Castle Super Beast - CSB 212: Gackt Bujingai'd Himself Into Your Favs feat. TheSphereHunter

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

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島. Hello, we have a guest. Good morning, good afternoon, everybody. Hello, I'm back for the third time. And welcome back, Susie. Yeah, I just realized, Pat, you would be like a perfect Salazar in Castle Super Beast. Oh, that works for me.

Yeah. Gee, I wonder what this week's subject matter is. Hey, Susie, what's the deal with RE4? It's very, very, it's very good. It's like, like the reviews weren't lying, you know, when people were like 10 out of 10. Oh, surely. No way.

It's not that perfect. And you play it and you're like, this is like it. Like I beat it on stream. I did a stream playthrough and I was like, this is this is good and bad because like if there's a game called Resident Evil after this, it has to be this good because like, holy shit. OK, are you are you guys coming in saying that this is the new peak of the franchise?

So I don't know. The way that I would phrase it is that I was going through RE4 and I'm going through it on my own time just for a second run. And then I'll probably do a third and a fourth and a fifth and a sixth. And my only complaint that I can possibly make about this as a game, but also as a remake is that it's not technically as great as the first one because it didn't come out in 2005, right? When RE5 RE4 came out in 2005, it was like this game is from the fucking future.

And now this game is not from the future. It's from now. It's just uniformly excellent in every single way. Right. All the quality of life of the modern day. Right. Yeah, because I mean, that's I just want to the bad. I want to add to that. Like it's an amazing point because when RE4 came out, there was literally nothing else like it.

So like it's kind of like, oh, you know, that that that innovation, like is really there. But it does. I feel like this game does innovate. Well, I mean, it's a little bit of a sidestep from that main point. But I do wonder how much of that we have left in. Well, there's always infinite time can go on and things can always change. But I mean, in terms of the way games and particularly high budget, you know, AAA spectacles have come along like RE4 has definitely cemented.

This is where the camera is going to go, whether you're Leon or Kratos, you know, you know, or Marcus Phoenix, whatever. This is where we're sitting now. I kind of wonder how many times we're going to see like an overhaul that becomes a industry wide change from from here on out. You know, I can't imagine there's all that many. Like when I was playing RE4 original last week in prep, somebody asked me, do I remember how crazy it was that you got to play

a 360 game on your GameCube in 2005? Because RE4 was just that much better looking than everything else. And it was also like a new camera, new perspective, new way to shoot a gun. I think the last game that even came close to that was like, I don't know, Breath of the Wild, like in terms of like, hey, this is different. Your Master Sword is going to break after two hits, but it's mine. Don't worry, you can you can throw a rock at some guy. But in terms of like, oh, wow, you can actually do this.

And even that wasn't actually new. That was like PC survival games being refined into Nintendoization. Yeah. And Pat, now we are. Oh, this is new. And now your Marvin knife breaks. Yeah. You know, I was sitting here and I was starting the podcast with like, you know what doesn't have fucking weapon durability, Resident Evil 4. And like, no way it does.

It actually does. Yeah, it actually totally does. But it's only the one thing, though. So it's fine. I hear that. So I hear that there's new stuff and I hear that there is like overall like touches that improve the flow and the feeling of the story and such. And one of the things I've caught wind of is that like Marvin's memory is like a factor. Yeah. So Marvin and Kendo and pretty much like Leon just dealing with

like not being able to save Raccoon City, you know, that that factors into his like personality shift in this game. But every once in a while, are you to remake Leon still comes out? Like the nerd dork, like altruistic Boy Scout comes out and retriever. Yes. Yes. And that's that's when you're like, Holy shit, this is like. Did they plan this? Because I don't I did never saw this coming like like it's so good. So on top of that, in terms of like thematically, you say like Marvin's

memory or what have you, but like also like literally the knife that Marvin gives you in RE2 is the knife that you're carrying with you through RE4. And I don't know how much of it you've caught, Willie, but I don't know how much I talked about during the demo, but after going through the full game, like knife parrying is a massive, massive part of the game. Parrying thrown weapons, parrying dynamite, parrying Molotovs, parrying every single boss, parrying, having full scale Devil May Cry style, three round knife fights where, by the way, where the guy you're fighting literally says a Virgil line.

Oh, yeah. And almost word for word. Like Krauser, what does he say? He says he says all that matters is power. And without it, you can't protect anything. Oh, my. Yeah. OK. Yeah. It's right. It's all the nose. OK. Yeah. And so I think I've seen as well, people kind of discussing the idea that like this cements the Leon a path since you have to you have to meet Marvin

in order for this to make any sense. Right. That's always been the way that's like it's always been the for me, the cleanest takeaway that Leon a Claire B was the way to go. It made more sense to me that Claire would be the one fighting Birken more often. Or or finishing off Birken, but regardless, did you carry the machine gun? That's crazy. I just don't know. That's insane. The fuck is that even look like?

Really? I mean, it looks like Leon standing there just blocking bullets with his fucking night is what it looks like. Yeah. OK. All right. He does the Virgil's bit of just like spinning. That's the that's the thing about this about this game is like when the trailers were coming out, everyone like maybe not everyone. Like I was definitely in favor of like a darker story, but like people were so worried about like, oh, the game is going to take itself too seriously. And for the most part, it does in the cut scenes.

But when you're in the game, like that's when Leon's dropping one liners. That's when you're parrying. When you parry the dynamite, you cut the fuse on it. How fucking insane is that? That's ridiculous. OK. It's your suplexing. So, you know, like you're doing the crazy stuff. It's a weird dichotomy because like the original I just went through it.

It's so zany and the story is so inconsistent. It really it's three completely separate video games that got stapled together. And it's it's just no one is taking it seriously, like at any point. And with the new tone, like everyone's taking it seriously at all time, unless Leon is fighting someone at which point, all the stupid shit comes out. Like he'll be asking for props from Ashley. Like, yeah, that was cool, huh?

Oh, that's pretty good. Bad, right? It's like, OK. And then the dead scenes are played straight, like they're played like serious, like not serious drama, but they're played like serious, serious and clean. But they gave you something different, which is we finally have I have had a complaint about Resident Evil cut scenes and a lot of video game cut scenes for a really long time.

And that is, dude, he's right there. Just shoot him. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. They're just shoot him. And this game does not have that problem. When I when I reviewed this game, I mentioned a few parts that I think are going to get like memed to death. And those are the moments. Yeah, because it's final.

It's finally like a holy shit, like he has a brain in his head. Like, just shoot him right now. OK. He's right there. He's right in front of you. Just just take him out. Just you shoot him. You shouldn't write. OK. But because these are Resident Evil characters, they're, you know, made of goo. And how of the invincible?

How of the the supporting cast like changed as well? Like, mostly for the better. OK. Um, there's one. And would you like? Yeah, I don't want to. I don't want to trash anyone. I'll just say that you could you could handle it. Yeah. OK. So, man, Ashley's great.

