How Abubakar Salim Found Healing Through Gaming

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

- Hello, and welcome to the official Xbox podcast, the only podcast coming to you from inside Xbox. We took a week off, but we are back and I have a couple of behatted gentlemen here with me today. Martin Garcia.

- Hello.

- Good to see you. You're a Forza marketer, and you were on last year, but your first time here in 2024. How are you doing?

- I was here right before we launched Forza Motorsport. So we've launched, we've done a bunch of updates on the game. But I've been good. Glad to be back.

- Good. Yeah, I was playing this weekend, actually.

MARTIN GARCIA: You've been busy. We've been busy. We're busy.

- And the resident meme master of Xbox, Josh Stein, welcome back. Good to see you, man.

- Thank you, thank you. An honor to represent the whole team of meme masters.

- All right. Well, we have a great show for you. Actually, it's been a quiet few weeks on the game release front, but that is about to change. Next week is really heating up. We're going to be talking all about that, new games coming to Game Pass. And later in the show-- I'm very excited about this-- Abubakar Salim is going to be speaking with Malik. He is the person that you've been seeing and hearing, because my god, what a voice.

He is the mastermind of Tales of Kenzera Zau, which is out next week. So more on that a little bit later. But first off, I mean, this is a gaming podcast so we like to talk about-- what are you watching on TV? Because there's a lot of good TV right now.

- There's some good TV right now.

- And specifically for gamers. I feel like everybody's talking about the Fallout TV show on Amazon Prime. Are you watching it?

- Oh, yeah. Four episodes in. Haven't finished it.

JOSH STEIN: Four in. Have you finished it?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I have not finished it, either.

JOSH STEIN: I have to finish it just by job, because the next day, when I look at the Xbox social feed, there's spoilers in there. Literally screenshots of the final thing and everything and whatnot. I won't spoil it, but it was in our feed the next day. So I'm very glad I-- a little tired, but I had to binge it all the way through when it dropped.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: All the episodes are out right now.

MARTIN GARCIA: Yeah.

JOSH STEIN: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And it's just been pretty amazing to see how everyone coalesced. There just seems to be a feeling, like, once you've watched a couple of episodes, I'm itching to play like Fallout 4 again.

- Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

- What about you all?

- That's when you've got a good show, man, when you-- same way, Edgerunners. I watched Edgerunners, immediately booted up Cyberpunk. This one was no different. But I've also been playing Fallout 76 for a couple of months now. But booted it straight up. I just hit level 100, actually, last night. So I've been in there a little while.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, a little bit.

JOSH STEIN: Been in there a little while, but I still am impressed. After level 100, literally last night, I stumbled into a mystery shelter. It's not a vault, but it's a shelter, and there's a whole secret faction underneath the ground that I never knew, never had any idea about. They've got their own armor mods I can find, their own guns, their own like missions and everything. And I'm probably like 40, 50 hours into this thing, so I've been really impressed.

And it's been kind of fun, switching from the show to the game to the show to the game.

- Yeah. Admittedly, I haven't played fallout in years, but watching the show again makes me really excited to jump back in and download Fallout and play it again-- as soon as I finish the series, that is. And I've been trying to stay off social so I don't get it spoiled, like you were trying to avoid also.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's really hard. Yeah.

- It is.

- It's kind of difficult because everyone gets excited, but, yeah, it's a little hard. But they've been also putting in a bunch of updates. It feels like all the games are getting a little bit of a tummy tuck and a facelift and a little bit of sprinkle, some pizzazz. Even in 76, you can get the Vault 33 jumpsuit. So they're putting things in now.

They put Maximus, one of the--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Brotherhood of Steel.

JOSH STEIN: Correct, as a-- what do they call it? Basically a companion at your base now, who can kind of hang out and do missions and things for you.

- So Bethesda has announced Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Fallout Shelter all getting free updates. Some are out, as you said, now. Some, I think, are on the way. Head on over to bethesda.net. There's plenty more on that.

JOSH STEIN: Yeah, the big one is April 25, Fallout 4 gets a next gen update. That's the one a lot of people are really excited about. There's a lot of good updates. Like you said, Shelter, 76 got some good content drops, but the big one a lot of people are really hyped about is that next gen update for Fallout 4.

I've had a few friends be like, which one do I start with? Where do I jump in? And I'm like, ooh, you know what? Just jump right into Fallout 4 on April 25. That'll be a good one.

- That's what I'm going to do, then.

- Yeah.

- I just got to finish the show by then, and then 25th--

- That's actually a great little daisy chain of events. That'd be pretty fun.

- Yes. So the show is out now. All the episodes are out in one go, which it's just sitting there, and I'm like, all right, can I watch now? Is my kid going to bed yet? And no, she doesn't like going to bed. So I've got to catch up.

But it's got Ella Purnell, who's just been awesome as the Vault Dweller.

JOSH STEIN: From Yellowjackets.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Oh, OK.

JOSH STEIN: Yeah, yeah. I saw her a little bit in-- I haven't finished Yellowjackets. A little bit in Yellowjackets. I haven't seen her in anything else, and then she's like the main character for this whole thing.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Aaron Moton, who is--

JOSH STEIN: He plays Maximus, yeah. He's the Brotherhood of the Steel character.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And the ghoul, Walton Goggins.

JOSH STEIN: I'm a big fan of westerns. Grew up playing them with my dad-- or watching them with my dad, and so I love Walton. He's in a lot of westerns. He's usually kind of maybe the bad guy or the shitty drifter in a lot of them. He's so good. I feel like that man was born to act in a cowboy hat, and I think he steals the scenes every time he's in it. I think he's, by far, my favorite character.

- I don't watch a lot of TV normally, or TV shows, but I'm watching the Fallout series, and all these actors and actresses are just amazing. So maybe I might have to watch some of these other shows that they're in.

- There's been a lot of really good TV, which I'm also-- Anytime I'm watching TV, I'm like, this is time I could be playing a game. But I'm not feeling that with Fallout. Also, X-Men 97.

- [MIMICKING OPENING NOTES] I love that.

- Are you going to do the whole song?

- I'll give you the whole thing, yeah. We never skip the whole thing. I love that intro so much.

- Are you an intro skipper, typically?

- Animes, yeah, because it's the same-- they're screaming and shouting, and then it's this montage of someone, like [MIMICKING SWORD WHOOSHES].

- And how can you skip that?

- It's intense. Anime intros are intense to me. It's a lot.

- And you know the intro is going to be-- or the episode is going to be good when it kicks off with just the intro. I don't know if you noticed that.

- It doesn't do the little pre-break.

- Yeah, exactly. It's just the episode starts and it's intro. Some of them, they'll show a little bit of a recap and go into intro, and then the episode. It starts with the intro, it's going to be good.

- Whenever I'm watching a show with my wife, I'm not an intro skipper. To me, the intro is part of the show, especially something like, I don't know, like Stranger Things, where it like really gets you in the mood, with that song. Whenever the opening starts, immediately, me and my wife, I was like, quick, where the remote? Because she's going to lunge for it to skip, and I'm going to lunge for it to stop her from skipping. It's a healthy relationship.

