First Impressions: Suicide Squad + New Vapor Series Controllers

ANNOUNCER: Games in this podcast range from E to M.

[XBOX SOUND]

- Hello, and welcome to the Official Xbox Podcast. I'm Jeff Rubenstein and, as usual, I have a new group of people waiting here on the cheese couch. I feel like every time I walk into the studio--

- Cheese couch.

- --I don't know who's going to be here.

- Surprise!

- Well, Kelly, Kelly Lombardi, so great to see you. Last we chatted, you were just taking on the captaincy of Rare's Sea of Thieves marketing.

- Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So what you been up to?

- Rare's Sea of Thieves marketing.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Oh, OK. Cool.

- Rare is such a special studio with such a long history, that it's been a lot to jump into and learn and get the vibes of. And some of it just includes playing a lot of Sea of Thieves, which I'm a big fan of, so--

- That's so rough. I hope you're-- I hope you're managing that.

- I know. I'm OK. I'm hanging in there. But it's just been fantastic. It's been such an amazing challenge, and the community is so nice.

So just learning and being a little bit proactive while respecting the amazing work that they're already doing over there. So it's been a lot of fun. But yeah, that's what I've been up to.

- Celebrating season 11. We had Joe Neate was the last person to sit here in that particular cushion. So I think it's maybe our dedicated Sea of Thieves spot on the couch.

- I love that. I love that. Let's lock that in right now. You heard it.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- All right. And our resident meme master, Josh Stein, returning once again.

- Yeah, I'm sorry, and you're welcome.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's good. You live really close to the studio. Let's be very clear.

[LAUGHTER]

- Conveniently, they put me in a box around the corner.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, so--

- It's a pleasure to be back on. We've been having a lot of fun over on the front lines of social, getting people excited. We just had Showcase. People were really excited about that. So it's kind of nice to jump in and talk a little bit about what's coming up this week with you guys.

Yeah, there's a lot of anime goings-on, and that's one of the reasons we wanted to have you on the show. Because we were like, who's really big in anime? And your hand couldn't have gone up any faster. So we'll get into that in just a little bit.

If you're just joining us, we are the official Xbox Podcast, the only podcast that comes to you from inside Xbox. We'd like to introduce you to folks that are working here at Xbox, creating games, doing many of the different roles that take place here within Xbox, and learning about the things that are going on, talk about the news what we're playing, and all of that. If you're joining us on youtube.com/xbox, first of all, thank you. We're also available on audio podcasts, such as Spotify, that's the one, and Apple Podcasts as well.

So let's get started. There's quite a few games coming out. We were just talking last week, was one of the first really big new release weeks of the season, where we had Like a Dragon. We had Tekken 8 come out. More stuff coming out this week, especially into Game Pass. Kelly, why don't we-- why don't we start with you? What have you been playing?

- How can you even keep up? I jumped into Turnip Boy Robs a Bank because I love Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion.

JOSH STEIN: So this is his second felony, right?

KELLY LOMBARDI: This is his second felony, and I'm living vicariously through Turnip Boy and just committing felonies left and right. But I was surprised because the first one had more of, like, an RPG feel where you're going around and completing different missions, things like that. This one is more of a rogue-like, where--

JOSH STEIN: Oh, I didn't know they mixed it up.

KELLY LOMBARDI: Yeah, I didn't-- I didn't either until I jumped in and-- no spoilers because it happens within like the first ten seconds-- but yeah, basically, your whole thing is to case and rob this bank. So you go and you rob the bank, and then you go back to headquarters, bring the money that you gathered and the intel, and then you can buy different weapons to upgrade. And then you progress further and further through the bank until-- I don't know what happens because I am not that good at it. But I've been really enjoying it so far.

Still the very funny, witty dialogue back and forth, very clever naming conventions. Some of the characters from the first one are back.

JOSH STEIN: Are they all vegetable-themed? I feel like they'd have a lot of vegetable puns.

KELLY LOMBARDI: Yeah, there are some vegetable goings on. There's a whole veggie mob happening.

JOSH STEIN: Oh, OK.

KELLY LOMBARDI: It's really-- you've got to play it.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And it's on Game Pass.

KELLY LOMBARDI: It's on Game Pass.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Easy for anyone to really get out there and play.

KELLY LOMBARDI: And if you haven't played Tax Evasion, there's-- in the very beginning, they say, have you played the first one? And if-- I don't know what happens when you click No, but I'm assuming they give you a recap so you don't have to have played-- haven't had to have committed tax evasion to rob a bank. You can do one or the other.

- If you're just committed to bank robbing, you can kind of jump right in.

- Yeah.

- Oddly enough, not the only root vegetable-based game on Game Pass this week. We'll talk about Brotato in a bit.

- Oh, yeah. That's good. That's good.

- But I believe you also-- trying to do whatever I can to connect these games together. I don't know-- I haven't played enough of Kill the Justice League: Suicide Squad to know if there's any vegetable-based power-ups or anything down the line. I would have to imagine some of these superheroes do get enough. There's some squash or something.

- Eggplant, glowy purple going on in there.

- Yeah, yeah. A little bit of a stretch, but.

- Jetpack powered by vegetable oil.

- I mean, we all have to do our part.

- Yes.

- So you've gotten to play this. As we're recording this, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League came out last night. And so 9:00 hit, Pacific time. We all jumped in. You were able to play the first hour.

- Yes, I stayed up past my bedtime and played and got through the tutorial. So I got to play through each of the characters. And at first, I was a little overwhelmed. Maybe this is a silly thought, but when I first jumped into the first character, and then--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Deadshot. They give you the first shot.