Lewis has been had his his his role expanded dramatically. And he has a Don Quixote kind of thing going on where he's calling you Sancho. OK. And making jokes about windmills. And he's great. He's fantastic. He is also in a lot more of the game. Ada Ada is played by how do I OK if you haven't seen.

Well, you played Mortal Kombat X or 11, the one where they go to the future. Mm hmm. I've played them both. Do you remember Rhonda Rousey as fucking Sonya Blade? Yeah. Yeah. That's that's what's rolling around as Ada Wong in fucking R.E. Four.

Just that's what it's giving. Yeah. Just like I have the lines in front of me on the paper. And do you know what? Do you know what almost made me pass out? Use this, huh? That almost I almost fucking fell on the ground. The climactic line of the final battle.

Hey, use this. Huh. So, I mean, I guess like the idea was the tradeoff there was that you get to put Rhonda's name on the box and go look. We got Rhonda Rousey in this case. It's it's the lady who played Ada in the Welcome to Raccoon City live action movie. OK. So I assume the thought process was, oh, there's an actor

who already played Ada. We'll just get her. Right. OK. They should not have done that. Voice acting is is it's acting, but it tastes a lot. And so you know how like you'll you'll like watch a show or a movie or a game, you're like maybe the voice direction was bad, right? Maybe the voice director just didn't give them enough to work with. But then everyone else is crushing it. Yeah, like a plus.

Like why am I crying multiple times at multiple scenes then? You know, like what happened? What happened? Damn. OK. It's really, really. Line delivery aside, are there any like script changes with her that are like um, yeah, nice step ups. Yeah. Um, I would probably say I said it in my review, but it kind of feels like I mean, this isn't confirmed, but there are hints to it throughout the game.

But it feels like they cut out a lot of Ada's like pivotal moments and are going to save it for her for her story, her separate ways story. So that it's definitely like a negative, but it kind of stands out if you've played the original, like there are a few scenes that are like from Ada that aren't in the game anymore. Where you're just like, like that we're in the game and find out that separate ways is going to be coming.

I didn't want to say that, but it seems likely. OK. Yeah, we didn't data mine anything. We didn't leak anything. It's fine. I didn't leak nothing. OK, so pull it out to like build something more later. Yeah, in particular, there's there's something really weird that happens in the game. There's so like we'll have a lot to say. I'm sure Susie has a lot about cut content and when you remake a game,

what you're going to cut and what you're not going to cut or what you're going to tweak because this game is like kind of the perfect example of that. But the weirdest thing is there's an entire boss sequence that was just wholesale removed, like it's completely gone. Yeah, but the boss still has documentation for it. Which one game? It's the U3 boss, the one that was that weird centaur freak that you fought in a maze in the island.

Yes, he doesn't remember. See? See? Yeah. So there you go. Like boy, but you find like notes about its creation. Yeah, but it's not there. U3. Like, wow, I'm looking at it and I don't remember this. Yeah, see. I feel like I feel like Capcom. Capcom probably did like internal surveys of like,

do you remember this and just like showed pictures to people? Do you know what this is? We don't need it. But the fact that there's still documentation for it makes me think, again, they're going to put it in the expanded thing at a later date. I think I think that could work way better too. If you're playing as Ada, because like Woolly, because clearly you don't remember it,

but like when you fought it in the original, you fight it in these like suspended cages and you kind of have to like open the door of each cage while it's like chasing you around. It is a pretty intense fight. But I was thinking like, imagine if you're playing as Ada and you have the hookshot and you basically have to hookshot between the cages to get away from it.

The original boss was astonishingly bad because you don't fight it in the maze. You just run past it. And then when you go to fight it in the arena, I just closed a gate on it and then shot it with 220 TMP rounds and it died and it couldn't move. It just instantly died. It's a bad boss in its original form.

So that's kind of like the major cut from the only major cut. OK, I wonder like there are some some areas that got like so like, oh, God, I just went through it. So there's stuff that got cut, but it was directly replaced with things of a similar nature. Or better. So there's one that I can remember you go in the in the middle of the castle after the dining room puzzle with the wine.

There's a sequence in which you get trapped inside a cage and a bunch of enemies fall in with you. And right after that is a sequence where you're running around hallways trying to chase a guy in red to get his key and then he hops on a minigun to shoot you and you're having to run around and it's it's kind of a fucking mess. In a medieval castle, by the way. What's that?

In a medieval castle, there is a minigun. And this they split it into two parts. They split one into a cutscene in which Leon gets caught in the same trap, but he fights off that fight in a cutscene while you play as Ashley. And then the second of which is instead of running like doing a loop to loop around this tiny little room where a guy's shooting at you with a gatling gun, instead, they have the part where somebody

clearly loves attack on Titan and has you going around the castle battlements while an Eligante is throwing like shotgun boulders at you as hard as he can. I didn't even put that put that together, but that is exactly what it is. It's like literally a attack on Titan crushes it into into shrapnel and then toss like the beast Titan and the do you, Pat. Did you know you can actually just ignore it?

Like you can ignore him and then leave and the bridge doesn't break. And it makes the backtrack to the locked chest. That you need a small key for easier. How cool is that? How cool is that? There are so many like sequence breaks in this game that are intentional. It's really weird. So far, there's two sequence breaks that have shown up that have become

like astonishing, the first of which I know the average viewer and Willie will be able to appreciate because the first fight in the game, the village fight, if you pull out your gun and shoot the church bell like a kilometer away, the fight instantly right. Yeah, I heard about that. Yeah, just ring the bell. That's awesome. And there's another one where if you if you throw grenades behind a little

column, you can blow up a dude waiting to pull a lever to like to send a platform. And so the whole sequence just doesn't turn on. OK. Now, do you want to know another one that was this like last night? OK, I won't say exactly what it is to avoid spoilers, but there's a part where a wall has to break. Yeah. And a device is used to break the wall. That's right.

Before the before you get you activate the device, you can throw two heavy grenades at the wall, then activate the device and one hit will break the wall. Shut up. And you do one wave of enemies and not like 10 ways of enemies. Yeah. Wow. OK. It's amazing. It's actually amazing. Did remake two and three have like things like this at all where you change that?

Well, the flow of the game is different, admittedly, right? It's totally different. Yeah, because it's R.E.4. So you like like R.E.2 and one, you're you're in a complex. You're in a set piece and things are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The all the all the sequence breaks in those games is like, what do I actually need? Right. Right. Almost nothing. Yeah, I need these keys and I need this thing.

So I'll just run and get them and then ignore everything and so on. Yeah. Or four is linear nature. Feels like it would make a much bigger difference to have like, oh, yeah, you a wall doesn't get knocked down. You stop a wave over here because you're right past it to the end of the stage. Yeah. Yeah. And instead in R.E.4, you have the situation of like, how many rooms actually lock me in? The answer is not that many.