- That's fine. I appreciate when they put a little extra in there, though. Because didn't Game of Thrones go to new areas? So you almost got a nod of where you were going in the show.

- Yeah, that's true.

- That would make me not skip.

- Even seeing, because they would change the cast of each one, so you'd be like, oh--

- Haven't seen that castle before.

- Yeah, exactly. OK.

- But X-Men 97 is so good. I know you're not caught up, but I just have to say, episode 5 is where it peaks. So you have to just--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That's the one that's out now, right?

JOSH STEIN: That's the new one, yeah. By the time they see this, I think that 6 might be out.

- Yeah. That's why I've been staying off social. That, and then Shogun, also.

- Shogun is great.

- This is a video game podcast, but whatever.

- Let's just talk about Solo Leveling.

- Yes.

JOSH STEIN: That's a new anime that came out. Season one just dropped. It's from Korea.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: OK?

JOSH STEIN: It's really good. It's only 12 episodes, 20 minutes each. It's a really easy quick watch, especially if you have a long flight or you're on a road trip or anything. It's really good.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: All right.

MARTIN GARCIA: I don't know what's worse, my anime backlog or my gaming backlog. I feel like both of them are competing.

- They compete for your free time?

- Exactly. It's like, do I want to spend this time watching something, or do I want to play something?

- And you can't you can't multitask with anime because you got to read the subs. You can't be playing.

- Yeah, exactly.

- Well, all right. So you've gotten back into Fallout 76 as a result of watching the Fallout show. We're seeing a lot of people doing that. What else have you been playing?

JOSH STEIN: I've been also playing-- I'm a little late, I think, to the hype train, but Balatro.

- You are the-- All right, every week, for the last 4 or 5 shows, someone has come in here and gone, have you played Balatro? And every week, I'm like, next week, I'll do it. But the streak is intact, because tell us what is working for you with Balatro.

JOSH STEIN: This is great. In a weird twist, actually, my wife played this first. Usually, I play it first, and she's like, ooh, what's this. I'm going to check it out. My brother-in-law got her the game on Switch. She started playing it. So then I downloaded it over on Xbox, and I was like, all right, let me try it between meetings or on my lunch. And so I booted it up.

It's basically poker, but it has this whole roguelike element, where you fight, you fight, you fight, you get as far as you can in your hands. You have three rounds. There's a boss round, with all diamonds are like negative points or something, or face cards get dished face down so you don't know what they are. And then you get multipliers with jokers, so it can give you times 10 for every diamond, or plus 50.

Basically, your goal is to get points. That's how you do each level-- 5,000, 7,000, 10,000. It just progressively gets. And it goes eight rounds, is when you tap out or you fail. And basically, you get other jokers, you get other things, very much like Hades. You do a run, and you've unlocked something or something else for the next run. And then they have different hands, so this hand will give you plus $10 when you start out. This hand will give you plus 1 discard every round. So there's also perks.

So basically, you're just unlocking everything and you're power leveling as you go through it. But it's a very one more game, one more game kind of game.

- So I've never been a big deckbuilder type of player. I've messed around with Slay the Spire and stuff like that. But what I've heard, I was listening to What's Good Games-- which, by the way, is a fantastic podcast. You should absolutely you listen to What's Good Games. And Andrea Rene was talking about it last week. She had gotten into it.

And she said, oh, if you understand just basic poker rules, you're going to be fine in this to start. Three of a kind is better than two pair, or--

- See, I don't know this when I went into it. I'm a blackjack guy.

- OK, but it's not super complicated. If you've played any manner-- a straight is a good thing, and things like that. Is that right?

- It's got a quick guide, too, one button press away. I think it's the cheese slices, and it'll pull up. Because I never know--

- Cheese slices? Is it the hamburger button?

- No, the right one is the hamburger button. The left one is cheese slices.

- I've never heard of that, but I see it.

JOSH STEIN: Yeah, because it's a three-stack hamburger, and then it's two--

- You put them in-between. So it's a 3 by 3 if you were at In-n-Out or something.

- Yeah, basically.

- If that helps you.

- It helps me, yeah.

- I'm terrible at poker. I don't know what hands mean what. So you just press cheese slices, and it shows you, OK, full house beats a straight.

- Oh, OK.

- And then you get jokers that maximize every-- and you can customize your rack, so if you want to just be straight, straight, straight, straights, you can delete cards, add cards to make sure you're always getting straights, and then you can level up straights so that way, it gives you more points.

So you can do a power run of just diamonds, straights, full houses, flushes. There's all sorts of perks and things.

- Are you ready to go to Vegas now? Is there going to be competitive Balatro?

- No, because I don't have cheese slices to tell me--

- To tell you what to do.

- This is where I need AR. In my glasses, I need it to hover so it'd tell me what beats what all the time. That's why I play blackjack.

- You would be calmly escorted from the premises, I would imagine.

- I just need to know how to count to 21. I can do that all day long.

- I don't know, math is a little bit more difficult.

- I've still never heard "cheese slices" as-- I've never heard that one.

- That's why he's the meme master.

- Yeah, that's true. And he loves cheese.

- I do love cheese.

- It fits that Stein knows that that's the cheese slice.

- I think the real title is View. Is it the View button?

- Yeah, I think View and Menu.

- View and Menu, but "cheese slices" is what the kids call it.

- I like it. Because hamburger and cheese slices.

- Martin, what burger have you been making with your controller? What have you been playing?

- Well, I have my staples. I still play Fortnite with coworkers, Horde and Gears, I play with coworkers. And my brother even convinced me to try Final Fantasy, which has been an adventure. It's been fun. But recently, I've been fighting for Super Earth on Helldivers 2.

JOSH STEIN: For democracy.

MARTIN GARCIA: For democracy, absolutely. And then this past weekend, I tried Content Warning.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: All right, tell me about this. Because I've seen this on Twitch a little.

JOSH STEIN: This is the crazy party game on Twitch, right?

MARTIN GARCIA: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah.

MARTIN GARCIA: So what you're trying to do is you and three other friends-- or you can mod it, I think, and you can get a larger group. It's very similar to a Lethal Company, kind of like Phasmophobia, where there's a group of you. You are essentially trying to become viral spook tubers. So you start off, you have flashlights and a video camera, and you go to this scary haunted mansion rock bottom-looking place.

And there's monsters there that you-- essentially, you go and you record footage of you and your friends interacting with the monsters, running from the monsters. You have a health bar, so you can die from the monsters, but you basically have to record you and your friends going into a haunted mansion, and then--

- And bullying this ghost.

- Bullying this ghost until the ghosts bully you. And then you come back with your footage. The interesting thing is you also have a amount of footage you can record. There's a battery life on your flashlights. You have to make it back with the video camera. You have to upload the video, and then it puts together all the clips, and you watch it together, and it gives you--

- The real nightmare's editing.

- Yes, always.

- That's really the horror mode.

- You got to make it home to fix it in post, though.

- Yeah, exactly. But nice thing, just like your game, is that you just click a button, it puts all the clips together for you. You watch it in the game, with your friends.

