‘Star Wars: Galactic Racer,’ ‘Ace Combat 8,’ and ‘Gears of War: E-Day’ Reactions | Button Mash

The Ringer-Verse

The hosts review three major new video game releases, praising their technical achievements and engaging gameplay loops while navigating a packed release

Key takeaways

• Ben Lindbergh, Matt James, and Steve Ahlman praise Star Wars: Galactic Racer for its roguelite racing mechanics and deep vehicle customization, though they note the narrative is relatively thin compared to other Star Wars titles.
• The hosts highlight Ace Combat 8 as a visually stunning 24-hour campaign with highly varied missions, expert flight controls, and a unique storytelling approach featuring a ghostly narrator.

Main topics

• Star Wars: Galactic Racer gameplay and roguelite mechanics
• Ace Combat 8 campaign length, flight controls, and narrative quirks

Notable quotes

"Must go faster."

Conclusion

The episode serves as an enthusiastic, spoiler-free guide to three maj

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:15) into the ringer verse your nexus feed for all things fandom i am marcus excuse me ben lindbergh senior editor for the ringer and your host here at button mash coming to you as always from our studio inside mike tomlin's massive minecraft city all Speaker 3 (0:35) the beautiful views he's very conscious Speaker 1 (0:38) Coach put some serious time into that place. With Speaker 3 (0:41) me Speaker 1 (0:41) is Ringer senior audio producer Steve, Wings of Steve Allman. Hi, Steve. Speaker 3 (0:47) Good. I'm overlooking my aquarium in my master bedroom, along with the amazing view of the baseball stadium. Thank you, Mike Tomlin. Please go to our parks department and fix everything. Speaker 1 (0:59) I will not criticize him for spending time on video games. Not on this podcast. On the Ringer NFL show, who knows? But not on Button Mesh. Also with us is Ringer deputy art lead Matt Brumack. James. Hi, Matt. Speaker 2 (1:12) Hi. I, too, like an open floor plan. So I Speaker 1 (1:16) did not when I actually had to work in an office. But fortunately, that is no longer my lot in life. Guys, I am giddy. I am giddy about gaming. Often we ease into our main topic on the pod with some banter about news. There's no time for that today. We'd love to do a deep dive on Mike Tomlin's massive Minecraft city, but there's just no time. The news is video games are good, specifically three new ones, not three new old ones, though it is, as always, a big time for remasters and re-releases. The Witcher 3, Wild Hunt remastered. Dynasty Warriors 3, complete edition remastered. Ghost of Yotei, complete edition. Those are out. People are playing those. They're having a good time. But we have three brand new games, two of them in long running, venerable franchises, one based on well-established IP. But nonetheless, hot off the presses, we will be discussing the first Star Wars racing game in about 25 years, Star Wars Galactic Racer. And then we will be getting into Ace Combat 8, Wings of Thief and Gears of War E-Day. both of which are sequels to 2019 predecessors and prettier and longer and arguably better than what we have seen before. Has there been a better button mash week? This is just a wonderland. Our cup overfloweth. This is a cornucopia. I mean, I could stand to Speaker 2 (2:45) talk about how bad. Sony and Microsoft are for 10 minutes. No, we can not do that for once. We can just Speaker 1 (2:53) talk Speaker 2 (2:53) about great video games for once. That Speaker 1 (2:56) sounds good to me. Yeah, I... want to just take a moment. I think this pod will be pure appreciation. Obviously, we will have some quibbles and we will find some faults, but mostly we're going to be talking about three new games that we really liked. And just to pause and survey the landscape here for a second, because we focus so much on the remasters and the remakes and the re-releases, and we do a lot of nostalgia-centric content here at The Ringer and on Button Mash specifically. We talk about some of the greatest gaming years. We do redrafts. Talk about November 2004, when every great game came out at the same time. And we did an episode on, hey, Half-Life 2 and Halo 2. Remember when those both came out at the same time? Or we did a whole 2004 video games episode. We're living in the good old days right now. I mean, it's hard to have that perspective and take a breath because we're playing three new games for every single episode we do. But this run. of two or three months here. It's just so fast and furious. We knew that this was coming as everyone tried to cram in all their big games in before GTA 6, but there have been some games that have taken us by surprise that kind of came out of nowhere. And just a lot of the most anticipated games have hit and have really delivered. So last week we had to do three in one and we talked about Control Resonant and we