The Gamerheads Podcast
The Gameheads Podcast - the podcast where gaming enthusiasts come to discuss the latest news, trends, and reviews in the gaming world.
Join the Gamerheads crew every Tuesday and Friday as they discuss games they're playing and interview creators in the industry.
The Gamerheads Podcast
Reviving Classics and Breaking Down the PS5 Pro: Nostalgia, Reviews, and Gaming News | The Gamerheads Podcast
Ever wondered if Roger is off mastering secret ninja skills or just kicking back at a Motel 6 in Akron, Ohio? While he's away, Mike and Phil are holding down the fort in this hilariously unpredictable episode of The Gamerheads Podcast. We kick things off with some playful banter about regional hot dogs that will leave your mouth watering and your sides aching with laughter. Plus, a big thank you to our amazing Patreon supporters—you folks are the real MVPs, allowing us to keep bringing the heat and attending awesome events like PAX.
Get ready for a nostalgia trip as we dive into the revival of classic video games! Sega’s making waves with leaked footage of a Crazy Taxi reboot and spiritual successors to Jet Set Radio. We're also crossing our fingers for a Dino Crisis reboot using Capcom's RE Engine and craving a return to the golden days of WWE games like No Mercy. But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows—Mike and Phil address the recent Xbox layoffs and what the Activision Blizzard acquisition means for the gaming industry. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions you won't want to miss.
What do you think about dropping $699 on a PlayStation 5 Pro? We break down the pros and cons of this hefty price tag, comparing it to the current gaming landscape and potential shifts towards PC gaming. Our chat then shifts to some killer game reviews, including "Tales of Iron" and "Yars Rising," both offering unique gameplay and narratives that are sure to keep you entertained. Finally, we share some gut-busting stories from playing "The Quarry," a choose-your-own-adventure horror game that had us on the edge of our seats—and occasionally in stitches. So buckle up, it’s going to be a wild ride!
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Music:
Jeff Dasler - Recused
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This episode of the GameHeads podcast is brought to you by Seven Bridges Premium Gourmet Yum Yum Sauce. Enhance every bite with our savory blends of flavors, perfect for meats, vegetables and crispy treats. Whether you're dipping, drizzling, marinating, grilling, roasting or snacking, seven Bridges Yum Yum Sauce takes your culinary experience to the next level. Get yours today and make every meal a gourmet delight. Hi, I'm Celia Schilling from Yacht Club Games.
Speaker 2:Hey, this is James from Mega Cat Studios.
Speaker 3:Hey folks, this is Matt aka Stormageddon from Reignite and the Fun and Games podcast.
Speaker 1:This is Stephanie from the Boss Rush podcast and the Boss Rush Network. Hey, this is Mark and Kion from Bonta Affold. Hey, this is Sebastian with the pronerdreportcom and the Single Player Experience podcast. Hi, this is Chris Mike.
Speaker 2:And Garrett from Daylight Basement Studio. Hey, this is BaronJ67 from Level One Gaming.
Speaker 3:Hi, I'm Jacob.
Speaker 1:McCourt from the Left Behind Game Club Crossplay Conversations and Video Game Trivia.
Speaker 2:Hey, this is Todd Mitchell from Code Right Play.
Speaker 1:Salutations. This is Mike Carroll from Stroll Art.
Speaker 3:Hey, this is Jeff Moonen from Fun and Games Podcast.
Speaker 1:What's good y'all. This is Adam from Respawn Aimfire.
Speaker 2:Hey, this is Patrick from the Backlog Odyssey. Hey, this is Rune from.
Speaker 3:Runic Codes. Hi, this is Andrew from Spalladaburrs.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone, jill Grote here from the indie informer. Hello, this is the crypt master and you're listening to roger richie. You're listening to roger on the gamer heads podcast, and welcome to another episode of the Gamer Heads Podcast. See, that's a better intro. I like that one because I'm so used to it. Hello everybody, it's Mike here and I'm being joined by Phil Phil, how's it going? You doing all right?
Speaker 3:I'm doing good, Mike. How are you tonight?
Speaker 2:I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for asking. Roger is going to be out for a couple of weeks, so we? He made the huge mistake of giving us the controls of the podcast, so we're going to take it into places that will probably get us fired, so should we?
Speaker 3:tell people where Roger is. Well sure my last location that I heard he was training with a bunch of ninjas on a secret remote island.
Speaker 2:Yes, and the last that I heard he's at a Motel 6 in Akron.
Speaker 3:Ohio.
Speaker 2:Is there any other?
Speaker 3:He's not eating dogs, is he?
Speaker 2:Well, that's the delicacy. Out that way.
Speaker 3:Damn it. Sorry, Roger Hot dogs.
Speaker 2:I like hot dogs. I went to Universal Studios one time and they had a hot dog place. That was all about different areas. They had a Chicago dog, they had a Boston dog, so it's like every region has its own style of hot dog.
Speaker 3:At Universal Studios.
Speaker 2:Well, not in Universal Studios. At Universal, like the City Walk, which is right.
Speaker 3:Oh, right outside of Orlando.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it might have been. No, it might have been in Universal Studios, I don't know. But either way it was pretty good. We had a good. I don't even know what I had. I think my wife had the boston dog, my son had like one of the from arizona, I think, like an arizona dog, huh, just all different toppings and stuff.
