I think it’s an absolutely fantastic game. And I really love playing through it. I had a huge amount of fun. I think it’s like a very direct continuation of Astro’s Playroom and has the same strengths, which I would say are, it’s a great hardware showcase, particularly for the DualSense. Probably between Playroom and this, the only games which have really made me excited about a controller, which is full of exciting, interesting tech. Kind of makes you feel a bit sad for the other people not using it as well as this. That’s one part of it. It’s a mammoth celebration of PlayStation. It’s probably like the platforming equivalent of Smash Bros. You know, but for PlayStation fans, in the way that it harvests references all the way back to PlayStation 1. It’s got some real deep cuts and they’re so lovingly done. You know, this is a part of the game which means a little less to me, as not a big early PlayStation guy. Like, you know, so many of these characters I unlock, I’m like, who the fuck is that? You know, I thought there were loads of cats from Monster Hunter. And it turns out they’re like PlayStation cats. That’s a thing. News to me. Lots of kind of hard to place JRPG antagonists, I don’t know, antagonists, protagonists. A distinct lack of Square Enix characters in this game, weirdly, but there’s, you know, Well, that’s interesting. Yeah, I don’t think there’s anything from Square Enix in there, actually. That feels like a bit of legacy japanese publisher approval process stuff to me. It’s strange, because the Buster Sword is in Playroom. Right, yeah, yeah. Like, you find it at one point. So I was a little surprised by that, because, you know, however, whatever the deals are that get these characters into the game, you know, I think they try and, like, honor them. And they’ve shown real respect to them. And certain games get, like, several characters who, in the hub world, kind of cluster together into, like, you know, there’s, like, a cluster of resident Evil characters. And they all do, like, little bespoke resident Evil animations. And they just show a real kind of wit and understanding of those games. And they riff on them in a way that only a fan could. So it feels really, really, you know, authentic and interesting in that regard. And then I guess the sort of, the third interesting pillar of it, you know, is the kind of action platformer that it is. Which is very driven by transformations and pieces of equipment. I think there’s sort of 15 gadgets you get, which are very like Mario’s transformations. You know, a pair of frog boxing gloves on springs. You know, a little dog jet pack that pushes you through glass windows. A PSVR headset that slows time. And I would say that those are really like the sort of show piece levels with these kind of gadgets at the heart of them. Because I would say outside of those, the actual kind of nuts and bolts platforming isn’t necessarily what’s particularly interesting about Astro. I don’t really think of it as a platformer. Maybe outside of its very, very difficult or not very, very difficult, moderately difficult sort of challenge levels, which are kind of more trad platforming gauntlets. I actually think a lot of the levels are more of a showcase for these abilities. There’s sort of rifts on combat. There are, let’s not call them puzzles, but there’s sort of, you know, playful use of these powers. And I think a lot of that masks the fact that Astro Bot is, you know, fundamentally a character who can like jump and hover, like those are his two moves, which aren’t very interesting and you can’t do a lot with. Can I chuck a theory in here as well? Or like, because I think 3D Mario is the closest thing you compare it to and that makes sense. But the thing that it reminded me the most of in terms of what you’re saying about difficulty and it’s like platforming, I guess, not cred necessarily, but you know, how much of a platformer it really is in terms of challenge. Kirby and the Forgotten Land, it reminded me of that a little bit. yes. Where it’s like, it’s showcasing more than challenging, you know. yes, I would say that’s true. The other game, it reminds me of less mechanically similar, but in terms of like the vibe of it is, are maybe like Lego games? In terms of like you just go into these spaces, there’s no question that you’re going to get through them and there’s lots of hidden things and lots of fan love and lots of weird little gimmicks and gizmos and gadgets. And that’s all, that’s great, you know, it’s fun. But it is, it is, if you come into this simply for like, oh, I want a platforming challenge. I do think it is quite one note, like outside of all that stuff. But all that stuff is so well thought out and so brilliantly executed that you don’t come out the end going, oh, that wasn’t a great 3D platform. It’s more like if you think on it, you think, I probably wouldn’t put this alongside, you know, the great platforming of Mario Galaxy or Odyssey or, you know, Mac 64 or Sunshine. But I don’t necessarily think that’s what it’s going for. I think this doesn’t really want to challenge any part of you. It just wants you to have a really good time and, you know, a great time was had. It makes me, I mean, the one place where I’m like, I feel not bad for Mario is probably the wrong word, but envious is to see that, the power of PS5 and the actual tech inside of it, you know, some of the stuff it can do with regards to like playful substances or mechanics. Scale. Yeah, and like, there’s some really great stuff with water in this game with like really globby water kind of cascading down and there’s bits where there are these like muddy monsters and the way the water kind of hits them and disintegrates them, you are like, oh, that is just so beautifully observed. It’s so tactile, you know, like Galaxy, it’s a game about texture and just the satisfaction of being on different things. But, you know, unlike Galaxy, just it can do all this crazy physics stuff and it has the DualSense controller with, you know, those mad kind of haptics. And I think that stuff is so nice. You’re like, oh, I would kind of like, I would kind of like Mario to have this on top. And, you know, that’s very rare that I feel like someone’s done something like that much better. But you are like, you know, fair play to them. It’s kind of mesmerizing on that level. Yeah, sure. Sorry. Is that my invitation to talk? Yeah, sorry. How have you been getting on with it? Great. Thank you. No, I think everything you say there is pretty spot on. I think it’s sort of like, I noticed this as well in our Discord this weekend, that a lot has been made of competing it against Mario, making the Mario comparison. I fell into that trap again. I don’t mean to. No, it’s almost just a bit of a bummer in the sense of, it really does succeed in its own terms of being the action platformer, like you say, and I think it feels very generous with its ideas. Much like the more recent 3D Mario games, it does just blast endless ideas at you, and it’s just really amazing to just start experience those. I finished two worlds of it. I know you finished the whole game, so you’ve played a lot more of it than I have. But I’m dreading it being over, and it’s rare that I get that feeling from a game now. So frequently, I play a game and I’m like, can I get to the credits so I can move on to finishing my fucking Dragon Age Inquisition playthroughs? I can do that episode in October. So many games I play, I have that mentality of like, this is really cool, but I want to get to the end credits. In this game, I’m like, oh, I feel like I’m using up the levels quite quickly when I was playing it. And that’s because it just shows you such a good time, like you’re saying. I really think it’s fantastic. Like, the few things I would, I always feel bad griping at it. The couple of things I would ask are, if you did take out the PlayStation cameo side of things, which I think is really successful as a creative choice. And if you have an affinity with that side of the game, then I think that just gives it like another dimension to enjoy. And like you say, you don’t have that affinity with it. So, you know, I think you probably understand what they’re going for. In a lot of cases, enough for you to see that that’s like a key part of the texture of the game. But if you took that out and it was like Astro Bot and his, and the enemies that you face and all that kind of thing, what would it stand up to Mario? And I think that’s where you can maybe be a bit like, the enemies aren’t that memorable necessarily, or like Astro Bot himself is kind of like, his malleability is what is iconic about him, much like Sackboy was, you know? But obviously even Sackboy had that kind of like, very material sort of like world and distinctive art direction it was going for. Astro Bot is almost a bit more, vanilla is too harsh, but like it’s almost like deliberately plain, so you can map things onto it and do whatever you want with it. And I still think it like looks great and it feels great. But that’s actually the area where I thought, oh, like aside from like the execution of platforming, this is something that Nintendo has down. It’s just like what are the goombas up to in this level and the kind of ways that can delight you. This doesn’t have the same character in that respect, you know? Yeah. But that’s the only thing I