Welcome back to The MinnMax Show! On this week’s episode, Ben Hanson, Jacob Geller, Kyle Hilliard, Jeff Marchiafava, and Leo Vader break down the most interesting things we learned about The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom gameplay from new previews, then we have a roundtable review discussion about Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, touch on Horizon’s Burning Shores DLC, before diving into the great indie games Shadows of Doubt, Blind Drive, and Mr. Sun’s Hatbox. Then we’re joined by the biggest fan of Advance Wars and former MinnMax cohort Suriel Vazquez to talk about the remake of the beloved GameBoy Advance tactics game. Then we answer questions submitted on Patreon by the community and award the iam8bit question of the week! You can win a prize and help make the show better by supporting us on Patreon and leaving a question! https://www.patreon.com/minnmax
Help support MinnMax’s supporters!
https://www.iam8bit.com – 10% off with Promo Code: APRILSHOWERS
TryMiracle.com/MINNMAX – 40% off with Promo Code: MINNMAX
To jump to a particular discussion, check out the timestamps below…
00:00:00 – Intro
00:03:39 – Tears of the Kingdom previews
00:22:58 – Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
00:45:59 – Horizon Burning Shores DLC
00:51:44 – Shadows of Doubt
01:00:11 – Blind Drive
01:03:02 – Mr. Sun’s Hatbox
01:11:36 – Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp
01:36:14 – Thanking MinnMax’s biggest supporters
01:40:46 – Community questions
02:12:45 – Get A Load Of This
JeffM’s GALOT – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2QC6VQXo8U
Jacob’s GALOT – https://youtu.be/QU0OaucfRbM
Suriel’s GALOT – https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/24/23683648/sega-of-america-unionize-cwa
Hanson’s GALOT – https://www.npr.org/2023/04/18/1170655273/a-tale-of-shipwreck-mutiny-and-murder
Kyle’s GALOT – https://deadline.com/2023/04/markiplier-to-star-in-direct-horror-film-iron-lung-from-his-own-script-1235333152/
Community GALOT – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4EFkspO5p4
*Disclosure – Games discussed on MinnMax content are most often provided for free by the publisher or developer.*
Follow us on Twitch – https://www.twitch.tv/minnmaxshow
Please support us on Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/minnmax
Watch our solo stream archives – https://bit.ly/3vRAQb
Buy MinnMax merch here – https://minnmax.com/merch
Follow us on Twitter – https://twitter.com/minnmaxshow
Go behind the scenes on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/minnmaxshow
Become a Game Champion by supporting MinnMax at the $50 tier on Patreon and lock in the game of your choice! https://www.patreon.com/minnmax
Mystical Ninja: Starring Goemon – Luciano Comassetto
Tokyo Jungle – Michael Berry
80 Days – DarkFishDays
Half-Life: Alyx – Maniac
No One Lives Forever – Jot
Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix – The Sleepy Mailman
Garfield Kart: Furious Racing – RabidLime
Sly 2: Band of Thieves – ProcyonNumber6
Placid Plastic Duck Simulator – RabidLime
Superman 64 – Zachary Pligge
Snowboard Kids 2 – Ted Ryser
Pajama Sam: No Need To Hide When It’s Dark Outside – Starkiller
Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles – Joshua Ayers
Luck be a Landlord – TrampolineTales
Kirby Tilt ‘n’ Tumble – Tokyo Game Life
Paper Mario – Clemens Zobel
Ico – Studio Hoiho
Dragon Age Origins – Logan Krause
The Simpsons: Hit & Run – Jawarhello
Cap’n Crunch’s Crunchling Adventure – Prettygoodprinting.com
source
"You monster. What is wrong with you." Um, what? Kyle is the sole voice of reason here. I didn't think I'd be typing that today. He had the appropriate response. There's right, wrong, all the shades in between, and opinion. You're wrong on this take.
The absolute dripping sardonic vitriol for SW: Jedi Survivor is amazing. I always thought the first game was bland and boring and just SW smooshed together with a bad and glitchy Dark Souls and to see these guys dump all over the sequel while Ben’s inner Star Wars fanboy is being bullied to tears is kind of low key hilarious hahaha.
Also, Andor > All other SW. as in ALL other SW. fight me.
It's funny how different games give different people that Triple A fatigue. Length definitely plays a part. I think Naughty Dog games tend to avoid it like Jacob said, because they are usually not that long and not full of sidequests and upgrade trees.
I feel like I need to track down Cameron Monaghan and hug him after every MinnMax Show where Cal Kestis is discussed. Cal is ostensibly the target, but Monaghan ends up the collateral damage.
