Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to episode 21 of from 8bit to 4k. I'm your host this week. I'm Jack Sohlman and I've got Mike of many names with me.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: How's it going everyone?
[00:00:21] Speaker A: And Pillow Pets here.
[00:00:23] Speaker C: Hello, hello.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: Hey guys, we have a discord. Come join the discord. The link is in the episode description. Come tell us what games you think we missed. Come play games with us. Come hang out. It's a great time. I also want to give a shout out to our patrons. Shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skip, Psy, Labana, Uncle Chrisco and Yeet the dab for supporting the podcast at the shout out tier. Now, if you want to support the podcast, head on over to patreon.com the4wards podcast, because that's the podcast network we're a part of. $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. And $10 a month will get you that same exclusive feed and we will shout your name out at the top of every episode for as long as you maintain your subscription. And of course, all of those benefits also do apply to our League of Legends podcast, the main four awards podcast.
So, guys, we've been kind of on a little bit of a journey. We've dabbled in some Terraria, which definitely fits in this bucket, but we want to play more co op games.
Mike has decided since he won the 20 questions last episode that we're going to play some Vermintide. We've started it, but we want to save Vermintide itself for a bigger discussion once we've had more time to sink our teeth into it. So we're going to save Vermintide, but we want to talk about some other games that are great for co op that we might be playing together in the future.
And even if we're not, these are games you can play with your friends. These are games you can play with your family members in some cases because some of these games are very family friendly. These are games you can play with your younger siblings or your spouse or whatever. So for online friends, we mentioned Vermintide, there's a couple other big ones that are in that genre, the biggest being, of course, Left four Dead. Left four Dead two, specifically, there's no reason to play the first one because all of the content from the first one is in 2. Nowadays, Left 4 Dead 2 is regularly like $2 on Steam sales if you don't own it. Just pick it up on the next Steam sale. It's still incredibly fun to this day.
And if you're a wild person, like some of my friends are, there's all sorts of crazy mods. You can make your Left 4 Dead 2 very weird if that's your cup of tea.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: If you want to stick to the zombie like, aesthetic, but want something a little bit more modern, Back four Blood is pretty much the exact same. Like, almost exactly the same. It's, it's.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: It's almost exactly the same to the point where I don't see a reason to Recommend it over left4dead2. With how cheap left4dead2 gets on every
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Steam sale, there are the occasional people who don't like graphic styles, if that's your thing. Back four Blood looks more modern.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And then sticking with the shooter theme, I think there's one shooter franchise that has been known for being way more co op centric than pretty much every other campaign shooter franchise.
Halo is so much fun to play in co op online or couch.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: There might be another.
And this one just reminded me, like, at the top of my head, okay, Gears of War, it's its direct competitor, was, like, pitched as essentially the other co op shooter.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm hesitant to recommend Gears of War just because I don't think they're very good games other than the very first one.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Three is actually the best. Really old three is actually probably the best.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Fair enough. But Halo, on the other hand, Halo is a blast in co op. You can play on whatever difficulty fits your group. So if you're playing with people who are less good, just turn the difficulty down. It's fine. You can play with modifiers. You can play with, in some cases, very silly modifiers. Lots of the Halo games have Grunt grunt birthday party where all the grunts die with a cheer, and confetti, which is so funny. It never stops being funny.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Not even 40 hours in, still good.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Not even hundreds of hours in, it's still funny. And that's important for co op gaming because you just want to goof off with your friends and have fun.
So I think Halo is like, if you're not looking for the horde, pure co op experience that a Left 4 Dead like is offering, I think Halo's the right choice for just co op campaign. Hey, let's play through this campaign together. There's a lot of Halo games. The worst Halo campaign is still pretty decent. Like, literally the worst Halo campaign is a solid experience. It's like a 710 experience.
They're great in co op. And also almost all of them are on PC because Master Chief Collection is on PC, so you don't need an Xbox for most of them. I think it's what, just Halo 4 and Halo 5 that aren't. And I'm not even sure about that. I think ODST might not be. Or is it in Master Chief Collection?
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Odst, I believe, is in the Master Chief collection. I know even Halo 6 is on PC.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: Yeah, Halo Infinite's on PC, so most of them are on PC.
And Master Chief Collection is regularly on sale for like 15 bucks.
So Halo 4 is not. That's my recommendation.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: Halo 5 does not appear to be.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Yeah, so most of the Halos.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: And realistically, Halo 5 is the worst one, so that's just fine.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the key is Master Chief Collection has all of the best ones. Other than, give or take your opinion on Infinite. Infinite's more divisive than many, but it's not a bad game. A lot of people do like it, but like Master Chief Collection has the original, which is hit or miss. It's not aged well, which is why it's getting a remake. But then it has Halo 2, Halo 3 and Reach, which are all incredible. Yeah, that's. That's my recommendation. What do you guys want to recommend for online co op?
