Ace Combat 8 is the Fastest Selling Game in the Series

Hey everybody, welcome to Game Mess Mornings with me, Jeff Grubb, your host from GiantBomb.com.

Thank you for tuning in.

In this episode, we're going to be talking about even more games coming from a classic series and why you just can't trust those reviews. It's going to be a good one because we have Lex Luddy on the show.

Lexi, how are you doing?

I have a tall glass of water and instantly started choking on it.

Yeah, let's go. That's the way to start a show way to start a Friday.

Yeah.

Things have been going well. I slept for one hour last night. This is going to be a fun one. Um, before we get started, I do want to shout out, uh, Rhiannon Bevan, who has been on the show several times before, uh, one of my favorite people in the world, one of the best reporters in the games industry recently lost their job. Uh, shit, the gamer, um, I'm not under contract with the gamers, so I can say, fuck Valnet. So, yeah, if you have an opportunity or you're looking for one of the best, like, original reporters and writers and interviewers out there, go check out Rhiannon. She's on Blue Sky at Read the Witch. Also, if you haven't seen it, I reposted it on my Blue Sky recently. Her interview with Randy Pitchford, where she

accidentally makes him have an existential crisis about the heat death of the universe, when she asks him about Battleborn being shut down. Really good stuff. Really, really incredible stuff.

We're big fans of Rhiannon over here, for sure. Yes, that is very frustrating to hear, as always. But yes, hopefully... people recognize just how wonderful she is and able to get more work. Um, yeah, that's that God, it's every week in this business right now. That's how it goes.

Um, yes. Well, like I said, big fans of her. Lexi, how are you doing? Otherwise? Um, we are a million games have come out.

There's still stuff coming out this year, but I am now kind of like, okay, what can I get cleaned up before Zelda? And, and then, and then Grand Theft Auto. Uh, how are you feeling about this whole year of playing video games?

Yeah, so I'm working on kind of the one last review I have on deck, which is a pretty long game. And it's kind of a bummer because all I want to be doing right now is playing Galactic Racer. And also maybe... Grub, I want to play Rainblood Town of Death. Do you know what Rainblood Town of Death is?

No, but I would like to be educated on it.

Rainblood Town of Death is an RPG maker game from 2010, developed by Soulframe Liang, who is the game director on Phantom Blade Zero, which is coming out next month. So I've been following this game since like 2023 was when I first played it at Gamescom, maybe. Yeah, Gamescom. I've played at Gamescom, SGF, and also TGS.

Okay.

And I've played it, like, four times now over the course of development. That game is super interesting, and its development history, while really hard to track down, is very interesting, because Soulframe was literally, like, the most indie of indie developers in the Chinese scene, from what I can tell, and at some point managed to convince NetEase and Tencent to give him hundreds of millions of dollars to make AAA action games.

Um.

So I would love to talk to that guy, but I've been playing his original RPG, which got a fan translation into English and is on the Internet Archive. And it is surprisingly compelling. It's the same story, or at least some of the same elements of Phantom Blade Zero. Like, it's the same protagonist, and he also only has a certain number of days left to live and the whole thing.

But it... It confounds me and compels me. So, like, if you're curious to check out something weird and maybe a little bit janky and you might have to toy with it a little bit, I had to go in as an admin and create a save file folder because there wasn't one in the version that I downloaded. Otherwise, it kept crashing. You can do that from the Internet Archive and you can check out that game and it's actually kind... It has some ideas.

Yeah, I love that kind of stuff.

I definitely have recently been looking into Toby Fox's early like fan games and stuff like that for a variety of reasons. Earthbound Halloween edition or whatever it's called.

Yeah, that's that seems very interesting. I apparently like.

That song, Megalomania, like the early version of that song appears in there. Definitely love like just kind of seeing where a lot of the big names in the space got their start. And a lot of them go back to mods and things like that or Doom wads. I love that. So very cool. And man, Phantom Blade Zero seems like It's going to be very good. I don't know.

Yeah, I previewed like four hours of it at Gamescom. That is not a Souls-like. It is an action game. And I think that's the thing that you need to go into it with that in mind. And I think when it leans into the action gameness of it, it's really compelling. When it does try to do a bit more Souls-like stuff with the bosses, I wasn't feeling it quite as much. But yeah, apart from that, I've been busy working away on reviews. I would like to get to that Hellraiser game at some point on Silent Hill.

Yeah, I want to try it.

Just because it's spooky season. But also, I've been acting as your pit crew for Star Wars Galactic Racer. Yeah, I appreciate that. Has that helped you?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was, uh, that was smart stuff.

Uh, soft tires for this lap. Yeah.

I appreciate that.

Yeah.

The race engineer, uh, Lex Lutty has been very helpful. Um, yeah, no, it's been great setting times in galactic racer. I am still loving, loving, loving that game.

And you know what?

We're doing the bomb 12 today. Let's see if it ends up on there. Uh, and to do that, let's, uh, let's get started with the show.

Everybody.

Um, Hey, thanks for tuning in. Let's explain ourselves. Giantbomb.com. Go to giantbomb.com slash join. Become a premium member. If you do, you're supporting independent games media. You're going to get ad-free versions of our shows, and you're going to get access to a bunch of premium-only stuff.

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You know, every weekend is a good time to check because we often put up stuff on Saturdays, and then you can catch up on the stuff that we put up over the week. If you're a premium member, go watch those shows. Lots of cool stuff happening. This is the run, Sewer Shark. Kat Gerfman, go check out all of those. As far as this show goes, most weekdays, I, Jeff Grubb, will help piece your gaming life back together.

That includes breaking news and maybe even some of our own original reporting. For all these topics, I'll get the input of a bona fide expert who will make me look smart.

If you are watching live on Twitch, welcome.

You can always listen to the show later on podcast feeds by searching for Game Mess Mornings or find the RSS feed on giantbomb.com. You can also catch the show later with chapters and timestamps on YouTube.

Hello, YouTube. All right, we have a lot to get into.

