The State of Gaming - Game news from April - 2023

00:00:00All right, let's get going for another state of gaming. It's been Mars and now it's April and we are back once again. You know, so I think we need to break this down a little. We had a hot streak and we really did. We were almost a little proud of ourselves. But that streak ended when this year began. It's actually been, what, four months now? And yeah, so that streak is officially over. It's done over with. But this one is, I mean, this could be said to be the beginning of the new streak. The better streak. The upgraded streak. Yes, streak 2.0. The streakening, as they say. No one says that, but we just said it. It's a thing now. So this is State of Gaming April edition. or any other form you might slap onto that but it's uh yeah so for those of you who have sort of misled the description for this uh series is that we are looking back on this month of april and uh you know going through the list of highlights and news gaming gaming wise obviously and then we highlight some of them and i think we've said this on a couple of occasions that the highlights are picked by us

00:01:24So if anything is missing or you know of something that you thought we would talk about, it still might not be there because this is what we focused on during the month that has passed. And it might just be things that we care a little bit more about than you do and vice versa. So it's very much our highlighted monthly list of gaming events. Yeah. That's the exclaimer. And having said that, we have lists. as in any other of our shows, and we have one for this month. But before we get into all that hot and juicy stuff, we have some other juicy stuff, maybe. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. But still, oh, no. Oh, no. So you will now be hearing the bongos. Yes, what you just heard. Yes. But that's a cool-looking can, though. Yes. It looks a little psychedelic. Yeah.

00:02:21I think because this is a neon sign from a bar called Omnipoyos Hatt, which is one of the Omnipoyo bars in Stockholm. And it's a hat. And it's a neon red or orange. Hard to say. Yeah, a lot of colors. They made this beer, I think, the beginning of this year to celebrate that they had sold like, I don't know, a million beers at the bar. A billion cans. A billion beers. But yes, it's a black can with very neon-esque colors on it. Yeah, it's beautiful. But did it taste beautiful? Oh, it's one of the best, I think. Worth going alcoholic for. You heard it here first, folks. Oh, that's a bold statement. That's a sizzling statement. But you know, we have lawyers. Oh, we do. A lot of them. We probably have.

00:03:18Anyway, that's not why we're here. We're here to talk about booze. No way. No, that's just one of the things we talk about anyway. Anyway, I don't think I have anything that can top the Omnipore you can, because it was so cool. But I do have this Coca-Cola vintage glass. That is very, very cool. It is actually pretty cool. And inside of that, I have Coca-Cola and something else. I won't give the kids that. So it's no, that's why I didn't mention the other thing. So it's Coca-Cola and some other stuff, but it's delicious. In fact, I just made sure. Yes, it's still delicious. It's one of those Winnie the Pooh things that you have to go all the way down until you hit rock bottom or in his case, honey bottom to shake if everything is delicious all the way down. I think in most cases or almost certainly every case that he ever tried, it was delicious all the way down.

00:04:16It was. And that's so stupid. But also, it's so true. How would you know? How would you know unless you went down there and found out by yourself? Exactly. And in his case, got stuck inside the jar. Oh, well, that was unfortunate. Yeah. So, Oskar, what are you sampling? Yeah, I'm continuing my beer streak. Your beer fest. Yes, with a wild sour. Beer bonanza. Is it? Is it delicious? Yeah, it is. It's fruity. Okay. And we mean that in the drinking fashion. Yeah. Even though there's nothing wrong with that. Let that be said. We're actually going to come back to that topic later in this show. Yeah. Because we just plan ahead like that. That's our mind game. Yeah. Anyway, for those of you who have been with us for a longer period of time, we have... Many a years. Yes, indeed. Well...

00:05:16Some years now. Yeah, it's seven soon. Yeah, but I was thinking about the first item in the list. When did Cyberpunk 2077 release? Is it two years ago? I think it's about two years ago, yeah. Yeah. So for those of you who have been with us since then, we have talked about this game on and off. It's actually 10th of December 2020. Okay. Okay, it's getting along. So many years and still so far from... So, that's one of the things we have talked about on and off, the troubles and tribulations of Cyberpunk 2077. And we argued about... Well, not argued really, but we brought forward our love for this game that we had before it was released in our defense, in our Swedish podcast, because... We have been talking about this game in less favorable ways since release. So people might have thought that we actually hated this game, but no, we actually want to like it. So having said that, Cyberpunk 2077 had a big update a couple of weeks ago. So the big question floated up onto the radar, and that is, is it time? Is this the time? Is 20...

