Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine 62 - Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus [S2E13]

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Hey, Aiden, if you were in Vice City, what would
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you do with a stolen car?
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Oh, boy. I would probably turn myself in to the police.
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Well, I would drive straight through your internet. Yeah. Oh, no.
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It was you who did that?
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Yeah. Sorry.
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Oh, Ty.
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You've got Fun Factor, two old gamers reviewing old video
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game magazine reviews. I'm Ty Shelter, he's Aidan Moher, and
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we're two professional creatives who grew up loving the video
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games and video game magazines of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.
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Every episode, we take a critical look back on the
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games media that, for better and for worse, inspired us
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to do what we do. First, go to funfactorpod.com and
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follow the show on your podcatcher of choice. leave us
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a rating or review on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever
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you get your media. We'll read the best, kindest, funniest,
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and most entertaining ones on the air in our letters section.
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Please consider becoming a member of Fun Factor Ultra, our
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premium tiers that unlock ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and the
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swanky members-only channels of our Discord. That's where you'll get
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the link to live streamed recording sessions like the one
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we're doing right now. Just go to funfactorpod.com and I
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promise you, you cannot miss the sign-up widget on our homepage. Then,
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help us spread the word. Shout us out on BlueSky
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at FunFactorPod.com and everywhere else at FunFactorPod. Aiden, we are
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currently being showered with the last of the proceeds of
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the lockdown era overinvestment in game dev, with a raft
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of studios releasing their last games and closing, no matter
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how well they do or don't over the last few months,
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and then what feels like the era-ending release of Grand
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Theft Auto 6, Nearly upon us. Meanwhile, games media has
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been a rolling bloodbath for the last few years, with
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independent and worker-owned ventures struggling just to get some eyeballs
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on some small fraction of the amazing and interesting games
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launching and dying out every single day. It feels like
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we are in a once-in-a-lifetime moment where more worthwhile games
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are coming out than anyone can possibly be aware of,
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let alone play. did you have, or could you even
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conceive of having a backlog in 2002 besides not just
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being able to buy all the games you wanted to play?
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Yeah, no, I mean, it was, I always say like,
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you know, as an adult right now, I have the
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money to play the games, all the games that I
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want to play more or less, but none of the
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time back then I had all the time, but none.
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Of the money.
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And so it always came down to money for sure.
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There was no backlog. It was like, I was milking
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Final Fantasy VIII for every ounce of game, right? I
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wanted that game to last forever. That being said, I'd plow,
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you know, 80 hours into an RPG in a few weeks,
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like no problem. Whereas now that would take me months
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and months and months. So yeah, no, it was definitely
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like just access to games that really limited at the time,
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at least what I kind of thought, you know, I
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felt like, I felt like I knew everything out there,
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but I think like in hindsight now, it's like there
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would have been more of a backlog if I had
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paid more attention to the Saturn or if I had
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been more into like PC gaming, um, at this time. Um, so,
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you know, like backlogs just didn't exist back then. Cause
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nobody had the volume access to the volume of games.
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I think mostly, um, it wasn't that necessarily games weren't there.
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It was just there. I was on the internet, but like,
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the bubbles were smaller then so like now i'm exposed
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to like so much stuff all the time right like
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in scheme in particular is like you're exposed to so
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much stuff but that's almost a problem for discoverability yes
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you know um but yeah no no backlog back in
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the day backlog was like how long can i make
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this game last but until my friend is done with
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what other other like what other other rpg was sort
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of like making the round so i needed to like
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you know make sure that final fantasy whatever eight lasted
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long enough that my friend could finish legend of dragoon
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so i could you know play it or whatever i
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was the one actually that owned legend of dragoon but
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as an.
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Example sure yeah yeah and that's i mean i think
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there's been discoverability problems in every era you know because
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like in the nes days both games and games media
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were still so like wild West and like regional even,
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you know, where like there were games that just didn't
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make it to various regions of the country or were
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plentiful in some regions and scant in others. Um, and
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then during the 16 and 32 bit days, you know,
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we constantly missed games that were not on the console
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that we owned. Like you said, uh, and, uh, A
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couple of episodes ago, we saw a preview for Sly
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Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. And I short-circuited, because I'm like,
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how did I miss this one? And I think the
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issue we're about to look at has some hints as
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to how it... flew past me. Um, but are there
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any games from this era or really any others that
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like should have been right up your alley, but you
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didn't even find out about them for like years afterwards? Yeah.
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I mean, I feel like I knew about most games, right?
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I was, I read so many magazines that anything that
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was sort of like coming forward, um, in the console space,
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I was pretty well aware of. And even in the
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PC space, Um, there were obviously like lots of Japanese
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games that I've sort of since discovered, but I didn't
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really have access to them before. Uh, or at that time,
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I think though, like really is like the way I
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perceived games or series at this time. I was so
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into RPGs that like, I think in this issue, burnout
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too is covered. Um, and burnout is a series that
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I kept hearing good things about at this time.
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Um, you know, and I liked racing games.
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But I just completely discounted it because it wasn't an RPG.
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And then the next generation comes along, Xbox 360, I
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get Burnout Paradise and I'm like, holy crap, this series
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is so good. Like, where has this been all my life?
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And it's like, oh yeah, I just ignored it the
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whole time. And so I think like the big difference
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with like media at this point being like the discoverability
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option outside of like Word of mouth is like, it
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kind of homogenized the message a little bit in probably
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a good way that like a small game sort of
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like was elevated to where the big games were just
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by virtue of being in the same magazine. Whereas nowadays,
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like you have small indie games, single dev indie games
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that are self-published trying to compete against like Gears of
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War E-Day or whatever. on storefronts or for like eyeballs
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on social media, like all the social media sites. If
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you really want to be able to like promote your
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game or your book or your whatever you have to pay,
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but the pay scales are all geared towards what Microsoft
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can afford. Whereas at least in here, I think there
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was a chance if you had something interesting that you
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could kind of get through, get your game through a
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little bit better back then, if that makes sense.
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Yeah. Yeah.
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Yeah.
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It's funny because I think part of rise of the corpos, right.
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Is like, we're having that consolidation. We're starting to see,
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we have these fewer platforms, there's fewer systems. And then
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the games coming out, you know, the bar, the minimum
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bar of quality is higher. It's like all double a
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and single a right now.
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Yeah.
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And more effort dev times are, you know, dev cycles
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are lengthening, you know, and, and then instead of having like, okay,
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the same studio is going to crank out a game
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every 11 months or whatever, right? It's going to be, oh,
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this will take a year and a half. This will
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take two. Some of these big franchises, obviously Elder Scrolls,
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we just covered Morrowind, where it's been a long time
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since Daggerfall, but we still can't even begin to comprehend
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how long it's going to be until Skyrim and then
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until whatever the next thing is, which we still can't
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comprehend how far that away, how far away that is, right?
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And here we go, same thing with Vice City. We're
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about to get Vice City, which is going to be,
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you know, the third... major GTA release in like two years.
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And then there's only going to be one more. I think,
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I think four is actually going to drop by the
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end of this season of our show. And then there
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won't be another one or there'll be one other one until,
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you know, six comes out. So pretty, I mean, there
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was five. That's what I'm saying. That five, five is
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the one other, right. So like four is going to drop.
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I guess. Yeah. And then, and then only, only five
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in between four, the end of the season we're about
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to cover, the end of this time period we're about
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to cover, and today, which is unbelievable.
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Yeah, find me Final Fantasy the same way, right? Like, what,
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Final Fantasy XII is out at this point?
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So, yeah. But so, it feels like, you know, we're
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getting towards that consolidation. There aren't that many games, right?
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We're about to see how many games, you know, and
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yet we have all these one console magazines now.
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Yeah.
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It's like, there's not that much to cover, you know,
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one console magazine for Nintendo or for Sega, you know,
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it's 16 bit or eight bit. Like you could do
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one console magazine. Don't have a lot to cover in
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this age. And yet this is what we've got for
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the most part. So this is kind of fascinating to me.
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And even still, even still there apparently are ways I
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could miss games that came out. And we're going to
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start to look at them in a moment. If you
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are not already a member of Fun Factor Ultra getting
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ad-free episodes, hang tight through the break. When we come back,
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we will crack open the cover and flip through official U.S.
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PlayStation Magazine 62 right here on Fun Factor. Welcome back
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to Fun Factor, where two old gamers review old video
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game magazine reviews. Of course, we want you to review us.
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Do we get a full 5.0 in Fun Factor? Leave
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us a review on Apple Podcasts. We will read the best, kindest, funniest,
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and most entertaining ones on the air. So far this season,
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we've caught up with some surviving old favorite publications. We've
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checked out all the new Xbox-only mags, and we've looked
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at what's happening on either side of both ponds with
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English and Aussie outlets. but it wouldn't be the rise
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of the corpos without the official U S PlayStation magazine
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launch of which we covered way back in season one. Yeah.
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It's a good magazine. I think like it's lumped in
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as one of those kind of Ziff Davis empire magazines.
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I think I, I always liked official PlayStation magazine. It
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wasn't as fun as PSM was. I think PSM was,
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were they.
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Still going by now? They were, they were, uh, they
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were more fun.
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OPM seemed a little more like, serious, like kind of
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trying to fill that, that niche, uh, that next gen niche. Um,
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but it's a, it's a pretty solid magazine. And like,
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looking back at this issue, like it's pretty dense. There's
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not like, there's honestly not a lot in here that
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like appealed to me at the time in terms of
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like game coverage. So it's probably an issue I would
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have flipped through at the, at the grocery store and
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then picked PSM or EGM or whatever instead. Uh, but
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the quality is there if you were into.
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Uh, um, quality.
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No.
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Yeah. PlayStation games.
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Right.
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And I think that's kind of, you know, one, one
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reason I wanted to make sure we checked in here
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before we rounded the corner into 2003, because in PlayStation land, um,
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you know, we've had this kind of lull. Xbox came out,
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you know, we had some big hitters immediately before our
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period started, you know, final fantasy 10, a bunch of
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that stuff.
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Okay, cool.
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Now we're in this kind of lull. Now we're rounding
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the corner towards vice city, uh, Chris, you know, holiday
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season 2002 and PS2 kind of striking back when, you know,
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Xbox and Halo have kind of owned much of this period.
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So here we've got official U.S. PlayStation magazine. Aiden, it'll
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be short, but do you want to paint us a
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word picture of what we're looking at here?
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Pink.
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Yes. Yes.
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Very pink. So you have like a nice, I mean,
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it's so the cover story is Grand Theft Auto and
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it has a Grand Theft Auto Vice City logo, which
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has its, you know, pink. and white um stylized subhead
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logo word mark and then it says in big bold
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uh white black outlined letters what the other guys didn't
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tell you and then the background is just that bubblegum
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pink um it's a pretty striking cover and during an
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era where you were often getting you know Key art,
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maybe art that was specifically centered, designed by the studio
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for the magazine, or you're getting a ton of screenshots,
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or you're getting.
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That kind of cluttered look.
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This is like super clean. And then it comes with
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a PS2 demo DVD inside as well, which was a
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big deal. So I probably did not flip through this
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one at the grocery store because it was probably bagged,
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but it's nice. It's a good looking magazine. And at
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the bottom, there's a black bar. That says 1,171 ratings
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and 16 pages of tips.
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Ooh.
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The tips is still wild. Like it's wild.
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Yeah.
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This time. Cause like, I was like full bore on
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the internet at this point. So like the idea of like,
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I never really cared about tips, but I really didn't
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care about tips at this point. Yeah. But yeah, nice, striking, simple,
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like clean design that stands out from what a lot
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of video game covers looked like at the time.
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Absolutely. And I mean, we just looked at hyper last
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week where you're going, okay, there's like, seven real world
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photos of like here's the rock here's a race car
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here's a turned off game boy advance here's you know
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like these things that it's like oh what are all
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these things what is this magazine what's inside i don't
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know this is like grand theft auto vice city the
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end gonna stand way out on the rack that's good
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and it is you know it's gonna do what it
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says on the tin right November 2002, issue 62, 225
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numbered pages, 24 games reviewed for two different systems, which
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kind of surprised me, PS2 and PS1, which they went
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ahead and stylized ONE, P-S-O-N-E.
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Well, that was like the little.
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The slimline.
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Yeah, the little cute one.
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Yeah. Andrew Blit says in the chat, it's the magazine
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rec equivalent of a clickbait YouTube thumbnail. Yes, exactly.
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You're like, cool.
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That.
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This is the thing.
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Do it. So if we go past ads, ads, ads, ads, ads.
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Okay, great.
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Original editor-in-chief Wataru Maruyama, who was acquihired by Ziff Davis
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as part of turning PSX into the official U.S. PlayStation
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magazine back in 95, is long gone. Replaced by many
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familiar ZD faces, we've got editor-in-chief John Davison, reviews editor
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Joe Ribicki, contributors, we have Shane Bettenhausen and Greg Seward.
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And yeah, we've got a bunch of familiar names. Amazingly,
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Simon Cox appears only as the creative director of ZD
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Game Group and not in any other specific role in
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this mag at a time when he seemed to be
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somehow editor of like 82 different magazines. There are some
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wild other names in the contributor section, which we'll get
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to in a second, and we will get to Davison's
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letter from the editor. But before that, Aiden, are you
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familiar with Car Talk? No. Okay.
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That does not sound like something I would have spent.
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00:16:00.549 --> 00:16:04.009
Okay, so it was an American public radio show featuring
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two brothers, Tom and Ray Magliazzi, who owned a garage,
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like a car repair place, and also hosted a radio
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call-in show where people would call and say, my car
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is doing this. And they would kind of riff. They
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had a really great, easy chemistry. They're absolute radio legends,
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literally National Radio Hall of Famers here in the U.S.,
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and many people might know them best from Pixar's Cars.
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As the Rusties guys. They're like the old guys that
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Lightning McQueen has to put up with them being his sponsor.
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So they closed every show of theirs with a bit
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where they rattled off a bunch of credits to staffers
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who don't exist. And had pun-based names based on their
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alleged jobs. My favorite was always, our Russian chauffeur, pick
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up and drop off. So, I wanted to note here,
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we have gossip columnist Clish McClaver, which, according to my Googling,
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Clish McClaver is basically in the Scots language, meaning gossip.
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00:17:13.769 --> 00:17:18.769
Ah, okay. Okay. So that's a joke in exactly this style.
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That's some primary source research right there.
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00:17:21.109 --> 00:17:23.559
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, and that's what... I don't
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know if this is an intentional car talk riff. They
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would have been on the air for a decade plus,
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nationally syndicated for many years already at this point. So
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I don't know if it's that or they're just doing
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the same joke, but it cracked me up. But then, Aiden, okay, so...
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There are some wild names here, but before.
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We even talk about- I know where you're going, but
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did you notice Penny Arcade in the credits? Yes, I did.
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For illustration design?
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So we have a four-person art team. Senior Director Bob Conlon,
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Art Director Jason Babler, Graphic Designer Tina Huynh, and illustration,
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just Penny Arcade. Okay. I actually, in my first flip
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through and jumping around to the different places I wanted
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to touch, no Penny Arcade art, like Gabe art, caught
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my eye. So maybe on my second flip through, our
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flip through here together live, we will see where that is.
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00:18:18.059 --> 00:18:21.359
But so we have this cool section about our contributors. Now,
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these are freelance contributors, right? Andrew in chat goes, watch
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it be by a woman coincidentally named Penny Arcade. Or
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maybe that's another joke. Maybe they did not get a
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contribution from Gabe. What's his face? From Penny Arcade. But anyway.
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About our contributors. So they have this inset photo thing.
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00:18:41.829 --> 00:18:44.789
These are freelancers. These are not like we normally get
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this for the permanent staffers, right? We don't normally get
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this for freelance contributors. And I think we're going to
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see why here. Let's go. We got Zoe Flower. She writes,
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plays video games, makes TV shows, and is rumored to
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have been one of the original Beatles. She produces rock videos,
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designs websites. And we'll kick your ass at DDR. That's
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what she tells us anyway. www.zoeflower.com And zoeflower.com does not exist.
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So I was bummed. I started to look her up though.
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And she actually does. She's done a lot of stuff.
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She also has a bit of an SEO problem. Because
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there's a woman who's made her YouTube channel. I am
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Zoe Flowers. So it brings that up a lot. But
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00:19:31.279 --> 00:19:34.109
she did, in fact, she got an industry thanks to
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credit in Guitar Hero 2, worked on SOCOM US Navy Seals,
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has credits in a bunch of the Lego games as
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a designer and writer, and then was design director in
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2002 for a game called Video Horror Society. So like VHS,
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it's like really.
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you.
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Know, riffing on that. And that is for a studio
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00:19:54.079 --> 00:19:57.799
called hell bent games, which I think made some of
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the Lego Ninjago games. Um, hell bent games, I believe
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is up in your neck of the woods in Vancouver. Um,
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But like many extremely online public facing people, Zoe appears
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to have grown tired of everything. And most of her
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social media and stuff went dark in 2022, 2023 with
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Hellbent's last major release that she's credited on. So I
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00:20:25.130 --> 00:20:28.910
don't know what she's doing now, but it's not being online.
375
00:20:29.880 --> 00:20:32.339
Jealous. Yeah.
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00:20:32.480 --> 00:20:35.519
Then we have Karen Jones when she's not busy with
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her main gig at the New York Times. Karen has
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been taking time out to hook us up with the
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Hollywood Connection. This month, she explores the staggering vitality of
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00:20:42.690 --> 00:20:47.839
James Bond and how Bond games have helped. How Bond
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00:20:47.859 --> 00:20:51.200
games have helped what? I don't know. I feel like
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00:20:51.240 --> 00:20:53.160
there's something missing in there.
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00:20:53.180 --> 00:20:57.039
The staggering vitality of James Bond. So James Bond's vitality
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00:20:57.119 --> 00:21:00.180
is buoyed by his games. Right.
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00:21:00.480 --> 00:21:04.980
So Karen actually does have a ton of New York
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00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:06.049
Times clips.
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00:21:06.609 --> 00:21:06.700
Oh.
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00:21:07.220 --> 00:21:12.259
Which she has, as an old person, collated in this
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00:21:12.339 --> 00:21:18.200
extremely helpful PDF of links that don't click. So, you know,
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00:21:18.279 --> 00:21:21.400
but you can see she's a big time freelance writer,
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00:21:21.460 --> 00:21:24.440
has freelanced a million places, often at the New York Times,
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00:21:24.519 --> 00:21:29.549
but also other places, continues to be doing this freelance
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00:21:29.589 --> 00:21:35.690
self-employed for 29 years and 10 months. So again, pretty cool.
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00:21:36.650 --> 00:21:40.009
And then we have Paul Semmel, who Paul spends his
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00:21:40.029 --> 00:21:43.410
days writing for such publications as Maxim, Vibe, Blender, Revolver,
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00:21:43.529 --> 00:21:45.910
Total Movie, and Tongue, and his nights writing for us,
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00:21:45.950 --> 00:21:48.210
focusing on musicians and other celebrities. He's got more LA
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00:21:48.250 --> 00:21:51.690
style than all the rest of us put together. Paul
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00:21:51.990 --> 00:21:56.619
has never stopped covering basically all this same stuff for
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00:21:57.099 --> 00:22:01.500
a lot of premium outlets. He also has his own website, paulsemmel.com,
401
00:22:01.680 --> 00:22:04.980
and it looks like he's just interviewing authors and reviewing
402
00:22:05.019 --> 00:22:09.410
video games. for himself on his own website. Um, plus
403
00:22:09.670 --> 00:22:11.829
all of his other clips and links. Um, I had
404
00:22:11.869 --> 00:22:14.859
his muck rack up here. Um, but yeah, so Paul
405
00:22:14.880 --> 00:22:18.089
Semel being a video game writer, that's cool. Being a,
406
00:22:18.079 --> 00:22:23.519
you know, just general content, a cultural commentator, cultural reviewer. Cool.
407
00:22:24.460 --> 00:22:29.420
And then, Hey, here's this guy, John Scalzi. Yeah.
408
00:22:29.859 --> 00:22:30.539
John Scalzi.
409
00:22:30.740 --> 00:22:33.539
John Scalzi. John Scalzi.
410
00:22:34.089 --> 00:22:34.390
Yeah.
411
00:22:34.650 --> 00:22:36.869
A guy with even more Hugo Awards than you.
412
00:22:37.990 --> 00:22:38.869
Several more, yeah.
413
00:22:38.930 --> 00:22:42.079
Several more, but only several. I think he's got three more.
414
00:22:42.099 --> 00:22:45.140
I think he's got four. He keeps telling us he
415
00:22:45.180 --> 00:22:47.220
lives to serve, and that's exactly what he does this month.
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00:22:47.640 --> 00:22:50.440
busting out his usual selection of CD and DVD reviews,
417
00:22:50.579 --> 00:22:54.660
along with his bi-monthly Watchdog column. You can find even
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00:22:54.700 --> 00:22:58.869
more of what he's doing at www.skalzy.com. Go now. And,
419
00:22:59.460 --> 00:23:02.910
as of course we know, Skalzy.com works just fine, and
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00:23:02.970 --> 00:23:04.829
he is in fact keeping that up to date, as
421
00:23:04.910 --> 00:23:08.309
he has been continuously blogging and writing at his own
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00:23:08.329 --> 00:23:09.250
website this entire time.
423
00:23:10.029 --> 00:23:14.230
Yeah. I mean, that was his whole thing. He's always
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00:23:14.279 --> 00:23:17.490
been writing there, and I like that. He was getting
425
00:23:17.529 --> 00:23:22.730
a plug for it way back, what, 24 years ago? Yeah.
426
00:23:22.789 --> 00:23:26.170
Pretty impressive stuff and pretty wild to see John pop
427
00:23:26.250 --> 00:23:26.930
up here.