Jacob is echoing my thoughts on fallen order. It was fine but meh
Re: going back to classic Zelda – I'd love to see Nintendo take a lesson from Square Enix with some of their IP. They continue to try new things with the new mainline Final Fantasy games, but then they also constantly put smaller teams on games inspired by the old school Final Fantasy designs. Imagine some up and coming team at Nintendo making their own old school Zelda inspired game with a new IP as a way to build talent, for example.
Jacob: I feel like [Jedi Survivor] is my Triple-A breaking point."
FORSPOKEN SNUBBED YET AGAIN NO RESPECT I TELL YOU
"Immersive Simp" is a 10/10. Well done, Jacob
Lets all ultra hand eachother
Yikes! The Star Wars carmudgeonry!
i appreciate the star wars bleeps!
Jacobs take on Jedi: Survivor is interesting considering he played all of the first one and he has this to say about it. Like what were you expecting? At least for me I am expecting the same but more improved and according to many reviews including from Easy Allies. It seems it's just that but we shall see. The first game was never dark souls. If anything it got a lot of inspiration from Sekiro. Which is a good thing. Speaking from my experience from the first it's enough to be its own thing too. I thought it was a very good game being so close to being great. Maybe this one will be amazing but I'm Super excited nonetheless.
Had 2 playthroughs one normal one on mastermode 500 hours and I didn't do any of that stuff and I absolutely loved this game. Pretty sure this will be the case in this game also
I don't get people sometimes they like the old format because it was the same cookie cutter way. Then you say this is too open. It will be great guys
Suriel rules! That's it. That's the comment.
he is just male Aloy why all the hate lol
The Legend of Zelda: Nuts & Bolts
Thank you for bleeping the planet names ben
So does Jeffem like video games? All I heard was "I don't like video games being video gaming"
While Jacob's segment on why he doesn't like Jedi: Survivor was only a couple minutes, it felt like forever. There is a balance when listening to someone go on about how much they don't like something. This obviously wasn't Janet Garcia levels of why she doesn't like Uncharted (which she was pushed into talking about) but it was rough.
And i'm all for constructive criticism or if it's a game/sequel that you were REALLY excited for and left disappointed and you want to talk about why. I'm just not one for listening to folks only talk about everything they don't like about something, save that for the TLOU2 haters who watch other YT critiques on why it's a "bad game."
I had the same exact thoughts with jacob on fallen order. I was hoping survivor would be more creative. Respawn made the freaking titanfall 2 campaign!!
Jacob Geller is 100% right about Kyle Kestas being such a terrible protagonist. I’m surprised the rest of the team are playing his view as a “hot-take”. From someone who has finished most of the SP SW games including FO, this character is literally the only thing stopping me from bothering with this game, he just sucks unfortunately.
"You and Ganon just ultra-handing each other" is an all-timer MinnMax quote.
minnmax needs more suriel
A 1st party Nintendo game and a Star Wars game to talk about. Literally the two must toxic fan bases in all of nerdom. I don’t envy you guys this week lol.
I wanted to watch "Downsizing" but never did due to the bad word of mouth from a friend, but one thing I remember about it was the first couple trailers showed it as a straight comedy and then the final trailer was a straight drama and used some of the same clips from the first trailer.
For Jedi: Survivor, speaking on the getting lost in the game, I think part of the problem is that the developers wanted to have their cake and eat it too. In the sense of: they want to have a super realistic-looking world that has lots of environmental details and tries to avoid those more "video gamey" characteristics (floating red arrows, clearly highlighted platforms, etc.) that tell the player where they should go…but at the same time they also implemented a very limited game design for traversing/interacting with this world. A good example of games that achieve this properly would be the Batman Arkham games or Assassin's Creed; there you have realistic looking world that allow basically free mobility in getting around/up to places (want to climb a wall? go for it). In this game though, you kind of bump around seeing what your character is allowed to interact with till you do find that one "crack in the wall" that is where the level design wants you to go.
Jedi Survivor = K.I.A
lol that hot garbage makes The Force Unleashed look modern, seriously so many mechanics & systems feel straight out of the late 2000s
Star Wars consistently producing a steady stream of hot garbage for their fans is really comforting. No matter how bad things get, at least I'm not a Star Wars fan 😂
Theyll keep writing "review" for five minute discussions that half the panel has played for 2 hours. Who cares, right?
"No masterpiece was ever created by a lazy artist." —
I love this show!