Speaker 3:Well, it's kind of like hot dogs that used to be open in chicago until, I want to say, 2014. That had a plethora of hot dogs, all made with different meats and toppings. You could go and get like an alligator hot dog or a rattlesnake hot dog and they fried all of their. They fried all of their French fries and duck fat as well. So they were super known for their fries Cause they were so rich.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But yeah, hot dogs was great. I kind of missed that place.
Speaker 2:Hmm, I can't believe I never went there, but uh, I don't know if I could eat fries, why wait?
Speaker 3:You mentioned hot dogs.
Speaker 2:I know this is on me. This is my bad, See. This is why we need Roger here.
Speaker 3:No, Roger gets just as lost in the sauce as we do.
Speaker 2:He just tries to hide it better, that's true, he just regrounds us, is what happens.
Speaker 2:That's true. That's true. Yeah, good, call out. So all right, well, listeners, let's get into video game stuff. But before we get into that, we're going to give a shout out to our GamerHeads Patreons. Thank you to Jill and Matt and Sarah for your donations. It keeps us afloat and helps send Roger to fantastic places like the hot dog capital of the world, akron, Ohio, apparently, and allows us to keep the podcast going. So thank you so much. And if you would like to be a patron, you can go search up at Patreon, search up Gamer Heads, and there you can be a patron where you will get all sorts of fantastic items. If you donate $5, you will get a personalized letter from our friend Phil here, and it's great because he only knows 17 letters of the alphabet. So that's all You're going to get, only words that use those 17 letters, but he makes it work.
Speaker 3:I'm going to start practicing writing with only 17 letters to see if I can't put together a letter with it. That'd be so awesome.
Speaker 2:Yep, there we go.
Speaker 3:But, yeah listeners. For as little as $3 a month, you can support gamer heads and content like this, as well as doing things like sending our friends Roger and Trina to places like PAX East, pax West, pax Midwest, PAX Mid-South, pax Dirty South and all other PAXs.
Speaker 2:What's the difference between the South? You know what I don't want to know.
Speaker 3:Dirty South is like the Atlanta area.
Speaker 2:The rest of it's just the South Okay, good to know. Pax Panhandle Good to know.
Speaker 3:Pax, panhandle Pax.
Speaker 2:Bible Belt. Yeah, there are Paxes everywhere, all right. Well, what do you say? We get into our icebreaker which, by the way, is brought to you by Seven Bridges Yum Yum Sauce, available right now wherever Yum Yum Sauces are sold on Amazon.
Speaker 3:As well as a couple of different markets, especially if you're in the Minneapolis St Paul market. We just got into a bunch of actually, I can't reveal that one quite yet because it's not a finalized deal but we are at places like Vaughn Hanson's Meat Markets. We're at a fish market in St Louis Park as well, and we are working at other locations, including Shields.
Speaker 2:All right. So pick up some yum yum sauce today. Okay, so our icebreaker. So here's what I came up with for the icebreaker for today. So last week, my wife and I went to go see Beetlejuice. How was it. It was a movie. Out of all the Beetlejuice movies, that was definitely one of them. Okay, so it was okay. Um, it was there were too many plots there were like four different plots going on at the same time.
Speaker 2:If they got rid of three of the plots, or even two of them, and focused on the other two, then I think it would have been a lot better.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I also think the theater I was at made it worse.
Speaker 3:Why is that?
Speaker 2:We went to one of those Bruin View theaters.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Where the servers come up and take your order and stuff. So that's a little distracting. But also the screen itself is a little bit smaller and the sound system is not the best quality. So it's not really like I went there last year to see, um uh, the monster squad.
Speaker 3:You remember that movie, if you remember the monster squad like the goonies meets yeah, from like the late 80s right yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So a buddy of mine went and I went there to see the monster squad, which was great because I've seen it before, you know. It was just a fun time, but for a new movie that I haven't seen before and I like to get all my focus on that screen. I don't know, maybe that wasn't the best idea, but I don't know. Beetlejuice it was okay, and that upsets me too, because I love the original and I love the cartoon.
Speaker 3:That's a bummer. How was it visually?
Speaker 2:Well, it wasn't bad. Oh well, it wasn't bad. It really didn't feel very Tim Burton-ish. Yeah, I mean there were Tim Burton moments, but not 100% all the time. So, I might have to watch it again, to give it another go. But if you're looking to watch a scary movie, definitely go see Alien Romulus, because that movie was awesome, all right. So the reason I bring up Beetlejuice is because it's it's been what like 36 years since there was a beetlejuice movie and now we're just 36 later, 36 years later, we're getting another one.
Speaker 2:So that made me think about how can we bring this into the realm of video games. So my question is for our icebreaker what video game that's been lying dormant and we're going to um for, let's say, since the year 2000. So 2000 and earlier, would you like to see a new um, a new game in a new uh, I can't even think of the word.
Speaker 3:A sequel iteration. Um. So as I realized what I wrote down, I think both of mine might be slightly after 2000, but not by much. They'd be pretty close, like playstation 2 dreamcast era. Do those count?
Speaker 2:99 and 2000.
Speaker 3:So depends on which game, but I'll allow it uh, maybe one of them did have a sequel, but the first one that came to my brain was Typing of the Dead.
Speaker 2:I would love to get a sequel to Typing of the Dead. I actually found a couple months ago On Archive that game, because they don't sell it anywhere. I can't find it anywhere Not on Steam, not on anything so I actually found it on Archive, so I've got it saved on my computer.
