Women's tiny pockets, Elon Musk's a poet and we didn't know it plus all the latest gaming news is all coming up on this scene at UK Podcast.
[MUSIC]
Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of CNet UK podcast.
I'm Richard Trenholm and I'm joined by Katie Collins.
How you doing, Katie?
I'm very well, Rich.
How are you?
Great, very good, thanks.
Yeah, we've got a lot to talk about this week, so let's crack on.
First of all, this is probably a subject close to your heart.
It's official, women's pockets are too small.
There's been a study Done about the size of pockets in women's jeans, women's clothing.
Specifically in relation to smart phones and the size of smart phones and whether you can fit an iPhoneX in there or something Galaxy and most of the time you can't.
So 100% of the time men's front pockets could accomodate an iPhoneX but only 40% of the time could a pair of women's jeans accomodate An Iphone X. And it actually drops to 20% for the Samsung Galaxy and the Google Pixel phone.
Only 5% of the pockets tested, women's jeans, could handle these gargantuan phones.
Now Katie, you're a woman, Yes.
As a woman, tell us how you feel about these results.
Well, I mean, I think this is an issue, first of all, that's very, very close to my heart, and being a woman that wears jeans a lot.
But I actually think that this has been a problem For decades.
And it's just really coming to light now.
Because our smart phones are so big.
If smart phones hadn't got bigger, then perhaps we never would be discussing this.
Which I think would be a terrible shame.
Because it's really about time that women's pockets got the attention that they deserved in the news.
Free the pocket, hashtag.
Yeah, [LAUGH] And this isn't just A small pocket issue, there are a lot of women clothes don't have pockets at all and let me tell you how inconvinient-
[LAUGH]
That is.
I saw a meme recently online which basically said.
How do you know if
A woman's dress has pockets, and the punchline was, she'll tell you.
[LAUGH]
I remember once I was at a wedding when someone I know discovered they had pockets.
[UNKNOWN] nice dress and they went, yeah, thanks, and as they were kind of swooshing it about, they discovered pockets, and they were like, my God, it's got pockets.
Yeah.
And we almost had to stop the wedding, to make it like, the father of the bride was mid-speech-
[LAUGH]
And he had to sort of stop and say, ladies and gentlemen This woman is a woman with pockets, and she's very happy about it.
Yeah.
I treated myself to a birthday dress this year.
Mm hm.
And the thing that I was most excited about was that it had huge pockets.
[LAUGH]
I could have.
So, I'm actually using.
An iPhone 8+, which is slightly bigger than the iPhone 10.
It's the same size screen, but the actual body of the phone is bigger.
So I could easily fit maybe two, I reckon.
I reckon I could fit two phones in each of the two pockets.
I could carry four phone, wearing that dress.
Four phones, that's what they call you.
You've got a backup for your backups.
Yeah.
Is this one of those cases, you think, where like say, for years woman have been carrying stuff around like make-up and that kind of thing, and no one has really addressed this pocket issue.
But then suddenly smartphones come along.
They are a thing men understand.
Do you think that this thing only comes to The men always aren't taken seriously because,
But it's technology,
Exactly.
[UNKNOWN] That I can understand,
Yeah.
They are related.
I think that it's definitely kind of brought it to the forefront a little bit more.
Mm-hm.
But I would personally love the option to sometimes Be able to go places without a bag, that would be a really, really lovely thing.
You see plenty of men on nights out, or just kind of nipping to the shops or whatever, and just being able to.
Yeah.
put their.
That's great.
Wallet in their phone in their pocket and go.
That's fantastic.
I wanna be able to do that.
[LAUGH]
You know I think this is a feminist issue.
Fair enough yeah.
But I should be a fundamental right I should be able to go to places without a bag.
It should.
It's human rights, that's what we're talking about.
[LAUGH]
So yeah, so let us know how you feel about the whole pocket issue.
Are phones just too big, or are pockets too small?
I think that's kind of the fundamental question when it comes to technology.
Or is it somewhere in the middle, as with most things?
[LAUGH]
[LAUGH] Bit of a gray area.
Sitting on the fence there Rich.
Yeah, so I also have what's happening this week.
Elon Musk, I mean there's just every time you look at what Elon Musk is up to, there's just more stuff that you do not expect to ever be dealing.So fresh his bizarre twitter row with his earlier banks
He has proved that he is.
He's been getting his poetry.
Yes, so this happened yesterday.
Yesterday was exactly two weeks from the date that Musk kind of teased on Twitter that he might take Tesla private.