[00:06:17] Speaker C: I like to recommend Stardew Valley and other, you know, farmer sims of that nature. They're just fun, cozy. Could be online, could be couch, same way. Just fun cozy games to sit down and play where there's no stress of.
No high tense stress or any of that other than a daytimer can confirm.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: One of my friends who's been on this podcast before, Dragon Mom Antics, regularly streams a co op Stardew Valley playthrough with some of her friends.
Like, Stardew is a great co op game. And because it's a farming life sim game, like, it removes a lot of the. A lot of what makes games not as good for co op is the pressure of one player being better than another and making the player who's behind feel like they don't get to actually play the game. Like, when you're playing Halo and your friend is someone who plays on Legendary and you're someone who can't even approach that, regardless of what difficulty you guys play at, they're probably killing every grunt and every elite before you've even fired a shot.
You're just kind of walking around while they play the game. It's not a great experience if there's a big skill disparity doesn't matter in Stardew.
[00:07:29] Speaker C: So I'm going to do your own thing or whatever.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: I'm going to have a. A weird set of lists here for this the online co op because it's. There's going to be conditions to things because I'm starting with wow and wow is just a great co op game. The raiding is great. The dungeon questing is fine. Just wandering around with someone doing dungeons perfectly fine one around the world having fun. I'm still raiding to this day but I understand not everyone's going to want to pay a subscription.
So to get a lot of the feel of wow without having to do a subscription thing I talk about fellowship. I've talked about it a couple times before. It captures that feeling of dungeoning better than anything else that isn't just wow and it does it without a subscription. It's a one time cost that it's not expensive. I think it was like maybe 30 bucks. 25 not on sale. That's 25. So it feels great to do if this is the style of thing you're enjoying.
However, pure co op format games that I think as a game don't ever get talked about and is really just kind of fun.
This this sort of almost couch co op style. I love a game called Ultimate Chicken Horse. It is a pretty much purely co op game that is you and your friends build a level together and then race to see who can be the first one to beat it. And it's just a fun little party game. It doesn't matter. You can be the person who just decides you know what, I don't care about winning it. I'm gonna make the the most bitchin things to stop everyone else from winning. And you can just play it so differently. It's a fun little game that has.
Since I'm not playing it, I'm not going to go into obscurity about it but I think I should recommend it. It's a great co op game.
[00:09:17] Speaker C: We're going to miss a bazillion games going over this list because there's so many good ones. There's some honorable mentions before we move on.
It Takes Two is a great online slash cows co op. I mean Helldivers 2 is a great co op game and Baldur's 2 is so good. I say Baldur's great. 3 great online game co op.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: You can get some rock and stone in there. Deep Rock Galactic is very good.
[00:09:48] Speaker C: Many good online co op games. So just understand we are Going to miss a lot of the great ones. These are the ones that we wanted to highlight.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: So I have a question for you too, something we didn't really discuss in the pre show. Do either of you ever play couch co op games? Do you have people locally that you can play couch co op games with or.
[00:10:07] Speaker C: Me and my wife will play Memory Lane for you. Me and my wife will play like overcooked and things like that because she's not like a professional gamer by any means, so she can.
We can dive into like we just talked. It takes two. Or overcooked. You know, some of those. We play a lot of most of our games. Like she'll be sitting on the laptop and I'm on my, you know, computer. We hang out in Discord. We'll play a lot of like these multiplayer simulator games or phasmophobia games that she really enjoys.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: So I have. I have a D and D group that meets up in person and randomly we will decide to do couch co op games or board games instead of doing a D and D night. So, like, one of our favorite things has always been Smash, but it can be any of the fighting games that are couch co op fighting games.
They're all a blast for us.
But that reminded me of another one that I think neither of us have mentioned, but is one of Jax's favorite games. Enter the Gungeon.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: I do love Enter the Gungeon. However, Enter the Gungeon very much suffers from. If one player is worse than the other, you're not gonna have a good co op experience.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: Same thing with, with Smash. But like, we'll do Mario Party or Mario Kart. Where in Mario Party it doesn't matter if you're good or not. That game can just be frustration. And Mario Kart is. I've lost to a 10 year old.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
So I wanted to highlight a couple of specific types of couch co op games.
One is the Beat Em Ups. These are your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, River City Girls, Castle Crashers.
These sorts of games are great couch co op games. Some of them do have online, but often this genre does not have online co op, unfortunately.
I think Streets of Rage 4 has online. But don't quote me on that, I haven't played that one.