Speaker 3:I still have my keyboard and my disc copy of it as well, so I could I could still boot up and play at any given time that I wanted to, but that was the first one that popped in my mind, just because it was. I knew how to type, which is a skill that's kind of now been lost on me, as I haven't been in an office and god only knows how many years. But it just made it that much more exciting just to type and, like, kill zombies by typing the correct, accurate word as you were going through it, and it got to be very difficult as you were playing through it as well.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, have you seen the Terminal Montage video or the cartoon of Typing of the Dead?
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'll show it to you after we're done here, but I got to watch you watching it because it's funny.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, another one that popped in my brain. I got to watch you watching some voyeuristic stuff. Another one that came to my brain was on the PlayStation 2, I believe, and it was a game called PsyOps, where you played as an agent for some kind of a military agency because agents and agency go hand in hand but everything was like psychically controlled and you were taking down whatever bad guys. You had powers such as telekinesis and all of the all of the normal psychic powers, but that was a super fun game in my opinion, and I was always bummed that they never made a sequel to it yeah, psyops.
Speaker 2:So, and I always found psyops interesting because, right like I, might even been. That same year, but back to back a different company released a similar game called second sight, which was pretty much the exact same concept just not done as well just not done as well. Well, I'm gonna go, okay, so any others?
Speaker 3:uh, yeah, I did have one more and they might have made a sequel to this as well, but again, I might have spaced it out. But jet set radio oh, you know what?
Speaker 2:I think they're working on something. Okay. Sega is working on re-releasing or revamping some of their old uh ips.
Speaker 3:Actually just this either this week or last week, some footage of the uh crazy taxi reboot got leaked really yes, interesting yeah I know there's been a couple of spiritual successors to jet set radio, like uh spice, channel 5 and as well as I would even say sunset overdrive.
Speaker 2:I said spice channel. Do you have a freudian slip there? The spice channel 5.
Speaker 3:It wasn't channel 5 for me I think it was like channel 98 well, I was actually thinking about the movie spice world, as well as space channel 5, at the same time as what just happened in my brain, so I just I just mixed up a whole bunch of late 90s stuff, gotcha. But I also put sunset overdrive in the same category of a spiritual successor to that game, which is another game that I feel could use a sequel and was vastly underrated. Gotcha. What about yourself?
Speaker 2:well, it begins and ends with dino crisis. Why do we not have a new dino crisis?
Speaker 3:how did that one not?
Speaker 2:come to mind. I, I just, oh, it upsets me so much, I mean, it's even just a reboot. They with the resident evil, uh, the re engine, oh, they can make it so good they make it so good, but you know what, and that actually kind of pisses me off because I'm not a big Monster Hunter fan and Capcom says well, we would work on Dino Crisis, but we're so focused on Monster Hunter that we're not. Makes me angry.
Speaker 3:Sounds like you'd probably hire a couple more people to get the ball rolling on the other one.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, I don't know. Other one, absolutely. I don't know. It's just dino crisis it's not hard. Come on, it's dinosaurs and resident evil.
Speaker 3:You've got the engine. Just replace zombies with dinosaurs and you're in business right, oh well, silly.
Speaker 2:uh, the other one I had and I don't know if this counts, because I think technically they did release a new game, but I would would love to see a new WWE game in the style of no Mercy or WrestleMania 2000. I know they did something similar with AEW Fight Forever, but it didn't work out as well Like. I seriously like if Nintendo took or whoever has the rights to that took the actual game, bumped up the graphics and put new wrestlers in there and sold it for like 15, 20 bucks, yeah, digital, only that thing would sell.
Speaker 3:It was Yuke's, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:A ton of effort. What's that?
Speaker 3:It was Yuke's, wasn't it? Yeah, yuke's and Aki, I think, or the engine, it was like the aki engine, but it was like yukes and jack, specific I think, maybe something like that well, that's one of those ones where, uh, what was that wrestling game that roger was playing for a long ass time was a spiritual, spiritual successor to that too, um oh yeah, wrestle federation or whatever the hell it was called yeah, wrestling legends or something like that.
Speaker 2:I don't know know, I remember that one, yeah, but then I bought it and I'm like this game sucks.
Speaker 3:Roger would not steer us awry with his game choices, that's true.
Speaker 2:That's true, those are two, but then the one that I really would love to see a new version of one of my favorite older games, Kirby's Pinball land oh, yeah, oh, or metroid pinball for that matter. Metroid pinball yeah, a new, a new pinball, like when was last time we got. Well, I know we get pinball fx and everything but, that's fine, but, but I would love to see another. Or you know what you know. You know what's a great game I used to play on the Game Boy Advance Pinball of the Dead.
Speaker 3:Really, I've never even heard of that.
Speaker 2:Yep. Pinball of the Dead, yeah, released by Sega. It's exactly what you would think it is.
Speaker 3:Can you?
Speaker 2:beat it? I don't think so. I don't know. I think it's just a high score thing. I don't think there's no story or plot or anything. It's just playing pinball pinball tables with zombies to kill and all right. Yeah, stuff like that. So, anyways, yeah, pinball, kirby's pinball land. I love that game, one of my favorites and I'm very lucky that the battery on mine still works so I go back to it every once in a while and I'm like, yeah, that's my score.
Speaker 3:So I don't think I've ever played kirby spinball, which is shocking, knowing how I feel about this nintendo things yeah, it's a very good game. I really enjoy it have they ported it over on anything?
