Morning XP Boost

Ep03 E3 Analysis Part ONE!

June 17, 2021 Episode 3
Morning XP Boost
Ep03 E3 Analysis Part ONE!
Show Notes Transcript

This week on MXPB Glitch goes back in time to avenge his broken PS3, and Tox gets spoppy.  Plus, we’ve got part one of our E3 analysis featuring Wonderlands and Microsoft.

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Tox 0:05  
This week on MXPB glitch goes back in time to avenge his broken ps3 and  gets spoopy. Plus we've got part one of our E3 analysis. Don't touch that dial, MXPB starts now. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the morning XP boost. We're your hosts  and Glitch, and we're here to give you the experience points you need to level up your week. Glitch, how are you doing today?

Glitch  0:45  
Great. How are you, ?

Tox 0:47  
I'm so good. I had my birthday this week. So I'm running that birthday high, and I feel great.

Glitch  0:55  
Well, happy birthday. Glad to hear that you had a great. Glad to hear that you had a great birthday.

Tox 1:01  
Thank you. Thank you. So this week, we've got a lot of E3 news to go over. So we're going to spend a lot of time on that. We're going to skip the news. And we're going to go straight to this week in gaming history. So glitch. Tell me what you like in this week.

Glitch  1:18  
All right. So this week, June 14, back in 2013, The Last of Us came out. , did you ever get a chance to play that game?

Tox 1:29  
I always wanted to, but I never got around to it. How was it?

Glitch  1:32  
I'll tell you what. It's one of those games that kind of changed how gaming continued past that point. It was a it was a game changer. A game changing game. The storyline was absolutely incredible. The relationship between the two main characters is something that to this day, is looked at and viewed upon in the gaming community as one of the greatest gaming stories and relationships of gaming history. The game was just I mean, it was a beautiful game. They did an incredible job with not only the artwork, but the story itself. And unfortunately, I was not able to complete this game. I purchased it for the PlayStation three on release day. You know, I pre ordered it. The hype was real. Yeah. So I wanted to make sure I got a copy. I got all the way I want to say probably in two days, I took my days off back then. And I just hammered that game out. And my PlayStation three responded in kind by not being kind. Oh, no, I got to the very final cutscene at the very end of the game. No, no spoilers, but it involves an elevator. And inside the elevator, my CD drive decided to go ahead and take a break for the rest of my PlayStation threes life locking The Last of Us disk inside and unable to spend

Tox  3:08  
oh man locked the disk inside as a permanent reminder of what you missed out on 

Glitch  3:17  
Yep, it was digital download only for the rest of that system's life. Oh, so about a year or two later I did go ahead and YouTube what the ending was I looked it up and watched it. I was just so upset. You know, I it's one of those like I almost rage quit Last of Us at the very end. And it took me a year or two to kind of get over it. And finally, finally watch what actually happened at the very end. Yes, after you've had a chance to heal from that traumatic experience, though. Yeah, to two years of healing. What do you have for us ?

Tox  3:51  
So I'm going to go a little bit off script for me. Dead by Daylight June 20 2017. On the PlayStation 4 specifically, this is a game that my friends forced me to play against my better judgment, because I am not usually a scary games type of person, as I think we've discussed visa vie the Resident Evil discussions we've had on this very podcast, but I played this with my friends. And so I had a little bit of that support group so it wasn't too scared. And they sort of showed me the ropes. And I gotta say, you know, for someone who doesn't like horror games, this is a really fun one because it's almost exclusively multiplayer. It's four vs one. So you have a killer that's chasing around for sort of innocent victims. And it does a really good job of incorporating lots of different iconic characters from different horror movies, both on the villain side as you know supernatural beings Zombies. Jason, you know, whatever. I guess they recently introduced, Mr. X, of MXPB fame who we were talking about last week in honor I guess of Resident Evil village and, and its success. And then for, you know, people that you play running away from the killer, you've got some iconic characters, including the characters from Stranger Things. So it's really fun in that way, and it kind of dampens the spookiness of it, but I'm not gonna lie, it is really spooky. When you are running, trying to hide mostly hiding, because you move at an incredibly frustratingly slow pace compared to, you know, you would just want to get the heck out of there, and get away and get to your challenge and complete the challenge as fast as you can. But you can only really walk, you can sort of jog, if you get injured, you sort of limp along and you're groaning, and you just want to dismount, like should be quiet, though they're gonna hear us. So it's, it's really thrilling. And it's a lot of fun to play, especially with friends, it sort of takes the edge off, but leaves enough of the edge on that you want to play more. So it's a great game. And this is coming from someone who does not like horror games or movies at all. So this is a fun one.