KELLY LOMBARDI: --Deadshot. And then they were like, oh, and then learn how to play King Shark. And I was like this is so many mechanics to learn. I was like, I'm never going to be able to remember. Because I've been playing Xbox since like, I don't know, a baby. But I still get my quick time actions mixed up. Like, left and right are not my strong suit. So when they're like, hit right bumper, I'm like--

JOSH STEIN: Oh, in the traversal, yeah, you kind of swap between a left bumper and a right bumper mechanic.

KELLY LOMBARDI: Yeah. And so I was like, oh, how am I going to remember all of these? And then I realized they're giving you a tutorial with each of the characters to see which playstyle you like the best before you pick one. And I was like--

JOSH STEIN: Try before you buy, yeah.

KELLY LOMBARDI: --I went from overwhelmed to "this is brilliant." in I don't know, how ever many minutes it took me to complete the tutorial. I was so skeptical. And then I was like, wait, I love this.

- Yeah, it took me until, I think, the third character before I realized there's a lot of focus on traversal early on. But that right bumper generally propels you forward while left bumper generally has you go upwards.

- Yeah.

- And then there's a combination between the two, yeah.

- Exactly. And that's-- and that's-- once you get that into your brain, then the differences between the characters, I think, become more nuanced.

- Yes.

- You got to play a lot further along. Was there anyone who gravitated towards, by the way?

JOSH STEIN: Who's your favorite?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So it's Deadshot, Boomerang, King Shark, and Harley Quinn.

- I was between Harley Quinn and Deadshot, and ultimately picked Deadshot because I'm more of a sniper fan than a get-in-the-action, run-and-gun kind of person. And so I decided to give Deadshot more of a try. But I did love Harley Quinn's traversal, I think, the best with her little bot that she kind of swings from. It was very like--

JOSH STEIN: It's the Batman grapple.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: We played almost identically because I initially picked Deadshot, as well, because I really like when you hit the Y button, you swap to the sniper rifle, and I was like, I'm really hitting a lot of these shots so.

KELLY LOMBARDI: Yeah.

- For whatever reason that might have been the case, I was like, that was very empowering.

- Yes.

- But then what I noticed is when you first get to the point where the tutorial effectively ends and into the Hall of Justice, if you hit left on the D-pad, then you can switch. And I immediately switched, and I was like, well, let me try out Harley Quinn because I did like her traversal as well. And so I'm still figuring out who I'm going to like. But I like the idea that I can at least switch. You got a lot further into the game, Josh.

- I did, yeah. I stayed up way past my bedtime. Hitting that cold brew a little harder today. I actually gravitated the other way. I was a King Shark guy.

I typically, I think, play-- maybe this says more about me and ourselves. It's like video game horoscopes. I go for the bruiser. Just get in there and just start throwing your shoulders around.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I mean, look at you. I mean, you're a linebacker.

JOSH STEIN: I like the traversal of-- it's like Deadshot, but King Shark, I just like-- I just like the idea that I can pull this massive chain gun out and just-- [IMITATES GUNFIRE]-- and just start shooting away.

But I will say Boomerang was really fun. He's basically a speedster. I will say there's a reason you probably like, if you played the Arkham games-- do you play the Arkham games?

KELLY LOMBARDI: Yeah.

JOSH STEIN: That you like Harley Quinn's traversal because it's literally Batman's grapple, one for one. So I got a little bit farther past the tutorial. And I'll say the game really opens up for DC fans, fans of the Flash, Green Lantern, Batman. I'm trying to do this without spoiling too much, but the story really opens up first and you kind learn what's the baddie, what's the motivation, what's the world. And then you go into this side mission but you need to go through it to progress. So maybe it's more of a main mission.

And-- I'll just say this because there was millions and millions of people who played the Arkham games-- how much of a badass do you feel like in Batman when there's like 20 guys, and you're just like-- [IMITATES FISTFIGHT]-- and you're just doing all the things.

- Do you do the sound effects for the Arkham games?

- Yeah, I did actually. [HISSING]

- The original Batman comics.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Pow!

- I want to make fun of you, but I completely knew exactly what you were doing.

- You knew exactly what I'm doing, yeah. But how much of it like you felt like-- just a night terror, just death becomes me, Kevin Conroy Batman? You are on the opposite end of that. You were on the receiving end.

And I have to say whoever directed that mission or put it together, did a phenomenal job because I've never been, like, scared of Batman. I'm a big Batman fan. I love Batman. I love, like, he scares the bad guys with his presence. It's actually-- they do a phenomenal job of scaring the crap out of you.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's OK. We're rated E-M.

- OK, I was like-- I was like, I can't remember what we're rated. It scares the crap out of you because you're on the receiving end, and you go through each Suicide Squad's experience with him. But I won't say any more.

Other than that, it looks like they have a lot of fun with the story. If you've ever wanted to know what all of those superheroes just smashing together in this crazy battle versus "we're fighting for the good of mankind," so it's a little bit of a "what if." It's really-- I think it's really fun. I found a lot of satisfying faction in it, as a Batman fan. I maybe got 4, 5 hours in before--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: What time did you go to bed last night?

- 2:00 AM. I went to bed at 2:00 AM, Jeff. I'm very tired.

- I'm glad you made it.

- I would say it's a lot of fun. I'm really excited to see where the story goes because it feels like they're having a lot of fun with it. I'm trying not to get it spoiled. It's a little hard when you work in social though. So I'll admit, like, I--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You do need to be careful.

JOSH STEIN: I knew the whole tutorial mission going into it because I've just seen enough clips on social. I knew, OK--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And we've seen some streamers--

JOSH STEIN: --I'm going to try out for it.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --playing as well, so.

JOSH STEIN: But there's a reason, probably, why you like each hero and why they feel similar. Because in the Justice Hall, probably right after where you're at, you'll realize how you get your traversal skills. And they kind of plus up, and they're very inherently the heroes that you like.

- So those are our first impressions. Definitely looking forward to playing more.

- Absolutely.

- Yeah.