And I think Splinter's Revenge, the relatively recent retro throwback TMNT game. That's really good, by the way. I highly recommend it has online, but most of the games in this genre just don't. But they're fantastic in couch co op. If one player is way Better than the others. That's fine. These are spammy button mashy sort of games anyway. So the players who aren't as good are still going to be able to hit enemies and play the game and have fun.
Which is the important part of playing couch co op games is that your friends you're playing with will be able to have fun.
The other big one I wanted to highlight is that there is a lot of classic and classic style games that are really good in couch co op. I wanted to just name drop a few because I think they're great.
There is a recent indie game that I cannot speak highly enough of called Infernax.
It is metal as fuck. It's so good. This game has multiple endings that actually change the game throughout the game, not just a new ending in the same game up to that point.
It's great. Cannot recommend Infernax Enough has two player co op where player two plays as a totally different character with different abilities.
It's a lot of fun. It's also very hard. Like this game is genuinely difficult hard. Speaking of difficult hard, Contra is a classic co op game series.
There's a Contra collection of a bunch of old Contra games. The main ones that matter are Contra 3 and Contra hardcore. Cause they are the best entries in the entire series, but they're a lot of fun run and gun shoot stuff. Metal Slug, same thing. Metal Slug is hit or miss on availability on modern platforms. But like if you can get Metal Slug X or Metal Slug 3, those are the best ones. But all the metal slugs are good, like the worst. Metal Slug is still a pretty fun game. And then I wanted to shout out a couple games that I don't think anyone thinks of when they think co, op, but they're absolutely fucking fun as shit. One is Zombies Ate My Neighbors. Yeah, it sounds like a silly title. Zombies Ate My Neighbors is like a top down shooter spoof of everything horror. It's so good. You literally run around levels fighting werewolves and Frankenstein's monsters and mudmen and every other horror trope you can think of while trying to save your neighbors from getting eaten. And if all of your neighbors are eaten, you lose the game. And if you run out of lives, you lose the game. It's extremely hard. This is one of the hardest video games I've ever played. But it's a lot of fun even though you won't beat it.
And my last one I wanted to highlight is an rpg. Believe it or not.
Secret of Mana on the Super Nintendo allows full 3 player co op once you've gotten the other party members, which happens very early in the game. And I highly recommend this game to begin with. Secret of Mana is a fucking classic gem for a reason. It's a really good game and it's a lot of fun. My wife and I have played through this entire game, start to finish in co op. It's great. And RPGs can be fun if it's someone you live with that you're gonna have repeated couch co op sessions with because you get to experience the story together and play through and progress.
Stuff like Divinity or Baldur's Gate 3 are really good in this regard too.
[00:15:28] Speaker B: Mm.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: So you had one more that you've added?
[00:15:32] Speaker C: Yeah. So sorry. It looked like Mike was getting ready to say something so I wanted to. I didn't want to interrupt him.
So I. Yeah, I just thinking. I started thinking Mario like, oh, even all the way back from, you know, Nintendo like early days, it always had multiplayer. Especially like they thrived on couch co op. Most Nintendo games did.
Um, and then, you know, all the, even the most recent ones are almost strictly couch co op. And it's just platformers in general are really fun when it comes to co op. And again, it comes down to like there can be a kind of a gap there of I have skill levels, there could be the gap of skill levels. So. But it's a lot less frustrating than it is like on a shooting game because it's fun to watch
[00:16:25] Speaker A: with the classic Marios where they're taking turns. Whereas the more modern marios like Mario 3D World or New Super Mario Brothers U, those sorts of games where you just get spawned in Mario wonder where you just, oh, you died, but the other player is still alive. Cool. You'll spawn back in, in a couple seconds and you just keep playing the level. Those ones can be a lot more fun with just differing skill level players.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: Pointing out platformers reminded me of one of my favorite. It is both online and couch co op games.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: Portal 2, the second half that does the entire co op section is so fun co op and it requires both of you working together, which means no one can take over the entire thing.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: Not just that, but it's also a different game entirely than the single player Portal 2 campaign.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: 100%. And it's fun.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: Completely different puzzles, completely different story. It's fun. Portal 2 rules. I love that recommendation.
So yeah, play some co op games with your friends or family. Co op games. Frickin rule. So our other segment this week is gonna be games we Feel like talking about what's going on in our lives and we didn't plan beforehand. Guys, do you want me to go on my 10 minute rant about the new game now or do you want me to save it for last?
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Save it for last. I may as well start my beginning one because it's literally one of the games we didn't mention that is a co op game. I'mma start off because one of my game that I have been talking about and playing this week is Darktide, which is the 40k version of vermintide. It's so much fun if you like a little bit more shooting because Vermintide is very scarce on it.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Vermintide's very melee heavy.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: It's significantly more melee heavy, but it is it. It has atmosphere dripping from the walls almost literally because of, because of what you are facing in Darktide.