428
00:23:26.950 --> 00:23:29.410
The jump scare was unbelievable.
429
00:23:29.950 --> 00:23:32.950
I knew he was friends with Joe Rybicki. I've seen
430
00:23:32.990 --> 00:23:35.819
them riffing on Blue Sky, right? So I knew they
431
00:23:35.900 --> 00:23:40.960
knew each other. And obviously, John is best known for
432
00:23:40.980 --> 00:23:46.140
his blog and his books and his Hugo Awards. He
433
00:23:46.160 --> 00:23:49.700
won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. I think
434
00:23:49.720 --> 00:23:52.369
that was his first one. Yeah. And he's since won
435
00:23:52.460 --> 00:23:52.970
some others.
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00:23:52.990 --> 00:23:56.710
Best Novel. Best Series, I believe, most recently.
437
00:23:57.710 --> 00:24:00.670
And not somebody I expected to see pop up as
438
00:24:00.690 --> 00:24:04.089
a freelancer like this. Pretty funny. Especially because he doesn't
439
00:24:04.109 --> 00:24:07.230
really cover video games. Right. But I think what that's
440
00:24:07.289 --> 00:24:10.130
showing us, too, is the way that these video game
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00:24:10.170 --> 00:24:16.619
magazines are trying to consolidate into, like, culture magazines. They're
442
00:24:16.700 --> 00:24:21.500
trying to cover movies and CDs and everything else between.
443
00:24:22.980 --> 00:24:28.829
Karen Jones was writing about Hollywood and movies. John's reviewing CDs, DVDs, music,
444
00:24:29.470 --> 00:24:32.289
TV shows, movies, not just video games.
445
00:24:32.950 --> 00:24:36.049
And they're trying to highlight this by putting, hey, we
446
00:24:36.089 --> 00:24:38.380
are bringing in writers who are not video game writers.
447
00:24:38.420 --> 00:24:42.220
We're not just bullpen staffers. These are big deal people who...
448
00:24:42.660 --> 00:24:45.359
get paid to write at other big deal outlets, that
449
00:24:45.380 --> 00:24:47.700
makes us a big deal outlet if you're writing about
450
00:24:47.740 --> 00:24:49.839
all this other culture stuff. Like, to be clear, and, like,
451
00:24:49.880 --> 00:24:51.440
with all due respect to John, but he wasn't a
452
00:24:51.460 --> 00:24:52.980
big deal at this point, right? No.
453
00:24:53.029 --> 00:24:55.450
Like, this was, like, he was, you know, a freelancer
454
00:24:55.769 --> 00:24:57.890
just like any other freelancer at this point. Like, he
455
00:24:57.930 --> 00:25:01.150
hadn't really made a name for himself outside of that yet.
456
00:25:01.990 --> 00:25:03.569
I don't think he was that far off when did
457
00:25:03.609 --> 00:25:05.890
Old Man's War come out. But, um.
458
00:25:06.190 --> 00:25:10.099
Yeah, I want to say, like, 06? But I also, like, we.
459
00:25:10.750 --> 00:25:13.230
also like talk a lot about how, like, you know,
460
00:25:13.250 --> 00:25:16.950
this was a time when games media could be a
461
00:25:17.009 --> 00:25:22.170
launching point for careers, not, uh, whatever it is now,
462
00:25:22.910 --> 00:25:26.740
like it's not, which is not a launching point, uh,
463
00:25:27.579 --> 00:25:31.140
for careers. Um, he won the John W. Campbell award,
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00:25:31.180 --> 00:25:34.140
which is now the astounding award, uh, in 2005. Uh,
465
00:25:34.180 --> 00:25:35.700
so it was a few years after this that he
466
00:25:35.740 --> 00:25:37.819
sort of like started to really make a name for
467
00:25:37.839 --> 00:25:40.319
himself as a, as a writer, as an author. Um,
468
00:25:40.359 --> 00:25:43.059
but yeah, like, you know, you could launch a career
469
00:25:43.160 --> 00:25:46.940
out of, out of games media. Um, and now it's
470
00:25:46.980 --> 00:25:49.579
like the dregs of people trying to scrape by to
471
00:25:50.259 --> 00:25:53.180
get paid for the work they've done. Uh, it's changed
472
00:25:53.259 --> 00:25:58.480
a lot, but yeah, if we treated cultural criticism with
473
00:25:58.619 --> 00:25:59.210
respect again.
474
00:26:00.589 --> 00:26:03.470
It would be nice. Wouldn't it? Um, and can you
475
00:26:03.529 --> 00:26:07.130
read just the first paragraph here of John Davison's letter
476
00:26:07.150 --> 00:26:07.630
from the editor?
477
00:26:08.589 --> 00:26:11.309
So in his letter from the editor called What the
478
00:26:11.349 --> 00:26:14.410
Other Guys Didn't Tell You, John Davison says, quote, Grand
479
00:26:14.430 --> 00:26:18.130
Theft Auto 3 changed video games forever. There's absolutely no
480
00:26:18.190 --> 00:26:21.799
doubt about it. It's now sold 7 million copies worldwide,
481
00:26:22.140 --> 00:26:25.039
and it seems that no one saw this coming. No one,
482
00:26:25.140 --> 00:26:27.759
that is, apart from OPM, the only magazine in the
483
00:26:27.819 --> 00:26:29.900
US that put the game on the cover and made
484
00:26:29.920 --> 00:26:33.559
a really big deal about Rockstar's While everyone else was
485
00:26:33.619 --> 00:26:36.599
running basically the same Devil May Cry preview over and over,
486
00:26:36.980 --> 00:26:39.799
we landed the story of the year. I'm not normally
487
00:26:39.920 --> 00:26:42.519
one to toot our own horn quite so vigorously, but
488
00:26:42.539 --> 00:26:43.880
I'm particularly proud of that.
489
00:26:45.029 --> 00:26:53.509
Okay. You're the editor-in-chief of official US PlayStation magazine. Like, okay.
490
00:26:54.630 --> 00:26:57.930
You called it to an extent, but also to the
491
00:26:57.970 --> 00:27:02.630
editorial director of ZD game group, like the entire group. Yeah.
492
00:27:02.690 --> 00:27:06.940
Yeah. So like the cover here is like what the
493
00:27:06.980 --> 00:27:09.640
other guys did. And even the, the title that the
494
00:27:09.720 --> 00:27:12.660
head of this letter from the editor is what the
495
00:27:12.680 --> 00:27:14.500
other guys didn't tell you. The reason the other guys
496
00:27:14.519 --> 00:27:17.819
didn't tell you that is because you have exclusive access
497
00:27:17.839 --> 00:27:20.380
to at least some amount of pre-release info.
498
00:27:20.460 --> 00:27:20.700
Right.
499
00:27:21.880 --> 00:27:26.500
And yeah, I'm not going to say that Grand Theft
500
00:27:26.619 --> 00:27:30.460
Auto three success was due to Sony pushing it more
501
00:27:30.680 --> 00:27:31.920
than Devil May Cry.
502
00:27:32.640 --> 00:27:32.859
Right.
503
00:27:32.900 --> 00:27:34.700
Like, I don't I don't know enough about I don't
504
00:27:34.720 --> 00:27:37.940
know what the publicity budgets were. I don't know. I
505
00:27:37.960 --> 00:27:42.069
don't know. But we know that basically from the beginning,
506
00:27:42.730 --> 00:27:46.619
Games Magazine covers were kind of a. delicate dance between
507
00:27:47.279 --> 00:27:50.640
what did the editorial team want to feature and what
508
00:27:50.759 --> 00:27:54.380
did companies or, you know, advertisers want them to feature? What,
509
00:27:54.440 --> 00:27:56.759
you know, do they need to trade a cover for
510
00:27:56.819 --> 00:28:00.200
an interview? That kind of stuff, right? So the idea
511
00:28:00.220 --> 00:28:02.500
that we knew this was going to be the big
512
00:28:02.539 --> 00:28:05.529
smash hit, so we put it on the cover. Okay,
513
00:28:05.549 --> 00:28:09.430
but like, also, you're the official US PlayStation magazine. You
514
00:28:09.490 --> 00:28:12.819
have Sony's ear. Like, Sony... This was launched by Sony
515
00:28:12.859 --> 00:28:15.549
going in halfsies with Zeph Davis to buy an independent
516
00:28:15.589 --> 00:28:19.009
magazine and fund this. So, like, to an extent, Sony
517
00:28:19.049 --> 00:28:20.690
knows what's going to be a hit because that's what
518
00:28:20.710 --> 00:28:21.890
they're going to push, right?
519
00:28:23.650 --> 00:28:25.400
Sure. And then the flip side of that is, like,
520
00:28:25.480 --> 00:28:28.440
how many blastos have we seen on the cover of magazines?
521
00:28:28.460 --> 00:28:32.029
There will only ever be one. One true blasto. There's
522
00:28:32.089 --> 00:28:35.769
only one true blasto. There's games that get attention that
523
00:28:35.890 --> 00:28:36.609
don't bear it out.
524
00:28:36.990 --> 00:28:39.269
And then six months later they go, okay, maybe we
525
00:28:39.289 --> 00:28:42.299
missed the mark on that cover. But, you know, you
526
00:28:42.319 --> 00:28:44.140
see the review and it's a three and a half
527
00:28:44.200 --> 00:28:47.119
out of five or whatever. And they're like, yeah, okay,
528
00:28:47.140 --> 00:28:49.200
we featured this on the cover and said it was
529
00:28:49.220 --> 00:28:52.420
going to be like the Mario killer and it's not.
530
00:28:52.980 --> 00:28:55.829
And so like, I don't know. Yeah.
531
00:28:56.890 --> 00:28:58.509
It's just kind of funny to me to call you
532
00:28:58.549 --> 00:28:58.910
a shot.
533
00:28:59.670 --> 00:29:04.730
I think John's you know being you get excited right
534
00:29:04.759 --> 00:29:07.619
when you can draw those correlation lines between something you
535
00:29:07.640 --> 00:29:10.440
did and success but at the same time you need
536
00:29:10.460 --> 00:29:15.380
to recognize that like if every cover has the potential
537
00:29:15.700 --> 00:29:17.960
to be you have 12 shots out of the year
538
00:29:18.759 --> 00:29:22.019
right right and if every you know if you say
539
00:29:22.079 --> 00:29:23.819
everything's gonna be the next big thing because it's on
540
00:29:23.859 --> 00:29:26.579
your cover then eventually you're gonna get it right right
541
00:29:26.599 --> 00:29:28.660
even if you get it wrong six other times.
542
00:29:29.150 --> 00:29:32.500
Yeah, yeah. And maybe there was some internal stuff, whatever.
543
00:29:32.539 --> 00:29:35.579
But hey, enough masthead. I think it's time for the
544
00:29:35.660 --> 00:29:45.859
flip through. Okay. So Aiden, we've got the table of
545
00:29:45.900 --> 00:29:49.880
contents here and you know, it's, it's pretty straightforward. Got
546
00:29:49.900 --> 00:29:53.329
a couple of screenshots, lots of white space, lots of
547
00:29:53.450 --> 00:29:57.230
clear sans serif text here. The thing, you know, here
548
00:29:57.250 --> 00:29:59.579
are the page numbers. Here's the thing. Here's the list
549
00:29:59.599 --> 00:30:03.660
of reviews, here's the page number. It's kind of a
550
00:30:03.819 --> 00:30:06.279
zag from what every other magazine is doing right now,
551
00:30:06.319 --> 00:30:10.430
where it's a bazillion pictures and numbers all over the place.
552
00:30:10.450 --> 00:30:12.990
This is actually pretty clearly delineated, I think.
553
00:30:13.269 --> 00:30:18.630
Yeah, and it uses a column-style layout, which I think
554
00:30:19.089 --> 00:30:22.069
makes it easy to digest. You can read it left
555
00:30:22.089 --> 00:30:25.140
to right fairly easily. Easily, and then they have big
556
00:30:25.180 --> 00:30:28.740
call-outs for the big stories. Dragon Ball Z, Grand Theft Auto,
557
00:30:29.000 --> 00:30:36.589
Vice City. It's pretty dense. Typography-wise, it's pretty tight. The kerning,
558
00:30:36.670 --> 00:30:39.589
the letting, and stuff like that. Maybe it reads better
559
00:30:40.069 --> 00:30:41.829
in a magazine, but I almost feel like they could
560
00:30:41.849 --> 00:30:43.049
have let the....
561
00:30:45.730 --> 00:30:47.309
Let it breathe a little bit more.
562
00:30:47.349 --> 00:30:51.049
Especially like in the previews, the reviews, uh, the demo
563
00:30:51.069 --> 00:30:54.670
desk stuff. Like that's pretty small. Maybe I'm just old. Maybe,
564
00:30:54.809 --> 00:30:57.269
maybe when I was, whatever.
565
00:30:57.309 --> 00:30:58.890
It's a little bit small, but I'm also doing a
566
00:30:58.910 --> 00:31:00.130
two page spread right now.
567
00:31:00.210 --> 00:31:02.349
Yeah. You know what? That's, that's fair. That's fair.
568
00:31:02.569 --> 00:31:06.390
I am too. It is definitely small. Like it is
569
00:31:06.519 --> 00:31:09.980
like even printed, you'd kind of want to squint a
570
00:31:09.980 --> 00:31:12.490
little bit to get it here. Like, disc problem? Did
571
00:31:12.509 --> 00:31:14.210
you buy a copy? This is tiny.
572
00:31:14.230 --> 00:31:20.490
This was almost unintelligible, even at full-size print, whatever. That's
573
00:31:20.529 --> 00:31:25.109
like when you see a medication advertisement for, like, whatever,
574
00:31:25.289 --> 00:31:28.750
and it's the least of side effects at, like, 700
575
00:31:28.750 --> 00:31:30.339
words per minute, and you're like, whoa.
576
00:31:31.490 --> 00:31:34.240
Right, and then we have Thiefy. Here's your chance to
577
00:31:34.259 --> 00:31:36.299
play the incredible Sly Cooper for yourself and a list
578
00:31:36.380 --> 00:31:39.640
of all the stuff you get on the demo disc.
579
00:31:40.710 --> 00:31:44.160
Sly Cooper, Red Faction 2, Hitman 2, Silent Assassin, MX Superfly,
580
00:31:44.259 --> 00:31:48.619
and Dr. Muto, the very weird game I also don't
581
00:31:48.680 --> 00:31:52.160
remember that is heavily advertised across all the magazines at
582
00:31:52.240 --> 00:31:59.640
this time with a very confusing fake magazine layout advertorial thing.
583
00:32:00.160 --> 00:32:03.400
One thing I think is really illustrative of this time
584
00:32:03.549 --> 00:32:07.269
in games and the corporate environment that we're getting into
585
00:32:07.329 --> 00:32:11.430
is they're really trying to push games... With like broad appeal, right?
586
00:32:11.470 --> 00:32:16.009
More mass market casual appeal. Yeah. And like, so like
587
00:32:16.190 --> 00:32:21.660
you have stuff like character platformers, right? Mascot platformers.
588
00:32:22.740 --> 00:32:23.140
On the disc.
589
00:32:23.160 --> 00:32:27.039
But like, if you look, there's a little sidebar underneath
590
00:32:27.079 --> 00:32:30.250
the PlayStation Underground logo. Like there's a playable demo of
591
00:32:30.309 --> 00:32:33.509
Wild Arms 3 on that demo disc, which is the
592
00:32:33.549 --> 00:32:35.069
only game I would have been interested in.
593
00:32:35.849 --> 00:32:36.910
Right, right. Out of that list.
594
00:32:37.759 --> 00:32:39.819
But, you know, we're at a point where these, like,
595
00:32:40.700 --> 00:32:47.680
RPGs and fairly popular, like, Sony-exclusive series aren't even really being, like,
596
00:32:47.740 --> 00:32:51.460
highlighted in the magazine as, like, you know, a selling feature,
597
00:32:51.960 --> 00:32:52.880
which I think is interesting.
598
00:32:53.609 --> 00:32:56.809
Speaking of selling things, there's a place that sells stuff
599
00:32:57.069 --> 00:32:59.569
that's partnering with us. We're super excited if you use
600
00:32:59.690 --> 00:33:03.019
our code FOOSDAY, like us. Fun Factor Foo's Day. If
601
00:33:03.039 --> 00:33:05.200
you see on our social media, it's Tuesday, but with
602
00:33:05.220 --> 00:33:09.309
an F. Foo's Day, you get 15% off at Old Glory.
603
00:33:09.430 --> 00:33:14.230
Old Glory is apparel, and they've got all kinds of shirts, hoodies,
604
00:33:14.309 --> 00:33:18.930
everything for over 300,000 items for music, sports, entertainment, pop culture.
605
00:33:18.950 --> 00:33:24.650
They have a video game section, and they've got 413
606
00:33:24.650 --> 00:33:27.730
items right now just in their video game section. And
607
00:33:27.759 --> 00:33:31.680
they've got officially licensed stuff, you know, Minecraft, Nintendo. uh
608
00:33:31.839 --> 00:33:33.960
like all kinds of stuff like this i think they
609
00:33:33.980 --> 00:33:37.079
have a cthulhu section that had like 92 things so
610
00:33:37.099 --> 00:33:40.119
if you want like a cthulhu ugly christmas sweater like
611
00:33:40.160 --> 00:33:42.700
they've got you right and then of course there's also
612
00:33:42.720 --> 00:33:46.569
a bunch of sports stuff there's cool throwback tees and
613
00:33:46.829 --> 00:33:50.170
shirts here we go uh you know classically trade the
614
00:33:50.190 --> 00:33:52.670
nintendo i've got zelda stuff all this kind of stuff
615
00:33:52.690 --> 00:33:57.430
so again oldglory.com we've got holidays coming up use our
616
00:33:57.490 --> 00:34:01.390
promo code foosday get 15 off and that helps us
617
00:34:01.450 --> 00:34:05.509
out a little too just go to oldglory.com and uh
618
00:34:05.549 --> 00:34:07.890
yeah this is our first time doing this kind of
619
00:34:07.930 --> 00:34:09.690
thing and i'm i'm pretty excited about it.
620
00:34:10.530 --> 00:34:12.449
Pretty excited i know what i'm gonna do after this
621
00:34:12.510 --> 00:34:16.329
episode go to oldglory.com.
622
00:34:16.360 --> 00:34:21.059
Buy a cthulhu ugly sweater foosday yes i want to
623
00:34:21.079 --> 00:34:25.739
flip ahead to the letters section here and we've got
624
00:34:25.980 --> 00:34:29.710
this one letter of the month And I was really
625
00:34:29.849 --> 00:34:33.849
struck by this because it's very long. Normally, these are
626
00:34:33.929 --> 00:34:37.150
edited down pretty tightly. This one is very, very long.
627
00:34:38.150 --> 00:34:41.650
And I kind of skimmed it. I recently bought SOCOM
628
00:34:41.769 --> 00:34:45.670
US Navy SEALs along with the network data. I was like, okay, okay, okay.
629
00:34:45.690 --> 00:34:48.289
I was kind of waiting for it to get to
630
00:34:48.329 --> 00:34:52.010
the fit. When I play Quake 3 Arena Online, I'm
631
00:34:52.030 --> 00:34:55.469
a camper. The really annoying guy who hides up. Being
632
00:34:55.510 --> 00:34:56.849
a camper is look down.
633
00:34:56.889 --> 00:34:57.309
Okay.
634
00:34:58.039 --> 00:35:00.559
And basically this guy just goes on for like 400
635
00:35:00.559 --> 00:35:05.139
words about how, oh, but in SOCOM, he's a sniper,
636
00:35:05.639 --> 00:35:10.639
not a camper. So that's a moral, there's positive moral
637
00:35:10.679 --> 00:35:13.860
valence on this. Right. I don't know. I did put
638
00:35:13.949 --> 00:35:18.809
in the script his final paragraph, which if you want
639
00:35:18.849 --> 00:35:20.829
to read that, I would deeply appreciate it.
640
00:35:21.610 --> 00:35:26.800
Sure, so, uh, J.P. Reaper Vaughn says, quote, To finish up,
641
00:35:27.079 --> 00:35:30.239
just let me say, I'm a sniper, not a camper,
642
00:35:30.519 --> 00:35:33.400
and I've got your head lined up on my scope.
643
00:35:33.940 --> 00:35:36.800
So the next time your character drops down, dead, and
644
00:35:36.820 --> 00:35:40.510
there isn't another player anywhere in sight, check the messaging
645
00:35:40.570 --> 00:35:42.969
at the top of your screen, and you'll know that
646
00:35:43.670 --> 00:35:47.230
Reaper is on the opposing team, and I'm going to
647
00:35:47.269 --> 00:35:51.170
continue to take you out round after round.
648
00:35:52.389 --> 00:35:58.389
J.P. Reaper Vaughn, VaughnJP at Hotmail.com, just published right there
649
00:35:58.409 --> 00:36:01.489
along with everything else. This is just delightful to me
650
00:36:01.530 --> 00:36:04.800
because it's like, oh, yeah, well, like, I was the
651
00:36:04.880 --> 00:36:08.519
annoying guy that everybody hates, just like camping. But now
652
00:36:08.619 --> 00:36:13.820
camping is good in SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs. Then it's
653
00:36:13.920 --> 00:36:18.039
sniping associated with high skill instead of low skill, even
654
00:36:18.059 --> 00:36:19.320
though I'm doing the same thing.