- I expect to be doing that. But I will say the mindshare, like carving out the time, is incredibly tough right now. I know you've also been playing Diablo IV last week. We had Rob Ferguson on talking about Season of the Construct. How's that going for you so far?

- 2024 went off with a bang here with gaming. Like, I remember January used to be like, man, I guess I'll go back and replay "Red Dead" for the eighth time. Not happening anymore.

- Yeah.

- I'm having a little bit of time juggling it. But, yes, my regular I'd say three to four nights a week with a couple of friends and co-workers is getting on and playing season of the construct. I am playing a sorcerer for the first time, and I'm doing--

- That was my first season role.

- I'm doing a meatball sorcerer. So I do like meteors and firewalls.

- As a meatball sorcerer.

- I don't want to do the-- I don't want to do the electric balls. I feel like that's what everyone does. They're a little OP. Although, they did do some buffs and nerfs, which is nice. But I'm doing a sorcerer and I'm having a lot of fun with it. I'm basically just creating just a pyromaniac, having fun. I think I hit level 63 last night in the season. So trying to just-- my goal is to do one character for the first like 4 or 5 seasons and go--

- So you've hit them all.

- Go through each one. Yes.

- Yeah. So starting out with a sorcerer as I did, and I guess it was technically season zero, really when the game first came out, you just need to be very cognizant of your health. Because when you get all those lightning bolts going around and everything and then you're like, oh, wait, I'm taking a beating here.

- That's where I'm struggling, because like I said I love King Shark. I'm a Barbarian. Yeah, I'm a smack them around kind of guy and you can't do that as a sorcerer. So I've died a lot just being in the middle of it and then my squad's like, Stein, you're supposed to be throwing fire over the fence.

- So you could theoretically tune your construct to be a little more tanky and maybe draw a little--

- Correct. I don't know if you did that on purpose. But, yeah, so you can do offensive and defensive perks. You get two perks per construct and then some sub perks. But the key is you pick two. And I have two defensive perks. So one bubbles me and shields me with my little spider guy that crawls around, and then the other one just keeps feeding me health. So I will say it's probably enabling my tankiness as a sorcerer. Because I could just get in there and I don't die as often as I'm leveling those other stones. As I'm leveling those stones up and making them more powerful. But I love the idea of the little guy keeps you nice and alive. Keeps you strong. My favorite part is he agros the baddies, or you can put a perk on that he does. So when there's a big boss, it's really nice I'll say as a squishy sorcerer to have him go up and then the big boss is just wailing on him and I'm just like, firebolt, firebolt, firebolt, firebolt.

- That's basically my Soul's experience. Whenever possible, draw someone in there and stay back there. I'm like, oh, I didn't even get my hands dirty and you just--

- I'll never play sorcerer again probably, but I'll finish it out this season.

- Appreciate that.

- It was tough like to get away from my necromancer's in the Skelly build, because I was reading online that, oh, the strongest builder actually when you sacrifice all of your familiars and I was like, but I love going, "Get them Skelly boys" and watching them go.

- There's something satisfying about an army of undead just-- Just send them forth.

- At the end of the day, I just optimized for fun. Like, obviously I want to play-- if it takes me an extra second to beat Lilith, I think I'll deal with it.

- It'll be fine.

- Yeah, exactly. We've also been playing one game together, which I like to call time eater, "Palworld."

- Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

- This is a game that I sat down with really for the first time this past weekend. I was like, I'm going to play for half an hour. And two hours later I realized that I was late to take my kid to her soccer game, because time just goes in this game. What's been your experience?

- Yeah, you-- because I haven't been playing enough. Wow. I'm promise I'm working. I'm doing my job, boss.

- You're just not sleeping.

- Yeah, exactly. I'm just-- I'm sleeping.

- Yeah.

- Yes, that's a great way to describe it. The first time I played it I did 30 minutes and was like, I don't know. And then about I think it was that night and it was on Saturday I was like, let me try it again, and I had my friend Ethan get online. He's like come check out my world. And, man, Ethan had built a fortress and a whole setup. And then so was like, oh, OK. So we go back to my world, which I love that you can hop into other people's worlds and help them grind and build and grow. And I blinked and it was 2:00 AM again. Because literally you just daisy chain from things, because you have base care I'll call it. Where you need to build up your base, build up your pals, assign them jobs.

And then, Oh, shit, I'm so close to get the wood mill, and then you want to get the wood mill. Now I need the pals for the wood mill, and then you got to go catch the pals. And then I felt like when I'd get like burned out on base building and min maxing I'd be like, all right now I'm going to go catch cool stuff. And so then I'd go on an adventure for two hours catching these rare pals, running into these giant-- which I love that they are larger than life. I appreciate that. The game could have very much just kept them all pocket sized and they are not.

My favorite, there's this llama, I can't remember his name, but he's basically a llama and he's probably 18 stories tall. And when you catch him I kind of thought he would like shrink down and be my size or rideable. He is rideable, but he is still an 18 story tall skyscraper. And you're just this little guy sitting on him and he's just-- Just bouncing along. But then when you get bored of that, you go back to the base. Oh, well, now you have all these new pals. And your pals have been grinding while you've been out hunting, so then you can, well, now I can come up to the next seven stages of my base. Rinse, repeat, and then blink and you've lost five hours.

- There is something magical about just like you start working on something on your workbench and then your little pals start coming over and they're hammering and they're like, oh, you've got this. It's like almost a management simulator.

- I've become a foreman though now. Yeah, I was kind of like one of them. We were all hanging out. But then when I was, well, five of them come, I'll just add a sixth one. And so now I've been very like delegating. And then realized you can assign them permanent jobs.

- All right, you got to tell me how to do this, because I don't know how to do that.

- Yeah, you can assign them permanent jobs and they will sit there and they will wait for that job until it is done. And then they'll wait for the next job. And so that's what you start micromanaging. I feel like I could run maybe a semi successful small construction company.