So let's start the morning mess with Ace Combat 8 becomes the series' fastest seller to 1 million. This is from Bandai Namco kind of announcing this. Bandai Namco says Ace Combat 8 Wings of Thief has exceeded 1 million worldwide sales faster than any previous entry. It is available on PS5, Xbox Series X and S and PC. Obviously, the 87 on OpenCritic and Metacritic is going to help with that. That is the second highest rated entry in the series behind only Ace Combat 4. Yeah, I mean, God, if you build it, they will come. Certainly feels like what this story is screaming.

And.

you know, it also feels like.

Yeah, we've been telling you make these kinds of games, make more of this stuff and we'll play it.

And like, what do you hate money?

And a lot of times it's like, man, I hope people show up and play the game, but more and more, it feels like these games that have a cache from that timeframe, obviously are going to be very popular with the old heads, but enough, of that stuff is floating around in YouTube video essays and Reddit threads that plenty of people from younger generations are well aware of these games at this point, and it feels like that is working in the favor of when you get a new one, it has enough hype, and it breaks through right away.

What's your read on this?

Ace Combat 8 just delivering immediately out of the gate.

Yeah, I think there's some element of Bandai Namco wanting to emulate capcom to a certain extent of course they have their multiple pillar franchises and bandai always has its um anime licensed stuff which well it's not licensed because they own most of it but like they they do their anime games that do extremely well for them but i think there is a There's at least someone there at the company who is savvy enough to be like, hey, we also have these other original IPs that we aren't doing anything with. And we look across that like Capcom and they are having great success with their original IP and even, you know, bringing back Onimusha. starting work on new things like pragmat and things like that why aren't

we doing more of that um and i think you're also seeing konami try to do this a little bit at the moment with they're doing more of a let's shop out or projects to external partners rather than develop them internally but like that um that uh what's it again something in velvet that rpg set in new york in 1930s new york like that's I saw someone on Blue Sky say that that looks like a tree. game from the ps3 era and i'm like fuck yeah it does fuck yeah this looks like something that would have come out around the same time as folklore or something um and i'm way into it so like i'm all for these kind of mid-budget Ace Combat probably had a sizable budget, but, you know, not the biggest budget of

the biggest budget games that can sell quite well, that can keep on selling quite well and do kind of have legs. Like, Ace Combat 7 kind of had really good legs. That's why they worked on this game, was because it kept on selling as the generation went on and as years went by. So, yeah, I'm glad this is doing well, but I really just hope this means we get a new Ridge Racer.

Yeah, I mean, that's the question.

If I keep speaking it into reality... eventually it will.

Happen you would hope so it's but like yeah like this is one of their their old head franchises that they have produced games uh in that series like relatively recently they've kept it going and i wonder if that gives them more confidence of like well yeah ace combat 7's already proven that that there is an audience for this thing and well you know we'll make another one and now you wonder if it's like okay do they attribute this game breaking through to like well that's just ace combat i think that would be a little silly i think you know you can do this with a lot of other stuff but There hasn't been a Ridge Racer in, you know, the last one of those probably wasn't too far.

When was it? Oh, seven?

No, seven on the PS3.

Yes, right. On the PS3.

Right. So that was like a launch game.

Yes. So forever ago.

Yeah.

So like that is going to be the kind of thing where they might have a little bit more trepidation. But you I think the lesson to be learned here is you take what worked with Ace Combat. and pick the next franchise, and how is Ridge Racer kind of not at the top of the list?

You know, number one or number two there.

I really hope that we get a follow-up story in the next couple of weeks, or the next couple of days, that Star Wars Galactic Racer is doing similar numbers. Because then, at that point, it's like, oh, we can make arcade racing games again, that are fun, and not just Sims, and aren't Forza Horizon. I think Screamer kind of underperformed, but that game was... pretty niche and was trying some weird things and I appreciate it for that. I think that Star Wars Galactic Racer and Clutch, which is meant to come out next year from the ex-Forza people and Maverick games, I want to say, that will be like a big bellwether for whether... I went into a secondhand store the other day and was just, like, looking at, like,

Project Gotham Racing and, you know, like, all of these racing franchises that existed... alongside each other. And I just was really bummed out. Like I was looking at Dirt 3 and all of the Need for Speed and all of these things where you're like, man, remember when we could just like reliably get three really good racing games every single year and you could play through the entire campaign and be like, oh, that was really fun.

Yep.

Yeah.

And it's obviously there is, you know, making the games more expensive. So they are the sort of equation that they put their numbers through is a little bit different. But there's also clearly more people playing games now and a bigger space opened up for games in that genre because it's not as crowded. So yeah, Star Wars Galactic Racer is going to be a phenomenal success. It is obviously catching on with that wider audience. And it's going to sell gangbusters or whatever the phrase is. It's going to be a blockbuster smash hit.

And obviously.

People will always reckon, hey, OK, well, it's Star Wars. We don't have the Star Wars license. Well, how do we do this? But there are other ways to approach it with things that are familiar. I definitely want to buy into a world in which we get a new Ridge Racer. So I'm trying to manifest that a little bit like you were.

But I think it would be the right choice at this point. I think Ridge Racer could take off.

Maybe it won't do a million in a couple of days like Ace Combat 8 did. But there's a chance it really could catch on if it's as good as Ace Combat 8.

All right.

Wolverine shows how much business Sony is risking with its all with its move to all digital. We talked a little bit about this yesterday, but there's some other tidbits of information in this story from Andy Robinson at VGC who writes. Sony and Insomniac's big PS5 exclusive Marvel's Wolverine saw 35 percent of its launch sales come from the physical disc version.

That's according to Ampere sales.

Data published by the game business, which suggests that the PlayStation title sold strongly at physical retail, despite recent confirmation that Sony is ending disc production. According to GSD data, which is additional data here, Wolverine's physical split was even higher in Europe at launch in the wider European area with 51% of sales coming from the boxed version. And that differs greatly depending on which country you're looking at.

So for example, in the UK, two-thirds of Wolverine's sales were digital. But in France, more than two-thirds were physical. So culturally, regionally, there's vast differences here. Point is, when you average it out throughout all of Europe, half of Wolverine's launch sales were digital.

Physical.