And earlier in the day And he hadn't tweeted anything all day and we suddenly realised that he'd deleted his Instagram account without saying anything.
Right.
It just gone.
Yeah.
And it's not the first time that Elon Musk's deleted social media accounts.
So earlier this year for example He deleted the Facebook pages for two of his companies, Spacex and Tesla.
Yes
Now, we were all a bit mystified as to what was happening, and I got in touch with one of his representatives.
Yes?
No comment.
[LAUGH]
[LAUGH] Looks like your guess is as good as ours, hey?
Yes, and What I thought would happen is as usually happens with Elon Musk, he likes to kind of be his own spokesperson, use Twitter as his microphone.
I thought I'm sure later in the day.
Because that's worked out really well for him in the past.
[LAUGH]
If I were his spokesman I would probably suggest that maybe he takes a bit of time off.
Yeah.
[LAUGH]
Probably a good thing, but there you go.
So what is this [UNKNOWN] thing he's tweeted then?
Rather than tweeting an explanation all he said was he tweeted, I don't know whether it was a direction.
Whether it was read.
Elliot's notes on the wasteland or read Elliot's notes on the wasteland.
As in, you should read this or I've just read this.
Right.
It's not very clear.
That's true.
But he tweeted a Wikipedia article about A T.S. Eliot poem The Waste Land.
And also a kind of a short passage from the Waste Land.
A Passage.
So I thought I would read the passage.
Okay, and bring the full weight of your gravitas and acting experience to this.
Well, yes, I did do an English Lit degree so this should be my area of specialty.
It's going to be something special, yeah.
We didn't do performance poetry.
But we did do some TS Eliot.
[INAUDIBLE] spoken word.
There's slam poetry coming up for you, ladies and gentlemen.
Okay, Phloebis the phoenician, a fortnight dead, forgot the cry of gulls and the deep sea swell and the prophet and loss.
A current under the sea picked his bones and whispers as he rose and fell.
He passed the stages of his age and youth, entering the world pool.
Gentile or Jew, you who turn the wheel and look to windward.
Consider Flibus who was once handsome and tall as you.
My word I mean that was something special, bravo bravo-
Thank you [INAUDIBLE]
I do appreciate that.
That was lovely.
Yeah, I mean, what significance it has for Elon Musk I have absolutely no idea.
Well so, as I said, I did an English Literature degree.
[LAUGH]
And I would offer my own interpretation.
Now but I don't need to because some wonderful journalist at Bloomberg had a little crack at it and I think did a really good job.
So I'm just gonna [LAUGH], I am just going to, we'll try and link to this piece in the show next to give some of their [UNKNOWN] But they pointed out that it has been a fortnite since [UNKNOWN] tweeted that he had fundings secured to take Tesla private.
And so he was saying, as in the poem he says a fortnite dead.
I know obviously he's still alive but I mean who knows.
He's been going through some private turmoil in that time.
Who knows what's going on it that Elon Musk's head.
It's one of the great questions of our time.
It is, absolutely, yeah.
I mean one day we'll figure it out I guess.
Yeah.
Well yeah, very fascinating stuff and if you have a favorite piece of poetry that applies to a particular tech billionaire and eccentric then let us know.
Is there a particular Poetry or limerick that goes better with Elon Musk than The Wasteland we'll, we'll have to wait and see.
Maybe I should start a column on that.
I think, I, to be honest I think we should start a poetry corner in this podcast.
I think,
Yeah
if, you know, if you're a big fan of the poetry then we can, we can do more of it, you know.
Katie's Poe..
Yeah
Sell it full on..
Katie Reads Poetry podcast.
I'm okay with that.
[LAUGH]
Yeah, I think that I'm getting a thumbs up from across the board, yeah.
I'm sure there will be some comments on YouTube suggesting that we don't do that.
[LAUGH]
There's always comments on YouTube suggesting that we don't do things, and it's never stopped us before.
And-
Right, so, yeah, so moving on.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
Someone mentioned that she was at that particular piece of poetry that lends it's name to consider Phlebas.
Phlebas, the Is that how you say it?
I hope it is, yeah.
Yes.
Which is [UNKNOWN] sci fit novel which is going to be turned into a TV show by Amozon which leads us rather torturously and roundaboutly.
Nice Segway.
Yeah it was a bit labored but I'm gonna run with it.
Which brings us to Amazon's latest TV show, Jack Ryan, which is based on the famous Tom Clancy best selling series of novels.
And the character, Jack Ryan, who's been seen in movies before.