- Well, maybe, we won't have--

- Maybe it's a false sense of video game confidence.

- Next time we need a guest, we'll just assign a pal as podcast guest.

- Yeah. Depresso's my favorite though. I don't know if you've run across Depresso. So, yeah, Depresso is this little purple guy. He's hilarious. He looks very depressed. But when you catch him and you and you assign him a job, he gives 1% effort. So you've got these cat pals hammering away on these ice picks. You've got these big elk pals like hitting the wood with their antlers and harvesting. And then if you look at Depresso.

- It's good to see myself represented in video games.

- So some interesting stuff about "Palworld." We know everyone's been talking about it. When I look at my friends list, so many people are playing it. As of last weekend, we got some stats. And people were wondering how big is this game.

- Lots of people been asking.

- On Xbox, specifically, well, it turns out huge. Over 7 million players have enjoyed "Palworld." It is the biggest third party release in Xbox Game Pass history. That is no small potatoes. It's also the most played third party day one release via Xbox Cloud Gaming with Game Pass. So fans are enjoying "Palworld" on multiple screens, on consoles, on PC. So in case you didn't know, it's on Game Pass. It's on for console and PC and cloud. So based on 10 days, 7 million people have played. Over 7 million people have played it, which is just pretty phenomenal.

- Yeah.

- If you haven't tried it yet--

- It's going to be 7,000,001 when I get home and finally jump in later.

- Yeah, yeah.

- It's one of those thing, play it, believe the hype. Because even if a survival game might not be something that you've enjoyed in the past, everything is just broken out by just, oh, just one more point I get to unlock this. Just one more thing, and then next thing.

- Just one more level, just one morepal.

- Just capture one more pal and they really nailed it.

- I'm not afraid. I'm not going to like it. I'm afraid I'm going to miss like an entire two days of work and I'm going to emerge from my home hair a mess like, "Where am I? I've been playing this game."

- What year is it? Yeah. My only tip, when you build a base, don't bring fire pals.

- OK, excellent.

- Because you start with wood, and there's a lot of-- well, there's a lot of viral clips of people making the mistake of having some fire pals and a very elaborate wood base.

- Good to know. Good to know. We'll have to bring you back. Once I evolve out of the wood age and into the bronze age--

- Stone age?

- Yeah, exactly. So a lot of people are playing that. Here's a game that I expect a lot of people will be playing on my friends list this week that I've gotten to play quite a bit of hitting Game Pass. "Persona 3 Reload." This is a masterpiece already. I know we talked about 2023 from a game release perspective as being spectacular, but if we look at the games that have come out this year that have been reviewed incredibly well from "Prince of Persia" to "Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth" and then here we are now. "Palworld" of course has just been fantastic. "Tekken 8" reviewed incredibly well. And now I'm just looking at the scores for "Persona 3 Reload" which came out this morning as we're recording this, it's at an 89 Metacritic with 50 reviews. Suffice to say, when you're reloading or remaking an all time classic game like "Persona 3", you got to hit all the right notes. They're hitting all the right notes.

- Both for the core probably and the new.

- Exactly.

- Walk me through a little bit. So "Persona 3", as someone who's never jumped in, but I'm seeing these reviews, I'm seeing my friends get excited, I'm seeing my coworkers get excited and I'm like, oh, just very curious, is this the third iteration?

- OK, yeah, so good questions here. "Persona 3" when that came out on like PS2 in 2006 something like that, it completely changed what "Persona" was. I would say don't worry about playing Persona 1 and 2. Each one of these games is standalone so if you want to start with Persona 5, that's fine for any of them. And so there were multiple versions of Persona 3. There was Persona 4 FES, Persona 3 portable, which is where I first played it.

- So we have flavors of Persona 3?

- Yes. Suffice to say, if you were to start anywhere, based on my experience, Persona 3 Reload, what it does is it brings in a lot of the modernization and visual flair from Persona 4 Royal, which a lot of people got to play on Xbox when it hit Game Pass. This is where you would want to start, I think is Persona 3 Reload. Persona 3 Portable still available I want to say on Game Pass. That being said, elements of it are almost a point and click adventure, because it was made for the PSP. It was amazing at the time. Persona 3 Reload takes advantage of modern hardware. I got to speak with the devs a few weeks ago and they were talking about how modern hardware has actually been huge for RPGs and it's why RPGs have been able to progress so quickly, because building these worlds, something that the tech has caught up with their imaginations, and you just see it just looks spectacular.

- Oh, that's cool. OK. So the tech and creative have really merged in one of their best versions of this game.

- Here's what we would have made if we had this back then.

- That's the impression that I got from them. As someone who played through P3P way back when and hold it in really high regard. A lot of us think as people who've played all the Persona games think that Persona 3 may have had the best story, it's hitting those notes. It hasn't really changed that. It's just that the visual style and a few of-- here's what I'll say about a remake. A great remake it looks like what you think the original look like in your head.

- Oh, yeah.

- And you're like, yeah, this is what it should look like. Then I've gone back and I looked at some of the things that don't age well and I was like, Oh, this is what it used to look like. OK, I'm glad that they reloaded it in this case, because it really looks really slick. It works really well. Of course, being part of Game Pass, it plays on console and it plays on PC. I've got an ASUS ROG Ally which is essentially my portable gaming system and it plays perfectly on there. And for those who are into extending out the battery life, you can play it on 15 Watt and it still looks phenomenal. So you can really extend it out. And oddly enough I enjoyed playing these games portably. So it looks great on your big TV, but it looks great even on a whatever it is 8 inch screen.

- Well, because that's where you started with it, right?

- For me.

- It's home.