You actually just need the item to progress through the room. You just you can they reduce that in this way because they're there were way more like just rooms that were like Devil May Cry rooms, like kill everything in the room, then the door will open, but that's not really the case anymore. No, instead, they're just in your way. So like, given that the the name of the game is knife parries and shit now, when you switch over to Ash, can you do like night armor parries? Does she have like a like a night armor gauntlet on or something?

But she has been given a way to defend herself. OK, so in the original, she threw little lanterns at some of the goons, but those were like like limited use here. She's fighting exclusively armors and she has like a little blue lantern that will freeze them in place. OK, it's like kind of the same thing, you know, kind of it's a lot easier to use. Yeah. And her section does not have a fucking nightmarish slide puzzle in it. So like, oh, yeah, her sequence also has a sequence break.

It does. Yeah. If you know that you just put in a code correctly, which is the same every time, you just skip like 95 percent. There's two. There's two of them. Really? There's two. Yeah. Yeah, because on my second play through, I tried to enter the same code and I was like, what the hell? And I was like, oh, I guess you need the paper, you know, to get the code. And then I found the paper and it was a different code.

And I was like, oh, wow, there's two. Oh, that's weird. It's not random. It's just one or the other. Yeah. OK, that's OK. That's weird. Now, does it still kind of feel like you switch over and you're like looking at the clock like, OK, how many chapters of this are we doing? Like you like. Oh, no, hers. It hers. So like like Resident Evil 2 remake is great, but like Sherry's section is awful

and Carlos's section is better, but has like a fight at the end of it in RE3 that I don't think particularly works with the style of game they have. Ashley's section RE4 is interesting, but also really fast on replay. Like really fucking fast. OK, OK, once you know what you're doing, you can get through it in probably like five minutes or something like it's such a like in like six minutes. It's a quick diversion, because yeah, I just I remember getting a taste for that. Like there's just moments where like, yeah, you feel like you feel like a dip

when I played like Onimusha the other day and it was just like, wait, what? At the last second, you got to switch characters and she's not as well thought out and has way less mechanics. And you're like, oh, like it's not crazy slide puzzle. In that game, holy shit, it's but it's just like one of these bits where you're like the switch isn't the problem. It's just make the all the second character as fun. You know, make sure that you've got a lot going on.

You know, I'm like it's not the same with like Ada, you know, for example. Yeah. Interesting. OK, I forgot Ada had a section in RE2 remake. She has a gun, you know, you could have. Yeah, she also has that weird scan of the targets thing. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Ashley is great in this game. Like, you know, like she's she's so I don't want to say likable.

She's lovable, like she's just great. She's great. Fantastic. And you can finally tell her to kind of back the fuck off. You're fighting dudes so that she's just not constantly in your way. Oh, like like commands. Yeah, there there is like stay close in which she attaches herself to your hip, which can be a problem, because like there's like there's a tax you can duck. Like people who have like hammers or like gigantic sites,

they'll like wind up for a huge horizontal swing. And you can tap crouch to Leon will do like a little backflip over there. He'll do a backflip. That's amazing. Or he'll go like flat on the floor, depending. But if Ashley's like right next to you, she gets bonked. OK. When you say attached to your hip, does she like physically like? Like like no, no, she's one foot back and she just stays. OK.

All right. OK. But it also it also doesn't feel like the original where like when you told Ashley to follow you, like Leon and Ashley become an entity, you know, that are like one person entity. They are like locked together, you know, like she is she is like off behind you. Like you can you can run faster than her. And then she'll be like, where are you going? Like don't leave me type of thing.

Like so. OK. But more importantly than any of that is that she no longer has health at all. Yes. She has she gets hit once and she's downed and you have to pick her up. OK. She gets hit a second time when she's down. She dies. OK. But usually they go and grab her. And try and leave the room, which is I never had any threat of her actually leaving the room ever because the way the areas are larger and like more interconnected.

Yeah, no one ever got even close to a door. They also give you, which I think is really cool on the HUD, they give you like a little like meter where it's like the guy like it like gets closer to the exit, you know. And it's like the guy carrying Ashley. So you can like kind of keep an eye on how much time you have left before she's like taken away completely. I like that I like that the the dreaded era

of the escort mission is finally kind of gone. And now you just have like competent companions like Atreus and things like that. Like you actually have like, oh, I don't mind this person that she's not a drag. She's not Atreus. No. But I mean, I feel like there's been quality of life improvements over the years that have gotten us past the days of Emma Emmerich. Yeah, that's the Emma Emmerich will never be again. Hopefully, you I completely forgot about E.E.

Oh, my God. E.E. Absolutely. Wow, that was a blast from the past. Yeah, no, I think no, not my my first like escort mission memory was actually Peter Puppy from Earthworm Gym. Oh, hell, yeah. Right. The where he's like walking on the path and you've got to like protect him by whipping all around. And it's like, this is the worst.

It's I hate it so much. What's a great level? It's so annoying. It's the worst. You got to whip him to make him jump. And anyways, God, every time I think about Emma Emmerich or E.E. I think about what an absolute massive fucking loser. Otacon is that he is so wrapped up in his own personal bullshit

that he ignores a dying person's final request. She goes, call me Emma just once. And he goes E.E. And then she fucking dies. And then he starts saying Emma to her corpse. I'm like, literally one thing. Did the one thing? Yeah, but at the same time, like think about how much of a shit Huey was.

And like he got his comeuppance. So it's it's he's the worst, but also the best when you think of how much he pissed off Huey. Yeah, that works. I know another Huey that just helps me, you know, the dog. Yeah, the dog is is he also based in Redpill? Oh, my God. Hey, Susie's here.

Great. Hey, Susie. Did you know that the dog from RE4 original dies in RE4 remake? Look, we have a picture of an incredibly dissimilar looking wolf in a bear trap in the in the dead. Are we are we allowed to say fuck IGN for starting that? How much IGN? Like, how about you wait for the game? Composing dog corpse, the dog.

It's not even. No, it's not even a dog. It's a wolf. And then, sure enough, you get to the, you know, one mission later and like, oh, hey, it's that dog looked like literally it's that dog. That part seems even stranger in the new tone because it's so like everything's so dark and serious and and morose and scary. And then just like, oh, hey, wow, is that dog is that dog? Wow, cool. I mean, he is also the same guy who kicks grandma's head off

and then goes, not bad, huh? Yeah, right. So, you know, there's do you approve this on? I was talking about this on stream two days ago or three days ago when I was going through like some of the the village. And so, well, you have a crouch button now, which allows you to stealth kill people with the knife. So in those areas where it's a little quiet and, you know, maybe enemies don't see you can sneak or just cut them a little bit.

Or if you knock them down on the floor, you maybe you stab them in the neck or what have you. But it creates the situation where like there's a couple specific zones where the villagers are just hanging out before the fight starts and Leon can just sneak up on people and slit their fucking throats. And I'm just like, is he a hundred percent sure that person was infected because they're just like I'm thinking of there's a specific guy like farming with the pigs

in like the second village room and he's just standing there. And I just snuck up. He's he's got the sense. He's got the plaga sense. Yes, you know, like it's it's kind of weird. Like what? Like if someone like just incidentally says, Morir es vivier like in a normal way.