talked about Silent Hill Townfall and we talked about Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave. And now we've got three more that maybe are even more up my alley. So we have no time to sort of take a breath and smell the roses and get our bearings. But I do just want to highlight that, boy, games are good right now. It's insane. When I had to Speaker 3 (4:39) tell people that I had to like not hang out or not chat because I had to play games for this podcast, it was the most like. champagne problems that this job has ever fortunately been able to give me because it was the most time consuming and annoying that I've ever been to anybody that knows me. Yet, Speaker 1 (4:59) nonetheless, you ditched us twice to make dinner. I had to make dinner for my girlfriend. All right. I've got a line there. Your culinary exploits. I need to know more about your culinary side here. When you're in New York for Comic-Con, can you make me a home-cooked Steve Allman meal? I mean, I need to. How many courses are we talking here? Let me tell you something. The air fryer is basically Speaker 3 (5:22) the AI of cooking. There's no humanity in it, but it's basically Speaker 1 (5:25) cheating. I have an air fryer. You'll feel right at home. Just come on over. We can play local co-op instead of online co-op. But yeah, it's just it's an incredible run that we are on right now. And we're talking about these three sci-fi games that just grab you and don't let go. And we have all spent varying but substantial amounts of time with all three of them. And our theme for today will just be borrowed from Dr. Ian Malcolm. Must go faster. That is the motto of these three games. And that's also our motto as we try to cram all three into one episode, which will be a tough assignment because any one of these games could carry an entire podcast. That's how much we have to say. So to quote another wise 90s movie icon, you must have Jedi reflexes if you host pods. I think that's how that line goes. There are weeks when I play games partly out of obligation and it's just, hey, I host a video game podcast. These are the big video games. Got to do it. Then there's this week when if I were not hosting a video game podcast, I would still just be seated in front of my TV for dozens of hours playing all three of these games. Great graphics, incredible sound design, lots in common here. So I am just happy as a pig in shit, as the saying goes, which as I understand it, pigs are actually pretty hygienic creatures. This is a hurtful porcine stereotype. that they are happy and shit. But I was happy in whatever we were playing. Not Speaker 3 (6:56) to get Speaker 1 (6:56) too woke on Speaker 3 (6:57) here, Ben. No, Speaker 1 (6:58) yeah, not at all. We'll defend the pigs. The pigs are very smart. They got a bad rap. But really, I'm happy in the opposite of shit because that is what we have been playing this week. So we have not finished all three of these games because how could we possibly? But consider these well-informed impressions. more so than maybe full-fledged reviews. But we have seen a ton, though not enough. I want to see even more. And of course, we will be steering clear of spoilers. We'll be talking about some plot premises and just sort of the setup and how these games do on the story side. But we won't be giving away specific twists that you will not have access to very early in your experience playing these games. So the order is going to be Galactic Racer, Ace Combat, and Gears. Not necessarily in order of quality, but honestly, it's tough to say because there's not a lot of daylight between these games quality wise for me. Maybe at the end we can do our personal rankings of them if we can agonizingly choose. But let's begin with Galactic Racer, developed by Fuse Games, published by Secret Mode, out October 6th for Windows, PS5 and Xbox Series. As I alluded to. I believe this is really the first Star Wars racing game in about a quarter century because all of the Star Wars racing video games were compressed within about a three-year Phantom Menace-inspired span. You had Star Wars Racer, of course, the classic in 99. Then there was Racer Revenge, also sandwiched between those two. There was Super Bombad Racing. Never let it be said that we forgot about Super Bombad Racing on Button Mash. There was also Racer Arcade. All of those came out. in the blink of an eye, and then these games go away. And finally, they have returned in the form of Star Wars Galactic Racer. So guys, give me your high-level takes. Obviously, we were pretty hyped for this. We're spoiled because we just played Star Wars Zero Company a couple months ago, and that was a great Star Wars game. Are we going two for two? Steve, thoughts on Galactic Racer? Speaker 3 (9:05) We are absolutely going two for two, Ben. I got to sample this very briefly at Summer Games Fest, and I had to