- Yeah, and I will say with a turn based game-- so the story in it is great, but there are huge elements or huge sections of the game where you're basically going up this giant labyrinth. And so sitting on the sofa and my wife's watching something else or something like that, it's a really good game for that. I've got one earpiece in. I will say they've redone all the voices and it's just really good. It's worth playing through a second time for me, and I would say a first time for anyone. So if you're wondering, oh, I've never played a Persona game, is this a good starting place? Yes, 100%. I will say Persona 5 is also a great starting point so just whatever works.

- No wrong answer there. Nice.

- I could listen to you talk about Persona in general for a very long time. The excitement and energy and passion.

- Can you tell?

- I feel like there's just no one better suited than you. Because like you just come alive and you're like, oh, let's talk about it and let's get into it. If anyone does want to play Persona Reload, if you've inspired anyone with this excitement, with this passion, it's on Game Pass? And it's available, it'll be tomorrow, so February 2nd. This should go up on February 1st. Yeah, I would say give it a shot. It should bring you in immediately with its visuals and its atmosphere. And if it doesn't, maybe it's not for you. But if that's the case, I don't want to hear from you, because I absolutely love it.

- If that's the case, keep it to yourself.

- Yeah, exactly. But one last thing, the thing I will say that really sets-- and it started in Persona 3 three, apart from a lot of other RPGs, it really created this socialized by day and fight by night dichotomy.

- I like that.

- So you actually go to school and in fact, you're getting quizzed at different times. You're helping out your slacker teammate who's, wait, do you know the answer to this? And if you get it right, it actually improves some of your stats.

- That's cool.

- And the more friends you make and the deeper you make the relationships, and I will say some of the stories get really serious and cover like really serious topics, it actually does help you when at nighttime you're going through Tartarus and summoning these different personae and it lets you evolve them in different ways.

- That's cool. It's a very innovative way to look at the day/night cycle that you typically see in video games.

- It's been hugely I would say influential in future things.

- That's awesome.

- Yeah. I checked out Persona 5 after we had talked about it one time, and I thought that was so interesting. And it appeals to the everyday hero of it. Yeah, you have to go through some of the mundane things, but even that contributes to what ends up being your superhero powers of like, oh, I'm better at this because I did this in school or I passed this test or I did this. There's magic even in those little moments that don't feel like there's magic in them, and then you take them and then you use them to go be a super hero. And that to me I was just like, damn, that's cool.

- Well, I think what's really interesting is, like, I like high fantasy as much as anyone else. I'm still playing Baldur's Gate 3 and I absolutely love it. It deserves every plot that it got. But something that particularly works for me with the Persona Series, and I would say with Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth as well, these are more like real people in a world that I recognize dealing with real problems, and obviously there's fantastical elements. Wouldn't it be great is if I could level up and if my relationships with friends only go up and to the right and got better. But at the same time, I can still identify with many of the issues. And for me, that is just what's so riveting.

- Yeah.

- And I wish life was that way.

- Seriously.

- Like interacting with co-workers and people is like, blip, blip, blip, ping. I'm like, I said the right thing.

- You never level down in these games, you only level up.

- Wah, wah, wah. Oh, we're going to overthink this later.

- That might be part of the appeal. Maybe it'll inspire you. Actually I've read a few things about how Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth and Itchiban's relationship with his parents actually really has gotten through to a lot of people. Yeah, it's interesting stuff. All right, I've talked way too much about this. One of the reasons I wanted to have you on specifically, Josh, is Persona 3 Reload, it's part of our celebration of anime that is taking place at Xbox. And there's a huge Xbox Game Pass anime collection that's going on right now. Includes Guilty Gear Strive, HI-FI Rush, Sea of Stars. Persona 3 Reload as we mentioned launching on the Game Pass tomorrow. But there are more than 90 games movies, TV shows that are discounted across the store. I don't know a lot of these things. So I'm going to need your help with a few of these in a few of the games that are coming out here.

So Nier Automata, again, that's a game, the Becomes Gods Edition. People that love that love that.

- Yes, they're very diehard.

- Oh, you don't beat that game once, you got to beat that game 6 or 7 times.

- You don't beat that game.

- Minimum.

- Yes. And then you know. The game beats you I guess. All right, so tell me here. All right, I've heard the name, but Naruto and Boruto. What's going on with that?

- Yeah, you got Naruto cross Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connection.

- You said that so smoothly.

- The producers have trained me well.

- Yeah.

- And then Demon Slayer, which I think it's Kimetsu No Yaiba Hinokami Chronicles.

- That's the Demon Slayer.

- Basically the Demon Slayer game that's on Xbox, which takes you through basically season one of Demon Slayer or the first arc where you go through, if you've ever seen clips of it, like the spiders and kind of the family there. Demon Slayer, by the way, a phenomenal anime. I absolutely recommend checking it out. There's a lot of sales in the stores as part of celebrating anime this month and so there's a ton of them. Anywhere from Dragon Ball to-- there's always a season of Dragon Ball I feel like they throw in there, which is great. And then Jujutsu Kaisen, I just finished.

- JJK.

- There's a lot of JJK fans right now.

- That's what the kids are calling it.

- Yes. Yeah, JJK is very popular. It's got two seasons and one movie basically. Very digestible. Season one introduce you to the characters, get to know their powers. Like any anime, what makes the world boil? Who's evil? What's good? What are those gray blurred lines? A lot of gray blurred lines in this one. Then there's a movie, which I would recommend watching before you go into season two. Lots of enemies have different paces. Demon Slayer is one of my favorite ones. Got a nice good clean pace here. I don't have to go 70 episodes in a boss scene before I get to the ending.

- There's only like three seasons of that one, right?

- Yeah. Yeah, three arcs. Yeah, they do them by arcs. But, yeah, there's the sword smith arc, there's the entertainment district, which is probably my favorite arc. But I'm not digesting the manga a bunch. I'm just kind of waiting for the new seasons to come out. But JJK has a new game coming out. I think it's on February 2nd.

