Castle Super Beast - CSB 191: Bin Laden's Laptop Connects Anime To 911

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps Hands on Bayo 3 Hitboxin' Witcher Remake, Henry Cavill Exits The Franco-Prussian War Created D&D Game Reviews: Purchase Guide vs Analysis You can watch us record the podcast live on twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast CD Projekt RED has announced The Witcher Remake, built from the ground up with Unreal Engine 5. This Witcher remake is being developed by Polish studio Fool's Theory with veteran Witcher staff. This is the previously announced title that was codenamed "Canis Majoris" Beau DeMayo says some of #TheWitcher writers 'actively disliked the books and games' when he was working on the series. When he became #XMen97's showrunner, his #1 rule was 'you had to be a fan' "You have to respect the work before you're allowed to add to its legacy" Liam Hemsworth will replace Henry Cavill as Geralt in ‘THE WITCHER’ Season 4. henry cavill has been fighting the show-runners for years and it looks like he finally gave up his fight Nibellion quits Twitter NASCAR driver recreates wall ride from 2005 GameCube game to qualify for championship Overwatch 2 is offering a Pachimari weapon charm cosmetic that costs 700 coins in the game, or roughly $7 USD. However,  a real keychain with the same design costs $5 on Blizzard’s Gear Store. So the digital item actually costs more than the real one.  It's faster to earn Overwatch 2 skins through playing WOW than the actual game, players suggest

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너 너 I am Woollie, I am Pat, pleased to meet you, pleased to meet you, in freshly shaven mode. Yeah, I decided to give it a trim. I was getting a little bit too guanado enemy number four for my liking.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah, so it has been a weird week in particular. Big, big joy when Friday came around and my copy of Bayo three was dropped off and I just

like, I'll just stare at this box. It's a pretty box. You like it. It's a pretty box. You having fun? Really? Have fun with Bayo three? Really enjoying the prettiness of the

box. It's quite shiny. In fact, I saw it. There was a moment. I'm not cracking that open. I'm not looking at. There was a don't do that. No, I know.

There was a moment this weekend where I had this, this emotion where I'm like, fuck, I got a, I'm tearing through Bayo three pretty fast, but I got a, I got to speed it up because my streams are as long as I thought they were going to be. And then I got to finish it by Monday

so I could talk about Bayo three and on Monday. And then I like open up my phone and then I'm like, oh, what's, what's the, what's the notification on my phone? Woolly versus is streaming stray. Yeah.

And I'm like, I'm okay. I'm in no rush. Okay. It's okay. I could do. Okay. Well, well, look, I mean, I'll have

the people know this, that it was, it was National Cat Day on, on Friday. So it was. Oh, that's great. Yeah. So and that had been sitting there anyways.

It was just completely apropos of nothing. I kind of was like, that's great. And I was like, oh, that's great. Yeah. So, and that had been sitting there and I was like, that's one of the one offs like neon white

sparked the electric jester to, you know, stray. These are all one off things that had been sitting for me ready to just like, I wanted to check them out. In two streams, but if you really sat down and parked your ass, you could totally do it in one.

Hmm. And, and it's the type of thing too, as well, where I had played a little bit before the night before with punch bombs. So basically, like got, she got her first negative test as of, you know,

yesterday. So it's like, OK, it was, she was testing positive up until day like whatever 13 it was or some shit like that. Like, it's crazy. And it was just like fucking winner.

Yeah. Like that, that, that real, that long lasting one. Good, good times there. So either way, that meant no returning to regular schedule by Friday, which was the hope. So what we do is kind of just like

continue to, you know, just solo stream and I grabbed stray, you know, and decided to pop that in instead. And, and I would just have to sit there and smolder in Bayo envy. And that's fine.

That's fine. Based on the idea, though, that like we got that, that negative probably will be clear and good to go for tomorrow. So I'm assuming we'll be able to finish and to and get started on three because Jesus

fucking Christ like what what's your timing? I'm obviously going to talk about three, but it's actually fairly easy to talk about three without story spoilers because the story is terrible because it's a bayonetta game.

Especially since you will, you just went through Bayo one year, like most of the way through Bayo two. Those games have just terrible story like just oh, it's it's just nonsense. I mean, fucking Enzo running around ass crack it his way through everything.

It's like, yeah, that's what you're here for. A couple of cool fights and then some daddy shit. And you think back to Bayo one and you're like, wow, this is a really confusing time travel story. Like that.

I'm not sure makes sense. And then Bayo two comes at you with like doubling up on the originals confusing time travel story to say that while those guys were time traveling, you were also time traveling with yourself at the same time.

And yeah. Okay, man. So who are the new demons that we're going to make weapons out of how cool are those fights? Like, let's just get right, you know, like, yeah. What am I going to say?

What what non surf board item am I going to surf on? And Bayonetta continues that tradition. I don't know if it has time travel in it because I haven't seen any. So but they've can they've replaced that confusion

with the confusion of the multiverse um and good and just how to put this the entire game story seems like a front

to have wildly dissonant levels that have nothing to do with one another and they don't want to explain how you got to them. Sure. Okay. So just Dr. Stranging it. Like, yeah.

So like go through a portal and have a gameplay change. You would have to explain how Halo how John Halo got to the ice planet. Mm-hmm. Bayonetta 3 says I walked through a portal.

Yeah, there was the ice planet. Yeah, done. Perfect. Um. Bayonetta 3 continues the excellent tradition of wow, I'm having a great time. And it's still

not the best bayonetta game of feeling. I said about every bayonetta game at some point. Huh. Interesting. All of them are really cool and seriously flawed

in other ways. Interesting. Okay. So if it's not Umbran Climax this time. So the big the big gameplay thing is they've removed like the hands and feet

weapon switching and they've replaced it with controlling your demon. Controlling your demon is a lot more in depth than I was expecting. Like Madama Butterfly has a four hit combo, a kick combo,

a special move, a series of ranged attacks, and a command list, which includes like Tetsuzanko and like her spin kicks. Okay. That's good because my expectation and I haven't watched

the final trailers, mind you. But my expectation is for Kaiju feeling like size combat, which is unfortunately just going to be big and sluggish. But no. Well, they are big and sluggish, right?

Okay. And here's a fun thing. I don't know if you've played any of the Platinum games, but say you do a combo. I have never played a Platinum game. You've never played a, okay, so let's say you did a combo and then you did one, two, three, four.

And then on the final hit, there was like a full second of hit stop and a light would flash on your character. And then you hit the button assigned to your astral chain and then the demon comes out

and does the finisher literally, literally exactly the same as an astral chain. Oh, that's how they're doing it. Okay. So like, hey, Wili, did you play astral chain? Yeah.

Yeah. You now know with 100% certainty how you control your demon in banner three. And do you like hold it to keep it out at that point? Yes. Okay.

Okay. Huh. And you, you can use it. You can use the demon button as your, your parry button. If you parry on the enemy flash and it's, it's, it's literally, it's literally, so I was sitting there

and I was playing it and like this, when you're playing the game, not when you're doing the fancy set pieces, but when you're running around and doing like fights it legitimately feels more of a sequel to astral chain than it does to Bayonetta two.

Huh. We like odd that, I mean, Bayo two is still very Bayo one, but there's, you know, little details that change here and there. What you're describing sounds drastically different.

Yeah. And like here's the puzzle that you solve by bringing your demon out and have the demon go through the room as the puzzle and it's, it's, it's great. Like actually, actually fighting dudes in that game is absolutely incredible

and they absolutely have the most of the set pieces of they've ever had. Okay. And none of them are after burner. Okay. None of them are mashed the button as hard as you can to play after burner. Right.

They're all like, oh, you're, you're riding down a thing and it's scary. Have a big, have a normal fight in a cool location. Or no, no, no. I'm talking like set pieces. I'm talking like that surf down

the building as the building's destroying. Okay. Okay. You know, but none of them are mashed the button before the one cool boss fight in the game like Bayo one had.

They're all like, oh yeah, that's a cool sequence. So, oh, this is the RE4 jet ski thing you want to do again. And this is the turret sequence where I'm allowed to hold down the button, et cetera. But the levels.

So I'm glad that I'm not the only person who felt this way because I looked up online and friend of the show sphere hunter was saying the same thing. The levels are really wide and they're really big and have collectibles all over the place.

They are also like a singular color palette and kind of just big boxes. They're, they're, they're just, they're really boring. Okay. The level, there's like, there's one, there's one level about halfway

through the game that is like, like a bayonetta one or two level. But like most of them are big, big open areas that are kind of bland looking. Well, so the, the, a lot of places in like Bayo one, like when you're going through Vigrid, it's a series

of hallways into, into fights. But in Bayo, in Bayo two, when you start out, it still has hallways into fights, but there's areas like Noa Tun, where you get into the city and it's a fairly giant first area to run around in and find little collectibles and whatnot.

And then occasionally you get a secret verse if you can. So, how do I put this? So Vigrid and, and, and Bayo two's location, there were a lot, there were a lot of hallways into rooms and to, to kind of, you know, plazas or whatnot.

Plazas, yeah. Lots of plazas. Yeah. Like, so one of the things that showed off is that you go to Tokyo and you do, you do the, you know, the 108 building stuff, right?

And you're in that square. And like most of that stage is you're in a big square, like cityscape with grey buildings and maybe a long corridor. Like you're, you're given a lot of room because your demon has

to come out, but it just, I don't know how to describe it, because the levels actually have a lot of secrets hidden all over the place, but they're all secrets hidden all over the place in wide open spaces. I just saw somebody in the chat

sum it up correctly. It feels like the entire game lives in the framerate dimension. Okay. Okay. And, and when you're playing it and you're like really doing a lot, you can see that it

desperately, desperately, desperately needs to live in the framerate dimension because the switch is having trouble. It's doing its best. Yes. It's, it's, it's really having a lot of trouble.

Um, so yeah, my only big complaint is the story as always and the, the, the levels are just there's a, the, the hub level looks like sonic frontier. So it looks like, looks like sonic adventure. What you're describing with the

whole astral chain, uh, if vacation of the combat system makes it sound as if there's a whole lot of, um, uh, demon summoning opportunities in game. Yeah. And again, my impression was that

there were going to be like a couple of cutscene moments that are not, not cutscene, but like up a little pseudo boss fight section at the end of a level after a series of normal verses. Are you saying that most verses actually have you calling out your

demons? Oh yeah. The only time, the only time you can't call the demon out is when you're in a area that is too enclosed for it to literally fit. Weird.

Oh wow. Okay. You've been doing about 95% of the time. Uh, and the, the demon summoning has a bunch of mechanics associated with it. So.

That, that you use all the time. So back when I kept saying ad nauseam that like, I wonder if this is scale boundish in its, in its like leftovers. Yeah. The desire of the team to have a game that lets you also fight with

a monster on your side. Is this in fact what we're seeing if that's what most of the game is? You know. Like you use them so often that like you're, so Panther within is gone. Um, and has been replaced with, um,

the movement ability associated with the demon associated with the weapon you are using. So. Oh. For example. Okay. So example, if you have the guns,

you'll be using madama butterfly and your dash will you instead turn into like a madama butterfly looking demon lady and you get a float on your jump. Right. Uh, there's other ones that I'm not going to mention, but instead of

getting the float, you get like a dash forward as part of your double jump or like a, a, a swing as part of your double jump. Okay. So it depends on what weapon you have equipped. So Panther within snake within and

crow within and such have all just been replaced with the weapon you have gives you a specific movement type ability. Right. And, uh, so you have a band at a one and two safe file, right? Uh, I have a safe file for one

on my Wii U though, like it's or not, we know, whatever, you know, go download band at a one in your switch, open it up, play one level, save. And that will unlock Scarborough Bear and, uh, love is blue. World is blue.

Love is blue as selectable weapons within like the first stage. Wonderful. Um, and when you do that, it gives you the entirety of the Bayo one and two moveset associated with them. So no feet anymore. So all weapons are both hands and feet

together. Yeah. And, uh, so I was kind of bummed by that, but it makes sense because the, the second batch of weapons is the demons. And you can switch the demons with the D pad.

Like you can, you can do a Madonna butterfly combo into like a Gamora combo. Quick switch demons. Okay. Quick styles, demon styles. Okay. Well, can you quick switch weapons

still one shoulder? Yeah, but only between two. Oh yeah. As usual. Yeah. That's, that's regular. Okay. Um, and the other thing is that, um,

so I was kind of bummed out because it, but it, you know, I never used the, the hands and feet thing all that much, which I usually ended up going like the, the, you know, grace and glory fists on the arms and feet and the guns and the arms and feet. Uh, but I don't know if it, the,

the technical reason behind it or the design reason. Uh, but as a result of that, they have been able to give you way more weapons overall. I feel like I'm halfway through the game and I have like 10. And I have like eight demons.

I mean, it could just be like making up for the lack of, you know, because customer, because when you mix two, you get essentially a, uh, not a new move list, but the way that the two things on your hand and feet interact with each other will determine like how your weaves come out at what,

you know, which combos you get and such. So it is, it's multiplicative. And if they're going to remove that, I could understand that kind of combination to what weave on what weapon has the demon follow up with what attack. So like your standard, your standard like punch, punch, kick, punch with the

guns and Gomorrah, Gomorrah comes up from like the floor and it's like a headbutt, right? But if you do punch, punch, punch, punch, punch, punch forever and then follow up with Gomorrah, Gomorrah comes behind and does a huge swipe that knocks the enemy back at you.

But if you used Madame a butterfly, she would do like a knee drop or like an elbow. So, so essentially weapons and demons have been decoupled from each other. But the weapons still lower wise is a demon.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No, all the, all the gameplay stuff is really excellent. The only bummer I have with the levels is like, how do I put this?

So like I said, they were wide open and huge and all that and they have all this hidden stuff as a result, when you're trying to scrape for stuff, like 40 per, like, like a third of the, of the level is actually fighting

enemies. Yeah. Versus are like far apart. So to be honest, the, like the first two games are also kind of like that though. Are they? Yeah.

In your memory, in your memory, like if you sprint from verse to verse, you can just book it and get nonstop combat. But if you are trying to find all the alphimes, if you're trying to find all the little secret verses and you're running under the water and doing these little like

blow up that barrel over there or hit that bench. Oh, now there's a verse. It's going to take up quite a bit longer to just scrape. So I am, I am mentioning like the, I feel that a lot of levels are a little bland.

However, I still, I'm going to roll that back a little bit. I, as I think about them more, I do like them better overall. Because what they've done with this is secrets are a lot easier to find. They are, they are a lot easier to find.

Thank God. Alphimes and secret missions and whatever the fuck the demon equivalent of an alphime is, you just see them. Like you'll, you'll come into a map and you'll turn the camera like behind you and you'll be

like, well, there's an alphime like literally 400 feet away from me. I can see it. I just walk over to right. That's great. That's great because it's not, it's downtime, honestly. Like when you get to the alphime,

it's fun to do the mission, but it ends up like doing it now and looking on it. I'm like, yeah, there's a lot of downtime between verses that I kind of wish wasn't there, you know? So that's tight.

That's tighter. That's awesome. And I've ended up doing almost all the alphimes and, and demon portals. I guess. Muspelheims or? Mus, sure.

Fuck it. Yeah. And that's great. Those are a ton of fun. And on top of that, there's three hits. You remember the Umber and Tears of Blood and what an absolute nightmare those were?

The, well, the, the collectible story. The hidden crows. Yeah. The crows and the, yeah.

So those were, so now every stage has three, a bird, a cat, and a frog. Okay. And when you, when you

find all three in a mission, you unlock the secret mission associated with that chapter. Sick. Okay. And it just shows up on, on the map and then you just pick it.

Um, and on top of that, the, the, when you hit start and you see like bird, cat, bird, cat,

toad, that's the order they're going to appear in, in the stage. So if you see one, you know, you missed it. Yeah. So I got into a situation where I'm like,

I got the bird and the toad, but the cat was the one in the middle. I'm like, I totally missed it. I'll have to replay the thing. So wait, so the secret mission is not in the level that it appears

outside on the map. It's in the sub chapter now. Okay. And it's stuff like, you know, get through the mission super fast or do this puzzle thing. You know,

the, the typicals that, and they reward you with, actually no, sub chapters and secret missions are different. Secret missions are purple and they bring you to a frame rate secret mission dimension where you're doing stuff like the enemy step challenge

and stuff like that. And then the sub chapter is a completely separate mini level that has a challenge associated with it. Okay. Um, yeah. No, making that shit easier to find sounds fantastic. So I'm going to tell you this right now,

this might drive you crazy because it sucks for recording. Uh, they will hide missions. So they will hide weapons, demons and accessories inside sub chapters and secret missions. Yeah.

The versus, not versus the, the LPs. Right. Yeah. The LP, I have not found any LPs, but,

now it's like, I, there was one sub chapter that I beat and it was like, here's a weapon and a demon. I'm like, this was very optional. I did not have to do this.

Interesting. Um, yeah, you know what, I actually, you know, Bay of Three is great. There's only one real,

real giant big complaint so far. I haven't beaten it. Apparently the ending is terrible. Oh yeah. Okay. Everyone I have seen who has beaten the game was like, wow,

that is awful. Um, so you see the, the homunculus, the, the green warframe dudes. Uh, yeah,

from the first trailer, that is the enemy force. Yeah. Uh, I'm about halfway through, maybe two thirds. They represent 99.9% of the enemy roster.

Angels and demons have been entirely regulated to secret missions. Hmm. And alphimes. Okay. Okay.

And as a result, I'm like, I like, cause you, you've, you'll fight like affinity and beloved and pain and resentment and stuff like that. He was like,

ah, I love these guys. I wish I was fighting them more often. Okay. I really like those guys a lot. So two obviously has the whole sequence of, um, like returning to,

returning to Vigrid and then fighting the Bayo one enemies that need no introduction at that point. And, uh, it's, it's a fun little like, oh shit. Hey,

it's you guys, right? The return of the cameo from the first game. I mean, in this game, I would expect it, especially since the way the trailer kind of introduced the concept of the new group, I would expect it to be majority new enemies and then a little bit

of the all stars here and there. So, I might be pulling this out of my ass, but I have a sneaking suspicion as to why the old cast is used very sparingly. They do a really bad job of dealing with the demon summon. Like when you own a secret mission, so most of the secret missions that allow you to fight the

old cast don't allow you to summon your demons. They're actually in very enclosed spots. Is it because they're just retroactively not built to handle that mechanic? Well, there are a couple of times you can like you fight a pain, which is that golden with the set with the saw blades where you fight beloveds and pulling,

pulling like a demon out, you just fucking ping pong them off the fucking walls. Like, like it feels like they were not able to be updated to deal with your new arsenal because you just fucking beat the shit out of them. Okay. Okay.

Are you still picking up terrible lore books throughout the levels? Yes. You are picking up, you are picking up terrible, terrible lore books. Okay. You're picking up action figures. You're picking up trading cards.

You're, there are, I appreciate putting trading cards and action figures and these types of little look bonus things in the game. I don't appreciate, hey, what's that secret over there? I'm going to go get, oh, it's a fucking trading card.

Sure. And of course items are still, you know, being collected and stuff. I don't know how they work. I don't use that shit. Well, so the thing is, is that like you can, as much as you can ignore all the items as you can in all of these types of games,

and I think they, I've heard that they punish you less, but regardless, whatever, the one though is the one that's like, oh, get more rings, right? Because you use the get more rings item, and then you can get more money to buy the cool things you want so you can get all your moves faster.

So, Yeah, you, you, um, you're, you're going to, okay. So the game has a skill tree now. You don't buy moves. Skill tree. What?

Okay. Here's how it works. Right. Here's how you're getting, you're getting, you're getting like these little green, like Magatama looking things off the new guys, right?