Once you get to the castle with, you know, the cultists and all of them, that that that worry dissipates. But like, you know, when you when you blow somebody's head off in this game with a sniper rifle, like you see the pluggers like kind of shoot out of their stump, even if it's daytime. They just go and you're like, oh, that's weird. That's a bunch of weird goo. But now you slice their neck.

Yeah. Like there isn't there is a normal kind of man who I'm buying things from. Are there other normal people around here who I'm just murdering ruthlessly? Maybe. Well, they're done now. They're fine. Don't worry about it. Fine. On that note, I also heard that shop keep is there's something something new with shopkeeper.

Well, he's got a lot of lines that are brand new. OK. He is, I believe Capcom is trying to tell us. And this makes so much sense when I when I say it out loud that he is a pirate. Yeah. He's and everything that he has is stuff that he has picked off of dead corpses. Yeah, because he has a line about that. OK. Also, he's not he's not he's like conclusively not a pluggers carrier. Yeah, his eyes don't glow anymore.

His eyes don't glow and he hangs out next to the, you know, the blue fire that denotes his shop. Sure. That's the same blue fire that like Ashley uses, right? Right. Turns off enemies. Pat, I'm so glad you noticed that because I I pointed that out on my stream. I was like, oh, you guys want to know a secret about the merchant, why he doesn't get attacked is because of the purple flame and his blue lantern on his desk because when because there's a part in Ashley's section

where you have to leave the lamp behind and it just turns off any enemy that gets within like three feet of it. Oh, yeah, they can't do anything to him. He's he's fine. But he is a pirate. But like like like Davy Jones Locker pirate. Yeah. Yes. So I don't know if you remember this, Willie,

but you remember there was like a like a a shooting gallery sequence in the original where you could get bottle caps. OK. OK. So no, fuck it. So in the original, it would be like the village backdrop or the castle backdrop. And it would be like little cardboard cutouts of the villages, little cardboard cutouts of like the existing enemies that you have. Now it is a lavish ornate like classical pirate ship feast interior.

And all the enemies are pirates and like Spanish guitar music. Well, it feels like they ripped off Pirates of the Caribbean. This level could be like a little indie game like that you buy on steam. Like it is the production value of this one mini game is like insanity. It's so incredible. Like I had this situation where it blew my mind. I'm like, I'm going to get S ranks on all these goddamn challenges.

And I'm sitting there and I streamed it three days in a row just as long as I could. And I kept looking over to see one of my favorite comments, which was every time I turn this stream on, Pat is in this goddamn shooting gallery. Like, yeah, no, it's incredible. It is an incredible shooting gallery with Pirate Mariachi music. OK, OK. Well, the music is actually so this is a poll. Well, do you remember in the intro to Ari for original? There is a Spanish radio playing music

like and it's like, it's the same song. Yeah, yeah. OK, OK. OK, that song is the mini game song. But you mixed and dressed up like dressed up. Wow. Samples. Wow. When you get an S rank or not an S rank, but like when you when you hit bonus time, which is like what they're like, you did well enough to now just like shoot a bunch of stuff for free points.

It plays like the most flamboyant 2005 gay club remix of that intro song from the original and my fucking jaw hit the floor. I was so happy and there's rainbows shooting everywhere. And you have to shoot all these little treasure chests. It turns into Pac-Man. Amazing. Inch of D.O. OK, that's it. Well, that.

Yeah, I'm glad to hear that it's not like they've given the merchant a back story that is terrible or you know what I mean, or expanded too much so that now we know way too much about it or something like that. You know, well, the thing, the only thing that in this game that expands on him is that he's a pirate or probably a pirate. But also in RE eight, the Duke, who is the merchant of that game, makes brief mention of other guys like him

out there who sell people gear. Oh, I want to say they have the same voice actor. OK, I mean, it's a different. It's a different way sounds just like they sound very similar. OK, but they touch on the idea that this is a class of person that's out there doing this. Oh, yeah. Well, in village, like there's a super rare line from the Duke where he'll say, what do you buy in like in the voice?

And he'll say, sorry, that's something an old friend of mine used to say. Sure, sure. So they know each other. Yeah, it's it's it's great because like everything is is much darker, much more violent, much, much more serious. And then when you get to the merchant shooting galleries, it is a cartoon. It is so much fun. It's like you're like some of the targets are like the dogs dressed up in little pirate uniforms pretending to be like like gangplank monkeys.

Like, it's so stupid. OK, well, you got to play this game like you got. Oh, yeah. Yeah, 10 out of 10. Big recommend 10 out of 10. So good. Like I could I could just pick any random piece to gush about before I do that, Susie, pick something go. Um, oh, gushing about stuff.

Yeah, there's like there's so much here. There's so much. I'll say I loved how they handled like literally every gun in the game. Like one of the biggest issues I had with Village was when you as you progress through that game, like you can upgrade your guns, but the second the Duke had a new gun available, just buy it because it will be better. In this game, I play the whole game with a silver ghost of the starting pistol and excuse me, I got the riot gun, fully upgraded it, melted like one of the final

bosses in two seconds, you know, because I like the riot gun, you know, I just like the riot gun. And I I I love how it's like every single gun from the original is back. Plus more like there's new guns, too. OK, question. Reload porn. How we doing? That's OK. In my review, I actually address this. The reloads are not as cool.

They're not. You know why they're not. You know why they're not as cool because you're not locked in place anymore. Like you can move, you can run while reloading. Oh, you don't get the fucking. The only OK, the only one that's good are the pistol ones because Leon does a tack reload where if you have bullets in the magazine, he will take a new mag and then take it out and then swap it in and then put

the old one in his bag again. OK, in addition, if you have an empty mag, he'll like he'll pop it out completely and then put a new one in. So like that's like the only time where I was like, very cool. But all the rest of the tail differences. The it keeps bullet in the chamber if it's a chambered handgun. Yes. And one of the. So it's like you lose a little bit on the you lose a tiny bit on

the specific reloads, but there was something that I really appreciated, which is say I have the Silver Ghost in my hand, which is the starting pistol. And I'm wondering about and I switch to it and then I use an item or what not. Occasionally, when Leon switches back to holding his pistol, he will pull the slide back to check it for the chambered round and like get it ready for the next encounter. OK, like there are like like there are idle animations playing with your guns of him checking the guns to make sure they're good to go as you're just

going through the environment, but they don't have by no means. Am I saying like the reload the reloads are bad. They're just not as stylish as they're normally like you're not getting like you're not getting him like breaking the butterfly open and then like tapping him in and then yeah, that's like he doesn't do that anymore. I'm speaking of exactly the snap back at the end. No, like like a human being, you know, like a human being or the magnum with the like put them on, you know, yeah, yeah, snap to all of that.