immediately tell you guys that this might be my game of the year just on hype alone, because there's a very specific feeling in the idea that racing games, when done properly... It might be my favorite genre only because I spend the most time in it only so rarely. I think I've only spent this amount of time in probably Burnout 3 and this game. It's incredible. I think that it's going to at jump rub people the wrong way because this is not a racing game as you might imagine it to be. It's not... Like either it's neither open world nor like an arcade forward game, even though like there are arcade modes, but it's essentially a roguelike. And I think that the idea behind making a sort of small mini story campaign around improving your your vehicles and getting faster and getting better and learning how to build out. a sort of hyper speed racing vehicle in a Star Wars setting is inspired. And I don't think there's been anything that's kind of close to this as far as racing games are concerned. Matt, what do you think? Well, Speaker 2 (10:40) I think this is a fantastic game and I've really been enjoying my time with it. I think that I'm probably of the three of us, I'm probably going to be the lowest one on it, which is. Surprising, I guess. But I really like the format of this being a roguelike racer. I think that's a smart way to do it. You still have ways to kind of weave in a little story there. And a lot of the upgrades, like the upgrade path is pretty engaging. And I will also say that the very game modes here are very good and useful and kind of inform one another. I just think it's a really well thought out and put together game. And the things that kind of rubbed me the wrong way are like minor gripes that I have that I don't think you guys have at all. Because this game is just the headline of it is that this is fantastic. And if you're excited about this, you should stay excited about it. Speaker 1 (11:46) Yeah. So, Steve, if you like Burnout 3, then that's good news because Fuse Games. The developer of this game was founded by senior developers from Criterion Games. That's the studio that worked on Need for Speed and Burnout. So that lineage is very much on display here. It feels a little bit like that with the Star Wars bells and whistles and vehicles. And I think the structure is pretty brilliant. I guess I'd call it a roguelite as opposed to a roguelike. Really, the distinction between Speaker 3 (12:16) those Speaker 1 (12:16) terms has been all but lost and they're used. often interchangeably, but just in the sense that there is persistent progression. It's not that every run you are starting over from scratch, you do gain abilities and you level up and you take that into your next run. But just when I thought that we had had every possible mashup of roguelite or like meets genre X. Maybe this has been done before, but I don't know that it's been done as well or as prominently. And it feels overdue. It's like, why? Why would this not have happened before? Because racing feels perfect for that, because racing itself is a repetitive activity, right? You're going around and around the tracks and the same sort of selection of tracks. And so. Why not? It doesn't feel like they tried to force it into a roguelite mold. Not only do you get better because you know the scenery and you know the shortcuts and you know which things kind of look like a shortcut. And it turns out it's just a solid wall that you crash into because I had more than a few of those happen to me. But also you can gradually just build out your abilities and build up your vehicle types and gain that sense of mastery. It just it felt like a completely organic, natural fit for this blend of genres. Speaker 3 (13:37) I couldn't agree more. I also think that a thing that this game does really well outside of the fact that this is a roguelike is kind of incorporating the feeling of what it's like to. fly a spaceship in the fictional world of Star Wars because everything that we've known in Star Wars, like take the Millennium Falcon, for example, it's basically a cobbled together hunk of junk that can go insanely fast, but you've got to like constantly maintain all of these systems and kind of like divert power to this X, Y, and Z. And that's kind of true when it comes to most other vehicles in Star Wars. And this is kind of no different where. you have different ways of deploying speed. You basically have two turbo buttons of like, okay, make speeder go faster in the afterburner and the ramjet. And both of those things, if not three, because they give you an additional boost. Yeah, exactly. And not only based on the type of build that you want to make for your vehicle, there are the ways that you have and attain, not so much power-ups, but abilities. for your vehicles are an interesting balance in things that are to be maintained and constantly