00:06:4223, the year when you should start this game. Two scenarios. One, if you have tried it previously and was burned by the experience. Or two, a brand new run if you have never touched this game. And if you haven't, would it be nice now? I think now is the time when it actually would be at its nicest, obviously. And I think you might not be as disappointed if you haven't played this game before. But if you, for some reason, did play this game, I don't know. It's hard to get over the fact that they released a game that was really faulty. Yeah. So I think I'm firmly in the camp that if you haven't played this at all, And just started it up. Even maybe not knowing about the controversy of this game. And all the not so great events surrounding it. You might actually have a really good time with it now. I think so, yeah. Especially if you add those 100 mods. That makes it almost like it should be. Probably even as it should be. Let's go out on a limb here. So that's the next topic. Because Oskar found a video.

00:08:05Sadly, I don't remember the name of the YouTube content creator who did this, but he had bundled together over 100 mods for Cyberpunk and made them all work with each other, which is pretty impressive. And the game was pretty darn solid. Everything kind of worked. I mean, it is sad that you have to use 100 mods to make a game work the way it was supposed to. But if you flip it... You could take these 100 mods and make the game work the way it was supposed to. So, you know, end results? End results, yeah. But also, it's too late. Yeah, maybe. Just to give the creator some, or at least the creator of the video some credit, I would say that the title is I modded Cyberpunk 2077 into a game. cdr pro cdr promised and he is called synth yeah yeah i mean credit where it's due that was a great video and he broke it down pretty beautifully in it as well i think it was like 30 minutes though it's something like it's uh it's a it's a lengthy one but i found it really interesting to to look at if nothing else we should also mention that the dlc for 2077 is on the slate for this year so that's

00:09:31Kind of why this game still feels relevant. I think, for me at least, that's the big chance for them to fix this game, I would say. If they fail again, a lot of people will have given them the last chance they will ever get concerning this particular game. They still have the Witcher franchise back in the spin, but for the Cyberpunk franchise, I think this might be their one and only chance to fix this, to be fair. Yeah, and I think, Oskar, you put the head on the nail, so to say, with just the fact that this is a game that they promised us, and they did not deliver on that. And I think that's what's kind of making me feel like I'm not sure they can redeem themselves with this particular game, of course. They can buy my love.

00:10:23Yes. They can redeem it for a small portion of their... A small sponsorship, you know. So, anyway, they can in no way influence us. So, having said that, we will obviously be back to talking about... And we know that they have listened. We have seen them in our tracks. We have indeed. Moving on. We will be back, though, when the DLC drops, for sure. One of the other things that we were very interested in, well, both previously with the old game, the original version of the game, and yeah, the OG version of the game, even though there has been a remake previously. Anyway, we like this game and now it's back and we still like this game. And we are, of course, talking about Resident Evil 4, the actioning, when the series went action-y-ish.

00:11:21But did it right. The balance was great in this game. Yeah, it was actually one of the best installments of the series. So, very short recap. The game came out. A lot of people really, really liked it. And some loved it. I don't think anyone really said they hated the game. Some things, though, we'll mention that in a bit. But it sold really well. It looks great. It runs great. if anything harder than it used to be so that's a small minus for some and a big plus for others that felt that they wanted the you know the extra difficulty and also having played it previously they were kind of surprised in a positive way that they now had a new incentive to play through it again so you know most people took something positive from it but we do have one big thing that

00:12:15sadly came... I don't know. It has been a thing in other games as well. But in this game, it really hit the fan. Because we have a voice actress, and her name is Lily Gao. And she has the voice of Ada Wong in Resident Evil 4. And according to quite a few vocal fans, her, what should you say, body of work was so bad. so very bad that they decided to, like, hate spam her. And she basically quit all the social media platforms and went silent mode. And, you know, obviously, even if you would think that she did a, like, bad or subpar work, hating on the person isn't exactly the way to go about it. It's more easy to say that, yeah, this wasn't for me. And, I don't know, play something else for a bit, maybe?