655
00:36:19.340 --> 00:36:24.630
Amazing. incredible stuff uh and that one letter of the
656
00:36:24.670 --> 00:36:28.650
month yes i do like that here they have uh
657
00:36:28.869 --> 00:36:31.130
opm has on the sidebar they think you have what
658
00:36:31.150 --> 00:36:32.889
it takes to write the letter of the month send
659
00:36:32.929 --> 00:36:35.570
us your video game expositions and you could win a
660
00:36:36.010 --> 00:36:39.869
logitech cordless controller for your playstation 2 neat huh i
661
00:36:39.929 --> 00:36:42.090
love how they just had one of these crappy boomerang
662
00:36:42.210 --> 00:36:44.940
controllers like oh my god and they're like Hey, we
663
00:36:45.019 --> 00:36:46.159
might give this to you.
664
00:36:47.179 --> 00:36:48.010
Try. You'll see.
665
00:36:48.030 --> 00:36:48.110
Yeah.
666
00:36:48.119 --> 00:36:51.869
Not that everybody has one that they hate. You could
667
00:36:51.889 --> 00:36:54.090
win a Logitech cordless.
668
00:36:54.269 --> 00:36:55.849
Like, what do you mean I could win?
669
00:36:55.909 --> 00:36:56.610
Is it a draw?
670
00:36:58.269 --> 00:37:00.639
You don't give one out every month? Yeah.
671
00:37:00.820 --> 00:37:05.739
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. So what's interesting here for the
672
00:37:05.780 --> 00:37:08.579
letters section also is. it seems like they're really trying
673
00:37:08.599 --> 00:37:11.420
to like feature a fight even more than most letter sections.
674
00:37:11.480 --> 00:37:14.480
So they've got super quick. Ask us anything and we'll
675
00:37:14.500 --> 00:37:17.769
do our best to answer. Ian King's most wanted. We just,
676
00:37:18.489 --> 00:37:21.550
we just have, this is just here. It's just, I
677
00:37:21.570 --> 00:37:24.110
don't know. Ian King. I don't know why his most wanted,
678
00:37:24.530 --> 00:37:27.650
you know, like this, this, this, this is news. Actually
679
00:37:27.730 --> 00:37:29.469
ask us anything. We'll do it. They're like appear to
680
00:37:29.510 --> 00:37:32.110
be breaking news in the letter section as response to
681
00:37:32.159 --> 00:37:35.230
Q and a question of the moment. we asked you
682
00:37:35.250 --> 00:37:37.329
to tell us if that whole eighties thing in GTA
683
00:37:37.349 --> 00:37:39.050
vice city is a good idea. And here's our, but
684
00:37:39.449 --> 00:37:42.250
you know, beauty versus beast, you be the joy. Like
685
00:37:42.269 --> 00:37:43.110
there's all this.
686
00:37:42.989 --> 00:37:45.710
Weird, I think they're like trying to make something out
687
00:37:45.730 --> 00:37:49.010
of it. Leaning into the idea of like, not just
688
00:37:49.070 --> 00:37:55.010
personality driven games, media, but also just like community. Right.
689
00:37:55.190 --> 00:37:58.210
So that like you have people in the mail and
690
00:37:58.230 --> 00:38:01.889
like letter mail has always been part of, video game magazines,
691
00:38:01.949 --> 00:38:03.949
but in this way, it's almost, it almost reads like
692
00:38:03.989 --> 00:38:06.309
a forum where like you see interaction.
693
00:38:06.369 --> 00:38:08.750
They want to like create that.
694
00:38:08.769 --> 00:38:13.130
Feeling of interaction between the staff and the readers. And
695
00:38:13.170 --> 00:38:15.829
it's a community. And of course, like Ziff Davis would
696
00:38:15.869 --> 00:38:19.250
sort of pioneer this with oneup.com in a few years
697
00:38:19.289 --> 00:38:22.989
in the oneup.com forums and blogs and stuff like that,
698
00:38:23.050 --> 00:38:26.989
where like on oneup.com, like readers could have their own blogs. Uh,
699
00:38:27.030 --> 00:38:29.429
and a lot of like games writers broke into games
700
00:38:29.469 --> 00:38:32.349
media by writing blogs on one up.com. And I think
701
00:38:32.369 --> 00:38:36.369
that's probably what you're starting to see, like forged, uh,
702
00:38:36.489 --> 00:38:38.590
in this style of, of letter section.
703
00:38:38.989 --> 00:38:40.980
One thing I like about this is that they're kind of,
704
00:38:41.309 --> 00:38:44.130
you know, they're fostering that engagement in very specific ways,
705
00:38:44.429 --> 00:38:48.090
but they're also kind of auguring. They're setting up stuff
706
00:38:48.110 --> 00:38:50.449
ahead of time. So last month we asked you to
707
00:38:50.489 --> 00:38:53.800
tell us if the whole eighties thing in GTA vice city. Okay, cool.
708
00:38:54.199 --> 00:38:56.099
Next month, tell us what you want to see out
709
00:38:56.119 --> 00:39:00.190
of your online PS2 experience. Mark your notes, online futures.
710
00:39:00.510 --> 00:39:01.610
Put that in the summary, right?
711
00:39:02.030 --> 00:39:02.250
Okay.
712
00:39:02.369 --> 00:39:04.250
And then after we go through, and again, I like
713
00:39:04.269 --> 00:39:08.250
that they're congregating the ads together, right? So yeah, you're
714
00:39:08.289 --> 00:39:12.090
getting like three double page, double page, double page ads,
715
00:39:12.659 --> 00:39:14.980
but then you're getting some solid content in between as
716
00:39:15.019 --> 00:39:16.800
opposed to some other magazines that are now that are
717
00:39:16.820 --> 00:39:19.159
doing like one page of editorial, three pages of ads,
718
00:39:19.260 --> 00:39:21.900
one pages of it, you know? And then here we are.
719
00:39:22.980 --> 00:39:26.239
What is the deal with PlayStation 2's online future? Right.
720
00:39:26.320 --> 00:39:29.269
So they're kind of seeding the ground for this discussion
721
00:39:29.309 --> 00:39:33.739
while they're all struggling. breaking news and analyzing what's happening
722
00:39:33.900 --> 00:39:38.599
in real time. So they're talking about the... Okay, cool.
723
00:39:38.699 --> 00:39:43.820
On August 27th, here's the network adapter. SOCOM US Navy SEALs.
724
00:39:43.860 --> 00:39:48.329
Then 2003. Approximately 250,000 network adapters released onto the market.
725
00:39:48.510 --> 00:39:48.690
Right?
726
00:39:48.730 --> 00:39:51.889
And they're going... going for 400,000. They're talking about the
727
00:39:51.929 --> 00:39:54.690
early experience and, you know, server uptime and all that
728
00:39:54.750 --> 00:39:58.530
kind of stuff. And, um, it's, it's interesting because over
729
00:39:58.570 --> 00:40:04.730
in Xbox land, like Xbox live is, is coming. Um, and, uh,
730
00:40:04.849 --> 00:40:08.010
Sony is like, I think it's really, I didn't even
731
00:40:08.050 --> 00:40:13.679
think about they could scale their online service to not
732
00:40:13.719 --> 00:40:16.480
the number of consoles they're going to sell, which they
733
00:40:16.500 --> 00:40:16.940
don't know.
734
00:40:16.960 --> 00:40:17.059
Right.
735
00:40:18.219 --> 00:40:20.739
But the number of network adapters they released.
736
00:40:21.119 --> 00:40:21.360
Yeah.
737
00:40:22.179 --> 00:40:24.559
They're not going to have any more users, the network
738
00:40:24.619 --> 00:40:28.449
adapters they sell, right? Yeah. Yeah. Kind of caps.
739
00:40:28.510 --> 00:40:32.329
That's interesting. So in that sidebar, they went obviously to
740
00:40:32.369 --> 00:40:34.250
like a launch lineup. Yes.
741
00:40:34.329 --> 00:40:34.889
Which I like.
742
00:40:34.969 --> 00:40:36.929
I like the in-person reporting that.
743
00:40:36.889 --> 00:40:37.530
Used to happen.
744
00:40:37.590 --> 00:40:39.829
Like you'd go to an event like this. Yes. But
745
00:40:40.150 --> 00:40:42.329
I like Stephen Krause, one of the people they asked, like,
746
00:40:42.389 --> 00:40:45.429
what are you most looking forward to playing online? Stephen
747
00:40:45.449 --> 00:40:48.750
Krause says, believe it or not, but frequency too. Like,
748
00:40:48.809 --> 00:40:51.139
I was just like, yeah, man, my, my tasting game sucks.
749
00:40:51.239 --> 00:40:55.380
I'm sorry. But there he is making the like YouTube
750
00:40:55.480 --> 00:41:01.039
thumbnail face, uh, on the, uh, the bottom of those three, uh, photographs.
751
00:41:01.179 --> 00:41:03.630
Can't wait to get out Tony Hawk three and then
752
00:41:03.690 --> 00:41:05.389
later with Tony Hawk four.
753
00:41:05.750 --> 00:41:07.150
Yeah.
754
00:41:07.449 --> 00:41:08.750
All right. Ferris Denning.
755
00:41:09.730 --> 00:41:13.789
Uh, notably no, like these are all like console-y games, right?
756
00:41:13.929 --> 00:41:16.559
Like people want to play Twisted Metal and Tony Hawk
757
00:41:16.719 --> 00:41:21.449
and Frequency 2. Whereas nobody's talking about the EverQuest beta,
758
00:41:21.469 --> 00:41:27.010
nobody's talking about Final Fantasy XI, which you had to
759
00:41:27.090 --> 00:41:29.369
buy to get the network adapter, right? Yeah.
760
00:41:29.389 --> 00:41:30.849
Or could you get it on its own at this point?
761
00:41:31.010 --> 00:41:35.519
I think this is what they're saying is they launched
762
00:41:35.539 --> 00:41:37.460
the network adapter separately on August 27th.
763
00:41:37.460 --> 00:41:38.500
Yeah, okay. So this is the first time you can
764
00:41:38.519 --> 00:41:38.920
just go buy it.
765
00:41:38.920 --> 00:41:40.199
So this is the first time you can get the
766
00:41:40.219 --> 00:41:42.119
network adapter without Final Fantasy XI.
767
00:41:42.139 --> 00:41:44.420
Yeah. I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
768
00:41:44.900 --> 00:41:50.079
So, okay. And then here's Zoe's world. Zoe Flower. She gets... Okay,
769
00:41:50.159 --> 00:41:53.420
illustration by Carrie Rust. This is not... And I knew
770
00:41:53.440 --> 00:41:55.440
from the art style it wasn't a game from Penny Arcade,
771
00:41:55.460 --> 00:41:58.260
but right? So being Canadian... So I think Zoe is
772
00:41:58.300 --> 00:42:01.639
just Canadian. I think Zoe Flower is just from Vancouver.
773
00:42:01.659 --> 00:42:06.650
Just Canadian. Yeah. It's not that she moved to Vancouver
774
00:42:06.869 --> 00:42:10.130
to join a studio. It's that she was always Canadian, right?
775
00:42:10.170 --> 00:42:12.110
That's where she's from. Oh, yeah.
776
00:42:12.150 --> 00:42:14.030
She was on Electric Playground, it looks like.
777
00:42:15.250 --> 00:42:16.309
Ah, okay. Which is like.
778
00:42:16.829 --> 00:42:19.889
Maybe, at least when I look her up. Oh yeah, okay, yeah,
779
00:42:19.909 --> 00:42:23.489
she was a host, or was on Electric Playground, which
780
00:42:23.550 --> 00:42:31.840
is like a legendary Canadian video game TV show. From
781
00:42:31.909 --> 00:42:36.639
Victor Lucas, Tommy Tallarico, oof, was on it as well,
782
00:42:36.679 --> 00:42:41.679
but it looks like Zoe Flowers was host for around
783
00:42:41.679 --> 00:42:46.199
13 episodes between 1999 and 2000. Okay, cool. And it's
784
00:42:46.420 --> 00:42:47.179
filmed in Vancouver.
785
00:42:48.219 --> 00:42:50.920
Well, there you go. Yeah, and again, she was really
786
00:42:50.960 --> 00:42:52.780
on the cutting edge of a lot of stuff here,
787
00:42:52.940 --> 00:42:56.840
doing web shows and having her own website and being
788
00:42:56.900 --> 00:43:00.300
involved in game design and also game media and also
789
00:43:00.340 --> 00:43:03.139
game commentary. And she ended up being a design director
790
00:43:03.239 --> 00:43:08.059
for Hellbent Studios in Vancouver. But again, it's very interesting
791
00:43:08.079 --> 00:43:10.019
to me whenever we see somebody who is like a
792
00:43:10.079 --> 00:43:13.260
pioneer of like, yeah, I'm putting myself online. I'm making my...
793
00:43:13.820 --> 00:43:21.119
government name, my brand, I'm going everywhere. And now it's like, yeah, uh,
794
00:43:21.139 --> 00:43:24.219
it's 2022, 2023.
795
00:43:24.219 --> 00:43:24.679
Nope. Doubt.
796
00:43:24.989 --> 00:43:28.849
And you can't find her online anywhere now, you know? Yeah. Well,
797
00:43:28.909 --> 00:43:29.510
and it's interesting.
798
00:43:29.530 --> 00:43:33.489
Cause like she's in this issue alongside Scalzi who did
799
00:43:33.530 --> 00:43:36.489
the same thing, right? They both have their website in
800
00:43:36.510 --> 00:43:37.139
their bio.
801
00:43:37.639 --> 00:43:37.880
Yes.
802
00:43:37.920 --> 00:43:42.489
Scalzi, like, you know, That's his thing. And it was
803
00:43:42.550 --> 00:43:44.610
a thing around this time to try to make that
804
00:43:45.170 --> 00:43:51.480
all-encompassing persona your brand. But it's hard to maintain. Not
805
00:43:51.519 --> 00:43:54.260
everyone can be as sculzy as I well know.
806
00:43:55.400 --> 00:43:59.699
Right, right. We also have, again, trying to tie into things,
807
00:43:59.780 --> 00:44:04.019
November calendar. This is mostly celebrity birthdays.
808
00:44:05.039 --> 00:44:05.739
Yeah.
809
00:44:05.800 --> 00:44:10.360
Rebecca Romaine Stamos is 30. The multi-talented Ethan married to
810
00:44:10.500 --> 00:44:15.280
Uma Thurman Hawk is 32. Jack Osborne, Ozzy Osbourne's son
811
00:44:15.300 --> 00:44:17.440
is 17. The same day Eminem's new flick 8 Mile
812
00:44:17.519 --> 00:44:22.340
comes out. Leo DiCaprio is 28. Calista dating Han Solo.
813
00:44:22.400 --> 00:44:26.260
Flockhart is 38. Demi come back. You know, it's just
814
00:44:26.300 --> 00:44:29.760
like all of these. Then there's a few like release
815
00:44:29.840 --> 00:44:32.500
dates for video games mixed with Harry Potter 2 out
816
00:44:32.539 --> 00:44:36.019
in theaters. Also, fuck J.K. Rowling. keith sutherland's new movie
817
00:44:36.059 --> 00:44:38.199
phone booth gets completely over so i'm just sitting here
818
00:44:38.219 --> 00:44:42.360
looking at like what why why are they thinking that
819
00:44:42.380 --> 00:44:47.940
i a official playstation magazine uh buyer in november 2002
820
00:44:47.940 --> 00:44:52.119
needs to know that quote the insane anna nicole smith
821
00:44:52.159 --> 00:44:55.110
celebrates her 35th birthday by getting her ass stuck under
822
00:44:55.170 --> 00:44:57.590
something john stewart is 37 on november 28th a thursday
823
00:44:57.610 --> 00:45:06.809
i'd like i okay All right. That is weird to me.
824
00:45:06.840 --> 00:45:12.260
Well, and like in, and I mean, especially in a
825
00:45:12.300 --> 00:45:14.880
magazine that's like a single console magazine that's supposed to
826
00:45:14.900 --> 00:45:15.860
be focused, right?
827
00:45:16.099 --> 00:45:16.280
Yeah.
828
00:45:16.320 --> 00:45:20.460
But you have Sony is a multimedia company, right? Like
829
00:45:20.500 --> 00:45:24.659
Sony was making movies. Sony was a huge record label.
830
00:45:24.719 --> 00:45:28.300
Sony was making TV shows. So of course they wanted
831
00:45:28.340 --> 00:45:32.920
to associate PlayStation with all of those other things they
832
00:45:32.960 --> 00:45:36.090
were doing. Um, and they want it, you know, presumably
833
00:45:36.130 --> 00:45:39.820
PlayStation to be put on that pedestal alongside film and
834
00:45:39.840 --> 00:45:42.039
movies and TV. And as like all the same thing,
835
00:45:42.079 --> 00:45:45.440
because Sony themselves were making all of that now, like
836
00:45:45.559 --> 00:45:48.280
calling it an official PlayStation magazine and half the magazine
837
00:45:48.300 --> 00:45:50.619
being about not video game stuff is kind of.
838
00:45:52.199 --> 00:45:52.659
Weird.
839
00:45:52.880 --> 00:45:54.780
So like, maybe it would have been better off. Like
840
00:45:54.800 --> 00:46:01.289
if this was just like, uh, a culture magazine, you know,
841
00:46:01.329 --> 00:46:06.530
like maybe it would have come across better. Differently. But yeah. Strange.
842
00:46:07.369 --> 00:46:09.849
We've got a feature here. Quickly breaking the band. And
843
00:46:09.869 --> 00:46:14.889
I promise this isn't because Andrew Bluett's in chat. But
844
00:46:14.929 --> 00:46:17.809
it caught my eye. Because Ben Burnley. The singer guitarist
845
00:46:17.849 --> 00:46:20.329
of the hit new band Breaking Benjamin. Tells us about
846
00:46:20.349 --> 00:46:23.690
how his group's music wound up in interplays. Run like hell.
847
00:46:24.429 --> 00:46:26.929
And of course their music would also end up in
848
00:46:26.969 --> 00:46:30.349
Halo 2. Check out his giant Halo 2 retrospective. Which
849
00:46:30.389 --> 00:46:35.659
just dropped. Also I'm in that one. Reprising my role
850
00:46:35.940 --> 00:46:41.489
as Bungie's Rob McLeese, which I have been avoiding looking
851
00:46:41.530 --> 00:46:44.510
up video or recordings about how he actually sounds, because
852
00:46:44.530 --> 00:46:47.690
then I'm going to want to do an impression. And
853
00:46:47.730 --> 00:46:50.530
then that's going to be bad. They wrote Blow Me
854
00:46:50.570 --> 00:46:57.159
Away specifically for Halo 2, says Andrew. I actually, I
855
00:46:57.199 --> 00:47:01.019
was looking up right now which record label they were
856
00:47:01.159 --> 00:47:04.340
signed to. Oh, BMG actually.
857
00:47:04.539 --> 00:47:04.780
Okay.
858
00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:06.780
Because as you were saying this, I'm like, wait a minute,
859
00:47:06.800 --> 00:47:08.539
how much you want to bet? This is a Sony band.
860
00:47:09.039 --> 00:47:11.500
Yeah. Um, that's actually kind of surprising.
861
00:47:11.860 --> 00:47:17.260
Yeah. I'm genuinely surprised. It's not Sony. Um, but yeah,
862
00:47:17.320 --> 00:47:22.280
so again, we've got animatrix, which listen, fair enough. Reviewing
863
00:47:22.320 --> 00:47:26.050
the animatrix in a video game magazine is like when
864
00:47:26.610 --> 00:47:30.289
the magic, the gather, you know, a wizard, the, um,
865
00:47:30.949 --> 00:47:32.230
Or no, wait, Wizard is the sport.
866
00:47:32.289 --> 00:47:32.869
Yeah, when.
867
00:47:32.889 --> 00:47:34.650
The comics one. Gatherer?
868
00:47:34.969 --> 00:47:36.710
Scry? Scry.
869
00:47:37.269 --> 00:47:38.949
What's the one that reviewed Final Fantasy VII?
870
00:47:39.829 --> 00:47:40.469
Was it Scry?
871
00:47:40.489 --> 00:47:41.969
I can't remember which one it was. It was one
872
00:47:41.989 --> 00:47:44.179
of the magic... It was like the main Magic the
873
00:47:44.219 --> 00:47:47.400
Gathering magazine reviewed Final Fantasy VII, even though they never
874
00:47:47.460 --> 00:47:49.619
reviewed video games as far as we could tell before
875
00:47:49.719 --> 00:47:53.880
or after. Yeah, everybody was watching the Animatrix at this point,
876
00:47:53.940 --> 00:47:55.940
if you liked any kind of nerd stuff. Doesn't surprise
877
00:47:55.980 --> 00:47:57.969
me that it gets a shout out here.
878
00:47:57.989 --> 00:47:58.130
Um....
879
00:48:00.230 --> 00:48:04.650
And so we've got this is more preview stuff, preview
880
00:48:04.670 --> 00:48:07.849
of this Superman game and more of a comic style
881
00:48:07.949 --> 00:48:10.010
as we're seeing and about to see with Sly Cooper.
882
00:48:10.030 --> 00:48:14.670
The cell shading thing is really taking off. This ability
883
00:48:14.710 --> 00:48:17.239
to make stuff look like comic books or make things
884
00:48:17.320 --> 00:48:22.530
look like cartoons is a whole new avenue for 3D.
885
00:48:22.820 --> 00:48:26.300
The Duelist. Thank you. Oh, my God.
886
00:48:26.380 --> 00:48:26.639
OK.
887
00:48:27.920 --> 00:48:31.869
Appreciate you, Andrew. Yeah. So like we've got a lot
888
00:48:31.889 --> 00:48:34.130
of comic book games coming out and we've got a
889
00:48:34.150 --> 00:48:36.550
lot of cel-shaded games coming out. And so therefore we've
890
00:48:36.590 --> 00:48:39.010
got a lot of cel-shaded comic book games coming out.
