613: Back to Audio only we go

Larry: Hi it's Larry here at Xbox Live's major Nelson. Welcome to the podcast, show number 613. This is an audio only show.
Jeffrey: Larry, I can't see you.
Larry: Yes, I know.
Jeffrey: I can't see you.
Larry: It's audio only. For the past two shows we've done video and of course, we've taken the audio off the video and put it up on the audio. Anyway, here we are. We've been doing the past couple shows on Mixer. You've joined us Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Happily.
Larry: Of course Laurie you've joined us.
Laura: Hello.
Larry: Then joining us this week is special guest Graham Boyd. Hi Graham.
Graham Boyd: Hi, how's it going?
Larry: We decided to say, I know when I asked you to be on the show it was kind of awkward because we've done the last two shows on video and you haven't quite worked your way up to that show yet. So, we'll get you there.
Graham Boyd: Yeah I was going to ask you about that.
Jeffrey: Not wearing all that flannel. Wardrobe!
Graham Boyd: My mom always said I had a face for radio.
Larry: Here we are. It's nice to have everybody back together in a normal show format. A lot of questions, a lot of great feedback. Did you have a chance to watch the shows Graham? Even though you weren't on them?
Graham Boyd: Absolutely. I was watching them On Demand. In fact, you came up to my desk weren't you. I was doing something else and Larry asked me, "Have you watched the show?" I was like, yeah honestly I'm just about to watch it. I had the tab open.
Larry: So you can hit that under mixer.commajornelson. I've got on my YouTube. We're going to do those, a lot of requests to do them. We love doing them. I think we do. I don't want to speak for you Laurie or Jeffrey.
Laura: Yeah, it's fun.
Larry: It's just a little more, there's a little more overhead because there's a crew involved. There's a studio.
Jeffrey: And we have to do it live. We can't edit things out. I burped five times in the time that since the show started, but we edited them out every time.
Larry: Graham was using all sorts of crazy vernacular.
Jeffrey: Couldn't understand, we're like, nope.
Larry: We had to edit it out.
Graham Boyd: That's the seventh time we've tried this.
Larry: We do it live and it's a lot of fun, but we'll be doing more of those in the future. The goal is maybe do them once every month or two months. Whenever schedules allow. I'm looking at you Laurie and you Jeff. We'd love to have you on in a future show if you can-
Jeffrey: Shave.
Graham Boyd: You've got cheek.
Jeffrey: I know, I'm trying to cover it up with the beard.
Graham Boyd: My goodness.
Jeffrey: You have much better facial hair.
Graham Boyd: I love how you're making lots of visual references about me when we are actually on the radio.
Jeffrey: I know.
Graham Boyd: Too many flannel shirts. I have to have a shave.
Jeffrey: Actually, I like flannel shirts.
Larry: We're back here after the holidays. We talked a little bit. We had Phil on last week. I gotta tell you this funny story. We always talk about how we're very careful about things we talk about in the show and I read this weird story on some blog last night about, they basically took everything that Phil had said verbatim and posted it and was trying to make news out of it. There really wasn't, Phil didn't really say anything. He was just coming on to the show. So, that's why we have to do it, be careful. It was great to have Phil on. We're looking forward to some of the cool stuff we've got at E3 this year.
Graham Boyd: E3.
Larry: I know, you've already had meetings on that.
Graham Boyd: Absolutely.
Larry: I've had meetings. Jeff's had meetings. Laura hasn't had any meetings yet. You'll come in later.
Laura: I come in later.
Larry: She'll come in later. We're looking forward to that and it's quite a ways away, but let's jump off on our normal show agenda here. We're talk about what we're playing. I don't know who wants to structure. Should we have Graham start?
Laura: I think we should.
Larry: Graham.
Laura: Special guest should start.
Larry: Special frequent guest.
Graham Boyd: That's very [crosstalk 00:03:43].
Larry: You're the Charles Nelson Riley of the show.
Graham Boyd: I don't know who that is.
Jeffrey: Neither do anyone who is listening to this show. Me and Larry probably.
Graham Boyd: I'll take it as a compliment though.
Larry: Okay.
Graham Boyd: Well surprise, surprise I'll be playing Pub G.
Larry: We haven't been played together yet.
Graham Boyd: No, I know. I've only ever played solo. I have yet to do [crosstalk 00:04:08]
Jeffrey: You can actually look at your inventory and not worry about getting shot in the back.
Graham Boyd: It would be a completely different game for me completely.
Laura: It is a little different. It's a little less anxious. A little less stressful.
Larry: So you're playing Pub G, which is just this past week they got their fourth update since they've launched a month ago. It's a bit amazing.
Graham Boyd: Actually, that update's great because it added the second controller.
Larry: Type B.
Graham Boyd: Type B.
Jeffrey: I use it.
Graham Boyd: I was loving it anyway, but that's changed the game for me. It feels much more fluid to me now.
Larry: You know what?
Graham Boyd: What's that?
Larry: I went back to Type A.
Graham Boyd: Did you?
Larry: I tried Type B for about three days, about 10 matches and I just, what happened was I found myself in a close quarters combat with the Shaka and when I pulled the left trigger, all of the sudden I'm-
Jeffrey: You're ADSing.
Larry: ... yeah I'm ADS so I didn't want to do it, so I went back.
Jeffrey: In general I feel like I've done better since we went to Type B.
Larry: Try it out because it's got some nice flexibility in there.
Graham Boyd: I think you're right enough. It will be trickier when you're indoors.
Larry: I just have to rethink my approach.
Graham Boyd: Why not? I'm loving it. Absolutely loving it. I've got my first chicken dinner. Two nights ago. Thank you very much.
Jeffrey: Solo?
Graham Boyd: Solo, yeah.
Laura: Wow, solo? Nice job.
Larry: Well done.
Graham Boyd: It was a funny one as well because we were right down to the last circle. There was four of us left. It was basically, it was on one of the farmhouses.
Larry: For those of you who can't see this, he's holding his hands up about the size of a half dollar.
Graham Boyd: [crosstalk 00:05:32] I didn't realize that when you get to the end game like that, if you wait long enough, the circle completely collapses.
Larry: So here's what happened. Let me tell you a funny story and we'll get to yours. I was playing with a friend of mine. I don't know who it was, it was one of my friends. We're doing Duos and we got, we're juggling through and we're down to the last few, he says, "Let's go to that". You know those funny little octagonal houses that are two levels? They're kind scattered around the map.
Graham Boyd: Yes.
Larry: We get upstairs and we hunker down. Sure enough, the circle starts closing in on the house. Now here's what happened. There was another team of two in the lower level.
Laura: The same house?
Larry: In the same house. So it kept, you're right, it kept getting smaller and smaller. All of the sudden the circle is inside the room and we're throwing grenades down, they're throwing them up. No one's leaving because we know we're going to die. You're right, all of the sudden it started just slowly closing down to nothing and one of us had to jump out and kill. It was a mad race those last 10 seconds.
Graham Boyd: Totally. I was kind of stuck outside the walls of this farmhouse. My assumption was the other three people were actually inside the farmhouse, but there was nothing happening. It was dead quiet and I'm thinking well, I need to do something. Going to have to rush the farmhouse at one point. Then the indicator came up saying play zone collapsing in five seconds or whatever. So, it forced me, I just had to vomit inside the house.
Larry: So the circle kept going inside the house.
Graham Boyd: Yes, yes.
Larry: I see.
Graham Boyd: It was just collapsing on top of me. I was literally sprinting inside the house.
Larry: With it coming behind you.
Graham Boyd: The wave, the edge of the circle. There was a dude in the house just as I came around the corner so I managed to tag him once and then he was actually playing just to be the last person in the collapsing circle. The other two people died.
Larry: Play Zone took it.
Graham Boyd: I head shotted him. I swear the second I head shot him, I died as well.
Larry: But you got the win?
Graham Boyd: I got the win.
Larry: That's exactly what happened.
Laura: Wow, wow.
Jeffrey: You put this on Twitter.
Graham Boyd: I put it on Twitter, yeah, for the last 30 seconds on Twitter.
Laura: Nice.
Graham Boyd: I was like, I saw myself die and I thought, I've missed it again, I'm number two. Then it was winner, winner, chicken dinner. I thought yeah!
Larry: You don't get to enjoy the chicken.
Graham Boyd: It was midnight at that point and I had an 8AM meeting the next morning but I couldn't sleep for like three hours.
Jeffrey: You can't sleep after playing that game.
Graham Boyd: Oh my god I'm so pumped.
Larry: You get so amped up playing.
Graham Boyd: It was great. It's just like, it's one of those games that just is story, after story, after story and every single time I play it's completely different. [crosstalk 00:07:50] where you land and you get taken out within the first two minutes. It's still an interesting story.
Laura: I'd love to know your strategy because I found myself in the situation, I was curious what anybody else would do. Say, it's been just a minute after you landed and you're running up to a house, but right before you get into that house you see somebody else run into that house. What do you do?
Larry: You keep running and just make sure you can pick something up as fast as possible.