00:13:10Or focus on the fact that Resident Evil games have never, ever been known for their stellar voice acting. Exactly. What are those voice enthusiasts doing playing a Resident Evil game in the first place? Yeah, it's so weird. I have never, I don't think I've ever heard someone say, you know, Resident Evil 1 was such a great game. I sometimes have it on only the audio and listen to those dialogues because, oh my God, the feels. That has never happened. The way Barry delivers his lines, they're just beautiful. The depth in his voice when he said, ah, my leg. I mean... Oh, my God. Oh, my Lord. So that has never happened. So I'm not really sure why they hated her that badly. But then again, haters usually don't really need a big reason to get on the bandwagon. The old hate wagon. It's always out there rolling. So, you know, I feel...

00:14:08Kind of bad for Lily Gao. She doesn't deserve the personal hatred. But, I mean, she could have done a bad job. I'm not sure. I mean, some, let's face it, not all voice actors or actresses do a good job every time. So it might not be stellar, but that's still not reason enough to go out and say that you should probably end yourself, you know. No, that's just cruel and vicious. And also, there are a lot of other layers that actually did approve her voice acting and said that this, because there's a lot of creatives working with this game, obviously, that's going to say, yeah, we're fine with this. Because I don't think she did it in her first take. So she probably redid it a couple of times until they felt satisfied with it. Yeah, exactly. Someone approved this. Like I said, this is exactly the Ada Wong we like.

00:14:59And as you mentioned, a lot of people have actually said, yeah, I was fine with it. Some even said, I thought it was great. I think the main thing here is probably that it's very different from the OG. Oh, yeah. Well. And some people don't handle change very well, no matter what that change is. No. I used to have this. It was crap, but it was my crap. You know what I'm saying? That type of thinking. Exactly. It was better before. Yes. And, you know, that's our tagline. Everything was better before, but not in this case. So shame on you people. Yeah. Yeah. Having said that, though, one thing that some people are also upset about when it concerns this game is that they added microtransactions on the download very recently. So after the big review period was over, they slipped some microtransactions in there.

00:15:56Nothing like some good old microdress, actually. Getting those golden skins, y'all. But we talked about this in our Swedish podcast, and we didn't really see a problem with this, because this is a single-player game, and if you want to buy yourself better guns, the only person who might be affected is you. Exactly. You and your wallet. Your wallet will take a hit. But if it's worth it for you, sure, do it. I don't think it's a big deal. Yeah, I don't really see the big deal. I mean, obviously, they slipping microtransactions in a couple of weeks after the review period. I think that's obviously something that they did on purpose. That's for sure, yeah. Because microtransactions never really sell a game in a positive way. So having no microtransactions on release was probably like, yeah, nice.

00:16:56you know, look the other way and just add them a little time later. But in this case, you know, I don't really see a problem with it. The behavior in itself might be a little bit questionable, but in this game, the practical result isn't, you know, I don't really care. And for this being a much harder game than the original one, maybe this is for... You might need them golden guns. Exactly. I'm not sure if it's, you know, I'm trying to remember, like, is there ever a time when a golden gun would actually impress anyone in a Resident Evil game? Maybe in this case, maybe Salazar would be impressed. That is true. So this might just be the game where you want to go golden. Talking about golden, we have something that wasn't very golden or overly golden.

00:17:57if you want to see it that way. Dark and Darker, the game that everyone was talking about a couple of months ago, is now removed from Steam, and they are locked up in a legal... What should you call it? A legal controversy, maybe? Something like that. They might have stolen some of that code. No, they borrowed it. Well, they would probably argue that they did none of that. Oh, no, they didn't need to do it. Yeah, so we're talking about two Korean game studios. And Dark and Darker is owned by Iron Maze, I think they're called. And a lot of their devs previously worked with another studio called, I think it was Nexon, with the Nex. And they claim that a lot of the code in Dark and Darker was just blatantly stolen from them.