would really throw at it. I think it’s wonderful to play. It’s like such an easy recommendation. Like you get a PS5 this Christmas, play this fucking game, it’s great. Do you want to jump in there Matthew? Yeah, no. Yeah, I’d agree with all that. Although weirdly, I think the levels actually here, I thought were the weakest are, each world ends with like a big riff on a specific PlayStation game where you kind of, it like mechanically mimics it a bit. You know, don’t want to like spoil them, but like I will say for example, there is an uncharted level and you become like a Nathan Drake bot. But actually the level, you know, outside of like the music where you’re like, oh, that’s cool. That’s uncharted music. And there’s lots of scenery which like nods to famous set pieces from uncharted. And you’re like, okay, I like that. I get to do my Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme. That’s all good. But the actual, I thought mechanically those levels were often the ones which were like least interesting because it’s just like, imagine Astro Bot, but he’s got a gun. And I was like, yeah, yeah, okay, where actually, I think that the levels where, you know, they just give him a wild power, which has nothing to do with anything in PlayStation. You know, like he can shrink down, or, you know, or he can, I’ve said, like he can stop time. There are other ones. I won’t spoil them because you should discover something for yourself. But I still think that’s, that’s like much more interesting to me. And just to see those levels singled out in so many of the reviews. So I was like, yeah, but they are, they are also just like quite broad nostalgia plays. You know, I don’t, I don’t think like a level that mimics Ape Escape. You know, it just makes me go, oh yeah, I’m not really an Ape Escape guy. I did play the Ape Escape level when I did think, was this entire series just doing this, just collecting apes? Was there anything else you did in that game? Well, I know that sounds ridiculous, but I never really played any of the Ape Escape games. So I was there thinking, the whole game was this? Yeah. But, yeah. But there’s, you know, I won’t spoil it because you won’t have got to it yet, but you know, there’s one level which it like completely mimics and sort of changes, like how the whole thing kind of controls and behaves, and it completely mimics an older game that they won’t be making anymore. And there you’re like, oh, this is quite bold. But then you think, well, maybe like I would have liked, you know, I would have liked a lot more of this rather than, you know, the kind of, maybe it’s the particular series they decided to nod to, I don’t think are a particular good match for like an interesting action platforming level. You know, like actually, you know, Uncharted or Horizon, God of War, things like that, they’re all, they kind of feel the same, and it’s quite hard to make them feel very different in a level because, you know, there are a lot of third-person action games on PlayStation now, where actually, you know, this is a game which spends its whole time reminding you, you know, here is a fucking 200 or whatever, other things we also did. And, you know, maybe there’s a case for like, I would, you know, if they make another one of these, which you would imagine they’re going to based on the success of this one, critically anyway, that they, you know, lean even further into that kind of deep cut stuff, perhaps. Well, I was wondering that, because I also thought like, I thought Astro Bot is now inseparable from all the PlayStation side of it, but I was there thinking, you know, like, the sort of, like you say, the successful part of it as a game is the fact that it has this kind of like game jam feel about how the levels are designed. Like, oh, I’ve got an idea for a level where it’s just like, there’s like a, basically like a construction yard and the whole thing’s been built in front of you. And it’s just like this kind of like big selection box of different ideas and they’re executed so well that I would almost like to see that side of things pushed next time more than having like PlayStation cameos drive it. At the same time though, like those levels you’re talking about are very much presented as additional levels within these worlds. Like, I don’t like turn my targets to them too much because I can see what the intended game flow experience is. And they are kind of intended as being like supplementary. At least that’s how they felt to me. I don’t know what you think about it. Yeah, it’s more that, I don’t know, it just feels like it’s a little bit torn between serving the PlayStation museum element of it and serving this character who, like you say, you can map all this different stuff onto him. And is that what, you know, what’s interesting, you know, is it Astro Bot and all the weird things Astro Bot can do? Or is it all the PlayStation past? And like, I don’t think it is particularly torn. Like you aren’t sitting there going, this game feels hugely compromised because of this. But I am, you know, personally way more interested in the, oh, let’s come up with another 100 mad things Astro Bot can do that we haven’t seen in other PlayStation games. I mean, the kind of spicier take is that actually I think some of the best things in this game, like for all it honours PlayStation, they are direct lifts from Mario Galaxy. They are Mario Galaxy power ups, level concepts in this game, sort of wholesale. It feels more like a celebration of Nintendo platforming innovation than it does PlayStation. Because PlayStation doesn’t really have that good history, mechanical history to actually like reference. I think that’s a very myopic Nintendo perspective on it. It’s not an overly populated genre, and they are like the sort of market leaders of the genre. I think it’d be a bit different when you’re talking about like third-person action games, the kind of games that you can pull from when you’re making something like, I don’t know, Ghost of Tsushima. It’s just like, it’s not quite as like linear and obvious as it might be when you’re like talking about 3D platformers because there are just so few of them around. So I think they would fully own that it’s indebted to them, and it’s obvious from playing it. But I also wouldn’t necessarily box it in that way, just because I do think they are making the most out of their platform and what you can do with the scale and the tech that PS5 affords you. So, I don’t know, I mean, I definitely think it’s… I think that’s probably like… Probably fair to say that that’s like a kind of supplementary narrative of the game’s design, as opposed to like the main thrust of it, if that makes sense? Yeah, it’s more that as I played it, I thought it was funny that the thing it reminded me more of anything wasn’t a PlayStation game. Really no more complicated observation than that. Fair enough. The space it’s going into has been dominated by one company for so long, and trying to do sort of stuff outside of that or around that, or that they haven’t already experimented with, given that the last decade of Mario has been so dedicated to scattershot ideas. They just have kind of planted their flag in a lot of territory, but that I came away with it still really enjoying it. That isn’t an out, and because of that it’s shit. I just thought it was interesting how open a debt it seemed to have. The thing to say is that even with that, it is such a close second to those games. That’s really the best thing you can say about this game, is that they got so close to the masters of this, who just make 10 out of 10 bangers every few years, and they are just like the high watermark of their genre, and some might say games more broadly. To get as close as they have is amazing, and the array of ideas they have is incredible, and does just keep wowing you. So yeah, I think it’s fair to make the comparison, but I think they’re not as far away from that quality bar as, certainly I can’t think of another 3D platformer in the last 20 years that’s gotten this close to Nintendo in terms of approximating that quality, and that quality of ideas. Yeah, I’d agree with that. I’d love to see them make more of an acrobat of Astro Bot, I think is the kind of puzzle piece that’s missing for me. Maybe get rid of the laser hover, because I think it undermines it in a lot of ways, and makes it quite kind of soupy as a platformer. But that’s, like we say, it’s fine as long as you are doing all this other stuff instead. Yeah, and I hope that the success of it means that they make some DLC levels, because it’s a weird thing to ask for to make more DLC. But this is actually a game where if you just said, here’s 10 more levels and it’s eight quid, I’d be like, yeah, let’s go. Because it’s the sort of thing where I think I agree with you that the difficulty means there’s not a massive reason to replay levels. The only reason you replay a level, I think, is either because you’ve forgotten enough of it, you can go back and be delighted by it, which will probably be the case for many people in a year or two, when they pick Astro Bot up again. But or to go and collect the various Astro Bots you missed around a level. I don’t think you necessarily go back into a level because it gets you a blood pumping in that specific way. Because an idea is so amazing, you’re like, I have to see that