Glitch  6:25  
It sounds like it now. If I understand correctly, the premise so you're kind of like hiding with your friends and stuff is the Yeah, so let's say it's Jason or whomever I know that they've done a lot of crossovers. Let's say it's Jason or somebody like that that's chasing you down. Is that an NPC? Or is that played by one of your friends?

Tox  6:44  
Oh, that's a player, that's a player that you know, you can communicate among the four. Well, I guess with discord you could communicate with anyone, but the way I played it is the four people sort of communicate and coordinate. And then the one other player, which is a human player, obviously is not communicating with anyone is just trying to hunt him down.

Glitch  7:08  
so like the scariest game of hide and go seek it sounds like you'd ever play.

Tox 7:12  
It is exactly that. And you have to complete these challenges along the way that sometimes if you make a mistake will reveal your location. So sometimes you have to make that choice between, okay, do I power through this challenge? Because I'm almost done with it, and it'll help me escape? Or do I start running and hiding because I've revealed my location because I missed the skill check. So it's, it's got some, you know, some tense decisions that I think mimic the the action in a horror film pretty closely, like where you have to make those sort of difficult decisions. What do I run now? Do I hide? Do I try to expose myself to get to the goal, potentially risk getting seen getting caught? It's, there's surprisingly a lot to it. And the community is pretty good, too, that sometimes we play against a killer that, you know, if there's a skill mismatch, they could just destroy you right away. But if they recognize that skill mismatch, they've even seen killers sometimes sort of like point out like, Okay, well, here's the exit, right? Here's what you got to do. And they'll kind of just, which is still creepy, by the way, because they're this horrible looking, being stalking you. But they're not going after you. It's a bit of a mind, you know, messes with your mind, because you're like, why are they not like trying to kill me right now? Sometimes they're just teaching you the game. Sometimes they're just messing with you. It's, it's a lot of fun.

Glitch  8:43  
It sounds like it. Maybe it's something that we should give a go sometime. I think it would be fun to play with you and some of our other friends. 

Tox 8:53  
All right. So there is a lot of stuff happening at E3. We're going to split our coverage into two parts. And we're going to start that first part right now.

Glitch  9:05  
Alright, so wonderlands was announced. It's a game that's being produced by gearbox, the creators of such games as Borderlands, Borderlands two and Borderlands three. I think I've heard of those. Yeah. small little titles. I think they're indie games now. No? Yeah. Yeah. Now wonderlands is going to be based off of a mega popular DLC for Borderlands two. It's tiny Tina's spin off it's got a phenomenal cast Andy Samberg, Wanda Sykes, and will our net will be our vocals for this game.

Tox 9:47  
Wow. Do we know who is who out of that cast it with respect to their characters in the game.

Glitch  9:53  
I do not think they have made announcements in that regards just yet. But I'll be I'll be really excited. To see where this goes, it's kind of like a Skyrim meets Borderlands kind of deal. They're definitely making sure to clarify that this is not a Borderlands title. It is a separate spin off. In fact, in the trailer, you can see some things that are not in the Borderlands franchise. It looks like we could see some weapon crafting, as well as some magic abilities. Which that sounds incredible. I cannot wait to see the game. I can't wait to see what these skill trees are going to look like, for uploading or for upgrading your your weapons and your characters, and how the weapon crafting mechanic is going to work in this game, but it also looks like there might be writable creatures. So riding a dragon. I'm super down for that.

Tox 10:47  
Oh, yeah. Especially a purple dragon. I did see the magic elements in the in the trailer and that looks really appealing. And you know, I that only kind of came through for me in the trailer it towards the end that sort of that sort of comical nature, that sort of Borderlands style. Only a little bit at the end. And obviously with the cast that we have, those are all comedians all well known comedians, how much do you expect this to be? You know, a comedy?