Um, that is a much bigger number Lexi than what Sony throws around when they talk about the reasons for doing this. And it's, it's the kind of thing where I think, um, they did a decent job, especially early on in this, in this narrative arc we're in with them explaining they're going all digital and, of burying this sort of thing.

They were like, no, man, look at the numbers.

And they would reduce the numbers in such a way to make a physical look extremely small. And to be fair, I bet they do look at it that way for the most part of total games sold. And when you are taking everything into account, physical games are a much smaller piece of the pie because a lot of games come out that are digital only. And I bet they do kind of just look at it that way if you are a bean counter. But for a game like Wolverine, this kind of makes the point that physical collectors will point to, which is some of these things are still, you know, a huge portion of the audience wants the physical version. And it feels hard to argue when you're talking about 50 percent or even 35 percent. That's a

big piece of the pie. And then obviously the argument would be, well, Sony expects almost all those people to switch to all digital devices. And yeah, that's a risk, though. It's a risk, and it feels like a risk that is manifesting in a lot of different ways right now.

Lexi, what do you think?

Yeah, I think it's interesting because a lot of this is extremely regional. I think that you are seeing certain regions where physical is a lot stronger and a lot more just part of the culture. You know, Japan, Europe, places like that. And, you know, places with shitty internet, things like that. um and sony's argument would be well those are smaller markets so why would we care about those when we are a global company focusing on the biggest markets that we can the thing that i always get hung up on when companies kind of use that logic is especially companies like sony while they are now largely based out of america or playstation is um they do want to be global brands and part of being a global brand is operating globally you have to be

accessible it's why it was so confounding when all the stuff about psn accounts not being a you can't make a psn account in like half.

Of north africa a huge roster of countries in africa.

Yeah yeah or you know a bunch of southeast asia all these different countries and it's one of those things of like okay if you actually want to keep on growing at a certain point you tap out the biggest market the biggest market might be you know in your eyes infinish but at a certain point there's just not going to be more people who buy a playstation especially at whatever price you're trying to sell a hash And you will have to go to niche and smaller markets to continue to grow. Or you need to keep those niche and smaller markets happy with you to keep those sales continuing to come in. And so it's one of those things where I really struggle to understand the thinking around it. I get that it is a massive overhead

that they can cut out, and that when you look at it from that point of view, you go, well, if, you know, even 20% of the people transfer, we're making all this money, but... I think that.

Also with the built in expectation that like when they do this, a huge portion of that audience certainly will.

Like they believe that. Yes.

I think the real damage is kind of the incalculable. Well, now you have less of a brand presence with, you know, 50 percent of people or, you know, 30 percent of people who don't transfer over to digital, however much. And that's kind of what these companies are relying on now. operating in sony has made it very clear it doesn't want to be a hardware company it barely wants to be a software company all these companies just want to be brands they just want to sell the idea they want to sell the ip and the product.

They want intellectual property they don't want to sell you sell you actual property yeah.

Yeah um and so disenfranchising audience members be it big or small it feels like it's going to start chipping away at that stuff and at a certain point your brand will becomes toxic and you know sony hasn't had its xbox one launch event catastrophe yes i think we talked about this last time of like they've been very smart specifically not pushing anyone out there that could possibly say something that could get soundbited or anything. You know, every statement is pre-prepared and vetted at the moment. But it is like one of these things of when the PlayStation 6 rolls around, scrutiny is going to be at an all-time high people are not going to be feeling good about the product and the brand and hell people

don't even really feel good about gaming at the moment because it's so fucking expensive and and when you operate when you work in a market that like is almost entirely vibes based like the games industry is yes goodwill is extremely valuable.

Yeah i like we talk about all the time right like see other people are so engaged and so savvy in this space in terms of being in the fandom that you really have to nurture those relationships as a big company because it can turn in an instant and then we see, as people point out, as we've talked about a lot in the last several episodes, the backlash to PlayStation manifesting as these emulators, Alcoholic Host points out, someone just got Demon's Souls PS5 running at 80 frames per second on PC. Last week it was running 30 frames per second. That stuff is advancing fast. And a lot of like whatever the motivation of the people doing the actual work is, but that is a little bit more nebulous. Or you could point to just that they

like the challenge or they like the notoriety. But the response from people who see these things and see news stories about them or see social media posts about them is almost universally Sony.

Asked for this. They asked for it. And now they're getting their comeuppance.

And we are happy to screw over Sony here because they don't give a shit about us.

That is a difficult thing to turn around. And they had it.

They had it from the beginning of the PS4.

They had that in their hands.

And then they looked at the two birds in the bush and were like, well, let's let go of the one in our hands and see if we can capture these instead. And they are still running around trying to capture it. They have not actually figured out the shift to digital, all digital. It's going to be rough going.

And it really hasn't even started yet. And so the fact that it's already sort of blowing up in their faces and they have yet to get to that point where at the beginning of 2028, God, I had to look up the year.

I was about to say 2018.

2028, they are going to have to actually go through with this and kind of explain it. They will have to come out there and start talking about it. Lots of opportunities for this to continue falling apart for them. And in the meantime, people showing up to stores to buy physical games because that's part of the ritual of how they buy games is And Sony disrupting that is going to continue to have to go over very well.

And we'll see if, you know, it's still hard to imagine them backing off on this, but they have got to be feeling the heat on it. And really nothing's going to change though until Grand Theft Auto comes out. Once Grand Theft Auto is here, they will reassess maybe at that point.

And who knows? I still don't think they'll change their minds, but we'll see. All right. Let's take a quick break.

When we come back, Alex, you want to pick your mind about something like, you know, talk about, you know, what it's like to review games and who's to blame on all this stuff. We'll get to that after these messages. If you want to skip out on them, giantbomb.com slash join. We have the ad free version of the audio and the video show there. We will be right back.

It's game mess mornings. That's Lexi. I'm Grubb. Let's get on with it here.