again. They’re great ideas, but I think there’s not necessarily a reason to replay it once you’re done with it. Yeah, that’s where I sit with it now. I’ve 100 percented it, again, testament to the very pleasurable process of hoovering everything up. But there was this sense of like, and that is done, as opposed to, oh, I might dip it back into that because I find it very expressive to play. You may roll your eyes at that and think that’s wanky. I do have that relationship with Mario, but that is the difference between the greatest of all time and merely outstanding. Yeah, that’s fair enough. The PlayStation cameo side of things is interesting because I definitely had a mixture of being perplexed and then being unexpectedly delighted. Right. I thought, I was a bit like, I was actually, when I found Crash Bandicoot and Jack and Ratchet, all I could think was, oh, I bet Matthew just groaned at this. That’s what I thought when I found those characters. No, no, I thought, of course, I mean, I thought it would be weird if they weren’t here. Yeah, and it’s nice that those are like some of the first characters you find, so I don’t feel too bad spoiling that. Plus, I think most of them were on the edge covers that they did for the C400. But then, when you get to a certain point early in the game, you unlock this PlayStation gacha machine, and so you collect all these different Astro Bots around the level, but then you give them a little prop that unlocks their personality, basically, which is such a nice little idea. And I went from being a bit like, yeah, there’s Jack, to the little Daxter popped out of the gacha machine, to having suddenly this pang of delight. And I was like, oh, I didn’t want to feel this, yet I am feeling it. And that’s where I was like, okay, well, this must be a pretty successful tribute to the thing that it’s honoring. If it’s able to create those kinds of feelings with some really nice animations and representing those characters well in terms of how they’re adapted to the Astro Bot design. So yeah, the PlayStation tribute thing is interesting. Your mileage will definitely vary, but I think that a lot of people have a strong history with that stuff and it will hit the mark for them. Oh yeah. But it just asks a really interesting question because you can only do that once, I think. So the next game, what would the next game be like? A co-op Astro Bot? Like Mario 3D World? I’d fucking love that. That’d be great. Or even if it’s just like, here’s 200 levels, they’re all absolute bangers. We just, you know, here’s one where you’re like running on the upside down and like inside a black hole or something, getting to those kind of like proper Super Mario Galaxy brain kind of levels. Right. Yeah. That’s what I think. The nostalgia thing, and I’ve done that kind of twice now with it. How many more times can you do it? It’s kind of an interesting question. There is a little bit of me where, you know, because I’ve replayed Playroom beforehand just to get the hidden bots and that kind of stuff that they added. And, you know, so much of this was in that too, you know, in terms of like the cameos and as wittily done that you were like, oh, it’s a lot of these guys are back, you know, but when, you know, when they do throw in something like really wild or out there, and it does quite a good thing where it doesn’t actually like tell you what any of them are ever. Like they have referred to with like nicknames and then a kind of a pithy one liner, which is almost like a riddle as to what they are. And even with that, a lot of them, I was like, I have no idea. But then you see something from, you know, the later era or like a weirder cut from PS3 even, you know, which I am more familiar with. And you’re like, oh, that’s funny that that’s in there. That’s, you know, that this is still on someone’s mind somewhere. I like that. So you see the day’s gone guy getting upset about it on Twitter. That was funny. That guy, that guy’s a bad, bad Twitter hang. That guy, he’s posting through it, as they say. Yeah, it’s, yeah, I am the other thing I would say about the cameos, though, and like where that figures into the future or whatever is actually slightly too much weights to make this game carry on its shoulders. Like taking it taking it in of itself. It’s a delightful, you know, easy recommendation. Like like this one of the slickest and most fun games I’ve played this year for sure. And like if you have like, I feel like fewer and fewer games are like aimed at kids these days. And it is like a pile of Lego games, Ratchet and Clank and like not much else really. Even something like Spider-Man, which you’d think would be aimed at kids, is quite a complex game for a kid to kind of get their head around. Like that’s like an 11 year old plus kid who should be playing that really. This is a game that you can actually give to like a five year old, I think, and they would like they would be delighted by it. And there’s no real objectionable content in it. And it’s nice to have a game like that. Those don’t really exist anymore on like that kind of like wide range of age groups that can enjoy one thing. And it’s something that’s just like Nintendo’s stomping ground. And so it’s really nice to see a game like that execute on this level, you know? Yeah, and I do not disagree with that. And you know, with that and then Lego Horizon as well, which I don’t know if that will be to the same standard as this. But it’s nice to see quite a bit of first party budget behind things which have a kids welcome sign on the door. Also just feels like the kind of success story you want to see. It’s a game that’s not 40 hours long, and nor should it be. And it’s single player, and it’s like, it’s like an exclusive on one of the quote unquote next gen consoles. And it’s just a team that’s worked together for years. It’s a simple, great, easy recommendation. And they smashed it out of the park, and the whole world cares. And like, that’s nice. It’s just nice that that has happened, you know, because, yeah, it bodes well for whatever they do next. So good stuff, Matthew. Astro Bot, available now. Okay, so next up then is going to be Star Wars Outlaws, a game we first discussed a few weeks ago. This launched in late August. It got, I wouldn’t say mixed reviews, but like sort of, but not like stellar reviews either. It was like mid 70s that landed on Metacritic. It didn’t get like the triple A pass, you know? No, definitely not. And also, I think it got a lot of scrutiny as well. Like as an overall, as a proposition, I guess. Maybe it’s the Ubisoft of it all. This is an open world Star Wars game. You don’t play as a Jedi or anything like that in contrast to the recent respawn Jedi games. You play as Cave vess, essentially an outlaw in the scoundrel ridden cantina pits of different Star Wars planets. It’s that side of that dimension of the Star Wars universe is where this game is set basically. It’s the first Star Wars open world game. What that amounts to is doing a lot of side quests using your speeder bike and riding around like a few different Star Wars planets including Tatooine, these kind of like vast planes and upgrading your speeder so you can move around a bit quicker, encountering wildlife out there and different enemy sort of like placements and and like you just see kind of like ships, spaceships take off in the distance and that kind of thing. It tries to tap into a lot of the things that you might want from a Star Wars open world game. I will note however that I was at an Imperial base when I was playing it last night. You cannot steal an AT-ST. I think that would have been a great touch if you could steal it. If you could walk out of a base like Incognito in an AT-ST, I think that would be amazing. But there was like an X button next to it, but that was just a climb on its head. I was like, come on, like if Rockstar were making this, you press triangle to steal that thing. nonetheless, interesting game Matthew, because I’m curious to hear where you’ve landed with it. I’ve played about 10 hours of it now. So I’ve got a lot more to dig into. But I do think it does some interesting things with the open world game. It’s not a list of arbitrary point-based, experience-based upgrades. Everything you get in the game, every upgrade you get to your combat or your equipment, is tied to items you have to go and find out in the world, which is quite an interesting touch. There are certain abilities you can unlock only by performing certain actions in a certain way. So as an example of that, there’s an ability you get where if you’re caught while you’re sneaking around a base, then Kate can start sort of like basically motor mouthing, sort of talking to just try and like distract the guard while you get like a beat to work out what you’re going to do basically. And that’s something I think you unlock by attacking enemies who have been distracted by your little alien pal, whose name I’ve forgotten. What’s his name again? Nix, yeah. But doing that a couple of times then knocking out an enemy while they’re distracted by him pretending to play dead. I think that’s how you unlock that ability for example. So it’s quite interesting. I think they’re trying to think about the logic of how and why you’d get or do certain things in the game in terms of how they’ve designed the shell of the open world experience. At