And you get the gems off the demons, you get halos off the, off the angels, right? So now you have three currencies, right? So the way that it works is items and upgrades are going to,

and accessories, they're going to cost the new currency, the little green orbs, whatever the fuck they are. I don't know, I don't remember their name, right? Demon crystals, which you get from torture attacks

and versus only are your upgrades for your skill tree, right? Okay. Angel halos are explicitly used for costumes and decorations. Okay.

So the, the perfumes and such, the essences rather, what, so when you say upgrades, you, by that, you mean new moves.

Okay. So I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you one example, and it's a demon that you know. It's Madama Butterfly, the demon you start with. Okay. So,

you're looking at, whatever the fucking purple gun is called, I absolutely can't remember, but the new gun, right? The new, the new default weapon. All right. What do you want to do with it?

Do you want the forward back spin attack with the arms? Do you want the forward back kick, which is the dash? Do you want the stinger equivalent? Do you want the high time equivalent?

Stuff like that. You would buy those on the left side of the tree. Right? On the right side of the tree, is your buying Madama Butterfly's new moves, such as Tetsuzanko or the spin kick, or increasing the length

of her charm move on enemies. Okay. And there, so there are like, there's like four or five built in on the left for your weapon, and then like 10 to buy, and then there's two or three built in on the demon,

and then like eight to buy on the demon, and then there is a skill in the middle that can only be achieved once you have met both sides together, which is usually a spin move where the demon comes out. So that's what I was going to ask is like, when you're saying,

when you're saying you have both sides, like each of those sides, then gates another inside layer of upgrades. Yeah. It's usually one, one big skill in the middle that you need like most of both to do.

And it's usually, it's usually like spin with kick, and it's usually the demon comes out to do your spin move. Okay. There are also things like, do you want to buy the final level of the charm upgrade with Medama Butterfly?

Well, charm 10 enemies before you're allowed to purchase it. Okay. Okay. Requirements. Yeah. Okay. So,

so you have skill tree on the left and skill tree on the right. The reason why this matters is because I got a weapon in the third level that I really thought was super cool. The demon associated with is my most hated character action

upgrade I have ever encountered. That was fighting words. Wow. I hate it. Wow. Okay. I hate it. Okay.

Okay. But it meant that I can upgrade the weapon separate from the demon associated with it. Right. The problem is that you get so many that I was, so I do the thing is like

I play with the guns on the primary and then the new weapon is on the secondary. Right. Yeah. I'm going to be replaying it. The next Bayo stream I'm doing is like Friday. I'm going to be replaying it a bunch over the week to just upgrade all of those because,

boy, there are a lot. That's, yeah. So that's pretty much how I do it as well. Like default on Layout A and then B is the new thing to try out. Yeah. So like you unlock like Scarborough Fair. Right.

Wow. Cool. Here's the Bayo one move set. It has its own skill tree. And when you upgrade the skill tree for Scarborough Fair, you have the entire Bayo one move set. Like not just the default stuff

that came with Scarborough Fair. I mean, after burner kick, I mean that jumping dash. I mean, hold the fucking button to spin around and do the goddamn break dancing, the gunshoeing move, like all that shit. So then, but Love Is Blue has a different move set. Yeah, because Bayo two had a different move set.

So you have to buy them again. Okay. Yeah. And then when you switch from weapon A to weapon B, your demon on the D pad stays the same. Yeah. Okay. So like I was using for my go to,

like I'm dying. I have to solve the problem is the guns with Gamora. Okay. Right. I don't actually like Madonna Butterfly as one of the summonable demons. I don't care for her. So currency wise,

what that ends up sounding like is that you have to kind of rebuy the same skills across each weapon. Yeah, kind of like you're going to have to buy the high time equivalent for each weapon. Yeah. Okay. So I guess beforehand it was just a big list and you just spend the coins on the list

and then once you get it, you got it, right? Now you got Foot Stinger and that'll never go away. Now there are so many that like it's actually really, really easy to completely max out a weapon. The problem is, is that it's not easy to max out that weapon before you get a new weapon. A new one, right.

Okay. Because they're actually giving them to you super often. And no proud sold refund system, I assume. No, you don't need it. Yeah. Okay. Interesting.

That's an interesting choice. And I guess by giving you a fuck ton of weapons, it just means like, yeah, play more, right? It's just that's pretty much what it's doing. Well, I finished a mission in which at the end of the mission I was given two weapons. Wow. Okay.

Okay. So I think that's the first time that's ever happened in a character action game. Two at the same time? Yeah. As well as two demons associated with them. Right. So if I wanted to on the next level,

I could just swap out the whole thing for all new shit. And you can carry up to four demons at a time? Three demons because down is taunt. Okay. Okay. Do you? So moon of Mahakala still an accessory? Still got to buy it 200K?

It is still there. It is still there. I don't know if it's 200K, but it's still in there. Okay. All the old accessories either are already there or I assume them to be there because with all this new defensive shit, I thought for sure moon of Mahakala wasn't there.

No, it showed up. It was just a couple of chapters later. Okay. And bird trick as well? Bird trick? Bird trick? So you trick teleport up to the nearest enemy, but like you do bird within while you're doing it?

You don't have bird within anymore. Right. So I'm like, is there an equivalent basically? It's like LL. It's LL on. You would double tap on the fucking R button. Yeah. You would do a dash right over.

Yeah. Okay. So that's all bayonetta. There's Viola. Right. Right. Who gets about one mission for every four of Beyo's missions? What?

Yeah. It goes Beyo, Beyo, Beyo, Viola, Gen. Beyo, Beyo, Beyo, Viola, Gen. Not DMC five then. No. No. However, when you go to the sub chapters, you can pick whichever one you want.

On replay of normal chapters, can you pick? No. No. Maybe on New Game Plus. No way. It's very impossible. Okay. It's very impossible.

What is that reminding me of? What am I thinking of? Am I thinking of Mega Man X3 where you get to use zero once and then when he dies, he's gone from the game forever? No. But I obviously don't like when you don't get, you know, a decent amount of time on a character. So here's the thing, right?

Here's the thing. So Viola is really cool and has a ton of cool stuff. Beyo has like, I'm looking at the screen. I'm going to guess like 15 weapons just by the end of the game. You can even do the unlockable shit as well as probably like 15 demons associated with it and all the moves therein. Viola has a samurai sword and Cheshire.

Okay. And that's it. And she has a move set that is very in depth for that. But that's all she gets. She is Nero without Exceed. She has, okay, she hasn't been given the equivalent buildup that Dante gets so that you can build them both. And Jean.

Jean is a side scrolling minigame that is terrible. You see it in the trailers. It's like an elevator action fucking thing as Jean. You're not actually doing it. No, it's fucking, it's bad. It's like, it's literally like four minutes long each time you do it, but it's terrible. Man.

Okay. Well shit. I was, all right. I was pretty excited for Viola to be a fully fleshed out character that you could do a sequence of levels with. Alan Nero. You get Viola levels as a treat. Yeah.

And I was kind of hoping they would be like a, you know, like obviously not starring role, but because like, look, Dante in, in, uh, uh, okay. In five, it kind of comes together a little bit more to, to give Nero a fuck ton of shit. But in four, Dante overwhelms Nero with the amount of shit he can do, right? Yeah.

It's no contest, but you're still getting a regular amount of progression with Nero, especially when you go and do the first half of the game so that like, it feels like you're, you're, you know, you're, you're spending time and you're getting progression with the character and you're, and you're learning them. Viola does get stuff as you go through the game, but it's not, it's like the Bay,

Bayo is getting one or two level weapons per level. It feels like, and Viola is getting like, oh, here's a cool little new gimmick or here's a cool little new thing, but it's not the end of the world. What Viola does have is when you hold down the demon button, instead of controlling the demon manually and Bayo becoming like a stuck, like a target, Cheshire acts completely by himself.

He is totally out of your control. You have no ability to do anything with him, but you get access to your hand-to-hand move set. And the block parry thing. No, no, you can't block because Cheshire is the sword. So when you throw the sword away to block Cheshire, you are left with just Viola's terrible dodge. Huh.

Okay. When you have the sword with Viola, yeah, it's the block parry system and it works just like which time, the closer it is to the frame that it hits you, the longer which time is going to go off for. Odd. What an odd choice to make her like an occasional bonus level as opposed to at least a stretch of like two,

three missions, maybe, maybe four so that you can like sink your teeth in, get to use this character and be like, all right, now we're switching back over. You know? So because like, remember, there was a character Viola is great. I would love to see more of that character. I completely forgot that you took control of Loki at all in.

Yeah. So I also forgot that, but you do take control of him for like 10 seconds. Yeah. Right. And then I mean, I'm not counting like a controlling little character in one, like you do have a little run from the monster, throw the cards out.

Okay, that was fun. Now switch back to Bayo kind of moment. And I guess the whole introduction of a playable new character. Holy fuck. You would take it to be more than just a little bonus thing, you know? Yeah. It's about 20 percent of total levels, at least where I'm at

so far. Okay. And like very, like it is literally one, two, three, maybe four bayonetta levels, then Viola, then Jen. And that's happened twice now. So I'm pretty sure it's going to keep going down that same direction. Yeah.

The aggressive character switch in the middle of the story might not be for everybody, but for me, like I like that. You know, I like everybody getting their time. It is obviously not as good of a pure action game as Devil May Cry 5. It focuses a lot more on set pieces like the other games did. And the set pieces they went with are definitely the best they've done.

Like they are large, zany, weird, cool fucking things. A couple of them while cool are fucking awful. None of them are as bad as the afterburner sequence, but there's one that's like a platforming section with like a demon. And it's just like, this sucks. Okay. Yeah.

All in all, it is a really great, highly flawed game. Um, have, has there been a return or not on a return, but like, has there been a lot of, um, flight combat? Because in two, none, none, zero. Okay. Because in two, you have a bunch of fights where it's your, you're doing your full grounded moveset, but you're floating through midair and you have to fly in and out of like the,

the, the various bosses. No, that none, zero. Okay. Okay. Zero. None. Interesting. Okay.

Cool. Um, also you get to, you get to dress up your, your, your bandetta and your viola with, with different colored costumes and different colored, um, uh, colors. Like eat, like standard bio can even be changed. Have her color palette changed. Like you can have her wear a white dress or you have a wear a bright red dress.

Naturally. Um, the colors they chose for these, however, are all like the strongest possible shades and all look terrible. Um, like it's, it's like bright pastel pink or like crimson red or like, or like super bright, like sea foam green. And it's like, um, do they bring back any of the, um, the extra modes? Like, uh, um, like the co-op climax and, and, uh, outside,

like outside of story mode stuff. Tag climax rather. On the main menu, there's literally new game continuing options. Oh wow. Okay. Uh, so if it, if that shit is there, it's all hidden behind, uh, completion.

Okay. Huh. Man. I will say one thing. Man, there's like, it's happened once and it's probably going to happen again, but you're sitting there and you're like, wow, $4,000 for that would have been a great deal. Oh yeah.

Not. Oh yeah. Not a lot going on. There's like, like the opening cutscene has the Bayonetta one Bayo and has like four lines of dialogue. And you're like, wow, that would have been, uh, that would have been a pretty good day's work for just that. Well, you know, things had to go and get complicated.

Don't have an abortion. No. Send your, send your, uh, your Bayonetta support dollars over to these fucking pro life causes. What? What are you? I don't know. All right.

I spoke with somebody and they, uh, implied to me that not only is that pro life thing kind of awful, but it's also possibly a scam because it takes in lots of money and the money doesn't appear to go anywhere. Attention Bayonettas, please put all your donations in this Bayonetta donation box and you rip off and you rip off the sticker and it's like, it's a fucking, it's a tithe collection plate. You're like, what the, is this a collection plate?

Helena? What? No, I would never that enough with this. I'm going back to the irony in somebody who coins the term. Bayonetta telling you to stop Bayonetting. Oh man. Well, she did say that you did not have permission to touch. Right.

Yeah. All that, all that sexuality was actually, um, saying that you did not have permission. Um, so really it, it's kind of, you know what, it's, I don't know why, I don't know why this pings in my head. Uh, I think, I think the tag is denial. You remember in a fucking Bayo two when, uh, Bayo can just summon like a 10 bigger or demons to kill Gamora, like just like, oh,

wow, it's even bigger. And you have this feeling of like, you could, you could do that the whole time. Why didn't you just do that against Balder? Right. Bayo three has that times like a hundred where it's like, wow, an even bigger threat. Um, I just pull this thing out of my ass.

Okay. I make the biggest thing ever. My interpretation is that because you have to sell your soul to a demon and then it collects that soul upon your death is that the more you use them, the, the, the, the, like the more time on the clock you're losing or something like that, you know, so you. So yeah, sure.

Except no, cause Bayo, the, the witches live forever until they're killed. Like that was something put in Bayo one. But like Rodin in like the first scene in the game will literally look at the camera and go, wow, I didn't know she could also do that. And I'm just like, what? Why did you do that before? You could have done, you could have done this gigantic fucking

1000 foot tall monster shit at any time in the prayer. Why do you just do it? You just done it. Why is young Dante so much more powerful than DMC one Dante? Why is, why is devil may cry three Dante running laps around him in the first game when he's an adult and he should be stronger? He forgot everything. It's just silly.

Yeah. The game is silly. Yeah. The game is silly. I can't wait to see the conclusion of this terrible, terrible story. I am like, like, I, you know what? You know when you feel, you know, when you're looking at something and you feel it in your gut and you're like, don't do that.

Like you can kind of, you can kind of see where it's going to go. Okay. And you're like fucking, fucking don't do that. That would be awful. Aside from all of that. Have you had an awesome fight with somebody on foot who is your size and your speed that's keeping up with you? Yes.

Fuck yeah. Good. That's it. I had one. That's it. And it was even on the right mission number. Excellent. I am hoping to have another one of those in the future.

That was like the biggest downside of like Bayo to where you got to fight Boulder a couple of times. And then the final boss was that gigantic fucking armed. See. Fucking awful. See, Boulder gives you the two in one though, because you get, you get the like sage form and then you get the like Balder form. And like, yeah, the sage was just the hottest fucking God.

Yeah. After all this time, I'm still like, can I please get Balder as a playable character because you could play as him a little bit in Bayo to his multiplayer. And that's not enough. Okay. Now to, but to be fair, uh, Nello Angelo Angelo Credo rather one, you get one criminal criminal, the best fucking fight.

And you only get it once, dude. I don't know what they were thinking with that. I guess they were just out of time, you know, that it. So for DMC four, yes, that is the solution. They were out of time. They did not have any time. Um, yeah, games way longer than, uh, you probably expect. Okay.

Like, uh, I streamed it, uh, four days and I feel like I'm halfway through. Well, the moment I heard that there was a second playable character, I said, Oh, add some extra missions for her. No, there's just really long and there's tons of it. Okay. And it's, it's fairly easy to unlock the sub chapters. And the sub chapters are significant in them of themselves. And the, the Muspelheims and Alfheims and all that are easy to find.

So you go and find them and you, you do them. Also the third in a big series is like, you got to kind of blow out everything and pull out all the stops, you know, a larger than life kind of feel. I have a tip for you. That's actually fairly important. Um, Viola and Bayonetta share health upgrades in that. Hmm. Um, so hold on, not in the way you think, not in that when you upgrade Bayo,

Viola gets upgraded. I mean, there's a total amount of hearts and moon pearls in the game. And when you get them in Viola's level, you can just go spend them on Bayo if you want. But you have to pick who gets it. Yeah. Oh, okay. Um, well, if Viola is going to get less missions than that's objectively.

I highly recommend giving them all to Bayo. That's objectively a worse choice. Yeah. And then I saw in my, in my playthrough, I maxed out on Bayo's moon pearls. When you give them now I'm just feeding. When you give Viola a moon pearl. Um, she is how long Cheshire can stay out. Okay.

All right. So, I mean, I saw this get mentioned a little bit earlier, but it's like, um, if you have to, like comparing the story between Bayo and DMC, and I'm like, there's no contest. DMC is a dumb story, but it's way better than Bayonetta's. Yeah. Secret. It's way better to be C to D.

Like, you know, there's, there's, there's a whole lot of nonsense in it, but things happen and stuff is legitimately like, oh, cool. Yeah. Okay. The sequence of events that occurs is like, I'm down with that. I'm, um, you know, uh, Bayo's always been nonsense story for sure. Oh, it's, but yeah, but that's, you know, that's not why we're showing up. There is, there is like a, there's like a problem that happens in the story.

And the problem is that people don't look behind them and it happens in every level, like in every single level. There's a cutscene where I'm like, you should look behind you. And they're like, no, I'm amazing. And something hits them from like, like literally every single level. And I'm like, this is stupid. And I feel like it's, they made a bunch of characters that are like Superman and they don't know how to have anything hit them unless they're just literally just

cheap shot from the back. Hmm. Okay. Uh, it is, it is always, uh, odd to see like Bayonetta being not flawless because she carries herself so flawlessly as a character. Um, but, uh, yeah. So, uh, I guess each of these games then coming in with such a massive change to basic basic combat, like this is going to be an astral chain game because it's directed by

the guy who made astral chain. Yeah. Like each, each game's primary gimmick is different. Um, uh, wait, hold on. Is that true? One second. He worked. Okay.

You scared me out of director on Bayo three. No, not, not astral chain director. My mistake. Hold on. Uh, he was crew on it. He was not. The director was, uh, Takahisa Tauro. Okay.

Um, and what else at platinum? Wonderful 101 crew as well. Yeah. Okay. Oh, this, this continues the platinum tradition of picking up a thing and being like, Oh, I get to play this game from platinum while holding this thing. Yeah. Okay.

There's a wonderful 101 weapon in the game that is just like now I get to play the worst version of wonderful 101 you could ever imagine. So, so, uh, it says, so the director of Bayo three is, uh, so the, the role he played on astral chain scale bound and wonderful 101 is game designer. So yeah, it does actually add up. Um, you're seeing, you're seeing that flavor applied to Bayo. Huh. Okay.

Okay. Interesting. Uh, I'm curious what we're going to see of like, uh, what was it, project GG at some point in the future. Um, because that's also a whole like, uh, uh, superhero, ultra man, uh, sentai kind of thing that they're describing. But, um, with the whole bit where you just, you were talking about the setting there, you said they're literally in Japan.

So you're fought, you're controlling giant monsters and you're actually rampaging through Tokyo. Yes. Yeah. So like, and, and, and because of that, the event sequences are going to take inspiration from certain Japanese themes over the years. We're just going to shoehorn it right into the bayonet of franchise, whether you want it or not.

Here we go. Yeah. So when you go through the levels, well, it's, it's cool shit. So fuck yeah, the levels feel very much like a Genesis game, like, like a, like a series of sonic levels because it's, because it's literally, what do you mean by that portal? What's that? What do you mean by that? Okay.

Let's, uh, let's take a look at, uh, Sonic and Knuckles, right? Sonic and, ooh, I accidentally, okay. In Sonic and Knuckles, your first level is the island, right? Oh, the green island with the mushrooms, right? And the second level is, oh, flying battery zone. It's a completely tonally different thing. It's machinery and, and all that shit, right? And then I think the third one is like, you know, we're going to Egypt and it's like,

what are these? Do these levels exist? And no, they don't shut up, shut up. We wanted, we wanted an ice level and a fire level and an Egypt level and a shut up. Just shut the fuck up. That's what, that's what I mean. Okay. Like, like it feels like 16 bit.

It doesn't help that you're collecting chaos emeralds. The MacGuffin is, I fucking forget the name. It's chaos something and it is, it is functioning as a fucking chaos emerald. Wow. Okay. All right. Sure. Sure.