Crimson Desert's lower review scores were because critics didn't get, quote, a fair chance to explore, executive says. This is from Chris Scullion at VGC. And I think we're definitely going to be pretty sarcastic about this one, Lexi. It is worth pointing out that nowhere in this diatribe does– let's see here. European CEO Lybie Park, who is part of the Crimson Desert studio, nowhere does she directly say reviewers played it wrong. So let's get that out of the way, but let's continue here. So– In an interview with The Game Business, the studio's European CEO, Lai B. Park, was asked why she felt the player response to the game was extremely positive, but the Metacritic score was 77, which, as Chris Scullion puts it here, is not necessarily bad,

but perhaps lower than expected. Park replied that in her opinion, she didn't feel that critics were given the optimal version of the game and also weren't given enough time to explore it properly. I do believe both parties have fair points, especially the critics. They had to play a build that was not the exact same version as the launch game.

Also, they had limited time.

Usually the classical approach when they review the game is following the main quest line. But with Crimson Desert, our unique charm is spread all over in our game world. All those tiny details that are hidden, the freedom to actually explore even further beyond the common So all those unique bits and interesting new freshened up bits. I don't think critics had a fair chance to explore those and experience them while in those reviewing periods. So that's a live park from a parole abyss. And, and yeah, I mean, also the game's just not very good.

I put, listen, I put 110 hours into that game. I put 110 of my precious hours on this planet into that game. That game is bad. It is incoherent. It has no direction. It has negative personality. It is about as deep as a puddle. but it's as wide as a fucking ocean, and it thinks that that's the same thing as, like, interesting. That game sucks. If I could go back and review that. And then when they started to patch it to make it better, they just removed the parts that made it slightly unique. So now it's just more generic.

Uh-huh. I'm sorry.

Mr.

Kurtz in chat says, it gets good after 111 hours, which is very funny.

LAUGHTER Yeah, yeah. You know, that sounds a lot like someone who told me I should re-review that game.

Look, you're right.

I feel the exact same way, where that lack of intentionality was so obvious in every single thing I interacted with in that game. that there was no amount of changing it through updates or launch versions versus review versions or whatever that was going to really address that side of it.

Could they make it better?

They obviously have improved it in some ways because you can always do that.

But I am talking about its elemental parts.

Like the, you know, the atoms that make up that game are the thing that I have an issue with. And that stuff hasn't really changed.

All that much.

It's one of those things of like people are, you know, We'll be like, well, you know, they fixed this thing and they fixed this thing. And yeah, that wasn't my, like, that wasn't the core problem. The core problem is that it's deeply uninteresting. And the ways that it's obtuse are not, like, engaging. It's, when that game is obtuse, it's because puzzles are bad.

It's because it's... Bad at letting you know what's interactable and what isn't. It's because the world is extremely flash and is extremely generic. And the fact that, like, the sky system that they have of, you know, oh, you can explore this, like, these two parts of the world. The upper part has fucking nothing in it except for really shitty jumping puzzles that if you fall off, you, like, have to fall for three minutes until you reset. Um... Also, like, just the amount of people who are like, oh, it gets cool when you get a dragon. No, it doesn't.

That dragon's not that fun. I've played Leia. Leia's a better dragon game than that. Oh, no. It's... Anyway, what I do agree with is that critics didn't get a fair chance to explore. Because I remember being... So I wasn't in the... I was in a weird situation where my boss took the review key for that and got invited to the Discord for it. The review's Discord for it.

And then I didn't. So I was reviewing it, going through my boss, being like, hey, can you see if there's fucking anything about this goddamn puzzle that people have talked about in the Discord? So everything I was getting from the Discord was secondhand information.

Um.

But I will say a lot of people in that Discord were like, yeah, I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish this game in time. And like, yeah, maybe you should have sent out codes earlier if the game is that big. If you don't, if you think that the appeal of the game is exploring its wonder, maybe give people more than two weeks to get through a 110 hour game. And like that was pretty much beelining-ish.

And they were also, you know, mildly hostile during that review period as well. There was some weirdness and stuff like that. So it was, yeah, look, again, they're not coming here and blaming reviewers, but they're getting about as close as they can before really explaining that. you know, or taking responsibility for making the game that they made.

All that said, I know there are people who enjoy that game and I find I've enjoyed plenty of slop in my life as well. So I get it. We're not attacking you personally, but I deeply dislike this game. It was just counter to everything that I come to gaming for and kind of felt dismissive of what makes gaming truly good. And I kind of have a, almost a, you know, a wholly confrontational feeling against this game where it's just like, oh, you have a different idea of what gaming should be. And it's not just that I dislike it. I think it's bad for gaming. So yeah, I can't help, but feel that way. That's, that's, that's my truth.

Everybody.

I agree with you on every point. And I, I totally, I know people who have gotten things out of that. I know John Lineman really likes this game and I respect John a bunch. Um, but it was, He does? Oh, I have to go block him. I take back everything nice I said about your work on the Star Wars Galactic Racer documentary, John. But I think... Very rarely, I try not to complain about this job. I try to be like, it is tough out there to get work, but I try not to complain about the act of, I play video games for work and then talk about them.

Because that is the really good part. That's the part that is fun and enjoyable. The securing work is hard and tough, but the actual doing of the work is genuinely really fun most of the time. I will say there was a real soul-crushing moment about 10 hours into that game when I thought to myself, yeah this is like a five out of ten and i still have however much time that i have to put into this to roll credits and that's.

Why i was very happy to be like we'll just do a quick look and move on with.

Our lives um and so uh yeah that was a real rough moment of oh i still have a long ways to go in this.

All right. Well, I mean, look, that game's going to continue to be around. It'll be there.

One day I will check in on it again because I do want to see, like.

Will I notice a lot of it? You're adding swimming before the end of the year and boats.

Because why not?

That game just needed more content. That was the problem with it.

Uh-huh.

There wasn't enough empty stuff to explore.

Oh, my dick had died a while. Wild. Thank you, games. Let's see here.

Silent Hill producer says second and third wave of games are already being considered.

This comes from Siddhartha F. F. Rossini at Game Observer.

After years of gathering dust, Silent Hill has finally made a proper comeback, earning rave reviews in the last few years. Between the second second games remake F and Townfall Horror Series fans are definitely well fed. And apparently Konami isn't planning to send it back into hibernation anytime soon.

