The State of Gaming - Game news from April - 2022

00:00:00All righty then, we say hello and welcome to State of Gaming. April has come or went, depending on how you see it. And it's time to make a recap of all the good games. I'm not sure how you could make it not being over. Is there still somewhere on Earth that hasn't gone into May yet? Interesting question. I don't think so, right? Because... well maybe maybe maybe maybe if they have then they are on the very last minutes or hours so make it last people because we are recapping it um shamelessly recapping it because we have I have already forgotten but is this the fourth or is it the third episode in a row that we actually managed to record I think it's the fourth now yeah fourth I think it is so we are on a high roll to gaming heaven yes yeah so what will happen if we made it to 12. no no no no that's that's that's just wishing for disaster because we have let's let's face it we have the summer months and they will be uh they can always make it they will be summer hopefully because it's still sweden but they can put a snag in your master plan

00:01:29By introducing vacations and traveling and stuff like that. Well, I mean, unless we all bring our laptops and hook up via the Discord from wherever we might be. I still think we might aim for like nine. I think nine is good. Nine or ten, depending on. It's a solid figure and I would be proud. to call myself a gamer if we managed to do that anyway um state of gaming and it's april and for all of you who have followed our ordinary news cycle so to speak we will as per usual recap a lot of the stuff that you've already heard we will sprinkle in some some new stuff just to make it exciting and fresh but most of it will be some sort of recap or rethink on stuff that we have already mentioned and we do have a list and it's somewhat well populated so we should have enough to talk about and if we don't we usually manage to fill the time anyway for some reason talking about we we make it happen let's do it let's do yes as the kids say but before we do it we have a very important thing to try to get through

00:02:54No. No. A big no-no. We once again were treated to the massive sound of bongos. Oh, damn it. So, and as I've said before, this does still happen. It's not something that we have made up. This feature is happening. Me and Oskar are actually witnesses to this. So a beer can has been opened. Yes. There is a real beer here. Even though I went to a bachelor party last night. So we'll see how this goes. Yes. what do we have but i have a very colorful can today rodeo guava rodeo so it's a sour with guava tangerine and other natural flavors so it's basically a juice i think and also oscar has the brewery i didn't know he had one but that's pretty good blues nice but that's wrongly spelled yeah yeah you were someone misspelled your name

00:03:53Weirdly, it's spelled with a K, even though it's an American brewery. So does it have that intense guava flavor? Yes, this was actually really good. Okay, so I'm sensing a four out of five. Definitely. That's pretty cool. So, Oskar, what do you have? It's gin. Gin, okay. A classic. Straight up. Straight up and then straight down. No, it's lime and something else. That sounds pretty delicious. And I actually, because I had sort of let myself down for the last two or three weeks maybe, I'm back to the rum and coke. Yes. Oh. Because it's almost summer, wishful thinking, but it made me feel good. So here we are. And you can never go wrong with that. Even if you have a bad rum, the coke will save it. So.

00:04:52it's a pretty solid drink to make even if you're not good at making drinks so first item on the list has to do with a french company that is canadian if that makes any sense it makes sense we're talking about ubisoft of course and we have some stuff some maybe good stuff some maybe exciting stuff and also some doubtful stuff so let's start with the rumors because and this has been a persistent rumor that has been around for at least a couple of years now that someone is interested in buying ubisoft and they actually got hold of some rumors or some papers that went through that they had done like an inner audit of their assets and that's usually something that you do before someone makes you an offer and they did confirm that this had happened so someone has

00:05:50probably at least ask them to do this or maybe even made it clear that they want to pitch them an offer at some point so that's interesting and who to be yeah yeah so that's the the follow-up question who could it be and seeing as they have bought almost everything else first on the list is obviously microsoft but people have been thinking is it is it too big now can they actually buy Ubisoft without them breaking corporate laws of having too much of the market not sure also it would be a big deal and I mean Microsoft is already really big when it comes to gaming Studios so yes I mean not only are they big they they they are still growing from from what they've said themselves like we are on always looking for interesting Studios and new opportunities and I don't know I mean

00:06:45All of us have liked what they've done the last couple of years, but it might be good to have some competition left, aside from Sony. Yes, but it's also ironic in a way, or it's so interesting just to think when Microsoft first announced, I don't remember when this was, that they were going to make this Xbox and they were going to go into gaming. And I think I kind of laughed. yeah on the inside because it felt so out of context for them the xbox one launch was a disaster the 360 was okay and the original xbox was okay but the xbox one was a total disaster because they had like fresh new features uh i think the the most spectacular thing on their list was that you could stream sport events on your console and all the gamers just died inside and then they went out and bought a ps4 instead