Like, like Viola might as well turn to fucking Bayo and say, Sonic, we have to go get the fucking chaos emeralds to stop Dr. Robotnik. Wow, I'm not even wrong. Like I'm exact, like, you know, you do that thing where you start to exaggerate and then you think about it like, no, that's actually exactly what's happening. So I was, I was, when I was trying to think of like switching to another character, I was thinking about like switching to knuckles, but like, what's the spread on that? You know, is it, is it comparable?

I imagine you get more, like, I imagine the percentage is not a, well, what, from what you're describing, 20% of the game. Yeah. 20%. Right. Geez. Okay. Cool.

Yeah. Cool game. Can't wait. Can't wait. Like getting excited for its terrible ending. Like get it, like, like, even if I had not heard anything, you know, when you can feel it, when you're like, the answer to this question is going to be stupid. Because the big question of the game is who is the big bad is the answer daddy and I'm

like, like, there's, there's like, like, part of me was like, if it's Balder again, I'm going to shit. No, this time it's that would be, it's Viola's daddy. We got to get another dad in there. You know what? Why not? Yeah. Rodin's daddy, what?

I mean, it is, um, as, but it's like, okay, if it's Balder a third time, as long as the fight is fucking sick, then who cares? I don't think, I don't think it's, I don't think it's Balder a third time. That was like an offhanded thing. Yeah. I'm going to stop having this conversation. Sure. I'm going to make that face that I make that you hate.

Right. Right. Right. Okay. Um, yeah. Cool game. Uh, excited, excited to see it end, um, the, the weapons that you said you've been getting in droves, are they mostly new?

Are they mixed of returning? Oh, uh, aside from, aside from love is blue and counting functional replacements, like if there's no Kafka, but you get a new bow and arrow, I'm going to say that's a returning type thing. Okay. There's a, there's a, I would say there is, there is, it's, it's like 90% new. Okay. Okay.

Sick. So far, anyway, like I have not, I have not, I have not. Like I have not gotten a samurai sword yet. Hmm. And I assume that I won't get one because Viola has that. Okay. But who knows? Interesting.

All right. Cool. Um, hopefully, hopefully this week, uh, can crack that open anything else this week. I didn't. I was going to play signal us and I was going to play risen evil eight gold and then I just didn't. Man, that shit looks incredible. And I just did fucking pay.

Oh, but I am going to be doing signal us an RE eight gold this week. I'm just going to spread it out. Yeah. If you want to check that out, go to twitch.tv slash Pat stairs at yeah, I also tonight going to be on a twitch.tv slash peach saliva stream for Halloween around a six PM PDT. That's 9 PM. We're in where we're going to play a preview build of the devil in me, which is the last game of the dark pictures anthology.

Hmm. Yeah, signal us chaos gears, chaos gears, chaos Emerald, I don't care. Um, signal us looks incredible. Gotta, uh, see more of that and, um, yeah, that's so it's a, is it, um, I wonder how long it is. It's 25 bucks. I, I, okay. I'm going to, I'm going to go to how long to beat.

I'm going to. That's what I was wondering. Top of my head. I'm going to say six hours. HLTB. How long? It's early, it's early, so it might not be accurate, but not nine and a half all. Ten and a half main plus sides.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Catch it. Uh, okay. Well, over on, uh, my end, uh, over on the verses. Yeah. Um, I had, uh, some, some, some, some solo stuff I did.

So yeah, I played stray and, uh, that's a simple ass little be a cat. You're a cat. Do cat things kind of game, um, that feels like an extremely high end Xbox live arcade game. It's pretty much it's like, like it is very much walk forward and press a to jump to the preset location. There's, there's, you know, not a whole lot of complexity to it. And like when you do eventually have to start like dealing with, you know, anything that

is a threatening, you, you just kind of shine a light. So it's as simple as that. Very basic. But if you're down to just like do cat things and keep it, have it fun, then it's fun. You know, um, I fucked around with boxes and pushing paint cans over the ledges of things. And I got those, uh, goofy ass boxes to clip through the world and it was a good time. Good for you, man.

Uh, I enjoy, I enjoy the chillness that, that, that game brings and, um, yeah, I'm not done. Um, I got to, I guess, uh, the point at which you gain the, uh, the light weapon, so to speak. Um, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that. Yeah.

And, uh, no, it's, it's, it's, it's cool because I also feel like it goes on my list of like, I can recommend this to any human being that I know. I could not possibly recommend it to any human being that I know at its normal price. How much was it? It's full price. Yeah. Or, or pseudo full priced. Let me see.

I think it was like 50 bucks. Uh, 36.99 Canadian, 36, 40 bucks, 40 bucks, Canadian, that's still okay. I would, I would be a tentative recommend on that. Okay. And it is, it is fucking short and well, not no depth. Okay. Well, not as a consumer purchasing, uh, guide, but as a content, uh, uh, uh, guide, I would say that I would like, that's a game that I can easily recommend to everybody I know.

Um, there's a couple of games that kind of fall into that, like, but even then it's like res is really cool and open, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that's for everybody. Whereas like, I would tell my mom, like, yo, mom, you can play this game straight. You'd like it. It'd be, it'd be fun. You know, um, I don't know, man, those robots don't have Jesus. No, but you can, you like, I feel like the slow, like being a cat and then slowly getting introduced to the setting is going to work on most people.

You know, you're going to buy into it by the time you get to the. You get to the robots and the, and the, the, the, you know, the history of the post-apocalyptic setting and, um, the robots are fun, little charming people, you know, they're nice. So, um, yeah, I feel like I can, I like that. It's another game that I can just be like, yo, have you tried this? You can, you should play this. Anybody can play this. You're going to like it.

And then also, uh, you got your meow button and as we all famously know, cat's meowing at each other. It's really important that that game had a meow button and that it also has like 800 knock the fucking shit over for no reason. That was the entire, that was the entire focus of my game. Like I'm just aggressively finding things to knock over. And yes, it doesn't make sense that cats are going to meow at each other without people around, but who the fuck cares?

You have to meow. I have a cat. Cat will meow at me. The cat will get up on a table and I'll be like, get down off that table and the cat will look at me and just like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Like goose game, get a goose cat game, get a cat. That's it. Um, animals are assholes.

I love them. They are our friends. They can be huge sharks, but it's also like when the game is designed in such a way where it's like your goal in life is to just knock shit over everywhere and to stomp on every keyboard you see. Um, also if you see a carpet or a couch, fuck it up. Just fucking mercilessly. I still think my favorite thing ever was I was playing FF 14 and the dog was like, bro,

bro, bro, like pet me. I want attention. And I'm like, not now, buddy. And he picked up a book with his mouth and threw it at me and then stomped his feet. Yeah. God damn it. Fine. Fine.

No, you can be such a fucking little shitty attention whore cat that like you go to sleep next to people having a conversation and you're sleeping, but you can still press the meow button to force them to pay attention to you, you know, which is just like that is, that is so like, yeah, that's the right energy. It's like, Hey, I know you're trying to carry on with your life and I'm completely ignoring you, but you should be paying attention to me anyways. Fuck you. Yeah.

So like Elmo has started to do a new thing and it's the cutest thing in the world and it's like, oh, he loves me. And I'm like, I could punch the cat in the fucking face. So Elmo likes to sleep on your on top of your head like a little crown. He likes to do this to page, but he's recently started doing it to me. But part of that is that he will lick the top of my head as like a like grooming to be like, I love you, you know, the cat dad or whatever. The problem is that I am bald and whereas other people, their hair just get licked,

like he's scraping into my scalp and it fucking hurts. Yeah, you're getting the spikes like shit. That tongue is made for like for grooming and and and combing and cleaning. You're getting spiked up. Yeah. And so that my my elderly, almost 14 year old cat is lying on top of my head. I'm trying to sleep and he's like per per per and he's like stretching and he's like lick, lick, lick.

I'm like, I love you too, buddy. But like it feels like a person has sandpaper and he's going, so I pick him up and I put him down and then I fall asleep and then sure enough, a few minutes later. Yeah. Yeah. The only way I've found to solve it is to put him on top of Paige's head while she is sleeping and then just just like if she wakes up, just pretend to be asleep and just play.

Oh, the cat body. It's impossible. Have you tried not being bald? You know what? I've never tried not being bald. I have not tried it. It's not much better because dreads are just chew toys for everything. Oh, yeah.

Everything is swatting. Everything is biting. My friend. Oh yeah. Because your hair, if a cat hit it would act like a cat toy. It's a toy. Like just the. So they're just going for it nonstop.

And like, um, uh, uh, which we'll call it, uh, Steph's, um, my brother, a lost Steph's brother has little, little, uh, little, little pup that like is super hyperactive and loves to jump up and try to like grab on and hang, you know? So it's like, it's like a challenge to like mount the tree and grab one of the branches, which is what my hair effectively is. And, um, even I remember at, uh, my friend's place, uh, who he had a bird, a little budgie and it would fly over and it would land on the shoulder and, you know, it's like, oh cool.

Hey, what's up? On the, on the dreads. So, um, yeah, it ain't much better when they're this distracting because they just look like a tree to be like bitten at and played with, you know, um, the shadow of the Colossus music does start playing once they, once they, they land on me anyway, um, so, uh, cat game was a lot of fun and, uh, we'll be coming back to that. Um, and it was a, yeah, we had like quite a, it was the type of thing that needed some, um, to, to, to play some, some, to, to hang out with a punch mom and, and stream from

low of the local apartment, what to hang out. Uh, it was kind of perfect for that type of mood. So that was cool. Um, a little late to the, to the announcement, but, uh, strays, strays are pretty all right. Fun game. Um, I remember seeing God. I saw the, you ever see a comment that's so fucking stupid that you're just like taking it back.

And like, I saw somebody talking about straight like four days ago, I think it was, and their comment was just so outrageously stupid that I, it has locked in, which is somebody going, I can't stand stray. They may, I beat the game in three and a half hours and that was just too long for the steam refund and I didn't like it. Yeah. I'm like, I think I saw that refund is not so you can fully complete a game and then send it back if you didn't like it.

It's like a meal. You don't eat the whole burger before asking for a refund. You take two bites and go, this tastes like shit on unless the name of the game is try to refund me unless it's a challenge. Yeah. Yeah. I think I saw that. Anyway.

I don't know. Um, the, uh, uh, uh, yeah, that was, that was, that was pretty good. The other thing I did was I tried, he tried to get used to the new toy. Got a hitbox. Ah, I was wondering, I was wondering, I felt like this was inevitable. Yeah. Yeah. I got a hitbox, uh, and, uh, for those who aren't familiar, this is a leverless joystick.

So what it is, it's a way to cheat at fighting games. Sure. Uh, it is, uh, basically it's, it's a, it's like an arcade stick except the red buttons you see over here are the directional buttons that you tap. So they kind of serve the purpose of WASD, you know, uh, that's pretty much it. Um, and I've, I've talked to, we've talked about it a bunch recently, but it's like, yeah, it's a way for you to, uh, if you're gonna, if you're, if you're gonna get like wrist pain from like, you know, controller or arcade stick usage, this can help you

in that regard. Uh, some people also are just preferred keyboard users. I'm not one of them, uh, but I was curious, I'm just curious to like feel it out. And, uh, I took it for a test run and I can say this with characters that do like Hadoken motions, you can kind of, you can get there and be like, okay, yeah, this is, this is not too different. Just gotta, you know, remap a little bit of your brain for like the up button, but you can still quite as intuitive.

So the up button not being above the other directions where the W key would be on your keyboard is like, it is, it's interesting because it's like, even though it's supposed to be there, it's like, it's placed kind of out of the way because in most fighting games, jumping is a rarer thing anyways. You know, like it's, it's, it's almost like, Hey, you're not going to be pressing up as much as you're going to be pressing back down and forward. Therefore, it's, it's just going to rest where your thumb is and you don't have to like move away from the three most essential keys, you know, um, in reality.

So it's fine. It's kind of fine. It's, but you can, you have, you have to adjust when you're playing like, again, a motion character, a charge character, which is where the entire like benefit of not having to return the stick to neutral comes into play. A charge character, like a Blanka, my brain hurts trying to reacclimate what I'm supposed to press. Really?

I figured it would have been the opposite. It's so hard. It's like learning a stick for the first time again, but worse because like you're like the, the thumb being down there is just, it's anti-intuitive and you have to work it into being an intuitive thing and charge motions. I was thinking left, right. I was not thinking up, down. Yeah.

Because here's the thing. Yeah. Because because down is now above up. Yeah. And, and not just that, but you are never charging. With a charge character in a, in a fighting game, you're never really just charging neutral down into neutral up. You're always going down back, right?

And in a lot of cases you're going down back to up forward, down back to forward, you know, you're kind of picking which one to do, but it's just weird. And I can tell that with, with practice and time, you will get used to it, but there were moments that like for like, I saw, I was playing like Street Fighter five and I was just using Blanka and I was just trying to mess around with it in that kind of context. And I also, I played like Nago and Strive for a second and I was like, fuck this, no way, no way. It's just, it's too much, too many, too much going on there.

But with, yeah, using Blanka, it's like, do you, you know that feeling when like you hit a puzzle and Baba is you, and like you can physically feel your brain struggling? Yeah. Yeah. No, I know the exact emotion you're describing. That was happening multiple times per round. And I was like, this hurts. It hurts to stop and go, okay, wait, down, down back, up forward, fuck, right.

And Blanka in five also has a V trigger, which involves you having to do a lightning rolling attack in all eight directions. Oh, that's, and to keep the combo going, you have to pick the right direction to move it in. So it's just like, it just hurts. It hurts. So I'm going to apologize for the non visual listeners at home, but I hope that my audio description is going to do justice.

So woolly, there's this thing called a keyboard. You may have heard of it. I think you might have, I'm holding up what's called a keyboard in front of the screen right now. Yes. It's got keys on it. Yes. Also, historically, it's paired with what's called a mouse, right?

So when you play on the keyboard, usually you would have your ring, middle and index finger on WAD and maybe down for S, and you would use your thumb to hit what's called the space bar. It's the really big button at the bottom, right? And that's what's being used as the up in this situation. Now I know that you have played nearly exclusively shooters and PC games on a controller, but some people have actually used this keyboard device, and that's what the hitbox is trying to emulate in terms of where that up button is.

Yes. As we've said across perhaps six episodes now, when we've been discussing it in the last two, three months. I'm just assuming you need a refresher because your preferred method is this fucking controller mouse abomination. Sure. That's not the point. The point is that it emulates the placement of a space bar by resting your thumb in the

natural position where that would be. However, in a fighting game when you have to roll towards that direction or switch immediately from down back to up forward, and you're going against years of what your hand is used to doing, the process of rerouting those synapses in your brain is... If only there were games that let you use the keyboard to play them, you would have been able to map some of these neurons before. I'm confused as to where we're going here. What's wrong with what I'm saying?

The only joke that I'm making is that Woolie doesn't know how to use keyboard for video game. Okay. Therefore, box hard. Yes. Fair. I have used keyboard on some LPs and I've struggled with it this year. However, I still think in the way that you've played fighting games for the last for your

entire life, it still is pretty different from what you're used to. There is an interface struggle with what you're used to. Even if you're used to keyboard, some people have played keyboard fighting games and in most of those cases, they're using W as they're up as opposed to space bar to jump. I don't know anyone who uses the keyboard as a fighting game tool that is using space bar as the jump button usually, but the resting hand position makes sense. I have to say, as a fighting game man on this podcast, it was probably only a matter of time for you.

I had assumed you would have already had a hitbox as like a, I know you had the keyboard weirdo version. The mix box. Yeah. I kind of assumed you already had one because you like sticks and you like these kinds of fringe kind of control methods. It is a cool little gimmick. I'm torn as to whether or not I should even bother getting one because I probably won't

end up using it. I have played so much on stick at this point and it was hard for me to learn stick, but I have to say, I do think it's very brave of you to have, you know, we both follow high fight on Twitter, right? And you saw high fight post that clip of a guy all throwing out just instantaneous supers and then we had those three fighter six matches in which I blew you up and you were like, maybe this, maybe this will be the way. Maybe that'll be the way to do it.

You know, everyone's arguing about whether or not hitbox is cheating. That is, that is, yeah. You're like, maybe I can cheat. Maybe that's what that's the edge. I was missing the entire time. You know, yeah. Well, I will have to see how hard I can cheat with it and let you know. Ultimately, I don't think I'll be switching to this as a primary method of control.

If I ever start getting risk, I'm too old to do it. If I ever start getting wrist pain, I will force myself to. Because that's not a matter of like, that's not preference anymore. That's a, you know, like fucking health issue. And I don't want to, if I start feeling wrist pain in like this phase of my life, then it's definitely not going to improve as you go forward. What are like 22 or something? Oh, my wrist hurts a little bit.

Quit being a pussy. All right, that worked. Yeah. But now that we're old man's, yeah, no, don't ignore anything. So if I ever do start feeling wrist pain, I'm probably going to switch over to this. But yeah, I, it's, it's stressful. It's stressful and it'll probably with time. Because I know, because the thing is, is like tournament players that have

switched over to it, like everybody had to do this relearning process and eventually landed on the other side. And once they do, they tend to swear by it, you know? I've been playing sticks since 2005, 2006. I don't know how long, like everybody. Yeah. All tournament players that have made the switch, they, they, they tend to swear by it immediately, you know?

And I know, like even Reggie's like, he's excited to like be like, oh, shit, he wants to learn how to play it as well and stuff. And it's, it's, it's gone from being a niche thing that shows up like one guy at the tournament would have it to now like being a little, like maybe like 40 percent of players. Sometimes you'll see like what whipping out something like that. Like it'll, it's come, it's become quite constant and frequent to see. And yeah, I, I, I also think the weird part about it is that it's also

like character specific, you know, depending on what your character has to do. I think it'll be easier or harder using a hitbox, you know, I like, for example, um, I mean, you know, doing a 720 on a hitbox in like 10 frames is probably way easier than doing it on a stick. I mean, the idea of a 360 being like roll your fingers across four buttons is way easier at the same time. Yeah. Man, I've done a lot of 720s on an arcade stick.

Yeah. Also, you know how, you know how like doing a super motion is just a little bit easier naturally going from player two side than it is on player one side. Yeah. Because the force of your wrist going inward is weaker than it is going outward. So in this case, it's just a matter of just twiddle these two fingers or twiddle these two, you know what I mean?

Like it's just down, forward, down, forward. Okay, you're good. No problem. Um, so things like that become completely even on both sides as well. But a character like Naga Ryuki, who requires a fuck ton of quarter circle inputs and DP inputs, alternating with each other in a row. I wouldn't switch over to this. Um, it would be interesting though, because now considering I play partially

on pad, partially on stick, like I would like to be able to function with this just so that I can future proof. So when I was playing Street Fighter six on pad, I have not played a fighting game on pad in 15 years. And I was like very confused at how easy it was for me to go back to playing on pad, like it required like some relearning, obviously a little bit. I had some failed inputs, but it was like, it was not as doable nearly is it? And I'm like, man, like I obviously want my stick for Street Fighter six, but

I could totally just play on pad if I wanted as somebody who fucking built fight sticks from scratch, I am really happy that it's entirely optional now. You know, there were like fight sticks as a, as a, initially people thought they were like a gate kept thing where they're like, you'll never get good at fighting games unless you get one of these. And it's like, no, you know, not at all. You absolutely can. You can.

It's just whatever you're comfortable with talk about that. I mean, let's talk about the reality that was playing fucking Marvel two on a fucking Dreamcast controller. Right, right, right. That was a different time. Yeah, but it's, it's, I'm super happy that it's entirely optional now. For anybody that's like, eh, I don't have the money to invest in this. You know, that's a, that's totally reasonable.