Glitch  11:19  
 100% it's Borderlands so we're going to have that weird sense of humor that Borderlands has. And I mean, it looks like they are they're preparing this to be a real landslide hit. Especially with that. I mean, Andy Samberg, Wanda Sykes, and Will Arnett, those are those are three massive comedians, and to be able to book them for a video game. Yeah, that's funny. That's what they Yeah, they, they really did. We we did not get an exact release date. However, we do know that it will be released early 2022. And I'll tell you what, as soon as that game is available for pre order, I'll be pre ordering it, I cannot wait to see wonderlands. And what it's going to hold for us.

Tox 12:05  
Yeah, it sounds like a blast. I might even play it.

Glitch  12:10  
Let's go. What do you have for us, ?

Tox 12:14  
Alright, so one of the bigger things that came out of E3, the first part of E three that we're covering today, I think, is actually coming from Microsoft. And we'll talk about Halo in a minute. But more so kind of the future of Microsoft, the future of gaming, if you want to be so dramatic, you know, Microsoft has already their game pass streaming service, which you can already use on your Xbox, you can already use it on your PC. Now they've announced that the service will also be available as a smart TV and smartphone app. And I think, you know, this is a trend that we've seen for many years, really this game streaming notion, this sort of ideal that you could be, you know, the Netflix of games, where you could just log on to a service, you don't need to have a console, you just have your controller, and you pick a game. And it you know, the cloud does its magic, and brings you something that is responsive and actually playable and looks great, and is their full gaming experience. And so I think the game pass is taking another step in that direction. We, you know, we already have game streaming services, and they work to various varying degrees, right, you can test them out yourself. Amazon has one called Luna. And of course, Nvidia has one. PlayStation now includes some game streaming. And they all include different titles, they all have different costs. But I think Microsoft has set up game past to be really the best. I don't know if the titles, you know, will be the most popular. I don't know if the service works in the most flawless way. But they're really trying to set themselves up for success. And they've had a history of trying to be sort of more accessible, more sort of, I don't want to say cross platform, but it's only the two platforms, PC and Xbox. But they've said things like, you know, they don't want you to have to buy your game twice. If you buy it on Xbox and you want to play it on PC or vice versa. Then you can play it and the titles that show up in the game pass. They are the titles that you want to play, right. That's the brand new first party title on the release day. And it's in the game pass and you can play it as part of your service versus some other services would you know sort of reserve that for that experience for people who pay full price and then maybe it shows up in there. So Service later, maybe it never shows up and you don't really know. So I think they're really positioning themselves to have the best. And the other thing that struck me is the price point. Because you know, there's already a crowded marketplace and you for the 10 bucks a month, you get it 10 to 15, there are various tiers. But you get all the game pass goodness is streaming, and the first party titles on launch day that you can play the PC and the Xbox playability, which I think is fairly unique to Microsoft, as well as the streaming. And you also get an EA games pass, which itself can be five to $15 a month. So value wise, they've positioned itself really well, really competitively. I mean, you can get Amazon's game streaming service, which is mostly kind of phone type games, for five bucks a month, for another $15 a month, you can get Ubisoft games, for five to 15 bucks a month, you could get EA Play alone. And that that works, I think on multiple platforms. So that's a cross platform one for PlayStation five to 10 bucks a month, you can get PS Plus where you basically can download games to play. And then PlayStation now is another five to 10 bucks a month. And it includes game streaming. But the game pass is really looking to be the all in one. And I think that's going to move Microsoft potentially away from their own console. But growing the services business which, which is a popular business move. What do you think about all this Glitch?