That was like so fucking sick, man. One of my favorite like the right is now reloading singular bullets into the rifles magazine on the bolt action instead of the strip. That yeah, that game is the that's the first time I ever appreciated like a bolt action rifle reload at like sequence. Like I never really thought about how fucking sick that entire thing is to do in the heat of battle until I saw it at RE4. And I was like, oh, my God, that is so stylish when done clean.

You know, everything is very tactical. Like I'll even I'll say one thing, but I won't go too deep into it. There is a there's still a knife fight and it is now portrayed not like a movie, but like a realistic two edged weapon experts are fighting each other. Yeah, they have they have a little moment in the cut scene where they do that little slap fight thing that you see in knife. Yeah, OK, where there's just OK. OK, yeah, don't stab me.

Don't stab me. You get stabbed. Yeah. OK. And it's it's cool like like it actually looks really cool like the way it's shot, you know, but yeah, I think it's very grounded. It's ground because I mean, yeah, there's there's obviously there's the there's the original knife fight, right? There's what that would look like in real life with two people in close quarters just trying to fucking get each other.

It's messy and ugly and scrappy. And then there's like, I guess there's the that sequence I saw from one of the RE movies where they have that point blank gunfight where they're just shooting at the floor or whatever the fuck is happening. It's trying to be equilibrium, but it's just not Leon's capabilities in this game are about as close as you could probably get to playing that nonsense. Yeah, OK, OK. You're you're parrying like a dynamite by cutting the fuse only to central axis

relox shoot grandma and then kick her head off as you then like duck a grab from one side. It's a flying coming at you and then stab is like it's. Yeah, it's the timing alongside the John Wick four is appropriate. The sequence of going person to person like that when done like perfectly does look like a stylish ass fucking game like absolutely. I'll say that. Yeah, you definitely you feel it for sure. Like the the opening fight in the castle, like when I was streaming it the other day, I just like I threw a flash grenade

and then like roundhouse kicked like each guy and then one guy with a scythe like just threw it at me and then you hit the crouch button to just crouch under it. Turn around right gun all three of them and their arms, legs, heads. They're getting cut in half clean. Like it's just so sick. There is a level of graphic violence on this game that is kind of astonishing. So I feel bad because like let's let's say let's say you're a new parent or something like that and your kid is like eight and they're like,

can I play Ari for and you're like, it's too violent. You're like, you played Ari for when you were 10 or whatever. I'm like, bro, the coming out of this dude's body. Like there is the head evaporating into goo with the neck muscles shooting like the plagues trying to escape. There's like when you blow somebody's arm off in this game, it's not like like a bicep down. It's like pectoral muscle out.

If you see the plaga tentacles is like coming out. Yeah, I mean, straight in half, it's it's fucking crazy. The last time we were talking about the new dead space and the term was de-gloving was used. So things have gotten pretty visceral. At the same time, though, I was a child when I beat Bionic Commando. So yeah, that was pixels of Hitler's head exploding with full on pressure. But you know, but one of the very scary so grab death animations

in this is jamming their thumbs through Leon's eyes into the back of his head as he's going screaming and shooting out. Right, right. Well, you get the warning up top, right? Depictions of Gore, Yadda Yadda. And you baffling bafflingly still get the warning at the end telling you that it's a fictional story and that if you if you pretend that it's not fictional,

the RPD will pursue legal action against one of the strangest fucking warning messages I've ever seen. I'm I'm I'm going to go ahead and guess that like that's just their way of being like, hey, please don't go jump anybody speaking Spanish, please. And then for RE five, we need that same message, but even bigger and larger European. Excuse me. Excuse me.

Speaking European. Yes. OK, the fact that the fact that Leon speaks like a little bit of Spanish in this game. But it's still rural Europe is insane. Like the words Spain and Spanish do not appear in this game. Even though they're speaking, they're speaking now speaking Castilian Spanish, which is so specific. Like. Mm hmm.

I love it. No, I just I'm sure there's. Well, people have already been like talking about like, OK, how do we tackle RE five are right? How do you how do you approach that? Well. Yeah, let me tell you so I can't tell you how they would approach RE five's content because of somebody asked me what what would happen. I asked God, they asked me this on stream. I'm like, do you think that RE five are would be more or less racist?

And I would say that they would probably try to make it less racist. But if they made it more racist, that would be very brave. That would be a very brave thing to do to make it like much more racist. Just can I can I elaborate on something about that? I feel like, OK, so there's a there's a part in this game. Pat, you know this already and a lot of people in the chat know already. They took the the racist part, like the most racist part of RE five, the marshlands

and just put it in this game, like without the enemies, like it is the same level layout, like you're in a giant lake and you go from place to place. It's like this big open world area. Yeah. So my theory is if they do remake five, they'll just the marshlands is not going to show up. OK, it's an RE4R, you know, like because. Yeah, no grass skirts, guys, no grass because that's the thing, right?

It's like, I remember when that when the first trailer popped up and then that got then that became a controversy because it was just showing like shooting into a crowd in a town in Africa. And it was like, what the fuck is happening for a second? I remember walking into a room and saying, well, they have you seen the new RE five trailer? And you went, no, no, really, right? And I went sit down and watch this and he's watching this.

And it's the shot of like the dude like the dude with no shirt. And he like looks up under like a Kubrick's there and will he put his hands to his cheeks? Oh, no, not scary black people. They're the worst. And it only got worse from there as the trailer went on. And you get the warlord and you get all that. And so that was enough on its own to be like, oh, Jesus, right?

The fear of the other here it comes. And then they're like, OK, let's put in that little whatever whatever the devs did, they put in the little thing where they're like, hey, the front lines of the horde like one out of every five will be white. Don't worry, it'll be OK. We'll have it be a, you know, a nice mixed, diverse crowd coming at you going, yeah, you know. And like, you're like, all right, like, is there a way to approach the story

with you, Chris, big action man and Shaver right there, right there. Hey, look, right. And this is a zombie story that happens to take place. Here is the like, is there a way to just make that natural? And it's like, you can. You can just tell that story. The pieces are already there. And then the Magini stand up.

And you go, God damn it. Like you could have just you could have been you, you know, it's like, all right, it's just it's a setting. It's just a setting, but it's it's a zombie story. Take it and then the fucking masks and the and you're like, OK, OK, I don't know. So frustrating because like the pieces you need to make it work are already there. The the A sorry, the B plot of Resident Evil Five is American and European colonialist powers are using people in this poor nation as test subjects and fodder.