But if you do want to, and you, or if you are used to it and or if you do want to, you know, keep that arcadey feeling to it, which is fun. I like there's, there's something really pleasant about just doing this, you know, that feels strange. That feels fun. Is that I used to get hand pain playing video games. Um, and at some point I just stopped gripping controllers nearly as hard. Like I got a relaxed grip and I'm like, cause you mentioned hand pain about

like, like once I moved to an arcade stick, all possible hand pain from playing on a pad disappeared. Yes. Yes. Like I'm super, super relaxed playing on a arcade stick. Um, so wrist pain, like it can, depending on how you play wrist pain can be very extreme on a pad versus for like the amount of things you have to input versus on a stick where you can kind of like have your hand a little bit

more relaxed. Like if you're doing, if you're playing a game that requires you to press triangle and X at the same time, fuck off. Like, right? Like weird moments like that are going to be awkward for your button pressing or square in circle. You and Paige both have the exact same thing going on where I remember, I still remember Paige like white knuckled the fucking PS4 pads so hard during,

uh, Ludwig in Bloodborne that she couldn't hold a controller for like three months and I've seen clips of you playing and like I can hear the plastic creaking when you, when you're like, I'm like, you, y'all both need to relax. Dude, like I can tell you exactly where that comes from. Like how many dropped supers before you realize that going harder, faster and tighter makes it work more consistently, you know, and then you start doing every input tighter because it'll, it won't drop. If you try to lightly do a double quarter circle, sometimes in the middle of a

combo, you're going to drop it and be like, that sucks. And you're like, fuck, what do I need to do? And you're just like, do it faster, do it tighter and do it harder. And now you get more consistent. You mentioned that because that, that exact experience is what got me to slow down and chill out because when I started playing on stick, I was matching inputs out so fast that I was to get tons of input errors. Like the issue wasn't that I wasn't doing it in time.

The issue is that I was doing it so quickly that I completely botched the input entirely and was hitting shit out of order. Like, you know, that thing where you try and do a fireball, but somehow a fucking up gets in there. Yeah, you're just doing it so fast and so like fucking loose. So as soon as I started to calm down, like my input game improved dramatically. So for me, calming down helps when you're doing a raw input, right? So if you're just going straight into that sequence, it's no problem.

If you're one frame linking three crouching light kicks into one ultra, you don't have that leeway. I would just don't do that. Yeah, exactly. Right. Furthermore, if you're trying to do a on reaction, the moment I see you start to do a fireball all like super to punish that, you don't get to casually do a two quarter circles.

That is a I see you start the fireball animation. I'm reacting to it instantly. That requires split second input. So being better at reacting to things and tighter inputs requires you to do them faster and doing them clean is ultimately the best way to do it, which is what professionals will have you do. But it's like, that's why you can play these games and until you're a professional and learn to do them clean.

There's a limit to how, you know, clean I can get with my inputs given my abilities, but that is why I kind of ended up on that side. You know, you know what this whole conversation makes me think about? It makes me think about Bayonetta and it makes me think about Devilman cry. You know what, you know what one of the biggest difference between those two is man, there is not a single fucking strict input in that whole fucking game. Like there, there everything is just loose and shit. Like, do you want to do a circle and then hit the button?

Do you want to wait like a full second? Yeah, it'll come out. Don't worry. Versus, it'll, it'll, it'll happen versus exceeding and max acting. Yeah. And, and just release, you know, like, yeah, it's, it's none of that shit. No, no, no, get out of here. Mm hmm.

Um, yeah, man. Some people are, some people make their games to have top jet upper in it. You know what I mean? Like Tekken is just like, no, we don't give a fuck. You've got to do this, do it clean, do it precise and wait for exactly this many frames. Do you want it to be electric or not? No, I'm just trying.

I'm like, oh, no, no, that's a choice. You're making a choice to not do this one. What is the one sixtieth of a frame? Fuck it. Electric, like, yeah, whatever it is. Nonsense. Uh, not, not even electric, top jet upper with Brian Fury. Badness.

Um, but, uh, just a caveat though, that, um, the hit box style, uh, arcade stick as a means of avoiding wrist pain is also not a hundred percent because some people have gotten pain from, um, using it and like, I guess the way you kind of rest your, your, your hands. So I saw people saying that, say, jam, fuck this fingers up, playing with one. Because if you're playing, uh, fucking, uh, Gold Lewis and you're rolling behemoth typhoons, think about that. Right.

You're this behemoth typhoon. I break your fingers. You're rolling across all those direction buttons in every possible order aggressively. You know, and in some cases you're doing them back to back to back to back. It would be, yeah, I would imagine comparable would be like, again, Nago where I've never had to play a character that had that many quarter circles and DPs, like back to back to back to back, you know? Um, so you got to be careful with it.

Anything aggressively with your hands in a, in a, in a, anything in repetition is going to wear your hands down, no matter what position, you know, using the keyboard, uh, even can probably, after a point, do some damage. You know, it's a really good example, actually. Um, so I've told both of these separately, but like you're talking about like any, no controller setup is perfect for everyone in terms of hand pain. Right. There are two games that I had to stop playing because they physically

damaged me. Assassin's Creed black flag, the way that they want you to hold down the right trigger in that game gave me frozen shoulder. I remember just, just, just they want you to hold down the Xbox trigger at literally all times, or it was the PlayStation at the time and it fucked my shoulder up and then, um, fucking Guild Wars two, well, a game that I actually really like, um, the only real fungal way to turn your camera is to click the right mouse button down and spin and, you know, move your mouse and

you want to be doing that at all times, which meant that like 80, 90% of the time I was playing Guild Wars two, I was holding down the right button and that fucked my wrist up so bad. Did that access a shortcut menu? No, it's just to turn the camera. It's just to activate free look. Oh fuck. Okay.

Yeah. That sounds weird. Cause like holding down the right mouse button like that, you wouldn't think that, you know, it's with my fucking middle finger. You wouldn't think that that would do it. Well, I was playing like six hours a day for like a couple of weeks and it just fucking, it fucked my whole wrist up. They fixed that years ago.

Okay. That's great. Yeah. Toggle would be good. Is it a toggle now? What is it? Someone in the chat explained to me so that I can talk about it like I know. I mean, I'm thinking of, uh, playing Reinhardt back in the day as well, like

holding up that shield. Um, did they put an accessibility option on? I feel like there was an accessibility option on to toggle it. Uh, so, but there was a point where it was like, Oh shit. Yeah. Hold on, man. I, I dude, this, this might, this might be my favorite thing is when you go, Oh, did they fix it?

And then you look over, yes, no, no, yes. Yeah. They kind of fixed it, but the action camera breaks some of the abilities and it sucks for ranged characters. Okay. It sounds like they didn't fucking fix it then, huh? Mm-hmm. Anyway, the number one reason I started playing FF 14 is because I get to use a

fucking game pad. No matter how much I play that game, it doesn't hurt my hands. Yeah. Um, of course, uh, if you are looking to avoid any of this whatsoever, you can always just use modern controls and street fighter and you'll get yourself a little smash brother style input. Uh, and I, uh, there you go. I want to, I want to see the, the, the, the, there's a third control option.

Right. The dynamic, the dynamic, I want to, I want, I want to see it so bad. I think dynamic. I think what it is going to be is stylish mode from excerpt. So, okay, dude, guilty gear, excerpt had something called stylish mode and it just made your attack button context sensitive. So if you were up close and you mashed it, you would do a combo. And if you were further away, you would some, you would do a ranged attack and

it was just completely like a context sensitive button and all you're really responsible for is the positioning of your character. So there was a dumb meme and I think the high fight posted it or retweeted it and it was a bell curve. And on that bell curve was on the beginner end and on the total effort end of fighting games was LOL. I'm just pressing buttons. Yes.

Yes. Yes. And in the middle was, oh, okay. Do I have to cancel this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the same thing. Yeah. Cognitive load, the metal stack control options are going to enable is people to select their cognitive load and I can't wait for good players.

I'm using air quotes right now. Good players to get their asses blown out by like children using dynamic mode because the kids can just relax and focus on, oh, he's unsafe. I'll hit him. It is quite interesting. The other thing being the, oh, the beginners and experts being like, LOL, this character looks cool. I don't know.

And, and at the top of the mountain is, okay, but they have this on plus. And yeah, so the one thing though about that, and this is like, to rip it back down to reality, I know that there's at least one element that is not parallel between classic and modern controls is supers on modern do less damage. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. And that's easier.

They're faster. Exactly. You get it right away. We're reactable. You completely understand. It is better. It's, it's a, that is, you might be like, what, why? And it's like, no, it's fair because if you have to react instantly, they're

better to one, but better versus a full motion as described before you've earned it. So that makes a difference. Yeah. Oh, like if I, if I know, if I know that I can fire out a super fireball on a button, a button press, I can just sit there and the instant I see your fucking arm move one frame, I can hit that button on reaction. Yeah.

It's just, that's a different world in terms of you're, you're getting a stronger character out of the situation, you know, and this kind of ties. I want to, if you want the ultimate proof of this, go look at videos of super street fighter four on the fucking Nintendo 3DS. Yep. Yep. Or sonic boom is a button you can tap to do a sonic boom or tap to do a flash kick and so you can just walk forward and then if someone jumps, you

do a flash kick and you're like, okay, well, that's the end of the game. Or if you want to, if you want to play the most fucked up version of one of the best games of all time, go fucking track down a version of CVS to easy operation or they map fucking, um, Gief 720 moves to the fucking sea stick. Yeah. Like something that is not immediately obvious about fighting game moves is that like the amount of time it takes to do them is often balanced in how good

they are, you know, uh, so like the ability to like walk forward and you can't do a flash kick because you've stopped charging down, but if you're playing Ryu, someone jumps at you, you can be like, Oh, okay, I can do a sure you can now, you know, but like that or just going, someone jumped, press a button. Don't think about it. It's, you know, it's automatic. It's that mental stack is a whole level easier to deal with. You know, so this is, this is a bit off, off topic.

Have you been following these, this, this fucking argument, this, this drama and the call of duty community over skill based skill based matchmaking? Is theft skill based matchmaking is bullshit. This is oppressive. So, uh, okay. So I got good to stop on random opponents call of duty, modern warfare to the new modern warfare to that is not the old modern warfare to has, has skill based matchmaking, which means it will, if you're a sweat, it will attempt to

pair you with sweats. And this has led to like YouTube video after YouTube video, after YouTube video that is somehow finding its way to me just via Twitter and recommendations of like skill based matchmaking is ruining a call of duty. Every single time I fucking hop in and play, it's just the sweatiest thing. I can't relax and have fun. And I'm just like, okay, well, you make videos and streaming content and podcast content for your living, right?

So do I, I look at these guys and every time I see this, what I'm actually hearing is it's really hard for me to blow out people in games and look super good on my channel because of the, the skill based matchmaking. Of course. It has made it bordering on impossible to do a highlight reel in one day. You can't do your no scope. Three sixties into 30 seconds to Mars. If everybody else is as good as you are in the same server, right?

Now he, there is, there is one thing about it that is actually fairly interesting that I saw people talking about on our subreddit, which is part of the problem for even the average player is that the way call of duty does its SBMM is terrible. It, it takes your fucking win percentage off your last five matches and then just dumps you into whatever it thinks works for you for five straight matches. So if you, if you are killing it Saturday afternoon, when you log in Monday morning, you are going to be killed for five straight games.

And then you're going to ping pong back down into baby mode. One of the weirdest things that I saw was I found out that certain call of duty creators log in and, and do all their footage recording at four morning. Oh yeah. Okay. With the lower player count, yes, the SBMM doesn't work anymore. Right.

Right. Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, yeah, that is a wild concept coming from the outside where it's like I'm used to every match you play. The next match will be based on what your performance was and there's one

other person to deal with. That's kind of nuts to see people who are pros quote unquote being like, no, but I want to fight the randoms though. I want my, my matches to be unrelated to, to not be tied to my fucking skill. Like it's like, but isn't the whole point of getting better so that you can emulate what would be like, let's say a tournament environment, because if you had to go to the world finals for, you know, call of duty or whatever, you'd be fighting against a whole bunch of other good people.

So that's a really interesting and very fighting game perspective in that when I want to sit down and play a fighting game, I want to climb the tournament. Every single thing about fighting games has been based around the tournament for, for the end of time. Let me tell you about, I play Fortnite every now and then I'll play Fortnite or I'll play reverse. And do you know what I want to do in a battle royale? I want to beat up children until I get to the final circle.

I want to beat up children, right? Right. And tell you to the final circle. Okay. I don't care. I want, I want, I want people that are just smart enough to put up a fight, but not smart enough that I actually have to worry about it. However, that being said, if you're a professional esports sign to a team, I

got my jersey player, you're not just looking for those replays on Twitch. Well, I would say that if you're a professional esports player, you're not logging into random lobbies, you're getting five of your buddies and you're playing against five of your other buddies on the team and you're doing scrimmages in your, in your fucking, you know, in your, your, your, your esports bong or whatever the fuck it's called. Yeah, I guess it's just the difference in worlds because in the, in the world of fighting games, like everyone, the line, there's a, there's a line between

casual and competitive, but the, but like wherever that line is, the competitive side is like anybody who feels like participating on that mountain. Yeah. See the, anybody who approaches the mountain here is considered competitive. You just got to walk up to it. You're like, you're like rolling the, the, the line from amateur to, to competition, to, to, um, contender, right? Um, I'm talking about the, the, the group on the outside.

So like the, the, the pro call of duty streamer or pro call of duty streamer streamer content creator is closer in reality to like bum fight to like a boxing tournament. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Right. And, and it is like, Hey guys, you've made a system that you've

made a system that feeds and clothes my bums. Right. And now they're, they're, now they're harder to tip over. The, the content streamer would never be caught dead actually competing at an event with skilled people like that. Right. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. Wow. I act, man, I nailed it on that. Like I, I'm starting that up. Like this is a stupid thing to say.

I'm like, ooh, ooh, wait, actually. Hmm. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. It's just, it's just funny. And it's every single game that comes, every shooter that comes out and says, we're going to have to go base matchmaking.

This happens over and over. So I'm going to boot up my game and I'm going to, I'm going to take it from, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm stuck on floor 10. I'm going to take it over to floor one because I'm allowed to, and I'm going to go to the park that's specifically for floor one. And my whole streaming career is going to be about just beasting on floor one. Oh yeah.

It's, and we, and that's it. Because like smurfing is like a wild problem in certain games. And it's like to be expected in others. Right. Like fighting game players, there's a group of them that do love to smurf and those are typically scrubs, but like Dota and all the, all the, all the movers have like the craziest fucking smurfing problems. CS go has smurfing problems.

And it's like people don't want to fight. They want to win. Yeah. I remember learning about that, you know, back in the, the overwatch days. And it was, it was very, it was very eye-opening, you know, um, because I'm like, but what about, but what about the fighter's spirit? What about the, the, the waterfall training? What about the, the Ryu inside of all of us?

Yeah. I think, uh, dude, I think, I think what the one that got me was, I saw a guy talking about like league and valorant and like climbing out of bronze is like the most miserable fucking experience in the world in a team game because that, that bottom is just a fucking nightmare to the point where a lot of people will just like fucking pay to boost up to silver just so they can start playing the game like a normal video game. And it's like, man, by constantly changing all of the non-skill components

of the game every two weeks, it really feels like you're incentivizing this kind of nonsense. Hmm. Um, are the complaints coming in for the, for the call of duty battle royale game or for the, for more, more battle war zones on out yet? Okay. Uh, I think we're sometimes, is that where's that this week? I'll play that.

I'll play new war zone. Okay. Cause like traditional call of duty, you can play with two teams and be a but I don't know, I don't know, but I'm just like the difference between playing a battle royale game and getting a random number of people of random skills or whatever versus a team based game. That's also going to be, um, randomly populated kind of sounds like, uh, if it's battle royale, you get a little bit more leeway towards, it should be random,

but not really, you know, at the end of the day, skill-based is, is to keep the challenge going. I think, uh, I think the other fun thing about modern warfare two is multiplayer that people are talking about is like, they removed slide cancelling, bro. Why the hate movement? And I, I was, I saw this complaint and I'm like, I don't know what the fuck I'm reading, so I have to go look into it. So I look into it and it's, um, called the duty games for the past while have

had a lot of movement mechanics that are bugs, but turned into mechanics where, you know, you can slide cancel this, you can jump cancel that so that you can get all sorts of zany movement. And I watched people playing and I'm like, you, you fucking, you people just want to play unreal tournament. Like you literally turned call of duty into unreal tournament. Hmm. And when the devs try and turn it back into call of duty, you're like, if

you're obvious, but, but call of duty is the only game anymore. It's that if you play, that's where everybody is. So yeah, too bad. And like more than that, like I'm watching people turn call of duty, not unreal, it's wrong. I'm watching them turn it into Titanfall. I mean, that's not, you're not like, you're not going to win me over by telling me it shouldn't be Titanfall, but right.

Yeah. But, uh, man, the call of duty that I played, it was interested in playing was the one with the space jumps and the, and the big boost button. Right. I liked the one with the, the extra skeletons that had the double jumps and the dashes and the air. That was fun. Anyway, um, uh, yeah.

So I guess, uh, two other things, um, not a ton to say here, but I played a bit more neon white, uh, decided to go back in and, uh, just, you know, get some more of that gameplay in, let the story do what it does. That's all fine. Um, the, the levels, like beyond that third area. And then as you get into like, you get a boss fight and you get like new mechanics and stuff, uh, that game is fucking sick, man. Yeah.

No, it's a cool game, man. It gets really cool. And like, when you start seeing how it all kind of comes together, um, I really like it. I was hoping that boss fight would not be like, I was hoping for something that would resemble a real boss fight as opposed to like, um, I don't know. I guess like a, a, just a, a low, a level with a couple of stopping points. But in the end, it worked out really well.

And it reminded me of like mirror's edge server room. Shit. You know, that's, that's the goal. Mirror's edge server room is the, is the fucking pinnacle. It started to feel like that. And I was like, okay, your this is where this game is going. Um, uh, neon white, uh, yeah. Like super fucking cool on the, on the gameplay.

And then of course, um, yeah, going back to your, to, to try and do better records and stuff, finding out how to streamline your, your, your runs. Really, really sick. I definitely want to continue on that, uh, down that road. And, uh, I'll even say this much. The game gets more serious, I suppose, as plot starts moving. And as long as like a plot is moving, I'm like, yeah, this story is doing what it's supposed to do.

You know, that's fine. It works. Um, it kind of just feels like a lot of that front part is trying to just do the Saturday morning goofy. I guess people are saying adult swim anime vibes. You know, and I'm like, well, that is, well, I mean, I, I'm, I'm, you know, like, like the vibe of like listening to Steve bloom, dubbing over, um, you know, your, your spike spiegels and, and, uh, watching your, uh, you know,

other like whatever came, whatever, um, um, shown in anime, you know, came dropping on, on, um, cart to Toonami and stuff like that. Um, yeah. Not adult swim. Sorry. Toonami. That's what I meant to say. Uh, it has that like, it has all that goofiness and then the like sweat

drop, Tenshi Muyo. Oh no, like whatever, uh, spit in your mouth, humor. Um, but, uh, as it gets towards, I guess, you know, whatever the plot goes into, it starts just addressing whatever is going on in the setting. And it's, oh, it's, it's not as, it's a bit more bearable when they're sticking to the script and, and, and trying to make a few less of those gags, you know, so, uh, yeah, that game, uh, seems to improve and get a lot cooler and, uh, I definitely wouldn't mind coming back around to it.