00:18:52And how do they know that? Yeah, obviously someone must have either, like, I don't know, noticed something, or they just, you know, called their old bosses and said, hey, you know that code we did? Yeah, it's in this game now. So long story short, the game was pulled from Steam. They tried to spread it via torrents on Twitter. That got taken down because lawyers. And now they're locked in a legal feud. And where that lands, we do not know at this time. It's a sticky situation. We might not know for a couple of months or years. I mean, these things can take a long, long time. In my defense, though, I thought this game looked more boring than paint drying on a wall. So it wasn't code worth stealing.

00:19:50I mean, it doesn't affect me at all. But a lot of people did love this game. And I think I mentioned this in our Swedish show. I think this might be one of those games that is fun playing, but just looks boring, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, we'll probably see the end of this at some point, but not sure when. Maybe not during this state of gaming streak. No, probably not. I mean, let's face it. These things take time. And for no other reason that they have to get to the bottom of this. Which is probably hard. I mean, at some point they would probably have to go and look at the code. Yeah. And compare however they would do that. But yeah, interesting case. I don't think I've ever heard anyone accusing another studio of just taking their code. So that's a new one. They should just be able to put it in chat GPT and ask it.

00:20:46Well, I'm not that sad because it just got me those bad Kingdom Come Deliverance vibes. And I was, nope, I'm not going to touch this. Yeah, that game sucks hard. Yeah. Even though it had such a great name. It did have a great name. And it also had like a great, the idea was good. But everything else, oh my God, what a snoozefest. So yeah, enough about that. Let's move on to something that was, you know. It was stuck in development hell for 10 years, and it went through three different studios. But now it's here. Dead Island 2. And it is really, really fun. You know? That's what I've been playing the last, well, week now, I think, when I had time to game. Does it have an island? No, it does not. That's one of the things that people are confused about.

00:21:43So the Dead Island, this is, for those of you who aren't sort of in the loop on this, this is the third game in the series, Dead Island. And the first couple of games came out way back in the Xbox 360 era. And I think the first game was released in 2012 or something like that. And that was set on an island. And the second game was set on a boat. And then that boat got stuck on an island. Yeah. So it ran aground. And this game is set in LA, which is, as far as I know, or very little islandish. Maybe they have, like, Hawaiian shirts or something. Maybe. I mean, I wouldn't know. I've never been there. But one of the things that I do not want to set in the trend for is the name, which is now Hell A, and not LA. Yeah.

00:22:42And they actually talk about it as hell-a in the game. It's a thing. They're actually... I don't want to spoil it because this is a really new game, but the story, to be fair, is not the selling point in this game. But they do spoof a lot of content creators and teenage celebrities and celebrities hanging out in Bel-Air being awful people. It's a lot of that. That's an easy target, though. It is. But the main selling thing in this game is killing zombies, and killing some more zombies, and then killing a bunch of more zombies, and in very creative ways. That's fun. It is fun. But I think it's interesting, this definition of developer hell, because like, as you said, this has been in developer hell for about 10 years, but that was kind of the norm when Blizzard did games back in the days. Oh yeah, for sure.

00:23:41And I guess then we just call it polished. Yeah, I mean, to define developer hell in this case, I think it is the fact that it went through three different gaming studios. So two studios gave up on it and packed it and shipped it to someone else. And that usually means that the game will become fractured and have a lot of creative minds involved and stuff like that. But for some instance, they managed to make it work. And it looks absolutely gorgeous. It does. Yeah. Yeah. So if you are... Oh, I should say, this is probably one of the few games where you have to... Going into this, if you're squeamish about gore, this is not the game for you. It's just not. Because they have a physics engine in this game that makes it possible to just carve down a person from the outside into the bone.

00:24:39You can just slice away until you see the skeleton. Oh, wow. That's... Yeah. Brutal. It works. It works. Oh, yeah. So, yeah. That's a... It's sort of a spoiler, but more a disclaimer. A disclaimer. If you're not into gore, stay away from Helle. Yeah. But if you're into it, get in there. This is your thing. Get in there right away. So, yeah. It's been pretty fun, though. I think it's... 15 to 20 hour game which is you know pretty good for being a hack and slash action adventure sort of and there's some side content some of it's good some of it is you know fetch this thing for me because i'm on it type of deal so yeah do you think they gave up the island in favor of the hell a pun i i'm almost certain that they did i should also add that it's already sold over a million copies