Jeffrey: You have something or you don't have any weapon?
Laura: Say you have a simple weapon like a melee weapon or something that you just picked up along the way.
Jeffrey: I'd probably go somewhere else.
Laura: Would you go somewhere else or do you follow him in?
Larry: No we go in. I absolutely go in.
Laura: You go in?
Larry: I go in and if I can't find a weapon or the other individual finds a weapon first, I'll make sure I know how to get out.
Jeffrey: I live to fight another day. I feel like when we play with Larry we're either, we're out in the upper 80s, like we're out real quick or we make it into the top ten.
Larry: We go the distance.
Graham Boyd: What I was doing initially , was I was working really hard to land somewhere isolated, away from other players so I could get settled, get all my gear and stuff. I think recently I've kind of flipped that because I want to get into more gun fights early, basically to practice. I was finding that I would be in a game with no kills for 25 minutes and then as soon as I got into a gun fight-
Jeffrey: Sounds like me.
Graham Boyd: ... actually getting earlier.
Laura: Practice.
Graham Boyd: To practice [crosstalk 00:09:09].
Larry: There's two data points that I would use on playing the game is, one I usually use the roomba method, which is I start on the outside of the islands and work my way in.
Graham Boyd: Nice.
Larry: If you have a roomba, you know what that means. Laura I know you know what that means. The other thing is, I also make sure I make a mental note of the flight path.
Graham Boyd: Yes.
Larry: Because that usually dictates, plus or minus five or ten degrees off either side is where a bulk of the people will land. So you want to make sure you stay out of the flight path and go away on opposite sides of that. I'm very cognizant of that.
Graham Boyd: I like that because you know, you've got a better sense of where players are coming from.
Larry: Precisely.
Graham Boyd: If you're going away from the flight path you can pretty much be certain that there's not players coming towards you.
Larry: Precisely.
Graham Boyd: As long as you're watching your back you can have a good sense of where people are.
Larry: Precisely.
Graham Boyd: It's such a good game.
Larry: Anyway-
Laura: There's a lot of strategy to it.
Graham Boyd: Yeah, wicked.
Larry: Wicked. That's exactly what I say. What else you playing?
Graham Boyd: Force Horizon Three, Xbox one x enhanced.
Larry: It says right there on the splash screen, Xbox One X enhanced. It's funny I was in Albert Pinnella's office the other day and I should get him on to talk about this because he booted it up and he was looking at it. Albert's a car nut. I don't know if you know that. I was talking to him about this-
Laura: We know that because he told us the story of he named the S controller.
Larry: ... After his car experience. He was telling me how he plays Force Horizon completely opposite than anybody else.
Laura: Seriously?
Jeffrey: What do you mean?
Larry: He'll only use cars that he owns.
Laura: What?
Larry: Most people use it to play cars that they want to own or have this fantasy car. This very expensive, nope.
Graham Boyd: How many cars does he own?
Larry: Apparently-
Jeffrey: Enough to have a pretty good collection.
Graham Boyd: There's like 700 cars in the game.
Larry: The answer is, the answer is he owns 30. He's collected them for many, many years. He owns more car in real life than I do actually in [inaudible 00:10:55]. It's unreal. So it's just so funny. It looks phenomenal. It was fantastic.
Graham Boyd: Incredible. To be honest, it looked amazing already.
Larry: It always looked great.
Graham Boyd: To see it in four k is just, is another level all together.
Larry: Your eyes melt.
Jeffrey: I'm just hoping one day I have a car nice enough to make it into [inaudible 00:11:12].
Graham Boyd: Yeah, there you go.
Jeffrey: That would be, still no Prius huh? Okay, all right.
Graham Boyd: I used to have a Mini. I suppose that was in, wasn't it?
Jeffrey: Yeah.
Graham Boyd: It's absolutely gorgeous and actually I'm glad I had a reason to actually go back and play it because it's one of those game, I've played it like pretty consistently since it came out 18 months ago now. I was looking at my stats the other night. I'm only 52% complete on that game.
Larry: Really?
Graham Boyd: I haven't even done the final showcase. I'm like 70% towards the final showcase.
Jeffrey: You did Hot Wheels and [crosstalk 00:11:44].
Graham Boyd: Yeah.
Jeffrey: Both so good.
Graham Boyd: My three year old son loves Horizon as well. So, often we go in and play co pilot with him and he just, we just basically blitz around the island. It's really cool. It's nice to go back. I played the showcase where you're racing against the vertical take off and landing jet.
Larry: The V tall.
Graham Boyd: Which is nuts.
Larry: The harrier, yeah.
Graham Boyd: So good. Headphones on.
Jeffrey: [inaudible 00:12:09] four K screens.
Graham Boyd: Absolutely love it. It's so good. Well done to the team on that because it looks incredible. Then, aside from that. I finished college at World War Two about a week ago. I was playing that-
Larry: I need to get back to that.
Graham Boyd: I really enjoyed it. Campaign. Really enjoyed it. It's the fresh campaign in the college at E game I've completed for, I would say maybe the last three or four.
Larry: Yeah.
Graham Boyd: I really dug it. I thought, they tried to do some interesting, brave things with the campaign story like that. I think it landed pretty well. Some really brilliant set pieces like battle of the bulge.
Larry: I've heard about that. I'm not there yet, but I've heard about that. You've seen the films. The movies, right? It's just epic.
Graham Boyd: About a year ago I went through, we've talked about this, I went through a mad sort of World War Two history reading phase.
Larry: We talked about that because, we didn't do this on the air, but we talked about the fact, I don't know if this was with you Laura, but when you're, I don't know this, maybe it's true, but you reach a certain age as a guy where all of the sudden anything that's on TV or around World War Two you stop dead in your tracks.
Laura: Really?
Larry: It's the weirdest thing.
Graham Boyd: You become Tony Soprano is what happens.
Larry: It's the craziest thing. Is that right Jeff?
Jeffrey: I'll let you know when I get to that phase.
Graham Boyd: Such a youngster.
Laura: Not there yet.
Larry: Well you're kind of there already because you're having this Wolfenstein experience. We'll talk about that later.
Jeffrey: This is true. I've learned a lot about World War Two.
Larry: See?
Jeffrey: Playing Wolfenstein.
Larry: Okay, there you go.
Jeffrey: Quite the documentary that one.
Graham Boyd: It was good. It felt very, you know there's a great episode of Band of Brothers where they're in Bastion and it's Battle of the Bulge type. It felt very much like that and it does one of those things at college where it completely changes the pace halfway through the mission and you actually end up in a fighter plane escorting bombers.
Laura: Have you been to the Museum of Flight?
Graham Boyd: No.
Laura: You should go.
Larry: Here in Seattle.
Graham Boyd: My Dad's coming in two weeks and yeah, I'm going to take him. We're really excited about it.
Laura: Lots of World War Two there.
Larry: Museum of Flight is obviously what it is, it's a museum of flights here in Seattle. It's nice. You ever come to Seattle, you want to take that in.
Laura: It is definitely a place to stop. It's right next to the Boeing factory.
Larry: One of them.
Laura: One of them, yes, one of them. It's got a ton of World War Two planes.
Larry: You know what it has there? It has one of the original Air Force One jets.
Laura: Yes it goes. The one that Nixon and-
Larry: Lyndon Johnson.
Laura: ... Lyndon Johnson and let's see if I remember the other one. A couple Presidents.
Larry: JFK?
Laura: I don't know if JFK flew on that one. Some of the Presidents for sure.
Larry: Did you go into it?
Laura: I did. They let you in and you can walk around in it.
Larry: Do you remember seeing that, how you knew is was Lyndon Johnson's?
Laura: His hat was there.
Larry: Not only that. They point out where the Presidents desk was, to the right was a little clip and that's where he would put his hat. He would clip his hat. I just want you to appreciate that being from Texas.
Laura: His hat is still there. Exactly. His hat is still there by the way.
Jeffrey: I don't think he wore a ten gallon hat?
Laura: He wore a Texas cowboy hat.
Jeffrey: Well I'm going to look that up.
Laura: Yeah, you should. It's really cool. Anyway, he's in a flight.
Jeffrey: That question has not been on HQ yet. What kind of hat does Lyndon Johnson wear? [crosstalk 00:15:08]
Yes, exactly.
Laura: Goodness. Definitely carve some time out there. I took my father there once and he's a big history-
Larry: See, see. It happened to him too.
Laura: ... it happened to him. It happened to him. We had to leave him behind because he wanted to spend much more time looking at all the planes and the exhibits than we did.
Larry: You're going to have a great time with [inaudible 00:15:30]. It's unbelievable. Most of it's indoors.
Laura: Most of it is. The really interesting exhibits like the Concord and the [crosstalk 00:15:38] are outside.
Larry: The Concord, that's right.
Laura: They have a Concord and I had never been in the Concord before.
Larry: It's claustrophobic isn't it?
Laura: Yes it is.
Larry: It's like so tiny.
Laura: It is so tiny. It tapers to a point.
Jeffrey: But you're in it for an hour.