- They're using CapCut, I guess.

- Yeah, the quick pinch.

- Yeah, you just put it in there.

- That's great. I feel like Twitch always rotates these great party games. You mentioned Phasmophobia, and then what was the other one?

- Lethal Company.

- Lethal Company. It always feels like there's a nice rotation there, if you have a good group of friends.

- Yeah, it's definitely-- I don't know if you can play it with randoms. I think that would also be interesting too, to just get a bunch of random people together and try to make this scary.

- Watch the chaos.

- Yeah, exactly. And then you have basically three days to get ad revenue from these videos. So it's very--

- Oh, wow.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Wow. This is an influencer simulator.

- Did a content creator build this?

- Yeah. I mean, probably. You get views per video and ad revenue, and you can use the ad revenue money to buy a boom mic or upgrade sound effects. You can upgrade your equipment. There's a bunch of stuff that you can buy. There's a taser stick that you can get to fight back against a monster, so you're not just recording them with your camera and your flashlight.

- It's like Hunger Games meets the Twitch streamer.

- Yeah, exactly.

- All right. So that's Content Warning?

- That's Content Warning, yeah.

- Sounds fun.

- A lot of fun.

- It sounds like a lot of fun with friends.

- All right, so I played the opposite of that.

JOSH STEIN: Yeah, what have you been playing?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Botany Manor. So I actually played through this in about-- It even sounds completely different.

JOSH STEIN: Just like, I've been gardening.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So one of my favorite games of the Xbox One generation is called The Witness. I don't know if you all ever played this.

JOSH STEIN: Never beat it. It's really hard.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's a very challenging puzzle game. You're navigating this island by yourself, very colorful, very watercolor-y looking, and figuring out all these different sorts of puzzles and eventually solving and leaving that island, which, again, very challenging. That's a 25, 30-hour puzzle game, if playing through the first time, at the very least.

This is a, I think, much more bite-sized, a lot less banging your head against the wall or having to look up a YouTube walkthrough on this. But it's plant-based. So all the puzzles are plants, and you need to figure out how to make them grow. And they're not real plants, because if they were, they'd all be dead because I can't keep a plant alive.

MARTIN GARCIA: Absolutely not.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Never. Oh, I've over-watered it now. That's a thing, apparently. But in this, they're imaginary plants. They might need a certain wind speed, and so you end up bringing it up in this tower, where the wind goes a certain speed and figuring out the shutters. And so it's just a very relaxing game. I think I played it in two sittings and finished it.

And there's actually a story there, and you're uncovering things. It takes place in the late 1800s.

JOSH STEIN: Assuming beautiful art.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah. It has a look like The Witness. It has that watercolor-y look. It's incredibly placid, birds chirping. It is like, when you need to calm down after playing Content Warning and you need to make sure-- because you can't go to bed right after playing that-- and you're like, OK, I need to just completely zen out. This is a zen out, cozy game, and I absolutely loved it. It's one of my favorite games of the year.

It's in Game Pass, Botany Manor, highly recommend it. Maybe now going to the opposite of that, I was traveling last week and I was just looking, what are some good relatively bite-sized games that I could play on my ASUS ROG Ally, because I had a seven-hour flight, back and forth, to the other end of the country. And you ever play a boomer shooter?

- Yeah.

- So all right, so I grew up-- I'm old, that's the thing you need to remember here, Martin-- and so the first shooter game I ever played was Doom. We literally had it like on a floppy disk, and when we were in class, we'd pop it into the computer and I would play the whole time. And then actually, I would do terribly in that class. It was 12th grade science. And then I would stick around and I'd clean up the room, and he'd give me extra credit, and that's how I passed that class.

I was very good at Doom. And so there's a series of games that take that aesthetic, that pixelated 3D shooter.

JOSH STEIN: I love that the internet coins it "boomer shooter."

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Boomer shooter, but with modern sensibilities. And so it doesn't feel archaic. It doesn't feel like it did back then. It feels like you want it to feel. And Warhammer 40K Boltgun is my boomer shooter. And I'm not really familiar with the Warhammer universe. Doesn't matter. All I know is I'm going around, I'm blowing things up, I've got a chainsaw type of thing that I can lunge and do it, and it played so well, super high frame rate.

JOSH STEIN: Old-school Doom's a really good really good comparison because that's exactly the look and set and the art, but has all the modern mechanics. I've put in a few hours of it. It's a great, like, just veg out, just sit there. You don't really got to stress about it.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: No, you don't need to think too much. I mean, you can die if you're not careful. But it's just picking up power-ups, increasing your shield, increasing your health, getting new weapons, and blowing up these things in a pixelated--

JOSH STEIN: Over-the-top.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --bloody mess of viscera. And I absolutely loved it-- like, metal soundtrack and all of this type of stuff. So even if you didn't live through the original age of boomer shooters, this is a fun thing to try out. It's not ADSing. It's not a tense, white-knuckle, I've got to peek out from behind cover. You're just moving full-speed.

- It's not a round of Valorant.

- Exactly. You're just going full speed and blowing everything up, trying to find secrets. A really great floaty jump. I think that was actually the star of this. In a lot of those older shooters, you would hit spacebar was jump, and you would go, boop. You would jump about as much as I could jump. This, you get some really good-- so there's some platforming elements. Also in Game Pass, Warhammer 40K Boltgun. Highly recommend.

- I like the sound of that because I don't have to-- we talked about sweat in a round of Valorant to play this. It's kind of something you can just kind of run around, shoot stuff, blow stuff up.

- It's a very different-- It's funny, because it's just coming full circle. Valorant probably would not exist if not for Doom or something like that. And then this is just coming full circle and capturing what that was.

- It's the ignition point.

- Exactly, exactly. So Game Pass, a lot of games that are--

- A lot of good stuff in there.

- --either out this week or coming next week. Let's break it down right now. OK, we've talked a little bit about this in previous episodes. Out now, Harold Halibut, available day one with Game Pass. You might go, I don't really like fish, and I would say, fish is good for you. You should eat fish.

This game is not about fish, despite the name. It's a handmade narrative game about friendship and life on this city-sized spaceship, which traveled across the universe and got stuck underwater, and generations are just living in this spaceship underwater. It's a really cool looking visual design.

JOSH STEIN: Would highly recommend everyone just watch the trailer. It really encapsulates it. It reminds me of Inside meets the art of Fantastic Mr. Fox it has that claymation, but almost puppeteering art to it. I can't imagine how long it took to make this game.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: These words were literally constructed and then digitized into the game.

JOSH STEIN: It looks a really advanced claymation, like a Fantastic Mr. Fox movement animation. But it has this deep, mysterious, dark lore story that gives me Inside vibes. I would just say watch the trailer, it'll sell you on it. And it's in Game Pass.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's in Game Pass, so download it, try it out. But it's worth at least looking at it. I would say this is a game, when you hear the words "Harold Halibut," you're like, is this an old fish in Miami or something like that? But no, it is not, and it's a completely different thing. Definitely check it out, and at least, like Stein said, watch the trailer. I'm looking forward to getting into this when-- well, it's out now, so when I get home.