- Cursed Clash.

- Yes, it's a 2v2, and it kind of goes through a bit of the story in season one. So you get to meet the characters, what their superpowers are and everything, and kind of what makes the evil world tick. But I'll tell you this, man, it goes from 0 to 1,000 in season two. Like, you gotta hold on. Like, season one is great. I feel like it's a very typical anime. The movie then comes out. It's a nice little digestible 90 minutes. You can watch it, it gives you just a little bit more backstory on more of the bad guys and how they get to it. And then season two has no fear of killing anyone you love.

- Oh, gosh.

- All I know is pretty routinely I would see a name trending.

- Gojo.

- Like Gojo was one of them. And I tell my kid and she's like, stop talking to me, I don't know yet. One time I walked in, she was crying. I'm like, is everything OK? And apparently something happened in a KFC. I don't even know.

- This is one of those animes or manga that has just no fear of killing a main character hero you love. Because anime always introduce you a cast, I'll say it that without spoiling it and it's just a lot of animes, you're with that cast the whole way through. You really don't lose anyone.

- One Piece.

- Yeah. Yes. Or you lose someone eventually or maybe a side character. This one is like, no, you remember watching 20 episodes of this person, dead. And so I had more jaw dropping moments in season two than I had in a lot of recent animes. Demon Slayer is just fun to me. It's dark, it's broody, but your main characters are your main characters.

- You have a guy that falls asleep and becomes a badass, which like that's my favorite guy.

- Yeah.

- I wish that would happen to me.

- His powers are amazing. The thunderclap and flash. I just love that little, like-- I feel like the anime meme where you just-- and then the apple falls into slices.

- Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash or JJK CC. Are we doing that? We're not doing that. Is out tomorrow.

- Correct. 2v2. It's like 15 sorcerers. You get to see the Cursed spirits which are like the bad guys in the game. Well, you can equip cursed spirits as good guys too. But you'll combo the skills together. You'll basically have this inspiration of all these original characters that you love and then you get to play the heck out of them.

- OK. And there's also tons of sales on movies and TV shows. Boruto, the Naruto next generations, not only will that be on sale, but apparently season one will be a perk for Game Pass Ultimate subscribers starting next week February 7th. So you can just jump in and watch it. So maybe a good place to start. And we also have multiple anime titles available in free play days starting next month, or throughout the month I should say, starting with One Piece Odyssey this weekend. So if you're interested in One Piece, you've watched the 1,000 episodes or the Netflix show.

- That's my treadmill show.

- Get into that. OK, good to know.

- That way I never get off the treadmill.

- You can try that game for free.

- I love that. It's a great time to jump in. I watch a lot of anime as a kid, and I feel like the way you consume it now is so different. I remember we used to try to convince my mom to let us stay up, because it was like the Dragon Ball Z boss fight and we'd be like, it's on Adult Swim but it's on at midnight, but I swear this is the episode where he finally beats Frieza.

- And it's not.

- And it's not. It's just them all charged up staring at each other yelling back and forth for like 23 minutes and then it's over. And my mom would be like, oh, so that was it? And we'd be like, about that, we're going to need to stay up next weekend as well, because--

- We need 15 more of these before someone throws a punch.

- Yes. And now you can just have a perk on Game Pass and get a whole season of it and just watch the whole thing. So I think now's as good as time as any.

- Golden age, maybe?

- Yeah.

- At least, if not for the anime itself, certainly for the viewers.

- We were talking about this. With generations, anime has become extremely popular. And it's just grown. I've always believed like as millennials have grown from their Saturday morning cartoons into adults, they love seeing both fun and mature versions of those Saturday morning cartoons, which you get the whole spectrum in anime from love interest to serious to fun and go lucky and across the board. And then the next generation even more.

- I remember growing up anime was very much like some people were into it and it was a pretty limited group of people.

- Yeah.

- It was a select group, let's say.

- It was nerds, it's OK.

- OK, fair enough.

- You can call me out.

- I'm not trying to judge. These were my friends too.

- The dynamics have changed though.

- Yes. There was a really cool thing on Polygon I want to say this week that was a really awesome anime laid out infographic, and I think it was like 42% of Gen Z watches anime weekly. So that's modern pop culture.

- I'm not cool enough to be an anime culture, because I'm not like in it enough. Where before I got made fun of for watching anime, now it's like, oh, you don't know anime like we know. Yeah.

- Someone out there is going to roast me for like mispronouncing.

- No gatekeeping. That's where I'm a big believer on.

- Get back in there.

- There's room for everybody under this tent I would say. All right, let's talk about new releases this week. We talked about Suicide Squad Kill The justice League. We'll all be putting more time into that. Just as a note, as a bonus, if you buy the Suicide Squad game, you get discounts on DC movies such as "Suicide Squad," "The Suicide Squad," different movie, and more on Xbox. So you'll want to check that out also. We had Phil Spencer on the show a couple of months ago, maybe October I want to say, and he mentioned "Brotato". Well, this Phil Spencer favorite got its console and Game Pass release this week. It's a top down shooter roguelite where you play as a potato. So I told you more root vegetables after Turnip Boy.

- He brings this up almost weekly.

- Yes, he does. I've asked him more than once. Like, what are you playing? And he's like "Brotato." so you wield up to six weapons at a time to fight off hordes of aliens. Choose from a variety of traits and items to create unique builds and survive until help arrives. What's the next root vegetable that's going to get a game? Parsnip Punch Out or something?

- Rhubarb Ranch.

- Ooh. Rhubarb. The year of rhubarb, 2024.

- Got one? I'm putting you on the spot. I can't even name it. What do you got? Radishes?

- Radish. Yeah, I'd go for a radish spirit kind of.

- Yeah, that could be DLC for Rhubarb Ranch.

- There we go.