00:07:42so that wasn't a good time but over the last 10 years they have made a pretty impressive comeback and now they own almost everything yeah i'm not even making that up which is kind of weird but ubisoft might or might not be on that list someone is definitely looking into it so we'll we'll be back with more ubisoft uh acquisition news down the line they have also decided to turn off the service of 90 old games mostly from the like the the old the old era of 360 and ps3 so there is just such a big number oh yeah 90 games yeah and that's just in a way that that confirms how big of a backlog or catalog they have of titles so it's not an It's not a small company to buy, and they do have a lot of assets. Some of them are up and running at this moment, and some of them are more dormant. And the biggest ones, of course, would be Rainbow Six and Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed. I would imagine that those three together bring in most of their money on a yearly basis, but they still have a lot of other stuff that they could bring out. And we're talking about one of them was the co-op.

00:09:04game with nintendo with the raving rabbits and i think they are making more of those along the line so they have some some some cool projects in their pipeline as well and one of them rumored as well is that they are trying to do another pvp battle royale game um for some reason that that fad feels like it's been over for some years but they want in i'm not sure why So next on the list is, it's weird. Have you ever, and I'm asking you, Oskar, because we are most into this company, I would think. But have you seen one of the Masterline figurines that Square Enix makes? Have you seen how big they are? Yeah. Because I don't really know. They are. larger than before if you say because like i was kind of trying to compare it with the the one that i have some kind of feeling for is the high wind pig green from final fantasy 7 yeah and i guess this is about i don't know three times as big or something like that yeah because i try to look into this

00:10:28We should do a small recap. So Squared Enis has a figurine line, which is called the Master Line figurine line, and it has their most expensive figures. And they usually are quite pricey. The last one they made was from Nier, and it cost about $5,000. And then they announced that they were making a new addition to that collection this year, and it would feature Terra from Final Fantasy VI, and she would be riding a Magic Tech armor. and uh the past week they announced the pricing for this new statue and it came in at twelve thousand dollars nowhere near the five thousand no uh this is a drastic change in uh in asking price and it took people by surprise they were kind of hoping and thinking it would be somewhere around the 5000 bracket but yeah it was so much money that um

00:11:25Hironobu Sakaguchi himself actually tweeted square Enix are we okay is everything all right so are you broke but haven't told us what's going on here so um yeah and also uh for those of you that are still thinking I want one of those uh there's only 500 100 of them are exclusive for the japanese home market so basically that leaves 400 of them for global uh sales and yeah you if you want one of those you'll also have to wait a year because they are out in 2023 so get you you can probably find them at ebay for for even more yes for even more money so yeah um it's it's horrendously expensive but it looked really really good the sad part is that i would say that they will have no issue at all to sell them no it's it's a sure sale because this is such a huge series and final fantasy 6 is an iconic game so and i would say probably a few of them also will speculate because they as we said they will probably skyrocket in like a year or two or so

00:12:39especially when they are they ate so expensive no one bought it yeah but in five years it will be like five times more yeah oh yeah i'm not even surprised if it's actually about what 30 000 in a couple of years so let's buy three of them maybe we should we'll go in and buy three of them and hoard them in a locker yes it is probably an investment and then we'll sell them and buy a small house yeah or something like that It's a shame, though, because it's a really nice looking figurine, for sure. And if it had been a bit more sensibly priced, I would have been somewhat interested, actually. It could be a fun story to tell your kids. How did you make your first million? How come you're broke, daddy? Well, you know, this figurine. Look at this beauty. Just look at it. That's why I could never afford anything for you guys.

00:13:36i'm sorry that's that's why we won't have dinner tonight sorry but not sorry anyway talking about new things we have already expressed our happiness about this news item but there's a new monkey island game in the pipeline from original creator ron gilbert himself and it is made in 2d old school graphics yes and Yeah, that's pretty cool. So much looking forward to that. Yes, and all of us played the original games. Well, it sounds like there's quite a few of them, but there really isn't. There's two of them. One and two. Those were the games that Ron Gilbert himself made. So because of that, this game is actually, in his mind and in the official gaming legacy line, or the... storyline if you will this will be the third game so the the other games that other people have done on other companies telltale among them will be i don't know if they do a star wars like larger universe type of deal where there are other stories but they're not official anymore because this will be the official monkey island 3 game so it will continue from where we left off in monkey island 2 which was at um was it um like um