Orcs Must Die 3 is also out this week. Well, it's the third one of these. There's solo, there's two player co-op, and basically, you're killing hordes and hordes of orcs. People don't like orcs, so this is-- do everyone a favor.

MARTIN GARCIA: Yeah, you and your friends, you can buddy up and fight some orcs.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, exactly. And then just in time for the Stanley Cup playoffs, which are often going this week, NHL 24 is coming to Game Pass Ultimate via the magic of EA Play. You all hockey fans?

- I love going to a hockey game. I love watching hockey. But I think with the Stanley Cup coming up, kind of like how we talked about Fallout wanting to make us play the game, Stanley Cup, in real life, you probably makes you want to play NHL 24.

I was watching UFC fights this weekend, made me want to play the UFC game.

- You are highly suggestible.

- Yeah.

- You're a marketing manager's dream. Target him with the ads.

- Yeah, I am. I do get targeted.

- Yeah, if we were going to start talking about Overcooked, you would be like, my stomach's grumbling.

- I mean, we were talking about food and halibut and cheese slices.

- Yeah, that's right. You're like, fish and chips for lunch? Fish tacos?

- Just taking a cooking show tonight.

- Cool. All right, so a number of games coming up next week. I'm really excited about this one. Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes. It's out April 23, day one on Game Pass on cloud, console, and PC. This is a sprawling RPG. It looks very much influenced, or maybe a spiritual successor, even, to the "Sukoden," Suikoden series. Never knew how to pronounce it, love these.

These were RPGs that really go back into the '90s, where you would collect like 108 different characters. That's why it's called Hundred Heroes. Maybe you wouldn't get them all in one playthrough. And then you battle in a variety of different types of battles. There's more close in, 6v6, turn-based RPG stuff. There's larger, full-scale military stuff.

There was actually a palette-- not "palette cleanser," but a feel for this game that came out last year, called Eiyuden Chronicle Rising that featured a number of the characters in more of a Metroidvania-esque platformer that I really got into. And you learned a number of the different characters, and that's not how this game will play out, but those characters will be in Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes.

And when you've got a hundred heroes, you've got a lot of room to play with. So one of them is a kangaroo with an eye patch, because--

JOSH STEIN: Why not?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Why not? It's a fantastic world, so very much looking at-- this has been, as a turn-based RPG player, this has been an incredible year. And we're only in mid-April with Yakuza-- or I say, Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth, Persona 3 Reload. I'm still playing-- what's the one? Unicorn Overlord, which is just an amazing game. Less of a turn-based game in that situation, but anyway.

I got to take one of these off the board, so I better really just crush through Persona 3 Reload-- pretty close on that one-- so I can get in for day one on Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes. Another game-- y'all like Soulslikes, right? Maybe?

- Oh, yeah.

- Yeah.

- OK. Very different take on Soulslikes, a game that's actually made here in Seattle, Another Crab's Treasure. It is out also day one on Game Pass-- cloud, console, and PC-- on April 25. We can talk a little bit about it. There's some video that I'm assuming you're watching right now.

JOSH STEIN: I got to shout out the community team on this one.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Oh, actually, yes.

JOSH STEIN: They have some hilarious social. Like, one day their community was badgering them, put a gun in it. I don't think it's in the game. I don't think it is.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I think it is, actually.

JOSH STEIN: But literally, it's this itty bitty little crab who was basically trying to find his shell when you watch the trailer, and he's just got this massive Glock, just walking around with it.

MARTIN GARCIA: Why not?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I think that's the difficulty level. Because I think, unlike a lot of Souls games, I think you can make the game a little bit more accessible from a difficulty perspective. And I want to say when you lower the difficulty, that's when you get the Glock.

JOSH STEIN: Oh, OK.

MARTIN GARCIA: That's clever. I like that.

JOSH STEIN: I thought it was a joke, but they have a lot of fun.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I gotta look it up.

JOSH STEIN: They have a lot of fun on social. Bad news, fun news, good news is they actually-- they were broken into, unfortunately, and someone stole their Xbox mini fridge. And they posted it on social media, so we sent them a new mini fridge. But they had this whole post where they were like, I can't believe they would take our mini fridge, of all things.

And they have insurance, so everything was covered, so the team didn't seem too stressed. Just more a major inconvenience. But we sent them a new one, and we like sent an even bigger one.

- Nice.

- So now the joke is if someone steals the next one, we'll just keep sending them a bigger and bigger and bigger mini fridge.

- You should do that on social. Every time it's stolen, the fridge gets bigger.

- Just gets bigger until it's a life-size fridge.

- Yes, exactly. There were actually a couple of those made, if you recall.

- There are some real ones, yeah. We made them for the unboxing.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: iJustine had one. We're going back to 2020, and was Snoop Dogg the other person?

JOSH STEIN: Snoop Dogg got one, too.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, and I think there's one actually down in the studio.

JOSH STEIN: iJustine had to put it in her garage because it was too big.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yes, it would not fit through the door.

- It's huge. It's a giant fridge.

- And when it opened up, it made the-- OK. Anyways, you can look that up. iJustine's amazing, and hopefully that's probably still on YouTube somewhere. Another game that has been getting a lot of play on Twitch is Manor Lords. This is coming to PC Game Pass as part of PC game preview day one on April 26.

This game looks really cool. This is sort of a medieval village builder / medieval--

JOSH STEIN: Yeah, it looks like you manage your village basically through wars, famine, micromanaging it. I've only seen it a little bit of footage of it, but from what I've seen people playing it, it looks like you can have these battles, then you have to simulate stuff. You have to build up your little village and add different buildings that give you different perks as you kind of rotate around the game.

MARTIN GARCIA: It sounds like something I'd blink and lose, like, eight hours to playing, without even realizing it.

JOSH STEIN: Yeah, yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah. And I think really does a good job of replicating these large-scale battles, which is, I think, going to be the differentiator. You don't have to take it from me. It's on PC Game Pass next week, so I'm sure we'll talk about it a little bit more. Maybe we'll play it over the weekend, hopefully, maybe. Send me a code, please. And we'll be able to talk more about it and share some more footage of that.

One more game coming to Game Pass on April 3 at the end of the month, on cloud, console, and PC, a game called Have a Nice Death. Stein, you know a little bit about this.

JOSH STEIN: Yeah, this is right up my alley. It's a 2D roguelike. Yes, I play too many games.

MARTIN GARCIA: No, no. It was just--

JOSH STEIN: It's a 2D roguelike, basically, but you're Death, and you're trying to take a vacation, is basically the premise. And you're the boss, of course, because you're Death. You hit them with your big, old scythe. But your minions aren't working, and they're getting lazy.

So basically, you have to go on this boss tirade to whip things in order and get the world and death and the underground back on track.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: We got numbers to hit.

JOSH STEIN: Yes. So you have this passive aggressive-- and it's, of course, cute. It's this cute little animation-- reminds me a little bit of Ori-- this cute little animation, where you're just Death and he's just [SIGHING], again? Again? I have to do this again? I have to clean up your messes?