manicured. And also, again, I think that might be why Matt bumped up against this so much, because it is a lot to take in at the moment, because there are so many things that you think about using. Like, I didn't think about using autopilots for a while, because I'm like, why would I want to autopilot my... my vehicle, I want to drive the car. But then, but then when you go down this like weaving very narrow, like threading needle tunnel, you're like, okay, well maybe I do turn on the autopilot for that. And knowing that like the autopilot is like, you can do all of your pre-system checks. If you possibly fit that one into your roster, it's, it's a very kind of amazing balance of containing the chaos. of what these machines in Star Wars is. And I thought that was really, really great. Speaker 1 (15:37) So what did you bump up against other than various surfaces on racetracks, Matt? Speaker 2 (15:44) Well, like I said, they're just kind of, I think that whenever you have like a roguelite, you're going to, you know, you're going to lose a lot, right? You're going to fail a lot. And that's good here. And there are... are a lot of complex systems to learn. So I think the start of this game, the beginning of it for people, I think people are going to be surprised at how challenging it is to grasp all of these things. Like Steve, you were talking about the fact that you have Afterburner and you have the RAMJET, right? So you have basically a turbo button that will activate the... Speaker 2 (16:26) the afterburner or whatever, and then you click the right stick in to switch over to ramjet. And these things are kind of like recharging separately. And you have four different abilities on your directional, on your D-pad that you can each fire off with the L1 button. And there are so many different paths through each course that you have to learn. You have to learn the course. Every time you have to learn the course, you're not going to get. through a new course, doing a good job the first time almost ever, because they're almost designed to toss you off. And you'll have to learn them mirrored as well, because they're very often mirrored. So you have the tracks, you have to learn all the abilities that you have. You have to learn the ins and outs of the kind of vehicle that you're racing. There's a lot to grasp, so the start of it can be a little challenging. this game is constantly just filled with NPCs just being like, you suck. You're bad. So like, but they're also, Speaker 3 (17:32) but like, sorry. Also they're like, you run into them all the time and you're, they're also kind of the homies. Like you're like, Oh, what's up you motherfucker. I beat you last time. Want to try out my new speeder bike? Yeah. Okay. Go for it. Speaker 2 (17:44) Yeah. I think it's the design of it is great in that. I was saying you have to learn all of these things. So they have a mode, they have an arcade mode in this game that has just a bunch of different challenges that I think do a good job of helping you figure out the fastest way through particular courses. And then they have a scenario mode, which gives you a random sort of scenario with a character that is there to kind of teach you how to use all of these abilities. So there is just a tremendous amount of knowledge. to learn, to practice yourself to put into this. And it can be overwhelming at first. And this is, without spoiling anything, this has several acts, right? So basically, you have to go through this entire tour a few times to get to the very end of the game. The very first tour is short and sort of a training kind of thing. And then the game opens up a bit and you start seeing more of the systems and you see how deep and complex it is. And there are just a few little things here and there. There's eventually a level cap on how many permanent upgrades you can have for your vehicle, which was a little frustrating when you hit it without knowing that it was going to be there. Speaker 2 (19:10) I will also say like, and this, this is, this is, it sounds nitpicky, but it's also kind of not. My thumb hurts. Speaker 1 (19:19) When Speaker 2 (19:20) you're clicking in for a widget. Yeah. I'm saying that. Yeah. Because, because you, you bet the accelerator is on. Let's talk PlayStation controller, the X button. Right. And you're sort of. The Speaker 1 (19:33) accelerator is on the X button. R2 for me. Oh, really? Yeah, R2. Button mappings. Wait, what? Oh, no, I'm sorry. The boost button. Speaker 2 (19:41) The after button. Oh, yeah, after button. It might as well be the accelerator. Sorry. Yes. Speaker 1 (19:47) There are courses where you're basically using the ramjet for the entire time. Speaker 2 (19:52) You're pressing this button like a tremendous amount. You're Speaker 1 (19:56) holding it down for less. Between this and Ace Combat. My thumbs definitely, I'm forming some calluses. So