I will say though, this, this, and, uh, I guess the other game was like wolf stride, definitely they touch on a little invisible rule that I think we've had over the years, a bit, maybe less you more so me, but like it's, but I, but I think we both kind of had it where it's like, if a game is a triple A game from a giant studio and it's, it's ass, then drop, trow and just dump all over it, uh, because that's what you're feeling. And that's what the game is. When it's an indie game, you give it a little bit more leeway because they're

like, there could have been limitations to the same team size. There could have been, you're like, you're a little, we're a little nicer to indie games. Sometimes I feel just cause you're like, you know, I'm nice to price points. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Um, the game, if the game cost me $79 plus tax, I'm going to shit all over it.

If it costs me 20 bucks, yeah, I'll be nicer because it cost me 20 bucks. I kind of feel like when it's a situation, when you're in a situation where you're like, okay, the person who made this game has probably tuned into this and this game is pretty good and it's got a couple flaws and then, you know, but you kind of, I'm like, I'm like, yeah, all right. This cringy, but the rest is, you know, you kind of just, you have a little bit of that, like you can see a part of why those flaws came to be with limitations and restrictions a bit easier than you could when it had like a bigger team

that had time and or, you know, uh, was mismanaged in some ways. You know, there's just, there's that. Meanwhile, Hades and vampire survivors exist. Exactly. Shut up. Exactly. And hollow nights. Totally.

Well, I would not, I would not ask anyone to follow Hollow Nights example because those people are crazy. Like I would ask exactly one, one people to follow Hollow Nights example. And that would be team chair. Call it like team. They're so nuts. Like they actively, like they're actively like fighting off your dollars to give you content like some people in the chat are saying like ultra kill and stuff like

that. No, no, no, no, there's, there's a million. There's a ton of fantastic examples of indie games that are like sparkling. Like that don't, that don't have these glaring issues. Um, the thing is, is just to say that I. Like you, I feel like it's the struggle, not the struggle. What am I, I feel like the, the, the, when it's a smaller team, if you're like one person made this or like two people made this, I can, you can kind of see it like,

okay, yeah, they didn't have a giant group to like get this done. And not everyone is going to be as amazing as those people that made those games that we just listed. A lot of people are just going to be regular human beings that are like, well, this is the best I could do by myself or whatever. And you're like, okay, I get it. You know, so I get that from an emotional perspective, from, from a practical perspective, particularly since we're doing a podcast and people are

ostensibly listening to what we have to say. Like the, the dollar value is always going to function in. I remember, I remember, uh, having like the longest arguments with Liam about it where it was like the review should have nothing to do with the price because you're doing art and I would be like, no, you're reviewing a product that people want to buy. It's, I view game criticism closer to like criticism of an automobile and compared to like a piece of art.

And we came to the conclusion, which again, bro was brought up earlier on the podcast when I'm talking about like signal us, um, which is you can either have a consumer buyer's guide or a review within, uh, uh, a, a white room, like a, uh, without, without context, that's timeless. Right. And the example given like, um, ground zeros, which is, uh, this is a great game, but how do you feel about it based on its price? Well, if the price is going to not, going to not be a factor when someone

comes to this game years later, then it starts, then it, it becomes obsolete from this review, but if it's, I never liked that because like, if you're reading a review and the review is like it's overpriced, but the review is four years old and the game's $4 now, then you can just, you can make the jump yourself. You can, but I do think that like there's those two things have separate goals. And by setting out those, by, by making it clear what the point of your, your goal is here, you inform the person who's looking to either buy it or see what you're feeling on this content was, you know, like there, like, I, I feel like,

uh, you can look at it and go, this game is, uh, you're like, whatever you say, you, whatever you, whatever that amounts to, but you make the jump yourself. If you used words that were kind of descriptive, that were like conditional to the pricing, then that ends up being way more than just a, never mind these flaws. It's fine. The game's free. Right.

Like if you have to kind of put those asterisks in place, they have a valid place. If you're trying to ask, if people are trying to figure out, should I buy this game? Yes or no. But if that's not what you're looking for, if what you're looking for is, um, how does this get like, what, how does this game stand up as, you know, a, uh, whatever the genre is, how does it stand up compared to others in its, in its, you know, predecessors and how does it stand up as like, you know, whatever

story, art, uh, uh, all that shit coming together as, as just a, a, a cool, valid entry into the video games medium, you know, and like those are two separate things. I think that 99.9% of game reviews are product reviews. And even if they're attempting to be criticism, they're not because they're on deadlines for the game's release as part of its product cycle. Uh, games criticism, like book, like book criticism is not, oh, I got the book. I have to read it in two weeks and then provide my critical thoughts on its content. Right.

Book criticism is this book came out 60 years ago and I've read it 400 times. I want to talk about the themes. Like a good example of games criticism is every article I've ever read the doc has ever written, right? Or some of the stuff that James Small used to write stuff that is, is, has nothing to do with its release has nothing to do with this. Tim Rogers, some Tim Rogers stuff, right? Tim Rogers, uh, fucking Joseph Anderson, uh, race Vic.

That's criticism 99.9% of stuff, including everything that we pretty much say on this is like, Hey, is it worth the money? Right. So that's, so all the, all this is to say that essentially when you're going through a GameStop GameStop game, when you're looking at an IGN review or a polygon review of something in a lot of cases, it's like, should I, it's a simple, should I buy this? Yes, no, but the other thing we're describing that it still gets called a review is actually analysis, you know, and, um, whether or not 99% of what you see out there is a consumer

buyer's guide, there's still his place for analysis and, oh, I love, I absolutely love analysis, but it is, it is legitimately very frustrating to me when it is like, Hey, I got the game for review for free and I was on a fucking four day deadline to bang it out as fast as possible and then to turn around and say, well, money has nothing to do with it. Well, you didn't even fucking buy it yourself. Of course, money has nothing to do with it. Yeah. Like I think back to, I think back to when I was like 14 and I was broke and I chose to play,

like, I chose to buy FF nine over, no, FF nine, I was pirating at that point. I had friends who chose to play Starcraft over other PC games because they could get more hours out of the campaign and multiplayer as opposed to a different half life because the counter strike didn't exist at the time. Hours are the only thing that matter. Exactly. That type of shit. The thing is, though, is I would say that it's likely that analysis versus reviews,

even though the majority of the websites we're describing will have these types of things and then they get aggregated into the Metacritic score, which is ultimately an aggregation of should I buy this game critique, right? But the analysis side of things, people that are looking for that find it on video essays on YouTube, right? They go over to Susie or to Clemps and such and they find these like long breakdowns of these things that they enjoy and they go into depth on what the creator was going for, what this was referenced, all this and they pull it all out and like you're not going to get that in the same

IGN platform, you know? So it just, it exists in a different space, but both of these things exist, like should exist. And personally, I'm more interested in the analysis side. I find that more fascinating, you know? Yeah, no. Well, especially now because now I want to make my own product review decisions. Listen, I am aware of there, it is a hard ass line in the sand for me to go, hey, where's vampire survivors?

Vampire, okay. Hey, I got 61.8 hours out of vampire survivors and I paid $3 for it, beat that losers. I'm aware that is a hard line in the sand and it is ridiculous. However, it is also true to when I tell anyone about vampire survivors, I got 61.8 hours out of vampire survivors and I paid $3 for it and it fucking ruled. Yeah. So basically, if what you're looking for can be found at the bottom of a steam page, then that's fine because you're just looking for those helpful reviews with the thumbs up,

thumbs down, and then the reasons why. But I don't find the steam review system actually way more useful than any critical review. But it would be really weird to scroll down and to see a Sphere Hunter video at the bottom of a store page for one of those games. You know, it'd be like, maybe not, you know, a Vati video at the bottom of the Souls page because that's, it's a whole other thing, you know. You know what, you know what my, so someone in the chat just mentioned, audio only takes 90 minutes and costs you $15, but you will think about it for the rest of your

life. That's a really good quote and I like it. I think, oh god, I think there are two favorite Steam reviews. One is people acknowledging the game, like thumbs up, this game's a bad value. I love it. I love it. It's incredible. Get it. And my other, which is really my favorite Steam review, which is thumbs down and then

underneath the thumbs down is 1800 hours played. And then like a fucking thesis statement on why the game is garbage now. And I'm like, amazing, you, you have very successfully convinced me not to play this because you got like a million hours out of it and you seem to be a miserable husk. You seem to be, your, your life seems to be ruined because you played Rust or Arc or whatever. So something interesting that happened was, so my friend Nadeem put out this game, Dr. Koboishi's labyrinthine laboratory.

And it's a, it's a fun ass little puzzle game that is going to hurt your brain with, as I described, Baba is you ask like, what the fuck is, is the next step? God damn it. Why can't I figure this out? Moments. Right. The thing about it is like in going for a sort of retro atmosphere, it also, it doesn't skip animations and it doesn't have a retract your last step undo kind

of situation. So if you do a, you have to do a, let's say you do like a 20 step sequence and you fuck up on step 21, you got to do those 20 steps again, you know, as you would if this were an older PC game. Someone reviewed it and wrote like basically that like they love everything about this game and they're having a great time with it. And that there is a, and that basically the lack of an undo function means that they were just frustrated with the inability to undo their mistakes and having to redo them again,

made it, made them give it a thumbs down. So they're like, this good game otherwise, but I hate this, this feature missing enough to say that I would not recommend it. And then a dude went fair enough. Here's an undo function and put it in the game. Right. So the game is now patched to have that removed. I mean, we're, we just moved on to talking about reviews, but if we're going to talk

about Steam reviews, the, the, I found them to be a million times more useful for a couple of reasons. That is one of them play like feedback into actual change is definitely something that you see on, on that more often. But the number one thing that I use Steam reviews for is you go onto a game and you're like, huh, that's weird. Why are all the recent reviews negative? And then you scroll down and it's like, update broke the game won't launch.

Right. You're like, okay, good. Excellent. That's actually crazy helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the most helpful any review has ever been is before you even bother. Yeah. Shit's broken. Doesn't work. Okay.

And so doesn't Steam, so Steam has an all reviews aggregation, but then it'll say like overwhelmingly positive, but then what's the second one it shows you sometimes? It's, it's, it's overall and it's recent. Oh, right. Right. Okay. So you can, you can see what though. So you'll, you'll see like overwhelmingly positive and then you'll see mixed and you're

like what the fuck is going on and you could look in and it's like there's a change that a lot of players don't like or, you know, what have you. Yeah. Anyway, so, but that, that, whenever that did that debate about like, you know, whether a review should take fact factor in the price point, you got to just say, you got to straight up go like, do you want analysis or do you want a consumer's buying guide? You know, I also feel that some games push that, push that conversation to the forefront,

like more easily than others. Right. So like Hollow Knight, if you get through Hollow Knight without mentioning what a fucking steal it is, you're crazy. Like the person should know that there is tons of game here. Meanwhile, when you talk about Stray, which is $40 and you blow through it in like a single sitting in some cases, that should also come up because like that's, it's, it's, it's pushing the line there.

How do you think free to play should be handled in that regard? What is the personal? You should review the monetization. So what, yeah, what is the personal amount of like, this is annoying, but I get there's some annoying features required for a free to play situation versus like, you should, you should, I have a, because every play, but like, I was going to say, everyone has a different tolerance for different amount of micro, right? Yeah.

So you should do your own personal review of the monetization. So like, let's take Monster Hunter Rise. Does Monster Hunter Rise have stupid fucking extra DLC that you can buy, including character vouchers and all this fucking shit that doesn't matter? Absolutely. Did I think about it literally once when playing the game? No. Did it ever try and get in my fucking grill?

No. Right. Then we can talk about Overwatch 2 and its monetization, which I'm pretty sure is on the news in a few minutes, because there's a new Overwatch 2 monetization story that is fucking lit. It's the best one in a while. Have you seen it? I have.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's a goodie. But the idea of like, what a game is super sick outside of this monetization scheme, which is, let's say, terrible. Done with that split. I feel like the review that doesn't factor into the price has been one of the reasons that has led to, wow, this game is great, except for all the parts where money happens. Because the question, of course, is how many games can, how many games that are free to play

would go under that analysis category to begin with? From what I hear. I don't care about the analysis. I'm specifically mentioning when you talk about Hearthstone and you review the video game of Hearthstone and how it plays, by focusing purely on the gameplay and not factoring in price into it, you ignore the fact that getting cards in Hearthstone fucking sucks. When you talk about Overwatch and all you review is the parts where you shoot the gun, you are giving them a free pass to make the rest of the game where you unlock everything

cosmetic or everything to be complete fucking trash and fleece you. Yeah, I have never more strongly disagreed that price isn't a factor than when it comes to free to play games, because free to play games aren't actually free to play. No, that absolutely should be a factor because it's the main thing that you're going to be running up against besides whatever the gameplay loop is. The, what I kind of wonder, I guess, is like how subjective that part ends up being, you know? Well, incredibly. And if something has a really, let's say it's not aggressive about how it pushes you down

the monetization like whole, but the prices are still ridiculous. You know, you have a thing where- Yeah, so a good example of this came out recently. Okay. You remember 10-10, the Pokémon knockoff? Sure, yeah, I was going to say For Honor, but yeah, okay. So 10-10 came out and 10-10 is a, I think it's like 40 bucks and is a fully fledged, pretty good Pokémon knockoff that came out with a battle pass and the battle pass was

all just cosmetic shit for your trainer and for your profile thing. And when it came out, it got like mediocre reviews as a result of people being like, what the fuck is this battle pass shit? And then within a few weeks, it went right back up to very positive as people just literally ignored the battle pass and pretended it wasn't there in the game. You're right. In that case, like, okay, fine. But then you look at something like Diablo Immortal in which it's like,

hey kids, you want to spend some dollars every fucking 10 minutes. In particular, there's that story that was absolutely wild of a guy who had spent like 55K and had power leveled himself out of matchmaking. The game just didn't have anyone to matchmaking with it because no one was stupid enough to spend that kind of money. So what I kind of think of is like, okay, so let's say like we're talking about Rumbleverse, right? That's a game where the battle pass exists and you can buy levels on the battle pass or you can buy you can buy cosmetics.

If you're fucking stupid, I guess. But you could also just play it and ignore those things, right? Yeah. Now, I also don't care about any of the rewards that were on that battle pass. Mm hmm. And I've also like, and this is just the whole woolly being fucking unupdated and shit, but like battle passes in general are still kind of like, I don't pay that much attention. I'm just, I don't care.

I'm just playing the game, you know, in most, in a lot of cases. And if it's a cosmetic bit, then I can understand that I'm like, well, I like that outfit. So I'll buy that. I'm going to buy that, that, that, you know, helmet or whatever for that amount. And I'll ignore everything else. Like that's not the typical experience that a lot of people are going to have admittedly, but I'm content to then go spend the next 50 hours never once looking at any of those things. To me, I'm all.

Rumbleverse might be the worst example possible because all of its cosmetics are dog shit. And I'm, and I'm actively just like, I'm just like, I, I'm looking to just get into the game and have these fun little fighting excursions. Like the parts that are there that are like based around this whole thing. I'm down to buy some of the cosmetics to hide my ugly character shape because I fucking like, like I bought a bunch that I wanted to like make my character look as much as enjoyable as possible to me or whatever. But the point is, is that I'm not annoyed by the monetization in it.

Whereas like I'm annoyed by the monetization and other things, but like I don't feel then that my level of tolerance for this because I enjoy the game enough to like not care about what am I trying to say? Because I have a high priority on how fun the game is to me, the other shit that I don't give a fuck about doesn't negatively affect the game that much in my brain. Well, I obviously, but everybody's personal tolerance for this is going to be subjective. Right.

I mean, all criticism is subjective unless you disagree with me at which point it's objective and you're a dumb ass. Clearly, but like that. I mean, I think everyone has a little bit of them inside. They're just not willing to say it. Yeah. So when it comes to reviewing one of these types of games, I guess I'm just, I'm kind of wondering like what the right way to handle that would be.

And I guess you just have to go, it's always subjective and write your subjective review and call it a day. The general gist of the way people seem to have handled it is if they're able to get through the review without the fucking monetization, like literally getting in front of their face and in their way, right? Which, which gives like, you know, because if like, you know, Diablo mortals the best example, right? Every fucking 10 minutes.

Hey, you want to buy some fucking gems? But this leads to the super excellent trend of the Ubisoft method of putting the game out for review, waiting till all the reviews hit and then turning everything the fuck on. That wasn't there before. Like Ubisoft ships those Assassin's Creed games without the store in them. And then once reviews hit, then they turn the fucking store on. You know what I'm thinking of and what I'm being reminded of is Street Fighter 5 launching and having a focus on like the characters are there, play the system and just do the fighting.

And what else is going on? Don't worry about it. Just focus on the fights and the characters and how that aged like fucking milk. Oh yeah, just right away too. Even if you're talking about features and modes that I am never going to play, arcade and survival and whatever else is going on in that, like it's not that big a deal to me. Or especially was it because I'm also now that I'm thinking about fighting games as

like a package that should be an enticing thing that a new player would want to buy, like I'm definitely looking at it from all of these different angles and modes like test your luck and shit that should be there. Alpha 3 is still like one of the most popular fighting games of all time because of World Tour mode. But I remember a point when I was like, I'm just here to fucking hit the brackets. I don't care about anything else. And it's like that is not going to represent most consumer's opinions on this thing.

So as a result, the thoughts and feelings we had about Street Fighter 5 right on release were of use to no one. They were of use to literally no one. I mean of use to other fighting game players, perhaps. They're already there anyway. Totally, totally. So that's kind of what I'm reminded of is just like, oh yeah, your precise interests create a skew that prioritizes certain things over others.

Online used to be irrelevant to me in fighting games because I was like, well, just go play locally. What the fuck are we talking about here? Online always sucks. That was never going to be a part of the discussion. Because that's not the real way to play the game. The real way to play is with someone in person. Duh.

You know my favorite stupid review is, as we're talking about this, like the most useless of all video game review criticism is the MMO expansion review. Like I'm thinking of reviews of Endwalker. Being like, wow, it's great. Like, you know, you have to play through the other ones, right? Like people who are like the 14 million people or whatever they're playing for FF 14. You think they're fucking waiting for fucking Endwalker to come out

and then fucking seeing the reviews and then fucking. Now I'll get in. No, they bought it the day it was announced. Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. If it's not a standalone campaign, which it never is. Uh, Guild Wars has standalone campaigns.

Uh, Brutally. Could you play Brutal Wars without playing the original campaign? I want to say, yeah, I feel like I want to say you could. I want to say you could, but like expansion packs in the original definition of the term, as opposed to, uh, like we brought the level cap is now 10 higher. Go to the mountain or go to the volcano. Uh, anyway, uh, that's all fun. That's all interesting.

Anyways, um, one other thing that part of survivors cost me three dollars. Game of the year. What if it was, what if it was a 60? 60? That'd be a fucking ripoff. What if it was free, but you, that game looks like a piece of shit. What if it was free, but half of the characters were purchasable for five bucks each?

Zero, zero out of 10. Right. Right. Uh, okay. Um, one other thing. This is what like the reviewer tilt and value meant on the, like the game pro and game spot, like fucking review criticism. You remember game spot, did the reviews and you had to

fucking fill it out with a formula? Uh, the, um, which one are you talking about? So gamespot.com back in the day, back in the aughts. When they did a game review, let's say Ocarina of Time, you had to factor in graphics, sound, gameplay, and then there were two or three others. And then you would like literally get the average of those, which is why they had to specify not an average later.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why reviewer tilt was added so that you could add an extra number to juice it up or down. And that's where all the really fucked up scores from game spot came from replay value. That's how you got 8.8 and shit like that because you had to put it into a fucking formula. Ah, man.

Yeah. Yeah. Or, or when like you could have a glowing, a glowing ass, the words all sound incredible. And then at the bottom, it just says three, you know, uh, anyway, I still think eight and cool news for film review had the absolute best review metric of all time, which was full price slash opening night, matinee, rental or pass.