According to series producer Motoi Akimoto.

After this successful first run, Konami is already considering a second and even a third batch of Silent Hill games. Speaking to Famitsu in issue 1965. Akimoto looked back on the series' revival since its big Silent Hill transmission announcement in October 2022. With all three initially announced titles now released, he was glad that this opening act went off without a hitch. All three titles we initially announced were able to be released successfully, so we're relieved.

And then he laughed about that.

They've also received high praise and we are satisfied with it. He, however, stressed that Konami isn't treating those three releases as the finish line. Successfully launching this first wave comes with great relief, but we're not stopping here. We must think of the second and third waves, continued Okamoto, adding that his main job now is to maul over Silent Hill's future. We can't just share specific details, but we're currently looking at a number of projects. Akimoto then recalled that convincing the higher ups to launch three different entries wasn't exactly easy. Still, he believed bringing the franchise back was just one with just one remake wouldn't cut it. From my perspective, just one remake is not enough as producer. I cannot let

it end only with that. So, yeah, I mean, God, you can kind of imagine what this looks like going forward. We basically have it confirmed publicly confirmed.

Was it just a rumor that Bloober was going to do Silent Hill one remake?

Uh, I think, I think they said that they were partnering with Konami again.

So is that the extent of it? Okay. I think, well, you can imagine here. Well, let's see. Bloober is going to do another remake. Maybe they remake silent Hill one. Yeah. Silent Hill one remake is next year. Thank you. Lazy shoe.

Uh, so they have that. And then that kicks off the second wave. And then there's some other new games that come out in the following years after that.

Sure.

It'll, it might be hard to get if silent Hill remake one is coming out next year. it might be hard to get something out in a 2028 if they are only kind of getting stuff started right now, but that, that would still set stuff up for a 2029 2030 release. People will still be ready at that point. And I think this is the right way to approach it.

What do you think?

I will say, I, I agree with the sentiment, but there's a real selective memory going on here to not mention Silent Hill Ascension or this short message.

Yeah, which one was the TV show thing?

Ascension was the pseudo-livestreamed TV episodic thing where that company, everyone involved with that company seems to have lost their mind and gotten AI psychosis when I.

Last checked it. Yeah, that sounds about right.

And they are a good thing, though, right?

Like because you you.

That's why you do so many. So you can look like, look, we have three wins and nothing else. And because the fans want to forget about Ascension other than us, like I will dunk on it for the rest of my life, of course.

But yeah, the fans are ready to move on from that. They should be ready to move on.

And they've done the work to build a narrative where they can just be like, What are you talking about?

What's Ascension?

Why aren't you playing the good Silent Hill games that we made? So the strategy worked even when the games didn't all work. I think that's kind of the thing here where I would imagine when they do go to second and third waves here, they will build it in a similar way. Maybe they won't try something like Ascension again, or at least exactly like Ascension. Maybe they'll have some other weird idea to experiment with Silent Hill alongside the more traditional games because those seem to be working very well at the moment.

I will also say Okamoto is also an executive producer on the Return to Silent Hill film. And hey, stop giving Christoph Gans those movies. Stop doing that. Stop letting him.

Make those movies.

He doesn't... He extremely does not... He does not understand those video games. Please keep him away from those video games.

And there's so many young horror directors that... you could turn to right now that would fully get it. Like they're already making movies similar to the concepts in silent Hill. Just let them have it instead or stop making silent Hill movies, but that might not be an option.

Yeah.

Look, I'm excited about Konami's just like the fact that this producer is like, I have a vision of what we need to do to fully respect the silent Hill brand and the audience. And that means we need to invest into it big time. And the fact that they had the sway to pull that off, And.

Then it worked.

That's like, that's gotta be the kind of thing where it's a playbook. They can follow repeatedly with other stuff. And hopefully that is kind of what happens here.

Yeah.

I mean, when was the last time you heard a gaming executive genuinely talk about like a roadmap where you're like, that seems kind of reasonable and not, you know, we're going to be the number one thing in the world. It's just like, no, we're going to keep on making these because these do well.

Right, we're going to make the games.

Right, yeah, we're going to do the thing that is literally our job instead of imagining some world where we are the king shits on a big golden toilet. Yeah, this is the way that producers and executives at companies like Konami should be talking about their games. It is, hey, we got successful making games. Here's my plan to make a lot of games. I can't help but respect that. So, yeah, like I said, hopefully they're able to pull this off and continue going forward. Seems like it seems like it's exactly what Silent Hill fans want, even if some of them like weren't thrilled about Townfall. There's definitely some criticisms there.

I don't think any of them are going, oh, they've lost the thread over there. Cancel the whole series. They don't understand Silent Hill anymore. It's like, oh, yeah, no, there's just kind of a, in my opinion, maybe a mediocre game in like following up some great games that I really loved. So, yeah, keep doing it exactly this way.

All right, update on Forza Horizon 6 for PS5. It's now launching January 26, as according to those rumors, those are now confirmed. Sal Romano at Gamatsu writes, Forza Horizon 6 will launch for PlayStation 5 on January 26, 2027, alongside the game's first expansion and a free update. Publisher Xbox Game Studios and developer Playground Games announced. It will be available both physically and digitally. Users who pre-order the Premium Edition will gain early access to the game on January 21st. So, yeah, the game, just a little bit ago, they were like, yeah, that's still coming in 2026. My understanding is Fable's really causing them to, you know, have all hands on deck for that.

I said that the last time we talked about it.

It seems like squeaky bum time over there for them for a lot of reasons. And I can only imagine the fucking pressure. I can like, God, do you remember E3 2018 when there were rumors that they were going to announce Fable at that show?

I remember. Yeah, I do. Yeah.

Because it was like, it was such an open secret that there was a new Fable being worked on. that's how long this game has been worked on by playground like i've talked to people who were at universities around that time who were like yeah we were getting recruited to work on fable coming out of uni um and yeah that man that project i don't know there's no way i i feel really bad about it because i wonder if there is any possible way where that right part reach the standards that Xbox would demand of it to ensure that there's either no layoffs or there's... No.