Graham Boyd: Well not anymore. Cool. Exciting. So there's that. There you go.
Larry: Visuals.
Jeffrey: Cowboy hat and a one piece coverall.
Larry: Okay, that's Lyndon Johnson. All right.
Jeffrey: Pull off all the looks.
Graham Boyd: My last one really quickly is a total change of pace. Is City Skylines.
Laura: I'm playing that on iPhone actually.
Graham Boyd: Are you? I didn't know it was on iPhone.
Laura: Yeah it is.
Larry: It's on most everywhere.
Graham Boyd: I need to get that then.
Larry: Yeah you do.
Graham Boyd: I've always loved city building games and I was really excited for it coming out. Last year, was it last year?
Larry: Last year.
Graham Boyd: I never had the chance-
Larry: What are you building? Are you building a real thriving metropolis? Is it more urban, suburban?
Graham Boyd: ... Good question. It's called Aberdeen. It's inspired by my hometown.
Larry: Are you trying to put the main building in and building around that? So trying to duplicate.
Graham Boyd: I'm not trying to duplicate it. I would like it to be a thriving metropolis. I'm building it slowly. I've kicked off a lot of farming industry and some logging.
Larry: Is it young Graham Boyd's memory of Aberdeen?
Graham Boyd: I think it is. It's a romanticized version of Aberdeen.
Jeffrey: You live right next to the football stadium?
Graham Boyd: I haven't got football stadium yet, but in theory yes. Nice river front. Couple of rivers running through it. It's good. I'm really enjoying it. I like the sedate pace. Over Christmas with a nice cup of tea or maybe a little whiskey. That was a nice game to play in amongst all the college Es and Pub Gs and all the others.
Laura: Probably what you want to play after.
Jeffrey: You were painting a nice picture. I would like to do be doing that.
Laura: You definitely need to chill out.
Larry: I have this mental picture of Graham in his smoking jacket with the fire on.
Graham Boyd: I was wearing my onesie.
Larry: A whiskey, brandy snifter and you're just playing.
Graham Boyd: In a leather armchair. Something like that, yeah.
Jeffrey: Foundry goes there.
Graham Boyd: I do find the older I'm getting I like games where I can actually just enjoy a cup of tea while I'm playing it. There's not many. There's like, City Skylines is one. Xcomm is good for it.
Jeffrey: Absolutely.
Graham Boyd: It's nice. Enjoy a cuppa. Play a bit of video games.
Laura: I recommend Slime Rancher for that.
Graham Boyd: I keep meaning to play that.
Laura: It's really fun.
Graham Boyd: I think my son Finn would love that.
Laura: He probably would.
Graham Boyd: Okay. I'll get it installed.
Laura: It's very slow paced. It's one of those games that you play after you finish something like Pub G to just wind down before you go to bed.
Graham Boyd: That's funny isn't it.
Laura: It just slows the heart pace down and gets you into a zen mindset. It's really fun.
Jeffrey: You've sold me on Slime Rancher.
Graham Boyd: Good.
Laura: It's pretty fun.
Larry: Well this is a sequeway. That's what you're playing?
Graham Boyd: That's it.
Larry: That will sequeway into what Laura's playing, which sounds like more Slime Rancher.
Laura: It's a really good game. I very much enjoy that. I am up probably up into the medium or high level of being a rancher. I've got lots of good slimes. I've got all the little hybrids of slimes. If you don't know the game, the economy building game and you basically farm your slimes for money because you feed them and then they poo out money. Then you go buy upgrades to your farm.
Jeffrey: Where can I get me some of these slimes?
Laura: I want some of those slimes too for real.
Jeffrey: Daddy wants some more shoes.
Graham Boyd: Did you play Stardew? Stardew Valley.
Laura: I did a little bit, but that one, didn't hook me as much.
Graham Boyd: Really?
Laura: I know.
Jeffrey: Did you have a mayonnaise machine? That's where the money starts rolling in.
Graham Boyd: It's some delicious mayonnaise.
Laura: I know. That should have been right up my street. Probably didn't give it enough time because there was something that had come out at that time and I just didn't get hooked into Stardew Valley.
Jeffrey: There's romance.
Laura: It's a farming game.
Jeffrey: A fight against a oligarch retail giant. There's a lot. There's a lot to it. It's not just all turnips and radishes.
Graham Boyd: That was my most played game of last year.
Laura: Was it?
Larry: Really?
Graham Boyd: When you review the Xbox Live stats thing. The email that went out. That was my most played game.
Larry: Did you work on that?
Graham Boyd: 130 hours.
Larry: Did you work on that project?
Graham Boyd: I worked on it. So it was a team over in the UK that actually did that.
Larry: That makes sense now because for some reason, in America the year goes from January until December.
Graham Boyd: You're touching on a sore part here. That was the biggest piece of feedback I'd say we got from the community was that a year in review should be 12 months rather than nine months. There's a ton of-
Larry: First three quarters.
Graham Boyd: ... there's some-
Larry: Learnings for next year.
Graham Boyd: ... big data reasons behind that. You know what, if people are listening and they did see that and frustrated by it or whatever-
Larry: We know why.
Graham Boyd: ... we heard that feedback-
Larry: We hear you.
Graham Boyd: ... and we're looking at options, yeah.
Jeffrey: AC Bongo's on Twitter. Hit him up.
Graham Boyd: Give me all your year in review feedback. Sorry Laura. The reason I asked was I was interested to know, because it sounds kind of similar in terms of that farming to Stardew Valley. I wondered how close it was to that, but maybe not very.
Laura: I don't know. I didn't get too much into it. I only planted a few plants in Stardew Valley. I didn't probably spend three or four hours in it. Sounds like you spent hundreds.
Graham Boyd: 130.
Laura: That's a lot of hours. Good for drinking tea.
Larry: Again, tea.
Graham Boyd: Stardew Valley.
Larry: Tea.
Laura: I think rivals Larry's 120 hours in Fallout.
Larry: Oh yeah. Fallout.
Laura: Last year.
Larry: I think absolutely. I'm still going. Actually, I think probably the Witcher is up there as well now. I'm bumping against that as well. We'll talk about that.
Laura: I don't have too much to talk about this week. It's been busy. Busy week. I just played sort of normal games that you've already heard me talk about before like Diablo and Dungeon Avengers Two. Actually, jumped into multi player finally on Dungeon Avengers Two.
Larry: You know, I got all-
Laura: You did text me to say hey let's play Pub G.
Larry: I feel terrible after that. I really do. I just got a lot of people emailing me, how could you not play? I feel terrible. My sister, who you met, Sue she's like, "I listened to the show, what the hell?" I'm like, what? What? I'm getting it from all sides.
Laura: Well, thanks community for sticking up for me, but to come to Larry's defense, you did try and organize [crosstalk 00:21:55]
Larry: I will continue.
Laura: This last week. He did try and it was my calendar didn't line up.
Larry: I will continue. I understand, things don't work out.
Jeffrey: Larry's guilt trip game it hard. Really hard core. Someone will invite me out to something and I'll be like, "I'm going to have to tell Larry that I can't play tonight."
Larry: This is actually a structural difference between you and I. We never really talked about this. I went through the phase where when I was working in radio I was out every night until two, three, four o'clock in the morning. I'm done with that. When I go home at night, I mean I like race to get in my sweatpants. Right? I'm like, I'm ready to go. You-
Jeffrey: I go home, I suit up.
Larry: Exactly the opposite. It's like I don't even want to know. I generally know when I text you or send you message, there's a 5% chance that you're going to show up. You've got a very active social life and I respect that.
Jeffrey: I feel bad because it's like, I'm like, we're playing. I want to. All I think about is Pub G for the most part. We have such a great time when we play and I'm like, tonight's going to be the night and my wife just texts me 20 minutes ago and I have to break the news to Larry, we have a parent teacher conference.
Larry: That's fine. I get that.
Jeffrey: I'm like, does my kid really need this? My kid needs chicken dinners.
Larry: No, no. When it comes to your family I understand that. It's when you're out for your seventh bowl of sushi that week.
Jeffrey: They don't put it in bowls.
Larry: Plate.
Graham Boyd: Bowls [crosstalk 00:23:22].
Jeffrey: I guess you could have a surashi bowl. He's not wrong, he's not wrong.
Larry: I'm telling you.
Graham Boyd: At least you two get texts. Here's me grinding away. Solo Pub G.
Jeffrey: Not true.
Graham Boyd: Lone wolf.
Jeffrey: Did I text you say, hey come on the show this week? Did I text you say, hey I'll bring you over to the studio?
Graham Boyd: Yeah you did. That's fair. You haven't asked me to be in your Pub G circle.
Larry: You know what, that's because I don't have an excuse. I was waiting-
Jeffrey: You're lone wolf. We know you're a lone wolf.
Larry: I'll tell you this. I'm holding up this mental list in the air in front of me. It says Jeff, Laura and Graham. I'm going to take Graham and slide him right to the top.
Graham Boyd: Great, thank you. I appreciate it. Literally no one has ever [crosstalk 00:24:05].