That said everything you needed to know about a movie. Um, fucking ACG. There's a guy on YouTube called Agri Centaur Gamer. Don't know why he's called that. It's a very strange name. He does fantastic reviews. He also reviews on that's, that's, that's a scale of like full price, deep discounts, fucking ignore it.

Yeah. I remember I've had a bunch of conversations trying to workshop like what would be an interesting and useful way to review games that would like actually give you as much useful information as possible. And, uh, people are mentioning, uh, double toasted. I have no idea who that is.

Okay. I've never heard of that person. I'm sure they do good for. Anyway, I got to take a piss. Yeah. Yeah. So do I, uh, all right. Piss break.

All right. Something else, uh, I did that got me thinking is, uh, I decided to eventually, you know, I was like, you know what, fuck it. We're looking for things to, to, to watch and, and spend time together doing me and punch mom. So in, in, in her quarantine, we decided to start House of Dragon, House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones spin off. And it's a show.

Probably. I mean, that's what the Targaryens are all about. So I assume that's going to be coming up at some point. Um, in, I just watched the first episode and, uh, it was not burning a like hole in my hole in my pocket. It was not, it was not a, I didn't have a burning desire to be like, oh, yo, let's get back to this thing and see what's going on with the spin off. Cause I kind of, I'm like, I know this is like at best.

It's going to be like, well, we're adapting, uh, other work that George R. R. Martin wrote that is also good. And this will be a well done version of that. But there's also a part of it that's like, this could also be a fear, the walking dead situation. This could be a, um, where that's like a spin off of the walking dead TV show. You know, and like whatever else, or a, um, uh, almost like the Hobbit, you know, where you're like, okay, Lord of the Rings was the main thing.

We're going to do the Hobbit now. And then we're going to, it's, it's going to be the spin off. And it's going to be like, okay, how can we do any, and it kind of just gets, it gets mucked up by the fact that instead of just trying to focus on delivering this, the, the, the material and the, the, the story that it did the first time, it is a spin off can sometimes buy into its own hype and can sometimes come in trying to deliver on like, you remember the legacy of Daenerys Targaryen. Now go back to, you know, and you can just kind of see how, uh, if they get caught up in

the HBO massive hit show, uh, uh, energy that they can kind of lose track of things. So hoping that, that, that's not the way it goes. So far, um, doesn't seem like that's going to be the case. I'm, I'm, I'm astonished that you would actually go back to that. Yeah. So I, we kind of were just looking for something. Well, there's a couple of things were in the middle of going through. I was just like, I was curious. I'm, I was just legitimately curious.

I'm astonished too, because I was kind of just probably, I could have just continued dodging it really burnt real hard. And here's what I, here's what I kind of discovered in this, in this first episode at the very least, which is setting up, you know, the world, the players and all the characters and such. You're, um, it's, it's a pretty cool introduction to like the era and the set and the stuff that happened in the, the, the years, you know, like two centuries before when the series actually, uh, the main Game of Thrones series goes on, but I got to the end of regular Game of Thrones and was so annoyed at fucking everyone and everything, especially the main line characters

that like a part of me that was, I remembered when I was so interested to find out about the whole Targaryen line and the lineage and the dragons and the Valyria and all the stuff in the past in the first four seasons and how like I actively stopped caring about that and then went to despising it by the end of the show, just because of how bad Danny got. And I kind of like had this moment of just like, as I'm watching this, I'm like, oh man, I forgot that I kind of ended up like hating a lot of this, not just Game of Thrones, but like, I don't care about the dragons and Targaryens as much because of how bad it ended with her. And I'm kind of like the stuff I do fondly remember and want and would love to know about more about is like anything else from not her and

Jon Snow, you know, and, uh, and it just, I was like, wow, they did such a bad job that like it, any past excitement I had, because you're going to split up the timeline to all the, there's all these different places you can go, but in Game of Thrones, most of the past is a bunch of Targaryens and their dragons. That's going to be it, you know? And I'm kind of just like, man, I, I would, I would love to follow along with like some, a dude shows up and they're like, oh, that guy's from Dorne. And I'm like, yeah, what's happening in Dorne? I want to know about that. I want to know about anything else because I'm just like, like Daenerys and her stupid fucking dragons just made me care actively less about her entire bloodline going backwards.

Um, but it's good. It's so far in solid and I, and I, and I, and I liked what was set up and I'm going to keep going. It, but I just, I had a moment of like, I have to get over this residual, this residue from the last show. It's still, it's still scraped. I have to scrape it off the corners. You know, this, this might be a stretch, but like, I feel like I'm listening to somebody getting excited for the release of Mass Effect Andromeda. You see, that's the thing is I don't know where this is going to go and I'm not tied to it being good, but what has been seen so far is not a train wreck. So I'm going to continue with my hands up and see where this goes. That's where I'm at. But I ultimately, I'm like,

I, you made me, you made me care less about the, about this entire fucking aspect of the story, which is the whole focus, you know, if you're going to go. Can't wait for the end of this is they're going to have birth to little baby Daenerys and they're going to look at her and they're going to be like, surely she will be the winner of the game of thrones. I mean, I mean, like there's a moment in the pilot there's a moment in the pilot where they basically go, you know, there's a, there's a secret, there's a secret game of thrones that's going on. They don't know. No, they don't. You are a liar. There's a moment where they basically go. Now nobody knows about this,

but it turns out there's a secret game of thrones. And now you're in on the secret have been able, I would never have been able to anticipate just how far reaching, you know, you know, Ellie, we really are the last of us would fucking go. Like it's because it tapped into a real stupid emotion of like, oh God, damn it, don't do it, which is funny because it's the inverse of the cool thing that you like, which is the name of the thing is a thing in the thing. Mm hmm. But like at the same time, if fucking if fucking what's his name with the yellow jacket looked at that bitch on the moon and was like, you know, we really are the cyberpunk edge runners.

I mean, yeah, like so it's it's done better than the way I'm describing it. I'm being facetious. There they it's it's implemented in a better way. But I I just kind of like I don't know. It's weird that the thing that was interesting in the early seasons was like this like fairly realistic, not realistic, but this fairly like, yeah, no, realistic fantasy setting that then slowly introduces magical fantastical concepts. And then it turns out those things like take over. And like the the initial like, holy shit of the initial holy shit of like the the the fantastical becoming more and more apparent, even when they open with like, they show the first thing you see is some fucking White Walker magic bullshit. But then they spend

an entire season just like people are talking, dudes get killed, you know, whatever, there's a castle, there's politics going on. And there's nothing to there's nothing, everything's kind of grounded. Yeah, you just you lead you lead in everyone's interest with these little breadcrumbs. And then you fuck those breadcrumbs up. And now it's like, okay, now, now, let's go back and spend as much time as you ever could want in the land of fucking bread, where where you're going to get soaring dragon flying scenes to the end and all that shit. And I'm like, you have to you have to buy me back, basically, you have to win me back over and make me care again. And, you know, if if I wish I knew the source material a bit better to say that like, okay, they're kind of

they'll like, it'll be fine because the source material is really solid. But I'm, you know, gonna trust in the fact that they're going with grim. And the show is what it is, but it's not D&D, it's not the same show runners. So we're hoping for the best. But you made me hate a thing I cared about. And now when I hear more about it, like, I'm kind of like, but I'm open to being one back over is where I kind of sit. And every time I see an echo of something that is like, very clearly like, hey, remember the show? Remember the it's like, it's like, of course, they have to do that. They have to make it as as, you know, it has to be penetrable by anybody who tuned in for them to the biggest show in the fucking world when that thing was popping off. The opening crawl where

it tells you this is how long ago this is happening. This is the things that are going on. And it's like a paragraph. And then it kind of ends on like, it tells you like 172 years ago. And then it's like, before the Mad King, before all this, and the birth of Daenerys Targaryen, and then all the words fade out. So the only words on screen left are 172 years before Daenerys Targaryen. And it's like, okay, like we have to make sure the dumbest person is like, okay, got it. Not lost. Let's go. Like they just, they put all this Star Wars blurb up for you. And then they just fade it out to the three words that matter. You know, I really every, every time we run into this, this kind of thing where a fictional equivalent does whatever it needs to do. It switches

time periods, switches locations in order to get away from the burden that it's prior work imposes on it. All I can, I'm going to mention it a hundred times. And it's going to be Mass Effect Andromeda, because they went to the absolute farthest location you can in a setting. Outside of like, we went to a different dimension, went like literally as far away as you could in a setting and then botched it. And now that setting is unavailable. So like the next Mass Effect game has to go back to the original setting because there's no, like they're stuck. Kind of like that. Well, there's the Star Trek method, right? Where you like, it's another setting. Star Trek, that's great. Space is really big, but it's over. Well, no,

I mean, the modern, the new Star Trek, like, just change the timeline. Well, and it's, but it's like, put the other timelines right over there. It's, it's, it's, it's the prime timeline continues to exist in the comics that no one will read. Don't worry about it. It is the captain of the enterprise. If you're upset about anything, the main timeline is right over there. It's all good. And then everyone who loves Star Trek goes, yeah, I don't care about continuity. I care about if it's fucking dog shit. I'm going to go watch Seth McFarlane's The Orville because that's the new Star Trek, actually. Right. Why did I see, I saw the news. Garth Merengue is making another thing. Yeah, sure. Fuck it. So good.

All right. What's going on? A couple of items in the news. Well, since we were talking about the microtransactions, we might as well go right into that. Yay. I mean, it's simple, but it's, it's pretty fucking funny. Someone realized that there is a Blizzard store. There's a Blizzard store charm you can buy, which is the cosmetic for Patchy Matty. The little, the little cute fucking, what is it? The radish or looks like a radish with a, for the face, whatever. It's a key chain. You can buy the key chain in game for 700 coins or roughly $7 USD. However, if you buy it in real life off of the Blizzard gear store, it costs five bucks. So the digital item costs more than the real one.

Oh my God. You know what my favorite thing about the story is? This wasn't the Overwatch 2 story I was talking about. Really? So first of all, that's fucking hilarious. I thought that's what you were talking about. That's fucking hilarious. No, the new one is from this morning. I don't, I'm not going to copy paste it and send it to you because I want, I want to see it hit you organically. So you can use your battle net balance in order to buy things in Overwatch. However, you can use your battle net balance to buy your WoW subscription, right? Makes sense because it's

your battle net store balance, right? However, WoW allows you to turn in-game gold into your battle balance so that you can buy your subscription in WoW with in-game gold, much like Plex in Eve Online. It's been discovered that it's faster and cheaper to grind gold in WoW or even buy gold in WoW and then turn it in to fucking Blizzard money and buy skins in Overwatch 2 on battle net. Just buying skins in Overwatch 2. Oh my God. It is, it is faster and cost-effective to play WoW, to get the Overwatch costumes. Okay, okay. Didn't we find out at some point that not just with FF14, but all of these companies, they hire an economist to handle their digital economy in these games?

No. I don't think FF14 has one because the FF14 economy is a train wreck. The solution FF14 takes is to kill real money traders on site. What is the story I'm recalling where Blizzard does? Blizzard hired a real economist, right? It was a new story. I want to say we covered it where they're like, this is getting complicated enough that we have to call in people who understand this in the real world to make sure it doesn't- Do they still work there? Who knows? That was years ago. Oh my God. If you're trying to get through that battle pass, you might as well just stop playing the fucking game and switch to WoW.

So WoW has a system where you can purchase a token with in-game gold and convert it to a battle net balance. 13 euros is equal to one token. The rate is not great unless you're good at farming or just super committed and it can take a while to get gold. However, despite that, it is still faster than earning the fucking shit in Overwatch. Because remember, Overwatch takes like 200 weeks to unlock everything for one character because they cap your fucking currency on a weekly basis. And buying gold in WoW is- Well, that's real fast. Yeah, okay. How do you- How do transactions usually occur in that regard? Do you just like literally go to like a fucking eBay type situation or PayPal or whatever?

Depends on the game. Yeah, okay. Depends on the game. It's tough. Oh, also, yeah, you can just buy gold. Yeah, no, that was WoW's solution. The balance to gold ratio goes the other way too. See, but wasn't the whole point- Sorry, wasn't the whole point that- They cut out real money transaction by just being the real money transaction house. And they can get a little skim off the top of every transaction themselves. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Cool. Okay. That's great. That's great.

Um, yeah. No, I was- The thing I saw was just like the fucking- The digital item is now more expensive than the real one in real life that you can own. So you know what, I can eat, but- I can fucking- I can start jerking myself off right now and literally explain to you in marketing terms why that's the case. While the real materials to make that item are in fact- Please don't do both of those things, but go on. Are in fact a real cost. They are quite low due to wholesale manufacturing. And in fact, the digital creation of said item in game required testing as well as QA support in order to implement into the game. As well, in terms of perceived value as a status

item, you are actually much more likely to have more people see your digital item on your character than your personal item in your day-to-day life. Yeah, I'm going to go with that last one. Sure, there's other shit involved, but we're going to go with the last one on that. 100%. Meanwhile, you always remember that the theory of economics was literally invented in the 20th century purely to have an academic background to argue with communists about. It's a fucking fake science. And shit like this is why Nebellion says, fuck it, I'm out.

Rip Nebel. Social media is going to get fucking lit soon. So Nebellion is a good Twitter account. That was a good follow for a long time. Basically, just there's been these like accounts that would pop up that kind of rival large organized websites in terms of just news reporting. Just be like, yeah, one guy with a fucking mob psycho avatar is just going to tweet out what's going on, you know, or like Wario 64 and shit like that. Just like, yeah, one person with reliable tweeting can do the job. But that was it. Nebellion's like, fuck this, shut down the account and basically is leaving, not moving to any other platforms, is just leaving the game

reporting world in general because with Musk taking over Twitter, Nebel's not interested in sticking around. Oh, man. Twitter's going to get real bad real soon. It's fucking awesome to watch. And even like, like there was, I didn't know that there was a Nebellion Patreon set up as well with some coverage stuff, but yeah, they're shutting that down as well as well as the Discord channel. So that's that. Shout outs to a real one, man. You know, when I'm looking through what's going on or what happened in any given week, there's a couple places I like to grab stories from and Nebel was one of the solid ones. I, you know, wish them well. I hope, I don't know what they're going to go on to do, but it seems like it might not even be video game related

because there just seems to be no interest in like migrating or carrying this forward at all. And yeah, and they said, I don't think Twitter's experienced, has yet experienced good leadership. The trend will not change with Musk either. I do not trust the platform. I don't trust Musk in the seemingly infinite immaturity. I don't think Twitter will fall apart instantly, but I could die a slow death. Why waste more time? Oh, I think the, I think the ultimate is that Twitter metrics have shown that the day that Musk came into power at Twitter, use of usage of the N word jumped 500%. I saw that across the site. I saw that and I investigated the situation. And to the, to my, the best of my estimation, it appears to be that nothing actually changed except a bunch of people

who just wanted to try it, just went for it because they thought that would be the moon 20 times in a row. Yes. No, I like to my, from what I gathered, nothing actually changed, but they just said, ah, fuck it. So now my, my, my follow-up, my right hook to my left jab is there is, there is talk right now that all lifetime bands on that platform are going to be rescinded. Yes. And I'm like, you have to be the worst person in the world to actually get banned on Twitter. So that's going to be fun. There's a lot of talk. Let's see what actually fucking happens with the goddamn thing. It's going to be a shit show either way, but I don't like some of that sounds so ridiculous. Like I just, I can't imagine just like, nah, we're opening up the

Crypt Keeper like gates and just letting them all flow back like the soul NATO activates. Like that's a huge move. I don't know if we're going to go that far. We'll see. But whatever, man, I don't know. It, it, it was, it was something that, that I jump on it. I tell you when my videos come out, I tell you when I'm streaming and you know, that's, that's pretty much what I'm trying to do. Yeah. So I'm actually, I use Twitter a lot. You use it a lot. You actively use it. I actively try to make sure it's a like, here's what's going on with official announcements for channel related things. And if I see something cool that someone sends me, I'll retweet it or like it or check it out. But for the most part, I'm, I'm, I'm, I've been trying to create that

distance. I was talking about that a couple of weeks ago, you know? Yeah. So life is better without it. Yeah, I disagree. As somebody who I'm going to go through my DMs right now, people that I have actually started to talk to or professionally connect with as a direct result of Twitter and Twitter only fingers, the gentleman who does some of the music for my stream pocket bear illustrator. Oh yeah. Emotes for me and stuff like that. Totally. Gene. Totally. Fucking Mandalore, fucking, Meg boy, Manuel, Dave over at fucking new blood talking shit at me for using a controller and then sending me a code for faith. Like it's, it's where I speak to literally everyone I know in this business. Lots of professional relationships are easily fostered with this platform. Absolutely.

That still, I still do use it for that, you know, and, and in cases I'll be, you know, like if it's not on already on another platform or something, like his discord is getting used a bit, quite a bit more of these days as well for me. But yeah, that part of it aside, if not for Twitter, I would not have been able to find out that Mandalore was following me and then message him just to tell him that he massively undersold what a fucking piece of shit the ending to Pathfinder Kingmaker is. It's the only thing I want to say to him, like, dude, you talked for like 10 minutes about what a fucking piece of shit that dungeon was. You should have spent double time on it. That thing fucking sucks. No, one of the coolest things is when you're like someone who you're

does something, someone who does some really cool shit you're into, you check him out and you're like, oh, shit, you follow me. Oh, that's dope. And be like, hey, that's a cool thing. And Twitter can do that. But all the annoying shit that's just coming off of the feed that I don't want to see or coming off of the news updates or the trending for you or all of that shit that just completely makes my life actively worse when I look at it. I would rather not have any of that. So I have a genuine question. Like, aside from Twitter, how do you reach out to fellow creators? Like, literally how? I mean, it's pretty much Twitter and occasionally Discord. Yeah. Okay. That's why I fucking thought it. Yeah. Everyone's on it. They're right there.

But what I'm describing is the difference between, do you have Facebook Messenger on your phone? The Messenger app? No. Okay. So, okay, I still have a bunch of friends. I still have friends and family that use Facebook Messenger. Right. So I have that on my phone as like one of the apps that I used to communicate with some people. And that has been separated from Facebook, the platform. And so it's almost as if your DMs are their own thing separate from Facebook. Right. And okay, you're making a confused face, but regardless, I'm just going to keep going here. So the way I'm looking at like what you're describing with talking to people that are in the industry or talking to people that I would like to make friends with and such on Twitter

is almost a completely separate thing from the feed of shit rolling through my algorithm. And I treat those two things separately. The thing where someone messages me, but for some reason to get in touch over a game or like, you know, to collaborate on something or to just to discuss whatever you're messaging people through on their Facebook page. No, no, no, no. Okay. I was just making a comparison. Like rewind here undo. The only reason why I brought up Facebook is because I'm just making a comparison to say this. The Facebook app on your phone years ago was just Facebook and you'd go to it and there'd be a messenger inside of it for DMing people. But then there'd be the normal feed and all the other bullshit you don't use.