00:15:01i'm trying to think like the very last scene was at either the cellars where he battled with leshack or at an amusement park i'm not sure exactly but either one of those two i think would be um would be where we see him again and yeah it'll be fun to see where he takes it from here because we have to start kind of fresh now and try to forget everything that happened to uh that franchise since he left off the last yeah last decade like the last decade for sure obviously it's uh time to relive the first games because if we don't remember the ending it's time to and it's a good good time to actually go through this game because they have had good remakes with uh where you can chase between the original graphics and the new graphics and they are still very good adventure games and

00:15:57we like that genre so it's cool to have it back one thing to point out though is that this game will have a hint system which was not included in the original games they were hardcore and we've said this in the podcast many times things were better way back then and on this matter we kind of stick to that because these games are in my opinion always more fun when you have two guess and guess and guess again until you crack the riddle or the puzzle and then you can progress and That also makes you so much more pleased when you actually beat the game because it's you're supposed to click on everything Yes, everything with everything to make it go somewhere. Yes So yeah, hopefully the hint system will be easy to toggle on and off

00:16:50And we mentioned this in our other shows that maybe we should also deny you the achievements because you are a weak gamer. So, yeah. Another thing that has to do with an old franchise that should have stayed old, maybe, is that they have now done another Lego game for the Star Wars franchise. It's actually called the Skywalker Saga. it's star wars but focused on the skywalkers i think so um it has all of the the major movies in it so what's that nine i think yeah yeah the the nine originals yes and um in my view and and it's really quote unquote originals yes oh definitely so in my view and maybe in yours as well this is the only way to experience the last three movies uh in a format that where they don't suck and also maybe the three first movies well they they weren't exceptionally good i would not say that but they were passable yeah especially if you watch the kind of the cut ones that are kind of yeah uh definitely they they might even be okayish but let's face it the the middle trilogy or the original trilogy

00:18:16Are probably still on a level of its own. So, yeah. Anyway, this game though. It looks really, really good. And enjoyable. Yeah. They have a pretty funny release trailer also. Yes. They do have that humor. Which has always been at its best in the Skywalker or the Star Wars games. They have Lego-fied a lot of stuff. But I still think that the Star Wars Lego-verse is the best one they've made. and um yes i think it also looked kind of i mean the old games had um the graphics aren't the the most important thing in these games obviously but this one actually looks pretty good so it looks really good so that's a that's a nice thing so if you are into the lego and the star wars worlds this might actually be a game worth getting on like the ps5 because i think it's on the ps5 and yeah

00:19:12hopefully at some point I'll get to try it as well I will probably not go and get it right away because I've played many of the old ones and um and this is not a time sensitive thing either because I mean they they are where they are and they hopefully won't change over time so uh maybe pick them up when uh when the price is right and uh yeah it's very enjoyable to play the Star Wars and they're very easy to pick up and play as well so yeah that's nice talking about disney though they are back with their epic but also somewhat weird and convoluted game series kingdom hearts it's uh it's the fourth game it it's officially on its way and it's uh they had a trailer it looked beautiful and i didn't really understand anything because it's a lot of stuff in that series that you have to wrap your head around

00:20:09it's so weird it's a lot of hearts for obvious reasons but there's a shadow in the heart and some something got clouded and there's key masters and goofies in there and mickey mouse is sort of a king and yes he's a royal mouse yeah so it's a lot but a lot of people love this uh series and have played all of the games and they have a lot of games that are on alternate consoles they they have handheld games game boy games and that's probably one of the big reasons it's hard to get into it because you have to go out there and find all these games because they usually have a little bit of story in them so if you want to have the full picture you actually have to play all of the games or find a youtube video with all of it included so that you can kind of follow along there are a couple of those online and they're lengthy but

00:21:05i think that's still the quickest way to get on board with what's happening is it worth it it might be i i still think it would be super interesting to have a guest on this show at some point that knows this series and could pitch it is there such a person in the world oh there's there yeah you're right yeah it might be impossible people we tried but we might find someone who is better invested than we are that could pitch this. Definitely someone that is more knowledgeable about this than we are. It would probably be like, okay, so guys, I've listened to what you said. Everything you said is wrong. Let's do this right. That's the person. And if you are that person, please get in touch with us because we would love to actually get to know what's going on. The good thing about this, though, is that the development of these games...

00:22:02uh it's usually pretty long like four or five years so just call the number on the screen yes the one that is in the lower bottom right now blinking in red that's the one and uh yeah we have we have four or five years probably to play through all the games so when the next one comes out we will be the experts yeah well yeah hopefully yes maybe or we all together could be the expert We can split them up. So I have the first one and you have the second one, Oskar the third one, and together we will be a united kingdom. But isn't it like six more games between them? It's a lot of games. Yeah, there's a lot of games. Also a music game, a rhythm game, which is kind of weird, but also very Disney-esque, so maybe not weird at all. Frozen is in there, yeah. Of course. I mean, why wouldn't it be? So, yeah.