Larry: Let's find out the man that people say his voice doesn't match his appearance.
Jeffrey: I don't know what that means. Could that be a compliment? I don't feel like it does. Somebody said you weren't as fat as you sounded. I don't know what that means. Did you read that? Believe me I'm working on it. Great. It's certainly not from eating all the chicken dinners. Although I finally did get one. Mostly by happenstance. I was playing with a couple folks that were very good. I felt like I had a pretty contribution and then we got the chicken dinner and the stat came up and I think I scored less points that anyone in history getting a chicken dinner. No kills. I had my hip score was three. I think someone was maybe spooked by one of my bullets. Didn't actually hit anybody.
Larry: It grazed a building that somebody was in.
Jeffrey: All I had wanted for so long was to take a screen grab of my first chicken dinner and post it. I'm like, I can't post this. I've had significantly better games where I've finished in 50th then in that one. I just happened to watch better people win and I was on their team. So, but I did get it.
Graham Boyd: Hey there's always players on the football who contribute a lot, but don't necessarily show up in the score.
Jeffrey: I was the holder for the kicker, basically.
Graham Boyd: Okay, yeah.
Jeffrey: Maybe. Maybe.
Laura: You were part of the team.
Jeffrey: I'm not even the long snapper. Anyway, it's a very important position. So besides that, you had mentioned the Witcher. I'd finished up Hearts of Stone, which was just exceptional. This not exactly a spoiler alert seeing how that came out 18 months ago, give or take. I was the first DLC for the Witcher Three, just amazing.
Larry: It's Xbox One X enhanced.
Jeffrey: Yes. I went back.
Larry: I'm just going to say this. Imagine playing one of the best games of this generation on the most powerful console of this generation on four k it looks phenomenal .
Jeffrey: You don't even need to imagine. It's real. It's real.
Larry: Go home.
Jeffrey: Been on sale a number of times. I don't know if it is right now.
Larry: Why are you playing this?
Graham Boyd: What blows my mind is that game's two years old now, almost two years old.
Jeffrey: Three.
Laura: What!
Jeffrey: It came out in 2015.
Graham Boyd: 2015.
Jeffrey: It's 2018.
Graham Boyd: Oh my god.
Larry: I remember in 2015, I remember in 2015 if you guys remember we had some of the guys from the Witcher team on our podcast at Pax East.
Jeffrey: Oh my god.
Laura: That's right.
Larry: We were talking about it and I was like, I had this feeling it was going to be big. I never knew it was going to be this big.
Jeffrey: No. Absolutely one of the very, very best games of the generation. It still is good. Then I started Blood and Wine and it's a whole new map. There's a whole bunch of other stuff to do and so I feel like that will be another, I mean, Hearts of Stone I probably sunk in 20 hours into that.
Larry: Yeah, that was beefy.
Jeffrey: This one seems like [crosstalk 00:26:52].
Larry: I'm at the point where I'm well North of 120 hours into the Witcher. Well north of that.
Jeffrey: You finished Blood and Win?
Larry: No. I stopped playing it about six months ago when the enhanced version came out I booted up by save, and I was in a dungeon, and I've totally forgot what quest I was doing. It took me 20 minutes to relearn all of the controls, and I'm like oh I gotta change this, I need that. Anyway, so-
Laura: Did you get out?
Larry: ...I got out. I finished that quest. I'm now top side again, so, I was underwater.
Graham Boyd: Did you see the tweet from cyberpunk4077?
Larry: No. Were they saying something about E3 right?
Graham Boyd: Well the tweet just literally says "beep" but it's got 50,000 likes and-
Laura: Interesting.
Jeffrey: When did that come out?
Graham Boyd: The 10th of January.
Jeffrey: So today, recording, that's about a week ago.
Graham Boyd: The first tweet for, oh my god, their first tweet for five years.
Laura: Five years.
Graham Boyd: Have I read that? It was their first, that's nuts. I didn't even realize that.
Laura: That's a long time.
Graham Boyd: That is significant isn't it? So their first tweet for five years on the 10th of January, 2018 was "beep".
Larry: Beep.
Graham Boyd: 18,000 retweets, 50,000 likes.
Laura: And you're one of those likes?
Graham Boyd: I am indeed, yeah. I was in about that. All right, so that will be interesting to watch.
Larry: Yes Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: So, I can't wait for that. I don't know anything about it other than CD project red is making it. So, I'm in. So this weekend was the NFL playoffs, week two, the first one I had to worry about because we had a first round by. I found I had too much nervous energy because I'm from Philly and we just wait for the sweet relief of when we finally lose and don't have to worry about it again. Every win means another week of agony. So, while we were watching and you know when you're watching the NFL there's a lot of stoppages of play, replays and half time and commercial break. So was playing Super Lucky's Tail.
Larry: Yeah you were.
Jeffrey: I found I just had it. I was playing on my laptop. It's an Xbox play anywhere game.
Larry: Were you enjoying tea?
Graham Boyd: You can have tea with Super Lucky's Tail.
Jeffrey: I had something a little stronger than tea at the time. Actually, almost done with that. So, hopefully, maybe about by half time of Eagles Vikings I'll finish Super Lucky's Tail this weekend.
The opposite of my palate cleanser, the most unrelaxing game you can play besides Pub G was Wolfenstien Two, which I'm very close to beating, but I played through two moments that were just mind blowing and staggering, and you know, if you've played the game you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, nothing can prepare you for the things that you will see because oh my god. I mean, you don't play a lot of shooters I think for the story. This is a shooter I'm playhing for the story.
Larry: And it's a great shooter.
Jeffrey: The mechanics are great.
Larry: And it's fun.
Jeffrey: It's really fun and very visceral, but oh my god, some of the things that happen. We have to talk about that some other time. The last thing, I spent a lot of time watching Overwatch League, which kicked off last week.
Larry: I did too.
Jeffrey: So did a lot of people. I think they over 400,000 concurrent on day one. There was a Philly team. Philadelphia Fusion, which-
Larry: There's a Boston team. Boston Uprising.
Jeffrey: ... that's right. I may have to get a Jersey .
Larry: Is there an Austin team? I know you didn't live in Austin but-
Laura: It's Houston and a Dallas team. So it's right in between.
Graham Boyd: The London team. London Spitfires.
Jeffrey: They're very good. They're very good. I would say them and Seoul seem to just be like, you watch them, it's like running into a buzzsaw. The two teams are just so good.
Graham Boyd: One thing about the teams I wasn't sure about. Are the players related to those geographical regions or is it-
Larry: Doesn't appear to be.
Jeffrey: No more than, it's where the ownership is. So the Philadelphia team's owned by Comcast, which is based in Philly. Robert Kraft who owns the Patriots owns the Boston Uprising. So the ownership teams, right now all the teams are playing in Los Angeles in a very nice stadium.
Larry: You know who's stage that is?
Jeffrey: I think it was purpose built in Burbank.
Larry: That's the old Tonight Show.
Jeffrey: It's the Johnny Carson stage.
Larry: It's the old Johnny Carson stage.
Jeffrey: I had a friend who went to one of the tapings.
Graham Boyd: Video screens they've got.
Larry: Yeah. It's beautiful.
Jeffrey: It's very nice.
Larry: Beautiful production. Beautiful production.
Jeffrey: You need to figure out a way to go to one of those. I believe in future seasons they will play a home and away and it will be home arenas and stuff like that. That will tie it more to the cities.
Larry: Nice.
Jeffrey: So definitely looking forward to that. I don't know if you got your free skin. I think it's still going.
Larry: I did.
Jeffrey: Exactly, I got my Philly skin for soldier-
Larry: Boston Uprising.
Jeffrey: ... anyway.
Larry: Fun?
Jeffrey: Yeah. So after that I started playing the game a lot more.
Larry: You play with your daughter?
Jeffrey: Yeah. She's quite good.
Larry: She's very good.
Jeffrey: For an eight year old. She's up there in the eight year old pro league I think.
Graham Boyd: That makes me feel better because Finley was playing a lot last year and I was a little bit like, shoot Finley can play this?
Larry: Wait a minute, wait a minute we need to get those guys playing together. Who does Finley play as.
Graham Boyd: Soldier.
Jeffrey: She's diva.
Larry: Here we go.
Jeffrey: I won't let her play any other shooter, but it's so cartoony and otherwise friendly. Anyway, so that, there's actually new-
Larry: I've played with your daughter.
Jeffrey: ... You did.
Larry: We had a good time.
Jeffrey: She's good.
Larry: She's legit.
Jeffrey: So there's a new map coming. There's Blizzard World, which is coming next week. Looks really cool and it wraps in a number of different Blizzard franchises like Diablo and Hearthstone and Starcraft and World of Warcraft and everything else they do. So there's a lot of interesting crossover skins and they just keep making the game very appealing to come back to.
Graham Boyd: That's a really smart map isn't it? It's really clever. Use all the right [inaudible 00:32:24] like that. I remember, I saw a trailer for it and I was half paying attention. I actually thought it was a new IP they were launching.
Larry: No.