But visually, it's gorgeous. You have all these amazing moves, glowing sparks, you name it. You look really cool. But you're this passive-aggressive boss who's just really sick of his minions just slacking off and he just wants a vacation.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I feel like you went deep down in that one. Like, that touched something in your soul.

- I just want to take a vacation. No.

- All right, so Have a Nice Death, that's out April 30 on Game Pass. So really quite a lot to play in the next couple of weeks.

- There's some bangers in there.

- Yeah. I hope you used the last week or two, where it was a little slower, to catch up on that backlog. Because you weren't just watching TV, just watching Fallout, because you've got a lot to play coming up. Also for Game Pass core members, as you know, there's a library of games. And we said we will be swapping some games in from time to time.

Well, three more games are coming out on April 23. Deep Rock Galactic, this is a great four-player co-op game.

JOSH STEIN: It's so much fun.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: This one just kept going and going, had a really long life, a lot of updates, and still going and a lot more folks will have access to it on April 23. Super Hot Mind Control Delete. This is one of the most innovative shooter puzzles ever. We talked about it a few weeks ago, but the world only moves when you move, and so you creatively figure out how to get through these scenarios where you might fire a bullet, and knowing where the person is going to go, and slowly make it happen while staying alive.

JOSH STEIN: Like Neo, yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Exactly. The whole game is in bullet time. Bullet time, the game.

- Which is like real life. So when I go to sleep, the world stops moving and I can just sleep for 20 hours.

- Oh, yeah.

- You'd like that, would you?

- I'm tired. I got three kids.

- 20 hours.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And last but not least, Wreckfest will be joining. All right. Another game that's going to be coming out next week, and really excited about this one, this is a game that was really-- I don't want to say "dramatically," but very memorably revealed at the Game Awards last December. I was in the audience and it was something that I had no idea what this game was.

But then a gentleman by the name of Abubakar Salim came out and shared a really heartfelt story about the game that he was making, and where he was at in his life, and this journey that he went on to bring this game. And what's really interesting is he had never made a game before. He was he's an actor from a show called Raised by Wolves, and also was the voice of Bayek in Assassin's Creed Origins.

- I think he's in Game of Thrones this summer? Like, the TV show? He's a full-fledged actor, and he's like, I'm going to make a video game about my culture and my life.

- Yeah, and I would love to know how you go from being someone who plays games to someone who can make games. That is a journey not a lot of people have gone through. So fortunately, Malik was able to sit down with him this week. So let's take it away and learn a little bit more about Abubakar Salim and Tales of Kenzera Zau.

- What's going on, everybody? It's Malik, and we're back with a very special guest. Now you may recognize him from his acting career, or maybe the voice of a very special assassin, but now he's moving on to becoming the creative director of a very special game that we've all been looking forward to. It's Tales of Kenzera Zau. Everyone, please welcome Abubakar Salim. How is it going, Abu?

- Hey, it's good, man. It's exciting and terrifying, but it's good.

MALIK PRINCE: We were talking a little bit before about how I'm nervous for you because this is your first game. What is the feeling right now? Because we're really close to launch. What is it, about a week from where we're recording?

ABUBAKAR SALIM: Yeah, like five, six days. It's nuts. The feeling is it's a train that's continually moving, that you can't really stop, and you just have to enjoy. You just have to love it. And I'm very proud of the experience that we've created and that we're going to share with people, so as long as-- and I've told this with the team as well-- as long as we're all really happy and proud of what we've kind of achieved, that's the important bit, you know?

- Yeah, and I got to say, there's almost no way that you can't be proud of it. And we'll get a little bit into the story in the background, but I think just the framing of how you're building the story and the inspiration, where you're pulling from to make this game. It's got to be one of those very proud moments. But I want to start off real quick, top level, for anyone who was living under a rock and hasn't seen Tales of Kenzera, tell us a little bit about what the game is.

ABUBAKAR SALIM: Yeah. So Tales of Kenzera Zau is a action adventure platformer inspired by Metroidvanias, and pulls from there. And it explores, essentially, this young shaman kid called Zau who makes a deal with the God of Death, in order that three great spirits, which he will send to the Realm of the Dead, he will bring his father back, because he's on this journey of grief.

And it's very much inspired by my own personal journey, having lost my father 10 years ago. It's set within this Bantu mythological world, which kind of pulls from these Bantu tales and stories, essentially, that was inspired by the stories that my father would tell me as a kid.

And yeah, it's our debut game for our studio, this very emotional, vulnerable game that I announced at the Game Awards, which is very surreal.

- Yeah. I think everyone remembers that moment, and I want to take a step back because I feel like that moment, as well as kind of what you just said to set everything up, is so important. My dad is still around, but I think everyone can kind of understand that if you're lucky enough to live a long life, you will experience that pain that grief where you're pulling from for this game. And in many ways, I feel like by you making this game, you're helping so many people kind of prepare for that through your story.

- Thank you.

- So I want to talk a little bit-- oh, of course. I mean, again, it's one of those very inspirational but fulfilling pieces of work that I feel like you're creating at this point. So I want to talk a little bit about your upbringing and what led you into gaming. For anyone who hasn't seen it, go to news.xbox.com. We have a great story, and so I'm pulling from a little bit of that to kind of go through this.

But you talk a little bit about, in other interviews, about your dad and his support of your love of gaming. Because, I got to say, my dad, he didn't understand what gaming was. But we've all kind of had these gaming experiences that have pulled through in some way and manifested in some way later in life. Can you tell us a little bit about how that led you into entertainment?

- Yeah. I mean, again, I was very fortunate to have a father who allowed me to play games. You know what I mean? Especially at a time when games were seen as not a great thing to do and to play. So yeah, he was very instrumental to allowing me to essentially express myself through video games. And so growing up with that mentality, that openness, that sense of feeling comfortable being a gamer was really crucial in regards to, again, having me fall in love with the idea of storytelling and the power of stories that could be told through the game medium-- not only within film and TV, but really, especially with through games.

So yeah, that's kind of how I started. But what's funny, again, is I didn't really realize that you could have a career in games until I did Assassin's Creed Origins. Because what Assassin's Creed did essentially was it pulled the curtain and made me realize, wow, these games actually have people behind them and these people really care. And I always say, if I knew that I could work as a game developer when I was younger, I probably would have done that instead of being an actor, funnily enough.

- Yeah. And what you said is so important because as I've been lucky enough to have somewhat of a career here at Xbox, and when we were back in the office, it was really awesome getting to meet the people and hearing their backstories of, again, what brought them into gaming. And so I just always find that super interesting.

Now you also talk a bit about how this isn't necessarily a shifting from your acting career into gaming, in that, as you mentioned, gaming kind of pulled you into acting. I've talked with people like Joseph Ferris, who we've--

- Oh, what a guy.

- Well, let's talk about both of you had some great gaming award moments-- a little bit different, each of them.

- Just a little bit. Just a little bit.