the same time, a lot of what you do will feel quite familiar as open world games go, like going to points in the map, that sort of thing. sometimes the game I think as well wants to challenge you to figure out how you actually get to a place. I think people are quite frustrated by the lack of a yellow path that shows you where to go for every single open world location. I think that’s a deliberate choice because they want you to see the world and your speeder bike as your equipment to solve the puzzle of how you might get over this cliff or round this cliff. I think it’s a really interesting game. I don’t think it’s amazing at any single thing except that collectively all of the different bits and pieces it has means that it represents that side of the Star Wars universe pretty well. I think if your fantasy of playing a Star Wars game is the Han Solo fantasy, I think this game is really good at serving that. There’s more I want to say, Matthew, but what do you think? Yeah, I’d agree with a lot of that. I do think it’s interesting that they’ve shifted away from the simple XP skill tree unlock RPG system, which is defined Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed, and less so Watch Dogs. I’m not going to go as far as saying there are Metroidvania elements, but there are bits of the environment you can only interact with or places you can only go once you have unlocked specific skills through this slightly unusual skill-based system, which makes… To have a little bit of gear gating in this world, you can sort of see them trying something a little different. And actually, I think that’s the overarching thing is I think, you know, they could have just done Star Wars Far Cry or Star Wars Assassin’s Creed, and actually they have tried to kind of push their formula on or question elements of their formula here, where they probably didn’t need to. Like, they could have actually phoned it in a bit more than they have. But yeah, and I have talked a little bit about this before, but there’s like a faction system, which again, I’m only about 10, 12 hours in. But I kind of like the idea that every mission you do kind of either like pleases one faction, displeases another. There are sometimes little interruptions in the mission where characters kind of offer you a bit of a devil’s bargain to like, why don’t we fuck over the person who gave you the mission and you give it to me instead, and then it will please these people. And then you’re standing with those individual factions. It has the usual, you know, the quite obvious pros and cons of like, you know, the traders for this faction will give you better prices if they like you. And that stuff’s quite boring. But I think the idea that there are territories on the map which become quite hostile the second you slip into like even like a poor reputation with them. And it just turns those areas into a completely different experience. You know, like when you’re on great terms with someone, and any mission in their territory is just a case of like driving up to it and then as long as they’re on, it isn’t being guarded by that faction. You can just kind of walk in and have a good time and it’s all very easy. Where otherwise, like you have to approach it completely as a stealth mission, because even being seen is going to jeopardise your reputation with them. And you know, I have heard people say that deep into the game there are mechanics which let you swing that reputation too easily and it undermines that. But you know, now, I could say 12 hours into the game, that stuff’s still really working for me and I think it’s one of the more successful versions of that like, turf war, which loads of people have tried in these open world games for you know, for about the last 20 years there’s been kind of… and it always comes down to you going to their turf and they shoot you, but the kind of the push and pull of it and how it ties into the missions, that I think is genuinely quite interesting and quite good. I think a lot of this game’s problems with regards to its poor reviews are like, if you have to take this thing at speed, I don’t think a lot of these ideas get to bed in and I don’t know if like, I had to review it over a weekend, if I, you know, if I was just following the main storyline, if I’d necessarily have a chance, like I really slowed it down and I’ve, you know, basically been on the first planet all this time. And you too, right? Yeah, yeah, I think it’s a good way to play. And because of that, I just feel like I’ve got, you know, I’m not saying the people who reviewed it didn’t, I’m not at all, but I feel like I have a quite a good sense of it. I think it actually is quite a slow paced game in a lot of ways. You know, it wants you to kind of, you know, the fact that stealth is often the way forward in missions, you know, it isn’t like built for you just to kind of cane through and rush through. Though saying that, the other thing I think is interesting is that on its key story beats, I think, the more kind of scripted set PC levels are pretty successful, like as single player sort of action adventure levels. Like, it’s no way near like Naughty Dog Uncharted tier. But there are spaces which have that flavor and to find them kind of embedded in the more trad open world. That I’m always interested in. Like, any game, because for a long time, you associate open world with a more kind of emergent action. It’s not necessarily the place you go for like choreographed thrills. And obviously, there are the clear exceptions to that rule. And Rockstar do very big scripted story missions. But the idea that you can kind of happen across a space or, you know, meet, you kind of team up with these sort of brokers who give you these abilities. And often their storylines are more scripted. You know, they’re trying to give you more of an adventure feel or a heist. You know, they’re the ones where it’s like break into this big imperial base or there’s this strange kind of wind farm where you have to do all this kind of platforming in it. And it kind of has quite unchartered platforming, climbing, that kind of stuff. And I just find that quite novel, you know, that it has kind of has both of those things. It’s almost like you can see that they want to, you know, they could have made an uncharted, like a 10 hour, you know, third person action adventure game. But they’ve also made this open world game. And the way those two things kind of mix. Yeah, I think it’s like, like you say, it’s like all kind of interesting and maybe like more than some of its individual parts. Yeah, it’s not a phrase I use very often, but it’s like, I think it’s actually true here. Yeah, I just, I’m sort of surprised by how experimental it is in some ways. And I think the Star Wars of it as well, I mean, you know, the more sort of basic angle is like that, that stuff is really impressively done. You know, when you’re inside the Imperial bases, you know, there’s some of the best versions of that. I mean, you know, I don’t, not like I said, I think Jedi Survivor is the, is like the tighter, more coherent game for sure. But, you know, it gives me the same thrill of like, wow, I’m in a massive Imperial hangar and there’s all the ships I recognize and there’s always Stormtroopers marching across like gleaming floors and it looks pretty amazing this game. You know, it kind of, you know, even if you’re only casually invested in Star Wars, it feels like you’re in a, you’re in a Star Wars. So that’s, that’s pretty great. Yeah, I think the, that, that thing you’re talking about of when you first go to an Imperial ship and you board it, and it’s basically like capturing the experience of the Millennium Falcon being beamed aboard the Death Star, right? Right. You have to get out, you have to sneak out, you have to find what you need and then come back and then escape in a kind of like hail of, hail of like laser fire. And it imitates that so well in so many ways. The action beats of it are really good. Like it forces you to do stealth, but I don’t think it’s like unreasonable stealth. It’s all fairly. I think, I think they’ve designed the stealth for you to see it as a puzzle you can solve with like one solution and you’re figuring out what that solution is, i.e. the exact path that keeps you out of the way of these Stormtroopers. I don’t think it’s meant to be like the stealth where you’re, oh, you can do it in like four different ways or whatever. I don’t think it’s necessarily designed that way. Yeah, it isn’t Metal Gear Solid V, you know? No, definitely isn’t. But then like when the action beats start, it really, really works and it just looks and feels so authentic. Yeah, I think there’s just so much attention to detail in it as well. I saw a bit of criticism towards the populated locations as being a two-movie set and not really feeling like real places. I think one difference it has with Jedi Survivor is, when you go into that one bar where all the NPCs are, every single one person there or alien there will have a conversation with you, and there’s a little relationship your character has with them. these are not designed in that way, but the scale of them and the feel of them, I think is actually really convincing and well done. I think it’s quite cool when you just rock up to a sabacc table or you’re in a little market place or whatever, and it’s got that good grimy