You might've seen the Alec Baldwin movie, Hunt for Red October, with Sean Connery, you might have seen the two Harrison Ford movies about Jack Ryan.
You may have seen the Ben Affleck one and the Chris Pine one but no one really likes to talk about those.
And after all those movies they're trying to make Jack Ryan into a big TV show.
And I watched it and it's okay.
Yeah, I mean
The thing is, it's gonna be on Amazon very soon.
It's, I think it's the 30th of, I will tell you that in a minute.
The 31st of August.
Mm.
So, not long.
It's okay.
The problem is it's.
Really, really generic.
Mm-hm.
When Tom Clancy's novels were written, he was like a real master of this kind of geopolitical spy story.
This kind of like nations and terrorists kind of groups at war with each other.
And kind of globe-trotting stories about kind of these smart analysts.
He was a real master at that story.
Mm-hm.
And the Jack Ryan character, who is this office Desk jockey who's kind of dragged into these conflicts was kind of was really well realized in the novel's he's like the smartest guy in the room and he can sort of be drawn into action, but it's a very good so it's all about the politics of these situations and they were really really good.
And yeah, they're absolutely they sell by the they sell by the aircraft carrier form, but the problem is when Jack Ryan's put on screen.
Sitting at a desk or working on a computer doesn't quite translate onto the screen quite so well, and to be honest, it just doesn't really grab me as a character.
And it doesn't hep that this particular show, it just doesn't have anything particularly unique about it.
You've seen everything in this show before.
There's a lot of stuff of guys with beards Like following other guys [INAUDIBLE] to African market places and like frowning and saying [INAUDIBLE] Kind of jumping into cars and chasing around after people and then it cuts to like an office where there is a bunch of people in this kind of glass framed office, looking at millions of computer [INAUDIBLE] I think, where's he going?
We've lost him [INAUDIBLE] Bourne's on the move and this kind of thing.
Except it's not a Jason Bourne movie.
But you've literally seen all this before.
And there's very, very little that's new.
It's very slickly done, it's very cinematic.
And there's a good chance that if you like this sort of thing you're gonna like this.
But it just doesn't have any of the fresh angle, even just a slight twist on the formula.
That stuff like Homeland or various other movies have that are very similar to this.
I was thinking about this just last night actually because I saw, it's a totally different genre.
But when I was on the tube I saw a post of her new adaption of Vanity Fair.
Yeah.
The Thackery novel.
Mm-hm And they made a film with that.
I mean it must have been at least ten years ago now with Reese Witherspoon in it.
But I did think, especially with these book adaptations of kind of well-loved theories or well-loved books.
I think if they're gonna do it more than once.
If they're gonna redo it, then it really has to be something special and it does have to be something new.
And in every other adaptations that I can think of that I remember when they remade Pride and Prejudice for example which was not of this genre.
But the BBC adaptation was so classic, was so brilliant, people still talk about it.
It was with Collin Firth diving into the lake as Mr. Darcy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the fact that they remade it just kind of seems a little bit pointless And there are things that I think, the first adaptation perhaps, the technology wasn't quite there.
The way that they adapted it perhaps could've done with some work.
I often think of His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman, and those novels.
And they actually ended up only making
The Golden Compass, the first one of the books.
It didn't go down very well.
Yes.
Everybody sort of said it wasn't particularly well done.
Yes.
And I think they're now going to make a long form TV
Exactly, yes.
adaptation after that.
Which I think would be, it's a much better format for it.
Much better, and it's an opportunity for it to give that amazing series the adaptation that it deserves.
But unless you're going to, like you say, really bring something fresh and really new to it then I can't really see the point in really adapting something again.
Yeah, well, that's it.
And this is an Amazon show, and Amazon previously have made a lot of quite prestigious, quirky shows.
And they haven't really had a big hit in the realm of Hulu's Handmaiden Tale Or Netflix's Stranger Things, and they've won a bunch of awards for Transparent, but they haven't had a big kinda mainstream hit.
Yeah.
And that's kind of why they're shifting towards these kinda big tentpole things.
So they're doing Jack Ryan, but they're also doing Lord of the Rings, and it's the same.
It's like you say, I mean, it's not like we don't have a definitive version-
Yeah.
Of Lord of the Rings.
No one watched the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies and went, well that was good, but it could've been longer.
Yeah.
So I kind of wonder what they're doing.
And the thing about this Jack Ryan show is that it kind of wipes away all of the sort of the kinda the surroundings and the settings from the books.