Laura: I was confused as well. I thought it was actual events. Is there Blizzard World?
Larry: You texted me.
Laura: What's the new world?
Larry: I'm like, it's a new map. She's like, "Oh".
Laura: I was hoping it would be a Disney World, but for Blizzard I would totally go.
Larry: Yup.
Laura: Spend a whole week there.
Graham Boyd: Well you can go in Overwatch.
Laura: Yeah, there you go.
Larry: We should continue playing that. What else do we have?
Jeffrey: That's it from what I'm playing.
Larry: So I've been playing pretty much everything we've been talking about here. The Pub G. Looking forward to next week because I'll be streaming Sea of Thieves, the beta, the alpha, what is it?
Jeffrey: It is the closed beta.
Larry: Even though it's closed they have agreed to let people stream. So I will be screaming and there's been a request for us to play, I'm looking at you Laura, I'm looking at you Graham. Would you like to play?
Graham Boyd: Yeah.
Jeffrey: Well look there's room for four on the set.
Graham Boyd: I love that.
Laura: I would too.
Graham Boyd: When?
Larry: We'll kick it off, I think it starts the 24th? Which is a Wednesday. Middle of the week next week and maybe we should do that Wednesday evening.
Jeffrey: That would fun.
Laura: That would be so fun.
Graham Boyd: I would love to do that.
Larry: We an co stream, we can do all sorts of crazy stuff. So I know I'll stream from the Major Nelson studio in Seattle, Washington. It's a lot of fun. I know we've been playing the internal version and Jeff and I, Laurie you haven't played at all?
Laura: I have not.
Larry: It's so fun.
Laura: I've only played it with you at PAX.
Larry: The build has come such a long way. Such a long way. This game looks so-
Laura: Have they fixed the compass?
Larry: ... Yes. Well, you know what, I stand corrected. I don't know because you don't know if the compass is fixed.
Laura: That's right.
Graham Boyd: What was wrong with the compass?
Larry: Laura and I, we were playing the game at PAX East, or I'm sorry, PAX here in Seattle.
Laura: PAX here, yes.
Larry: We're playing it and we had a quest, because you get a quest and you have to solve the riddle and it unveils the next part of the quest. What was the quest Laura?
Laura: We were looking for-
Larry: Seven paces east or something.
Laura: ... some kind of buried treasure. So the puzzle is a series of steps. You unlock step one and it reveals more about step two. We were at the final step to try and find the buried treasure and the instructions were to start at the camp fire and take seven paces or something due east and then dig. I was there, I'm near the campfire, I've got my compass.
Larry: She's digging away like, I don't see anything. She's in a hole. I just see dirt coming out the top. She's like, "I don't see it!"
Laura: I was digging and then Larry's like, "I'll give it a try. I'll follow the instructions." It turns out your East was different than my East.
Larry: Just ever so slightly and sure enough, first one, dink. I hit the top of the chest. So Laura-
Laura: I blame the compass.
Larry: ... was crying foul on the compass. Joe was there right? It was Joe, he was like, scratching his head.
Laura: Laura doesn't know how to read a compass. I do, I promise.
Larry: We're looking forward to streaming that of course. If you're in the beta, the closed one earlier this year, or you're an insider, you're going to get access, but if you want in, you can pre order.
Jeffrey: Exactly.
Larry: So, if you're hearing us talk about it and it sounds interesting , all you need to do is pre order the game and boom.
Graham Boyd: You're in.
Larry: You're in.
Graham Boyd: It will be nice to talk about it and stream it.
Larry: We've been having a lot of fun in that thing and just some of the laughing moments. There are a lot of moments. We played it two years ago at Games Con, right? It was you and me, and Benny, and Ellen. We had a good time.
Graham Boyd: Some of the rare guys on the-
Larry: Anyway it promises-
Graham Boyd: ... it's a lot of fun.
Larry: ... if you have a crew that you normally play with, I highly recommend you role with a nice crew. Now, what's great about it is, I don't know if they've talked about this so maybe I'm giving up a little too much, is that if you play by yourself or just with two people there's a smaller vessel you can use, which is perfectly manageable with one or two people. I actually prefer it. It's small.
Jeffrey: Larry likes and intimate. Too many people on this big[crosstalk 00:36:28].
Larry: Too much going on. Where's Graham? He's under down below having tea. That'll happen next week on Wednesday the 24th, that'll go live. Look for details on that. Follow me at Major Nelson, I'll be tweeting out when that happens and when we stream. Looking at you all across the table.
Laura: It's super exciting.
Graham Boyd: We got to talk about the Sea of Thieves controller as well.
Larry: It's the car isn't it?
Jeffrey: We had it on the video podcast that you still haven't watched.
Larry: We had it in the video podcast.
Graham Boyd: Was watching selected highlights.
Larry: I've got that.
Graham Boyd: It's a beauty isn't it?
Larry: Yeah, in fact I've got one that I'll be playing with on the stream next week when we do it together. I'll show that off on the stream.
Graham Boyd: Matches your jumper today. Doesn't it?
Larry: So jumper's kind of a feminine term in the US.
Graham Boyd: Is it?
Larry: Yeah, it is, but it's okay. It is.
Graham Boyd: I mean, you said it.
Larry: I didn't say it. It's fine.
Graham Boyd: Sweater? Pull over?
Larry: Yes pull over. That's fine. Anyway, whatever I don't care. Look. Google tells me I look like Eleanor Roosevelt.
Jeffrey: One of our finest first ladies.
Larry: I've, no.
Jeffrey: She was very distinguished.
Larry: Actually I sent that Laurie, you know what her response was? Should I call you the first lady now? I think you should.
Laura: His response was blocked.
Graham Boyd: Unsubscribe.
Larry: So, yeah. Did you download that thing and look at what you look like?
Graham Boyd: I haven't done it, no.
Larry: So we're going to do it right now. For those of you who don't know what we're talking about. If you have an IOS or an Android device, Google our friends that run that search engine. They have an app that you can download, and if I can unlock my phone I will show it to you and it is called Arts and Culture. So I'm going to hand this to you Laura and you can show them how to use it. So, you scroll down, is your portrait in a museum? So we're going to go ahead, go ahead and show them.
Laura: What it does is it takes a picture, well you take a selfie.
Larry: And then hand it back to me. Don't look at it.
Laura: You take a selfie and then what it does is it tries to recognize the features of your face and match that to a painting. Oh that's nice.
Graham Boyd: Thanks. One of my best selfies actually.
Larry: So I got, we are going to, you look like Issac Crosby Trot or Anthony Dewail or-
Jeffrey: You look like Filch from Harry Potter.
Larry: ... Jose Rodriguez [inaudible 00:38:53].
Jeffrey: You don't know who he is?
Graham Boyd: I don't know Harry Potter. Sorry.
Larry: This is self portrait with flowered wallpaper. I kind of like that.
Jeffrey: He's also in-
Graham Boyd: He's quite a dandy that guy.
Laura: Painting doppelganger.
Larry: So basically it looks at all of these famous portraits, some of which are unnamed and they're just beautiful pieces of art and it looks at-
Graham Boyd: That ones pretty close isn't it?
Jeffrey: That's quite a mustache.
Larry: So I did mine and it showed me as Eleanor Roosevelt. Have you done yours Jeff?
Jeffrey: I am Francisco [inaudible 00:39:23] from the Netherlands. I don't know. It doesn't look like that much like me. Maybe a little. He looks shifty, which maybe is the closest thing.
Larry: You're right, you're right. In any event, Laura, what did you?
Laura: I tried a couple of different poses with my head and always got different results. Some of them were quite disturbing.
Larry: Well, you're telling me. Want to see mine? I'll do mine right now for you.
Laura: One of, I had a 54% match with David, with the head of Goliath.
Larry: No.
Laura: That one.
Larry: Really?
Laura: Very unexpected.
Jeffrey: That's a very close up picture of you. Very mug shotesque.
Laura: I had one of an abstract art woman and another one with a very colonial looking man who had a stove pipe hat.
Jeffrey: Buckles on your shoes.
Laura: Yes I think they have a little ways to go for actually matching.
Larry: Well this is quite incredible. Look at this one.
Laura: What?
Graham Boyd: Nice.
Larry: That is Colonel TE Lawrence from Lawrence of Arabia who I'm actually named after. My mother.
Laura: Really?
Jeffrey: Now I'm happy.
Larry: Now I'm happy. Eleanor Roosevelt, boo. Boo.
Jeffrey: He looked more like Eleanor Roosevelt.
Graham Boyd: I think the headphones have confused it.
Larry: Oh stop it.
Graham Boyd: Not so sure about that one.
Larry: Maybe.
Graham Boyd: What's that noise.
Larry: Maybe. Jeff's being kind, I can tell. Anyway, you can download that and it's interesting to see what you may or may not look like. Eleanor Roosevelt.
Graham Boyd: I'm going to be Wikipediaing Isaac Crosby Trot.
Larry: Yes.
Graham Boyd: Today.
Larry: In fact we are going to put that as the special guest in the show notes for this week. Instead of Graham Boyd.