Omg, and after Ben says “to be fair, all the reviews are glowing”, someone says “well, they had to go thru a 20 hour game in 3 days, so can you trust it” basically. Like that’s not EVERY GAME. Wtf. Such a bad take. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. Don’t make it sound like everyone that does is wrong because they had to rush through it.
That Jacob Geller. I like the guy in general but sometimes he just has the shittiest takes that are just plain wrong. For example, its okay to not gell with God of War 2018 but calling the story a genric, father figure plot we've seen a million times in triple A games. We have? Other then The Last of Us, im struggling to think of another game that has this.
But anyway. Theres lots of fun to be had with Jedi Survivor. A couple of hours in and im having a blast. I personally love the combat and im not verh verse in star wars lore, but i deeply enjoyed the story of the first and this one so far. You can totally not like the game, thats fine, but saying that its just not fun for anyone is plain wrong. Glitchy? Sure, but i have yet to come across any game breaking or utterly distracting bugs. I dunno. If you enjoyed the firsr game, 90% chance you'll like this one. It just seems they are coming off overly, and unnecessarily negative.
damn.. thought this season of mando was the best
Thank you beta testers aka those who pre-order. Months or years after release I get the game for under half price, complete with patches, quality of life updates and free dlc!
I'm glad Suriel took this time away from MinnMax to really figure out the answer to How This Whole Thing Operates
Whoa, Ben Hanson with a war crime joke? So funny, but probably not appropriate some how. I loved it though.
Hi Minnmax, Just constructive criticism on the JS stuff: I think it would help if you guys were a lot more constructive when hating on games you don't like, especially when everyone is only 2-4 hours into the game other than Hanson (really appreciate you guys letting the audience know your hours with the game though 👍). The strong opinions you guys develop off that short time with the core game really come off as forced at best, and extremely mood-dependant on a given afternoon at worst. Unless it's discussions about the performance or motion blur or something like tht, feel like you guys are laying it on a bit thick
Also I love Jacob, dude is an inspiration to my own writing and Ill always be a huge fan of his work both new and old. But if he (or anyone) is gonna rip into aspects of a game, I'd like to hear more specific contextual examples of why he didn't like things. Lines like "by the 2nd cutscene I was checking my phone" come off as really disrespectful to the game and it's devs, especially when the game doesn't really seem to disserve that magnitude of hate. Or maybe it does deserve it, which then I think some specific examples to explain his stance on those areas would have done a lot to understand his perspective. If he doesn't have much tangible to support that feeling he has, then a more thorough discussion during next week's show might've been the better move
I think that's why many of the comments to this vid are so negative too: its filled with ppl implicitly feeling that disrespect, or people feeling validated for hating things which just amplifies the hate discussion. "Games, Friends, and Getting Better" isn't exactly applicable when things turn out this way lol
Either way, much love to Ben, Jacob, and the gang. I'm just one voice, but I wanted to mention it as a suggestion to possibly improve content, discussion, and understanding going forward
I agree 100% with Jacob I don’t see the Jedi survivor hype except it’s lightsably shiny thing
Y'know, as five (presumably) straight guys it kinda sucks how boring you found Cal as you missed his best quality and part of the reason I very much enjoy playing as him- he's really really hot 🔥
SURIEL RETURNS 🙂
Just want to throw my two cents in that I really enjoyed Jacob's input on Jedi Survivor (as it seems there are a few negative comments about it). I like MinnMax because i feel everyone shares their honest personal opinion, and are willing to disagree with each other
To address JeffM environmental puzzles are great in Spyro the Dragon 1 because its all about the platforming and figuring out how to reach certain places with a limited moveset, its quite fun even if simple.
I love that Jacob got the most excited to talk about Blind Drive. That's why I like him, he just wants cool and interesting games. He alone has changed how I look at games.
How Jacob describes his feelings on Fallen Order 2 is exactly how I feel when I try to force myself to play the first one. Like why am I doing this??? 😂
Thanks for the review guys, I’ll be saving my money for TotK, and Hogwarts! 👍
Appreciate the asterisk on The Deepest Dive for TOTK. I feel like the name "Deepest Dive" is a problem when dealing with brand new games, because the name suggests "We're diving deep into a game that everyone already knows, with the full benefits of hindsight and history, to appreciate the small details that everyone might've missed." It's fine to have a game club, but that has a different purpose than the name implies.
To Jeff and Jacob's points on Jedi Survivor, Jedi Fallen Order had all of the same problems and people ignored them. It's not surprising it didn't improve given its success.
This may be the best episode of the podcast yet! I feel like everybody’s extra passionate, energized, and firing on all cylinders here!
Really fucking great to have Suriel on talking deeeeeeeep about some good GAMING.