Like it's like it's all right there, right? But that's not what's in your fucking face for 99 percent of the game, right? Like like fucking Wesker might as well be the blonde fucking Hitler jerk off Upermench, right, that you're fighting by the end of the game. But that's not what you're fighting for 99 percent of the game. Yeah, they I think they would have to just make if they remade it again. Frame it more from Sheva's perspective. And Chris is the outsider and we're showing him around and make the enemies

BOWs, not people what like make them more creatures. Yeah, like, but there's gameplay reasons why you want to fight the. Yeah, yeah, OK. So one of the things and it really makes me feel very strongly that is next on the docket. So we'll get to talk about this relatively soon, I bet, is the changes to the controls specifically. So Lewis in the original game, he never really hung out with you

outside of the cabin fight. He would fight with you in the cabin fight, and that's it. In this game, Lewis gets a whole chapter and he is. And it's like an hour and a half long. So it's a long chapter. Yeah, he is an AI controlled partner who will throw you ammo, melee people, help you in boss fights, and his AI is excellent. OK, you fight a full duo boss fight with him, much like the duo boss fight

in RE five, and he is great. He holds his own. He does real damage. He saves you from things. Wow, he has cut scenes associated with helping you with the boss fight. And I'm looking at this and I'm going, this is Sheva. That's a partner. That's a partner. OK, OK.

How how how long is the game now? Oh, it's fucking long. Yeah, my I don't know about you, Pat. So on my first playthrough, I didn't do everything and I died a lot because, you know, new challenges and my playthrough was 17 hours. OK, that's so isn't the original 20. The original is it's like it's like 20 when you were 15. Yeah, OK, OK, not for you freaks.

Oh, my God, just for us normal people. I always just estimated the time frame to be around like 20 or so. That it will. Yeah, it'll probably I've heard a lot of like of my casual like video game friends, like they're completing at 25, 30 hours. Like no joke. What I can say, conclusively, after going through one than the next, it is longer than the original. OK, definitely.

And depending on your personal love of that shooting mini game, the it's much longer. And the side quests, so there's side quests now. So. Yeah. And the side quests are all really good because they're really simple. Hey, man, go find this fish. Hey, man, there's a secret boss you can fight. And those are for real.

OK, they put super bosses in the game. I can't believe it. That's cool. Yeah. No, as people rightfully point out, the entire audience is RE freaks. You guys are all crushing this. Yeah. Yeah. Speed run, world record, fucking competition levels. So I want to talk about regenerators because.

Oh, my God. Yes, it's the it's RE fours. It's the scariest enemy in the game. It's one of the like the defining factors that a lot of people think about. The breathing, the having to snipe them while they slowly walk towards you. So the general balance of the game in RE four original enemies didn't like to stand behind you. They wanted to like run from your periphery into your field of view because you couldn't really turn very well.

They don't do that anymore. They they'll crowd you. They don't give a shit because you have full free movement and free aiming and more movement. So the regenerator used to just slowly walk at you to accommodate the fact that you can move more easily. They don't slowly walk at you anymore. They have like a brisk pace and when you shoot their leg off,

they no longer just flop around a little bit and do a little jump. They like start skiing along the fucking floor. They're like coming after you. OK, way scarier than the original. They're so much more mobile. And they have this great flesh technology on them where as you light them up, you will see pieces of them like peel away. So with like normal weapons fire,

you can get to the parasites regardless because they're actually in there. You just have to tear them out with like regular handgunner shotgun bullets. You want to know something cool, Pat? So there's a challenge slash trophy to beat the game with only a pistol and a knife. Yeah. And I did that and I was like, how the fuck am I going to do this with the punisher? Yeah, because the punisher penetrates like five enemies.

So it's just like, oh, you just shoot them. Just shoot the whole right through. Yeah. So I. So Susie mentioned, yeah, you can beat the, you know, not only is a can you, but it's actually enshrined in the game's challenges to beat the game with just the pistol. You know, the pistols are good enough that I don't even really see a big problem with that. Yeah, they're good. Yeah.

What were you going to say, Wally? Sorry. Stunned right now. Yeah, because the correct name of the enemy is Regenerador. It is now. Yeah. So, um, supposedly. So in the original game, they were the only enemy in the entire game that did not have a Spanish name. They were the only one.

OK, there was no doors. There was Gerrador's. There was Delago. Yeah, gigante. OK. And then there was Regenerator. And yeah, Regenerador. You're right. Spanish for Regenerator. We threw in the air.

Do you remember what the armors were called, Pat? You remember? Oh, the Mad Max looking dudes. Yeah. No, no, the suits of armor. Oh, the suits of armor. I don't know. They're called Armadura. Really? OK. I just wanted to say it because it's my favorite word to say. Anyway, I will say, though, in the suits of armor,

there's like parts of the new R.E. Four that still feel like they were lifted from Devil May Cry one. Yes. Yes. OK. Like still, like design elements of the way the castle looks primarily, where it like looks like the pieces of the castle on Melee Island or Malay, Melee, Millet, Malay, whatever the fuck. Did you notice the three point five hallway?

Oh, there's a three point five hallway. And if fucking blew my mind, which one is it? I can. So when you play as Ashley and you like right at the start, when you get the lantern and you crouch under the little like desk. Yeah, you're totally taxidermy hallway. You're right. Is like there's all like the animal heads on the walls.

What happens when you get to the end, a deer head falls off the wall just like in the original. It doesn't come to life and then fall off the wall, but it's like literally the same trajectory of that. You know, I didn't catch that. But what I did catch is that when you have your Plaguez hallucinations, it's the exact same shade of blue. It is used in the hallucination parts of the three point five demo with.

Yeah, and it's super like blown out and blew me. Yeah. It's so good. Well, you got to play it. There's so many nice little details. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Like you don't meet Sadler for most of the game in this time. Like in the original, you met Sadler like super early and then they would he would like call you on the fucking phone.

And it was like, OK, that's strange. And here they're like, no, he's going to give out his hallucination commands to people and Ashley and Leon are going to hit the dirt and see Sadler in his like mind palace. So you get to see him and hear him talk and all that without actually having to be physically close to him. And so early with Salazar, Salazar no longer calls you on the phone. Instead, he has some old timey fucking brass pipe

intercom system rigged throughout his castle. It's so cute. It's so cute that he laughs at you if you shoot. Like you can cut him off and he'll give you a little giggle if you try and shoot his stupid pipes. I like how the I like how the the remake version of Salazar is less of a creepy child and more of a what are you weirdo old man thing? He's so awful. It's so gross, but it's it's like it's before it looked like a child

with bad like textures dropped on him kind of thing. Oh, my God. And and currently it's like, oh, no, you're like a weird little old thing, you know, 20 years old, man. Yeah, yeah, it's got Benjamin Button vibes. So they did a great job. One of the things that Susie and I were talking about before, which was like everything makes sense. And like as people who like care or cared, I don't know if I do anymore

about the Resident Evil storyline. Like, boy, there's a lot of stupid, stupid shit in these games. And there was stuff like, hey, why does the Gerrador even fucking exist? Like what? What is why? Why would they do that? And then you find dialogue and text that describes like this guy just really pissed off Salazar for some reason, and he decided to horribly fuck him over. Hey, why is Salazar such a dick?