It is so good. The same people, it's Fat Shark.
They have put as much effort into making this a great Left 4 Dead style co op game without it being the same game retreaded with a new skin.
So as opposed to like with Vermintide, you have your class and you have little sub partitions of your character class that define who you are. They created a talent system for each character that has an extensive version of how you decide to build out your character based on which portion of them that you like. So I've been playing a character called an arbitrator. He is judged. It's Judge Dredd with a dog. So I, I have Judge Dredd with a dog and my dog rips people's faces off.
The way that I have decided to do it is I have put points into using my shotgun and having my dog explode with electricity every time he's surrounded by people doesn't kill my dog. That needs to be pointed out because it's a bad thing to kill the dog. But it has this unique feel to it that took the formula before it and iterated on it without sacrificing the feel. It still feels exactly like it used to. It feels like a slightly different version of what Vermintide has without. And the left, it's. It's the same style. So all of them feel in their core similar. Only the gameplay of each of them has a unique hook to it that makes it feel different from just playing more Vermintide. And since that is the game that we are doing, I will be doing both of them. And it doesn't detract playing one into the Other.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: Fair enough. All right, Pillow. You don't actually have a game in here. You have a announcement that will have come out since when this episode goes live, but has not yet happened as we're recording this. Tell us about it.
[00:20:23] Speaker C: Yes. So tomorrow, from the time of this
[00:20:26] Speaker A: recording yesterday, you're listening to this.
[00:20:30] Speaker C: Yes. Nintendo Direct. Direct has had happened or will happen has had to happen.
Something along those lines.
There will be a Nintendo Direct. And there is a lot of hype that there is going to be the Legend of Zelda announcement. And what we're hoping for, and what I'm hoping for and a lot of the community is hoping for is a remake of Ocarina of Time. Not just a remaster or a port, a complete top to bottom remake for Ocarina of Time. There's also hopes of a remake of Twilight Princess. So one of those two either or I would be happy for but I would be super happy with an Ocarina of Time remake to bring it up to speed with these new engines. As long as it's not a breath of the wild skinned Ocarina of Time. I want Ocarina of Time remade. Modern day.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: You heard me a couple episodes ago complain about how poorly Ocarina of Time has aged. I really hope that's the announcement. The reason everyone thinks it is, by the way, is because the original Legend of Zelda came out in 1986. It is now 40 years old. This year is the 40th anniversary of the Zelda franchise.
[00:21:49] Speaker B: I understand your desire for that one. I. I personally, because my favorite Zelda game is very different than yours. I want a link to the past. I want a link to the past.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: Mike, we got a remake of Link to the Past. It's called A Link between Worlds and It's on the 3Ds and it's actually very good.
[00:22:08] Speaker C: It is really good.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: I know people like to say it's a sequel. No, that game is a fucking remake.
[00:22:14] Speaker C: So while I will agree with you,
[00:22:15] Speaker A: those games, every beat exactly beat for beat, including the world map being mostly the same.
[00:22:21] Speaker C: The. The majority of the world in the Zelda universe will disagree. Just because Ocarina of Time was the majority of us. Our first love in every game most of the time, like if. If they did Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time together, like just a big combo, like, hey, we're gonna actually just shove both these games together and you can play them together as they were designed and intended.
And like here, both games together play it. That'd be great. I I would just. I. I'm getting my hopes up and I'm sure it's going to be. There's going to be a Zelda announcement, but I'm hoping it's going to be the one that we want.
[00:22:59] Speaker A: Watch them do the thing that would make me super happy and literally almost no one else, and have them release a new Zelda 2 styles.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: I was gonna say make them redo Zelda 2 because that game no one played.
[00:23:12] Speaker C: I mean, that'd be fine too.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: Zelda 2 fucking rules. It's just. It's NES cryptic bullshit. Despite how good it is.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: And no one play it's the least played of any. Much like actually exactly like Metroid, the second game is the least played game.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: Okay, but in Metroid, Zelda or Metroid 1 and 2 are actually not good games.
They laid the groundwork that made Metroid 3 Super Metroid a masterpiece. But Metroid 1 and 2, there's no reason to ever go back and play them. They suck. Metroid 2 is extremely linear and not in an interesting way.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: Okay. There's no reason to play the original versions of them. Their remakes are fantastic.
[00:23:54] Speaker A: Samus returns and AM2R are both great.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: And zero mission is.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: Zero mission is great.
So yes, I agree with that. But like the original NES ones, there's a reason they got remakes for Metroid 1 and Metroid 2 on the game Boy. Because those games suck.