There's no number. There's no number it could do to avoid all layoffs. There'll be some layoffs, no matter what.

Yeah. Or, you know, just straight up actually go back to Forza forever. Yep. And yeah, it's a shame because I think even when Fable isn't good, it's interesting.

You know, this one seems like it's exactly like I will be surprised if the main criticism of this Fable game is it's boring and uninteresting. I bet if it fails, it fails in some interesting way at the very least. And yeah, the pressure. You're right, because that that amount of time that is going to tally up to a very big number at the bottom of some spreadsheet is And they're going to be aware of that at the leadership of Playground. And when they put that game out, it's like, man, can it sell to sort of justify it?

Because while there will be some layoffs, the hope will be that this game sets up a foundation where it's like, look, we've done all the hard work of figuring out how to make this game. We can take that going forward and make another one or try some other similar game in a different franchise and just let us keep going with this same core group of people, which is going to be massive. And it just feels like that is going to be a tall order because Microsoft doesn't care that they move fast and break things. They think that's fine.

Such a brilliant idea. And that means not having to look all that closely at what makes these teams special. Just break it and force them to figure out something new, which would be kind of devastating if Fable comes out, is great, sells well, sets that studio up for a great future. And now Microsoft leadership comes in and breaks them.

It's like, well, figure out something different next time. That would just be incredibly frustrating. But in the meantime, Forza Horizon 6 is going to sell well. incredibly well on PS5. That is a golden goose. That one sort of doesn't miss. And that audience will show up. Now, obviously, there was a lot of anticipation to get a Forza Horizon game when 5 was coming out to PlayStation, but I still imagine this game's going to do well.

Maybe it doesn't replicate the numbers of 5, but maybe it does. I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, January is pretty quiet release-wise so far, so that also plays, you know, that will be to its benefit.

So, yeah.

Racing games.

Yep, exactly. Order of the Sinking Star reviews.

83 on OpenCritic. This is from Phil Hornshaw at GameSpot. Order of the Sinking Star might work better if it had been more curated in deploying its massive pile of puzzles. This is the Jonathan Blow game, everybody. Another kind of collection of puzzles set up in a structured way. Hornshawn continues, but the occasional frustration and overcomplication is an affordable price of admission to play around with so many fun ideas.

John Paul Jones at PlayStation Universe gave it a 10 out of 10. Order of the Sinking Star then isn't just Jonathan Blow's most epic puzzling odyssey to date. It also happens to be, Braid notwithstanding, his most accessible title in years. Though the delivery of its dialogue can feel, excuse me, disparate at times, that is nowhere enough to detract from the soaring caliber that Order of the Sinking Star ultimately achieves. Crafted with love at every turn, make sure you don't skip the credits, and infinitely more respectful of the player than Blow's previous title, The Witness, Order of the Sinking Star might just be the best puzzle game on PlayStation 5. And then Steven Talby at Push Square gave it a 6 out of 10. I don't

think a game has ever divided my brain in two like Order of the Sinking Star. It's unique structure and the way it blends together. So many mechanics is great. The individual puzzles are cleverly and thoughtfully designed and it's all delivered with plenty of polish. However, in making such a vast game, I think it runs out of steam before it gets the chance to really start to flex that combined with uninteresting dialogue and no real compelling hook other than the promise of hundreds more puzzles makes it harder to recommend. Um, yeah, I think, uh, Dan, Dan had been playing some of this, uh, And he's not really a fan.

He finds it uninteresting, is kind of, I think, what he keeps saying to me. What do you think, Lexi?

Yeah, I would recommend people go check out Arranger, a role-puzzling adventure. It has contributors from people who had worked on Braid, like the artist, and doesn't have any contributions from Jonathan Blow, who is a transphobe and posts weird things about women on Twitter all the time.

He's got a completely broken brain. He has completely lost it.

Also, like, listen, Edmund McMillan, you just released one of the most successful games of the year. Maybe don't do a big live stream with him. I know you're like an edgelord, but like, fuck that. Same with like Day9 doing sponsored streams for him. not a great fucking look for, you know, men who are extremely senior in this industry to continue to work with a man who has a reputation as poor as Jonathan blows. Um, and I'll leave it at that because anything else I'd say would be a little bit too mean for radio.

Let's just say, yeah, he, uh, yeah, look, uh, Jonathan blow is a, I think a bad person.

Uh, he's also just rude.

Um, and all my interactions with him, I found him to just be a rude person, uh, even before he was posting all of his insane takes nonstop.

That's just because you weren't talking to him about Tai Chi. Come on.

That's right.

That's the first time I ever saw him was doing Tai Chi outside of GDC. That was very, very funny.

Yeah.

Look, I'm surprised some people are as into this game as they are because when I kind of like looked into it, I'm just like, oh, this looks a little uninspired.

But yeah.

I would also recommend you seek out that this game is based off of four other indie games. Go seek those out. If you really want some Sokobans, there's a lot of fucking Sokobans on Steam.

There are a lot of great Sokoban games. Yeah, Sokobans are the block-moving puzzles.

Yeah, there's that one that you really like.

Goof Troop. Go play Goof Troop.

The one that was like the Link's Awakening style one, the Sky one that you liked. I can't remember its name now.

Oh, yeah.

God, I can't remember its name either. But yes, that one was very good. Yeah, people love Steven's sausage roll.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

So, yeah, there's a lot of good games that you could be playing and you don't have to give a transphobe money.

Yeah.

Pretty easy.

Eat me, Jonathan Blow. Cyberpunk is getting a Paramount live-action movie. This is from Andy Robinson at VGC. Paramount Pinterest is working on a live-action movie set in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe.

According to Deadline, the film.

Adaptation is in the works with Lorenzo D. Bonaventura, who had previously produced Transformers and The Meg, working alongside CD Projekt Red themselves. No further details were shared, but CD Projekt Red's co-CEO, Michael Novakowski said, we're excited about Paramount as a future partner who shares our creative ambitions for the Cyberpunk franchise. We look forward to sharing more details at the appropriate time. Makes a ton of sense. Cyberpunk is a great setting. Obviously, when CD Projekt Red has done a lot of work here, Hollywood has been able to build on that from, you know, as they kind of pass it from original source material into the video game and then pass that on to Hollywood.