Speaker 2:I don't think, I don't think they ported it yet that's a bummer yeah, well, we can talk ways that you can play it when we're done recording yeah, we don't want to throw that kind of stuff out there yeah, all right. So what do you say? We uh move on and let's talk about what's in the news, and we hate to talk about negative things in the news, but it's been a slow week. Uh, unfortunately, we got word of more layoffs on the Xbox side, I think. What did they say? 650? I?
Speaker 2:think it was 650, yeah, About 650 people are being laid off from the Xbox division of Microsoft. Now, these are not from what I understand these are not developers or people working on any games but this was more on the corporate side and, from what we understand, this is also uh, this also might be focused on more of the activision blizzard part, which again, doesn't surprise me, because anytime one company acquires another company, there's always, uh, mass layoffs and people trying to even out the money they spent.
Speaker 3:The best way of phrasing that, too is trying to even out the money they spent. It's a very real thing.
Speaker 2:Yep, and it sucks. It really does I hate to use the term, at least because it's always horrible when someone loses their job and their livelihood, especially when it's due to something like this and there's no notice at least at least it's not there, none of the games themselves like, because they they've had a big impact on games, you know, with them shutting down the um different studios and everything so, but it's still, it's still horrible. It's, it's, it's terrible. I just it's just. It's just so aggravating when you see things like that, especially when and this is a conversation I had with one of my coworkers is what really gets on my nerves, aside from the actual firings themselves, is the corporate speak in the press releases. You know, like we wish everybody the best of luck and you know this decision is never made lightly. My ass, it's not made lightly.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're probably just excited as hell to be like all right, look how much we get to save and give ourselves bonuses and all that stuff. That's what I said to my coworker too. I'm like you know, in Japan, when, when a company is not performing, the CEO will cut their own salary.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that ain't going to happen here.
Speaker 3:It also like at this point, how are people still getting into the gaming business? Just with how often these things hit and like, just how how they occur and just out of nowhere? It seems like and I, neither of us, are insiders Maybe the writing is on the wall when you're sitting inside of the building because you're looking over at Dave, that's just putting their thumbs going like yo, dave's making one, 50 a year to do that. Yeah, so I mean $150 a year to do that, yeah, maybe it's more obvious when you're inside inside, but it just doesn't sit well.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, we wish best of luck. Obviously Hope everybody gets to land on their feet and find a new job right away, but it's always horrible when something like that happens.
Speaker 3:Get the hell out of the video game industry at this point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. Well, people are saying they foresee another crash coming, which is not surprising for several reasons. Number one um, they did a ton of hiring during the pandemic right and then now that, that, now that that you know that's over, that the demand isn't there as much. And not only that, but the cost of games, the cost of, uh, producing and creating games and the length of time it takes to make, like a triple, a game, is getting ridiculous.
Speaker 3:You know, five, five, six, seven years to make a game, then be released with a bunch of bugs for everybody to complain about, and then hail about a year later when all the bugs have been patched out too no, but when all the bugs have been patched out, they've already moved on to another game right it's, it's, yeah, it's something needs to change.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna be totally honest. Like the, I really wish the industry would realize that they don't need to make these types of games where you've got people in motion capture suits acting out, where it's like these walking simulators. You know what I mean. It's like these action games where it's like a movie.
Speaker 2:You don't have to do that. I I mean me myself, just myself as a gamer. I don't want that. Give me a game like jack and daxter, where, where it's it's a fun, straightforward eight hour, ten hour game that takes you maybe a year and a half to make. Then use the engine, improve on it a little bit, make a sequel that comes out a year later or a year and a half later. They do the same thing, like the during the, the ps2, xbox gamecube era.
Speaker 3:Those games were churning out and there were good games coming out yeah, none of us complained about the amount of jack and daxters or sly coopers that came out. We sat there and played them with a smile on our face and loved every second of it yeah, absolutely time splitters, tony hawk, we didn't complain about until the fourth one, like we. Just we sat there and ate it because they were all good, that's true, that's true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, okay, so I guess. So to your point, yeah, like the guitar hero, uh, uh, fatigue, things like that. I could see what. Yeah, like, if you're releasing well with guitar hero, then they started doing guitar hero, aerosmith guitar, right, uh, you know, abba, I don't know whatever, um, I'm gonna play guitar hero abba abba. Yeah, uh, guitar hero phil collins, or actually they'd be drum hero, but anyway but they also didn't change anything up in between all those games.
Speaker 3:For the most part that's true. It was just the same game, released with different tracks, like guitar. Here was a game that could have benefited hugely from just dlc if it would have been. I think at the time they could have just kept it going off, the original one and everything would have been okay, and this is why I turn to indie games for a lot of my playing.
Speaker 2:You know they're more creative, they're out quicker, they're reasonably priced. I keep telling like that. One game I reviewed it for the website Pumpkin Jack.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that is exactly like an old-school PS2, Xbox GameCube-type game. It's fun, it's straightforward. It's the kind of game I want to play. I don't want to play. I'm sorry, but I don't want to play Grand Theft Auto 6.
Speaker 3:I do.
Speaker 2:Eh.
Speaker 3:But that's me Again, sucker for open-world games. It's my wheelhouse, that's true, I love them.
Speaker 2:And that's not to say you can't have these AAA games. No, that take eight years to make, but that shouldn't be your priority. Like, make one. Like, have one section of your studio do that? I don't know. That's probably why I'm not running things. I don't make the yeah, I don't get to make the stupid decisions.