00:25:36Wow. In like 10 days, which is pretty good. And on PC, it's an exclusive for Epic for a year. That's how that goes. Moving on to something that has sold a lot of games. I didn't know this. So I think maybe, Linda, you talked about the first game a little bit on some shows, right? Yeah. We talked about the Little Nightmares franchise. There are two games now. So they are basically cutesy horror platform adventure games. And they feel very indie. Like very indie-esque in their style. And I knew they had done well. So if anyone would have asked me, I would say like, yeah, probably sold like a million. That's cool. That's really good. So they've sold over 12 million copies. That's so many copies. That is quite a lot of copies. And I mean, I'm thrilled because...

00:26:34It's a great series. And having sold 12 million means that he'll probably make more games. Not necessarily little nightmare games, but he will continue to make games. And seeing as those two games were pretty good, I mean, I'm all for that. 12 million, that's solid numbers. Yeah, hopefully more in the same genre. Like cutesy, feel-good horror games. That is exactly what I want. Yes, we do like those. Feel-good horror games. I mean, yeah. We've talked about this before. We have our own definition of horror games. You can find traces of it in a lot of our shows, but we kind of like the cozy feeling of horror. And this one pretty much hits the nail head on with that. So good on them, for sure. Something that we also thought was pretty cool, if nothing else, is that...

00:27:33I'm not sure if he's a gamer or if he's just an enthusiast with the Unreal 5 engine. But we have a gentleman called John Rue who is now, at this very moment, building Tokyo in anime style. Yeah. And he's doing this for free. Yeah. And you can download that shit if you want to. You should. It's pretty cool. If you're not put off by the anime style, I think it's cool just to look into this because... It's pretty detailed. I have now had the chance to actually look into this myself. And seeing as I've never been in Tokyo, I'm not sure how accurate it is. But people who have been there claim that it is very accurate. And you can actually go into this alley and take a shortcut to there. And you can in this little anime version of the town as well, which is pretty cool. And the end of this project is when he has...

00:28:26virtualized entire tokyo in anime style which should take about 20-25 years i think yeah it's a huge city yeah yeah yeah so i mean maybe he will get help at some point if this project gets traction out there it wouldn't be the first time a fan project grows but it's a cool thing nonetheless so we thought we might might uh you know beat the drum a little bit for him because we like that it's cool Something that is, I'm not sure if it's cool or if it's just sad, but it's very Ubisoft all the same. They are back at the old Steam catalog with some games. The very same games that they took away from the Steam catalog because they wanted to have their own platform. And then they realized, as everyone else already had, that if you have two platforms, that means you can sell it at two places and get even more money.

00:29:23For some reason, they had missed that fact. They're back. I don't know how, though. They're back. Yeah, well, they're almost French. They are French. Well, yeah, that's a good excuse. Yeah. And French people, you know, they're passionate, but not always logical. Let's say that. That's the reason. They like cheese. Ooh. Cheese. And cigarettes. Yes. And baguettes. That's all the stereotypes. And hopefully that's the reason why they're doing this. Because we do not know. And strange hats. I wouldn't say that. That's going too far, Oskar. We don't want to get chased down by a mime. That gets sticky. Anyway, so one of the games that will be back on Steam is the Far Cry series, obviously. And as Oskar said in our Swedish version,

00:30:18It's a decent game. You should maybe try it. That's both saying yes and no at the same time. I am well aware of that, but you should maybe try this as far as we want to stretch that. A few of them. Let's say it like this. If you like open world games and not have your daily dose for some while, then it's a good game. It's just that, as I said in the last episode, it's too long for my taste. They could have just shortened it with... 25, 20%-ish. To paraphrase this, you can't have too much of a good thing. And if you do, it's not a good thing anymore. It's just decent. You can't have just enough of a decent thing? Is that the new version of that? It might be. Anyway, they're back, and they will be uploading games throughout the summer. So, if nothing else, you'll have a lot of games to play on your holiday. Also, Atari.