I would love a remake of Zelda 2. I don't think Zelda 1 needs one. There's nothing in Zelda 1 that a remake could add to it. Whereas you could just play Link to the Past, Link between Worlds, Ocarina at a Time and get a much better version of the same experience.
[00:24:25] Speaker B: Watch them do a new version of Four Swords Adventure.
[00:24:27] Speaker A: I would genuinely love if they announced the GameCube 4 Sword Adventures for the Switch.
Because that GameCube 4 Sword Adventures no 1 has fucking played. Because you had to have a fucking Game Boy Advance. A Game Boy Advance Link cable for each player in addition to a gamecube and the game. I've played the entire game in 4 player co op and it is one of the most fun Zelda's ever.
[00:24:51] Speaker C: I will say, like none of that's impossible because it's a lot easier for them to port a game and make it accessible like that. But the big announcement would definitely be a remake and I'm gonna assume it's gonna be one of their Nintendo 64 games just because of all the remakes that we.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: With Star Fox, I think there's a 0% chance that they remake Majora's Mask without also remaking Ocarina?
[00:25:13] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. They won't skip. They wouldn't skip Ocarina at a time because that is such a loved game. Even though Majora's is Ocarina, Time has
[00:25:21] Speaker B: gotten ports that Majora's Mask has not. So it's possible that they will announce
[00:25:25] Speaker A: they both get three ds.
[00:25:26] Speaker C: Yeah, they got a three. They both got three D ports.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: Majora's Mask and one. I did not remember seeing that one.
[00:25:30] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So all the games are pretty equal on ports.
There's a 3ds version of Majora's Mask where they added a more frustrating. But it was supposed to be more friendly way to track the. The Notebook and they made it changed it to where like this. The.
The Song of Time. You could actually select the time you wanted to go to. But yeah, it's definitely worth. This is what I'm hoping for. Nintendo Direct.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: What watch them announce.
[00:26:00] Speaker C: Find out in the morning.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Dogs or other bullshit you don't care about.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: Once there be literally zero to do
[00:26:06] Speaker C: with Zelda, like Zelda's 40th anniversary. We didn't announce anything this year. Sorry. I would be devastated when I wake up tomorrow.
When I wake up tomorrow because I'm getting ready for nights. It's going to be later in the afternoon. I'm going to be hopping straight on to YouTube's Nintendo channel and trying to find it.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: Yep. And I mean, they did announce a remake of Star Fox 64 is coming out literally in like two weeks. The next game in the, like, Nintendo canon after Star Fox 64 that anyone cares about is Ocarina of Time. Just straight up. Like there's nothing in between those two games that anyone remembers or cares from Nintendo.
[00:26:46] Speaker C: They could go and I would really not want a Mario 64 remake. I would be really mad about that.
I mean, it would be cool.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: It has a gazillion of them because Mario 64 sucks.
You could just go play Mario Odyssey. It's a better game in every possible regard. Or you could go play Mario Galaxy, Sunshine, Mario Galaxy. They're all better games than everywhere. Mario 64 is a bad fucking video game.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: That's a hot take.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: I've been. I've. I've been on this rant before. It ruined platformers for literally two generations because everyone tried to imitate it. It has terrible levels. Its star design is extremely tedious and frustrating. Fuck Mario 64. I would be ma. I will genuinely be Mad if what they're doing is a remake of Mario
[00:27:36] Speaker C: 64, they would never. I don't think they would ever do that for the reasons you mentioned. There's a hundred thousand 3D Mario games all better than 64.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: Yeah, literally every 3D Mario game that isn't 64 is better than Mario 64. Literally every single one. You cannot convince me otherwise. Okay, Mike, what's this other thing you have in your list?
[00:27:56] Speaker B: So we've been talking about some anime and I need to get possibly my favorite anime movie. It. It's hard because saying anything besides the studio Ghibli movie is your favorite. It's really hard. But this. This film holds a special place in my heart because it's. It's ridiculous, it's fun, it's stupid, it's a blast.
And it's important.
It's a movie called Redline and it is.
It is a race.
Most of the movie is just one race, one car race. But not like you think I say it's a racing thing and some people are gonna get turned. Don't. It doesn't matter if you like racing, don't like racing. Know anything about it. It's something special and wholly unique, but also kind of stupid. There is one point in time where. And this has nothing to do with the plot, so I'm happy to talk about the scene where the main character, his name is jp puts something into his car, pushes the button and he flips upside down, starts spinning like a top and flies over water to get past his own in the race. It's ridiculous, stupid. It's fun as fuck. It's hilarious.