Star Wars feel about it. It picked its lane and it went for it, much like Jedi Survivor. The only beef I do have with the populated areas, the quote unquote cities, is that the first one, Miragana, on the first planet, has either end of town is owned by two rival factions, and a lot of the missions send you into the enemy faction’s territory. But it’s such a small town that you go to the same place five times over where they’re like, oh, it’s hidden in the Crimson, what are they called? Not the Crimson Dawn? Crimson Dawn, yeah. It’s hidden in the Crimson Dawn territory, and you’re like, well, I know the exact event, I’m going to then, because it’s the same event I use to get into their territory every single time, and then I’ll hide in this smoke, I’ll knock out this guy who is there every single time. Like, particularly because it begins to add like a layer of what I assume are like endless, procedurally generated microcontracts, which just send you, but they can only send you into that one bit of enemy territory. So, it’s like these five guys who are just getting like murked on a daily basis by Cave vest, because they happen to be the one place that a mission can be set. Like, it’s like a quirk of it. Maybe that’s the game sign of like, you should probably move on to the next planet now. But it does make me laugh, where I’m like, oh, look at the map, oh, I know where I’m going, yep. Yeah, yeah, that is interesting, kind of push and pull between like, yeah, the scripted bits of it, and the story they want you to experience, and then the open world gears at work. Yeah, that is kind of true. I do think that as a stealth experience, like it’s interesting because this is where it’s been a bit of a lightning rod for criticism. I think they’re even patching some of the stealth bits to be a bit less complicated. Maybe that’s even available by the time you’re reading this or listening to this rather, I don’t know. But I actually, I quite like the boldness of being like, there are definitely, it flashes up with this big fucking text and goes captured, or whatever it might be, when arrested or whatever, when like you’re busted while exploring like a stealth section. But I also think it’s quite bold these days to be like, we’re doing like insta-fail stealth, because it’s not that complicated. Like from what I’ve played so far, you only get stuck for so long, you do eventually crack it. And like, I don’t know if it would be better to be able to blast your way out of all those situations where it is asking you to be stealthy. What do you think of the stealth? Yeah, I mean, that’s kind of the problem with all the Ubisoft games is that a lot of them are like stealth games until they’re not. And then they’re like, well, they’re quite robust action experiences. Here, I think because the stealth is like a little bit thin, and the actual like gunplay is a little bit thin, like you have like a blaster and temporary weapons that you can pick up, that they want like more control over when you’re doing either one. So they’re like, no, this is definitely a stealth section, you’re going to fail. I’ve got no problem with that, because then when it does an action set piece, it’s like we’re deciding this is an action set piece, you can’t sneak through it. It’s a bit of sort of authorial vision. They’re allowed to do that. I actually, the fuss people have made over certain sequences in this, where you see interviews where they’re almost having to offer this sort of mere culprit, like, oh yes, we’re having to patch it, we know we made the stealth tutorial too hard. It’s like, no, if you found that too hard, you should be fucking embarrassed by your abilities, I’m afraid. Get good, Matthew Castle. Very rarely can we play the get good card. But I’m like, that? I genuinely didn’t know what people were talking about. It can’t be the thing where you crawl down the side of a street behind some boxes and no one sees you, because there’s a one clear route to where you’re trying to go. Oh no, it is that. If you can’t do that, what the fuck? Have you never played any stealth game? Perhaps. Maybe that is the problem. But the thing is, if you buff that out, the main problem I’ve had with Ubisoft games I’ve played over the years is they round off too many edges. If you ask them to round that off, are you not just adding to the things that people are normally complaining about? That’s how I felt about it. It’s the most basic kind of stealth game. It’s not anywhere near being an immersive sim. It’s like, activate this distraction, make this thing explode to kill an enemy. Use your little guy, Nix, to go and do most of that. And it doesn’t ask that much from you. And they don’t go on for that long, for at least from what I’ve played so far. So, I don’t know. I don’t really agree with people, even though I do get the kind of instinctive flash of rage that you might get when those big letters come up. I mean, I’ve just played so many worse stealth experiences than this. And then I didn’t complain about those. You just stomach it, don’t you? And get on with it. And I don’t know. If anything, I think, going back to the faction thing, actually one thing I do like is that when you’re on great terms with a faction, but you want to rob something from them, it actually does add this quite exciting sort of frisson of like, oh my god, if I get caught, I’m going to fucked up this friendship, which is currently really strong. I think that’s like a really fun layer over this. I actually don’t want to mess up this relationship by being caught stealing something quite inconsequential from a warehouse. I am just being a shit lord robbing from my friends. But at the same time, I really don’t want to get caught and jeopardize that. And that feels like quite an emergent scenario, a bit of drama that they’ve managed to conjure out of their systems, which is not something I expected to be saying about the open world Star Wars game. No. I’m kind of waiting to see what the complete vision is with the faction system before I comment on it too much because I don’t quite see where it’s going. And like you say, maybe people are cautioning about where it does end up in terms of how simply it flips. But I do agree, it gives you like this little jolt of excitement when you do betray a faction and you choose to do this. And I’ve not seen that in a blockbuster game recently. Yeah, like it’s a cool idea. So yeah, I think this is oddly a slightly underrated game. Yeah, I agree. Not massively underrated, but just a little bit. It’s like, I don’t know, I think if you like Star Wars, you should play this, definitely. And like, I don’t know if that people necessarily get that message from how people are talking about it. But yeah, I think it’s as good a piece of Star Wars as Jedi Survivor is, for sure. It’s just not meticulous a game as Jedi Survivor, you know? Yeah, interesting stuff. Okay. All right, then that’s Star Wars Outlaws. That is available now. Yeah, so me and Matthew recommend it. Though I will say that I don’t like the space combat that much. And I thought that was the thing I was gonna like the most. It’s technically very impressive to take off from a planet and be in space. All that stuff’s fine. But it’s like, I thought I just wished the combat was a little bit more Rogue Squadron than it is. You know, a little bit more arcade-y, a little bit more fun. That’s probably the thing I like the least about it. But I do appreciate the fact that I’ve been on this one planet and the whole game, probably couldn’t get away with the entire game being on this planet. But if you had one other settlement, I think you maybe could do. It’s a pretty beefy thing in terms of places to actually know, because you would get so bored of those few faction bases. You definitely need other places to go come to think of it. interesting game, Matthew. So we move on to a game that only you have been playing, but it’s firmly a Matthew Castle trademark experience. So you’ve had this boiling away in the background for a little while, I think. So why don’t you talk about it, Matthew? It’s Famicom Detective Club, Emeo the Smiling Man, which was something I wondered if it might happen, which was after they remade the first two games from the NES for the Switch. I thought, well, the amount of effort and love that went into this, this feels like a bid to put this series back on people’s radars. And lo and behold, they have, they’ve made another one. If you haven’t played any of these games, there’s some adventure games in the 1980s mold in that you’re kind of navigating with a command menu, almost like a sort of proto version of verb sheet that you would later get in like point and click games. This is like the step before that you’re in static environments, static characters in front of you, you’re talking to them, you’re kind of quizzing them, you look at them a lot. There’s some quite strange stuff in this game where it kind of tries to sort of simulate a conversation or the cut and thrust of an interrogation using this command menu. So, you know, it’s not just a case of like talking and then talking through all the different areas of discussion. sometimes you have to sort of look at them and then they’re like, oh, you catch a nervous glint in their eye and that lets you push the conversation forward a bit. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s some kind of LA noir style thing, which it definitely isn’t. But there’s some strangeness in the command menu. I think it’s not hugely successful. I’ve read some quite passionate defences of it as a mechanical device. They think, oh, it’s kind of conversation as a puzzle that you have to solve using all these commands. But I’m like, it feels to me like I’m just clicking on every one of these commands until I hear a bit of dialogue I haven’t heard already, which is how I imagine how most people will play this game. So it’s no great shakes as a sort of mechanical detective game, but it’s quite interesting as a story. A body is found quite early on with a paper bag on its head with a smiling face drawn on it, which connects it to an urban legend of three girls who were killed in a similar way 20 years ago or something. Yeah, so it has this slightly creepy air in that, is this mystery tied to this strange urban legend? Is it just something kids talk about? Has it just been embellished over the years? Is there any truth in it? And a lot of really great japanese thrillers and horror films have kind of dug in to this sort of territory of you hear about the videotape that kills you, you know, for example. You think, oh, are they going to kind of lean into that? They don’t really. Like I think it actually sheds the kind of creepiness quite early on, which is a bit of a shame. You know, they’ve got this quite compelling character in The Smiling Man or the idea of The Smiling Man, but the game doesn’t really dwell on it and becomes like quite a chewy process of just trying to like work out what happened 20 years ago or just remind yourself of what happened 20 years ago. And it almost feels like the modern case kind of gets lost a little bit because you spend so much time going to libraries and reading newspapers and talking to old people about something they don’t quite remember that I think it actually defates a lot of the tension. Like it feels quite gentle because of that. It feels like it feels like some teenage school detectives doing a big research project, which isn’t quite the horror thing you might be expecting. And I’d say that’s true for the meat of this game. And I felt sort of similar about the other games, that they were just a little bit too old fashioned and a little bit too gentle in what they did with the genre. But what’s interesting about Emiya the Smiley Man is the very end of the game, which I can’t talk about because it like ruins the surprise. And the surprise is definitely the thing which impressed me and pleased me the most. You know, I got to the end of this game, not like dismissing outright but thinking, ah, that’s kind of like not much of anything really. And then the last hour of it goes like incredibly hard in a way that you just aren’t expecting a Nintendo game to go. I mean, it’s horrible by most people’s standards, let alone Nintendo’s. I just thought it was absolutely bonkers that this thing had happened and maybe more as like a student of like Nintendo games and knowing the kind of areas that they don’t go into and don’t really deal with. I thought it was just so unusual and so striking that I almost wanted to just recommend it to everyone on the basis of that, of like, you kind of have to see like where it goes. You may not particularly like where it goes. You may not actually think it’s that interesting, but you certainly can’t predict where it goes and that’s always quite an exciting pitch. I think Jay Bayliss mentioned it on the last episode, that he read that, oh, it did something that they haven’t seen in a game before, and just that’s enough to get you to play it. And I kind of agree with that. You know, I thought it was absolutely fine. You know, just another average Famicom Detective Club game. But I think at the end, yeah, it lent into something else. I’ve got an interesting proposition for you, Matthew. Yeah. So, I don’t think I’m going to play this game for two reasons. One, it’s like there’s two others that I feel like I would have to play first, so I understand the lineage of these things. Right. And two, there’s too many other games to play this year, so I don’t think I’m going to get to it. How about you tell me, I’ll cut it out of the episode, what it is and I will react to what it is. So people could hear my reaction and they can decide for themselves whether that’s worth experiencing. Because that’s an interesting experiment. The impact this has. Because we talked about it a lot, so. Yeah. So. And then that’s it. Wow, okay. That’s pretty wild as these things go. Yeah, okay, interesting. That’s not exactly what I thought it would be. I thought this was gonna be one big twist. It would completely un-move you, but that’s much more involved than that. Wow, yeah, that is more intense than maybe I thought it was gonna be. I thought it would be related to the content of the killer and who the killer is, but I didn’t expect that, Matthew. So, okay, well, that’ll be the one bit I keep, is my reaction to it in the episode, but wow, that’s wild. I can see why that is well worth talking about. I hope the people, at least a few critics, play it enough so I can read more about that. It’s like the Sharp Objects post credits. Yeah, a little bit. The really funny thing about it. So, Yoshio Sakamoto, who heads up the Famicom Mystery Club, is also Mr. Metroid. He did a GDC career retrospective years ago, 2010 or something. And he talked about how much he was influenced by the films of Dario Argento. And at the time, everyone was like, what, Metroid? He was trying to say, like, oh, this is my guy. Dario Argento, the director of Suspiria, he’s like, he’s my guy. Like, that’s what I was trying to do in Famicom Detective Club on the NES. Not very successfully, I would say. And he says a lot of his techniques have inspired the kind of narrative of recent Metroid games. And we all went, ha, ha, ha. That’s quite odd to hear a person in Nintendo talk about a, you know, pop culture or something outside of games. That never happens. Miyamoto has never been like, I’m a big Fincher guy, you know? That doesn’t happen. But actually in this game, I was like, yeah, that is like that. Like, yeah, you do like Dario Argento and you have reflected that in a piece of work. So, so all of us from 2010 should probably shut the fuck up. Wow. Yeah. Really interesting. Okay, cool. Well, that’s good. I think that’s a good little end to that discussion. Just because I think that you get a good overview of the game there and then, yeah, maybe a little, a little kind of hint at what it, is or what else is waiting for you in the game. interesting stuff, Matthew. Well, thank you for your continued work in the visual novel genre, I think it is. Thank you to the people who commission me to review these games once in a while. Well, there’s definitely a sort of like part of our listenership who enjoys these games. It’s talked about quite a lot as a genre, it feels like in the Discord. So, it is niche, but people do like them a lot. Yeah, I am definitely more on the kind of like negative end of the scores and the reviews for this one. I just, I don’t know, it always bugs me when people are like, oh, people who don’t like this just don’t understand like visual novels. They marked it down because they don’t like visual novels. And it’s like, well, you know, that’s not true, like with my tastes. I think I am familiar enough with the genre. So, that bugs me a little bit. There’s a lot of defensiveness around this. But hey, if you love it, fair play to you. You know, I think it’s interesting. But probably just about that. Okay. Good stuff, Matthew. Well, that brings us on to our final game of this episode, then, which is Space Marine 2. So, Warhammer 40,000 game, it’s a sequel to a 2011 game called Space Marine by Relic Entertainment that was a bit of a snowballing cult hit. I don’t know if that’s the best way to describe it. But I think it scratched an itch that a lot of fans of that universe had had for a long time, which is to see a proper sort of like console style action game set in that world, action game slash shooter. It was a little bit in the mold of Gears, but because you’re playing these big hulking genetically modified space marines in this like, you know, massive armor, you essentially weren’t really in cover because it wouldn’t make sense for space marines to really be in cover. So you were just, you know, you had like shooting, but you also had like a melee weapon, chainsword cutting through orcs. And then later in the campaign, they chucked in a second faction, some kind of chaos faction. I’m afraid I can’t remember the different chaos factions in Warhammer 40,000, because my sort of like knowledge of that universe is quite superficial, I would say. I do think it’s a great backdrop for video games. And it’s really interesting to have this sequel come along years later and seem, and seemingly have like a much bigger audience like who are just dying to play it. So as we speak, over 180,000 people are playing this on Steam right now. So we are much anticipated for sure. It’s like, because I think the thing that’s happened in that time is basically that Warhammer 40,000’s popularity has exploded and like games Workshop sort of like, you know, position, I guess, culturally has exploded. Like it feels like as well that basically our generation got disposable income. It