Speaker 3:But you could if you want to get laid off.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 3:And speaking of stupid decisions, I was about to say what else do we have in the news, mike?
Speaker 2:Let's talk about Sony. So this week Sony announced the PlayStation 5 Pro, the much rumored console upgrade to the playstation 5. That was, um, everybody, everybody knew it was going to happen, we just didn't know when. So they had like a nine minute presentation this week and it's basically what you expect it to be. It's a playstation 5 with uh, with a little bit more under the hood and and that's essentially it. Nothing major in terms of you know, no major changes. It's just more powerful. It's a more powerful PS5. What does have everybody talking is the price point.
Speaker 3:And what is that price point like?
Speaker 2:$699.
Speaker 3:US dollars. Okay, so how much is a PlayStation 5 right now? Not the Pro version $500. Okay. So what is that additional $200? Get somebody.
Speaker 2:I don't know the exact specs. I know they're out there, but I'm not a big fan of specs. But it's just they're saying that it's. So right now, when you're playing PlayStation five, you can choose between fidelity mode and performance mode. Fidelity mode, I think, is like you're prioritizing graphics over performance. Performance mode You're prioritizing performance over graphics. So it's like you're choosing either 4K or 60 frames per second. The pro you could do both. Either 4k or 60 frames per second. The pro you could do both. They're also going to be updating several PlayStation five games that take advantage of the PS five pro. No game announcements. They're like hey, here's a brand new game and here's how it looks on the PS five pro.
Speaker 2:It was all here's how your older games are going to look. But wait, there's more yeah this. So you want to spend 700 on your playstation 5 pro? Go for it why? Yes, no, uh, but please be be advised that this $700 gets you the digital version of the PlayStation 5 Pro. If you want to get the disc reader add-on, that'll cost you an additional $80.
Speaker 3:It's not like a peripheral plug-in, is it?
Speaker 2:No, you could take like a piece of the console off and pop it in, so it looks like now you duct tape your sony discman to the side. That's right and it all makes it work so now, if you want the full playstation 5 pro, that is, uses physical media, you're spending 780 plus tax that's an astronomical amount of money.
Speaker 3:You can get a decent gaming PC for that, and not that I'm a gaming PC or a PC gamer.
Speaker 2:Yep, and that's. I know it's funny cause I'm going to get into that in a second, but I want to call it. Ign had a great article about it and it said introducing PS five pro the most expensive way to play PS4 games Damn. Yeah, that was. There were. Ps5 Pro the most expensive way to play PS4 games Damn, there were some interesting comments in the chat.
Speaker 3:Damn, that is Alright, that's not even pulling a punch.
Speaker 2:I'm going to ask you to say that again, but you've got to say it like Ron Simmons, or wait, did I say no, not the wrong guy, damn, damn. There we go. So let me ask you this, and this is I'm glad you brought up pc. I'm not a pc gamer nope I've always been against it. I've always been a console. Hook it up to the tv, you know plug and play.
Speaker 2:That's just my preference. That's just my preference. I don't want to go out and buy a new video card every other year, just so I can take advantage, you know. However, with this information, I started looking at 160 hertz monitors, so gaming monitors.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm looking to update a PC potentially Nothing major, but I am now looking into PC gaming, so this. So I'm going to ask this if this is the way consoles are going, what is the price point for you for a console where you say I'm out, I'm done, I'm going, I'm sticking with pc and that's because that's going to be my best option? That's uh you're even better, yet switch I'll go pc before I go switch.
Speaker 3:Damn it, even if it costs me 1200 bucks to to build my pc that'll play it.
Speaker 3:Um god, I don't man well it's too much for a video game console that's gonna be a question I think we're gonna be looking at when the next generation whenever that might be, which is probably gonna end up being far too soon, unfortunately drops but mean I'm cool with paying $500. I'm okay with paying $600. But $700 with no disk, where I have to pay another $80 to get the disk, is starting to push things, especially knowing full well that I can go out and my controller of choice is an Xbox controller, as I'm an Xbox gamer and I can plug it into my PC and I can play microsoft games as well as just like have xbox online on my computer and do that. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Seven might be the breaking point all right, so I realized that I'm much cheaper than you have you seen my comic collection? That's yes, I 500, to me 600, 600 would be probably be pushing it like six is pushing it. If I were to say 600, then I'd be like I better be getting a lot of stuff with this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, at the very least a pack-in game and it better be a big boost in performance as well. Yeah, because between the one and the series x there's a performance differential, mainly in load times and the auto resume and stuff like that, but it's not necessarily like that big of a difference where it's just like holy shit, have you seen this? Yeah, hey, I just spent 27 minutes without swearing.
Speaker 2:Not bad. I kind of feel like we got hosed this gen.
Speaker 3:Uh-huh, I agree.
Speaker 2:Nothing like this gen is like nothing interesting. Well, a couple games, but it's like it's nowhere near as last gen or anything like that. So I would probably 550550, $600. I would like I don't know, that might be. I don't know if I could spend that much, unless again, I'm getting a pack-in game in, maybe like three months of Ultimate. You know something? There had to be something in there to entice me to.
Speaker 3:It's going to have to be a hell of a sell to get me to go that high, yep.
Speaker 2:So it's going to have to be a hell of a sell to get me to go that high, yep. So I don't know If this is the way systems are headed. I might be headed out. I might just stick with PC.