And then you go through the entire family history of the Salazar family and as well as like staff's diaries about what a fucking piece of shit child he was. Yeah, like even even before the the plaga, too. Yeah, he's throwing acid in the people's faces and having them execute. He's like little Joffrey. OK, OK, exactly. And then we gave him a bug. And then he just like literally infected everyone in like the surrounding area.

Yeah, the I would say this. I'm sorry. Sorry. I was just going to say, I would say this Resident Evil is probably one of the better written, performed besides one person and, you know, just conveyed stories in the entire series, like literally, like everything is just so perfectly like put together and like set up. And I just never thought in my lifetime I would be saying that about R.E. For because R.E. For story is so bad.

Yeah, because it makes no sense. The usual is like, hey, how would you are you were working on a virus and it got out? Whoopsie doodle. And that's like the plot, like that's the whole plot. Yeah. Well, here you go and you even get like massive like murals and diaries and like family history of like the plagues existed like six hundred years ago. And then the people of this region beat it down with swords and hammers.

Yeah. And that's why they were raised up into nobility. OK. And they call it like in the files that the the historical record of the Salazar family, they call it demons. Like they thought they were fighting demons from hell instead of like a biological. That's cool. Nightmare. OK. It's so cool. Because yeah, I feel like I can summarize like the last like 15 years of hey, Pat, so what is Resident Evil about? And the answer is shut up.

It's just always been to answer your question. Resident Evil at this point in time is about two things. The first of which is that there is a mold in Eastern Europe. There is a parasite in Spain and there is a rejuvenating viral plant in Sub-Saharan Africa that are all naturally occurring elements that are horrific biological catastrophes on their own. And the second thing is a bunch of egg heads going, what if we could turn these into guns and fucking it up? Right.

And then a bunch of superheroes going, we have to stop this. I'm going to roundhouse kick this 10 foot tall werewolf. Evil science. Yes, I think it's got like it's always been this case, but with Village adding on to it, I'm like the universe that this play that these games take place in is just like one rock breaking open in some region and having like the thing jump out like a week. Like they're all over the place.

And even if there was no umbrella, like it still would have been a massive. Well, the Plaguez happens completely independently helps because he's a researcher, but like the generic form of the Plaguez that has like all the tentacle heads and the centipede monsters. Like, yeah, that happens totally separate of everything else in the series. Yeah, no, totally. They happen to be lucky to be an evil company that is on a planet where these things pop off constantly.

And you can be like, oh, we can do some shit over here. What's going on? What's this? What you got over there? It's also the universe in which like the the Raccoon City Green Herb is exported worldwide because it has magical healing properties. Wait, specifically the Green Herb from Raccoon City is based in the Arclay Mountains in Raccoon City is because of the presence of a medicinal herb known as a Green Herb, which has incredible regenerative properties.

It's where Umbrella made all of its legit money. Wow, with like all of its little products, herbs or cannon. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if you caught this green herb or the Arclay Mountain Green Herb. It's it's a nice name. I like it. I like, you know, that's like it's not a gameplay contrivance, like the herb in Resident Evil has a like legitimate history and is impartial responsible for the Umbrella mistakes

because it's where they got all their good money before they started getting on the freak monster bandwagon. What if we found Magic Herb in the Midwest? Whatever, wherever the fuck it is, like, I don't know. Like, hmm, OK, I'm on of the impression that like first aid sprays are just like a synthesized manufactured green herb for sure. Yeah, just like a bunch of them crushed up into a can and you spray it on your fentanyl spray style. Absolutely.

I think in RE7, they had to make a distinction saying that like the herb from Arclay Mountains has now gone worldwide because Raccoon City got fucking nuked. Yeah, they I'm pretty sure they did. Yeah, Pat, did you notice that? Sorry, again, I'm just getting over being hella sick. I actually I got this game like almost a month ago at this point and I like played through it while sick and I did not want that, you know,

like, do you have you guys ever like watched a movie or like played a game you were like looking forward to while sick? And it just like makes it the experience like a little bit worse. Absolutely, you're just like, man, I think you mentioned that you had played it for like 45 hours across three days, but you were horribly ill. I didn't want to stop playing it, but I had to stop. You told me you couldn't get out of bed. I got out of bed for this and my back

and ribs and upper chest hurt so much. I was like, like, I would like get out of my chair and be like, how the sucks? I was going to say something else about the game, but I don't know if you got this, Pat, but there's a file that you can get like late game. And it's like some deep lore stuff, but I was blown away that they put it in and it connects it to it connects this game to argue three remake a lot more. But which was was that there was I found something about the fucking Wesker Spencer bullshit, but I can't I don't think that's what you were the one

that I'm talking about is the laboratory six dream team. Oh, yeah. The people that made Nemesis. Yeah. And Louis, which have like, yes, like Louise helped make Nemesis. Yeah, because they go through the Holy shit through the like Nemesis's parasite always came from Europe and then specifically from like the Paris branch. But like in RE three remake, they Nemesis is like stupid parasite bullshit comes a lot more out and it looks like less plagues. OK. And so like now there's just a little bit of like, oh,

the umbrella team had a little piece of plagues and they just decided to put it into one of their bio weapons. And it made him like the way smarter and scarier than the little tyrants that they've been mass producing. It's fascinating because like when you put the regular plagues into a normal person, oh, man, I remember talking about this in RE four original one is playing through it. People were asking me, hey, Pat, what do you think? The reason is that none of them use firearms.

They all use crossbows and melee weapons. And I said, I don't think they're smart enough to operate a gun because the plagues parasite is screwing up their brain function. And also the plagues is like literally puppeting them. So they're not quite as coordinated as they otherwise would be. And then in RE four remake, yeah, sure enough, you find dialogue going, the people that are infected with the generic plagues parasite have lost most of their intelligence.

Oh, OK. They are significantly like mentally impaired. And it makes so much more sense to like when you like, especially in the opening village raid, when like you examine the dialogue, like, you know, La Campana, they just say the bell, you know, it's time to go. Yeah, let us pray. Like it's all very basic like phrases, you know, like I would have just I kind of I guess, yeah, I think I just assumed over time that it was more or less

kind of like the zombies and I am a hero. There's like just whatever little bits of you were what you were is left over. That's what it's tapping into to, you know, have them swing and recognize things and still behave somewhat like a human. Yeah. Oh, OK. And then that's what we that's that's what we mean about like everything in this game making sense. Like they like literally go into everything like every monster has

like a somewhat backstory to it, obviously, like the villagers and the ganados overall, like they just like everything gets explained. I think they actually go into the details of like the Navistador bugs and it's like how the fuck that get made like seriously, what the fuck? That doesn't look like somebody that got thrown a parasite on them. And then you find out, oh, no, it's actually like one of the worst ones. It's actually horrible like genuinely nightmarish how those got made. Oh, gross, horrible.

It's really cool. Yeah. Yeah, I guess there's like also there's when you there's levels to consider when it's like, OK, the zombies are the dead are moving around. They're just literally corpses attacking you. And then you can like you get to this where it's like, is there any of you still in there? Yeah, you know, most of them is still in there. Yeah, and not able to control it.