Because it's 20, 30 years later, so the kind of Cold War setting is completely gone.
And when you take this character, who isn't really that interesting on his own, and you kind of put him into a very, very generic sort of setup-
Mm-hm.
That could have been lifted right out of Spy Game and Homeland and all of these other identical spy movies It's really difficult.
As a kind of coda to that, I'm actually quite looking forward to Vanity Fair.
Because I recently spoke to the visual effects people who worked on it.
And with it being a period story, you don't really think about their being visual effects.
But actually there's a huge number of visual effects in it.
They used a Cutting-edge digital visual effects to use great stuff like some of the things you talked about where the battle [UNKNOWN] is seen in the story.
And so they use visual effects to do that in away that hasn't been seen in the periods [UNKNOWN] before.
And also, one of the scenes to be talked about that we focus on, this [UNKNOWN] is gonna be coming fairly soon.
So if you're interested in this kind of stuff Look out for this.
But they talked about how they recreated Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, which is this kind of bacchanal that kind of was.
Well, I suppose Soho was the Soho of the time.
But this kind of outrageous sort of bacchanalian decadent place where people would go to entertain themselves.
And they've used.
Sounds like we could do with recreating that for us.
[LAUGH] It sounds pretty cool.
But this is the thing, so they've used visual effects to kinda build out the scale of that and realize that in a way.
So there's gonna be a shot where you're probably, the idea is that you won't notice that it's visual effects, but there's gonna be a shot where someone walks through this incredible Lively teaming set and then walks into a hot air balloon and flies up and the camera stays with balloon, and it's all done through visual effects.
So that's something that you wouldn't have been able to see like 10, 20 years ago.
So that sounds pretty cool, so if they can bring this kind of like new sort of generation of film making to it and And that's very exciting, I'm not sure that Jack Ryan does that.
I mean I could say if you're into your spice stuff then yeah, it's pretty standard issue, does the job and it is very slick and cinematic but for me it just didn't have any freshness or uniqueness to it unfortunately.
But yeah, so you'll see that on the 31st of August so look out for that if you are a Tom Clancy fan.
Anyway, so there's something else that you've been watching recently, as well.
That's correct, so this is obviously one of Amazon's big rivals in the video sphere.
Yeah.
It's a Netflix original that was released last Friday.
Mm.
And Netflix when it comes to its originals, obviously it's has had these big hits, like Stranger Things, but in the kind of teen genre, that kind of high school genre which has a kind of an audience that is teens and so people that are in their 20s as well and It has not been doing so well recently.
[LAUGH] Okay.
So earlier this year it was released season two of thirteen reasons why.
Yep.
Which is kind of being touted as being quite problematic due to how it handles the subject matter which is mainly centered around The suicide of the protagonist in the first.
Right.
The beginning of the first season.
And the second season didn't go down that well.
They still didn't think that, in spite of the kind of these warnings that they put at the beginning of every episode, they still didn't think it was handled very well.
And it also just wasn't reviewed very well.
Right, yeah.
You've gotta be very careful with debating suicide, especially teen suicide [UNKNOWN] to an audience of teens, which is an important audience for Netflix, obviously.
Yeah, and then just earlier this month, they had the series that they've really, really been pushing.
Front and center.
I've seen it every time I go onto Netflix.
Always the main featured show.
They really want you to->> Well that would be because of the algorithm that suggested that you'd be interested in it.
And also every time I search for anything and that thing isn't there or I haven't spelt it right that is also the first thing that pops up.
So it's like do you want to watch Insatiable yet?
Yes.
So the show is insatiable, which deals with.
A really overweight girl who loses loads of weight, and is just being kind of rinsed really for just being problematic in the way that it is kinda body shaming, but also just like being politically correct Correct in like a million different ways you'd not expect in 2018.
And so I was really pleased this Friday when they released really lovely form which is an adaptation of a really popular young adult novel.
Called To All the Boys I've Loved Before.
This is kind of a teen romcom.
It involves a girl who basically has these five letters that she keeps in her bedroom that she's written to the five boys that she's.
Had crushes on.
Okay.
And her younger sister basically decides that her older sister needs a boyfriend, so she mails them out to all of the boys that they are written to.
Gasp.
Yeah.
[LAUGH] And drama ensues And the protagonist, Laura Jean, kind of ropes in a fake boyfriend to.
Okay.
Ward off any trouble.
Right.
And I thought that this was a great example of.
And it's really beautifully done, really cinematically I thought it was gorgeous.
And the acting was lovely.