That worked decently for The Witcher.

I think Cyberpunk as a setting, you could do a lot of fun stuff in there, and it's going to look a lot like a reality.

Okay, but what if I told you we fast forward, let's say six months? And because this is a Paramount property, Taylor Sheridan is announced as an executive producer and co-writer. How do you feel now?

I actually would love to see the Taylor Sheridan take on Cyberpunk. Oh, that's the kind of sicko shit that really, I'm like, what would that dumb piece of shit, that garbage can of a writer, what would he do?

It is so fascinating to go back to Hell or High Water and Wind River and be like, A different person must have written these. Like a different, has to be a different guy.

Look, I mean, film is a director's medium. It is, it's not like television is a writer's medium. And when you compare and contrast, all right, what is the movies like that he didn't direct?

What are those like? Yeah, pretty good.

What are the TV shows like that he wrote and was the showrunner on?

Just plot slop.

It's just, hey, this happens and then this happens and then this happens and then this happens and they're wearing cowboy hats.

Fuck off, you loot. God, I really hate him. I'm sorry. I tried to watch Yellowstone.

That's so dad coded in the way that I like. And it was unbelievably stupid. I cannot believe that's one of the most popular shows.

If you have never watched Hell or High Water, one of his first film writing credits, Chris Pine and what's his name? But the director of Ash also directed a movie called Startup. which is about young offenders in an adult prison, and it's fucking incredible. It's so good. If you have never seen that movie, go check it out.

It's the guy who plays the main villain in Sinners, Jack O'Connell. It's a great movie.

Yes, he wrote Sicario, but yes, I agree with that. He also wrote Sicario 2, which is a joke. I'm sure Sicario 3 will save it.

Uh, all right.

Uh, yeah, look, a cyberpunk movie from, you know, obviously Paramount's going to be going through it. Uh, but yeah, cyberpunk, I'll, I'll, I'll be interested to see what it looks like in its first trailer and then we'll judge it at that point.

Uh, Anson TV show looks good. Yeah, that Norm Anson TV show looks good.

Yeah, I hope.

Apple TV throw a lot of money at their TV shows that nobody watches, and I'm all here for it.

Two more Leisure Suit Larry games are being delisted. Somebody tell Duke Mitchum he's going to be Very upset from Chris Scullion at VGC. The last two games in Leisure Suit Larry series are being delisted this month following the delisting of the previous seven titles. Last year, the 6C era online titles, Leisure Suit Larry, so one through seven. We're, yeah, we're delisted, and high voltage software's Leisure Suit Larry Magna come loud, which is just so funny to say. We're also removed from Steam.

Now, publisher- Oh, I get it, like ejaculation.

Like ejaculating, yes, but loudly. But it's also, he's in college, you see.

Now, a publisher, Assemble Entertainment has announced that the last two games in the series, 2018's Leisure Suit Larry, Wet Dreams Don't Dry, and 2020's Leisure Suit Larry, Wet Dreams Dry Twice, We'll be delisted at the end of the month. Um, well, all good things must come to an end. Eventually the publisher wrote in an update on steam after a fantastic run, Larry is getting ready to hang up his leisure suit.

Uh, we had an amazing fucking kill him. Jesus. That's what it sounds like. I mean, probably.

Yeah. I was going to say. Maybe take him to a farm upstate where he can do the least amount of damage.

Unfortunately, we can't share anything about his future. So if you've already if you've been thinking about giving Larry's latest adventures to try, now's the time. Once October 23rd passes, these two games will be gone from the store. Give Larry the farewell he deserves. Get them now or never. I wonder if this is like just rights are reverting or something like that. Or yeah, maybe the same thing is happening with Leisure Suit Larry that is happening with Ultima.

like the original creators are just showing up again to like, give us back the copyright.

Oh, what's his name?

Al something.

Yeah. Al Lowe. Al something.

Al Lowe.

That's it. Yeah. Al Lowe is going to bring back the new Leisure Suit Larry. And this time he won't be woke.

Yeah. That is his major problem. Too woke.

That's what I kept on saying when Mike was playing the Leisure Suit Larry game. I was like, man, this game's so woke. Man.

All right. Let's start wrapping this up.

Hey, this week, as in this weekend, Dragon's Dogma 2 Dark Risen launches today.

So go check that out. Seems like it's doing very well.

That's another game I want to play. I know.

I watched Christian play a little bit of it last night after the podcast, and it was running really well, which was nice to see. And then tomorrow, really today, all this weekend, hey, if you're in the Portland area, Portland Retro Game Expo is happening.

Go out there. Check it out.

See if you can find any Cubivores and how much they are and send pictures of it to Mike. Or even better, lie. Go hold a copy of Cubivore and say you got it for like $ 100 or something like that.

Really, just stick it to him. He would hate that. All right. That does it for the headlines. Let's get to the.

Go to Mike's house and steal his copy of Cube of War. All equally funny things that you could do.

I think we have to we have to do that. I'll set up the heist right now, everybody. All right.

Let's do the poll question from yesterday's show. I am refreshing getting the most up to date results. Have you ever played an Ultima?

Yes or no.

20% said yes, 80% said no. Again, this audience kind of usually sometimes surprises me a little bit more than I was expecting.

And yeah, good news.

We're probably going to have new ways to play Ultimate going forward. So looking forward to that. Mike keeps pointing me to a big video series about the Ultima games.

Like a massive video series on YouTube.

And apparently, I think I did start it a few weeks back because I was super into it. And that's why I was thinking about Ultima a lot. I thought it was very good, but they keep making new ones. I think he just did one about Ultima Online. Can't remember the name of the creator.

Magilar? Is that it, Octo? Go check that out, everybody. That's pretty cool. All right.

I was really worried that you were going to ask me if I had ever played Ultima, and I'd have to remind you I'm 26, Grub.

Oh, I know.

I didn't want to put myself in that situation, so I was happy to avoid it, but you did it anyhow.

Thank you so much. All right.