891
00:48:39.750 --> 00:48:44.219
And yeah. Oh, here's an interview with Mark Hamill. Oh,
892
00:48:44.940 --> 00:48:51.019
so like that rocks. And he's he's as Wolverine. Mark
893
00:48:51.039 --> 00:48:56.170
Hamill's Wolverine is interesting. Wolverine is the ultimate badass who's
894
00:48:56.250 --> 00:48:58.929
on the side of good. Maybe that's what the new
895
00:48:58.969 --> 00:49:01.929
Wolverine game was missing. Mark Hamill.
896
00:49:04.280 --> 00:49:05.360
Speaking of Canada.
897
00:49:07.239 --> 00:49:08.599
Oh, what?
898
00:49:09.760 --> 00:49:11.559
Some of the levels are like, you can drive on
899
00:49:11.579 --> 00:49:14.849
the Sea to Sky Highway, which is right by where
900
00:49:14.889 --> 00:49:18.010
I live at school. Well, across the Strait of Georgia,
901
00:49:18.070 --> 00:49:20.000
where the sailors see, but you know.
902
00:49:20.239 --> 00:49:25.940
Okay, okay. Yeah, and so here is our Karen Jones,
903
00:49:26.019 --> 00:49:31.139
freelance writer with expertise in Hollywood interactive convergence. Again, Karen
904
00:49:31.239 --> 00:49:34.090
has a major SEO problem as well, because I was
905
00:49:34.130 --> 00:49:37.610
going down a rat hole. The number of like white
906
00:49:38.130 --> 00:49:41.269
gen x or boomer women named karen jones who are
907
00:49:41.809 --> 00:49:46.000
kind of famous for something is many uh many of
908
00:49:46.019 --> 00:49:47.800
them are also right there's like a romance writer named
909
00:49:47.820 --> 00:49:50.039
karen jones there's about you know it was it was
910
00:49:50.079 --> 00:49:52.179
very tough to pin down what was her and what
911
00:49:52.239 --> 00:49:56.280
wasn't there's also a uh january 6th named kevin karen
912
00:49:56.300 --> 00:50:00.349
jones that i had to double check it wasn't her
913
00:50:00.409 --> 00:50:04.610
i think it wasn't her I hope it wasn't her. Hopefully. Yeah.
914
00:50:04.849 --> 00:50:07.769
And so just just talking about James Bond, just sort
915
00:50:07.889 --> 00:50:12.179
of generally Nightfire is the first video game to include
916
00:50:12.219 --> 00:50:15.760
the cyber scan facial features of Pierce Brosnan. So kind
917
00:50:15.780 --> 00:50:20.559
of talking about the convergence. Right. You know, quite a
918
00:50:20.579 --> 00:50:24.219
few years after the whole Silwood thing. Now we're coming
919
00:50:24.280 --> 00:50:28.320
back to, hey, look, faces can look like people. right
920
00:50:28.380 --> 00:50:30.179
here we've got right next to each other you have
921
00:50:30.199 --> 00:50:33.159
to cast uh uh how would you cast fighting games
922
00:50:33.219 --> 00:50:38.570
right with movie actors right sean williams scott is incredibly
923
00:50:38.630 --> 00:50:44.750
funny uh boy uh yeah so you can see that
924
00:50:44.989 --> 00:50:47.710
okay now we can have recognizable faces so maybe they
925
00:50:47.730 --> 00:50:49.929
should look like actors or actors should look like them
926
00:50:50.539 --> 00:50:51.099
and again.
927
00:50:50.960 --> 00:50:55.530
I spoilers no they should not No, they should not.
928
00:50:55.650 --> 00:50:58.190
Especially at this era, right? Okay, here we go. Yes,
929
00:50:58.250 --> 00:51:00.159
we do get a Penny Arcade strip.
930
00:51:00.320 --> 00:51:02.380
There we go. Okay.
931
00:51:02.420 --> 00:51:08.199
This is also a pretty, like, defining transitional era for
932
00:51:08.239 --> 00:51:11.340
Penny Arcade's art. You know, where it's like the big
933
00:51:11.420 --> 00:51:17.159
thick lines here. It's looking like kind of Cartoon Network-y, right?
934
00:51:17.219 --> 00:51:20.889
Everything's a little bit more spiky and jagged, but also
935
00:51:20.969 --> 00:51:24.510
has a little bit of that cartoonist touch. curve it. Again,
936
00:51:24.530 --> 00:51:29.469
it looks like contemporary Cartoon Network stuff, right? Do you
937
00:51:29.489 --> 00:51:30.710
want to read, Aiden, here?
938
00:51:30.730 --> 00:51:35.269
Okay, so the first panel has Tycho?
939
00:51:35.570 --> 00:51:36.469
I don't know their names.
940
00:51:36.849 --> 00:51:38.250
I didn't read a lot of any of their names.
941
00:51:38.269 --> 00:51:38.829
This is Gabe.
942
00:51:38.849 --> 00:51:40.050
This is Gabe.
943
00:51:40.550 --> 00:51:42.710
Mike Krahulik. But Gabe.
944
00:51:42.730 --> 00:51:45.570
Yeah, sitting on the couch playing a game, looking at
945
00:51:46.030 --> 00:51:49.070
a tube TV and saying, what's that again?
946
00:51:49.110 --> 00:51:50.349
You want me to do what?
947
00:51:51.550 --> 00:51:53.860
I know you want me to bite something, but You
948
00:51:53.969 --> 00:51:56.480
cut out there at the end. I'm merely trying to
949
00:51:56.539 --> 00:51:59.579
avoid confusion. I don't want to bite the wrong thing, advertently.
950
00:52:01.199 --> 00:52:11.239
Oh, your ass. Yeah, the online console gaming experience right here,
951
00:52:11.360 --> 00:52:17.719
in a nutshell. I understand why everybody was so excited
952
00:52:17.760 --> 00:52:19.840
about this. I was so excited about this, too. But
953
00:52:22.150 --> 00:52:27.130
Console online gaming was so... The last thing I wanted
954
00:52:27.170 --> 00:52:33.090
was voice chat in online gaming. I played NFL 2K1
955
00:52:33.260 --> 00:52:38.039
on Dreamcast over modem. And the number of times... If
956
00:52:38.119 --> 00:52:40.920
I'd been able to talk to people, I would have
957
00:52:41.179 --> 00:52:48.039
said the most horrible shit. Because there were some people who...
958
00:52:46.780 --> 00:52:48.840
I want to come through the phone line and.
959
00:52:48.820 --> 00:52:50.480
Beat your ass. Because.
960
00:52:50.980 --> 00:52:55.030
You are being such a jerk right now. Speaking of
961
00:52:55.050 --> 00:52:59.429
being a jerk right now, Kat, who's messing with me?
962
00:52:59.889 --> 00:53:02.690
We've just seen that extrapolated to, like, the nth degree
963
00:53:02.769 --> 00:53:07.610
across an entire, like, political and societal level with the
964
00:53:07.630 --> 00:53:10.780
internet where people just, like, they feel like they can
965
00:53:10.840 --> 00:53:13.940
say anything because you can't reach across and punch them.
966
00:53:14.679 --> 00:53:17.869
And I think that that's such a, like, a thing
967
00:53:17.889 --> 00:53:20.010
that we have to reckon with. And you're seeing that
968
00:53:20.070 --> 00:53:22.409
here 25 years ago with like voice chat. And the
969
00:53:22.429 --> 00:53:26.130
first time, like you could play games and like sort
970
00:53:26.170 --> 00:53:29.179
of an intense emotional situation with somebody you don't know
971
00:53:29.199 --> 00:53:32.659
who will say whatever they want to you without consequence.
972
00:53:33.079 --> 00:53:36.800
Yeah. And it sucks. A lot of people are not cool.
973
00:53:38.800 --> 00:53:41.150
Five questions with the SOCOM development team. I'm not going
974
00:53:41.170 --> 00:53:45.329
to get into that other than, I did not remember
975
00:53:45.409 --> 00:53:48.969
SOCOM having this big of a cultural footprint, but every
976
00:53:49.030 --> 00:53:52.050
page is about SOCOM. There's some sort of SOCOM reference
977
00:53:52.090 --> 00:53:56.590
so far in literally every section. However, I did... Nothing
978
00:53:56.630 --> 00:53:59.550
could stop me from noticing the Nyko Airflow Controller!
979
00:53:59.570 --> 00:54:03.409
The best controller ever created.
980
00:54:03.429 --> 00:54:07.889
I love this thing. I weep that we did not
981
00:54:07.929 --> 00:54:12.909
get more of these, but it has. It's a PS2
982
00:54:13.239 --> 00:54:18.710
DualShock with fans in it and holes and it would
983
00:54:18.730 --> 00:54:22.170
just constantly be blowing nice little breeze on your sweaty
984
00:54:22.190 --> 00:54:27.239
palms all the time it was outstanding the only problem
985
00:54:27.280 --> 00:54:31.019
with these is that in order to do the rumble
986
00:54:31.039 --> 00:54:35.019
it would divert the power from the fans to the
987
00:54:35.079 --> 00:54:40.679
rumble so also like every time it rumbled the fans.
988
00:54:40.179 --> 00:54:43.820
Would spin back up isn't it And it would just
989
00:54:44.019 --> 00:54:46.500
chew through battery. Well, it was.
990
00:54:47.219 --> 00:54:50.119
This was wired, at least. At least the initial ones were.
991
00:54:51.119 --> 00:54:55.519
I don't know about wireless. But yeah, so it would
992
00:54:55.559 --> 00:54:58.449
be like... You'd be going like, cool. Then you'd be like,
993
00:54:58.469 --> 00:55:03.610
take a hit. And then you'd hear.
994
00:55:04.690 --> 00:55:07.829
Because it was just like switching between rumble and then
995
00:55:07.849 --> 00:55:09.170
turning the fans back on.
996
00:55:09.269 --> 00:55:11.329
I have to say, Ty, I have never.
997
00:55:13.530 --> 00:55:16.869
Felt mistaken in my belief to just stick with, like,
998
00:55:17.130 --> 00:55:18.030
official controllers.
999
00:55:19.070 --> 00:55:19.530
Yeah.
1000
00:55:19.690 --> 00:55:21.969
Can you scroll back up to that page, though? Because
1001
00:55:21.989 --> 00:55:24.989
you do have the watchdog, the blue sidebar column there.
1002
00:55:25.070 --> 00:55:27.869
Oh, yes. John Scalzi. The Scalzi column. Yes, yes, yes.
1003
00:55:27.889 --> 00:55:31.730
Column. I don't know if he really nailed it with
1004
00:55:31.769 --> 00:55:36.119
the title of this column, though. Jerk the Jerks. Mmm.
1005
00:55:37.340 --> 00:55:39.739
Mmm. A friend of mine was describing one of the
1006
00:55:39.760 --> 00:55:42.590
more interesting strategies being practiced. People being jerks on mine, but... Yeah,
1007
00:55:42.690 --> 00:55:44.889
by some of the folks who were playing SOCOM online. Again,
1008
00:55:45.389 --> 00:55:49.010
oh my god. I get that it was basically the
1009
00:55:49.050 --> 00:55:53.630
first shooter you could play for PlayStation online, but good gravy. Yeah,
1010
00:55:53.650 --> 00:55:55.909
welcome PlayStation fans to the dark side of online gaming.
1011
00:55:56.329 --> 00:55:58.269
This sort of behavior is something PC gamers have known
1012
00:55:58.309 --> 00:56:02.510
about for years. Right, so again, this is them finding out, hey,
1013
00:56:02.550 --> 00:56:05.929
what happens when you put consoles online? You have an
1014
00:56:06.730 --> 00:56:11.849
even worse baseline level of behavior on the internet because...
1015
00:56:12.320 --> 00:56:15.579
people who you know didn't you know there's there's a
1016
00:56:15.619 --> 00:56:19.880
class thing happening here right where like who had pcs
1017
00:56:20.059 --> 00:56:24.820
and internet access right generally it was people who were
1018
00:56:25.300 --> 00:56:27.860
middle class and above generally it was people who had
1019
00:56:27.880 --> 00:56:30.920
uh you know higher levels of education or especially you
1020
00:56:30.940 --> 00:56:33.860
know a tech nerd type person in the house somebody
1021
00:56:33.880 --> 00:56:38.099
whose parents needed the computer for work or just were
1022
00:56:38.119 --> 00:56:41.340
really into computers way ahead of the curve. And while
1023
00:56:41.760 --> 00:56:45.429
sometimes those people had their own weird anti-social hang-ups, often
1024
00:56:45.610 --> 00:56:48.150
some of those people had their own weird anti-social hang-ups.
1025
00:56:48.769 --> 00:56:57.739
You didn't get the bite-my-ass guy as frequently with PC gaming,
1026
00:56:57.780 --> 00:56:58.110
I think.
1027
00:56:59.039 --> 00:57:03.659
Probably, I would expect it runs a little older as well. Right.
1028
00:57:03.679 --> 00:57:06.739
Yeah, exactly. Fewer kids and like the kids that are
1029
00:57:07.300 --> 00:57:08.840
on it are probably not playing. You know, if you're
1030
00:57:08.860 --> 00:57:13.139
an adult or teen or whatever online and you're playing
1031
00:57:13.519 --> 00:57:17.440
PC games in the late 90s, early 2000s, you know.
1032
00:57:18.579 --> 00:57:21.159
You're not getting as many just random kids as, hey,
1033
00:57:21.199 --> 00:57:23.079
we plugged in the PlayStation to the Internet. Now the
1034
00:57:23.099 --> 00:57:25.440
PlayStation has Internet. There's gonna be way more kids and
1035
00:57:25.460 --> 00:57:28.719
way more randos who don't know how to act. John
1036
00:57:28.760 --> 00:57:31.699
Scalzi always behaves politely online. You can see for yourself
1037
00:57:31.739 --> 00:57:34.159
when you comment about this column on the OPM message
1038
00:57:34.219 --> 00:57:37.469
boards or drop them a line at johnscalzi.com. He's all
1039
00:57:37.550 --> 00:57:43.650
about responding to your comments. And yeah, John Scalzi never
1040
00:57:43.670 --> 00:57:47.570
stopped being all about responding to your comments, even more
1041
00:57:47.630 --> 00:57:50.559
so once he got social media in. And Bluette says
1042
00:57:50.599 --> 00:57:53.079
in the chat, yeah, it's weird. I know exactly zero
1043
00:57:53.159 --> 00:57:56.059
people who ever played SOCOM. Yeah. It was apparently a
1044
00:57:56.079 --> 00:57:59.039
major touch point for the console and online multiplayer. What?
1045
00:57:59.539 --> 00:58:02.280
And I think I'm right there with.
1046
00:58:02.159 --> 00:58:05.360
Him because I'm just like, I don't honestly like it was,
1047
00:58:05.860 --> 00:58:09.050
but I think we're seeing that corporatization of games media
1048
00:58:09.090 --> 00:58:14.130
where it was the shooter with online capabilities and like
1049
00:58:14.170 --> 00:58:20.639
that broad military experience. appeal right so it got there's
1050
00:58:20.679 --> 00:58:24.199
no quake there's no halo there's no yeah you know other.
1051
00:58:24.019 --> 00:58:26.480
Shooter that people and what do most people want to
1052
00:58:26.500 --> 00:58:29.139
do online is deathmatch at this point right so this
1053
00:58:29.179 --> 00:58:32.320
is as close as you can get uh.
1054
00:58:31.599 --> 00:58:34.909
Like i'm looking so a few pages down um there's
1055
00:58:34.949 --> 00:58:38.090
like a hearts on fire like page yeah there we
1056
00:58:38.110 --> 00:58:40.289
go um and it talks about kingdom hearts and stuff
1057
00:58:40.309 --> 00:58:42.849
but then there's also online um and it says you
1058
00:58:42.889 --> 00:58:46.039
know it's here sony's online invasion has finally struck So
1059
00:58:46.079 --> 00:58:50.429
you have ATV Off-Road Fury 2 racing game, Automotilista racing game,
1060
00:58:50.550 --> 00:58:57.449
EverQuest Online, Final Fantasy XI RPGs, MyStreet, which looks like volleyball?
1061
00:58:58.250 --> 00:58:59.170
Or just sports games?
1062
00:58:59.269 --> 00:59:02.929
Simple games like Marbles, Volleyball, and RC Racing.
1063
00:59:03.510 --> 00:59:07.829
NBA 2K3, NBA Live, 2003 Resident Evil Online, Star Wars Galaxies,
1064
00:59:08.489 --> 00:59:11.260
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4. So-called was like the online
1065
00:59:11.300 --> 00:59:12.260
shooter for PlayStation.
1066
00:59:12.320 --> 00:59:15.019
God, Star Wars Galaxies got a PlayStation release.
1067
00:59:15.280 --> 00:59:16.980
That's wild.
1068
00:59:17.679 --> 00:59:19.860
Oh, Lord. Why should I care?
1069
00:59:19.940 --> 00:59:23.260
Wait, wait, wait. It says possible pitfalls. Quote, rumors of
1070
00:59:23.300 --> 00:59:26.559
delay of the PC version make Galaxy's PS2 release a
1071
00:59:26.579 --> 00:59:29.119
bit of an uncertainty, but it'll come sooner or later.
1072
00:59:29.659 --> 00:59:37.239
Maybe. Maybe. We'll see. Okay. So now, egg on my face,
1073
00:59:38.500 --> 00:59:43.480
they do have Clish McClaver's gossip column. So it's not
1074
00:59:43.539 --> 00:59:46.369
just a joke in the credits. She actually did have
1075
00:59:46.510 --> 00:59:50.030
a column here. So this is somebody's nom de plume.
1076
00:59:50.909 --> 00:59:52.190
Now I need to ask.
1077
00:59:52.690 --> 00:59:55.329
I mean, if this is anything like other Ziff Davis
1078
00:59:55.630 --> 01:00:00.030
gossip columns, it's like a catch-all for, like, several different
1079
01:00:00.070 --> 01:00:02.929
people writing under one. Surely. Surely. Right.
1080
01:00:02.969 --> 01:00:06.809
Yes. I, you know, and again, we've talked before about
1081
01:00:06.869 --> 01:00:09.829
the trouble you can get into with rumors. Like whenever
1082
01:00:09.869 --> 01:00:13.840
a magazine that publishes news publishes quote unquote rumors, it
1083
01:00:13.880 --> 01:00:18.059
just puts you in this really weird journalistic spot where like, okay,
1084
01:00:18.119 --> 01:00:22.019
like Final Fantasy 11, not coming to us where it is.
1085
01:00:22.039 --> 01:00:24.500
There are problems afoot with Final Fantasy 11's release date
1086
01:00:24.519 --> 01:00:27.980
here in the States. So, you know, okay. Like it
1087
01:00:28.039 --> 01:00:28.909
is unthinkable to me.
1088
01:00:29.449 --> 01:00:29.760
Yeah.
1089
01:00:30.409 --> 01:00:36.539
The Final Fantasy XI, you know, we've long since synchronized to, like,
1090
01:00:36.559 --> 01:00:39.440
global release dates now, right? Like, the idea that they
1091
01:00:39.480 --> 01:00:42.480
would make Final Fantasy XI Japan only. Yeah.
1092
01:00:42.500 --> 01:00:45.300
Well, and, like, it's speculating that we might get Final
1093
01:00:45.320 --> 01:00:49.579
Fantasy XII before we get Final Fantasy XI, which is funny.
1094
01:00:50.059 --> 01:00:55.579
Yeah. Oh, that would have been a lot. So, gonna
1095
01:00:55.619 --> 01:00:58.059
wrap up real quick with some of the flip-through stuff. Again,
1096
01:00:58.119 --> 01:01:02.030
here we have cd reviews by john scalzi what do
1097
01:01:02.050 --> 01:01:04.559
we think about bush's golden state three and a half
1098
01:01:04.639 --> 01:01:09.320
discs uh i was never a big bush fan uh
1099
01:01:09.420 --> 01:01:13.719
two discs for the buzzhorn disconnected i actually don't remember
1100
01:01:14.559 --> 01:01:19.789
course of nature supercala pulse ultra headspace and then vapor
1101
01:01:19.829 --> 01:01:26.050
trails by rush okay cool um so yeah John Scalzi
1102
01:01:26.070 --> 01:01:28.739
remembers listening to Rush's Tom Soil while playing the Tempest
1103
01:01:28.840 --> 01:01:31.300
arcade game. And dude, he totally had the high score
1104
01:01:31.320 --> 01:01:36.599
on the machine. Visit his www.indiecrit.com site for reviews of
1105
01:01:36.619 --> 01:01:39.099
the hottest indie bands in the history of the world.
1106
01:01:39.659 --> 01:01:40.440
How can you not go?
1107
01:01:40.460 --> 01:01:45.030
I do respect that John was clearly not playing a
1108
01:01:45.070 --> 01:01:49.429
lot of video games, but still tried to wrap that
1109
01:01:49.469 --> 01:01:52.900
into his coverage. He references playing Tempest. And in his
1110
01:01:52.940 --> 01:01:55.599
column previously, it's like, oh, my friend was telling me
1111
01:01:55.659 --> 01:01:59.599
about what was happening on SOCOM. Pretty funny.
1112
01:01:59.619 --> 01:02:03.110
Yeah. It's good that he worked that in and knows
1113
01:02:03.139 --> 01:02:05.190
the outlet he's writing for and the audience that he's
1114
01:02:05.210 --> 01:02:07.949
writing for. Yes. Also reviewed all these DVDs. And I
1115
01:02:08.050 --> 01:02:11.659
love the DVD reviews because it's like, I knew exactly.