- Yeah. But he's talked a lot about how, just like you, he would have started with games, because these moments and the way that you interact with the game, the fact that you pick up a controller and your controller is your physical connection to the game. It's way different, and you're controlling the character. For you, do you see gaming as a medium of storytelling that is beyond acting and beyond film, I guess?

- Yeah, definitely. No, I think it definitely has a different effect. It asks the person who is participating to actively go on the journey with the character, which you rarely-- I would think the closest medium, I would say, to that is either reading a comic book or a book, because you're having to actively turn the pages, and it invites you in that way.

Whereas a film medium, you're passively told a story, which, again, is powerful in its own regard and it has its own way of shaping something. But the thing about games which I really love is you are holding a controller and you're controlling this character. You have agency over this character, or over the elements that you're playing. And that's hard to capture in a film or a aspect, right?

So yeah, I mean, the thing that I love about Joseph as well is his approach to not only just the conjuring of games and creating games, but his approach to storytelling are just one and the same. You have to marry them both. You have to respect the medium, and that was a very big inspiration as well for the studio. And finding the studio and founding it, I was very much driven by this idea of if whatever story we're going to tell, we have to respect the medium in which we're telling it.

So even if it's a game, with a game and the story that we're telling this journey of grief, you have to respect the medium of the game and what that actually entails and what that means, and marrying them both and making them fit. And sometimes it might not fit, so you don't shoehorn it. You figure out something else. It's all about the respect, right?

And I think that was something that was really E in regards to the delivering of this whole franchise, as a whole.

- Yeah 100%. Let's jump into the game a little bit. Now you talked about it being a Metroidvania. Why was that kind of game so important to make for this story?

- Yeah, because there's nothing else that captures grief better than a Metroidvania. I think, again, it's that whole thing of-- OK, put it this way. You're thrown into a world that you have no idea about, that you could not prepare for. You feel kind of powerless, but the longer you spend time in it, the more comfortable you get with it. You'll be blocked by these obstacles that you won't necessarily know how to kind of crack at the first sighting, but you will go around the houses, get something that allows you, or learn something that will allow you to come back to that thing, and be able to kind of go past it.

And that's grief. And that's a Metroidvania, right? This idea of you will never get used to it. It will always be something that you have to kind of deal with, but again, you will get comfortable with it. You will learn how to almost be empowered by it, and that's something that I really respect about the medium, respect about the level design of it all, respect about the world of it. It's this sense of it demands you as a player to essentially have agency over how are you going to crack this puzzle, how are you going to deal with it.

And it's so reflective of grief and that journey of loss, be it either through losing a parent or a friend, or even a job, or even a pet. The fact that you genuinely-- you might see it coming, but it you were never prepared for the actual event. You just have to figure it out along the way. And that's what really is key with the genre as a whole, that I wanted to kind of, like, [AUDIO OUT].

- Yeah, finding the tools to deal with it. I love that, again, this story of grief not only goes through just the story you're telling, but also in how people are playing the game, and just the connection that people have had with Metroidvanias. I think that they probably totally understand where you're coming from with that.

Now this game has a concept of Afro-future. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is, in your mind, and how that connects to the game?

- Yeah. So for me, again, it's funny. I think when I was conjuring the story of this and the world of this, it very much is inspired by, again, just my perspective in regards to what would a future or a world or a universe look if I wanted to kind of conjure and create it from the get go, right? And I think something that really stood out for me or really stuck for me was I started essentially with the stories that my father would tell me about his father, who was a Nganga in Kenya, who would talk to spirits and whatnot and everything.

And I kind of look at, OK, that was your experience. Now let me look at my kind of world and what that brings. And it was just a way of reflecting this communication between two different frames, two different perspectives. You've got this element of the future, which is where Zuberi lives, or the modern day, let's say, for example, for this, where Zuberi's mentality or connection to the world is very different to his father's connection to the world and what that means.

And the way that the father now is communicating to Zuberi after death-- because this is very common within Bantu cultures, this idea that when you die, it isn't the end. There is more. Your ancestors, they can still communicate with you. You could almost argue that you have a stronger communication with people after they have passed, rather than necessarily while they are living. And for me, what was really important about these two different time frames is not only to reflect that grief is timeless, that no matter where you are, be it in the fantastical realm where Zau exists, or even within Zuberi's time frame, within the Afro future, grief is something that is universally felt, no matter where you are.

And I think, for me, as well, the aspect of what Zuberi represents is he represents us today and where we are today, this idea of when someone passes, that's it. That's the end, right? Whereas in Zau's time frame, or in that kind of mentality, it was like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to call the God of Death and tell him to give my father back. And that's that kind of mentality there.

So having that clash, that idea that actually it isn't as simple as you think it is, either way isn't right or wrong. It's just the way in which we deal with it. But ultimately, that is your own journeys, as you go along this story of grief. And so yeah, that's kind of what, for me, what that time frame represents. It represents the mentality of the humanity of today way.

- Yeah, no. 100%. It's such a good point. Now for those who are actually-- while we're playing the game, while I'm watching the game, it's very almost Ori inspired. That feels like one of the sources of inspiration for the game. And we know Ori, one of those tough games. I will say, it took me quite a while to beat it.

So can you tell us a little bit about some of the encounters that players will be able to experience as they go through. Maybe will they be as hard as Ori, or-- I guess, where do you see it?

- So we've aimed to make this as accessible as possible, but also, again, there is an element of challenge. There is an element of challenge. I mean, when people get to play the game, I know that there will be elements where they will all universally be like, oh, my god, that was hard.

Again, the thing is though, for me, those spikes of elements, they come at moments of surprise shock, a sort of sense of, ah, OK. This is something I didn't expect. I've now got to get over it. The longer you spend time in doing it-- you mentioned Ori, for example. I mean, that waterfall sequence in Blind Forest, I mean, it was something. And the feeling of completing it at the end, it was almost like I had to stop attacking it and go with it.

That was like my way of dealing with it, of handling it. Other people might be through memory. Other people might be through just sheer luck. That was one of those moments where I remember thinking, I know everyone else has struggled through this, but it's achievable, it's doable. What is my method? And you once you crack that, man, it feels good.

And so those are elements that will definitely throw their faces in Zau. But again, it was really important for us to not necessarily make them so difficult that they're blockers, in a way, that you could actually go through them and kind of feel that stress and struggle, but it is achievable.

- Yeah, well, I'm going to crack my knuckles and I'm going to lace up, and we're going to do our best. We're going to do our best to get through it. But again, not to sound a broken record, but I feel like everything that you just described in that difficulty curve is kind of part of grief, right? You will come across these waves that you think is insurmountable, and how you get through them and when you get through them, it kind of gives you the sense of, I overcame this and I got through it, and it gives you that stronger sense of overcoming.

And so I'm looking forward to it. And again, I will do my best. When I tweet out the screen of me completing the game, I hope everyone listening is proud of me.

- Tag me, man. Tag me.

- OK, I will. I will. I will. And one of the things that I love-- and not to go too much into it, but it's a tough time out there for lots of folks. I grew up incredibly poor, and where I'm going with this is that I wasn't able to play as many games as I wanted to because of maybe some of the barrier of entry. Those N64 cartridges were like $80, which is--

- Yeah, it's insane.