They were convincing teenagers, which I think is it really important thing for anything that you're going to set in a high school.
Yes.
No Freddie Prinze Jr.
in sight.
[LAUGH]
And It was just a really sweet kind of film for 2018, very unproblematic, and it's really kind of appealed to people online.
It's sort of, the other main character, a guy called Peter Kavinsky has sort of become a bit of a meme on Twitter.
I've heard that name on Twitter, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, and
And he's, because he's such a sweet fake boyfriend.
[LAUGH]
Why would you need a real boyfriend when you can have a really adorable, sweet one that treats you really nicely.
So it sounds like a dose of postivity, then.
It really is, and it feels actually, funnily enough, it's really PG.
It's so, there are no All the things that you think you need to make a, kind of like good popular,
Mm-hm.
Team drama.
There is no drugs, there is no sex.
Right.
There is no scary hazing.
[LAUGH]
Right, okay.
Or like Kind of darkness to it.
There's a little bit of drinking, but you know.
Unbelievable.
But apart from that it's just quite innocent, and that in itself In this kind of year of all these terrible-
Terrible things, yeah.
[LAUGH] In this awful hellscape, yeah.
Yeah, it feels just really lovely.
And it's really resonated with people.
And so if you're ever just, it doesn't take you too far on the emotional spectrum either way.
So it's not a kind of a tear jerker.
Okay.
And it's not gonna be like
It's not gonna be the funniest one we've ever seen but it's just a really lovely rom com that will warm your heart.
So if you're ever in the mood for you need to be perked up, it's kind of the perfect thing really.
And
Yeah I just think, I'm hoping this is an example of Netflix kind of getting back on track a little bit when it comes to its team,
Yeah.
Programming,
Yeah definitely, that's the thing, I mean Netflix has a bit of, they produce so much stuff.
Mm-hm.
It used to be the, when their original stuff was like a mark of, it guaranteed quality, house of cards and stuff right from the start You know the Orange is the new Black.
When they were like the only two things that they had that was like a hundred percent success rate.
Yeah.
And as they added new shows and new movies they were also really high bar.
But then the more stuff they churned out and the more that it became clear that they weren't really exerting that much editorial control over it, they were just kind of like throwing a load of money at some big name people like Ricky Gervais and...You know the Orange is the new Black.
When they were like the only two things that they had that was like a hundred percent success rate.
Yeah.
And as they added new shows and new movies they were also really high bar.
But then the more stuff they churned out and the more that it became clear that they weren't really exerting that much editorial control over it, they were just kind of like throwing a load of money at some big name people like Ricky Gervais and...
All these many, many people who've appeared on the streaming service.
It just became clear that the quality control maybe wasn't there.
And now they're producing so much new stuff week in week out that it's nice to know that yeah, some of this stuff actually is worth watching.
I mean, I watched recently there was another rom com With Kristen Bell and Seth Rogan, which I forgot the name of it.
It's the one where they go on a cruise.
We can edit this in later, but it's basically just an advert for a cruising company.
There's clear they all just went on a cruise for a week.
It's got Kelsey Grammer as well, Like Father it's called, Kelsey Grammer plays the dad.
And I just thought this is [UNKNOWN] rubbish, I can't watch this.
Yeah.
But yeah
So yeah, so it's good to see that Netflix is possibly back on track.
Netflix and Amazon trying different strategies.
And we'll see how they work out.
But yeah, let us know what you think of the latest Netflix and Amazon shows.
If there's anything in particular that you're enjoying right now, then let us know.
And moving on from movies and TV, we're gonna move on to gaming now.
So this week is the big gaming event Gamescon in Cologne in Germany.
And so if you're a gaming fun, this is the time to check out the most original innovative fresh ground breaking titles like Battlefield V, Life Is Strange 2, Devil May Cry 5 and other innovative.
Brand new groundbreaking titles such as Cyberpunk 2077.
I can't there's been 2077.
It only seems like about 1500.
I actually
Probably stopped after the first 800 games, to be honest.
Yeah.
But yeah, speaking of Cyberpunk 2077, they had an event at Gamescom, where they had special fake beers made especially [UNKNOWN] to the game.
And our intrepid reporter with a bit of heroic journalism Andy Hoyle, who's normally in this seat, he went out to Germany and he tried all of them.
And recorded it in a great piece of journalism.
I think that's gonna be the one that's gonna win all the awards.
Definitely.
That's the Pulitzer right there.
So he's on the ground in Germany, so we're gonna go across live, not live, to Andy in GamesCom.