Yeah, I never use the goddamn. Okay. Well, I'm just let me just describe what it was. Right. It was all of those things in one. Okay. Now messenger with messaging people was separated into its own individual app. And it was and when I stopped when I when family and friends would use that, I'm like, great, I don't use the normal Facebook shit anymore ever for anything. So having that completely removed from the equation from the equation so that you can have just a list of DMs is all I really want out of this. So now I can do that with messenger, right? So there's two functions happening and they separated them from each other because the actual Facebook environment, who gives a fuck? It's worthless. With Twitter, I'm treating it the

same way. And if they could separate the DMs into their own app, that would be lovely, you know, but the other stuff I'm describing would be terrible. Well, the stuff that I'm describing for me personally, I don't give a fuck about or not go don't give a fuck about, I'm using less of the feeds because I find I enjoy my life more without them. You know, no, so here's the reason why it would be terrible. And the reason why Facebook Messenger and all that shit just fucking was terrible. The whole reason Twitter DMs works is because you set your privacy so that you only get real Twitter DMs from people you already follow. If you didn't have a page that you actually went to and followed, that just means all of your Twitter DMs would look like that tab in my Twitter

DMs that I open every two months and look at wow, look at all these fucking messages that I'm going to skim through and how most of them are just insane people messaging me nonsense. For what it's worth over on face on back on Facebook, the any messages from people I didn't recognize would go into a completely separate tab that's adorable as well. But in this case, my whole anyway, it's not it's really simple. It's just there's the thing you're describing, which is like meeting people you want to talk to. That's good. Twitter is good for that. I agree. I use it for that purpose as well. The other shit that we're not talking about the other shit with the feed and whatnot with the random shit, like that shit, I can go without it.

You know, that's it. That's all I'm trying to say. But the the the meeting people in DMing and all that, that's good. But how how are you going to meet people on a social media app if they don't have a social media presence? Right, you'll have to like know who you're trying to reach out to and contact them for whatever reason. It doesn't you have what is your plan to contact somebody asking them how to contact them? I'm just saying that I don't want to use that part of it as much. It can still be there. No, I get it. I'm just saying the system of like the page where you follow and the other person follows. That's the part that makes the DMing work. Otherwise, we're basically just going like back to MSN Messenger or emails.

Sure. It still like once I could connect with the person, I still don't really want to look at the feed. If I want to go look at someone's particular thing, I'll be interested in that and I'll go look at that. But in general, like I don't I'm at okay, let okay, woolly, I'm going to I'm going to create a situation for you here. Right. I'm just going to create a situation. Let's assume Twitter is just DMs. It's just a messaging program. What you're describing about the rest of it being like how that's there is what helps you find who you want to talk to makes perfect sense. Like the what I'm saying is the part that I use and care about more is that second aspect. Even if the two even you need the one to get the other, but I still only care more about the other.

I get the first part being there though. Let me give you the situation and I want to hear your solution. Sure. Okay. Okay. I'm streaming. Dave Oshry watches me stream dusk with a controller and wants to shit talk me in my DMs and make fun of me for using a controller. And then later asked me some development questions about dusk using a controller because nobody else is doing it with a controller. Okay. Assuming I don't have a Twitter page. How does he actually contact me? You should have a Twitter page. I just don't care to use it.

Then what are you even saying? I want it. You're okay with it going away, but you need it? No, I'm saying that part of the part of what Twitter has been with that part. I was originally using those pages more when I was first getting on the app and I was actively browsing in a whole bunch. I just don't. All I'm trying to say is that it's I understand why it's necessary. I get the part where you're talking about how you're going to find somebody to begin with, but even though it's necessary, I don't enjoy using it. I want less of that in my life. So I'm not telling anyone. I know I get that, but how does this- It's just, I'm talking about my usage, not about whether or not it should exist.

Yes, but in terms of existing, the whole baseline conversation is the site becoming much worse to use and therefore people leaving it and if they leave it because it's so much worse to use, you're not going to be able to talk to them on it because they're gone. Yeah, that would suck. Yeah, I agree with that. I'm not, I don't have- Right, like let's say for example I wanted to contact my belly on for something. I'm not able to now. Yeah, no, that anyone who leaves over, like as it gets worse, yeah, no, that sucks. You're not going to have that ability for sure. But I guess that's a different thing from what I thought we were talking about. I was just trying to say that, man, over the years,

algorithm, it makes me upset. I don't like that. So I'm going to stop looking at that feed and try to focus more on using it as a business tool and if, and reaching out to somebody who I need to reach out to specifically or if someone reaches out to me, they can contact me for those purposes. But I just don't want to go scrolling through the infinite feeds and the infinite, and the trending tabs and such and all that because I feel like they make my life worse. That's- Yeah, absolutely. That's the end of my sentence. But that's not what I've been talking about the whole time. I've been talking about how when Twitter gets worse, it will get worse for the things that I use it for and send to you

as people leave it because people do use the infinite timeline. That's why we even have social media presences on it so they can look at our stupid bullshit. And I was talking about the other thing that I was talking about and we were talking past each other than I guess. Right. Ultimately, I would rather- Basically, you know what? I remember what I first said now. What I first said was I barely, I interact with the feeds and such less and less. I've already been doing that. So if Twitter, when it's, if it starts to go to shit because of policy changes and whatever else is going on, me not using it socially as much anymore in general is going to have less of an effect. However, caveat, if people who are people

you want to talk to are leaving the platform period, then that doesn't fix that problem. That's basically what I'm referring to is that if the site becomes an unusable shithole, then it will also cease to be useful for an actual contact app because people won't actually open it up to use it. Yeah. If it becomes more of a shithole while everyone is here going, damn, this shit sucks. I'm like, well, I'm dodging it as much as I can anyway. And if it then people are like, I'm out of here, then it's like, oh, fuck, well, that does suck. Yes, I agree. That does make it much less useful if those people are literally gone. I suspect though, I guess if I had to just fucking take a guess that like anybody who's interested or has business reasons to stay

available will probably continue to be available on the platform. I feel like Nibble and anyone who's kind of just doing it for the love of the game will have the freedom to just be like, fuck this, I'm out. Well, the turning point for Nibelio was like he's put a lot of free labor in his Twitter account that creates value for Twitter. And then the turnaround is like, pay us 20 bucks for your check mark whore. And it's like, goddamn, that's stupid as shit. Nibble was effectively providing a like news, a video game news source on the platform that could have been official because without having to go off platform to other sites. And that makes a lot of sense for people who are I get like us content creators and anyone else who's basically like,

hey, I want to let you know about my thing that's happening not on Twitter. Um, you know, I imagine you could just they continue to exist, even if it's just in robot retweet form. Hey, I have a, I have a something I want to respond to. I see a relatively interesting point, which is why are people panicking about this? It'll be the same because at the end of the day, money is all that matters here. That is an interesting take from somebody who I assume is in their early twenties that I watched my space and Facebook and dig, which was the one that hurt me the most, just fucking disintegrate. Oh, you use dig? Yeah. Yeah, I use dig. I never, I never evaporate into trash like damn near overnight because they're like, well,

we need to make more money. What do we do? Oh, fucking. And they just fucking evaporated. Oh, yeah. Tumblr just. Of course, yeah, and the titties and the dicks and all of a sudden. No, you know, it's going to be a live journal and Zanga. Yeah. And black planet. You know, I don't know. You don't remember black planet. Damn, you don't. You were missing out, Pat. You should have been hanging out on black planet black planet and Asian Avenue. Yeah. Whatever. I'm on the blue sky, social fucking waiting list. I did hear it's the new thing from Jack or whatever. It's Jack Dorsey's Twitter too. Yeah, sure, man. Anyways, so as we, as we get, as we talk about, you talk about different

generations of people, someone in their twenties or so, a lot of people, everyone's confused by some of these, these names and such. It's going to get real funny when you talk to generations of kids and you go, OK, so how many social media platforms have you migrated to and from? And for us, it was, what do you mean? There was something before the Disney Mind Palace? It's crazy because for us, it was the beginning of the internet and every stumble along the way from IRC and fucking use net into various forms of, well, yeah, if you're old enough, you go Friendster, ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger, AOL IMs, whatever the fuck your chat preferences were. Don't trust people who use ICQ. Uh oh. You know, it was where, dude, and the answer is,

where are my friends chatting? Yeah, I'm going to be there then, I guess. You just get, you just join the group. They go, what, you don't have, oh, go make a thing on this or that or whatever. And these things went up and went down and went and would fucking die and everyone would have to migrate. Stuff like MySpace comes on and adds a IRC. Yeah. Yeah. IRC will live forever. IRC was absolutely, you know, and well, BBC message boards and such, right? BBS rather. The stuff like MySpace came along and like added features that kind of gravitated all, you know, us as kids at the time would go on. I didn't have a MySpace page, but I remember when a bunch of people did start making them. And like, it always be like, okay, but like, are we, we're still, if we're all still talking on

this, what's, what's the point over here? Is there anything shiny or anything to bother with? And it's like, no, it's just going to be peer pressure. Okay, that's how it moves. But over the course of then till now, we've been through fucking countless dozens of major like centralized social media platforms and news aggregators and things like, yeah, you said like dig and whatnot. So Twitter has been stable and around for a surprisingly long amount of time by comparison, by comparison to all the other dead platforms we've cycled through. Yeah, you're right. You're right. But it's that's unusual. Twitter being around this long and gathering world leaders and like international conversation on not just North America or not just English speaking

countries, like even over in, you know, like you go to like, oh, what's YouTube in Japan? And it's like, oh, well, there's like Nico Nico. And it's like, oh, okay. And like, oh, meanwhile in China, it's Waybo, I believe it's, you know, but like, Arm of the Great Leader, Waybo. And there's like, and like every year, like, oh, right, like, just because I'm used to YouTube doesn't mean every country is doing that, you know, international internet is a different beast. Or is it? Yeah, what? How do you even be Billy Billy? Okay, excuse me. But the point remains that internationally, a lot of a lot of countries have their own platforms that we don't often hear about or interact with. Twitter was one of the few that sustained and managed to gather

an international audience. It's wild how long this has lasted. But we're used to things dying. By the way, while we're talking, I'm just scrolling down Twitter, which is giving me my good emotions of the day. May will temporarily be disabled from now until November 15th. May the Overwatch team is working to address these issues as quickly as possible and aim to bring back May in the next batch. Fucking 16 days off to fucking Jesus Christ. Anyway, I was going on a long winded thing to just say that dead social media graveyards are nothing new to us. We've seen them so many times. Twitter is an unusually sustainable platform, but not sustainable, but it has sustained much longer than others have. But

that doesn't change the fact that it can die just like any of the others can. And then people move on. I don't see it as special. I think the reason why people are so up in arms over this is that in the past, when a social media website just started to just become an unusable piece of shit, there was already a new one that people had already started moving to like a year ago. When MySpace was like complete garbage, people were already telling you what, you're not using Facebook already? What are you, stupid? There is currently no direct replacement for Twitter right now. Because it's been this long and this international. There's nothing on this scale. There's stuff that is country specific in a much smaller way, but definitely nothing that compares

for sure. It definitely has, and as a result of that, it has become what feels like, as described, the human town square, so to speak, in that regard. But I don't think any of that was ever going to fucking last though. The moment anything can come along and get multiple countries on board at the same time, I think. Get a user base on not just like, oh, you're focusing North America, but literally all languages in all places and such, then you're going to have that platform that you can migrate to. I don't know. Do you think what Jack's going to do is going to, do you think this blue sky is going to be something? I mean, why not? Yeah, why not try it? Yeah.

Maybe if I get an early, I'll get big followers. Yay. Look, guys, I'm the only one posting about this on blue sky. Be the first let's player. Right. Right. Just start posting text and image let's plays. Look, look at this. Look at this new meme I found. It's like a cat and he wants a cheeseburger. It's brand new. None of you kids have seen it. A billion re re skies. Yeah. All right. Yeah. What if I get in super early on blue sky and I get to be Pat at Pat. Just Pat. Oh, I want to do that now. I won't be able to.

I don't, I have the feeling, I don't know if Jack's going to strike lightning in a bottle twice, but we'll see. Anyways, rip nibble. Okay. I think, I think this is actually a great chaser to, by the way, Gene's doing well with his, with his cancer diagnosis. Very much on the mend. Cool. So good for Gene. Hell yeah. But he would hop in every now and then on Twitter just to post like hello so that people who know him through Twitter wouldn't think he had fucking passed away. Right. And every now and then would describe he'd be like talking about God of war or something and just like really surface like just what an

absolute piece of fucking shit people are on unregulated social media. Just absolutely fucking monstrous pieces of fucking dog shit about like video games. Like the kinds of people who would normally be relegated to a YouTube comment are now able to speak to you and it's just the worst. Well, it and it also just so happens that like video games is the only thing in their life that they care about beyond like being completely insufferable pieces of shit in every other facet. You know, like there's just a like of the list of interests that are going to have Venn diagram overlap. It just it turns out that you can grab a lot of there's a lot of pieces of shit that only have one thing they

care about in its video games, you know. Well, anyways, games good. No. No. Just don't. Like that that fucking that that animated clip of like like where you're like, hey, Willie, what do fighting games need to do to to revitalize themselves and or and you know sell to a whole new excited generation of gamers work. So anyways, so a whole bunch of shit coming out in regards to the Witcher for one. Oh, man. CD Projekt has announced the Witcher remake built from the ground up with Unreal Engine 5. This is what they were calling canis majoris back in the project list names that we got last week. It's made by

a Polish studio fools theory as well as veteran Witcher staff. So look at that. Which are one no longer as you described it completely unplayably garbage. No, the phrase that I love to use is actually it is a fucked up game for crazy people. Sure. I have a newsflash for everyone. It will still be a fucked up game for crazy people, but it'll control a lot better. So yeah, the sex cards was the one thing I knew about that series. I wonder if they're going to stick with that. How much would you be willing for them to change when it's now we're not talking about Resident Evil 4. We're not talking about Silent Hill 2. We're talking about a game

that like as you described has so many flaws that it's barely unplayable in the style of Witcher 3. That's it. Okay. Just put it the story and the environment and all that quest stuff is actually completely on point. It's just the way it controls and the fact that it's always falling apart. Don't try to update the systems as they are and improve them. Just copy Witcher 3 and bring the assets over. Just take all the stories and the levels and just put them into the Witcher 3. That's it. So there also was word that Henry Cavill has been fighting the showrunners for years on aspects of what Geralt should be like in the show. And it seems like he finally gave up because Liam Hemsworth is going to be replacing him in season four.

Yeah. So it's come out that the people writing the Witcher show are like, man, these books are stupid. I want to write my own shit. That's the next part of it. That's the next part of it. Yeah. Henry Cavill was like, yeah, I'm out. I don't want to deal with this crap. Goodbye. I'm going to be Superman. So I'm kind of wondering if being Superman, seeing as that's returning with the whole Black Adam bit and whatever, is like, since that's what they're kind of hyping up, is it a matter of like, I'm dropping this to kind of go do this other role that I'll be taking up my time? Or was it always going to be like, I was going to do everything, but these reasons give

me a reason to walk away. He was pretty adamant when he started that with the reason he signed on was they promised him that they were going to stay faithful to the book rendition. Okay. And that was like, that was like his line in the sand. So here's what's odd, though, as someone who hasn't watched the show seems like people really like it and consider it pretty good. Oh, there's some it's weird. It's a weird show. So it's it's interesting that that's the case. Also, I want to say the the author came out and said that he approves of Henry Cavill's portrayal and that he thought he did a really good job. Oh, I mean, that guy's going to

he learned his lesson. He's going to approve of all the deals that give him the monies. Okay. Because it's yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I kind of like like said, definitely sounds like a different tone from from the game deal back in the day. But regardless, I'm kind of yeah, like it's interesting to see that like something that was everyone was kind of referring to it as more or less a successful adaptation. He's walking away from it because like they're not delivering on what he wanted from respecting the original series. There's a whole interview then that kind of describes the attitude that he had and essentially that Geralt in the books has more internal dialogue and monologue rather than you get to, you know, be clued into his

feelings a bit more and that on camera, you can't obviously fully adapt someone's internal feelings. So he wants him to talk more and to have more lines to kind of, you know, show that he's more than I guess what he described as one dimensional. I mean, I'm I'm still catching up on the books. So I can't vouch on what's, you know, an accurate portrayal. But I will say that Cavill's acting for Geralt correctly synced up with my portrayal of him from the games, which is exhausted, which is if I had to if I had to describe one Geralt of Rivia, the character in a single sentence, it would be he is very tired. Yeah. And it sounds like he kind of didn't want him to just be a curmudgeon.

What was the word he used to use? There's something he used to describe that kind of attitude. But they seem to the writers seem like they're not going to be making those changes regardless. And related to this story is one from Bo De Mayo, who is was a writer on the Witcher series left and is now heading up the X-Men 97 series that's going to be coming out, which is, if you haven't seen it, it's like, you know, the literally 1997 X-Men show. Right. It's coming back. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And they're going to animate it the way they did in 97 as well. Badly. Yeah. That's awesome. It's going to like they're going for exactly the way it looked back then, too, which sounds super interesting to me. I'm super down with the

Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10 type thing for a TV show like that. Very interesting. But regardless, the showrunner left the Witcher series and he said that some of the writers on the Witcher actively disliked the books in the games when he was working on it. And so his number one rule for X-Men 97 was you're not going to be able to work on this unless you're a fan. You have to respect the work before you're allowed to add to its legacy. You know, it's funny because like it's very interesting because I got about halfway through Witcher 1's first season and I was like, it's fine was my takeaway. Apparently that was the first season. It was like, it's okay to good. And then the second season went right off the rails in terms of quality and

distance from the source material. And it's like, dude, how many times do we have to watch something go, hey, we're going to adapt this. And everyone goes, yeah. And then they go, we're not going to adapt it anymore. And no one goes, yeah, except the one guy whose idea was and then it fucking crashes and burns. Can you think of one adaptation ever that like flew off the rails from the original artist's fucking interpretation and everybody loved it? Because I can think of one. And it's the fact that Stephen King does not like the shining. Certainly think that that we've had. We've had that's it. We've had variations of this conversation. The boys, the boys, the difference with the boys is the boys comic is garbage fight club.

Shit. What was the other thing that just came to mind too? Uh, shits. I had one. So people are mentioning a couple of things and I have to say all you need is kill. Yeah. How many of those things were bad and then the changes turned them into something good. Bad into good. The situation I'm talking about is when you have something that is already good and you're like, I'm going to change it so that it's my gooder. I don't know. It seems like a recipe for failure. Yeah. A lot of people say in Watchbin, well, I haven't seen the Watchbin TV show, but I was interested in checking it out. I never got

around to it. I mean, I'm assuming they mean that more than the Snyder movie. Yeah. Yeah, that seems to be what they're talking about. Yeah. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. I just saw somebody say Dexter was horrible, but not nearly as horrible as the book series it was based off of, which I don't know where that fits in. I don't know where that fuzz in. You know, I, I, a lot of people re, a lot of people have a lot of really good things to say about FMA brotherhood as someone who I have. Yeah. I'd say that. That's a great show. It's also a great manga and the original series was pretty alright. It was alright. I would be curious to see if anyone thinks the, as brotherhood better than the manga like source material.

Probably definitely. I mean, I would say that it is by default. Interesting. Okay. But my opinion on that is a little, it's tainted. Music and sounds make it and color make it better. No, it's, it's literally, I read the manga and I was up to date on the manga and then I started watching 2003 and I got to the point where the little, uh, what's her name? Is it yelling? I can't remember the little girl with the panda. Uh, sorry. Uh, I forget her name. What's her name? And, um, May. Yeah. May. I got to the point where May should have shown up and she didn't and I'm like, where the fuck is she? And then stuff started like being different. And I'm like, what the fuck is this bullshit? This is wrong. This is not how it's supposed to be.