Speaker 2 (20:03) the afterburner is on X. And then the square button is sort of like the hard turn button. So for me, at least, I'm putting like the bend of my thumb on the X and then the top of my thumb over the square button. And that X button just ends up, I guess I'm pressing super hard, but you need to have your finger over both of those buttons like at the Speaker 1 (20:27) same time. I had the same sort of issue with Ace Combat because the yaw is R1, L1, and then the throttle is R2 or break with L2, I think. I will follow up with you on Speaker 3 (20:40) that Ace Combat controller scheme. I will get back to that. Speaker 1 (20:44) Our fingers, our hands, our controllers putting in some work this week for sure. Speaker 2 (20:48) Yeah. That's like a thing where I would legit have to stop playing after a while because... The game is so intense that I guess I must just be just absolutely grinding my thumb into this controller. It might be a while for Speaker 1 (21:03) you. That might be nine or 10 hours, though. But yeah, an unreasonable amount of time. Yeah, probably. Doctors recommend that you take a break anyway. Yeah, you won't have this Speaker 2 (21:13) problem. Speaker 1 (21:14) Yeah. Although, I mean, this is, you know, look, last week we talked about three really good games, but those were not games. that I could just kind of get into a flow state and play endlessly. Those were games that were sort of heavier or had more natural breaks built in. All three of these games just couldn't put them down, really, except when I had to pick up the next one because we had to podcast about it. Like, these are the kinds of games that are built to suck you in for hours on end, and they just propel you into the next run, into the next level, into the next act so seamlessly. And I think the second to second moment to moment racing action of Galactic Racer is great. Yeah, it is. Speaker 2 (21:58) It Speaker 1 (21:58) entails that F-Zero. The sense of speed. This Speaker 2 (22:02) is Speaker 1 (22:02) so fast. It's almost uncontrollable, but not quite feeling. That's the sweet spot where you feel like you kind of do need Jedi reflexes to stay in control. And you're just always white knuckling it. And literally, I guess, in Matt's case, and just. redlining on the screen and also in your brain. And that's what you want with a Star Wars racing game, obviously. So all of that is great. It looks great. It nails the, oh, this feels like Star Wars. This sounds like Star Wars. I know you were raving about the sound design, Steve. I mean, every time you kick in the ramjet and then you feel it, if you were playing on PS5, as I was with the DualSense, and then you get the haptics and it's just, and it's like, you know, your cheeks are blown back. I don't know about you guys, but. There are three perspectives that you can play this game from. A third person behind the vehicle, a first person, and sort of an intermediate. And I pretty much had to do third person just to get a little more distance from the blistering speed of the track. Oh my god. Speaker 3 (23:03) When you're pod racing, have you gone in first person mode? Yeah. You can't see anything. It's impossible to see. Well, you're only a human, Speaker 2 (23:13) you know. I Speaker 3 (23:15) know, but you have two massive jet engines that take up your three o'clock and nine o'clock and you just have to look through like a narrow, narrow window. And it's it's hilariously impossible to Speaker 1 (23:26) see. That's what you want. You don't want it to be some staid pedestrian pace. This is Star Wars. Galactic Racer must go faster. So I think, yes, the complexity can be a bit intimidating at first. There is a learning curve, but then that depth. is an asset eventually. It is. Because as you're going run after run and you're upgrading the base stats of your vehicle and then you're picking up favors from your mechanic character, Hebe, not that kind of favor, like a favor that enhances your racing ability. That's what I'm referring to. And abilities that you're unlocking and just all kinds of stuff that as you're racing, it's not purely the quick twitch, just turn here, but you're balancing, okay, my... This boost is ready. That other boost, the cooldown is almost done. Okay, time to trigger that. Now my ability is ready. You know, there's kind of a PV, well, P, I guess, when multiplayer. Yeah, PV self, but also PV versus other racers, NPC or otherwise, where, you know, you're trying to ram them and avoid being rammed. And so you get some kind of cool cinematic mini cut scenes when there's contact and someone goes spiraling, careening off into a wall and then people blow up. And so there's all kinds of abilities. that really enhanced the experience and helped me because I'm not that big a racing game guy, as I've talked about before. And so having a little bit more meat to it helped me