Speaker 3:I'm curious to see what the sales numbers look like after the first six months of the PS5 Pro, or whatever they're calling it. Out in the wild are.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, there's always the hardcore fans that will pick up whatever they put out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, which is, but that's the same for any system. Yeah, I mean, you got the Nintendo fans just begging for a new Switch all the time, like their 4K Switch and all that kind of stuff and I'm not shitting on anybody in this case, that is that type of person. And you got your Microsoft people that are just content surviving. Yeah, but it's, I don't know It'll be, interesting.
Speaker 2:Yep, so yeah. So, anek, the release date is November 7th. Pre-orders go live on September 26th. I think I also read that if you want to pre-order the PS5 Pro again, we're not judging you. We would like to be your friend if you can afford that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:No kidding, if you can afford a PS5 Pro, you can afford $3 a month to sponsor the GamerHeads podcast on patreoncom and you get more new content on it.
Speaker 2:But just be advised if you're going to pre-order the ps5 pro, I think for two weeks it's only going to be available for pre-order on the sony website and then after that they're going to put pre-orders on retail sites, something like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah they must be expecting a high demand for this, and I just I yeah, well, the the um, the drive is already selling out. Really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because it's the same drive that the PlayStation 5 digital uses.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:So like the add-on, so it could be either people buying it in anticipation for the Pro or our favorite people in the world, scalpers, scalpers, yep. So, but I digress All right. Well, that's the all the interesting news that we've had this week. Let's jump right into what we've been playing. So, phil, what you've been playing lately.
Speaker 3:I finally got off of my kick of only playing the same two to three games every day. That's not true. I still play the same two to three games every day. But I also recently have mixed in a game called Tales of Iron the Mouse, yeah, which is a game about a mouse that ends up becoming king and going to war with the Frog Kingdom. It is I don't know really how to describe it it's kind of Metroid vania-y. It's also kind of platform-y. It's kind of Metroidvania-y, it's also kind of platform-y, it's kind of brawler-y at the same time.
Speaker 3:All right, so it's an action-adventure from what I just said. All right, with small hints of RPG elements. I'm only about an hour and a half into it, but the way that it all plays out is you are the son of the king of the Mouse Kingdom, which I don't remember the name of, and you've been at peace for a long time against the frogs, and the frogs end up invading again, killing the king. You end up getting promoted to be the king and then you go to try to take the world back from the frogs. It's very pretty. It's got some very nice voice acting and narration that goes along with it. The gameplay thus far has been very tight, and the exploration facts have been fun as well. The combat is challenging enough to keep you engaged, but not too hard to make you quit that's I was gonna say.
Speaker 2:Is it seem kind of souls like at all?
Speaker 3:um, no, there's little benches you can sit on, that you can.
Speaker 3:That will save your progress, and so if you sit on a bench and then, like you die, you go right back into it, you don't have to recollect your stuff or anything like that okay, but in terms of the difficulty like no, it's not anywhere near that punishing, okay, but there is a counter and parry system to it, but it's I'd hearken it more so along the lines of a rudimentary assassin's creed counter parry system than a soul's counter parry system, gotcha, especially since it is all in the 2d space instead of 3d, where you're not navigating everything, you're just navigating everything.
Speaker 2:Yep, I don't know, did they announce a sequel?
Speaker 3:to that they did, which is what got me to play this. I saw a trailer for the sequel and I was just like oh, this looks really cool. I haven't seen the first one. I saw the first one. I think it was on sale relatively inexpensively, so I grabbed it, picked it up and I started playing it. It's something I'll spend spend some more time with cool yeah, very nice little hand-drawn graphics.
Speaker 3:They look hand-drawn to it. I mean, yeah, the controls are a little bit floaty when you jump, but also you kind of anticipate that in that style of the game, awesome.
Speaker 2:All right, anything else?
Speaker 3:uh, nothing outside of the usuals, no, and I tried to convince myself to go and play other things, but then I got stuck in a rut. What have you been playing?
Speaker 2:uh, so aside from the usual, you know fortnite, I've been playing that. Uh, I'm up to level, I think, like 160 something right now you're gonna hit 200, 150. So I'm actually gonna hit 200 this time. And black cat comes out this friday or saturday damn it, yes, yes, yes indeed. So yeah, uh. Anyway, what was I thinking about again?
Speaker 3:games you've been playing like games I've been playing.
Speaker 2:That's right. So, uh, the first game I can talk about now that the review is up where's the review at oh, I'm glad you asked, phil. The review you can find at gamerheadspodcastcom and the game I reviewed is Yars Rising and that's not about pirates.
Speaker 3:Yar.
Speaker 2:It's so basically, did you ever play Yars Revenge for the Atari?
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it's basically it's in that universe, and yes, I do mean that Universe. I call it out in the review. Is that back in the day? Games used?
Speaker 3:to come with instruction manuals that had backstory that had backstories in them.
Speaker 2:Yes, and actually yar's revenge came with a comic book that gave you by not just saying yar every time so this game is, uh, it's kind of like in that same universe, but this one is not the arcade game, this is actually. It's a Metroidvania. So this is it's made by WayForward. It's a Metroidvania game where you play as a main character and you're also a hacker for hire. So you start off going trying to upload like a virus into the organization you work at, because that's what you're being paid to do and I'm not going to get into the whole story. I don't want to ruin anything, but it goes into a very interesting story about aliens and all that other stuff. But it takes the whole Yarr story and mythos and incorporates it into this game. It's very typical Metroidvania where you can't get to someplace until you get in a power-up and then you can go back and do that, all that other fun stuff.