- The Radish Ranch Edition.

- Radish Ranch. It's a Red Dead montage of just veggies.

- All right.

- Carrot shootouts.

- Few updates to games. Forza Horizon 5 has kicked off its Lunar New year event at the end of last week. The Horizon festival has four weeks of content to celebrate the new Lunar cycle. It is the year of the dragon. Always an interesting year. Do you know your--

- I think I'm a rat.

- OK, cool.

- Which I think is very fitting.

- Yeah, I'm a snake. So between the two of us--

- I'm going to have to look mine up. I don't know what mine is.

- OK.

- Sneaky little snake.

- They go in a 12 year cycle. So anyway. Yeah, coming up, coming up. But anyway, year of the dragon. So each of these weeks will have a reward card featuring some of the greatest vehicles ever to come out of China. There's a really cool track with the dragon so definitely check that out in Forza Horizon 5. Microsoft Flight Simulator world update 16 Caribbean has launched this week. It includes 104 handcrafted points of interest. A bunch of airports including places in the Bahamas, Jamaica and Puerto Rico.

- The vacation I wish I was on.

- Yeah. So my family lives in Miami and I actually had a work trip visiting Microsoft San Juan. This is a long time ago, but I remember I flew from there to visit my folks in Miami. That is the most amazing flight. I just stared out the window the whole time.

- It's a living wallpaper.

- Yeah, exactly. It was just beautiful. It was just like the Windows 10, Windows 11 lock screen.

- Free dynamic background.

- And so I kind of want to play this again as reenact that, because it was just it was just stunning little islands, blue seas and all of that.

- Turn on a vitamin D lamp.

- Yeah.

- There we go. Definitely need that this time of year. Halo Infinite content update 29, it brings the spirit of fire operations to between now and March 5th. You can play three new operations in a new 20 tier free operation pass. And one of the things you all have been asking for, shoulder pads can now be equipped across any armor corps like the new Mjolnir mark 4 from Halo Wars. Last thing I want to mention real quickly is, confirmed MLB The Show 24 is confirming it'll be coming to Xbox Game Pass. It's beginning of February, this is when pitchers and catchers report, so the very, very, very beginning of baseball season when it comes down to it. So exciting to confirm that. I want to say Vladimir Guerrero jr. Is on the right on the cover box. It's the best baseball game that there is or maybe ever was.

- Since Backyard Baseball.

- It's true. I was an RBI baseball fan.

- Nice throwback.

- Yes, for sure.

- Yeah.

- All right. Oh, one more announcement here. This is pretty much hot off the presses so excuse me if I read. Lightyear Frontier. This was a game that we showed off in one of our showcases that looked really cool. A futuristic farming situation. Playable demo is now available in advance of its game preview release date which is coming March 19th. So, yeah, this will be fun. I showed my father this one. So my dad's a farmer.

- Really?

- Yeah, farmer, rancher, hunter.

- Turnips or brotatos?

- No, corn and hay mostly. Hay for the cows, corn for corn. Feed. Feed corn mostly. I grew up many a puffy eyes of allergies driving a bailor. Yeah, fun fact, terrible allergies. Terrible allergies. Grew up on an Idaho farm. So very puffy faced. But I showed him that and I was like, this is the future. Gave a typical Mr Steen reply of like, future of farming looks pretty futuristic. And so it's like, thanks, Dad. Man of many words. But it was interesting to see his reactions about it and he was just like, man, I wonder if they got air conditioning in those. It was just interesting to hear my older father react to this futuristic farming sim.

- You have to play it for him.

- I had to explain to him farming sim and he's like, wait, they play farming in a farming sim. Like, what I do for a living? I was like yeah. He's like, well, hire him. And so of course, it's another typical dad response.

- Very good. Very good. I mean, a lot of pilots. There's a lot of pilot influencers who play Flight Simulator. And so like the idea-- I mean, Powerwash Simulator.

- Some of them are very accurate.

- Yeah. And just fun in a way that I think maybe if that's your day job, you might look at that and go why would I do that after I clock off.

- I don't think I'd play social media simulator.

- Yeah.

- I don't know. I like to spend my Saturdays playing House Flipper and not cleaning my own house. But I'll clean up-- I'm like, oh, yeah, let me clean that pile of dirt, let me reorganize, and then I'm just surrounded by trash.

- You feel accomplished.

- Yeah, and I'm like, oh, let's call it a day. And then my own house is--

- Just eight hours of cleaning.

- I have literally been playing power wash Simulator had to shut it off before my wife came in because she would see that and say, you need to go outside and power wash.

- The driveway's green, Jeff.

- It really is.

- Dishes aren't going to power wash themselves.

- Yeah, no. Not doing that.

- I feel that.

- All right. Do we have a hand model here? Because we actually have some stuff to unbox.

- Yes.

- You want to do it?

- I'll do it.

- OK. Let's see those hands.

- They're little.

- They're manicured.

- Little.

- They're manicured though.

- You remember that Burger King commercial where he's like, I want to eat a whopper but I have these small hands? My friends used to send that.

- That's a great reference.

- Yeah, my friends used to send that to me because I have little infant hands.

- So I wanted to honor our good friend Major Nelson who started the white glove treatment, when we unboxing, I realize these are the White gloves I wore when we did the Doritos unboxing late last year. These have some-- yes, nacho cheese on there.

- They're scented.

- This would actually make things even worse. So I'm going to just trust that you sanitized. We actually have two controllers to unbox this week.

- OK. I have not had any Doritos today so good to go.

- All right, great. So let's get into that. And you have the descriptions of these, do you not?

- Yeah, happy to share a little bit more about these.

- The lower down one.

- Let's see what do you have first. Because we have two announcements this week. Oh, so we have started launching the Vapor Series, which have been received very well. We did a storm cloud vapor, which was a blue vapor last, I want to say, August. And so this is the next iteration.