And also this is the last fully hand by hand, frame by frame drawn movie that Madhouse made. It almost closed the studio because of the expenses on doing this hand by hand, frame by frame. They. They ended up paying for the rest of this out of pocket because they wanted this out so bad. And it shows. The quality of the visual in this is outstanding.
It has a very unique look to it.
But I think if you have any interest whatsoever in anime, this should be on your list of movies to watch because it is one of those last true classics done in the classic way fully. And the care shows the. The story is still a good story. It's really fun. And the English version is every bit as good as the Japanese version. You'll notice a bunch of people that you're very familiar with in voice acting if you listen to the English version or the Japanese version. Both are good. I have very few things that I Could recommend over watching Redline. It's 102 minutes. It's a little what, an hour and 40?
Well worth. Well worth.
[00:30:32] Speaker A: Fair enough. All right, I want to talk about so far my favorite game of 2026. Just period. A new indie game came out since our last episode made by the people who made Shovel Knight and it is called Mina the Hollower. I want to explain what this game is and then I'll explain what I love about it and why I'm enjoying the shit out of this. I'm near the end of the game but I have not 100% ed it. I will have to go back and do a lot. Mina the Hollower presents very much like a classic Game Boy Zelda game. The aesthetics, the presentation, gameplay, everything feels very on brand for like Link's Awakening, Oracle of Seasons, Oracle of Ages. Yeah, the old Game Boy, that trio of color games, it has a deliberate aesthetic that is mimicking their palette and presentation of how they drew characters in those games. But Mina the Hollower, despite sharing that much DNA with Zelda, is not truly a Zelda like game. It's not truly a Souls like game. Even though it has a very much a similar system to the Souls campfires.
It's kind of its own thing. It is an action platformer, top down perspective RPG is what it is.
You level up throughout the game, you find new powers, new accessories to equip new weapons.
But unlike a Zelda, these are not power ups that you need to solve puzzles or progress.
They're not progression blocking puzzles or anything. They're just power ups. So that's why I don't think it's quite a Zelda because the Zelda formula is very deliberately power ups enabling more access to the world. Mina doesn't do that. You can literally, if you know what you're doing and are willing to go into stuff that is really fucking hard. For your current power level, you can go straight to the penultimate dungeon immediately upon like starting the game as your first dungeon. If that's what you want to do, the game won't stop you.
Now, I didn't. It's the one I did last because the game definitely guides you to a specific dungeon order, but it doesn't stop you from doing them in whatever the hell order you want. But this game, it's so much fun to play. What's a Hollower? Well, it's a person who burrows into the ground, apparently.
Mina's core ability, in addition to running around, jumping and slashing her weapon, whatever weapon you choose, there's five different weapons is that she can burrow underground. And you do this by holding the jump button. And when your jump completes and you land, you will burrow for a little bit. It takes some getting used to, but then you can burrow under things. You can use the burrow to then launch yourself out of the ground to clear longer gaps than you could just jump normally. You move fast underground. It's a whole thing. The entire game is built around this tunneling mechanic from the get go for all of the movement, all of the puzzles, all of the everything.
Um, there's been one big discussion about this game in the past week and a half online that I want to address.
This is not an easy game. By default it starts out particularly unforgiving. You do not have a lot of health at the start. If you wander into the wrong area, you will run into enemies that can two shot you and you tickle them. This is the. It kind of guides you to the right place, but it doesn't actually tell you where to go kind of thing. This game, in addition to being hard early because you don't have any power ups yet, does not hold your hand on how to get around.
One of the areas I could not figure out how to access because it turned out the way to access it was to find this plant that you can jump on to launch yourself a good distance, burrow under it and slide it up to a wall and and then jump on it so you could bounce up and over that wall to get to an area you couldn't reach otherwise. And it was the only way to progress. And I had no idea that I could even go up that wall because it was a full wall height above me.
So it's definitely some trial and error. But because it has so much like weirdness and trial and error, you also feel like a badass when you do solve the puzzles because this is not a Zelda. Like if you find a puzzle you can do it. You don't have to come back later with new powerups, but you can. There are lots of powerups that will make things easier. One of the sub weapons that I use because by the way, this also has the Castlevania subweapon system on top of everything else. One of the sub weapons is like a dash with a shield that you can do in midair to fly over gaps. It's the main thing I've hung onto the entire game once I got it because it's great. It makes the platforming much smoother, but you don't have to you can get a powerup that lets you burrow into walls instead of ground in addition to burrowing into the ground, which lets you get through some weird areas that you otherwise wouldn't be able to easily navigate.