Graham Boyd: Spinning in his grave right now.
Larry: How did we get on that? I have news, let's talk about news shall we?
Jeffrey: We don't normally talk more about what we're playing and what games are coming out and about things, but there's news of a person this week and that is a new corporate vice president of Microsoft studios. Matt Booty.
Larry: Matt Booty, yeah.
Jeffrey: This is someone we should have on the show.
Larry: I've actually, Matt will come on the show. I reached out to him earlier in the week and he said, I've known him for a long time and he's like, "Yeah, I'll come on, when I have something to talk about." He just doesn't want to come on and, but he's really interesting. I got a lot of stories about him.
Jeffrey: He comes over from the Minecraft team and oh you heard it there. Once we have more to talk about, he'll come on.
Larry: He was on Midway. He's got quite the pedigree.
Jeffrey: Yeah I was talking with Craig Duncan from Rare and apparently he was Craig's boss back at Midway.
Larry: Oh really?
Jeffrey: He's like, "Oh, I'm reporting to him again."
Larry: That's fun. That's the games industry.
Jeffrey: Yeah, exactly.
Graham Boyd: Congratulations.
Jeffrey: So back to the stuff we're playing and we'll just go from stuff that's available now or new things that are coming out now through I guess, next week actually. So there's actually a beta, a lot of beta's in the next week or so. One for Metal Gear Survive and this is a co-op type of game. You're going to try out the co-op mode and it's going from the 18th to the 21st of January and you can just go to MajorNelson.com and find the download and you can just go ahead and start playing that.
Another game that was just announced, actually we're going to go to another game had actually just come out. That is Full Metal Fury. This is a game we talked about a little bit last week and that is going to be an Xbox play anywhere game. It looks pretty cool and as they were saying, it's a game that when you beat it you only just start to see the beginning. Sort of like, number of other games where you gotta beat multiple times to really see everything that's coming out. It's a fun game that you can play with multiple players in couch setting. Sort of a beat em up. I had a lot of fun playing this at game, not games con, at GDC last year. So definitely looking forward to that.
Some big announcements on Xbox Game Pass. Some really good titles have come to the collection. I've already downloaded a bunch of these. NBA 2K17 and WWE 2K17. I believe 16 might have been, for NBA at least, had been there previously so now you have newer stuff to do. Halo Wars Two.
Graham Boyd: Nice.
Jeffrey: Has dropped the collection. I know at one point we were talking about over a 100 games. Now we're up to 150 games for one low price. Dark Siders Two, the Remasters, Dark Siders One, the War Mastered edition was already and is still in the service in Xbox Game Pass. Now if you had beaten that, Dark Siders two the remastered version is in there and ready to go. Rhyme, which came out over the summer and a number of other titles. Anyway, just there's a ton to play and there's more all the time. I would say this has really been, one of the better months in terms of more stuff getting added and don't forget there is, you can play free. There is a trial for 14 days if you don't already have Xbox Game Pass. Find more details on news.xbox.com and of course, majornelson.com.
Larry: We gave away some free one year passes last week on the show.
Laura: We did.
Larry: Didn't we? Phil gave some away.
Laura: I gave one away.
Larry: You gave one away.
Laura: They all ended in Z.
Larry: They all ended in zebra.
Laura: Zulu.
Larry: Zulu.
Graham Boyd: I did enjoy you reading them out in, what were you calling it?
Larry: NATO.
Laura: NATO.
Larry: It's the NATO.
Jeffrey: People were correcting you on that, we just let that go.
Larry: That's fine.
Graham Boyd: On every single [crosstalk 00:44:52].
Laura: It's hard to remember.
Graham Boyd: You were doing really well. This is what I always do. When I'm on the phone to customer service, somewhere or wherever and you're like-
Larry: Trying to read something off.
Graham Boyd: ... how do you spell your name? So I very confidently start doing it in phonetic alphabet.
Larry: B as in boy.
Graham Boyd: Golf, Romeo and then you get to the point where M is always the one I forget right.
Larry: What is it? Is it Mary?
Jeffrey: Mike.
Larry: Mike.
Graham Boyd: Mother is used sometimes as well, right? You get to that point where you're talking very confidently and you're like, I can't remember what M is. It's okay, I've got an M, fine. Next. You were there the whole way through.
Larry: I did the same thing with my last name because they can't pronounce it or spell it. So I'm like hotel, romeo, yankee, bravo. There's always dead silence.
Jeffrey: I get it.
Larry: I like foxtrot.
Jeffrey: Always a fun one.
Larry: That's a fun one. Hotel.
Jeffrey: Hotel.
Graham Boyd: Bravo would just.
Jeffrey: Zulu. Whiskey. Anyway.
Larry: The NATO alphabet. You should put a link into the NATO alphabet Wikipedia page so people know what we're talking about.
Jeffrey: I'll put a link to that.
Just announced this week Assassins Creed Rogue remastered is going to be coming to Xbox One on March 20th and it will indeed be enhanced for Xbox One. [inaudible 00:45:58] post up on that on Xbox wired where you can take a look. We finally have a date now for Age of Empires definitive edition. We don't have too much longer to wait, about a month. It will be out on February 20th and that one, we've been waiting for this one for a little bit.
Graham Boyd: Definitely, yeah.
Jeffrey: That's going to be coming to Windows 10PCs for $19.99.
Graham Boyd: Bargain.
Jeffrey: That was a lot of peoples first RT.
Graham Boyd: We did the Age of Empire's event at Games Con last year. We had [inaudible 00:46:30]Vampires Four and talked about definitive edition two and three definitive editions as well. That event was nuts.
Larry: I missed that. I watched it because I was busy. That looked like a lot of fun.
Graham Boyd: It was like 300 Age fans, 400 Age fans in the room and the atmosphere was incredible. There was people in the room who Age is the only game they've really ever played, but they love it so, so, so much. They traveled to be at Games Con. The nostalgia, the lover in that game's amazing. So yeah, great to have a date, Feb 20th.
Jeffrey: So [inaudible 00:47:05] Champion of the Realms, this is a game that is by, who are the folks that did, the big moba, they did Smite. It's the team from Smite.
Graham Boyd: High Res is it?
Jeffrey: Yeah, High Res and it seems to be that if you're a fan of Overwatch of which, we are, it seems to be very much in that vein with very colorful and very different type of characters and that team is High Res studios. So, that, the X edition bundle is now available for Xbox One.
Another game that came out this week that looks really interesting and maybe I'm going to have to give it a go was Innerspace. It looks really pretty. Looks like a very calm, relaxing idea-
Larry: Perhaps even tea worthy.
Jeffrey: Perhaps.
Graham Boyd: We could do a new segment of [crosstalk 00:47:50] reviews.
Jeffrey: This title is tea approved.
Graham Boyd: Two teas out of five.
Jeffrey: Seems like you pilot different-
Graham Boyd: Made of teabags.
Larry: Leaves.
Jeffrey: We'll have to see. Next week I'll let you know which tea works. It might be a chai game. Feel like it might be a chai game.
Two big games coming out. In about a week, week from tomorrow, depending on when you're listening to this. On the same day, January 26th Monster Hunter World and Dragon Ball Fighterz, with a z, both coming to Xbox One and both of them, pretty darn good.
Graham Boyd: I've never played a Monster Hunter Game so I'm excited for World. Think I'll give that a shot.
Jeffrey: I watched a translation of an in depth, when they revealed the last trailer and some game play and stuff, and it looks really interesting.
Graham Boyd: First time it's been on an Xbox that series.
Jeffrey: First one I can remember.
Larry: Good question. We'll have to internet fact check that please.
Jeffrey: I'll take a look. That's coming out next week.
Larry: Those are the headlines. A lot going on this week as always. We're looking forward to getting back into the video studio. Do the video show, because last week we, the last couple shows we've done Laura, we've done Name the Game, but in a different way. We've shown the video clip to make it even easier.
Laura: To make it significantly easier for those that tune in, watch it in the video form. We don't exclude anybody who is listening in the audio form or normal listeners who also get a chance to play Name the Game, but of course, if you want an extra hint you can watch the video.
Larry: You can go watch the video on demand and go, maybe I need a clue, but not this week. Let's award the prize for last week.
Laura: Okay, let's do Name the Game from last week.
Larry: You have all the information in front of you right?
Laura: I do have all the information, but we need to role the sound effects from last week.
Speaker 5: I need healing.
Laura: So that was the Name of the Game from last week and the game was, the Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing Three.
Larry: Which? It's a game with golds title this month.
Laura: It is a game of golds title so if you want to try this out for yourself. Go ahead and download it. If you're a gold member, it will be free.
Larry: It's incredible adventures Jeff.
Laura: The incredible adventures.
Jeffrey: The mundane adventures. We don't think about that.
Larry: Van Helsing does laundry.
Graham Boyd: You can say he's really raised the stakes.
Larry: Yes, yes.
Laura: Back to Name the Game.
Larry: Just leaving him hanging there.
Jeffrey: Oh, is that what that was.
Laura: The high five.