00:31:15That classic gaming behemoth? Maybe. Well, why not? The classic gaming company, anyway. They have bought 100 IPs of classic franchises. And they will be using those. Basically, that's what they said. They'll be back in the gaming space. They will update games, rework games, reimagine games. And now they have at least 100 more IPs they can do that with. And we are hoping that this is a good thing, but fearing it's a bad thing. Yeah, that would be so sad if they did something bad with this. Yeah, they have such a cool legacy, so please don't soil that. But we'll see. I think Bubsy was one of the franchises they had picked up. And also a lot of retro... plain franchises in like the f-16 franchise and stuff like that things like the 90s yeah 90s stuff we could say without having to define it at all but hopefully this will be pretty cool yeah we're hoping something that wasn't very cool actually it is kind of cool but it's not cool it's one of those things that has a little bit of everything in it but

00:32:40Star Wars Jedi Survivor is out. And my god, that game sucks so hard right now that a lot of people have argued that they should pull it from the market. Surprise, surprise. Yeah. It's so bad. And let's now go into a little bit of detail in why it's bad. Because story-wise, it's awesome. When it works as it's intended, it's awesome. But the technical problems with this game is just ridiculous. It is a lag fest that shouldn't be possible in 2023. And what's worse, it doesn't matter what kind of hardware you have because they have locked a lot of stuff and capped a lot of stuff. And there's a very good video breaking this down floating out there. And it was some spicy stuff. They actually went under the hood and looked into everything. And basically nothing you can tweak on your own will do any sort of difference in getting this game to run even close to good if you are unlucky. For some, it will just work. And for a lot of other people, most people, I would say, it will not work. Is this the new Cyber 2077? It might.

00:34:04I mean, yes and no. It depends on how hard it is or how fast they fix it. There is a workaround. I'm a little bit hesitant about mentioning this because for most people, you should never, ever do this. But you can go into the BIOS of your computer and change some stuff. And that can sort of uncap and make the computer use more cores to run the game. But you shouldn't really go into the BIOS of your computer. If you're not comfortable with what you can do in there, because that can basically just kill your entire computer. Don't do it, kids. Yeah, do not do this at all if you are not very well versed in how a computer works. How about instead start a festival called Lägefest? Yeah, something like that. In this case, I would argue that it's probably better to wait.

00:34:55than to try and do this i actually watched a streamer try this yesterday and he blue screened his computer yeah it didn't end well so um you know if you have especially if you have like a really really good computer it doesn't have anything to do with how good your computer is so don't break that it's usually very expensive there are ways to work around the problem but none of them are really good at the moment unless you're comfortable with it how bad or good is it on console do you know It's also bad on consoles. It's not as bad, but it's bad. And the lag is horrible. It's just horrible. So it's not like a workaround to do PS5 instead or something like that? Probably better. I think the most positive thing I've heard is it's workable, but it's not great. They somehow really dropped the ball on this one.

00:35:54To their defense, it's minute though, I saw someone who ran into a screen in-game that said, hello there, you have run into a fatal bug. You can continue, but the game will be severely broken. And that was one of the options. Like, yes, please. And the other option was, I do not want to do this. I will instead load an older save. And do things differently. They built that in? That was in the... Only the thing of having such a thing in a game, it's like, okay, something went really, really bad. So the thing is, the theory is... Is this game free? Well, it should be. It's not. It's really not. But I don't want to, you know, out my dudes, because this is fairly... standard fare in QA. That when you're testing games, the developers have these things built in, so the QA people can know that, yeah, you've now reached the point of no return to do this, this, and this. If you continue from this on, we haven't built stability into the game yet. So this is either something that is left from the development cycle that just got left in there, or because this was weirdly well made graphically.

00:37:20It had the styling and it had borders. It might be that one of the devs had so much conscience that they left it in the game because they knew that this wasn't good. Those are the two theories. I wonder if it is that tester from Cyberpunk that has effed up this game also. He struck again. It could be, but then again, this is almost... I mean, this is... This is bad. Let's get that straight. But it's bad in a good way because at least now you know that if you continue from this point, everything will just be bad. Yeah, I guess it's... It really said, like, most of the things will now be broken. Do you want to proceed? The only I hope for is that this streak of unfinished game really could start something like, for God's sake, complete your games before you release them.