Andy, what's good?
What's good, you say?
Well, it's definitely not my quite dissappointing hotel room.
But I believe that you're probably asking about actual games con launches.
The big news of the show definitely come from a NVIDIA they have got a whole fleet of new top end graphics cards, this time called the GForce RTX 2080.
Now, the big thing that you need to know about this, is that of course it makes your games Look a bit more glossy and the performance is generally better.
Now that is what we pretty much expected.
But the R in RTX comes from a term called retracing now to be honest I didn't really know what raytracing is or why it's important but turns out it's a really really big deal and it's been something of the holy grail of video games.
Basically what retracing does is really accurately simulate.
How light really reacts to different objects, and different services in the real world.
It allows for much better reflections on things, much better shadows.
And it's something that can really give an extra element of realism to your games.
Basically A shiny surface can now reflect anything in its enviroment, now previously it would only reflect things that were already on screen, but now you can move around a mirror and it will actually reflect what else is there.
We saw a great example from the upcoming battlefield 5 like a tanks muzzle flash when it fired a. Shot around, I don't know what tanks fire.
The flare that came off that muzzle, you can see reflected in different objects all around, even though the muzzle wasn't on screen.
So it just means that when you're playing a game things are reacting in the way that they should do, so you feel a lot more immersed.
It might not sound like a big deal, maybe I'm not explaining it in quite the best way.
But really it all adds up to a much more immersive look overall.
It's the sort of thing that when you're playing even a game of great graphics now, you don't realize what can be improved until you see.
How it can be improved, and you see what's happening there.
So that's pretty cool, I should say we saw a Battlefield V, we saw, what else did we see, Metro Exodus.
Basically, a lot of the big games, a shadow of the Tomb Raider causes, all has this, and it's not just for reflections as well, the shadows Particularly in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
They are softer, they interact with other shadows in a more realistic way.
So as you're walking around a scene, everything just looks nicer.
It's difficult to kind of see, so I do urge you, if we aren't already putting on screen different demos, which I'm hoping we have got some examples Do go on YouTube and hunt down different thing.
There are screenshots all over the place of different before and after versions with this technology switched on and with it not switched on all of it makes a big deal.
But it's called Gamescom, let's talk about some actual games.
So first of all, the thing I really want to talk about the most is Life Is Strange 2 because we didn't really see a lot of that at E3.
We do know a lot more about it now.
We know the story is going to follow 16-year-old Sean and his little brother Daniel as they escape from their hometown of Seattle to their dad's old hometown in Mexico.
I won't say why at this point why they're escaping just in case you're really trying to avoid any spoilers.
Although the first 20 minutes of game play is available officially online so you can go and take a look at that should you want to.
It does [UNKNOWN] a really great game and much in the same vein as the previous Life is Strange series in that it's Completely story driven, and there are loads of choices for you to make throughout, and even down to how you talk to your little brother, and how you give these responses to those things.
And those choices that you make will completely determine how the game goes, and how you interact with characters.
As you talk to your little brother for example, you're given options, for I saw You tease him about things and basically play the slightly jokey big brother.
But that will then impact your relationship with him down the line in how he responds to you in certain ways.
I think it's really interesting.
I actually haven't played Life is Strange One, but I know a lot of people who are absolutely obsessed with it.
They love it.
It's this, apparently, cinematic masterpiece and It's very emotional, really brings you into the storyline.
This looks like it could be a lot more of that, but because it's not set in just one area, it's spread out.
You're gonna see more things, you're gonna do more things, you're gonna meet more people.
I think it's gonna be really interesting.
It's coming out, again, in Episodes like the previous one did, and the first one launches, I think, September 27th, sometime in September.
And the other ones will follow, sort of, six to eight weeks after that, so that's looking quite interesting.
I have seen a bit more of Cyberpunk 2077.
That was the big, big thing at E3.
But annoyingly [UNKNOWN] they didn't let any press, which includes us, capture any game footage or do anything like that.
So all we could really do is sort of talk vaguely about what we've seen.
Annoyingly that's been exactly the same thing here.
We haven't been able to capture any footage, we haven't been able to take any screenshots of our own, and we haven't been able to actually play it.
I sat in a dark cinema And I watched about 50 minutes of different bits of gameplay.
All I can say is that it does look fantastic.
The graphics look gorgeous, the actual gameplay itself looks great.
You will have to take my word on all of this.
It's a first-person RPG, not a first-person shooter, and kinda like Life Is Strange, it's very story driven, and as you go through different missions and quests and things You will have different ways of approaching them.