- That is nice looking.

- Yes. So this is the dream vapor. It should have-- flip it around here. Yeah, so it's got the dipped grips. It's got these grips on the side that are dipped.

- First you dip and then you grip.

- Yes.

- I'm going to do the beauty influencer.

- And then turn it.

- We picked the right person for this job.

- Turn it to the side to show off those grips. Marketing loves that. There you go. So basically, yeah, it's got the rubber grips on it. This is in the iteration of the Series. This goes up for pre-order this week and then it will launch February 6th. It'll be shipped to you or you can just go into the store and grab it. I always love when we jump out of like the hard blues and greens and go into some of the pastels. They're actually some of our best selling controllers so it's great to see that we've leaned into this. And, yes, this one's going to be a popular one. We just locked the social like assets for it and I'm very excited for people to see it.

- And I get to take this home? Oh, my gosh, you guys are so generous.

- You can fight.

- It's not mine.

- Yeah. You can fight for it.

- My wife is always like, another controller showing up at the house? And when she saw that one she's like, can I have it?

- Another controller?

- Wait, this is pretty. I like this.

- Yeah, yeah, exactly.

- So that's the next one, but there's more.

- There is more.

- There is. So the vapor Series has been pretty successful. And we know people love designing their own controllers, creating their own. So, of course, the marketing folks thought, why not bring the vapor Series to the Xbox Design Lab.

- So I designed this one. So go ahead and pop it open, and I'll tell you what my inspiration was.

- Made by Jeff.

- Psychonauts.

- Well, take a good idea. Take it and flip it around. I wanted to make a watermelon type of controller, because that's what it reminded me. So I have the outer skin there and then the inside seedless.

- So this is called, I believe this is nocturnal vapor. This is the green one. There's basically about six different vapor colors, all of them are going into Xbox Design Lab this week. So if you want to pre-order the dream vapor as is, you can preorder it and get it from the retailer. Or if you want to just make your own and you want to spend just a little bit more to customize everything, you can go and customize these. There's a bunch of colorways that have just launched this week. And that is the vapor Series.

- If you make a watermelon one, please let me know.

- There's green, there's gray.

- I felt very accomplished.

- I'm a little upset that it's not a root vegetable.

- I didn't really time this out for potato.

- We didn't know.

- Yeah, exactly.

- Throwing us a curveball with the fruit.

- Oh. I like this a lot.

- I think we make some of the most fun colorways in our control. It's a very groovy one.

- And it just makes me so proud of all of the different options you have. The beautiful colors that you can purchase outright and then also build yourself. There's so much out there that you can go get, but then if you want something even more custom, you can just make it, and I just love that.

- What I noticed is-- so my Series X is sitting in a cabinet most of the time. I open it up when I'm playing it, but it just fits in there nicely. The controller's what sits out there and that ends up being the conversation piece. When someone comes over they're like, oh, what's that? And then next thing you know we're playing Street Fighter 6.

- I've turned it into a wall art. Just because I happen to work a little closer to the controllers. I Have a few more than I think your average home. But I've just started-- I just got little hooks online and I've started hanging them because they're so pretty and there's a whole collage of them. And you're right, there's like maybe one Black one, and one white one, and then it's a ton of-- I got my elites, because I love that we can design those now too. I've got all the different series. The shimmer Series was the one before the vapor Series. That was really popular. The one where you kind of turned it and you got purple and blue.

- Yeah, a little sheen.

- That was very popular so a lot of people loved them. And we have some cool ones on the way.

- OK, something else that we do have that's cool is codes for you. So last week, free code Friday. I hope you understand why we did not end up giving out the Diablo codes. We just held them. We rolled them over the lottery into this week and the pot is even bigger. So we're going to add to from last week. Diablo IV game code plus enough platinum to get the season 3 battle Pass. But also we have codes for Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League. We barely had-- well, you stayed up till 2:00 AM, but we're just getting started with it. You get to try it out for yourself. So what do you need to do? You need to head on over on Friday at noon to twitter.com/xboxwire. Don't tell me it's X, I know that's your job. But twitter.com/xboxwire and we will ask a question. Actually, we'll ask this question. And you have about two hours to answer and then we will randomly draw some winners and you will win Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League as well as Diablo IV and platinum for that battle pass.

So what is the question? Well, the game we were talking about is Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League and we were just wondering, what superheroes would you delete forcefully if you were given the chance?

- Just wipe out from existence.

- Just erase them out of the-- Thanos snap them.

- You're going to get some strong Batman versus Superman arguments.

- Yeah, it doesn't have to be DC. Whatever you want. We just want to hear from you. So on Friday at noon Pacific, that's 3 PM Eastern don't get me started on other time zones, head on over to twitter.com/xboxwire Look for that question. Think about what you're going to put in there, pop it in there, and we will randomly draw a winner and you will get those codes. So that's pretty much it. Any final thoughts from you, Kelly? Or Josh.

- No thoughts, just vibes.

- Vibes are good.

- I'm thinking about my answer to the question now.

- Oh, yeah, which one would you delete?

- Yeah, but final thoughts. Go play Sea of Thieves season 11, and loved being here. Thank you for having me.

- Thank you.

- I'd have to shout out the team. Make sure you go follow us at Xbox on TikTok, Twitter or X, Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp. You name it, we're there. Give us a follow that's where we break all the official news. I know people love the rumor mill around social media, but--

- Not my social.

- Not yours. Yeah, well, unfortunately a lot of people's social. But give the team a follow. We like to do a lot of engagement. We like to have a lot of fun with the gaming community. Not just Xbox, just the gaming community. But that's also where you can make sure you find the latest, greatest, official source of Xbox news.

- There we go. All right, well, that's all we've got. We will see you next week here on YouTube and on Spotify and Apple Podcast. So thanks so much for joining. Have a good weekend.