Speaker 2:What sets this apart is two things. Number one I'm going to call out is the voice acting is phenomenal. The writing is really funny. The main character stuff, uh, what sets this apart is two things. Number one I'm going to call out is the voice acting is phenomenal. The writing is really funny. The main character, um, the, and I and I apologize that I don't know who voiced her, but she did an amazing job. Like she's just just like really just really funny and and aloof the whole time okay she calls out different things like video game tropes.
Speaker 2:She's like, oh, here we go, another room with lasers, what a surprise. You know, just kind of like pokes fun at these things, and her dialogue with the other characters is pretty interesting. The other thing that really takes it, the other thing that is different than most Metroidvanias and this is where it really goes into that Yars universe is that in order to open doors, to unlock power-ups, things like that, you have to hack into these terminals and when you go to hack into it it opens up a screen and it's the original Atari 2600 game.
Speaker 2:Okay and it's the original atari 2600 game.
Speaker 2:Okay, so in the 2600 game you have to like nibble away at a shield and then fire a cannon at the, whatever the enemy is, uh, the co-tile, and, but there's a whole, and then, once you do that, then it hacks the door or you get the power up, etc. But the cool thing is it's unlike the atari 2600 game. They have a bunch of different variations on it. So, for example, there's three missiles that are slowly coming at you or following you, so you've got to avoid those. Or you need to collect a pellet that shuts down a barrier that otherwise you can't damage it, or there's one where you're shooting and it's basically like centipede. So there's also other atari references in the game. Yeah, uh, the final one of the final boss battles is absolutely hilarious.
Speaker 2:Was not expecting it and I also slapped myself in the forehead because I didn't realize the uh, the reference at the beginning of the game and I and I won't call it out because, again, I don't want to spoil anything yeah, I could tell you about it after the show um and uh, and it's, it's not a bad game, I mean it's, it's a typical. As far as metroidvanias go, I gave it a, b, uh, it's a fun game. If, especially if you like Metroidvanias, after you're done with the game you can go back and play it on professional mode. Then you can also try to beat the times in all of the different hacking minigames. So they're all available for you.
Speaker 3:Do you unlock anything for doing that?
Speaker 2:No achievements.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's also. The soundtrack is very nice. They got a bunch of different artists, so there's a lot of uh lyrics and singing in it oh lyrics and singing lyrics and singing. Yes, you can't sing without lyrics uh, it's also, it's very techno, poppy, japanese type. You know that type of music. So yeah, it's it's. It's an interesting game. I had a good time playing it. I'm glad I played it. And you said, you gave it a.
Speaker 3:B.
Speaker 2:Gave it a B.
Speaker 3:And if people want to read the full review, where can they read that?
Speaker 2:They can go straight to GamerHeadsPodcastcom and look at reviews, and then you will see Yars Rising.
Speaker 3:As well as reviews written by Roger, occasionally ones by myself and some by Trina, and maybe even others that I'm not aware of.
Speaker 2:That's true. Yeah, over at GamerHeadsPodcastcom.
Speaker 3:When you said that it hits like all their like she calls out all the video game tropes and stuff. It made me envision in my head, and I know it's kind of been done. But there was that craze in the early 2000s of not another teen movie, not another whatever movie scary movie I do too, but somebody should make another video game. Video game, that'd be awesome where it's just like it just hits all of those notes.
Speaker 2:It's in everything.
Speaker 2:Yep, that would be fun anything else you've been playing yes, I have been playing another game and I'm really excited to talk about this one. Uh, so the wife and I, we were, uh, just hanging out in the living room trying to figure out what to do. We're like let's watch a movie. Like you know what, let's not watch a movie, let's play a game called the quarry. So I finally took the quarry out of my backlog, un, unwrapped it, popped it in because I told her about what Until Dawn was about. And I'm like, yeah. And she said, oh, she's like I love David Arquette. And I'm like, okay, because she loves the Scream movies. And I'm like, all right, well, let's play it. So we played the quarry and I, normally, after maybe like an hour or two, I'm like, okay, I'll stop for now and then I'll pick it up again later. I'm like, okay, are you good? She's like no, keep going.
Speaker 2:All right keep going, and so I think we're at about halfway through the game right now.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's just like until then it's a lot of fun. It's not what I thought it was't. It's been out long enough that I won't give out many spoilers, but I thought it was going to be like a, like a slasher, like a jason type movie. But I guess it's not, but at least from what I've seen so far.
Speaker 2:So it gets there yeah, so, um, I so we've been, we we've been having some fun with it because she's not a gamer she doesn't play games, but she's good at telling me what to do. So so, whenever, whenever a would come up and it's like how do you want to reply? I'd look over and she would tell me, like you know, you should reply like this One thing I learned about my wife she is a jerk, that's all she picked. She picked a lot like. A majority of the replies were like the mean replies, okay, like the sassy replies and things like that she picked. She picked a lot of like. A majority of the replies were like the mean replies okay like the sassy replies and things like that.
Speaker 2:um, I did think she kind of screwed me over, though, because there was, you know, in some points in the quarry, so if you don't know what I'm talking about, in terms of the quarry, it's basically like a choose your own adventure anime or, uh, like a like a horror movie, like a choose your own adventure horror movie almost, and it's well acted. It looks like a video game. There is some pointy clicky walking around and searching for things and you know, and taking things, things like that.