feels like that’s like a thing that happened. But also maybe in America, they became a bit more familiar with what Warhammer is. Obviously, it’s a British thing through and through, but it’s become progressively more and more popular. And the success of this game, and I would say the production values behind this game, speak to the fact that Warhammer 40,000 is in like a much big, it’s just a much more popular concern than it was when the original was released. And so the game reflects that nicely. It is a similar mix of shooting and melee combat. You’re primary enemy, but not necessarily your only enemy in the game. I’m sorry, I get the pronunciation wrong. I cannot remember if it’s fucking Tyranids or Tyranids. I can’t fucking remember. I think it might be Tyranids. I think it might be Tyranids, yeah. But definitely as a young boy, I called them Tyranids when I was painting little jean stealers, purple and blue, with a giant paintbrush and doing a shit job with it. Certainly that was my relationship with that. But yeah, so it’s interesting. It updates the formula a little bit, I would say. So you get more in the way of execution kind of kills, different ways you can stagger enemies and block enemies and that sort of thing. Slightly, I guess, I don’t want to say dark souls-y, but third-person action game touches have become a bit more popular in recent years. You get that. But it’s pleasantly 360 era in its form, in the sense that the campaign is, I believe, it’s like under 12 hours long. It’s not like a massive campaign. I think it’s sizable enough for what it is. I certainly don’t think it’s got so many ideas in terms of how the combat works that it needs to be longer than that. But it just feels 360 era in this way that I really like. It’s sort of a throwback to when a game could just have a 10-hour campaign, but then a load of multiplayer stuff you could go and do. Because what they’re trying to do with this game is that you start with the campaign, and then you can go into either competitive team multiplayer, or you can play this co-op mode they’ve done called operations mode. I should point out you can also play the campaign in three-player co-op, but operations mode, I’ve not dug into this. I will try and dig into this before we do the second one we’ve been playing episode this month. But that I believe is where its long tail comes from, and also where the combat really comes into its own. But the magic trick that this game has is that it uses, by Saber Interactive, who I believe made the World War Z game. That game I think had this swarm tech of loads of fucking zombies would turn up and you’d go, oh shit. This does that, but with tyrannids. You get these moments where just a sea of aliens turn up, and it’s a proper oh shit moment each time that happens, they start scurrying up walls and just pouring out into view. It’s really good at deploying that as a kind of like, okay, we need an action beat to punctuate this. What if a sea of tyranids just fucking swarm out, and then you just start going, uh-oh. It’s a really effective technique. I think it works really well. It’s a beefy, fun shooter melee combat game, and not much more complicated than that. But I think that for people who love this universe, you’ve never seen it presented this lavishly. This is the kind of game I think that people dreamed of as a kid, the making. It looks as good as any other modern game. It’s just so shiny looking. When you turn up to one of the opening levels, and there’s loads of Imperial Guard there, and Imperial Guard tanks popping off, and Space Marine gunships flying around, it just feels so authentic. And it’s like the vision of Warhammer 40,000 I think players have in their heads when they’re playing. But the games so rarely are able to realize, because they don’t have the budget. I don’t know if you have any questions or thoughts on this one Matthew, because I know it’s not really your area of the sort of thing. I played it at gamescom last year, and it was in a reasonably messy state back then. Like it was kind of fundamentally the same games. I’ve seen it running now, and I’m like, oh yeah, that’s very much what I played, except they’ve really tidied it up. And you kind of came away going, if they can make this stable, this is kind of going to be like weirdly one of the best looking games of the generation. Like you say, that horde tech and the kind of the sort of scrabbling mass, the way that aliens kind of climb up each other and over each other and just become like a wall of chaos is super impressive. It has like really busy sort of skyboxes with just loads of things like you see sort of platoons of like flying bugs, just like blotting out the sun and everything. And like the density of what you’re doing up close, combined with like the density of what you see in the distance, it’s just a really convincing trick that the whole game is as dense as this, even though you’re actually in a quite small area fighting like a very focused thing. If they really sell you on how big it feels, which I think is super cool. And I can get why like you sit in a tray and go, oh yeah, I probably want to have some of that. Just because nothing else really looks like it. Like, do you think it has lent at all into, you know, obviously it takes the tech from World War Z, which was their kind of left for dead, you know, clone. Like, does it have any of that kind of vibe to it? Like, are there, is it like general troops and then like special troop types that kind of spice things up? Or is it a bit like simpler than that? No, that is basically it. You get the smaller ones who are quite easy to counter, quite easy to mash through. And then you get the ones who require special attention, require you to block, require you to do a really nice little kind of animation. So, execution animation to take them out. Not necessarily, but you can. It’s just something you can do. It’s a way you can sort of a bit of mastery. There are certain types of attacks you can block. Some you just have to dodge because you can’t block them. Pretty conventional action game stuff, but like feels more contemporary than the original game does, obviously, as you’d expect. But that comes down to things like, you can do a sort of stun move, knock enemies back. And then if you tap the fire button, you’ll do like an instant, he’ll turn around and like shoot an enemy in the head and it will just die and the camera will pull in. And it feels, it’s just designed to amp up the satisfaction of how you kill things basically. And it’s not loads more complicated than that. And then the rest of the game’s design comes from, like you say, a lot of the time it is skyboxes that are there to kind of impress you. There’s not like a huge variety in the objectives. It feels like playing like, not one of the best Gears of War games, like not the kind of like highest tier ones. Because I think like it actually really, I think because sometimes the objectives are so simple. It started making me think about the different ways in which the original Three Gears games would play with objectives or spaces you’re in or different types of enemies that were designed to change up the experience. And that was kind of like, I think that was maybe underrated as the great things that that game did. Like it’s some genuinely great level design. Here I think it’s a little bit more repetitive. And so I think you have to go into it understanding that that is like, that is really the kind of game it is. It’s set PC but it’s not mind-blowingly set PC. But then I am early on in the game still. So maybe my perspective on that will change. And the presentation of it just goes so much further than the original did. I remember the original was like a good, I spoke to one of the devs once, so the director of the game and he was like, we had no money to make it. It was the end of THQ. Like it was, you know, like bad days basically, but they made it and it was beloved for what it was. And like fair play, they did a great job with it. This just feels like such a fan service elevation of like what that original vision was. And so I just think that yeah, it really deserves the success it’s getting and fair play to them, they delayed it a whole year to get the game feel of it right. And I think it is just about right. There’s a certain interplay between like the blocking and the way you deal with crowd control. I don’t feel like I’ve quite got my head around yet, but it feels like it was no doubt a very expensive decision to delay this game, but I think it was worth it. I’m glad it’s paying off for them with people just enjoying it as much as they are, Matthew. I like that between this and Plague Tale, which is another focus game, they are just like the home of swarms. It’s like if you like lots of one thing happening at once, like focus, there you guys. I just want to know what they’re going to do next. Yeah. Like, I don’t know if there are any other famous IP that lend themselves to swarms. chances are, but you’re swarmed with chance, just like loads and loads of chance. What about Lord of the Rings, like battles? That’d be good. Yeah. Chopping through loads of orcs. I think that could work pretty well. It is enjoyable, because it’s that thing of, like, you know that when the enemies get up close, there’s not going to be much of substance to them. And they won’t even really