You can burrow into the water. That's a weird one. This is something. I went to the water area and immediately jumped down a cliff and couldn't get back up and had nowhere to go. And I was like where the fuck do I go? Did I just softlock this game? There's no way this game has a softlock. So I figured there had to be something I was missing. And eventually one of the times I jumped into the water, I held jump and realized I burrowed into the water and then popped back out of the water instead of falling into the water and taking damage. Not the most intuitive thing in the world, but this is a retro style game. It's intended to be kinda hard, kind of obtuse, but rewarding when you figure shit out.
I want to touch on two things.
This is a follow on from Shovel Knight. Shovel Knight's their previous game. Shovel Knight is very punishing. When you die in Shovel Knight, you lose a bunch of your money when you die and you have to get back to that location and pick your money up to not lose it permanently. If you die before you get to that point, your money's just gone. Fuck you, Shovel Knight. Yes, Mina the Hollower. You have a spark meter. This is basically your tries before you lose your money. If you die, you drop a spark. You start with one. You will get more as you progress through the game. I currently have four near the end of the game. I do not know if four is the final amount or if there's a fifth power up somewhere to give me one more. Doesn't matter because four is plenty. Because what happens is you die, you lose your spark, you get back to where you died. If you died to a hazard, your spark is just lying there. If you died to an enemy, they pick up your spark.
Enemies also have a maximum spark count. If you die to that enemy, get back there and die to that enemy again.
If they have enough maximum spark available, they'll pick up another spark from you. If you if they don't, it'll sit on the ground there and you can come pick it up. When you make it back there, you do not lose money until you lose all of your spark. Which makes it massively more forgiving than Shovel Knight. Because if you die on the run back, cool. Now you have two sparks dropped again. I have four at this point, but most of the game you have two or three. So now you make it back to the first place where you died and you get that spark back. Cool. You have a spark back. Keep going. Get to your other spark.
If you die again, well, you got one spark back, so you're still okay. I've literally lost less than 2,000 bones. The money in this game out of the probably 100,000 bones I've spent.
This game is much more forgiving on deaths than Shovel Knight ever was. And that's, I think, its biggest strength of this is a hard but fair game. You can keep going and grinding and learning how to beat bosses, learning how to handle platforming things because the game isn't gonna say, oh, well, you died twice, so fuck you, you're suddenly broke.
I love that.
On top of everything I just said, the Hollower has an extensive difficulty modification system. If you want to make the game easier or harder, you can. You can make enemies do more damage. You can make enemies have more health. You can make enemies do less damage and have less health than normal stuff. You can make it so you just walk over pits instead of falling in them and taking damage. You can make it so you don't take damage from pits, but you still fall in them. You can do all sorts of stuff. There's a whole list, like it's an entire screen for both easier and then a separate entire screen for harder. You can tweak the game to your preference.
They do lock out achievements if you use the easier one, but that's fine. I am so sick of seeing people online talking about, is Mina the Hollower too hard? Because the answer is just no. The baseline difficulty, I think is appropriate for the type of game it is. This is not Silksong. This is much easier than Silksong.
But also man of the Hollower gives you all of the tools. If the baseline difficulty is too hard for you, please use the difficulty modifiers because the game is just fucking fun. And also this game is $20, by the way.
[00:39:46] Speaker B: I think that's one of the big things that is a problem with people is that they believe that everything's baseline difficulty needs to suit them, otherwise they feel worse. That's not true across the board on anything. Now there are going to be a small subset of people, the same people who proclaim that you can't beat a Souls boss if you do anything multiplayer, you can't use Souls, etc, etc, things like that. These people are assholes. Sometimes we will say things in jest and in fun, they get good. Yeah, sure, fine. That's just a fun thing. The people who are legitimately. No, that doesn't count. Fuck em. Ignore it.
[00:40:22] Speaker A: And, and here's the thing. If you load up Mina the Hollower and without having actually played even five minutes of the game, you turn on immortality, which is one of the options by the way. You can literally just make it so you don't take damage anymore.
I'm gonna look down on you. If you didn't even try the fucking game and you just went immortal mode from the get go, I'm gonna look down on you. That's stupid. But if you play the game and it's kicking your ass and you lower enemy damage and increase your health with the difficulty modifiers and it's still not enough and you go, well, I'm gonna either quit the game or I'm gonna go God mode. And you go God mode. Cool. I'm glad you're enjoying the game.
[00:40:58] Speaker B: There is another caveat there, and that is one of those people who. There are just people who do not care about the gameplay and care about the story of games. There is a subset of people who are like that. They usually watch streamers instead of playing them. Even if you want to play a game and get the story on your own, this is now an option in this one. Yes, this is something where I won't look down at you. It's like you don't care about playing the game. Your goal is the story. Sure, you have access to that now.