Glitch  16:50  
Yeah, so it's definitely becoming a crowded marketplace. Like, as you said, you know, there's so many different players trying to get into the essentially the Netflix of video games. And I think that, you know, with the crowded marketplace that we have, right now, you know, like you were mentioning, we have Amazon Luna, Ubisoft pass, game path, EA pass, PlayStation Plus and PlayStation now that I think companies need to start maybe taking a look at something a little bit different, something that PlayStation does, and I'm not sure if Microsoft does this or not, is I can download a game after I've purchased it to my system. And I can actually play that remotely. on pretty much anything, I can play it on my, my tablet, I can play it on my phone, I can play it on my, my PC or my, my MacBook, just by having the PlayStation app and being connected to to Wi Fi. And I'll tell you, you know, if you have good Wi Fi. The the place playing over Wi Fi is it's absolutely seamless, it's incredible. You know, you can, you can now actually connect your PlayStation five and I believe your PlayStation four controller with these different platforms, whether you're on like your iPad, or your MacBook, and you can play these PlayStation games remotely from anywhere with your controller. And it you know, I think I'd like to see, you know, that route being being pursued more, not necessarily using like a streaming service per se, still being able to own your games. But being able to stream those games that you own pretty much anywhere using your system and using the cloud. I think that's incredible.

Tox 18:43  
Yeah, that is a really neat feature. And I've played with it a little bit on the on my shiny new PS five, which I'm still very happy about. And I had a pretty good experience, I will say that my discerning eye did notice maybe a couple milliseconds of lag, input lag. But it did not prevent me from playing, I was playing sackboy so a platformer did not prevent me from playing that game and pulling off the moves that I needed to. But that was just one test over my home Wi Fi on an iPad Pro from a few years ago. So I think, you know, part of this story is that the experience will vary. And that's gonna be a hard thing to roll out at scale. I mean, you if you watch Netflix or Amazon Prime, we're all used to basically hidden the buffering for us. If you're of a certain age you remember waiting for videos to buffer and making yourself a sandwich and then coming back and then watching your video. Now, videos just kind of start and they very rarely cut out which would Which would kind of ruin the movie experience. But if anything happens in the game, you know, you can only you can't preload the gameplay because it's interactive. And if anything glitches, no pun intended, in the game, you're gonna see it and you're gonna feel it and it's gonna deter from the experience a lot more than it would from, say, watching a movie or TV show.

Glitch  20:26  
100% agree with that, I think that they're gonna have to find a way to they're, eventually they'll have to find a way and I'm sure that, you know, they'll be able to work on it and get it so that you know, regardless of what decision you make, it's still pre loaded somehow. I know, that's gonna be super complicated. Dev work. But I think we'll get there. I mean, I don't think you know, back in the days of having my, you know, dial up internet connection, and like you said, going and making a sandwich and then coming back after your video had loaded. watching your video. Yeah. I never even thought about something like Netflix being able to turn it on and stream it without any wait time. So I think I think the gaming industry we'll get there. It's it's definitely grown. When I first tried PlayStation now, which is their PlayStation streaming service. It was, it was bad.

Tox 21:25  
I remember playing Sega TV. I don't know if you remember that one.

Glitch  21:29  
No, I don't remember that. Was that another streaming service?

Tox 21:32  
It was like a cable TV channel. And you could play a games on it. Yeah, it was. This is in the 90s

Glitch  21:41  
Wow. No, I never I never used that. But I'll tell you what, the PlayStation now. I downloaded the one of the first titles they had available for you to play was Batman Arkham. Knight? Yeah. And I've always had really nice routers. And you know, I always pay for the the higher end internet connection because I play online games. And it, it was just not there. And, and from PlayStation three until you know till now the PlayStation five. I think if we're down to that, hey, I can notice some hiccups here and there. We're definitely stepping in the right direction. So I'm excited for the future and where streaming games are headed?

Tox 22:22  
Yeah, for sure. There's some technology. And they'll probably figure it out. All right. So another thing coming out of Microsoft is a little bit more information on Halo infinite, not a ton. But there were a couple things I wanted to sort of quickly touch on. And mostly that revolves around their free to play online multiplayer for Halo infinite. And of course, cross play with PC, as we've mentioned, is a big part of their strategy. So PC and Xbox same release date, both will be free to play online multiplayer. And in addition, their battle passes supposedly will not expire. So you know, if you're like me, and you've ever bought a season pass or a battle pass for a game, only to have the season and the very next day or week before you've been able to unlock everything. Still bitter about that Deadpool skin and fortnight. You won't have that problem with Halo infinite because you can play the battle pass until you're done with it. You unlock everything just by playing and you can by previous battle passes. So if you see someone with a skin and you're like, Oh man, I really want that Katy Perry skin for my avatar. You can go back and figure out what season it was and you can you can play for it. And the key word being play, they mentioned that they're not going to put skins in the battle pass and then later put them in the store. So they're really trying to make things about playing the game. It's free to play, you unlock things by playing, you can continue to unlock things by playing at your own pace. And no one can ever buy something that you would otherwise earn. You got to earn it by playing.