overwhelm you. You’ll be able to deal with them quite easily. But it’s just like the sheer vision of how many of them there are. It does really work on you as a magic trick, I think. It’s good stuff. I think what is interesting is whether this will open the door to more games like it. I reckon there’s quite a lot riding on this, in terms of a lot of the Warhammer games that have come out are in that mid-level of game. Like a double A space. I think a lot of the games that Focus have put out, some of them have been really good, but not all of them have. There’s a wide variety in quality between the different Warhammer games. But this is surely in the mold of what everyone, and I would assume games Workshop would want to see more of. It’s like big budget. It has to sell probably 5 million copies to break even or whatever. But that’s the scale of thing you want to see them do with this license. So to get a little taste of that, even more so than playing something like Darktide from a few years ago, this is just so much closer, I think, to the kind of experience that people want from this universe. So I play it and I’m like, well, it’s cool playing Space marines, but it’d be cool to see the elder version of this game or whatever. Like the other factions that behave in slightly different, interesting ways, the chaos version of this. Think of the different worlds you can do. In some ways, Space marines are like the most conventional faction. It’s a good way to get people to play the game if they don’t know the universe that well. But it’s quite a gnarly universe, there’s a lot of weird stuff in it. It would be quite cool to see more games with this level of production values. So I hope it does well, even if I don’t necessarily think it’s like a best in class third person game. So that’s where I’m at with it, Matthew. But I’ll keep playing it and report back. I guarantee, if you play this enough, you’ll eventually encounter Henry Cavill playing it in a lobby somewhere. You will have played alongside old Cavs and that’ll be a special experience. does it make you want to pick up the paintbrush and paint some incredibly tiny men? Definitely not. I have no time for that and I’m not good at it. This podcast is my fucking Necron army. Do you know what I mean? It’s the thing that requires a lot. The listeners aren’t my little men. The listeners are your Necron army. Yeah, they’re my little men. They die and they come back to life, much like the Necrons. I see them more as Skaven, just a swarm of rat men. yes. It’s interesting. Very rare when I get behind a game like this, but it feels like a real labor of love to bring it to life. Because how often do you wait 13 years for a sequel? Yeah, and just to see the response for it to be so different. When this came out on 360, I feel like it was such a footnote. The people who liked Warhammer were like, yeah, but I think anyone else really cared. It’s like, oh, it’s cool that you did this, was the response. And then I think over time, it’s just, yeah, it’s just found its audience has been available for like four quid on Steam or whatever. So that’s enough about that, though, Matthew. I will come back to it once I’ve played Operations Mode and talk about that. I’ve subscribed to PS Plus for one month just to kind of experience that. So expect takes at some point. Good, well, that’ll get you plucky Squire as well this month. Oh, is that the game? That’s pretty cool. That’s a plus extra premium one. I don’t know what tier you went for, but. I cheaped out a lot of the 6.1 I’m afraid. Oh, okay, no, you ain’t getting such a Squire then. Oh, never mind. RIP, hopes dashed so expertly there by Matthew. So we have another What We’ve Been Playing episode coming up in a couple of weeks. Maybe we’ll talk about one or two of the games that are here. I will try and finish Astro Bot. I think we’ve kind of set our piece on that one actually, but might try and say more on Outlaws when I get to a second planet. Like I say, maybe more to say on Space Marine. Neither of us have met Jabba, so. That’s true, but I thought he was a DLC mission, is he not? No, because there’s the Hutts at one of the factions. That’s got to be like King Hut, right? That’s true. I don’t think I’ve seen a Hut yet. No. So the next What We’ve Been Playing episode, we’ll come back to some of these games and talk about UFO 50 as well. That’s got a nine from Edge, so very excited to dip into that. Fictional consoles, back catalog, that should be really cool. Maybe a couple of other bits and pieces as well. Quite a big month for games. Yeah, it’s exciting, Matthew. Good time. Good time to play Blockbusters, all these things there. yes, it’s good, it’s just good. Okay, where can people get you on social media, Matthew? I am at MrBazzle underscore pesto on Twitter and at mrbazzlepesto no underscore on BlueSky. I’m Samuel W. Roberts on all those platforms, all two of them and BackpagePod on Twitter and BlueSky. Also, if you want to find us on there, patreon.com/backpagepod if you’d like to support us, get two additional podcasts a month. I’m going off now for a salmon dinner because I’m a deeply wealthy man and we’ll see you next week. Oh, what’s that? There’s still a few minutes left on the podcast, but the podcast appears to be over. What could be going on there? Well, I thought you might like to hear what Matthew told me about MEO the Smiling Man, Famicom Detective Club. And I thought I would put it after the final sting because I wanted to give you a spoiler warning for the content that Matthew will discuss here. This is a game that’s available now, obviously. This spoils the end of the game and what it leads to, the spectacular thing that Matthew discusses in this episode that is by far, I think, the most interesting thing I’ve heard about this game. So I thought I would let you experience what he told me and what wowed me and judge what you think of the game after hearing this because if you’re not interested in visual novels, I think this is a little bit of a mind-bending thing to hear and discover. So here it is, what Matthew told me about the twist in MEO. The Smiling Man. Yeah, it leant into something else. I’ve got an interesting proposition for you, Matthew. Yeah. So I don’t think I’m going to play this game for two reasons. One, it’s like there’s two others that I feel like I would have to play first, so I understand the lineage of these things. Right. And two, there’s too many other games to play this year, so I don’t think I’m going to get to it. How about you tell me, I’ll cut it out of the episode, what it is, and I will react to what it is, so people can hear my reaction, and they can decide for themselves whether that’s worth experiencing. Just because that’s an interesting experiment the impact this has, because we talked about it a lot, so. Yeah. So at the end of the game, you find this masked, this figure with a paper bag over his head, and he takes the mask off, and he’s incredibly disfigured, and he’s shot dead without you really knowing what was going on, and the case wraps up, and it’s kind of concluded based on, like I’d say 95% of what you’re investigating is concluded, and the credits run. Then at the end of the credits, your kind of the detective who runs the agency, who hasn’t been around for a lot of the game, pops up and says, Oh, I’ve been investigating this guy all a lot. Look, I kind of, I thought it might be this, and I’ve been investigating this guy, and I’m going to tell you about it, but you should really only play this bit of the game. It basically gives you like a trigger warning. He says like, it’s really, really awful, like what I’m going to tell you, and you don’t have to play it. He says, you just don’t have to do it, and it goes back to the title screen, and like a second campaign appears. So the title sort of flips around, and it becomes, it’s not called Emeo, it’s called Minoru now. And you go in and it basically explains the killer’s life story. And it’s people talking, they’re almost like talking heads. It’s still in the style of the game, but he’s interviewing locals who are telling him about this very abusive upbringing he had, and he was abused horribly by his dad, and how his sister died because of something he did, and tied to his alcoholic dad. And it’s quite sort of explicit about all that stuff. And this guy has a bit of a breakdown, he goes off. But then what happens is, there’s basically a half an hour anime that you watch, which shows what the guy did, like, throughout the game, and so you just watch it. You don’t play it at all. And it’s beautifully made. I don’t know who made it, but it’s great production values. But it shows this guy, you know, having a bit of a breakdown, murdering these girls, and there’s a bit where he disfigures himself with a pair of tin shears. And you kind of see it all. And, like, it’s really bloody and horrible. And it’s just, yeah, so it just sort of explains this guy’s story as this TV episode you watch. And it’s so at odds with everything that’s come before, because the rest of it’s like, if we go to the library before closing time, we might be able to crack the case. And then there’s this guy who’s like, this guy was really abused. He just figured himself with tin shears and then murdered three children. And you’re like, oh, and then that’s it. Wow, okay. That’s pretty wild as these things go.