[00:41:24] Speaker A: And in addition to the whole difficulty options, Mina the Hollower has a crapload of trinkets that you can get that modify your gameplay in ways that can make it easier for that kind of stuff.
For example, there is a trinket you can get that gives you an extra spark and makes it so sparks enemies have picked up get knocked out of them when you hit them instead of when you kill them. Suddenly those runbacks are way more forgiving because if you're running back because a strong enemy killed you, well, you just have to make it to them and hit them and you get your spark back. So you can keep trying until you get the hang of it and beat it.
I did want to also briefly touch on the weapons at the start of the game. It presents you with three options.
You're presented with a whip which is very Castlevania like it's straight in front of you, moderate distance daggers which are a very short range sword type weapon. Importantly, unlike Zelda, this is only a stab in front of you it is not a slash around you at all. And a hammer, which is a charge up mechanic. There's two other weapons that show up later. A shield, which is a parry mechanic weapon, and a gun, which you smack enemies with the gun in a much more Zelda like sword slash motion, including hitting to your side to build up shots. And then you switch to shoot mode and shoot. I like the gun. It's my favorite weapon because the Zelda sword style slashes feel really good. It's not as fast as the daggers, but it's pretty fast. And then you just switch modes and shoot things from a screen away. It's great. And all of these five weapons have power ups you can get throughout the game to give them new effects. Like now I can charge up my gun and I can charge up the slap on my gun for the whip. There's a power up that makes it so it does bonus damage if you hit enemies with the tip of it instead of with the rest of the whip. Like there's. There's power ups for all of the weapons.
Oh, and since I'm talking about accessibility, there is a shop you can find that will let you just buy whatever power ups you didn't find as you were playing the game. Missed a weapon, power up. Missed a trinket, whatever it might be.
It'll be sold there. You'll have to pay a bunch of bones for it. But if you just can't figure out where the hell it is and you give up and you just want to go play the game, go grind some bones off the strongest enemies you can beat as quickly as you can and then just go buy them in the shop. It's fine. I love this game. I'm having so much fun with Mina the hollower. I'm like 20 hours into this game, this $20 game, and I haven't beaten it.
I'm near the end. I'm in the final dungeon, presumably, unless it throws a curveball at me.
[00:43:59] Speaker B: Unless it pulls a curveball.
[00:44:01] Speaker A: The story is predictable, I guess would be the word I want to use. It's fine. The characters are Char. I love some of the characters. So Mina is a mouse. This world is populated with animal people. The guy who like runs this island that the place is set on, who invited you here, is named Lionel. He's a big lion dude. There's horse people, dog people, cat people, you name it. There's. There's crows, there's all sorts of stuff. Just every animal people you can think of. There's a lot of theming. Around that. So a late dungeon area has mouse traps as one of the hazards and if you step on them and don't immediately leave, they snap you up and do a shitload of damage. Because you're a mouse, One of the NPCs calls you means and I think it's adorable. I love this game. There's so much personality to it. And also the music slaps.
The music is just as good as Shovel Knight's music was. Go buy Mina the Hollower. That's my thesis. I'm ending the episode on that. Go buy Mina the Hollower. Give Yacht club games your $20.
It's on every platform under the sun. It's on Steam. It's on Switch. I'm playing it on Switch. I think it's on PS5 and Xbox One or Xbox Series S as well. I don't know because I don't have those. It's worth the $20. Just straight up. Don't wait for a sale. Just get this game and play it. You will get your money's worth. It's a lot of fun. All right, I think that's gonna be it for us this week, guys.
[00:45:29] Speaker B: I have a side note that I just found out through scrolling through things. This is current sale Orion the Blind Forest is on a beeeegg sale until. Okay, until June 16th wearing the blind Forest or in the Will of the WISP on Steam. 75% off.
[00:45:44] Speaker A: Okay.
Those games are great. If you're looking for something more combat centric, definitely look at Will of the Wisps. Blind Forest Combat sucks.
[00:45:53] Speaker B: I was.
[00:45:53] Speaker A: I was in the Blind Forest but the combat sucks in Blind Forest. It's great in Will of the Wisps.
[00:45:59] Speaker B: I had opened Venus Page to go take a look at the video and take a better look at some things. And as I scroll down to the bundles, they had some things talking about Ori's company and saw that sale and I went, this is a good series. I need to talk about a sale. If you like it, grab it while you can.
[00:46:15] Speaker A: Absolutely.
I looked Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition is $4 and Will O' the Wisps is 674. You could literally get the pair of them together for $11.
They're good games. Highly recommend. All right, that's going to be it for this week. I've been Jack Zillman from Mike and many names for Pillow Pet. Have a great night.
[00:46:36] Speaker C: Good night.
[00:46:37] Speaker B: Good night everybody.