Different outcomes from each mission that will, your choices that you make, again, will determine how the game plays later on.
It's a dystopian future, it's full of cool looking guns and swords, and bio-mechanical implants that you can upgrade your own vision.
It looks really good.
It definitely, it is very dystopian, it's very gritty, there's lots of bad language.
But it looks like a lot of fun, it looks like it's gonna be really interesting to play.
Brought some really cool game mechanics, things like different boosts you can give yourself as you're going into certain areas that Look like they're administered by, like an asthma inhaler.
The character, when you need to do something, just puts this thing, goes tsh, and breathes it in, and suddenly they're more powerful.
I don't think that's how asthma inhalers work.
As far as I've ever been known.
If they do work like that then do let me know because I'd like to try some.
But more importantly than the game perhaps are their promotional beers that they had on their media stand.
And they had four different ones.
And I thought it important to try every single one because.
Journalism.
So do go take a look at that if you are interested to know why I was quite drunk at a conference about [UNKNOWN] in the afternoon.
Some of the things I've played which I think is pretty fun, I had a go on Elder Scrolls Blades that is the Elder Scrolls mobile game which is Pretty much the nearest you're gonna get to Skyrim on a phone at the moment.
It does look really nice, almost console level graphics on an iPhone that I saw it playing on.
Again, it's an RPG.
It's not as open as Skyrim or Elder Scrolls Online.
You As you move around the world there are pretty set pathways for you to follow, but then you'll find enemies along the way and you'll tap in certain ways in order to take them down.
What's pretty cool about this game is that you can play in horizontal mode, or you can turn the screen and play in vertical orientation with just one hand, which is really nice if you just wanna casually play a little bit.
On the bus or as you're walking somewhere.
So don't play games when you're walking, pay attention to where you're going.
That's how accidents happen, people, come on.
But yeah, it looks fun.
I only played a short demo.
That's all we've seen so far.
We haven't seen anything new about it since E3.
But I did was want to highlight Because I am a bit of an Elder Scrolls nerd and to an extent I'm constantly playing Elder Scrolls online.
So the idea of having something which looks really nice on a phone is pretty exciting for those times when I can't tape Skyrim on my Switch.
Also, things that I thought were really fun Nintendo showed me a bit of Super Smash Brothers Ultimate.
Again, no big updates from E3, they have lots of new characters since then, but there are none that I particularly know or really care about, but the game itself looks like a lot of fun.
I think what the Switch does really, really well is that multi-player fun game.
I loved.
Mario Kart 8 because I can have four people again in my house all playing games together whereas I really found, and I know I've moaned about this on the podcast before so I won't go into detail but, most games consoles focus on online play.
So yeah you can have your Xbox One and you can be playing Embracing games and stuff.
You're playing against other people on other consoles in probably other parts of the world.
We've really sort of lost that social, local gaming where you can have your mates around, crack open a few drinks and game together.
I really kind of got that back, a miracle, tonight.
I have people around all the time and we're playing and we had a really, really good time.
I really enjoyed that.
So I like the fact that we've got more local multiplayer games like Smash Bros.
that you can fire up and you can play short but intense matches and just have a lot of fun together.
That's really, really cool.
Overall though, the show Hasn't been full of needs.
It really does play second fiddle to E3.
E3, back in June, is where we saw all the big announcements.
That's where all these games were first shown off.
And, really, Gamescom has pretty much seemed just like an opportunity for some of the European press who didn't get to E3 to have hands-on with games.
We've had Some tiny little incremental announcements on some things.
But no major news.
No major launches.
The big thing really has been the in video [UNKNOWN] card.
And that is a big deal, so that's exciting that they did that here because I think they were supposed to announce it at Be three but decided for whatever reason to not do.
The show itself is open to the public at the moment.
I went in yesterday and it was a seething mass of people.
In particular, around the booth for Fortnight.
That Fortnight is obviously a global phenomenon at the moment They didn't really have any big news at the show, but they did have a huge, huge stand which had its own assault course built around it.
There were zip lines you could go on, walls to climb over.
There was like a bucking bronco, one of those ride on things.
But it was a missile from the game rather than a bull.
There were live acts on stages, including, I think I saw one that was how to craft a weapon.
And I saw, yesterday when I was there, there were people in costumes dancing to Aqua's Barbie Girl and throwing t-shirts out into an audience of literally thousands of people, it was a crush of people, all around the booth, huge queues.