Graham Boyd: Not video this week.
Laura: Get back to Name the Game guys.
Larry: Sorry, sorry. We have a winner. A lot of people who correctly identified it, but only one of you gets to be a winner.
Laura: That's correct. We take all the correct guesses and then we choose a random winner and this week the winner is Shaun from Maryland.
Larry: Did you say Mary-land. It's Maryland.
Laura: Says you from the East coast.
Larry: Maryland.
Jeffrey: Is that what you called it in Texas?
Laura: Mary-land. Yeah. Is that surprising? Have you not heard that before?
Jeffrey: We called it growing up, Or-e-gon and that's not, now that I'm on the West coast, I said that exactly once before getting laughed and shamed.
Laura: Oh no.
Larry: I think there was a class in Syracuse, one of our broadcasting classes where my radio teacher made us pronounce all of the states and the capitals and the regions so that we would have very non distinct, non regional dialects. So, anyway.
Laura: Well I haven't taken that training.
Larry: Mary-land.
Laura: I still have the southern accent.
Larry: Meanwhile in Mary-land.
Laura: So Shaun, who's gamer tag is MJCaboose91, congratulations on winning. We have a lot of prizes for you. I was able to dig around Larry's office.
Larry: What do we got? What do we have?
Laura: Find a basket of games.
Larry: Basket o'games.
Laura: To give to you Shaun, but first I'm going to give you over 150, sounds like, games that you can go try on Xbox Game Pass for three months. So I've got an Xbox Game Pass [crosstalk 00:52:10].
Larry: All you can eat.
Laura: The basket of games that I found was a big bundle of ID8 Xbox titles.
Larry: For some reason when you say basket of games, I just have this mental image of you arranging him a nice basket with some crepe paper and a little bow on the top.
Graham Boyd: Nice wicker hamper.
Larry: Right? You're just painting such a wonderful picture Laura.
Graham Boyd: Preserves in there or something?
Laura: Exactly.
Graham Boyd: Crackers.
Laura: Maybe popcorn. Sorry I don't have popcorn for you Shaun. Probably. Just want the games, that's okay because all I got are games here. We have a copy of the ID Xbox game Full Metal Furies. The copy of 2064 read only memories.
Larry: RAM.
Laura: A copy of the, exactly, a copy of the Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human.
Larry: We need the Aquatic Adventures of Van Helsing.
Jeffrey: You obviously haven't played all the way through.
Laura: That's not all Shaun. I also have a copy of the Vanishing of Ethan Carter, which I'm excited to go try out. It came out recently. I have a copy of a game called Vesta, a game called Beholder, Innerspace, which is what we were chatting about earlier. That gorgeous game.
Jeffrey: I should have won. I should have played.
Laura: T worthy game. And that's not all. I also have a copy of Fortnight Founders Pack.
Jeffrey: Nice.
Laura: Exactly. So if you want to get into some Fortnight, I got you covered.
Larry: All I can think of when I hear Innerspace is that movie from the eighties.
Jeffrey: Martin Short.
Larry: He gets shrunk down. Was that Martin Short?
Laura: Innerspace. It was called Innerspace.
Larry: Was it Martin Short? Dennis Quaid.
Jeffrey: Dennis Quaid.
Larry: Meg Ryan. I'm looking at it right now. I just looked it up.
Graham Boyd: Great movie.
Jeffrey: Was Martin Short in there? I just made it up.
Larry: It got him an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. All right, anyway congratulations.
Laura: Exactly. Congratulations Shaun. You've got a lot of games to go try out. Thank you very much for playing. Should we do a Name the Game for this week?
Larry: I think we should do a Name the Game for this week. You ready?
Laura: I am ready. Let's roll the sound effects for this week.
So that was Name the Game for this week. It's really simple to enter. All you have to do is listen to the sound effects and guess what game that is. Send us an email. You can send me an email, [email protected] and cc [email protected]
Larry: Now it's a little different this week because we're going old school. You only have the audio. No visuals. So you gotta figure that out. Listen carefully. One entry per person please. More than one entry all of them disqualified.
Laura: Not exactly. Send us an email.
Larry: All those entries go.
Jeffrey: Unless you're from Mary-land.
Larry: Unless you're from Mary-land. Mary land.
Jeffrey: Isn't Maryland named after Mary Queen of Scots.
Graham Boyd: Yes. It is the land of Mary.
Laura: Good luck to all you Name the Gamers out there. We don't take entries over Twitter so please send me an email.
Larry: You can certainly do that but [crosstalk 00:55:36].
Jeffrey: You're just not going to win.
Laura: You're not going to win if you send them to me on Twitter. Send it to me on email.
Larry: Now Mary land. If you're from Mary land, but maybe you're even from Blizzard World. There's all these lands.
Jeffrey: I don't know where you're going with this.
Larry: I don't know where I'm going either. So let's, beep, beep, beep. Back up. Thanks Laura.
Laura: You're welcome.
Larry: What else do we have this week before we wrap this lovely show up Jeffrey? Do you have anything you want to add?
Jeffrey: No, I've contributed far too little.
Larry: Really?
Laura: I am wondering ...
Larry: Yes, dear. Yes, yes, yes Laura.
Laura: I think I saw this announcement from Nintendo.
Larry: The cardboard announcement. You want to go over that?
Graham Boyd: You sound so excited.
Laura: You sound excited.
Jeffrey: You may not be the target market.
Larry: I looked at it and I was like, I'm paying what for cardboard?
Laura: I hadn't looked at the prices of any of these things.
Larry: Go ahead.
Laura: We all have switches in the room. Do you have a switch?
Graham Boyd: I do.
Laura: So we all have Nintendo Switches.
Larry: But have you finished Zelda?
Graham Boyd: You know what, I haven't had the chance.
Laura: Laura?
Graham Boyd: My son has completely stolen it.
Laura: I have not finished Zelda no.
Larry: Jeffrey?
Laura: I started it.
Jeffrey: Not yet.
Larry: I started it after you did. Remember that fateful flight.
Jeffrey: I sunk in probably like 80 hours into it.
Larry: Cross country.
Jeffrey: I just haven't finished it yet.
Larry: I was sitting in the middle seat and you were so irritated with me.
Jeffrey: I don't like airplanes.
Larry: You were so irritated.
Jeffrey: It was so frustrating to watch.
Larry: The link dying simulators.
Graham Boyd: Fin finished Super Mario Odyssey like two days ago.
Larry: Also good.
Graham Boyd: After about two weeks.
Larry: I'm sorry Laura you're talking about Nintendo cardboard. What's the name of it?
Laura: So maybe I need your pronunciation skills, but it looks like Nintendo Lavo.
Larry: I don't know what it is either because all I can think of is Gabo.
Jeffrey: For someone who doesn't like clowns. I guess puppets probably fall in the same thing.
Laura: Anyway, they announced it recently. Nintendo Lavo, we'll just call it Lavo. I don't know if that's how you pronounce it. It is a series of build it yourself experiences. So it looks like they ship you a flat piece of cardboard and you build a contraption to put your Switch into to help you play a game or play an experience. So the examples they showed on some of their videos was building a 13 key piano out of cardboard and putting a Switch into it and then you can play the keys that are made of cardboard and magic happens and it actually plays the piano, which is pretty cool.
Larry: Magic happens.
Laura: I know. Magic happens. Somehow.
Larry: Step one cardboard, step two question marks, step three, profit.
Jeffrey: I think it's just one and two. It's just cardboard and profit.
Laura: So there are some that have the joycon controller separately then. The Switch tablet screen itself where I saw a remote control robot that would pilot the joycon control around.
Jeffrey: A fishing game.
Laura: You can construct a fishing rod out of cardboard.
Graham Boyd: Did you see the one it was just a little cardboard cutout of a man and you put one of the joycons on his back and the game appears to be to make him face plant.
Laura: Oh yeah.
Graham Boyd: I'll say interesting.
Larry: This was referred to as one of the most Nintendo things ever. They always come up with interesting things and I will say this, I can't speak to this, but maybe you guys can. Jeff and Graham is that, kids nowadays, they spend so much of their time with their faces in their devices. So the fact that the Nintendo is doing something to get people to be creative and build and what not is really cool.
Laura: That's what I liked a lot about it. The creativity aspect of it. Where instead of it being just a traditional controller and screen that your kids bury their faces into. This is now bringing it back into the world to something a bit more realistic, a bit more human if you will, you're now playing with things and building things. Just the creativity of it. They're able to extend that platform into now 3D things like a robot where I actually think is really creative.
Jeffrey: I don't know if they gave us a date on that.
Laura: It looks like, I'm looking at an article here.
Graham Boyd: You can pre order the packs now. There's two packs available.
Laura: April 20th in North America and April 27th in Europe.
Larry: Delightful.