- Yeah, my dad used to be like, you're not getting anything for the rest of the year. But what I love about this game is you're building 8 to 10 quality hours, and it's $19.99. Can you tell us a bit about your philosophy and your thinking in getting that balance of obviously building a quality game, but making sure it's accessible from a price perspective?

ABUBAKAR SALIM: Absolutely. For me, it was important, especially when starting a studio and making our debut game. It's important that we build it on the foundations of not only respecting the developer, but also respecting the player. And I think something that I really wanted to do-- I remember having this conversation with EA, funnily enough, about this.

And one of the big things that we were talking about was the price point. And we were thinking, OK, how long is the game going to be? All right, 8 to 10 hours. OK, cool, all right. But it's a Metroidvania. OK, man, there's going to be a lot there. Maybe we should go for, like, $35 and whatever. And I remember just turning around and being like, guys, what's the price of pizza? What do you mean what's the price of pizza?

And I was like, well, when you order a pizza, a decent, good pizza, you order it, it's about, what, $17.99 or $20? You almost feel like you've cheated the place that you've got this pizza from, because you've got a lot to eat. So in my head, it's like, how do we create something that makes the player feel really good after playing that and it didn't break the bank? I feel like I can accessibly take part of the story and take part in this, and not feel like I can't play something else or buy something else.

We're in a time right now where even some games are coming out, and you're deciding whether to buy a week's worth of shopping, or a game. And it's like, it's a weird time and I'm like, you don't need to do that. Again, it's that sense of I want to give you something that I know that you can access. There's no barriers here. There's not much of a barrier here.

I want to give you an experience that feels a good season of TV, that respects your time, also at a good decent point where you're like, actually, yeah, that was the price of a takeaway pizza that I could have got this week. You know what I mean?

- Yeah, I love that. And I think that we'll find that many players are going to see that value, but also see that quality and care and attention that you've put into the game. So I can't wait to see it. To finish out this interview, I want to bring it full circle. We talked a little bit at the beginning about how our connection to video games and how we brought our experiences with our parents through the love of video games, all the way through our career. Undoubtedly, there are many people, many kids, who are jumping into the game, who may even play Tales of Kenzera, who are looking to do the same.

And as you now are almost done completing your very first game, which is a huge, huge achievement, any words of advice for kids who are looking up to you, or some of the games that you're making now, as they look to get into a career of gaming?

- Yeah. I think just be led by the heart. It's scary, right? Being vulnerable and open and trying to-- again, it's a weird time and it's a weird world out there, but truly, as long as you're speaking from a place of authenticity, honesty, and kindness, man, you're kind of immortal. Game development is hard. This journey has been definitely hard. But the beauty that I've found, or the fuel that essentially has driven us to the point of where we are now, has been solely because of the fact that we were wanted to give an authentic and honest experience to as many people as we can, and also to ourselves.

And so that's the one bit of advice I think I'd give, is just be led by authenticity and truth and you'll be fine.

- Love that. Love that. Well, Tales of Kenzera Zau releases April 23 on Xbox Series X and S. Cannot wait to play it. I'm sure it's going to be great. And congratulations, once again, on your first game-- first of many, I'm sure. I'll say that.

- Thank you.

- Abubakar Salim, thank you so much for joining us, and we can't wait to play the game.

- Thank you.

- Thanks to Abu and Malik for that awesome interview. Very much looking forward to Tales of Kenzera Zau. I got to tell you, you've had the conversation, I'm sure, with your friends, with your significant other, with your kid, if you could have a superpower, what would it be? And mine? Forget about flight or invisibility or eye lasers. I just want to have a voice like that.

JOSH STEIN: Oh, yeah.

- Oh, yeah.

- If I could have the reaction that people have when they hear Abubakar Salim talk-- because I just hear him talk, I'm just like, please tell me more about whatever that is.

- It's powerful to have a voice like that.

- Yeah, there's some iconic voices that would be nice to just have 10% of that.

- Just for a day. Just give me one day.

- And sometimes, I'd be like, I'm going to sound like that-- blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I listen to it, it's like, wawa, wawa, wawa, and I'm like, argh! Mute. I sound terrible.

- In my head, I thought it was this awesome voice.

- Yeah. I hear Clint Eastwood, and then you come back, it's like, (IN HIGH-PITCHED VOICE) hey, everybody, welcome.

- You got to run this-- our producer has to run it through a filter. (IN LOW-PITCHED VOICE) Make us all sound like that.

- (IN LOW-PITCHED VOICE) Like squeaky little mice? Yeah.

- No, not the mice.

- Like Clint Eastwood.

- The mice, we're doing that on our own.

- Oh, reverse it. We sound like mice, but they can make us sound like--

- Yeah, I don't know if technology has evolved far enough to make us sound like that.

- One day, it will be our turn. One day.

- You know what our technology is being used for?

- Deepfakes?

- I was going to say. No, but to update a lot of our games. So I want you-- I'm trying to bring things back on track.

- Sorry, I'm scarred from working in social. I'm sorry I brought my PTSD in there.

- We're good. So Microsoft Flight Simulator, the-- it's not a game, the simulator that keeps on giving. Little by little, the team has gone through and upgraded and enhanced different parts of the world. And there is the city update number six, which includes Southwest Germany. It includes a new local legend.

I have to say, I'm really impressed that you waited until updating Southwest Germany. You know, he's our resident German game director, and he's gone all parts of the world. Does that include Cologne? I This is the only part of Germany I've ever been to. I feel like that's in Southwest Germany.

JOSH STEIN: I feel like that's Southwest-ish.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know I'd want to find--

JOSH STEIN: Germans around the world are laughing at us right now about our geography.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Maybe, maybe not. But I want to find the doner kebab place that I always go to. I want to fly over that, just to fly by. You can't get those here. They're not nearly as good. I mean, you can, but they're just not as good.

- Yeah, not good.

- Anyway, this is a good one. I'm going to want a doner kebab after playing this, because Call of Duty's ongoing Blaze Up event is now live in celebration.

JOSH STEIN: When's that happening, Jeff?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Well, it actually starts tomorrow. In celebration of 420, you can get the Cheech and Chong tracer pack and join the Blaze Up in-game event in both Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone. Finally, I have something I can talk about with my parents and they'll get it.

I feel like they were Cheech and Chong. They grew up in the '70s, so they had-- I think that was--

JOSH STEIN: They're either going to laugh, or they're going to tell you, I thought you'd paid attention during DARE. You get one of the two parents.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I think when they saw my grade in 12th grade science, when playing Doom all the time, they kind of knew which road I was on. You could also unlock-- and I just did this-- the Snoop Dogg operator skin in the season 3 battle pass. I particularly like the Snoop Dogg skin operator with the dog, the Doberman, with the sunglasses. Just works for me.

- We were talking about this. There's also a 420 slot skin that I bought. It's pretty good. I just love the skins like went from The Ghost and Soap-- and they still do those. Great military ones. They do have these cool skelly ones that drip gold and purple. But then you just have a baked sloth, or Cheech and Chong, and I love that.