00:38:13I mean, this just screams of not having enough time. I mean, and it's so weird because the first game was so good, Fallen Order, that they could have easily waited a half a year more. Yeah, people would have been okay waiting. And it's Star Wars. It's not like people will forget about that franchise in half a year. What is this kind of thing? So, Jedis, that's some sort of battle, right? Yeah. And this Jar Jar Binks, he was a nice fellow, wasn't he? Oh. One of the things, though. And even that didn't stop Star Wars from being. It didn't. They had enough time to make three more god-awful moves. Well, one of the things that is really good about this game, though, is the dialogue. It's really well written. But I don't know if you remember the little droids in the prequel movies.

00:39:11like the droid army, they are arguably the highlight of this game. Because they have a lot of internal dialogue, and they are adorable. You feel bad when you slice them to little bits seconds later. Because, yeah, I mean, if you hang back a little bit and just listen to them, they have a lot of things going on in their little lives. Some of them argued, for instance, which one of them was superior based on their serial number. Like, I am 10-25-43, so that means I should be superior to you because you're number 89. And then the other one countered with, no, but that's not how numbers work. We're counting backwards, which means that I am superior to you. And then they just looked at each other and went silent, and then you killed them all. So, you know, they had their moment.

00:40:07But there's a lot of that. So in one way, this game has had a lot of really great work put into it. And on the other hand, it's an absolute trash fire. I think we'll probably get back to this once or twice. As Oscar said, this might be the new one. The Cyberpunk of 2023. And we will have it on every episode from now on. But I would say for now, if you're not prepared for... A lot of bad times don't get this game just yet. Hang back a little bit. We have some more stuff. And Horizon Forbidden West. We've talked about this game that we kind of felt bad for it. Because it came out surrounded by other great titles. And Elden Ring was one of them. So it kind of, you know, it got really, really great reviews. And everyone thought this was a great game. But like two days later, everyone had forgotten about it. And it was just Elden Ring.

00:41:07But yeah, it has now had its first DLC. It's back. Burning Shores. It came out. It did. And it's good. It's even really good. Imagine if Elden Ring dropped the DLC right now. That would be... That would be cruel and unusual. But no, this time they got away with it. So Burning Shores, it's out. But it's got a little bit of, you know, people being weird and all. I can buy to some extent, and I will explain what that extent is in a little bit. But yes, so Aloy, the heroine of this franchise, ends up, if you, and this is also one of the things that, like, if you want it as a player, you can romance one of the DLC characters who also happened to be a woman. What? We got a little bit of, you know, woman versus woman kissing going on here. If you choose the heart. Exactly. So it's in Mass Effect style. You can pick it or you can just remain friends and there's nothing more to be said about that. Anyway, for a lot of people, this was a big no-no. Aloy is not a lesbian or a bisexual. I know this because I usually hang out with her on Tuesdays. So she said that. I know this. Oh wait, she's made up. My mistake.

00:42:30So I don't see the controversy about that in particular. The only thing I am slightly confused about is that for some reason I didn't think of Aloy as a person. I mean, is it spoiler-ish now? Because the first game has been out for quite some time. For reasons mentioned in that game, I always looked at Aloy as something not 100% human. More of a... No, more of a fan... Like... Okay, let's spoil this. Spoiler flags! So she's basically a clone from a long-since-dead scientist. And she was brought back by machines to be able to save humanity thousands of years later. So I never really looked at her as a human. And she... So for me, it was like, okay, so maybe she loves people. But I just never had that...

00:43:30thought crossed my mind. She was just there to save the world. She didn't have emotions. She didn't really care about anything. And she was very stoic as a person. So that kind of threw me a little bit. But after a couple of seconds, I was like, yeah, I still don't care. It's still a great couple of games. I couldn't care less. But I mean, people are going to hate stuff. And when it comes to like... I don't know why. But it's one... Sex and your sexuality will always be like hot topics in gaming. Yeah, but imagine if she was a guy. That would have been... Oh, my God. I don't think that... That gay fest, y'all. Sausage fest. We are used to those. Anyway. So, great game, great DLC. I still say, you know what? If you liked it, why not just get some more of it?