Graham Boyd: I want to show it to Fin. He hasn't seen the video yet. I'm really interested to see what his response to it will be because he plays a lot of Switch. He's seven and a half years old. So I think it will be a good read on what he takes. The rumor I'd heard was that it was going to be a Lego style [inaudible 00:59:55] build your own things and then have an interactive and I was really excited about that. I thought that sounds really cool and I could sort of see the connections from what they've done with [inaudible 01:00:04] and then they've got some [inaudible 01:00:05] that they've had over the past few months as well. I was buzzing. I was a little bit, when I saw the video, was a bit like, okay. You know, let's see.
The one thing that concerns me about kid though as well, particularly there is one pack is like a robot pack which looks really cool.
Jeffrey: You put it on right?
Graham Boyd: You put it on. It's a backpack and it seems to have string.
Laura: Here's a picture of it.
Larry: What did you guys, when you were growing up what did you have to play with? I remember I had an erector set.
Graham Boyd: Excuse me.
Larry: It was called an erector set.
Graham Boyd: Okay. What did you do with that?
Larry: I played with it with my jumper.
Jeffrey: It was Legos that were made out of steel.
Laura: Metal.
Graham Boyd: Like Mechanco. I think we called it Mechano.
Larry: It was interesting though, it was steel with little nuts and bolts. Things that would never get away today because people swallow them. Back then, there was a little more self, you had to take care of yourself and figure it out. What did you have Laura growing up? Did you have Legos Laura?
Laura: I did have Legos. I played with blocks, a lot of blocks and I had Barbies as well. Little Barbie houses that we would make with Barbies. I didn't have anything cool.
Larry: You had the Barbie bus and all that stuff.
Laura: No. I had a Barbie mansion. It was pretty sweet.
Larry: She has one. That's Dallas like.
Laura: I didn't get my first console until the Sega Genesis when I was a bit of an older kid.
Larry: Right.
Laura: We had to play with things and Legos and blocks and stuff, which I think was really beneficial actually.
Jeffrey: It was surprising to find out that I had got an Atari when I was five and never really looked back.
Larry: We had one too, we had one too.
Jeffrey: I remember the day my grandparents brought it in and they were like, "Here you go" and figuring out what it was.
Larry: You know people aren't going to know, people don't know today Jeffrey the struggle. Channel 3 or Channel 4?
Jeffrey: It's true.
Larry: With the RF switch. I don't know.
Graham Boyd: The one program you want to watch all week is on and your Mom calls you for tea.
Larry: Right.
Graham Boyd: You've got no DVR, you can't find a VHS tape, you've missed your chance you're never going to see it again. Ever.
Jeffrey: Everybody tomorrow at school's going to talk about it.
Larry: How olds Fin?
Graham Boyd: Seven.
Jeffrey: Did you have to have the same conversation I had to have, which is explaining to my kid that something on TV was live and no, I couldn't watch it later or couldn't skip the commercials. I was like, yeah, yeah. They have no concept.
Graham Boyd: They can't even imagine what that's like. I'm bored of talking to him about it because it's just like, he doesn't get it.
Jeffrey: Now sports helped, but he's like let's skip the commercials here, what are we doing? I'm like, we're watching this live. No one has ever seen this thing before, this episode or whatever it was.
Graham Boyd: Unbelievable.
Jeffrey: That was a concept.
Larry: I'm sorry I don't know how we, anyway thank you for that wrap up Laura. The Nintendo stuff. Interesting news this week.
Graham Boyd: Just a little thing on toys. There's a show on Netflix called The Toys that [crosstalk 01:03:12]
Larry: Oh I've seen it.
Graham Boyd: So good.
Larry: Yeah, I've seen it.
Graham Boyd: There's four episodes I think. There's a Barbie one.
Larry: There's a Barbie one.
Graham Boyd: He-Man, Star Wars and GI Joe and they are phenomenal. Really nicely handled. Like really in depth documentary's about the making of those toys, and the history, and the market and how they sold an then how they eventually flopped as well. I guess Barbie's still going strong. It's really nicely handled. It's funny. [crosstalk 01:03:38]
Larry: Especially the Star Wars one and the story of them. It's must watch.
Graham Boyd: It's really emotional at the end as well.
Larry: For those of us who are a little older, we grew up with those things and we never really knew. They were just toys. Now we know the story and the people that designed them. Fascinating.
Graham Boyd: If you're a child of the eighties like me-
Larry: Of the child of seventies like me.
Graham Boyd: ... there you go.
Larry: Or the nineties like Laura.
Jeffrey: We should do a Laura reacts. One thing I actually just hit around-
Graham Boyd: Child of the fifties, Jeff. He had a hoop and a stick.
Larry: And a shotgun.
Jeffrey: Now it got turned on me. Anyway.
Graham Boyd: A shotgun did you say? My gosh.
Jeffrey: We had cap guns.
Larry: I did too.
Jeffrey: They did not have an orange tip. So right before we started recording here the tomb raider movie, the second trailer just dropped with Alicia Vikander as Lara. It looked really good. It looks like this movie very closely seems to be very similar to the Tomb Raider reboot from 2013, which is fantastic game. If you like that, this looks like definitely the first trailer was, eh, this one is good. Plus it has a redo of Survivor by Destiny's Child. So, yeah, it works.
Graham Boyd: Cool. I need to catch up on that.
Jeffrey: You should. Two minutes and 24 seconds. I'll link to it out in the show notes.
Graham Boyd: How are you feeling about Ready Player One?
Jeffrey: All right. So I read the book like three years ago. When we came back, when we were in the desert.
Larry: That started this whole thing.
Jeffrey: Yeah. The book had already been out at that point.
Larry: That started the whole movie thing. That's right. Do you know the story?
Graham Boyd: No, I don't think so.
Larry: When Jeff and I went out to the desert.
Jeffrey: To uncover ET.
Larry: To uncover ET and the stench, Ernie Cline shows up in his delorean.
Jeffrey: Not his delorean. In George R.R Martin's delorean.
Larry: With the doors up. Do you remember? You and I were standing together, we heard this racket. I was like what the hell is that? Here he comes screaming into this landfill.
Jeffrey: The doors were going up blasting the ET theme song.
Larry: He shows up ready. So it was really nice. We had a nice chat with him. He met Zac.
Jeffrey: Zac Pen.
Larry: Zac Pen, the director.
Laura: Of the documentary.
Larry: The ET thing.
Laura: The documentary he was making on ET.
Larry: So that's all great. The documentary comes out. Everything is great. Years later, this past summer when I was in Comic Con, Zac comes up to me and puts his arms around, "It's great to see you again. We had such a great time. It was such a great thing. I want to thank you." What are you talking about? He said, "Because of that event, which Microsoft helped bring to the public" he had met Ernie Cline and when Spielberg came and wanted to do the movie, Ernie said, "I want Zac to write it" because they had met up there. So it was this bizarre.
Graham Boyd: A kickback.
Larry: You're telling me. Something. I was like, I got a little excited when he told me. Really? I'm still a nerd at heart. I'm really excited. I haven't watched that much because-
Jeffrey: Almost none.
Laura: Zero of any of the trailers. I'm trying to avoid it.
Jeffrey: I read the book a few years ago and I enjoyed it. I wasn't like, literature, but it was a fun read. I feel like there's a been a huge backlash that I don't understand. I'm from the camp of, if you don't like it, but other people like it, let them like it. Why do you care? I don't know. People take things a little too personally I think with pop culture. Star Wars being another one. Whatever. I'm going to see the movie.
Graham Boyd: Me too. I'm a fan.
Laura: Either way, right?
Graham Boyd: I read the book after there was news about the movie. I think after the first trailer as well. I sort of thought, I should catch up on this. I enjoyed it, but as I was reading it, I was thinking, if they do this movie right this could be phenomenal.
Larry: So we'll see. I'm going to try to email them and see if I can get us a screening to go see it before it comes out if you guys want to see it.
Jeffrey: Finally using your powers for good.
Larry: Stop it. Anyway, we got to wrap up the show because we got to let folks go here. You all have to get back to work. I need to get back to work. Did I just do a y'all?
Laura: I think you did.
Larry: Oh wow, sorry about that Laura.
Jeffrey: Take it back.
Larry: You all need to get back to Mary land. So, listen Graham, thank you for coming by.
Graham Boyd: My pleasure, thank you.
Larry: It's always good to see you. Maybe you're join us on a future show when we do it on the TV.
Graham Boyd: I would love to. I will change my shirt, have a shave, make sure I dress up accordingly.
Larry: Well, whatever you do is great.
Graham Boyd: Actually, I might do cosplay as my Google dude Trot.
Larry: Do that. Joining us today, special guest, we need to find out what his story his. I'll look him up. Laura thank you for joining us.
Laura: Thank you.
Larry: Of course Jeff. You can find everybody on Twitter. Jeff why don't you tell where they can find you. If you have any suggestions or complaints you can send them to ...
Jeffrey: The complaint desk @jeffrubenstein.
Larry: You can find Laura at ...
Laura: You can find me on Twitter @lauralollipop.
Larry: Graham.
Graham Boyd: On Twitter and Instagram @acbongs.
Larry: Of course I'm also on all those things as majornelson as well. All right gang, we'll talk to you next time and thank you for listening. Bye bye everybody.
Graham Boyd: See you later.