00:22:58uh i am sort of excited for the people that are excited but i know too little to be excited myself so yeah weird yeah um next on the list is there's a lot of franchises on this list i just realized but this is a franchise that has been around for a long time now and we are talking about the tomb raider franchise and yeah in particular the latest games from that franchise that have been made by crystal dynamics and they have done three games so like a mini trilogy and i think those three games had sort of not not a story that was like closely knit together but it was in the same they kind of harkened back to each other so it was oh do you remember this dude from five years before that was in the previous game and so on so they did connect to each other

00:23:55And they have now got the thumbs up to do a new one. And they will use the Unreal 5 engine. So it will probably look really, really good. It will look awesome. And what I heard, at least three key features to the new engine. The first, it's that you don't need to bake the light anymore. So it will be dynamic when you move things around. The second one is the LOD. So you don't need to calculate level of detail. so it will scale automatically yeah and thirdly they do they have a huge inbuilt library of mega scans yeah meaning that they basically have real photos that you apply to 3d objects but let's face it this is why it's called unreal it's unreal and it's here today they are kicking um what do you call it uh the other engine yeah that's i can't remember the other one yeah

00:24:50there is we are talking about unity i think yeah exactly oh yeah yeah um that's a news that we mentioned briefly in another show that unity that used to be really really big for indie studios have sort of uh become number two in the list because unreal have done some really good changes that a lot of indie studios have so they have made a comeback they they made a good comeback and unity have to prove themselves again So that's pretty cool. But yeah, this game will probably look really, really good. And I'm actually right now playing through the first of Crystal Dynamics Tomb Raider games, and it's still a really good game. Oh, yeah. Super brutal, though. It starts with her getting speared through the stomach and getting thrown off a boat and then thrown down a cliff. So Lara is pretty hardcore in this game. Is that one where you start in a cave or something?

00:25:47upside down in the cave yeah so that's a good game it's a really good game it's a good game and also uh joining crystal dynamic is is the former design director from days gone well days gone basically i think that was it didn't have like a an underline it was just days gone and um all three of us liked that game a lot of people didn't because they thought it was I don't know, too much of a biker game, maybe? I don't know. But we liked it because it was sort of a biker game and also a hardcore zombie game. And in post-apocalypse, it was, yeah, a good mix. And if he can bring some of his design skills to the new Tomb Raider, that's probably a good thing. And we don't really have, as far as I can tell, any information about when this game will be out.

00:26:44But seeing as it's a AAA game, it's usually two or three years, right? It'll probably take some time. Yeah, unless they announced it and they've already made a lot of the game already. And in that case, it might be one or two years. We'll see. I would imagine that even if it is one or two years, you still have enough time to go through the old games, all three of them, so that you are... up to par when the new one arrives because i wouldn't be surprised if this one ties into the former three games seeing as it's still crystal dynamics that are making them so that's pretty cool um another game that has very recently come out is rogue legacy 2 and it is i mean it's rogue legacy 2. it really is so everything from the first game is back in the second game but it's even better

00:27:37Or at least equally as good. So people that like Rogue Legacy 2 will be very much at home in this one and probably love it. I've seen a few streams and it looks really fun. It is definitely as wacky and as random difficulty-like as the first one. So for those of you who doesn't really know what that means, you have a mechanic where every time you die, you pick a new hero. And it's the child of the previous hero. And you get... random skills, and some of them are good and some of them are just bad. So you might be very nearsighted, and if you are, the graphics become super blurry. It might be that you're clumsy, so maybe you will fail when you jump three out of five times. And it might be like you have vertigo, so the vision might get blurred or you might have reverse control because you're drunk. There's a lot of stuff to make the game. I like that kind of thing. It's cool.

00:28:35it's very cool and it it will make you die a lot which is kind of it makes it even more fun when you actually get places because it's still a pretty good platformer and it does have pretty difficult boss fights and stuff like that so it makes you feel really good about yourself when you find a good character and may make a good build because you can find a lot of skills and you can unlock a lot of skills and you can make the gameplay pretty much in the style you want by picking different types of characters i think you always have three different characters that you can pick when you restart the next cycle and progress is saved between heroes so you don't restart the castle uh it's always in the castle that's very good yeah so yeah and you i guess you shouldn't be actually drunk when you play this game because it's gonna be really that's gonna be weird that would be weird i mean it might be fun but i wouldn't i wouldn't be surprised if you didn't get

00:29:34very far well plain drunk anyway i i would definitely recommend it for those of you who like the first one and for those who haven't tried it maybe actually get the first one it's probably dirt cheap at this point and if you like that you will probably like this one as well one thing uh jumping to the next item on the list that i have never heard about is that ludonaracon is back for the fourth time I've never heard of this. And it sounds awesome. It's back starting May 5th, so the upcoming week. And it's a narrative-driven game festival. And the digital show features 42 exhibiting games and 56 panelists. And it will have 32 demos to play. And you can find that on Steam. Nice. I think that sounds awesome.