- Why not?

- Yeah, so starting from tomorrow until April 25, players can get discounts on the Microsoft Store on slacker comedy movies as well that you might want to--

- That's a new term.

- --after you're done playing. "Slacker comedy?" Cheech and Chong, Hey, Watch This, Half Baked, and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Happy 420.

- PR wrote that term.

- Yes.

- "Slacker comedy." I like that.

- I am in PR. All right, and a little more wholesome announcement here. Stein, take us away.

JOSH STEIN: Yeah, so Xbox is partnered with AbleGamers. We're going to do a big sweepstakes in partnership with Activision Blizzard and King for a bunch of swag and experiences. So the goal is basically raise money with AbleGamers. We want to drive, we want to engage with you guys on social. We want to showcase the continued impact that AbleGamers makes on the gaming industry.

So three franchises over at Activision, Blizzard, and King have gotten involved. It's Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and, of course, the legendary Diablo. And what you want to do is you want to donate-- I'll give you the site at the end-- and you can get a chance to win a plethora of prizes.

They start with trips to Southern California to visit Treyarch and the Blizzard campus, or you can do one of a kind Ghost mask-- speaking of Call of Duty-- that the studio made. So this is a high-quality mask of Ghost, if you're big Ghost fan. You can get a sick little gaming chair from Raven, or just signed posters, signed memorabilia from the dev teams. The sweepstakes, it already went live now, so you can already go. You can donate.

I don't think we qualify.

- Well, we could still donate.

- But we can still donate, absolutely. But you guys can qualify and donate. Head on over before May 10-- it'll end on May 10-- to win.ablegamers.org. So it'll run until May 10. Again, you want to donate, and plethora of options and prizes that you guys can win.

- And AbleGamers does great work. It is really a great organization to donate. Even if you don't win, it is a feel-good activity, and you're supporting what they do.

- It's a good cause.

- Yeah, it's an amazing cause. Another chance for you to win something, this one is our Free Code Friday. As we always do every week, we'd like to offer up some codes for one of the games that we've been talking about this week. And the way we do it is we want you to, on Friday, April 19, at noon, head on over to twitter.com/XboxWire and we're going to ask a question. I'm going to pose this question to you, you will share the answer, and then we will, at random, pick five winners from one of my games of the year, what we were talking about-- Botany Manor.

We have a code, and if you're one of the five lucky winners who answers this question, we'll DM it to you and you can enjoy it. This weekend, the question is, if there was a fighting game and all the characters were plants, what plant would you be? Martin Garcia.

- I think my answer is pretty straightforward-- cactus. Thorns and thorns. I mean, a cactus. I think it would be cactus.

- I cast thorns.

- Would you be more defensive at that point, or would the thorns shoot? Like, what's your special move here?

- I mean, shoot out thorns, as cacti naturally can do, like porcupines.

- 9,999 damage.

- Infinite thorns. If you try and get close to me and attack me, you get hit by thorns. So there's a little bit-- there's defense and there's offense there.

- That feels almost OP. OK, yeah, all right.

- It's a pretty good one.

- That's a pretty good one. Offense and defense.

- Yeah, yeah. All right, Stein. What plant? What's your fighter plant?

- I go tank. I'd be a Redwood.

- Does that count as a plant? I guess it does.

- Just a giant tree. Just this indomitable, like-- I feel like I'd just smash them.

- Almost more like an ent in this situation, a Redwood ent.

- Like an ent Hulk. Yeah, I like that.

- They'd really have to zoom out on the screen for that one.

- No, no. I wouldn't fit. It would just be--

- You just see the bottom of the trunk?

- It'd just be my knee to my foot, as I step in and you just hear the powers or the things come down on whoever I'm fighting.

- I didn't think about trees as plants. All my plants die.

- I felt like the cactus is pretty impregnable, but now I'm like, ugh. You'd have to throw bark beetles at it or something.

- Poison, poison, poison.

- And wait, like, 10 years.

- Yeah, exactly. Playing the long game here.

- I might light a match and run.

- All right, well, I was going to go big tree as well. So I live in the city. I live in Seattle. The amount of land that I have outside of my house, it's about this much and about that wide.

JOSH STEIN: Oh, you're rich.

- Let me tell you, this is not a--

- That's generational wealth.

- You never have to worry about cutting your grass.

- It's not enough room to really plant anything, but it is plenty of room for this damn ivy to keep growing back, no matter what I do. Because what happens is the people on the other side of the fence, they don't keep their yard clean. It grows underneath. I've killed this thing, I've cut it back, I've tried everything, and this ivy is invincible. It cannot be killed.

So very defensive. I don't know how it would win.

- It's a slow win, but it's a win.

- But what I think is it would just stay alive long enough for the timer to run out, and it would be, at worst, a draw. So I have to go invasive Seattle ivy.

- You do an Anaconda wrap.

- Yeah, over time, if you were to let it go, because let me tell you, that just completely fills up with ivy.

- It might trip me.

- Starts going up the fence, and all that. Anyway, that's plants. So what--

- Jeff's personal vendetta.

- I'm really, because we're getting into spring and I was like, the sun's out. Wait, the ivy's coming back.

- Everything's exploding.

- Way to ruin the summer for me.

- You're in there, just like. Time to go to war!

- War on ivy.

- Equip my 420 Snoop Dogg skin and I'm ready to go. All right, so that was the question. I would love to know what fighting game plant, you would want to be. Don't tell me personally. Tell twitter.com/XboxWire on Friday at noon. We will keep that open for about two hours, and then we will pick five winners at random, and DM you, and you will get an awesome game-- Botany Manor. Enjoy it. I hope you two play it this weekend. What do you got planned for this weekend?

- Finishing Fallout, for starters.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: The show?

- The show. And then probably starting the game. My brother has been waiting for me to hop on Final Fantasy again with him, so I'll probably--

- This is Final Fantasy 14?

- 14, yes. And my brother, he lives overseas, so we have to do what feels like the most math to figure out, OK, if it's 6:00 PM your time, I need to get up at 2:00 AM my time so that we can play together.

- It's great the games bring you together. When I first moved away from my family, I would play Halo 3 with my little brother, and that was how we talked.

- It's how we stay in touch. Absolutely.

- Love that. Stein?

- Let's see. What are we doing-- what does my wife tell me I'm doing this weekend? I think we have some kid stuff Saturday. She's hanging out here, friends are coming over here for our little one. But other than that, probably just play more Fallout 76, see if I can't squeeze in a dad nap.

Going to see a movie with Ethan. We're going to go have a little man date at the movie theater.

- 2:00 AM shredded cheese? You bring that into the theater?

- Yeah, yeah. Bring my own little bag of cheese.

- Even if they saw you do it, they would let you go.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I think they'd be all right with it.

- I definitely brought cheese to the theater before.

- All right, Josh, Martin, thank you so much for joining us this week. We'll have another show next week. So we want to thank you for joining us here, on youtube.com/Xbox, or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or wherever finer podcasts are found. This is The Official Xbox Podcast. We will see you next week.