Speaker 2:But in the game there's like seven or eight main characters and you could have any combination of them living or dying, so you could have everybody live, everybody die or anything in between. So there's a whole bunch of different endings there. And I don't I don't know if I how's your poker face, cause I don't want you to spoil anything for me Okay, so we were in, we were at the scene. There's a scene where two of the characters break into like the, the county store, you know like the snack bar or something like that, and there's a you break into a safe and in the safe there are fireworks and it says will you take the fireworks, yes or no?
Speaker 2:And I asked my wife and I'm like well, what do you think? She's like, yeah, take the fireworks. I'm like okay, but in my gut my horror movie experience tells me like I probably should have left the fireworks there. But I guess we'll find out later. So that's all I'm going to say there. But then, on the flip side, she did something that I totally forgot about. There's a skinny dipping scene. You know what?
Speaker 1:I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:Yep, and there's a point where you either go up towards the surface or you swim back down. And I'm like, well, I'm going up to the surface. She's like, no, you need to swim back down. I'm like, why? And then she's like you need, you have to get what this person is swimming back down for. And I'm like I totally forgot about that. So I'm hoping I made the right decision on that. So that's the thing and that's why I kind of like these games. At the same time, they cause me so much stress because my decisions are impacting the ending and I'm like I don't want to mess up but I want to see everything. So it like it messes with my head. But, um, I think we're about halfway done. We ended it. Ended it at that point where where they went back, um, right after the first guy gets attacked.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:Right around, right after, oh, right after, oh, yeah, so it's right after the skinny dipping scene where the one girl is by herself. So you're not talking to her Instagram friends while she's walking around?
Speaker 3:Okay, and that's kind of all like in that elevated spot, right, if memory serves me correctly. Okay, and that's kind of all like in that elevated spot, right? Yeah, I think so, if memory serves me correctly. Okay, I know exactly where you are. Are you guys passing the controller where you're playing?
Speaker 2:No, I'm just You're driving and she's co-piloting. Yeah, well, yeah, just like whenever we drive everywhere.
Speaker 3:She's a Chewbacca to your Han Solo.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right.
Speaker 3:also working on grading papers at the same time. So fair. So yeah, very cool, yeah, but I'm loving it it's, you know, uh, along those lines, not to step on your toes, but kyle and I were going to start. Uh, what the hell is it called now? The new one?
Speaker 2:casting of frank stone casting of frank stone.
Speaker 3:But it is not online multiplayer. Oh so rachel and i're gonna play past the controller with that one, like we did with the quarry gotcha actually you and you called that out last week.
Speaker 2:Um, that that inspired me to to pick it up. Like you know what, I need to play the quarry and now that I'm playing it, I'm like shoot, I wonder what this is like playing online. So I might ask you to bust it out again you don't want to play the quarry online.
Speaker 3:It's bad, kyle and Kyle and I tried to do it and it's the same thing where it's not the two people playing at the same time, it's one person is helping the other person make decisions.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:The only ones that are good to play online are the oh, what the hell are they called Dark Pictures Anthology? Yeah, those are the only ones that are good online.
Speaker 2:The rest of them are all just like me.
Speaker 3:Ish okay, yeah, because then next time I'm gonna try to kill everybody. Oh, you're gonna kill half the people now as I kill half the people yeah but if you ever want to get the dark pictures, anthology stuff, I will gladly get into that with you all right.
Speaker 2:Well, I, I have okay, we'll talk about that because I think I have a couple on ps4 and a couple not on xbox, so okay, so yeah, loving that one. So I'm in a spooky season. I already got my scary movie list already written out here Movies. So, anyway, all right. So that's everything I've been playing. Let's go ahead and wrap things up. Kind of a shorter show today, but that's okay.
Speaker 3:When we're still 45 minutes that's not bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right. Minutes, that's not bad, yeah, all right. Well, let's get into how we can be reached. So, phil, if anyone wants to get a hold of you, how can they reach you? You can find me at twitter at b now 23 all right, and you can find my uh me over at pez guy mike on twitter and then uh nintendroj, if you want to reach roger. I almost forgot that I had that with a question mark Ted Rodge. Something like that, yeah.
Speaker 3:All right, and if you want to follow the show, you can go to GamerHeadsPodcastcom. Damn it, Mike. That's where you can read reviews.
Speaker 2:I'm talking about following the show on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook what. Oh, GamerHeadsPodcast GamerHeadsPod.
Speaker 3:I forgot One of the two. I don't know, man, I don't follow us. What are you asking me for? Because you were playing the role of host and I'm playing the role of stooge.
Speaker 2:You can go to Spotify and type in GamerHeadsPodcast.
Speaker 3:You can follow us there too dammit.
Speaker 2:You can follow us there too, dammit.
Speaker 3:Or iTunes.
Speaker 2:Or iTunes Yep, that's also, it's a.
Speaker 3:YouTube channel.
Speaker 2:Yep Twitch. I don't know if Roger still streams on Twitch.
Speaker 3:He probably won't be for about the next six weeks.
Speaker 2:That's right. Thanks everybody for hanging out with us as we try to maintain control of this train wreck. We appreciate it. Check us out next week. Until next time, everyone stay safe and game on. Have a fantastic night, everybody, so long.
Speaker 3:Take care, stuck the landing. Damn it, I forgot to press stop you.