1116
01:02:11.679 --> 01:02:14.039
Here we go. James Bond Collection number one. It comes
1117
01:02:14.059 --> 01:02:17.440
with various extras, including director commentary, making of features. Each
1118
01:02:17.460 --> 01:02:20.920
of the DVDs is also available. You are reviewing the
1119
01:02:20.980 --> 01:02:26.070
release on DVD, not just the movie itself. What are
1120
01:02:26.119 --> 01:02:28.929
the features? How much does it cost? Is it part
1121
01:02:28.969 --> 01:02:30.630
of a box set? Can you get the other ones
1122
01:02:30.670 --> 01:02:35.869
in the series? It's not that this doesn't belong in
1123
01:02:35.969 --> 01:02:40.219
media in general, but the degree to which this is
1124
01:02:40.300 --> 01:02:43.590
getting space in this magazine again, really surprises me.
1125
01:02:44.110 --> 01:02:46.789
And he accurately identifies beauty and the beast as a
1126
01:02:47.269 --> 01:02:49.789
five-star film. That's the best animated film in the last
1127
01:02:49.789 --> 01:02:51.130
40 years. Good stuff.
1128
01:02:52.469 --> 01:02:54.769
Um, yeah. So, and we still have, this is wild.
1129
01:02:54.829 --> 01:02:56.710
Cause we still have a PS two top 10 and
1130
01:02:56.750 --> 01:02:57.789
a PS one top 10.
1131
01:02:57.769 --> 01:03:00.280
This is a big, this is, this issue is like
1132
01:03:00.320 --> 01:03:02.320
twice as big as the ones we've been doing.
1133
01:03:02.340 --> 01:03:08.320
I know it's not, it's content here. All right. We
1134
01:03:08.469 --> 01:03:10.559
are going to get to the previews here.
1135
01:03:11.420 --> 01:03:12.059
Good gravy.
1136
01:03:12.400 --> 01:03:17.239
Tons of stuff. Devil May Cry 2. Fellowship of the Ring.
1137
01:03:17.780 --> 01:03:21.380
Pretty cool. And the two towers. Hands on previews for both.
1138
01:03:21.840 --> 01:03:24.940
Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Burnout 2, which talked about. At
1139
01:03:26.340 --> 01:03:31.690
the weird Dr. Muto double page spread again, which looks
1140
01:03:31.849 --> 01:03:34.510
even less like this one looks less like it might
1141
01:03:34.570 --> 01:03:38.750
be part of the magazine. I think. And then also,
1142
01:03:38.769 --> 01:03:41.820
this ad is just a straightforward ad, which is like,
1143
01:03:42.480 --> 01:03:45.340
that's so weird to have three of the four pages
1144
01:03:45.460 --> 01:03:51.179
be that. Here's a Shinobi hands-on preview, which, spoiler alert,
1145
01:03:51.219 --> 01:03:54.789
will be the cover of the next month's issue. And
1146
01:03:55.829 --> 01:04:00.809
this one, BMXXXX. Nothing says BMX biking like a topless
1147
01:04:00.849 --> 01:04:02.469
girl in cut-off jean.
1148
01:04:02.250 --> 01:04:04.429
Shorts, exclamation point.
1149
01:04:06.150 --> 01:04:10.400
I do love comedy for the humorless. That is a
1150
01:04:10.519 --> 01:04:13.960
good subhead for this. Extremely regrettable.
1151
01:04:13.980 --> 01:04:16.920
We don't know why Acclaim is risking its strongest franchise
1152
01:04:16.940 --> 01:04:24.409
this October. The gameplay innovations are strong, but collecting coins
1153
01:04:24.449 --> 01:04:27.829
around different levels to earn a 12-year-old's wet dream. You
1154
01:04:27.849 --> 01:04:30.710
can unlock a peep show with a real woman. With real,
1155
01:04:31.670 --> 01:04:36.719
maybe fake, breasts. Feels like a half-assed idea. Not worth
1156
01:04:36.760 --> 01:04:37.079
a laugh.
1157
01:04:37.760 --> 01:04:43.260
No. Yeah, so again, tons of content. There's tons of ads,
1158
01:04:43.280 --> 01:04:47.849
but there's even more. Red Dead Revolver 1. Remember there
1159
01:04:47.869 --> 01:04:53.090
was a 1? Yeah, before Red Dead Redemption, even. Yeah,
1160
01:04:53.150 --> 01:04:55.730
Red Dead Revolver, Red Dead Redemption, and then Red Dead
1161
01:04:55.769 --> 01:05:01.909
Redemption 2. We've got Silent Hill 3, The Sims, Ratchet
1162
01:05:01.929 --> 01:05:04.519
and Clank. I mean, tons and tons and tons. Crank
1163
01:05:04.539 --> 01:05:04.820
the Weasel.
1164
01:05:05.579 --> 01:05:08.960
I think that's a euphemism. Silent Hill 3. I'm surprised
1165
01:05:08.980 --> 01:05:11.929
Silent Hill 3 only gets a little half page.
1166
01:05:12.730 --> 01:05:15.369
Yeah. I think it's because it wasn't hands-on.
1167
01:05:15.489 --> 01:05:16.909
Oh, yeah. Fair.
1168
01:05:17.329 --> 01:05:20.150
So it doesn't have the first look or hands-on stamp
1169
01:05:21.010 --> 01:05:25.010
right here. First look, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4. Harry
1170
01:05:26.469 --> 01:05:29.750
Potter and the Chamber of Secrets talk about licensing magic. Okay,
1171
01:05:29.769 --> 01:05:33.809
that's funny. And then here we go. The big Vice
1172
01:05:33.829 --> 01:05:38.550
City feature. Where they tell you stuff that the other
1173
01:05:38.590 --> 01:05:41.840
guys don't tell you. We also get... Okay, now this
1174
01:05:41.940 --> 01:05:46.960
here is some more Gabe from Penny Arcade art. Mixed
1175
01:05:47.039 --> 01:05:50.960
in with... They've just got in this feature 80s flashback.
1176
01:05:51.000 --> 01:05:53.500
Do you remember piano ties and skeleton shit? Do you
1177
01:05:53.559 --> 01:06:01.159
remember the year of the Bach? 1988? Do you remember...
1178
01:05:59.900 --> 01:06:03.440
One was real dumb. Duck Hunt on NES? Yeah, I
1179
01:06:03.599 --> 01:06:04.760
remember Duck Hunt on NES.
1180
01:06:05.440 --> 01:06:05.619
What?
1181
01:06:05.780 --> 01:06:09.190
Yeah. Do you remember Hands Across America? So it's all
1182
01:06:09.210 --> 01:06:13.070
these just like weird, random 80s culture. Do you remember
1183
01:06:13.090 --> 01:06:16.199
when the Joker murdered Robin? Much less of a cult.
1184
01:06:16.219 --> 01:06:18.019
The one that got me was the Challenger Explosion.
1185
01:06:19.300 --> 01:06:23.800
What's pretty funny is these are 80s flashbacks, so that's
1186
01:06:23.840 --> 01:06:26.840
the equivalent of doing 2002 flashbacks for us now.
1187
01:06:27.059 --> 01:06:31.159
This is exactly where I was going with this. Do
1188
01:06:31.730 --> 01:06:34.969
you remember when the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up? Like, yeah, man, yeah,
1189
01:06:34.989 --> 01:06:37.610
I remember that. Are you kidding me?
1190
01:06:38.130 --> 01:06:42.750
Remember when Orange Celebrity tried to take over the country?
1191
01:06:42.769 --> 01:06:46.380
Jesus, man. Yeah. And then throughout this, what the other
1192
01:06:46.400 --> 01:06:50.110
guys didn't tell you. My favorite was like, OK, if
1193
01:06:50.130 --> 01:06:52.230
you're keeping up with things, you know, Ray Liotta is
1194
01:06:52.250 --> 01:06:54.969
the voice of the main character, Tommy Vercetti. You might
1195
01:06:55.030 --> 01:06:58.170
even know there are over 20 celebs lending their pipes
1196
01:06:58.230 --> 01:07:01.030
to other characters in Vice City. While we don't want
1197
01:07:01.070 --> 01:07:03.719
to tell you all of the biggest names, there have
1198
01:07:03.739 --> 01:07:06.380
to be some surprises. Like when you first heard Michael
1199
01:07:06.420 --> 01:07:09.019
Madsen in GTA 3. How about we tell you these
1200
01:07:09.059 --> 01:07:13.300
three big timers? Actor Dennis Hopper, porn star Jenna Jameson
1201
01:07:13.360 --> 01:07:16.300
and Hall of Fame defensive end slash ex coke addict
1202
01:07:16.340 --> 01:07:19.449
Lawrence Taylor. How's that wet your celeb whistle?
1203
01:07:20.469 --> 01:07:22.929
Wait, did they actually say X-Coke?
1204
01:07:22.969 --> 01:07:27.429
Yep, they sure did. What? Really? What? Yeah.
1205
01:07:28.579 --> 01:07:30.019
Whoa. Night of September.
1206
01:07:30.420 --> 01:07:31.420
Yeah. Like this.
1207
01:07:33.860 --> 01:07:34.239
It's it.
1208
01:07:34.340 --> 01:07:37.300
The vibes are very weird. Like, what is the exclusive info?
1209
01:07:37.659 --> 01:07:40.139
Serious stopping power. Shooting out car tires was the next
1210
01:07:40.239 --> 01:07:42.320
logical step. We've seen it in every action movie. You
1211
01:07:42.340 --> 01:07:45.280
had to know that Rockstar pushed that envelope to the table. Yeah.
1212
01:07:45.769 --> 01:07:47.510
Pull out your sniper rifle and put a bullet through
1213
01:07:47.530 --> 01:07:49.690
the windshield. That's right, folks. If you're about to get
1214
01:07:49.730 --> 01:07:51.860
a mouthful of grizzly car grill, you can curb the
1215
01:07:51.900 --> 01:07:54.260
vehicle with a bit of accurate aim. If you miss,
1216
01:07:54.300 --> 01:07:56.280
of course, you could forget about walking for six to
1217
01:07:56.340 --> 01:08:00.539
eight weeks. Like, so it's like really the, the, what
1218
01:08:00.559 --> 01:08:06.280
the other guys didn't tell you is like very, very,
1219
01:08:06.409 --> 01:08:12.139
very minor mechanical things. Basically like, Plus the, okay, we
1220
01:08:12.159 --> 01:08:14.760
got to tell you three of the quote unquote 20
1221
01:08:14.760 --> 01:08:20.479
celebrity voices. You know, like, okay, here's just a whole
1222
01:08:20.550 --> 01:08:24.810
shot of Ray Liotta. If you don't know Ray Liotta,
1223
01:08:24.890 --> 01:08:27.329
here's what the other guys didn't tell you. Ray Liotta
1224
01:08:27.350 --> 01:08:31.069
was in Goodfellas. I'm so glad we have that exclusive
1225
01:08:31.189 --> 01:08:33.329
Sony information to tell us that.
1226
01:08:33.409 --> 01:08:36.149
I've been sitting on that information for decades.
1227
01:08:36.170 --> 01:08:36.350
Yeah.
1228
01:08:37.170 --> 01:08:40.590
And just did not have the legal backup to reveal it, Ty.
1229
01:08:40.609 --> 01:08:41.770
I'm so glad it's out there.
1230
01:08:42.010 --> 01:08:44.350
By the way, shout out to Media Club Plus, the
1231
01:08:44.399 --> 01:08:46.840
Friends at the Table's media review thing. They're doing the
1232
01:08:46.859 --> 01:08:51.659
Sopranos season. They did a bonus episode on Goodfellas. It's
1233
01:08:51.920 --> 01:08:55.630
significantly longer than the actual movie and absolutely outstanding. I
1234
01:08:55.689 --> 01:08:59.210
really enjoyed it. And Ray Liotta, getting to hear Ray
1235
01:08:59.229 --> 01:09:07.760
Liotta's voiceovers in Goodfellas is just, it's iconic work. Absolutely fantastic. Yeah,
1236
01:09:07.920 --> 01:09:12.020
he was great in this as well. Again, gigantic section.
1237
01:09:12.439 --> 01:09:18.460
But I really found myself going like, so much effort
1238
01:09:18.510 --> 01:09:23.210
was put into this. but there's not much here in
1239
01:09:23.250 --> 01:09:26.840
terms of exclusive information or, uh, you know, they, like
1240
01:09:26.859 --> 01:09:29.239
they had the penny arcade guy draw a bunch of
1241
01:09:29.260 --> 01:09:32.720
these little insets for these eighties flashbacks. I'm like, I,
1242
01:09:33.119 --> 01:09:36.060
I don't know. Cause remember these guys are all older
1243
01:09:36.100 --> 01:09:38.789
than us. Right. So like we're the target audience and
1244
01:09:38.829 --> 01:09:41.270
they're in their twenties and thirties. You remember who shot Jr.
1245
01:09:41.409 --> 01:09:45.029
And I'm like, Yeah, I was like eight, but I remember.
1246
01:09:45.270 --> 01:09:47.689
Do you remember when the Challenger blew up? Yeah, I
1247
01:09:47.729 --> 01:09:49.829
was like five, but I remember because that was a
1248
01:09:49.869 --> 01:09:52.989
big deal, you know? So I.
1249
01:09:54.930 --> 01:09:55.170
Don't know.
1250
01:09:55.689 --> 01:09:58.630
Overall, you can tell how much work put into making
1251
01:09:58.670 --> 01:10:02.029
this a gigantic feature that should like get you ready
1252
01:10:02.100 --> 01:10:09.319
for it. But I feel like, I don't know, it
1253
01:10:09.359 --> 01:10:13.979
doesn't land for me. all the way across it feels
1254
01:10:14.020 --> 01:10:16.119
for us. And maybe it's just because we've had 20
1255
01:10:16.119 --> 01:10:18.300
plus years of eighties nostalgia since then.
1256
01:10:19.149 --> 01:10:19.390
Right.
1257
01:10:20.010 --> 01:10:22.590
Like I remember the first time, you know, I walked
1258
01:10:22.890 --> 01:10:24.550
past like a hot topic at the mall and there
1259
01:10:24.569 --> 01:10:28.670
was like a mega man t-shirt. I'm like, whoa, we're doing,
1260
01:10:28.689 --> 01:10:33.869
we're doing eighties nostalgia. Oh yeah. That's amazing. But like,
1261
01:10:34.470 --> 01:10:37.210
maybe it's just because this has all been so heavily mine.
1262
01:10:37.270 --> 01:10:40.789
I think, I don't know. I think too, like eighties
1263
01:10:40.850 --> 01:10:46.550
nostalgia is different for like, millennials, like elder millennials than
1264
01:10:46.590 --> 01:10:48.569
it is for Gen X. Cause like, I don't remember
1265
01:10:48.609 --> 01:10:52.829
the Challenger blowing up because I was like three or whatever. Right.
1266
01:10:53.189 --> 01:10:56.409
What I remember is Teddy Ruxpin or I remember, you know,
1267
01:10:56.470 --> 01:11:01.289
like Ninja Turtles. I remember, you know, different touch points
1268
01:11:01.329 --> 01:11:03.430
because I was younger at that time. And so like,
1269
01:11:03.449 --> 01:11:07.149
I think what we're maybe seeing is like, were we
1270
01:11:07.210 --> 01:11:10.279
the audience for this? Like maybe, Yeah, for sure. But
1271
01:11:10.319 --> 01:11:13.100
I think OPM also with DVD reviews, like they were
1272
01:11:13.189 --> 01:11:18.869
reviewing Bush. Like I didn't care about Bush in 2002. Right, right, right.
1273
01:11:19.069 --> 01:11:21.609
But Gen Xers probably did. And so they were probably
1274
01:11:21.649 --> 01:11:23.609
trying to age up the magazine a little bit too,
1275
01:11:23.930 --> 01:11:26.510
which pushes it a little outside of our wheelhouse.
1276
01:11:26.590 --> 01:11:27.689
Yeah.
1277
01:11:28.810 --> 01:11:34.909
I'm kind of impressed by just the structure, structural requirements
1278
01:11:34.930 --> 01:11:39.119
for like coming up with this and like, outlining it
1279
01:11:39.430 --> 01:11:41.869
writing it all getting it all laid out i think
1280
01:11:41.909 --> 01:11:43.890
i'm kind of more impressed with this than you are
1281
01:11:44.250 --> 01:11:47.310
and the actual interview uh in the text of the
1282
01:11:47.470 --> 01:11:50.550
yeah because it's all like an extended interview right right
1283
01:11:50.590 --> 01:11:55.989
right um with hauser and who else um seems actually
1284
01:11:56.029 --> 01:11:58.729
pretty good without having actually like read through the whole
1285
01:11:58.770 --> 01:12:02.529
thing uh it actually seems like a pretty good deep
1286
01:12:02.569 --> 01:12:06.720
dive into the game um And so all the extras
1287
01:12:06.739 --> 01:12:09.039
sort of fluff around it to turn it in from
1288
01:12:09.100 --> 01:12:16.710
a four-page interview feature into a, what, 12-page? Yeah.
1289
01:12:17.010 --> 01:12:19.170
And again, the graphics are really good. Like I said,
1290
01:12:19.649 --> 01:12:21.720
it's obvious that a bunch of work went into it.
1291
01:12:22.050 --> 01:12:29.810
And it's good work, also, I think. For me, taste-wise,
1292
01:12:29.840 --> 01:12:31.560
it just isn't hitting. And like I said, it's maybe
1293
01:12:31.619 --> 01:12:35.819
just because... we've done 80s nostalgia so thoroughly since then
1294
01:12:35.920 --> 01:12:37.479
that like, yeah, here are a bunch of guys who
1295
01:12:37.539 --> 01:12:38.979
lived through it. And like, you know, here are a
1296
01:12:38.979 --> 01:12:42.079
bunch of people who were a little older than us
1297
01:12:42.180 --> 01:12:44.840
and remember this better. And like, yeah, I don't know.
1298
01:12:45.000 --> 01:12:45.199
Yeah.
1299
01:12:45.880 --> 01:12:49.899
It seems like, okay, why don't we have more? Like
1300
01:12:49.939 --> 01:12:53.010
we had Miami vice. That's obviously incredibly relevant. So we've
1301
01:12:53.029 --> 01:12:56.100
got a bunch of Miami vice stuff. That's cool. but
1302
01:12:56.119 --> 01:13:00.180
I would have liked more relevant directly to grant that.
1303
01:13:00.079 --> 01:13:03.979
You're be able to tie Miami vice nostalgia to vice city.
1304
01:13:04.680 --> 01:13:08.199
Whereas like, yeah, like max headroom doesn't really, right.
1305
01:13:08.300 --> 01:13:11.659
Like hands across America is not relevant. Right. Like give
1306
01:13:11.680 --> 01:13:15.399
me like gangster stuff. Give me, you know, what cars
1307
01:13:15.479 --> 01:13:16.319
were cool then.
1308
01:13:16.739 --> 01:13:16.979
Right.
1309
01:13:17.020 --> 01:13:19.020
Like give me like stuff that's going to be in
1310
01:13:19.039 --> 01:13:21.500
the game. Maybe, I don't know. Maybe I'm just being unfair.
1311
01:13:21.800 --> 01:13:24.470
I guess like what I would say though, too, is like,
1312
01:13:24.930 --> 01:13:28.789
you know, On the shelf to my left, there's a
1313
01:13:28.850 --> 01:13:31.970
tote full of our old yearbooks. And I bet a
1314
01:13:32.010 --> 01:13:36.649
lot of this stuff is in the yearbooks for those years.
1315
01:13:36.710 --> 01:13:39.989
We would have memories and news and stuff at the
1316
01:13:40.060 --> 01:13:40.800
end of our yearbooks.
1317
01:13:40.840 --> 01:13:41.149
I don't know.
1318
01:13:41.189 --> 01:13:42.699
Maybe it was different in the States. But I bet
1319
01:13:42.720 --> 01:13:48.520
a lot of this stuff was in yearbooks for the 80s. Yeah.
1320
01:13:48.739 --> 01:13:50.159
As the crazy stuff going on.
1321
01:13:50.180 --> 01:13:51.579
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1322
01:13:52.869 --> 01:13:55.510
So, I don't know. I think it's just, yeah, I
1323
01:13:55.550 --> 01:13:57.670
think it's trying to evoke a nostalgia that you and
1324
01:13:57.689 --> 01:13:59.430
I just don't have for the 80s.
1325
01:13:59.609 --> 01:14:00.090
Yeah.
1326
01:14:00.109 --> 01:14:02.130
Because the 80s to us is just, like, the stuff
1327
01:14:02.149 --> 01:14:05.619
that has endured culturally more than the stuff that, like,
1328
01:14:06.000 --> 01:14:07.680
was really of the moment. That means a lot of
1329
01:14:07.699 --> 01:14:10.020
people who are there living it, but hasn't really, like,
1330
01:14:10.659 --> 01:14:14.399
permeated through culture the way that we, you know, the
1331
01:14:14.439 --> 01:14:19.710
way that we think of the 80s as people who
1332
01:14:19.770 --> 01:14:21.789
were very young at the time.