People queued for hours to have a go at these things.
It really did highlight for me, how much of a phenomenon Fortnite is, because yes, I am aware that everyone talks about it and stuff and it is a really popular game, but until you kind of go to somewhere and see all these people lining up to get Any kind of interaction with the game.
It really drives home how big a deal it is and that was kinda surprising.
So yeah it's been good fun.
There's plenty to read about Gamescom.
If you do head to cnet.com/gamescom you will be able to see all of our coverage from there.
And but there's nothing yet more to come, but we are expecting some more hands-on with some games and the plenty of new games launching over the next few month, before the end of the year, including Shadow over Tomb Raider and other big titles which we have seen nothing of the at Gamescon like Red Dead Redemption 2.
Obviously there is plenty more gaming news to come so do keep your eyes on CNet.
Otherwise that is it from me for the show.
I am going to probably tidy up my hotel room and check out but not before Having a little bit more of this nice German beer.
So I'll see you guys back in the studio soon.
[LAUGH]
We miss him.
Anyway, so for more information on those latest games, and watch the trailors, all that kind of carry on, then just search Cnet.com for the word Gamescom, all one word, that's games and then com.
Without a dot or anything, it's just one.
You'll figure it out.
We've got a one stop article listing all the coolest new stuff.
So if you look for Gamescom 2018, biggest news in games, you'll find that there.
Or if you really wanna go in-depth, you can check out our console-based friends over at GameSpot.com.
They're not console-based, I don't know why I said [LAUGH] they were console-based, but they are people.
They're human beings, and no matter, don't let anyone tell you differently.
Some of them are PCs.
[LAUGH]
Yeah, exactly, so GameSpot.com.
And yeah, that's it.
Also, speaking of going off to Germany to look at a smorgasbord of cool new stuff, next week, we're not gonna be here at the podcast because we're gonna be over in Berlin in Germany for?
Yes, we'll be going to IFA.
IFA 2018.
Which is Europe's biggest tech show.
Not Europe's biggest phone show, that's Mobile World Congress, which we've already had.
This is the tech show, so that means that there will be more smart home stuff on display.
We are hoping to see some big smart home announcements, particularly from Samsung and LG.
But lots of other kind of [UNKNOWN] goods companies as well, so people that make fridges, freezers Cookers, other things that you have in a kitchen.
And hopefully some cool, I'm gonna personally be looking out for a lot of home robots.
Nice.
That's gonna be my thing, I hope, for the show next week.
Love a home robot.
And there's a whole other bunch of press conferences as well including Sony, Huawei And Honor and I think we might see some phones from them, hopefully at the new Huawei Meet, which is one of the kind of big phones of the year.
So definitely look out for that, cuz we'll have all of the news live from Ether.
Mm-hm, and if, by the way, if you were kind of listening to that and going, white goods, that's not very interesting.
[LAUGH]
This is the one time of year when white goods are interesting, because what these guys do is they take their fridges, and their microwaves, and their kettles, and their toasters, And then they put other stuff in them.
Yeah.
[LAUGH]
So you'll get fridges with tablets and the screens in the door.
And cameras inside.
Yeah, exactly, dishwashers with a washing machine in the lid and a toaster with a home hub router in them.
Yeah.
In one of the slots, and just yeah.
Yeah.
It's just fascinating, it's crazy.
Coffee machines with speakers, all sort of things.
Coffee machines with speakers.
And wi-fi connected everything.
You don't need your pasta maker to be wi-fi connected, but no, apparently, you do so-
And it will have Amazon's Alexa as well.
Yes, Alexa everything.
Hey Alexa, make me some fettucini.
Hey Alexa, I want some bread.
And [UNKNOWN] I'll see you in [UNKNOWN] next week.
Absolutely, yeah.
Great, well, that's it for this week.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
Leave a comment below on YouTube to tell us how much you enjoyed it or how much you hated it.
And don't forget to tell us what you thought of the poetry, cuz that was a big deal for us.
Yeah, should we make that a regular spot?
Should that be it's own seperate podcast?
Leave a comment down there.
Ideas are welcome.
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Just a big thumbs up.
Please do feel free to leave us a review on iTunes or as well, and yeah, if you want to drop us a line you can reach us at cnetukpodcast@cbsinteractive.com.
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Katie, are you on Twitter?
I am.
I'm @KatieCollins on Twitter.
How about you, Rich?
I am @RichKnightwell with a K on Twitter.
Right, that's it from us.
Thanks very much, we'll see you soon.
Bye.