00:44:25And I think they also said they will be, yes, they did say in a very offhand way, like, yeah, this is the second game in the trilogy. So we know that there will be one more game in the franchise for sure, which is awesome. And talking about great numbers, though, we have Honkai Star Rail. And yeah, 20 million downloads in less than a week. How about that? Weird. Pretty solid. Unheard of. It's, you know, and yeah, I mean, I caved. Was it last year when I played another little game? Yes. No names mentioned. And it was well made and unfortunate. I shouldn't say unfortunate, but, you know, there's some controversies about this type of content and how it's presented and where it's made and all that. But you can't really argue about it not being well.

00:45:23put together. It's a solid product. Having said that, you perhaps still shouldn't go into that, but yes, everything looks great, works great, and obviously 20 million people bought the same thing and downloaded it. They made some ridiculous amounts of money. I think they made like a billion dollars every half year or something like that. Oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, and we're talking dollars, so you can buy a lot of hot dogs for that. Yes. Yeah. I will not, and this time I'm sticking to it, I will not be downloading Honkai Story. No. You say that now. Yes. No honks on my radar. That came out wrong. Something that didn't come out wrong is our last item on the list, Age of Wonders 4. It's out, and it's glorious. Yeah. Maybe not. I don't know.

00:46:20You and me, Oskar, actually talked to the devs of this franchise a couple of years ago when they were just done with Age of Wonders 3, which went sci-fi and slightly different. And I don't think that game sold very well. Nope. It was unnoticed, so to speak. Yeah. So they did what a lot of people do when something new doesn't sell. They go back to the old style. In this case, it seems to have worked because I haven't heard anyone who hasn't loved this game when they tried it. So it's the standard fare for a Paradox game. It's tactical. You have your overlay with maps, races, and then you should just go out there and conquer, I guess. But the thing is that you don't need 1,200 hours just to get into it. It's a little bit more fast-paced and a little bit easier.

00:47:18Well, I mean, it's easier in the sense that you don't have to, as you say, put as many hours into it. But the Age of Wonders franchise is pretty tough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So just clarifying what we mean by tough. But yes, the learning curve isn't as tough. Yeah, exactly. Not by a long shot. But it's a tough old franchise. I actually bought the first game and thought it was somewhat challenging, but I made it through. And then the second game came and I got... brutally murdered in the second mission about 10 times and then i said you know what i hate this game and then i played it for and then i played it for 50 more hours and i beat that game as well because damn it uh and i never played the third game will you play the new one then i think i might yeah i think i might at some point because i i i kind of liked how the third game looked but it was such a they went sci-fi in the third game you should say and

00:48:16Traditionally, this is a high fantasy with a twist sort of a franchise. You have your elves, you have your goblins, you have your dwarves and stuff like that. But the fourth game, it looks pretty fun. And there's a lot of skills and combinations that you can put out there. I'm not sure about the story because I haven't looked into it. Because if I do play it, I don't want to have it spoiled. But yeah, it looks... Like a lot of Paradox games, they're kind of well made. This is one of those weird ones because they own the studio that makes the games. So it's not an in-house Paradox game. Yep. It looks good anyhow. It does look good. And I hope that it does better than the third game. Because I think that game got a lot of flack for just being different. I don't think it was bad. It was just not.

00:49:14the standard Age of Wonders game. Yes, I think that kind of sums up our list for April 2023. If there's nothing else you want to add? Oh, one thing. It doesn't really have... Yeah, it does have. But the new Street Fighter movie. Oh, my God. Yeah, there are some rumors about who will be directing that ish. I will not spoil it here, but if you're interested, it's out there now. We will, of course, be going to the red carpet event I was about to say. We really won't. But we might actually see the movie at some point. I will. Is it better than the first? Hard to say unless you see the second. I will probably just to make it as good as possible, I will just before it watch the first two. Yeah, obviously. I mean, we will get down, we will look at that movie, and then we'll just go and look in the new one and say, you know what? Damn, it's fantastic. It's a damn fine franchise, this, or something along those lines. And with that, I push, I don't know, Bison over to Oscar's Corner to wrap this up. Yeah, small hadouken on that. Well...

00:50:40It's good to be back. We will, of course, try to continue our new streak and we will be back in a month with more of this. And then take care. Bye bye. Have a good one.