1333
01:14:22.659 --> 01:14:25.300
Makes sense. Makes sense. All right. Well, there's a lot
1334
01:14:25.680 --> 01:14:27.579
more to get to. We have a lot of stuff
1335
01:14:27.600 --> 01:14:29.819
to talk about. We've got the reviews section to get
1336
01:14:29.880 --> 01:14:32.699
to and everything else. Stick around. We're going to take
1337
01:14:32.729 --> 01:14:35.050
a quick break. If you are not already a Fun
1338
01:14:35.060 --> 01:14:39.130
Factor Ultra member getting ad-free episodes, then, hey, you'll get
1339
01:14:39.149 --> 01:14:41.609
to hear Millennium Falcon's music. You'll get to hear a
1340
01:14:41.630 --> 01:14:44.390
couple ads. You will come back and we will review
1341
01:14:45.149 --> 01:14:48.890
official PlayStation Magazine's review of Sly Cooper and the Thievius
1342
01:14:48.970 --> 01:15:11.760
Raccoonus right here on Fun Factors. we are back here
1343
01:15:11.880 --> 01:15:15.260
on fun factor as always we are having five out
1344
01:15:15.279 --> 01:15:17.180
of five stars worth of fun today and folks if
1345
01:15:17.199 --> 01:15:19.140
you are to leave a rating and review on apple
1346
01:15:19.159 --> 01:15:22.340
podcast we'll read the best funniest kindest and most entertaining
1347
01:15:22.420 --> 01:15:26.270
ones on the air but now It is time, after
1348
01:15:26.350 --> 01:15:29.170
all this run-up, going through an enormous amount of content
1349
01:15:29.229 --> 01:15:31.789
here on the official US PlayStation magazine, we have to
1350
01:15:31.810 --> 01:15:43.319
do the thing we do. Review the review. Aiden, can
1351
01:15:43.359 --> 01:15:48.840
you read, if not the best, then at least the
1352
01:15:48.939 --> 01:15:54.500
most friendly to our show grading rubric of all time? Yes,
1353
01:15:54.800 --> 01:15:55.319
I like it.
1354
01:15:55.399 --> 01:16:00.859
So they describe their grading system like this. The final score.
1355
01:16:01.359 --> 01:16:04.310
We rate games on a five point scale. So 0.5
1356
01:16:04.310 --> 01:16:08.500
is terrible. 2.5 is mediocre and five is superb. Get it?
1357
01:16:09.510 --> 01:16:12.409
That's it. That's it. That's all you need to say.
1358
01:16:12.729 --> 01:16:15.510
That's all you need to have. It's great. It lets
1359
01:16:15.529 --> 01:16:17.649
the score stand on its own. It lets the review
1360
01:16:17.689 --> 01:16:20.760
tech stand on its own. And then we also get
1361
01:16:21.479 --> 01:16:24.890
the critics here, John Davison, Gary Steinman, Joe Rybicki, Chris Baker,
1362
01:16:24.989 --> 01:16:27.989
Todd Zuniga, and Sam Kennedy. And I think they're going
1363
01:16:28.050 --> 01:16:32.810
with pictures from the 80s, right? So these are just
1364
01:16:32.829 --> 01:16:36.800
like childhood and or tween slash teen. They're all black
1365
01:16:36.840 --> 01:16:38.520
and white. I don't know if they were originally black
1366
01:16:38.560 --> 01:16:40.659
and white or they black and whited them out. Because
1367
01:16:40.699 --> 01:16:42.399
this looks like a school picture. You wouldn't have gotten
1368
01:16:42.439 --> 01:16:44.819
a black and white school picture in the 80s.
1369
01:16:44.880 --> 01:16:47.890
No, not in the 80s. Yeah, nobody was taking black
1370
01:16:47.899 --> 01:16:48.649
and white photos.
1371
01:16:48.439 --> 01:16:52.779
In the 80s. Aiden, our game today, Sly Cooper and
1372
01:16:52.800 --> 01:16:56.699
the Thievius Raccoonus. And again, like I said, I was
1373
01:16:56.840 --> 01:17:00.810
absolutely mystified by this game. And I was looking it up.
1374
01:17:00.840 --> 01:17:01.779
I'm like, how?
1375
01:17:02.220 --> 01:17:05.909
What? What? We have a like recently.
1376
01:17:06.189 --> 01:17:09.409
Yeah, it was. It was when we were the preview.
1377
01:17:09.430 --> 01:17:11.369
It was like three or four episodes ago.
1378
01:17:11.390 --> 01:17:11.470
Yeah.
1379
01:17:12.310 --> 01:17:16.329
One of the issues we were reviewing had a preview
1380
01:17:16.430 --> 01:17:18.560
for this. And I was like, what are?
1381
01:17:18.909 --> 01:17:19.609
What is that?
1382
01:17:20.489 --> 01:17:23.850
I should know about this. I like, I, I should
1383
01:17:23.909 --> 01:17:26.970
know about this. It's really stylized. You know, the cell
1384
01:17:26.989 --> 01:17:32.569
shading is awesome. It's, it's sucker punch. Uh, so like, I,
1385
01:17:32.689 --> 01:17:35.789
I'm like genuinely surprised you don't know about. Yeah, no,
1386
01:17:35.890 --> 01:17:38.250
I know. I, I, the whole thing that this slip,
1387
01:17:38.529 --> 01:17:41.470
my notice is, is astonishing to me again. So this
1388
01:17:41.529 --> 01:17:45.720
is sucker punch. This is the studio, uh, uh, infamous, uh,
1389
01:17:45.770 --> 01:17:48.689
ghost of Tsushima, ghost of Yotei. Like, This is a
1390
01:17:48.710 --> 01:17:53.369
big-time developer. It's a first-person Sony Computer Entertainment published title.
1391
01:17:55.270 --> 01:18:00.750
And then there were several other installments in the series.
1392
01:18:00.770 --> 01:18:05.130
This is a series. And I've just completely had no
1393
01:18:05.170 --> 01:18:07.010
idea this existed. And I don't know how.
1394
01:18:07.689 --> 01:18:10.829
Yeah, I'm honestly shocked. This was the era of a
1395
01:18:10.869 --> 01:18:17.359
lot of those big action mascot platformers. really kind of
1396
01:18:17.380 --> 01:18:21.380
coming into its own, not, you know, like Spyro and crash, uh,
1397
01:18:21.579 --> 01:18:24.180
kind of came through the PlayStation era, but like Sly Cooper,
1398
01:18:24.239 --> 01:18:28.149
Jack and Daxter, like they were just great games because
1399
01:18:28.170 --> 01:18:30.569
they were also exploring design space. That was kind of
1400
01:18:30.590 --> 01:18:32.350
interesting on its own, not just trying to be the
1401
01:18:32.409 --> 01:18:36.569
systems Mario or whatever. Uh, Sly Cooper was beautiful. I
1402
01:18:36.590 --> 01:18:39.970
didn't play the final game. I think I just played
1403
01:18:40.010 --> 01:18:43.800
the demo. Um, But the way it kind of mixed
1404
01:18:43.880 --> 01:18:46.590
in the fact that you're a thief, right? And you're
1405
01:18:46.649 --> 01:18:48.689
trying to like infiltrate places and stuff like that.
1406
01:18:48.590 --> 01:18:52.649
Was cool it was great game yeah um and again
1407
01:18:52.750 --> 01:18:56.060
he's a gentleman thief as described in some of the
1408
01:18:56.069 --> 01:19:00.239
material i found online right voice actor kevin miller is
1409
01:19:00.359 --> 01:19:03.619
actually still best known for this role according to his
1410
01:19:03.640 --> 01:19:07.239
wikipedia uh article but he was in tales of destiny
1411
01:19:07.239 --> 01:19:11.189
2 jet set radio um he was the coffee worms
1412
01:19:11.510 --> 01:19:15.460
in men in black to alien escape, uh, crazy taxi series.
1413
01:19:15.520 --> 01:19:17.619
He was in Shinobi that came out again as the
1414
01:19:17.659 --> 01:19:21.239
cover game next month, house of the dead three, um,
1415
01:19:21.319 --> 01:19:23.579
virtual cop three common Cindy. So in a bunch of
1416
01:19:23.720 --> 01:19:29.020
early two thousands and into the 2010s, uh, PlayStation move heroes. Oh, sorry.
1417
01:19:29.159 --> 01:19:34.590
He's like Cooper in several 2010s games and features. Right.
1418
01:19:34.909 --> 01:19:37.270
Uh, uh, yeah.
1419
01:19:37.409 --> 01:19:40.220
So anyway, uh, had a, uh, cool little career here
1420
01:19:40.239 --> 01:19:44.829
uh just from being mostly launched by being sly cooper
1421
01:19:44.850 --> 01:19:49.710
um and again this is i'm just sitting here i
1422
01:19:49.750 --> 01:19:52.869
guess sinking deeper and deeper into the fool's chair as
1423
01:19:52.949 --> 01:19:55.369
i'm like looking up what is you know sly cooper
1424
01:19:55.390 --> 01:19:58.840
like i absolutely should have known about this yeah the
1425
01:19:58.989 --> 01:20:02.260
the trifecta was like sly cooper jack and daxter ratchet
1426
01:20:02.279 --> 01:20:05.270
and clank Right. And, like, Ratchet and Clank kind of
1427
01:20:05.329 --> 01:20:09.640
endured more than Sly Cooper, which, like, the sequels kind
1428
01:20:09.649 --> 01:20:13.880
of got progressively, like, less interesting and good.
1429
01:20:14.779 --> 01:20:17.619
Jack and Daxter, you know, starting off as, like, a
1430
01:20:17.800 --> 01:20:22.119
fairly straightforward Banjo-Kazooie platformer and then turning into, like, this
1431
01:20:22.159 --> 01:20:23.380
weird edgy series.
1432
01:20:23.420 --> 01:20:23.619
Yeah.
1433
01:20:24.000 --> 01:20:27.420
And then, you know, like, Ratchet and Clank being very, like, action-focused.
1434
01:20:27.460 --> 01:20:29.300
But I would say those were, like, the big three
1435
01:20:29.340 --> 01:20:33.329
of the, like, Sony platformers. And Sly Cooper was always
1436
01:20:33.350 --> 01:20:35.250
the most interesting to me of the three.
1437
01:20:36.310 --> 01:20:39.199
Yeah. And that's, again, I knew all about Ratchet and
1438
01:20:39.279 --> 01:20:41.159
Clank and Jak and Dexter. I can't believe I don't
1439
01:20:41.180 --> 01:20:46.380
know about Sly. I'm also thrilled by I found a... Ah,
1440
01:20:46.500 --> 01:20:49.960
the best games of Sucker Punch Studios all time ranked
1441
01:20:50.979 --> 01:20:53.859
before Ghost of Tsushima or Ghost of Yotai.
1442
01:20:54.159 --> 01:20:55.050
So like.
1443
01:20:55.680 --> 01:20:57.619
Yeah, there's all the infamous games and all the Sly
1444
01:20:57.659 --> 01:21:03.069
Cooper games, and that's basically it. Yeah, so let's look
1445
01:21:03.109 --> 01:21:06.029
a little bit here. We've got our reviewer is John
1446
01:21:06.069 --> 01:21:11.609
Davison himself, editor in chief of the entire magazine. He
1447
01:21:11.649 --> 01:21:13.989
starts off with something happened while playing Sly that I've
1448
01:21:14.010 --> 01:21:16.840
never experienced before. Maybe it's just because I'm a bit lazy,
1449
01:21:16.899 --> 01:21:19.739
but most platform games that leave heavily on the collection
1450
01:21:19.760 --> 01:21:23.640
mechanic leave me pretty cold. I liked Jack and Dexter,
1451
01:21:23.659 --> 01:21:28.430
but had no real inclination to finish it with 100% cleared.
1452
01:21:29.310 --> 01:21:33.909
Sky is different, though. I'm obsessed. So, right off the bat, okay,
1453
01:21:33.930 --> 01:21:35.470
we're setting the bar pretty high.
1454
01:21:35.550 --> 01:21:40.460
I think. I think it's interesting to think about why
1455
01:21:40.720 --> 01:21:42.039
John would feel that way, right?
1456
01:21:42.079 --> 01:21:44.079
He's going to get into that in the next paragraph.
1457
01:21:47.239 --> 01:21:50.229
But the fact that Sly, as a character... is a
1458
01:21:50.270 --> 01:21:53.369
thief and thieves sort of collect things, I think is like,
1459
01:21:53.409 --> 01:21:59.310
there's like that compelling sort of like ludonarrative element to
1460
01:21:59.329 --> 01:22:01.880
it that might've made it feel more natural to get
1461
01:22:01.939 --> 01:22:04.239
into it. But I'm curious to see what John actually says.
1462
01:22:04.039 --> 01:22:05.960
In the next paragraph. One cool thing that he does
1463
01:22:06.260 --> 01:22:13.100
is highlight like bold key sentences. So we've got, I
1464
01:22:13.159 --> 01:22:16.250
haven't been this hooked on a platformer since Crash Warped.
1465
01:22:17.760 --> 01:22:24.539
I misread that as Warpod or Warpath initially. Crash Warped. Warped. Warped. Great. Yeah. Warped.
1466
01:22:27.399 --> 01:22:30.069
This keeps the game interesting to watch, even when you're
1467
01:22:30.090 --> 01:22:34.090
revisiting it. Features a plethora of simple but incredibly fun minigames.
1468
01:22:34.109 --> 01:22:36.789
So you have these bolded sections that are meant to
1469
01:22:37.329 --> 01:22:41.590
really drive things home. Yeah. So what's different? At first,
1470
01:22:41.630 --> 01:22:43.729
you may think it's just because it's a very pretty game.
1471
01:22:45.319 --> 01:22:48.020
And I want to stop there for a second. And
1472
01:22:48.119 --> 01:22:51.399
he kind of plays into this and kind of pooh-poohs
1473
01:22:51.430 --> 01:22:54.010
it at the same time, saying he loves the distinctive,
1474
01:22:54.850 --> 01:22:58.289
unique art style, loves the presentation. But really, what he
1475
01:22:58.630 --> 01:23:01.449
extra loves is how the developers have a great handle
1476
01:23:01.529 --> 01:23:05.399
on pulling off visual gags. So there's constantly, like, neat
1477
01:23:05.439 --> 01:23:08.859
little touches popping everywhere. And something that really over the
1478
01:23:08.920 --> 01:23:11.890
run of doing this show, Aiden, is... I have finding
1479
01:23:11.930 --> 01:23:16.510
myself routinely coming back to the defensive graphics, right? The like,
1480
01:23:16.529 --> 01:23:18.729
you know, as much as I was at this time,
1481
01:23:18.800 --> 01:23:24.760
a gameplay warrior, as much as anybody else, like, Hey,
1482
01:23:24.880 --> 01:23:28.060
sometimes if a game has like a really indelible visual
1483
01:23:28.119 --> 01:23:30.460
style and a really cool world that you want to
1484
01:23:30.500 --> 01:23:34.840
spend time in really appealing, charming, interesting, you know, scary,
1485
01:23:34.939 --> 01:23:39.479
whatever character design, that goes a long way towards making
1486
01:23:39.500 --> 01:23:42.500
you want to keep spending time in a world versus, okay,
1487
01:23:42.539 --> 01:23:44.720
the gameplay is good, but why am I playing? Like,
1488
01:23:44.760 --> 01:23:45.239
what is this?
1489
01:23:45.600 --> 01:23:51.800
You know? And, like, Sly Cooper, because of the choices
1490
01:23:51.840 --> 01:23:55.409
they made with the visual, like, style, holds up a
1491
01:23:55.430 --> 01:23:59.729
lot better than other games of this era, too. And, like,
1492
01:23:59.850 --> 01:24:03.069
I think you need to, like, there's this weird, like,
1493
01:24:03.630 --> 01:24:08.020
tug of war in this whole issue about, like, uh,
1494
01:24:08.260 --> 01:24:10.500
cel-shaded graphics, cartoony graphics.
1495
01:24:10.560 --> 01:24:11.439
Yeah.
1496
01:24:11.600 --> 01:24:15.060
Um, you know, like in with earlier, there was that
1497
01:24:15.119 --> 01:24:19.140
preview of like the online games on PlayStation two or whatever.
1498
01:24:19.220 --> 01:24:22.300
And with auto modalista, I'm looking back, I'm trying to
1499
01:24:22.319 --> 01:24:24.340
find it. It's, this is such a big issue. I know,
1500
01:24:24.479 --> 01:24:26.619
but it was basically like, Hey, don't let the cartoony
1501
01:24:26.640 --> 01:24:30.039
visuals fool you. Right. This is like a legit racing game.
1502
01:24:30.239 --> 01:24:32.859
It's like, well, yeah, it's a legit racing game. Like
1503
01:24:33.729 --> 01:24:35.409
cel-shaded graphics don't change. Right.
1504
01:24:35.800 --> 01:24:35.960
Right.
1505
01:24:36.100 --> 01:24:38.159
Yeah. They have a whole, but, but then they also
1506
01:24:38.199 --> 01:24:40.819
have like a whole section on like the cell shaded
1507
01:24:40.859 --> 01:24:43.279
graphics and the comic booky nature of them. And it's
1508
01:24:43.300 --> 01:24:46.529
just like, it's, it's this weird thing where like, I
1509
01:24:46.550 --> 01:24:50.329
think there's just a weird tension between how like serious
1510
01:24:50.369 --> 01:24:54.569
gamers are supposed to like, not like cartoony stuff or something.
1511
01:24:54.970 --> 01:24:57.630
Yeah, no, I, I agree. And obviously you're like, we're,
1512
01:24:57.710 --> 01:25:01.210
we're way past crazy taxi at this point. Like, Yeah, like,
1513
01:25:01.310 --> 01:25:04.890
cartoony driving games can be cool. I mean, Cruisin' USA,
1514
01:25:04.930 --> 01:25:08.829
to an extent, is more stylized than realistic, right? Like,
1515
01:25:08.869 --> 01:25:12.909
it doesn't have to look like frickin' Gran Turismo to
1516
01:25:12.949 --> 01:25:18.289
be a real racing game. But this kind of visual adventure, right,
1517
01:25:18.369 --> 01:25:23.520
with all these cartoony settings and cartoony characters, like, you
1518
01:25:23.560 --> 01:25:26.220
don't have that instant complaint of, like, well, this isn't, like, realism.
1519
01:25:26.760 --> 01:25:30.060
you know, like, yeah, no, you're a anthropomorphic Fox. Like
1520
01:25:30.100 --> 01:25:34.270
we don't need to have like super realistic realism. Um,
1521
01:25:34.470 --> 01:25:37.390
but it also doesn't have to be for kids either, or,
1522
01:25:37.529 --> 01:25:41.750
you know, simplified. Like, again, we're past super Mario RPG.
1523
01:25:41.810 --> 01:25:44.050
We're past, like, there's all these games that I like. Okay.
1524
01:25:44.430 --> 01:25:44.850
Yeah.
1525
01:25:44.909 --> 01:25:47.340
It just, cause it's cartoony doesn't mean it's, it can't
1526
01:25:47.380 --> 01:25:49.319
be a fun or rewarding game. Right.
1527
01:25:50.000 --> 01:25:54.039
For sure. Um, and I mean like the games also like,
1528
01:25:56.140 --> 01:25:59.949
The era of technology didn't necessarily have what it took
1529
01:26:00.050 --> 01:26:02.569
to do photorealistic graphics anyway.
1530
01:26:02.810 --> 01:26:04.350
Right, yes.
1531
01:26:04.829 --> 01:26:07.789
They're glazing SOCOM and pumping up SOCOM in this issue,
1532
01:26:07.829 --> 01:26:09.069
but it looks crappy.
1533
01:26:09.130 --> 01:26:11.840
Yeah. It's not realistic.
1534
01:26:11.859 --> 01:26:15.199
It looks awful. Where Sly Cooper, I look at those
1535
01:26:15.239 --> 01:26:18.140
screenshots of Sly Cooper and go, that looks sick and
1536
01:26:18.199 --> 01:26:23.210
probably looks so good on an era-appropriate tv yeah like
1537
01:26:23.310 --> 01:26:25.869
on a crt like that probably looks so good and
1538
01:26:25.890 --> 01:26:28.770
there was like i think they remastered sly cooper recently
1539
01:26:28.789 --> 01:26:31.729
and it just looks good but like if you've tried
1540
01:26:31.770 --> 01:26:34.800
to remaster what else is in here blade 2 with
1541
01:26:34.859 --> 01:26:39.500
its realistic graphics it would probably look terrible right um
1542
01:26:39.920 --> 01:26:44.619
and so like recognizing that like cartoony graphics quote unquote
1543
01:26:44.760 --> 01:26:51.060
are like a way to get around technical limitations while
1544
01:26:51.090 --> 01:26:53.850
having something that like just looks great and stands the
1545
01:26:53.869 --> 01:26:57.770
test of time, I think is something that I wish
1546
01:26:57.810 --> 01:27:00.689
there hadn't been so much tension around that, uh, you know,
1547
01:27:00.729 --> 01:27:01.489
back during this.
1548
01:27:01.409 --> 01:27:06.659
Era, man, I is, is this blade. That's what I'm
1549
01:27:06.680 --> 01:27:09.500
looking at. We've got a review of blade too. And
1550
01:27:09.539 --> 01:27:13.060
it's not even evident that I guess that's blade in
1551
01:27:13.079 --> 01:27:15.840
the middle here, getting set on fire. Uh, it's not
1552
01:27:16.039 --> 01:27:18.279
super clear who is blade even.
1553
01:27:18.720 --> 01:27:18.939
Right.
1554
01:27:18.960 --> 01:27:22.119
Um, Also, here's a heck of a lead. If there's
1555
01:27:22.199 --> 01:27:24.899
one thing I've learned from Blade 2, it's this. Vampires
1556
01:27:24.960 --> 01:27:30.850
love monotony. That is from Chris Baker. But, like, you know, meanwhile,
1557
01:27:30.869 --> 01:27:33.489
I can't even tell if they have provided us a
1558
01:27:33.510 --> 01:27:37.149
screenshot of Blade in Blade 2. And then, like, here's
1559
01:27:37.170 --> 01:27:41.760
what Sly Cooper looks like, right? Did Blade use, like,
1560
01:27:42.239 --> 01:27:44.920
the top screenshot says pistol ammo?