And then I looked up as to what actually was happening with that and I'm like, what is this bullshit? Why is it wrong? And that's why it is bad. So don't listen to my opinion on that. Okay. It has nothing to do with its actual quality. It just has to do with me having caught up to the manga and then going, oh, I wonder how they adapted this and then having the just episode after episode of what the fuck is this bullshit? That's war. Yeah. No. 2003 FMA ends on a rushed. We don't know the ending. We don't have time weird note into conqueror of Shambhala. Um, so I wouldn't make the comparison between that and brotherhood. I would say compare it to the source material directly, compare it straight to the manga, you know? Um, yeah. Oh, yeah. And yeah, Helsing,

there's Helsing as well, which got Helsing ultimate later and, uh, and anyways, it happens, but it's rare. In this case, though, with the whole, with the thing about like, you have to be, you have to appreciate the source material to add to its, its lore, its cannon. That's a, that's a fucking sick ass qualifier for sure. There is something to be said that just being a fan is not enough for you to be like qualified to work on something. There have been instances of just like all you have is being a fan and thus you have nothing new to say or nothing new to do or to write. And all you do is kind of just try to echo something from the past, try to recreate a moment that already existed and just try to do nothing really interesting

with the franchise. Um, or in some cases, like the fan controlled writing or thing with, like, there's like a he-man series that was basically almost like fan driven, fan written or whatever they listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, you got to have, you got to be someone who appreciates the source material, but you also have to be a talented enough writer in and of your own respects. And that combination is what brings out the best. Hey, Willie. Hey, what if, okay, our main character, he killed somebody and he's haunted by that. And so when he goes to Silent Hill, demons attack him that remind him of how he killed that guy.

Huh? Huh? Huh? Oh, think about it. Think about it. What game am I describing? I'm describing like four games. Yeah. Uh, in the, if you have to choose between a hack that is a fan of the work and a hack who is not a fan of the work, let's hire the one who is so that at the very least, they will just try to copy the thing, but both of those still suck. And the person who tries to go, I hate this. I have a better idea. Let's put Superman in a skin suit and have him fight a giant spider because that's what I think is interesting is the worst possible thing. And like that's how you destroy a franchise. I think the Superman in the skin suit and the fucking giant spider thing, that was pretty funny, but it wasn't nearly as funny until I connected

it to Wild, Wild West, which is well, literally the exact same fucking movie as the failed Superman script. Well, Kevin Smith connected it. That's the punchline of the story. Right. Right. Now I thought, here's the first story and then I saw Kevin Smith saying it again later. Okay. And that's why I have it separately. But yeah, no, it's fucking, oh my God. Right. Put a big spider in it. Um, but yeah, no, someone who is a fucking talented writer in and of themselves, and then they go, Oh, I like this thing. I have a good idea for it. That's when you're, you're fucking walking, you're, you know, you're walking on, on, you know, what we need to do. We need to get rid of all the writers and put them with the voice actors in the ocean. There you go. Just

throw them all out. And every time this happens in some part of a creative endeavor, just take that whole batch and just kick them off the project. Lighting people out gaffers, get the fuck out of here. Those dudes that hold the boom mic over the scene, get the fuck out of here. There is, there is one example I could think of, of like a writer that's like, I kind of hate this, but I like this, but I also kind of hate it. I have an idea, which is Drew Carpecian with Kotor, right? Where, where like the best parts of that are like the contempt for the world. Like, oh, okay, I'll take that. That works out really well. Craya is the best, you know, but that, that's, you have to be very, very good to, to weave that.

Star Wars fucking stupid. What's that, Craya? Nothing. God, she hates Disney. There should be Chris Avalon who wrote Craya, not Drew. Oh, my bad. Was he just part one? I think so. He's the, he's the Mass Effect guy for Mass Effect one and two. I thought he did the Kotors. Okay. Excuse me. I would love a like Kotor world at Star Wars, Star Tours in Disney, where you've got an old Craya like outfit walking around and she just hates being there. She hates existing in, and you're like, yeah, let's take a picture. And she's like, get, get away from me. And I'll see that she just walks up to like random park goers and

criticizes us, criticizes them on everything they do. Damn. That'd be great. Yeah. So being a fan is, is, is important, but it's not all. But if you hate the thing you're working on and you're just trying to get your credits, fuck you, you're destroying something that people care about. And in some cases, if that leads to it failing, then the studios will be like, well, that flopped and clearly no one likes this thing. And we don't know why except they must just hate the name and the way it looks. So that's the end of that. Umbrella Chronicles so poorly on the switch or the, we fuck it. No more Resident Evil games, losers. Actually, no, it was Umbrella Chronicles sold well on the switch. Here's Dark Side Chronicles.

Wait, that sold poorly? Oh, I guess you don't want Resident Evil. God damn it. Yeah. Anyways, all right. This one is fucking sick. Last little bit here. There was a NASCAR event a couple days ago. Did you see this fucking replay, dude? A NASCAR driver. I think I'm watching it right now pulled a wall ride stunt on the final lap in the Martinsville Speedway. It was nuts. And the driver. How does he do it on the wall? I don't understand the driver. So basically, if you hit the corner and of the wall and instead of steering and downshifting and slowing down, you make it so that the corner of the wall lines up with the car

and then you accelerate so that you don't slow down. You can ride the wall at max speed, providing the car doesn't disintegrate in the process and you can round the corner faster than other people can. Yeah, he's going very, very fast. So this tech comes directly from racing video games and you could do this back in the day in old games and he specifically played GameCube NASCAR 2005 and used that as something in the game you could get away with because, again, you'd have to have the car actually withstand the fucking damage. And so he tried it. He is flying around the fucking corner. He is going so much faster than the other drivers. So this is a thing that like he's not the first one. Other people have tried it and like they've all said that it's like, yeah, this comes

from old games, old racing games before they got super realistic would allow you to kind of hit the corner and it depends on the length of the corner. And like if it's too wide, you're going to take too much damage and you're in and it won't work. And so they also like three people fucked up trying to do this beforehand. And what it was done last time, they literally, the announcers called it a video game move. And this last one, he pulled it off and it was like straight out of NASCAR for the GameCube wall ride into third place finish, which allowed him to qualify. So this has led to a huge discussion, obviously, shit talking, everything going back and forth because a bunch of people are like, that is the sickest shit I've ever seen. What a fucking boss. Hell yeah,

this is this is the best. And other people going, this is a disgrace to the sport. How dare they disgrace to the fucking sport. How like based on fucking running booze. And now you're just gonna now everyone's going to try it. And now you're going to ruin the sanctity of what the race should be about. It's dude. Get the fuck out of here. It's it's the best, most interesting tech ever. And the fact that it doesn't work most of the time, it happens to work if you're good enough. And if you specifically are on a racetrack that has a short enough turn for it. And if you go look at, you can see the view from in the car, which is like like the view from outside looks like some fucking GameCube shit in the car. It looks like it's going to explode and crash like it looks

like a fuck up. Okay, so here's the thing. Here's the thing. Right? What's okay, let's say this is the new hot shit. Right? Let's let's let's extrapolate. Okay, so what does this mean? It means that people are going to go Okay, well, I should probably give this a shot on the next race, because this will be really cool. So the next race, you have like 10 guys trying to do this, right? And maybe they're bumping and grinding and they're trying to get on the outside of the track, which is not where the line is. And and let's say next race that these guys try it all 10 just disintegrate their cars on the fucking outside of the track and just wreck it. That sounds fucking awesome. And if you if you do a high

risk maneuver that has a chance of taking you out of the race, and then you like you you fuck up, then it's like, okay, you hit the turbo boost buttons, you hit the nitro, and then it didn't work. So congrats, you have figured out a way to make NASCAR interesting, because now you have guys who are like, I'm going to try and ride the line and do the perfect run. But people might rub my car and fuck me up on it. And then you have a bunch of other guys got Ricky Bobby. What if I fucking hit the wall as hard as I can? Maybe I'll bounce over the finish line. Yeah. Some people are there. They're learning how to snake in real life. And you know, it's it's it's the next level. It's the it's the it's the tech man.

All that once this is established, we need to move on to phase three known as Pat's plan, where you give every single driver a loaded shotgun that has three shotgun shells in it. And he took his headphones off. He knows what I'm going to say. I'm going to ask him to put his headphones on. All right, I want you to ballpark what I just said. Blood sports, we get it. Okay. No, seriously, do it. For those of you listening to the MP3, I took my headphones off because it's a no, I narrated it as you as you took it off. All right. No, but the trick the trick, Willie, the trick is you give him a shotgun with only three shots. That makes that that adds that adds like a dynamic of like,

how do I want to shoot the guys out front early? Or do I want to fucking, you know, wait till the end and then every and like once or twice a race, they'll fuck up and shoot like their own foot off. And then it's like, are they going to continue? Or can the pit guys bandage up their stump? Think of the strategy. You can take out three out of four wheels, of course. But then the grappling hook is the real best way to round the corners quite frankly. So, you know, yeah, I can't believe America hasn't hopped on Bloodsport already. I mean, we kind of do, but it's just it's from UFC one to UFC now. UFC one is basically blood sport. UFC one was for heroes.

All right, Sumo guy. Sure, man. Do your best, dude. Do your best. I believe in the power of Sumo. Do you? You know what? You know what? I'm going to, I'm going to not go blood sport. I'm going to, I'm not even going to go it. You know what would make fights way more interesting in like professional fights? If the fighters didn't know who they were going to go up against until they were in the ring. Okay. Here's a question. Are they, they just didn't know, but is the weight the weight? It's the same. Is the weight still balanced? Yeah, sure. Okay. But just like no research. Blind battle. Okay. No information at all. Okay.

See, that would be that. I actually, that's fine. Yeah. That'd be interesting. Now the high level that they get to these days is one of like, I've studied your frame data, actually your frame data. Like I told you about this, but like GSP was like a dude showed me that like this guy jabs in three frames and fighting games can tell you how to break down someone's jab. And so I know how to react to that. And so like they have to come up to the counter, to the counter, to the counter, which is like, again, high level crazy shit that you would never get to if you don't know the move list, but then everyone would just study the tapes of everyone in the division and then. Yeah. And so then, and then be prepared for it. So you have the,

you know, you have like the tournament of blind bouts, right? And then you get to the, you get to the finals and it's whoever made it through the semifinals versus the champ. And it's a fucking grizzly bear. Okay. Well, yep. And it's, it's just a grizzly bear. Right. And the grizzly bear is wearing little shorts. Okay. And you have to make the grizzly bear tap. Okay. Did the grizzly bear get a chance to study the tapes? It did. It did. See, you roll your eyes, but if I fucking called you and said, woolly, there's a man fighting a grizzly bear in UFC right now, you would run to the nearest screen. Yes. His name is Kabeeb. And he already did. What are you talking about? There's motherfuckers fighting grizzly bears in

real life in UFC all the time. They come from Dagestan. They're unbelievable. They literally do this. You can go watch the footage on Twitter right now. Dad, I don't know what you're talking about. Kabeeb versus bear. Sure. Okay. Yeah. He's unstoppable. He's, he's, he's, they fight bears, dude. We've already been there. This is old news. Oh, you know what? Oh God, Stu Hart missed out. You know, remember the old fucking stories of Stu Hart and the, in the dungeon? He'd fucking try out submissions on his bear. Oh, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Force his kids and new wrestlers to wrestle the bear. Yeah. Nah, man. Just all these, all these modern fucking Dagestani fighters, just like the hair's footage of a 13 year old rolling

with a bear for real. Cool. Now fight him as an adult. Good luck. Yeah. And oh, oh, oh, oh, no, you know what? You know what? You know what? Solution. No guns in the NASCAR people's cars. Like don't give the NASCAR driver's guns. Instead, let the people in the audience bring their guns. And just say outside interference in the race is just, it's just like a golf course. Just has castle super beast mail at gmail.com. That's castle super beast mail at gmail.com. That's where you want to send those letters. Golf. Let you replace the ball with a live grenade. We got one coming in only one.

All right. So, uh, there willy-wills and funky Pat, uh, Levi here. What's your favorite example of actual important events leading to some nerd shit? For example, you don't know this, but the Franco Prussian war directly led to the creation of Dungeons and Dragons. Let me explain. Prussia's victory in the war was a huge shock to the whole world as France's army was larger, more experienced and better equipped. When people started examining the Prussian army to figure out how they won, they found something unique that no other army did. Prussian officers would frequently play a game called Kriegespiel, Kriegespiel, Kriegespiel, literally war game in which they used maps and wooden blocks to represent military units, practicing tactics

and strategy. Some people would become convinced that the game specifically contributed to their surprising victory and many military started using it as well, often adapting the rules to better fit their own military doctrine. After it spread across the world, it was only a matter of time before it broke into the civilian sector and the war game genre was born. Fast forward to the late 60s when a young war game enthusiast named Gary Gygax created the International Federation of War Gamers. In 1971, he created a medieval game called Chainmail and an optional set of fantasy rules based on token mythos, making it a fantasy war game. In 72, him and a few friends started making the fantasy game, basing it off the rules of Gygax's Chainmail, and then the other games

him and his friends made decided to focus it on a single fleshed out character instead of a massive nameless units. And by that point, it's the name changed to Dungeons and Dragons. That's interesting. That's some fucking I can think of one. Huh. World War Two led to your ultra kill v one body pillow. The domino effect. World War Two leads to American occupation of Japan leads to fucked up morality clauses leads to all that anime shit leads to et cetera, et cetera, leads to Dante doing high times into air combos aerial raves. Yeah. Wait, how the fuck does 9 11 go to 50 shades of gray? Okay, because I can go to 50 shades of great to Twilight, but I don't Twilight goes to 9 11. Okay, well, it's that's that's that's worrying because I see people go, he doesn't know

and oh, I can see it. 9 11 goes to near. Yeah. Yeah. What does my romance have to do with 9 11? Did my chemical romance to a 9 11? Yeah. My chemical romance is first song is about 9 11. So how do you get from my chemical romance to Twilight? I mean, Twilight to 50 shades is pretty obvious, but I can't do that first part. Okay. All right. Oh, somebody's answering me in my DMS. Okay, the fact that everyone is kind of stalling here means nobody really knows either. So one person said it. Oh, and we're waiting. Okay. My chemical

romance was invented as a response to 9 11, which is not something I ever thought I'd read. And then the music of my chemical romance is the direct inspiration of Twilight. Damn. Damn. That explains everything. These dominoes. Holy shit. Okay. Yep. Yep. Sure. Sure. That's right. And Robert Patterson died in 9 11. Do you remember Patterson? Yeah, Robert, Robert Pattinson, like Pat Patterson. No, I don't know. Robert Pattinson was in a romcom where the ending of the movie was they didn't, they were never going to make it work because he hangs up the phone call as he's in the towers, as he's watching the plane hit the tower. Okay, man. Look, I don't look, you can tie any anime you

want to 9 11 if you go by whatever they found on Bin Laden's laptop. There's a quote. They found all kinds of fucking roms and wares and anime on his laptop, dude. So, you know, there's your direct connection if you really want it. All right. All right. It's a little too long for a podcast title, folks. All right. We got one over here. Uh, Dio, the clown says, Hey, Willie of the West and Pat Pat of the East, other way around, actually, love your show and have been a listener for years with the topic of PS5 scarcity issues coming up once again, figured I'd drop a piece of advice, uh, for where people might be able to find them. I work at an appliance store on the east coast

in the States and we have dozens of them taking up space in our training room in the back. My boss is getting sick of having them around. They don't sell for a profit and we're not allowed to add any extra store add ons to bundle them. They're not being marked up our soul at an inflated price. People just don't believe that we sell them. My boss has taken it for me to the store's resident niche weirdo to go and get rid of them by shipping them out and I've shipped them to half a dozen friends, family, people that had interest in them, but after too many trips carrying 25 pound boxes to the post office, my back can't do it anymore. So, uh, yeah, I guess in the end, there are places that did

get restocks of PS5s, but no one believes they exist. Yeah, the number one place to try and get a PS5, uh, if I were to try and get one out here is a pharmacy. That was the tech back here. Uh, yeah, in Canada, certainly a bunch, like a good pharmacy with a, um, like a farmer pre that has a fucking game center. When it's like, when the fuck did the fuck goes to the fucking pharmacy to fucking buy a game? Yeah, I think Min taught me about that because he found like some, he found some shit. They're back in the wee era. Pharmacies here have, uh, they started, they started selling games and then they started selling because it went, they went from like, oh, let's put out phone chargers. Oh, those are selling really well. Let's, let's put out like

phones. Oh, okay. Tech games, consoles. And then like there was an exclusive wee red edition that was only in the pharmacies in Canada. I remember that was wild actually. It was crazy. Um, so yeah, that became one solution. But, uh, yeah, apparently there are places with retail PS5s unmarked up, but you just have to, you know, believe the lie. Interesting. Um, go, you want a PS5, go somewhere where you wouldn't think to buy a PS5. They might have a PS5. I saw people saying bed, bath, and the NB and beyond. Yeah, that's it. Like whatever it used to be about crawling through the city, uh, to think outside the box. Absolutely. You like, you go to all your obvious places and then you start going, okay, who's got a little

corner department with a couple of games in it just dipping their toes in the tech world? They might have gotten to, you know, um, or even just calling them up. All right. And America has a lot of like weird chains we don't have that are like fucking like, oh, tons. Yeah. Like I like, you guys got like bulk barn shit or whatever, you know, like you go to for a barrel of peanuts or maybe they'll have a PS5. Who knows. It's possible. Here's one coming in from Sebastian says, Hey, dark side Pat and low tier woolly. Oof. I don't want to live with this. I don't enjoy it. Story time years ago.

Treasure was making a game for Nintendo. They wanted it to be tough as nails, but knowing how casual oriented Nintendo is, they expected to be told to tone down the difficulty and were ready to argue for it. To their surprise, Nintendo got back to them and said the game was way too easy and they couldn't ship it this way. They were absolutely baffled and had no idea what had happened. The game was sin and punishment too. Turns out they tuned the difficulty for analog sticks and Nintendo was using the wheeze pointer. Playing the game that was made to be extremely difficult analog became trivially easy on the remote pointer. I would do it. What's my point other than an opera, my an opportunity to show for motion controls. They're

good. I swear. Yeah. Okay. It's and I'm mentioning that RE four with motion controls is crazy. Which this person says is unequivocally better with motion controls. Oh, well, they're wrong. Super wrong. That's hilarious. Sin and punishment. The original right and 64 game. Yeah. Like you have to aim and the difficulty curve is entirely in learning how to get to stick to whatever part of the screen you can with enough speed and pressure and accuracy. Pointing your arm to the problem completely annihilates the challenge in that regard. It's true. RE four on the Wii was fun, but it was a joke, man. There's nothing that could touch you. It's that's so interesting how like aiming was difficult because you have to fucking line the

character crosshair up on the screen via like correction, correctional inputs, I'll call them, you know, versus like, yeah, light gun or what pointer is still is like instant correction. There is no correction. It's that is the that is the thing input and it's gone, you know. Interesting. Thanks for the tidbit. I didn't RE four motion controls have you waggle for melee? I don't fucking remember. I want to say it was like waggle for knife or waggle for or something like that. I feel like it was there. Yeah. Anyways, I remember is that Metroid Prime 3 was one of the games that like seriously hurt my arm

because the way the pointer just yeah, yeah, I don't care if you have to rotate the door and pull it out. Just, you know, Metroid Prime one was great with a GameCube controller. Like there was there was yeah, I'm a crazy person though. Like I turn off rumble for like every game that I can now not to mention like I I I literally don't even feel it just takes a battery life. The other thing too is like I'm like Metroid Prime had lock on targeting. So aiming wasn't even that big of an issue. It was mainly about being defensive, you know. Anyways, all right, that'll do it, folks. That's podcast. I'm going to yeah, we are we are we are good on the double negative with the with

the testing and yay, that's all awesome. So we're going to be back to normal. I'm going to resume Bayo to and back to Mass Effect as well. And yeah, check out Willie versus for the continued LPs. So it looks like we're finally good to go again. As of in the middle of this podcast, looks like the green light. Oh, nice. Yeah, fuck yeah. So we'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good week, everybody.