Glitch  24:15  
That's that's a smart move. I mean, you know, fortnight does that as well. Cosmetics that are in game through battle passes are never purchasable in the store. Which I'm sure that's exactly how Halo infinite will be. And then of course they have the exclusive store items as well. That'll pretty much never be in a battle pass. There's been a couple times where fortnight for instance, has decided to make something free. There was I think it was winter fest last year. We were having everybody was purchasing the it was the chorus emote. I know it was, you know And they decided to make that part of winterfest. And they ended up refunding everybody. I think it was a 200 200 or 300 v buck, maybe even 400 v bucks. And they ended up just returning that to everybody and gifting it to anybody who played winterfest. And I thought that was incredible.

Tox 25:18  
And that's nice that they would retroactively give that refund to. That's a good Yeah. Yep. Yeah, so I think Halo infinite will follow in that same vein, trying to be fair, you know, they had a video that I watched where they spoke about fairness a lot, especially in the gameplay itself with respect to where players spawn in their positions, not spawning a team or a player artificially close to an overpowered weapon, and fairness in in their pricing and ability to unlock stuff.

Glitch  25:50  
And in the trailer, to I saw some really interesting new, you know, if we go back to the days or days and Blood Gulch they've added some new things too, I think, right.

Tox 26:04  
Yeah. So I mean, I saw the grappling hook. And I've heard they have weapon drops, which I think was the thing in Halo two, but they've sort of revamped them and and brought them back. So you know, it looks like it's going to be a mix of that classic Halo gameplay with a few modern tweaks which it could be you know, some people might want more, but if you love Halo, you want something that feels familiar, too

Glitch  26:31  
Yeah, I'll be anxious to see what these what their battle passes are going to look like. I think a lot of people will make their decision based on that. I mean, the The gameplay is its Halo gameplay, but I think if they can offer some really interesting cosmetics and customizations Yeah. There's a market for it.

Tox 26:53  
Yeah, so for sure people will buy that if the if the cosmetics are good. So there were a few other honorable mentions that we wanted to talk about in the last couple minutes here. We've got starfield, we got a teaser for that outer worlds two got a nice little video there as well. The village DLC announcements and a Guardians of the Galaxy game. Does anything stick out to you there glitch?

Glitch  27:23  
outer worlds outer worlds? Definitely the outer worlds trailer. If If you haven't had a chance to see the outer worlds trailer, volume up, it is hilarious. Probably one of the best trailers outside of the wonderlands trailer in my opinion of EA three, they did an absolutely incredible job. If you played the first outer worlds. It's definitely got a lot of that dose of humor from the first one. So I'm excited to see where this game heads. They were showing it as a potentially an Xbox Microsoft exclusive. I'm hoping I'm really hoping fingers crossed that this is going to be cross platform it's going to come to all the systems. What about you talks are there any that really stand out to you? Well,

Tox 28:13  
I'm a sucker for almost anything Marvel's so I watched the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer. I thought it was hilarious. I saw a little bit of action II gameplay, and that was plenty for me. I'm hooked. I'm gonna be following this one. I'm probably gonna get it. I did not buy the latest Marvel Avengers PC game. And, you know, it didn't get great reviews. And I didn't feel like I had enough time for sort of a subpar single player experience. So I never picked that one up, but just based on the trailer, this looks like it's gonna be a ton of fun, and I'm really excited to see where it goes. All right, well, that about wraps up part one of our three coverage. Thank you so much for listening. We have been your hosts,  and Glitch, on the morning XP boost.

Glitch  29:03  
Tune in next week where we'll be discussing highlights from Nintendo's E3 presentation and more