No new poll question because it's Friday. We're going to do the Bomb 12 instead, everybody. So that'll be the 12 games that real gamers are playing right now. We'll do that here in a moment. Before we get there, though, Lex Lutty, tell people where they can find you on the Internet, what you have going on, all that good stuff.

Yeah, I just had a preview go up on Kotaku. It is of Phantom Blade Zero. I get into the history of that game, SoulFrame's development history, the history of the franchise and the Rainblood series and things like that. So maybe a different perspective than some of the other previews you're seeing out there for that. You can follow me on bluesky at lexluddy.xyz. I'm currently looking to help out with reviews if anyone needs help with reviews for the end of the year for anything coming up. And you can also check out Start Menu, which is the website I run for people trying to break into games media. startmenu.co.uk patreon.com slash startmenu we have weekly news roundups that we do every weekend where a different writer rounds up all the

news and we pay them for that through the Patreon funds which is really awesome and it's something that I'm really glad that we get to do and we have some big paid reviews also going up on startmenu over the coming days so keep an eye out for that.

Excellent work as always. All right, let's see here.

So no new poll question, as I said, but we have some cool stuff happening on Giant Bomb, everybody. Later today, UPF is happening. We're going to play some Deadlock. We're going to play some Galactic Racer. We're going to kind of maybe do an hour of each or something like that. Maybe send me into like one round of Deadlock, I think.

So we'll see how it goes. Maybe we'll have so much fun, we won't play Galactic Racer.

Excuse me.

Looking forward to that either way. We got some other cool stuff popping up on giant bomb.com. A lot of quick looks have gone up. We did a quick look of hell razor. There's I think a quick look of a bunch of other new games that are dropping this week. So there might be embargoes on those. So I'll hold off on mentioning anything, but yeah, go check that stuff out.

Get it, get it a giant bomb.com. And then yeah, go check out our live stream that we did of big walk. It was really fantastic. We kind of, Well, we did finish the game. We got credits and it was a very great ending. So if you've been watching with us so far, don't miss out on that. You can also see me get extremely mad with everyone multiple times.

I have never seen your face quite like it is in that post that you put up on blue sky.

I mean, it was and that was like after so much.

Yeah, it's like the POV of your misbehaving daughter's. or something of just like the most fed up I've ever seen an adult man of like, you look like you were about to explode. It is incredible. Yep.

It's, uh, it was, it was actually a ton of fun. It was great, uh, to just kind of be yelling into the ether. And, and, and, you know, the most frustrating part was just, you didn't know who you're yelling at. And you don't even know if the person you were yelling at was the person you were yelling at 10 seconds ago. Cause you can like look away and look back and everyone looked the same for the moment, uh, as part of this one puzzle. And it was, I'm like, oh my God, is this, who am I even mad at?

And that just made me even angrier. So go witness that for yourself. Sean did a great job live editing that as always. And yeah, it's a wonderful time.

All right.

I think with all that, let's do this. Lexi, tell people where they can find you on the internet. What do you have going on?

I already did.

I already did. You know what? It's Friday.

Let's get the fuck out of here. Let's do the Bomb 12, everybody. These are the 12 games that really matter to people who are really playing video games. Let's start here with number 12, The Blood of Dawnwalker. Number 11, Trails in the Sky, second chapter. Number 10, Silver Pines, which is a wild-looking Metroidvania game.

Have you heard of anyone playing this one?

Yes, I interviewed the developers of this game and played it a while back. I've played a little bit of the final release, but not as much as I want to because of reviews. This game is super interesting. It is all rotoscoped animation. Every single frame of animation for both player characters, enemies, are all rotoscoped to some degree.

And it looks fantastic. Also, it is from the developers of Yoku's Island Express. They went off and they worked on Helldivers 2 for a while, and then they kind of reformed and made a new studio. And And this is their first game back. And it has some really good talented voice work from a friend of the site, Susie Hunter, in it as well.

Yep. Yeah. Shouts out to Susie, of course.

Yeah, I'm going to check out Silver Pines, maybe when I finish Well Dweller, which we'll get to in a second. Number nine is Animusha, Way of the Sword. Number eight is World of Warcraft Forever. Number seven is Well Dweller. It seems like more people are picking that one up. Number six is The Witcher 3, and then gets two weeks in a row for The Witcher 3 at number six.

That game got its big sort of update, not the like new content, but the remastered version.

And a lot of people are still playing that.

Number five is Gears of War E-Day. Number four, Ace Combat Eight Wings of Thief. And that takes us to our top three. Number three is Control Resident down a little bit. Number two is still Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave. And then number one, Star Wars Galactic Racer. After a week of being out, it really, yeah, it's about a week of being out there. Ton of people playing this one.

Star Wars Galactic Racer races to, the top spot. I'm sorry I had to do it. Yeah, real quick note, Zero Company, top of this list for a very long time, kind of just fell off. Everyone just finished that game, it seems like. So not a lot of responses, including Zero Company.

It does have like 5,000 reviews on Steam, so it's not doing terribly. You know, that game is doing quite well.

It's doing very well. And it was number one for weeks in a row and then number two and number three for a while. Let me see if I can pick out a couple of games here that are on the.

Okay.

Someone said they were playing Cyberdillo. I hope that's a lie for your sake. Let's see. Some people still playing normal golf game. Some people are playing Minecraft Dungeons 2. Oh, Star Fox 64. Some people playing Baby Steps. Trying to see if I can find any. Oh, one person is playing the original Metroid.

Good for you. Some people still playing Dota 2. I'm sorry.

Nobody playing Duke Nukem Forever, though, which if only there was a way that we could watch someone play Duke Nukem Forever at the moment.

It's not possible. It's not allowed on the internet. All right. And one person is playing Shinmue. So there you go.

At any one point, any time throughout history, there's at least one person playing Shinmue. And we won't heal as a society until we fix that and make it zero. All right, Lexi, thank you so much for hanging out with me today and talking about video games. I really appreciate it.

Rob, it's always a pleasure. That was a fun episode.

It was a fun episode. Thank you all for watching and listening. You're the best audience in gaming. You really are. Until next time, have a good one. Take care of yourself and goodbye.

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