00:30:27Why Ludo though? Is it crazy? I have no idea. I think Narakan is probably from narrative. But Ludo. Maybe the first dude's name was Ludo. I don't know. So it does have a website if you are interested in more information. So you can definitely visit that and read up on this event. And it starts in the next week. So I will try to look into this and probably look at some of the demos as well. I love that the demos have sort of returned as a feature in gaming. Because a lot of them have been really good. And some games I've actually acquired because of good demos. So glad to have them back. So it's hosted on Steam. Whatever that means. And it runs until 9th of May. And including appearances from guests like Lucas Pope, Meg Yenath and Greg Lobanov. I have no idea who any of those guys are. But maybe they are big on the indie scene. And viewers can also expect exclusive reveals. So that's nice. Interesting. That's not bad. And yeah, we will definitely follow up on this once we have seen a little bit of it and know.

00:31:50a little bit more of it and who knows we might also do some some demo for the youtube channels so you can have a look at that as well so last thing on this list is psychonauts 2 is well according to themselves really double fine's highest rated game and also best selling game of all the games they have made and this was tweeted from lisette and she has a weird name lisette t3 montgomery who was the former art director on at double fine and she basically she came off sort of a douche when i read her tweets because it basically said like oh i've been a part of this for four years and because of me this happened and that happened and it we have never been better and all these awards were given because of my stellar work with this game it's like well yes you were probably important but there are also there's several hundred other people

00:32:49working on that game and i would think that tim schafer himself might have had something to do with the game being made but uh no question about it uh psychonauts 2 was a very good game yeah and this highest selling thing is also somewhat interesting because this game was on game pass and those numbers are not included in sales and they have even though it was there sold at least 1.7 million copies because they said they had beaten the previous game i think it's the the history of psychedelics too it's a bit interesting especially that at one point that notch himself wanted to self-found the making of it i mean the first one has become a a cult classic if you will it it was one of those games that didn't sell really well when it came out but over the years it's um

00:33:46gotten a following and a lot of people praised it because it was a really good game but they just didn't it's a i have to say though that when you start it up it's kind of hard to grasp what type of game it is it's it's very much its own thing and it's kind of wacky and a little bit weird but if you give it a couple of hours i think you probably need to give it like a couple of hours if you still don't feel like it's for you at that point it probably isn't but I gave it my third try a couple of years ago, and that was the time I actually realized that it was a good game because the start is a little bit shaky, but it does grow on you. And the second game actually takes place, I think, just days after the first game. So if you play the first one, you can jump straight into the second game and be very much up to speed with what's happening. So that's cool.

00:34:43Do we have anything that we want to add before we close down shop for the month of April? Any gaming nuggets? I have actually a little bit of a nudge to a physical game for once in a change. All right, go for it. There is a Kickstarter that has been completed with a lot of money, more than they asked for. And it's called Sorcery, a Constant Realm TCG. So basically... This is as written as a quote, it's an old school fantasy card game for players with rich imagination, technical nerve and appreciation for hand painted art. Hand painted? That's good. That's the cool thing with these cards that it is basically magic, but with another tap of it. But the art is like real art. It's coming from real artists, from real paintings. It's like super cool.

00:35:39graphics yeah basically so is this available now or is it coming nah it's it's just got founded it's a new zealand based game on kickstarter yeah yeah so you can find a bit of like play tests and so on and so forth but it's supposed to be printed and released during this year cool we i think we'll we'll try to add that to the list of things we'll get back to and inform a bit more about when we have more information but physical games are always fun i would probably play a lot more physically if it didn't rely on actually meeting people i know and that sounds so sad seeing as i i don't have any friends and you two are imaginary friends of mine uh you know uh it would make make things very difficult but if it wasn't i would love games like this even more so i think

00:36:34We are just about done. So I will pass the bucket, the gaming bucket. Oh, from maybe from that game that just came out, the Stanley Parabellum. Oh, yeah. He has a bucket, I think. So maybe I'll pass his bucket over to you, Oscar, to close the show down for the month. Yeah. So let's empty the bucket and see what's on in the bottom. And I think that will be a new episode in one month from now. So until then. Bye bye. Bye bye.