1561
01:27:46.010 --> 01:27:47.550
Did Blade, his name's Blade.
1562
01:27:47.590 --> 01:27:47.869
Yeah.
1563
01:27:47.930 --> 01:27:48.770
Does he use guns?
1564
01:27:48.930 --> 01:27:52.029
Yeah, he does have guns, but also the sword. Also
1565
01:27:52.069 --> 01:27:53.270
the sword, for sure. For sure.
1566
01:27:53.409 --> 01:27:56.750
Yeah. But I mean, at the same time, I kind
1567
01:27:56.789 --> 01:27:58.949
of feel like, you know, is there a bit of
1568
01:27:58.989 --> 01:28:03.449
that tension about graphical style in the magazine and maybe
1569
01:28:03.510 --> 01:28:04.989
even in John's review here?
1570
01:28:05.050 --> 01:28:08.550
Like, yeah. And like, but.
1571
01:28:10.869 --> 01:28:13.489
He also calls it a very pretty game, right? And
1572
01:28:13.529 --> 01:28:18.770
with like, absolutely stunning visual style and the art itself
1573
01:28:18.850 --> 01:28:22.819
is distinctively unique while the animation is slick cartoon-like and
1574
01:28:22.840 --> 01:28:26.180
filled with humor the guys behind this uh title really
1575
01:28:26.199 --> 01:28:27.720
seem to have a handle on how to pull off
1576
01:28:27.739 --> 01:28:30.420
subtle visual games and so like i think like he's
1577
01:28:30.779 --> 01:28:32.890
he is sort of acknowledging like yeah like does this
1578
01:28:32.899 --> 01:28:36.609
look cartoony is that like a taste thing sure but
1579
01:28:36.989 --> 01:28:39.909
they all have also just completely nailed this style and
1580
01:28:39.930 --> 01:28:42.060
so in a way that just adds to the game.
1581
01:28:42.100 --> 01:28:43.800
Right. And I, I do like you points out, cause
1582
01:28:43.819 --> 01:28:45.579
you can see here in this like kind of top
1583
01:28:45.640 --> 01:28:47.340
down section.
1584
01:28:47.760 --> 01:28:47.920
Right.
1585
01:28:48.319 --> 01:28:50.420
There's a bunch of different camera angles. There's a bunch
1586
01:28:50.439 --> 01:28:53.140
of different game modes. And you can see what they
1587
01:28:53.180 --> 01:28:56.350
say here. The gameplay isn't just hopping and bopping. Aside
1588
01:28:56.359 --> 01:28:58.609
from the jumping, collecting, running, swinging, sneaking, stealing, and hitting
1589
01:28:58.630 --> 01:29:00.170
things with a big hook on the end of a stick,
1590
01:29:00.529 --> 01:29:03.130
the game also features a plethora of simple but incredibly
1591
01:29:03.189 --> 01:29:07.829
fun mini-games. Variations on Super Sprint, Robotron, Asteroids, turret-based shooters,
1592
01:29:08.010 --> 01:29:10.649
and a thing where you run around catching chickens while
1593
01:29:10.689 --> 01:29:13.850
avoiding bomb-toting roosters keep the pace of the game varied
1594
01:29:14.010 --> 01:29:17.710
and exciting. None of the levels are too long, etc., etc. So, like...
1595
01:29:18.149 --> 01:29:21.789
And then goes into how that pulls into the unlockables
1596
01:29:22.810 --> 01:29:25.630
and the collectibles. And he said, the pacing and structure
1597
01:29:25.649 --> 01:29:28.090
of the game means that the process of achieving goals
1598
01:29:28.289 --> 01:29:31.710
and being rewarded is sufficiently frequent that you always feel
1599
01:29:31.770 --> 01:29:34.670
like you're doing something new. And that's how you have
1600
01:29:34.689 --> 01:29:37.289
to be so obsessed with the collect-a-thon stuff and going
1601
01:29:37.329 --> 01:29:40.310
back and backtracking versus it just being a thing that
1602
01:29:40.350 --> 01:29:43.340
you can do and therefore feel like you must do
1603
01:29:43.899 --> 01:29:46.319
in order to get your money's worth out of the
1604
01:29:46.380 --> 01:29:50.590
game or whatever. Yeah. Your Final Fantasy VIII. This game's
1605
01:29:50.630 --> 01:29:53.189
got to last until Christmas.
1606
01:29:54.350 --> 01:29:56.750
And I think what's interesting too, is he's talking about
1607
01:29:56.789 --> 01:29:59.489
how like in the game, you are collecting pages from
1608
01:29:59.510 --> 01:30:02.010
the Thievius Raccoonus, which is a book that teaches young
1609
01:30:02.050 --> 01:30:04.569
Sly how to be a thief. And as you do that,
1610
01:30:04.609 --> 01:30:07.149
you get more skills and then you're encouraged to go
1611
01:30:07.220 --> 01:30:09.340
back to previous levels and try to beat them with
1612
01:30:09.380 --> 01:30:11.939
a time limit. It says, quote, beat the clock and
1613
01:30:11.960 --> 01:30:14.060
you get to open up a special commentary track for
1614
01:30:14.079 --> 01:30:16.819
that level. Just like the director's tracks found on most
1615
01:30:16.859 --> 01:30:19.460
DVDs these days. And so it's sort of giving like
1616
01:30:19.500 --> 01:30:26.840
an in universe, like, you know, an in universe sense
1617
01:30:26.880 --> 01:30:29.399
of accomplishment for becoming a better thief. It's like, Hey,
1618
01:30:29.439 --> 01:30:31.699
I'm better now I can come back because I have
1619
01:30:31.739 --> 01:30:34.229
new skills. I'm personally better at the game and now
1620
01:30:34.270 --> 01:30:36.289
I can beat this level like super fast. And I
1621
01:30:36.329 --> 01:30:39.369
get rewarded with that by like the game breaking the
1622
01:30:39.409 --> 01:30:42.680
fourth wall of providing commentary. That was enough for me
1623
01:30:42.699 --> 01:30:44.760
just to get the A grade or the S grade
1624
01:30:44.920 --> 01:30:45.899
in some games, right?
1625
01:30:45.979 --> 01:30:48.420
Like, yeah, I just need to A plus this level.
1626
01:30:48.479 --> 01:30:51.319
I need to S this level. I need to beat
1627
01:30:51.520 --> 01:30:53.119
the time. And here it's like, oh yeah, cool. This
1628
01:30:53.180 --> 01:30:56.649
one lacks commentary tracks and stuff. Okay, all right, sweet.
1629
01:30:56.979 --> 01:31:00.710
Yeah, and I just think that that's cool. And Sucker Punch,
1630
01:31:01.369 --> 01:31:05.529
I think, understands how to make games that are sort
1631
01:31:05.550 --> 01:31:08.170
of rich experiences outside of just like, hey, beat this
1632
01:31:08.189 --> 01:31:09.890
game once and then send it off to your friend's
1633
01:31:09.909 --> 01:31:12.920
house so they can play it. um imbuing sort of
1634
01:31:12.960 --> 01:31:17.979
character in the game itself like uh holistically yeah you
1635
01:31:18.000 --> 01:31:21.399
know it's almost like i don't know like they look
1636
01:31:21.460 --> 01:31:24.100
at like sly cooper is you know like ratchet and
1637
01:31:24.159 --> 01:31:28.720
clank ratchet's a a lomax or whatever and clank's a
1638
01:31:28.760 --> 01:31:33.689
robot jack and daxter whatever banjo and kenzui banjo and
1639
01:31:33.770 --> 01:31:36.100
kazooie are like a bear and a bird but like
1640
01:31:36.140 --> 01:31:38.199
none of that really means anything whereas like sly cooper
1641
01:31:38.220 --> 01:31:40.800
being a thief really seems to define so many elements
1642
01:31:40.859 --> 01:31:43.539
of the game so many of the reward structure being
1643
01:31:43.560 --> 01:31:45.520
like hey if you're a good thief you're gonna like
1644
01:31:45.899 --> 01:31:50.250
acquire more interesting stuff whether that's new skills through the
1645
01:31:50.289 --> 01:31:53.710
thievious raccoonist book or it's developer commentary because you're becoming
1646
01:31:53.770 --> 01:31:56.590
such a highly skilled thief um i think that that
1647
01:31:57.029 --> 01:31:59.609
like john spending so much time in this review focused
1648
01:31:59.670 --> 01:32:01.720
on like hey this game kind of like makes me
1649
01:32:01.770 --> 01:32:05.479
feel like a good thief. Without saying that outright, he's
1650
01:32:07.239 --> 01:32:10.659
able to help me understand why the game is so compelling,
1651
01:32:10.680 --> 01:32:17.470
even though at first, cartoony graphics, collect-a-thon style gameplay, those
1652
01:32:17.630 --> 01:32:20.670
aren't things that appeal to John. But he's able to
1653
01:32:22.630 --> 01:32:26.970
unpack why the game works for him, despite the surface
1654
01:32:27.010 --> 01:32:29.090
level stuff, not being up his alley. And I think that's,
1655
01:32:29.430 --> 01:32:32.590
that's pretty impressive of the game itself, but also John, uh,
1656
01:32:32.630 --> 01:32:33.390
John's criticism.
1657
01:32:33.789 --> 01:32:35.909
Yeah. And I, I like, you know, cause they do,
1658
01:32:35.949 --> 01:32:39.750
they do the, uh, uh, Spyro meets crash meets solid snake,
1659
01:32:40.329 --> 01:32:43.250
you know, um, if slime needs to sneak up against
1660
01:32:43.289 --> 01:32:45.430
a wall, solid snake style, he'll know that's what you
1661
01:32:45.449 --> 01:32:47.109
want to do. And you walk up to a wall
1662
01:32:47.140 --> 01:32:49.819
and hit the circle button, simple design thoughts like this
1663
01:32:49.859 --> 01:32:53.279
just don't show up as often as we'd like. And like, cool.
1664
01:32:53.819 --> 01:32:58.670
That's also, uh, zelda wind waker's not out yet right
1665
01:32:59.369 --> 01:33:01.939
um but like you know yeah it's it's it's not
1666
01:33:01.960 --> 01:33:04.699
just but like i i love that it's getting that
1667
01:33:04.760 --> 01:33:06.760
metal gear solid shout out and not just all like
1668
01:33:06.859 --> 01:33:09.840
here's other platformers it's like hey here's other stealth games
1669
01:33:10.239 --> 01:33:14.460
right like here's other other elements that it's incorporating and
1670
01:33:14.500 --> 01:33:16.520
he says if there's any if there are any complaints
1671
01:33:16.539 --> 01:33:17.880
the only thing i can think of is that you
1672
01:33:17.899 --> 01:33:20.970
can beat the game in less than 10 hours there's
1673
01:33:21.010 --> 01:33:22.989
no way you'll have opened everything up in that time
1674
01:33:23.050 --> 01:33:25.029
but you will have seen all the levels Fought all
1675
01:33:25.060 --> 01:33:27.640
the bosses, each of which provides a dramatically different challenge
1676
01:33:27.680 --> 01:33:32.140
from traditional hit-em-lots brawls to Parappa-style memory games, and seen
1677
01:33:32.159 --> 01:33:34.880
the first end sequence. The extra stuff really helps stretch
1678
01:33:34.899 --> 01:33:37.020
things out, though, and if you're anything like me, you'll
1679
01:33:37.060 --> 01:33:39.539
happily sit through another ten hours to do so. So
1680
01:33:41.560 --> 01:33:44.729
then this is another... bit of discourse that we've been
1681
01:33:44.750 --> 01:33:48.350
talking about lately is like, oh, how much value for money?
1682
01:33:48.449 --> 01:33:51.770
How many hours are we getting? Actually, I would prefer
1683
01:33:51.890 --> 01:33:54.149
not to have every game I play want to be
1684
01:33:54.170 --> 01:33:58.270
the only game I play, etc., etc. And this is...
1685
01:33:58.220 --> 01:34:00.579
I feel like this is kind of the beginning of
1686
01:34:00.640 --> 01:34:03.539
that discourse, right? Because there were plenty of games that
1687
01:34:03.600 --> 01:34:10.079
cost $ 50, $ 60 at this time that didn't offer a
1688
01:34:10.119 --> 01:34:13.859
whole lot of depth. 3D worlds were often... necessarily small
1689
01:34:13.939 --> 01:34:16.359
right so if you're playing like a big exploration game
1690
01:34:16.380 --> 01:34:22.510
um you know jumping flash is uh over in a
1691
01:34:22.569 --> 01:34:24.970
jiffy if you know what you're doing right like it's
1692
01:34:24.989 --> 01:34:28.840
still a super cool experience um but like the idea
1693
01:34:28.880 --> 01:34:30.380
that there were games that you could sit down and
1694
01:34:30.399 --> 01:34:34.500
beat in one sitting was not unusual necessarily um but
1695
01:34:34.539 --> 01:34:37.680
it seems like he's almost fishing for like hey heads
1696
01:34:37.819 --> 01:34:39.640
up You know, if you buy this and beat it
1697
01:34:39.760 --> 01:34:42.220
in 10 hours and don't do all these extras, you're
1698
01:34:42.300 --> 01:34:43.300
shortchanging yourself.
1699
01:34:43.800 --> 01:34:48.520
Right? Yeah. And, like, I'll say that, like, I was
1700
01:34:48.579 --> 01:34:51.659
far more concerned about that at this time than I
1701
01:34:51.739 --> 01:34:54.609
am now. Like, I look at the new Fire Emblem,
1702
01:34:54.630 --> 01:34:58.409
Fortune's Weave, that just came out. Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. And it's, like,
1703
01:34:58.409 --> 01:35:04.189
200 hours long. Ugh. And, like, they just announced four
1704
01:35:04.270 --> 01:35:09.630
more point-of-view storylines via DLC. Yeah. And I'm like, man, sorry,
1705
01:35:09.649 --> 01:35:11.829
I just can't do that. I'm just not interested in
1706
01:35:11.869 --> 01:35:16.510
spending that. If Fortune's Weave was 25 hours long, I'd
1707
01:35:16.569 --> 01:35:18.520
go and spend $ 100 and buy it and play it.
1708
01:35:20.149 --> 01:35:22.260
But I do think that part of the reason I
1709
01:35:22.380 --> 01:35:25.699
skipped out on a lot of these character platformers during
1710
01:35:25.739 --> 01:35:28.880
this time, Sly Cooper, Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank,
1711
01:35:29.060 --> 01:35:32.909
is because I knew I... If the choice was between
1712
01:35:32.949 --> 01:35:35.350
buying that or buying an RPG that was going to
1713
01:35:35.380 --> 01:35:38.920
be 40 to 50 to 60 hours long, I was
1714
01:35:39.220 --> 01:35:41.439
always going to go for the RPG. That was not
1715
01:35:41.479 --> 01:35:44.500
because it was long, but because that style of, like,
1716
01:35:44.560 --> 01:35:48.109
sinking into the game really appealed to me. That being said,
1717
01:35:48.270 --> 01:35:50.750
I think John makes a good case that Sly Cooper
1718
01:35:51.369 --> 01:35:58.350
understands that it's short and emphasizes and rewards, like, perfection. And, like,
1719
01:35:58.489 --> 01:36:02.449
gives you... incentive to like get really good at the
1720
01:36:02.489 --> 01:36:06.529
levels and that's sort of like an arcadey experience that
1721
01:36:06.670 --> 01:36:09.210
I don't think was incorporated in a lot of these
1722
01:36:11.010 --> 01:36:12.930
character platformers at the time and I think that that's
1723
01:36:13.090 --> 01:36:16.409
a compelling argument at least to say hey yeah you
1724
01:36:16.449 --> 01:36:18.029
can beat this game in 10 hours but you're gonna
1725
01:36:18.069 --> 01:36:19.800
want to come back and do all the bonus stuff
1726
01:36:19.819 --> 01:36:22.119
that requires you to like get really good at doing
1727
01:36:22.140 --> 01:36:26.699
the levels quickly. Mario 64 helped set this template for
1728
01:36:26.739 --> 01:36:33.649
like look creating 3d assets is difficult and coming up
1729
01:36:33.680 --> 01:36:36.619
with new mechanics is difficult and like one of the
1730
01:36:36.640 --> 01:36:39.159
things you can do is cut down on the asset
1731
01:36:39.180 --> 01:36:43.060
you know the work of just making big giant physical
1732
01:36:43.159 --> 01:36:48.750
worlds by making them eminently explorable and replayable and fun
1733
01:36:48.810 --> 01:36:50.989
and engaging and whimsical and put in a lot of
1734
01:36:51.029 --> 01:36:53.369
detail touches right so you have no problem going back
1735
01:36:53.409 --> 01:36:57.060
and revisiting an area to get that extra star to
1736
01:36:57.100 --> 01:36:59.520
get that extra coin to get that whatever that collectible
1737
01:36:59.640 --> 01:37:04.760
is right um and i feel like this is just
1738
01:37:04.779 --> 01:37:08.039
a really cool evolution of that in another direction where
1739
01:37:08.060 --> 01:37:09.779
you go hey and then like let's also do you
1740
01:37:09.800 --> 01:37:11.479
know we've got all these mini games and we've got
1741
01:37:11.500 --> 01:37:14.979
all these different perspectives and different mechanics that unlock you
1742
01:37:15.000 --> 01:37:18.159
know the unlockables unlock more unlockables right and so like
1743
01:37:18.399 --> 01:37:23.399
you can provide that really tight and authored experience but
1744
01:37:23.659 --> 01:37:28.000
also not take six years to develop the game or
1745
01:37:28.000 --> 01:37:32.520
10 years to develop the game yeah yeah i mean
1746
01:37:32.560 --> 01:37:40.159
like what like looking at this and this review thinking
1747
01:37:40.239 --> 01:37:44.510
back on this game uh like i'm kind of struck
1748
01:37:44.550 --> 01:37:49.130
by how this format has held up really well like
1749
01:37:49.170 --> 01:37:52.600
i'm reminded of kirby in the forgotten land which sort
1750
01:37:52.640 --> 01:37:55.140
of had the same structure where it was like 3d,
1751
01:37:55.260 --> 01:38:00.640
like kind of smaller, shorter level-based 3d platformer game that
1752
01:38:00.699 --> 01:38:03.239
like rewarded you for like, yeah, you can beat the
1753
01:38:03.279 --> 01:38:05.380
game or you can beat the levels fairly quickly, but
1754
01:38:05.399 --> 01:38:09.279
you're rewarded for kind of coming back and, um, you know,
1755
01:38:09.300 --> 01:38:12.850
becoming an expert in those levels. Um, and I think
1756
01:38:12.890 --> 01:38:15.029
that this was just like, I think Sly Cooper was
1757
01:38:15.109 --> 01:38:17.949
interesting and succeeded because it wasn't trying to be Super
1758
01:38:18.010 --> 01:38:21.569
Mario 64. It understood, uh, You know, that there was
1759
01:38:21.609 --> 01:38:29.579
still space for, like, linear, like, densely packed, linear, creative platforming, 3D...
1760
01:38:30.119 --> 01:38:32.979
platforming levels that not everything so i had to emulate
1761
01:38:33.060 --> 01:38:41.050
that like mario 64 um structure um and i think
1762
01:38:41.109 --> 01:38:43.689
it just succeeded for for being its own thing and
1763
01:38:43.729 --> 01:38:48.520
try new things um in a way that obviously worked.
1764
01:38:48.539 --> 01:38:50.020
There are lots of games that tried things and it
1765
01:38:50.060 --> 01:38:52.220
just didn't work and we've forgotten about them. But I
1766
01:38:52.239 --> 01:38:54.859
think Sly Cooper was one of those instances where Sucker
1767
01:38:54.880 --> 01:38:58.260
Punch is just a good developer, right? And they brought
1768
01:38:58.340 --> 01:39:02.310
ideas together that worked really well and worked cohesively together
1769
01:39:02.729 --> 01:39:03.149
really well.
1770
01:39:03.909 --> 01:39:07.569
John Davison wraps up. Final score, five out of five. Superb.
1771
01:39:07.670 --> 01:39:11.149
Five red dots. What do you think of this review?
1772
01:39:11.250 --> 01:39:14.250
How do you score John's review of Sly Cooper and
1773
01:39:14.270 --> 01:39:15.149
the Thievius Raccoonists?
1774
01:39:16.380 --> 01:39:18.649
Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty clear that I
1775
01:39:18.689 --> 01:39:21.250
like this review. I think it is a strong review.
1776
01:39:23.029 --> 01:39:26.529
I would say I like the way that John sort
1777
01:39:26.569 --> 01:39:30.989
of interrogates his own personal tastes and isn't afraid to
1778
01:39:31.010 --> 01:39:33.270
be like, hey, typically I don't like this type of game.
1779
01:39:33.989 --> 01:39:37.300
I liked this one. Why? And looks at why it
1780
01:39:37.340 --> 01:39:39.920
worked for him. I think this is a really strong review.
1781
01:39:40.020 --> 01:39:45.149
I'm going to dock it a point because... It just
1782
01:39:45.229 --> 01:39:47.090
saves all of the criticisms for the end in the
1783
01:39:47.130 --> 01:39:50.510
way that I don't like. And I've talked about that
1784
01:39:50.550 --> 01:39:52.569
a lot on this show. I don't like when you
1785
01:39:52.609 --> 01:39:55.050
write something that's big and open and be like, oh yeah,
1786
01:39:55.090 --> 01:39:57.010
by the way, here are my complaints.
1787
01:39:57.130 --> 01:39:58.590
Right, right, right.
1788
01:39:59.050 --> 01:40:01.189
But I mean, docking at a point, I'd still put
1789
01:40:01.229 --> 01:40:03.869
it at a good 8.5 out of 10.
1790
01:40:03.869 --> 01:40:04.449
Okay.
1791
01:40:05.289 --> 01:40:09.029
Pages from the Thievius Raccoonus.
1792
01:40:09.220 --> 01:40:12.600
Okay, I'm going to give it 9 out of 10
1793
01:40:12.600 --> 01:40:16.140
pages of Thievius Raccoonus. For the reasons you say, I also,
1794
01:40:16.220 --> 01:40:19.840
I love the kind of bolded points for like, because
1795
01:40:20.520 --> 01:40:24.180
if you look, this is very much like the next
1796
01:40:24.220 --> 01:40:27.500
gen style of review where a lot of these reviews,
1797
01:40:28.159 --> 01:40:32.039
you know, a couple of these 5.1, you know, five
1798
01:40:32.079 --> 01:40:34.060
out of five ones are bigger, but a lot of
1799
01:40:34.090 --> 01:40:36.909
them are smaller. Even there's, you know, four star games
1800
01:40:37.270 --> 01:40:39.630
that are only getting like three or four paragraphs.
1801
01:40:39.770 --> 01:40:40.010
Right.
1802
01:40:40.710 --> 01:40:43.899
So most of these are just not that long. but
1803
01:40:43.939 --> 01:40:49.159
they blocked out a huge section. You know, he's one, two, three, four,
1804
01:40:49.189 --> 01:40:53.250
you know, four or five reviews sometimes even on one page.
1805
01:40:54.069 --> 01:40:56.350
But this is a, this, they get this big block out.
1806
01:40:56.430 --> 01:40:58.930
It's the first review, you know, it's like, this is
1807
01:40:59.029 --> 01:41:02.890
the big review of the month. Right. And so I,
1808
01:41:03.050 --> 01:41:04.529
I like that. And I like that. They kind of
1809
01:41:04.569 --> 01:41:07.039
signpost that, like you said, I like that he defends
1810
01:41:07.119 --> 01:41:10.760
against his own bias and also hit the presumed bias
1811
01:41:10.779 --> 01:41:14.859
of the audience and, Yeah, and it's really cool. It
1812
01:41:14.880 --> 01:41:17.810
gives it a great score. And apparently, again, I missed it.
1813
01:41:18.279 --> 01:41:24.449
I think it's interesting, though, that it kind of underscores
1814
01:41:24.470 --> 01:41:26.609
to wrap back to the beginning. What is the cover?
1815
01:41:26.829 --> 01:41:28.130
All Vice City. All pink.
1816
01:41:28.750 --> 01:41:28.989
Right.
1817
01:41:29.449 --> 01:41:33.390
There is the very, very, very slightest nod towards Sly
1818
01:41:33.430 --> 01:41:37.350
Cooper because there's a picture of the DVD disc that
1819
01:41:37.390 --> 01:41:40.069
has the Sly Cooper logo here. But you would never know.
1820
01:41:40.649 --> 01:41:40.850
Right.
1821
01:41:41.300 --> 01:41:45.260
So in many other months or in many other magazines,
1822
01:41:45.920 --> 01:41:47.920
the fact that there's a five, a five star game
1823
01:41:48.760 --> 01:41:52.159
that is friend, you know, sucker punch wasn't synonymous with it.
1824
01:41:52.159 --> 01:41:54.159
You know, it wasn't as big a deal then as
1825
01:41:54.199 --> 01:41:56.420
it is now as it is then as it is now. Yeah.
1826
01:41:56.460 --> 01:41:58.539
Then as it is now. But like the fact that
1827
01:41:58.560 --> 01:42:01.140
you had a first party title, five out of five
1828
01:42:01.180 --> 01:42:04.310
gets your biggest review of the month. This is kind
1829
01:42:04.340 --> 01:42:07.239
of what you sacrifice by going for this gigantic thing
1830
01:42:07.260 --> 01:42:09.760
that only covers that one big feature, even though this
1831
01:42:09.819 --> 01:42:12.539
magazine is stuffed full of incredible stuff, right? So you've
1832
01:42:12.560 --> 01:42:15.619
got this cover that just erases everything else because it's like,
1833
01:42:15.699 --> 01:42:20.000
pick this up because we have Vice City stuff. And like,
1834
01:42:20.579 --> 01:42:23.439
I just think that's a shame. And it's also partly,
1835
01:42:23.460 --> 01:42:26.880
you know, may have partly explained why I missed the
1836
01:42:26.899 --> 01:42:29.619
fact that Sly Cooper even existed because it wasn't defended
1837
01:42:29.960 --> 01:42:31.800
in the rest of the magazine the way that Vice
1838
01:42:31.819 --> 01:42:32.760
City and SOCOM were.
1839
01:42:33.810 --> 01:42:37.350
With GTA six coming out, like we're seeing so many
1840
01:42:37.390 --> 01:42:40.390
games push their release dates to get outside of that
1841
01:42:40.770 --> 01:42:44.449
GTA window. Right. Yep. Um, and that does speak a
1842
01:42:44.470 --> 01:42:48.460
lot to discoverability and like random games that like don't
1843
01:42:48.520 --> 01:42:52.260
compete with vice city or GTA six, sorry, outside of
1844
01:42:52.319 --> 01:42:56.020
anything other than just people's time and attention. Right. Um,
1845
01:42:56.050 --> 01:42:59.010
that's so many publishers and developers are like, Oh, we're
1846
01:42:59.069 --> 01:43:00.750
not going to be able to get anyone to pay
1847
01:43:00.789 --> 01:43:04.569
attention to anything we're doing in this window, this GTA
1848
01:43:04.609 --> 01:43:07.609
six window. So we're just going to push out, eat
1849
01:43:07.649 --> 01:43:10.630
the costs of delaying our game, and then hope that
1850
01:43:10.710 --> 01:43:15.229
we can catch people's attention, uh, you know, in the future,
1851
01:43:15.890 --> 01:43:18.109
which I think, you know, 20 years later, 25 years later,
1852
01:43:19.819 --> 01:43:22.189
Magazines aren't around anymore, but we're still sort of dealing
1853
01:43:22.229 --> 01:43:24.850
with the same issues where it's like GTA comes out
1854
01:43:24.869 --> 01:43:27.810
and it's like, OK, can't really compete with that.
1855
01:43:28.090 --> 01:43:28.310
Right.
1856
01:43:28.869 --> 01:43:29.050
Right.
1857
01:43:29.729 --> 01:43:33.270
All right. Well, that is our review of official U.S.
1858
01:43:33.310 --> 01:43:38.909
PlayStation magazine's review of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. Oldglory.com
1859
01:43:38.930 --> 01:43:41.899
does not have any Sly Cooper merch, but they do
1860
01:43:41.949 --> 01:43:46.819
have Alice Cooper merch. So if you want Alice Cooper
1861
01:43:46.960 --> 01:43:52.050
face paint, Alice Cooper t-shirts, Alice Cooper key chains, you
1862
01:43:52.060 --> 01:43:56.329
can go to oldglory.com. Use our promo code FOOSDAY. That's Tuesday.
1863
01:43:56.449 --> 01:43:59.210
But starting with an F, just like if you follow
1864
01:43:59.750 --> 01:44:02.489
at funfactorpod.com on Blue Sky, we talk about Fun Factor
1865
01:44:02.529 --> 01:44:06.600
Foo's Day when we drop our new episodes every two weeks.
1866
01:44:07.680 --> 01:44:10.300
Just use that promo code. You save 15%. We get
1867
01:44:10.319 --> 01:44:11.779
a little bit of a hookup on the back end.
1868
01:44:12.229 --> 01:44:15.930
It helps us out. Please check out oldglory.com. And hey,
1869
01:44:15.989 --> 01:44:17.689
go ahead and help us spread the show around. Leave
1870
01:44:17.729 --> 01:44:21.189
a comment. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts. We will
1871
01:44:21.989 --> 01:44:25.449
read the best, funnest, we will read the best, kindest,
1872
01:44:25.689 --> 01:44:28.470
and most entertaining ones on the air. Comment on YouTube.
1873
01:44:28.510 --> 01:44:31.569
Our YouTube channel continues to grow bit by bit. We're
1874
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1875
01:44:34.130 --> 01:44:37.430
are paying attention. Engage with us on there, and it'll
1876
01:44:37.449 --> 01:44:40.279
help the algorithm show us to more people And hey,
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01:44:40.300 --> 01:44:43.460
you can always just chat us up either on Blue
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1879
01:44:47.159 --> 01:44:49.800
great community there with a bunch of really cool people
1880
01:44:49.819 --> 01:44:51.880
who are also making great content in a lot of
1881
01:44:51.899 --> 01:44:55.170
cases or work on these magazines or both. And hey,
1882
01:44:55.510 --> 01:44:57.710
you won't have to wait a whole month for your
1883
01:44:57.729 --> 01:45:00.409
next installment. Unlike these old magazines, we drop new episodes
1884
01:45:00.529 --> 01:45:03.510
every two weeks. So go to funfactorpod.com. Follow the show
1885
01:45:03.529 --> 01:45:05.569
on your podcast of your choice. Get on the Discord.
1886
01:45:05.609 --> 01:45:09.159
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1887
01:45:09.199 --> 01:45:12.680
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01:45:12.779 --> 01:45:15.960
our Discord. If you do, you and we will have
1889
01:45:15.979 --> 01:45:20.479
a maximum score in Fun Factor.
1890
01:45:35.529 --> 01:45:39.789
The road, uh, the main road near my house is
1891
01:45:39.869 --> 01:45:42.649
like awful. And it was built as like, it was
1892
01:45:42.689 --> 01:45:44.640
never meant to sustain the level of traffic that it
1893
01:45:44.680 --> 01:45:47.699
gets now. And so we have accidents there regularly. And
1894
01:45:47.739 --> 01:45:51.140
a guy just drove straight through the internet, like the
1895
01:45:51.300 --> 01:45:53.800
networking box at the front of my neighborhood, like just
1896
01:45:54.539 --> 01:45:56.979
completely plowed it over. And not the first time that's
1897
01:45:57.000 --> 01:46:01.100
happened too. As you know, I've got a few tattoos
1898
01:46:01.140 --> 01:46:05.399
this year. Uh, my first. Yeah. And before, I wanted
1899
01:46:05.439 --> 01:46:08.060
tattoos since I was a teenager. And thank goodness I
1900
01:46:08.079 --> 01:46:10.680
didn't get one when I was a teenager. But I
1901
01:46:10.699 --> 01:46:13.090
was always like, I never did because I was paralyzed
1902
01:46:13.130 --> 01:46:14.869
by like, oh, it's got to be perfect. It's got
1903
01:46:14.890 --> 01:46:17.270
to be like the tattoo. And now I have a
1904
01:46:17.329 --> 01:46:18.789
few and I'm like, yeah, I'd go to a zoo
1905
01:46:18.829 --> 01:46:19.810
and get a bad tattoo.
1906
01:46:20.189 --> 01:46:25.149
Yeah, man. You and me, once again, same brain. Where
1907
01:46:25.289 --> 01:46:28.850
I desperately wanted a tattoo. And at this time in 2002...
1908
01:46:28.850 --> 01:46:31.430
Like the guy who was the drummer in our band,
1909
01:46:31.550 --> 01:46:33.989
this would have been almost exactly the time I was like, yeah,
1910
01:46:34.010 --> 01:46:36.229
I'm going to get a tattoo and it's going to
1911
01:46:36.270 --> 01:46:40.760
be like a full back tattoo that incorporates like the
1912
01:46:40.810 --> 01:46:44.659
elements of magic from Chrono Trigger and like, like a
1913
01:46:44.739 --> 01:46:48.060
baobab tree. And like, it's going to have like that
1914
01:46:48.159 --> 01:46:50.199
and like, you know, a moon because my wife and
1915
01:46:50.220 --> 01:46:52.239
I had a thing with the moon. And so I'm like, oh,
1916
01:46:52.260 --> 01:46:53.970
I don't know if there'd be like a moon over it.
1917
01:46:54.390 --> 01:47:00.029
And then my, my girlfriend will be like a fairy
1918
01:47:00.350 --> 01:47:03.760
on the moon, you know? And I'm just like, like, okay.
1919
01:47:03.779 --> 01:47:03.960
Yeah.
1920
01:47:04.020 --> 01:47:07.020
First tattoo absolutely has to be like a gigantic, like
1921
01:47:07.119 --> 01:47:09.800
everything I'm into as a teenager, fullback tattoo, like has
1922
01:47:09.819 --> 01:47:12.260
to be absolutely perfect. And then I didn't get one till,
1923
01:47:12.720 --> 01:47:17.079
you know, a couple, a few years ago. Um, and
1924
01:47:17.119 --> 01:47:19.750
to be fair, it was one of the elements of,
1925
01:47:20.020 --> 01:47:22.729
of bullshit I was into as a teenager, uh, which
1926
01:47:22.789 --> 01:47:26.479
is a Phoenix, but, uh, still it was, It's a
1927
01:47:26.520 --> 01:47:27.649
much better tattoo than.
1928
01:47:27.689 --> 01:47:30.350
Anything I would have thought. Let's see if you can
1929
01:47:30.390 --> 01:47:35.649
show chat. Show chat your back of your calf.
1930
01:47:35.750 --> 01:47:37.729
Yeah, okay.
1931
01:47:38.590 --> 01:47:43.380
Oh my gosh, you can. Incredible. Yeah, I definitely would
1932
01:47:43.399 --> 01:47:47.760
have got a Goku full back tattoo. Which, honestly, I
1933
01:47:47.920 --> 01:47:49.020
would probably still be into. Absolutely.
1934
01:47:51.130 --> 01:47:56.390
Sorry, I spilled my drink when I did that. No! Oh, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1935
01:47:56.750 --> 01:47:58.109
Sorry. My bad.
1936
01:47:58.270 --> 01:48:02.640
I'm gonna zoom in on this a little bit. We
1937
01:48:02.680 --> 01:48:04.100
have in here....
1938
01:48:07.239 --> 01:48:11.310
Grand Theft Auto 3 changed the video... Changed the video games?
1939
01:48:12.710 --> 01:48:15.050
Quote. Can you hear that?
1940
01:48:15.649 --> 01:48:18.189
There's a truck that just turned on. A diesel truck.
1941
01:48:18.210 --> 01:48:19.670
Can you hear that? I did not.
1942
01:48:20.029 --> 01:48:23.789
i can't okay great it's okay sounds good uh we
1943
01:48:23.829 --> 01:48:25.609
also have to do our fupa.
1944
01:48:25.189 --> 01:48:30.489
Uh yes i didn't actually write the ad copy um
1945
01:48:30.609 --> 01:48:32.609
yet uh but i can just i can just wing
1946
01:48:32.649 --> 01:48:34.970
it i was going to like smooth i was gonna
1947
01:48:35.350 --> 01:48:38.909
smooth it in um so yeah okay.
1948
01:48:40.649 --> 01:48:44.210
As long as you can't hear that truck engine rumbling,
1949
01:48:44.229 --> 01:48:47.210
then we're good to go. I'm good.
1950
01:48:47.430 --> 01:48:50.590
Go ahead. Def Jam Wrestling?
1951
01:48:51.310 --> 01:48:51.569
What is.
1952
01:48:52.449 --> 01:48:57.630
Oh, dear. Def Jam Wrestling. Yeah, like Def Jam Rap.
1953
01:48:58.149 --> 01:49:01.680
The rap record. Man, wrestling games. Also having a moment.
1954
01:49:03.539 --> 01:49:03.659
Um.
1955
01:49:05.460 --> 01:49:09.119
where'd you go where'd you go like no help where'd
1956
01:49:09.159 --> 01:49:11.180
she go we're all and so she has she does
1957
01:49:11.199 --> 01:49:13.279
the like okay everyone i'm i'm just gonna be i'm
1958
01:49:13.300 --> 01:49:17.939
gonna be right back like don't worry three year old
1959
01:49:17.979 --> 01:49:21.119
yeah yeah okay guys like if he was oh thank
1960
01:49:21.159 --> 01:49:24.560
god we were so concerned you know it's very funny
1961
01:49:25.180 --> 01:49:29.220
uh that's raylet r-a-e-l-e-t uh on youtube she does an
1962
01:49:29.260 --> 01:49:34.529
awesome job doing uh Pretty Derby, Umamasume, and Fire Emblem content.
1963
01:49:34.930 --> 01:49:38.149
It's a very cool community. Also, of course, I'm the
1964
01:49:38.229 --> 01:49:40.829
old guy in the community, but it's fun.
1965
01:49:42.750 --> 01:49:43.010
Yeah.
1966
01:49:43.869 --> 01:49:45.489
And go ahead, if you have something.
1967
01:49:45.510 --> 01:49:45.569
Oh.
1968
01:49:47.909 --> 01:49:51.920
Sorry, we can cut this to save this for the outtakes.
1969
01:49:52.100 --> 01:49:54.619
I just got a call from, I recognized it as
1970
01:49:54.960 --> 01:49:58.140
an actual local number. And I was like, all right, cool.
1971
01:49:58.180 --> 01:50:00.350
Then I use the iPhone, like, yeah, cool, screen it.
1972
01:50:00.359 --> 01:50:02.380
And it just sends me a transcript of the voicemail
1973
01:50:02.460 --> 01:50:05.949
as it's being recorded. And they're like, hey, yeah, this
1974
01:50:06.029 --> 01:50:11.130
is so-and-so from Schuller Books, which is my local indie bookstore. Yeah,
1975
01:50:11.189 --> 01:50:14.270
we just got the latest fantasy and science fiction magazine in,
1976
01:50:15.010 --> 01:50:18.789
which I can't remember the last time, because I used
1977
01:50:18.829 --> 01:50:21.239
to have them, yeah, hold a copy for that, right?
1978
01:50:21.279 --> 01:50:22.739
They used to just keep it on the shelf, and
1979
01:50:22.760 --> 01:50:24.479
then they stopped stocking it. And I was like, okay, well,
1980
01:50:25.220 --> 01:50:27.590
whenever a new one comes out, bring it you know
1981
01:50:27.619 --> 01:50:30.069
buy it and then hold it for me yeah um
1982
01:50:30.670 --> 01:50:33.029
and so it's been a year a year and a
1983
01:50:33.069 --> 01:50:35.449
half like i genuinely don't know when the last time
1984
01:50:35.470 --> 01:50:38.449
they actually shipped a physical copy so i knew i
1985
01:50:38.470 --> 01:50:42.760
knew you would appreciate like the what they shipped they
1986
01:50:42.840 --> 01:50:46.380
actually printed and shipped a copy of final of fantasy
1987
01:50:46.420 --> 01:50:49.199
and science fiction in the year of our lord 2026 that's.
1988
01:50:48.840 --> 01:50:53.180
Uh that we should do a bonus episode on dude
1989
01:50:53.600 --> 01:50:55.359
science fiction fantasy.
1990
01:50:54.810 --> 01:50:57.310
Oh my lord yeah media.
1991
01:50:56.930 --> 01:51:00.590
Like yes because i like what what's happened to that
1992
01:51:00.609 --> 01:51:03.260
magazine is heartbreak yes it is but i'll just leave
1993
01:51:03.279 --> 01:51:03.640
it yes it.
1994
01:51:03.680 --> 01:51:09.220
Is all right um so skipping back uh to the
1995
01:51:09.319 --> 01:51:13.310
actual review for a second here yeah um yeah and
1996
01:51:13.359 --> 01:51:15.890
really kind of finishing it up i i think this
1997
01:51:15.989 --> 01:51:19.810
is you know all right well aiden john davison gives
1998
01:51:19.970 --> 01:51:23.840
this game five out of five so like there we
1999
01:51:23.859 --> 01:51:28.619
go uh the superb right uh what do you give
2000
01:51:29.439 --> 01:51:33.590
uh john's review of i i you're muted oh shit
2001
01:51:34.689 --> 01:51:37.810
okay so sorry all right yeah all right so aiden.
2002
01:51:39.189 --> 01:51:40.989
All right to get it out that was a good
2003
01:51:41.050 --> 01:51:45.449
one yeah that was a crazy issue there's still There's
2004
01:51:45.470 --> 01:51:46.449
still 50 pages.
2005
01:51:46.590 --> 01:51:49.399
Right. Dude, I know. I was like flipping through it.
2006
01:51:49.409 --> 01:51:50.789
I'm like, oh, yeah, this is cool. This is cool.
2007
01:51:50.829 --> 01:51:53.590
This is cool. And like I had noted some stuff
2008
01:51:53.729 --> 01:51:56.670
to note. And then we were actually going through it
2009
01:51:56.750 --> 01:51:58.470
page by page. I'm like, oh, my God, there's so
2010
01:51:58.569 --> 01:52:01.550
much here. There's so much here. There's so much more.
2011
01:52:01.569 --> 01:52:03.149
Tips and tricks for DVDs.
2012
01:52:04.880 --> 01:52:08.520
Oh here's a game i didn't know existed missed three exile.
2013
01:52:08.159 --> 01:52:10.300
Oh yeah yeah i saw that too i was like
2014
01:52:10.420 --> 01:52:12.319
what because i was looking at the reviews right and
2015
01:52:12.340 --> 01:52:14.689
i was like what missed three i don't remember a
2016
01:52:14.729 --> 01:52:17.189
missed three i remember like missed and then there's like
2017
01:52:17.210 --> 01:52:19.229
a missed two and then there was riven when was
2018
01:52:19.270 --> 01:52:21.090
missed riven yeah.
2019
01:52:21.010 --> 01:52:24.449
Yeah unbelievable okay well there you go
2020
01:52:24.470 --> 01:52:27.529
Yeah i believe there's a reason why we didn't hear
2021
01:52:27.550 --> 01:52:30.029
a whole lot about it oh my gosh