Right. You know, or like they kind of they go into it like for one line of dialogue in our three remake, which I love so much right before. Zombie Brad bites Marvin and he tells him, I'm sorry. Like the zombie says sorry to the human being, you know, last second. Wow. And he stops in his tracks, so he's like, holy shit. And then he bites him because he hesitated and then, you know, and when he meets Leon, he's like, you do not hesitate, you know.

OK, so yeah, it's good shit. Yeah, it's definitely. OK, new bar for the franchise. Interesting. Yeah. Yes. And hey, I think the the last thing I want to say about this is that bingo has lore now and I love it. I don't know if you caught it, Pat. Wait, beyond just him saying it.

So on Hunnigan's computer, there's a shot of her computer screen and there's a post-it note that says bingo Friday night at 10 p.m. And my head cannon is Leon has a crush on Hunnigan and he goes to bingo with her. And he just did it. So that's why he mentions it in the village. You know what, actually, two final things that I want to say. That's wait. Sorry.

That's so much dumber because it's not like he's pulling it out to be witty out of nowhere. It's like it's the last thing he can think of. Therefore, like that's such an that's an even dumber context, Leon. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Much dumber. The the other last two things I want to say is the Verdugo fight is dramatically improved with the new controls, the ability to dodge him more accurately.

But more importantly, the Verdugo fight is you get to see the devs go, hey, one of the decisions made in RE4 was a mistake. And that decision was to give you a free rocket launcher because everyone uses it to skip the Verdugo fight. They no longer give you a free rocket launcher, but in exchange, the fight is fun. Yeah, it's really fun. And he still he'll still do this to if you shoot him normally, by the way.

He's he seems like the best monster the series has ever created because he's completely in control. He's still a human being in his head. And he's functionally invincible to gunfire, as well as being super fast and strong. If all, thank goodness, we fought him in that liquid nitrogen factory. And the second one is that specifically there was a there was you know, when you change characters, characterizations,

some people go crazy, like, for example, if you were to, say, remove the 48 panty shots that Ashley has, some psychopath is going to go on the Steve review page and catalog how they're all gone because they're crazy. There's a specific line in the ending that has been removed where Ashley in the original was like, why don't you come to my house and impregnate me? Sorry, a friend of the show, Plague of Grypes, made that funny meme about.

Yes, no way, friend. No way, pal, bro. That's gone. However, this is why context matters, because instead of that line coming out of nowhere, now we have a game in which Ashley is crushing on Leon super hard the whole time. The whole time. Like it is just shy of, wow, Leon, you're so strong.

One half step underneath that, like, like Jesse FF7 levels. No, no, that that would be. No, no, no, no, one. Not quite. OK, it's Jesse. And OK, OK, because that's the thickest it's ever been put on. Yeah, I don't think. No, Ashley is like, Ashley is like, maybe I could train to be an agent and we can protect the US together, Leon. And then he'd be like, wow, that'd be something, wouldn't it?

And then she's like, ha, ha, ha, ha, right, right. OK, OK. Yeah, excellent game. Super great personaries is coming in like a week. You fucking thank God. You know, just when you mentioned Verdugo, I remember he that's a whatever, you know me. It's it's it's a tepid card. I wanted it. Oh, Verdugo is the is the Xenomorph.

No, no, no, I remember. Yeah, it's the it's the sci-fi enemy that. Yeah, no, I remember that popped up. He looks like he's not from this game. Yeah, like he never I wanted to Xenomorph. He's he's an alien just without the head. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I wanted to tell you, Willie,

Verdugo in this game like legit looks like a Mecca. No, like, especially when you freeze him and he's like all covered in in snow, like white frost. OK, and he's like moving around all slow, like he looks like a Mecca, like it's so sick. I could also see Raiden slicing him up, you know, like with the way the suit like kind of look. Yeah, anyway, OK.

Yeah, you know what? I do have one last thing to say specifically about line changes. So because Salazar is not talking to you directly, he's he's intercoming you and you don't have the ability to talk back to him. A lot of the really aggressively fucking stupid lines in the original are not possible. In particular, no, thanks, bro, or that stupid conversation about what a first class script is like

is gone and they decided to replace that with when you fight Salazar, the two characters are talking the whole boss fight. They're having a whole conversation for the entire boss fight about the. It is this super stupid back and forth about the script writing joke. But it just goes on and on and on and on as you fight. Who what role Leon would play? Oh, yeah, you won't even get any lines and all this stupid and then he starts. He starts talking to Leon as if he's reading the script to like

if the fight goes on long enough, like he will just be like, OK, now the scene has started. Fantastic. And I like it's really good. Integrate that stuff into gameplay, you know, that's yeah, good, good stuff. Nice. And then, yeah, to to to be like, it's not all gone. You still get your achievement titles have the names of the old stupid lines. Yeah, so no thanks, bro. And is the achievement title or like grilled cheese?

Yeah, Mendez. Who like, you know what's weird about Mendez's boss fight? You still get his glass eye, but it's just a treasure now. And so now he has no reason to have a glass eye at all. He just lost it, you know, you don't open up a door. Yeah, thank God, it's so stupid. Why does why does the ancient village have a retinal scanner door? Yeah, but I have it doesn't make any sense.

Which is why does this gigantic centipede man that has unparalleled regenerative abilities not able to regrow his eyeball? Most of the other bosses are made out of eyeballs. He has an eyeball on his back. Yeah, I know. Maybe that's where it went. Have there been any functional or gameplay improvements to attach a case?

Yes. Oh, there's an auto sort button. Really? Yeah, so you don't have to do it. It just does it. Yeah, it just does it. It does it so hard that if you have an item that you can't pick up and you hit auto sort, if the item can fit in your case with the sorted, it will just move the item into your newly sorted attach a case. That's not what I want.

I want to have to do it. Also, you can have different kinds of attach a cases. You can have attach a cases that have more handgun ammo drop or more red herbs drop or resources drop. They affect the drop rate. OK, we neglected to talk about it because we talked so long about the shooting mini game with the pirates. But the reward for that is that you get to take your little tokens

and go to a literal gotcha machine and it will shoot out the character models from the original game as charms. Cool. And you can then hang them off your attach a case. And they'll do things such as increase your run speed. That's fun. You you make more and more shotgun ammunition when you use the gunpowder or 20 percent critical damage buff on melee attacks.

That's a lot. It is. Yeah, wow. OK. So like one kick will like put someone down pretty much. I had it like by the end game. I had it to I had the red attach a case which drops red herbs like very consistently. And then I had a charm that gives you like a hundred percent healing item resale value.

So I was just picking up red herbs and selling them like crazy. But then I had another charm of classic Ashley that makes one green herb heal 50 percent of your HP. So I was like, all I need is one green herb. You know, like it's pretty crazy. You can have builds in this game. Yeah, it's weird. Or you can do what I did and just cheat engine yourself.

Four hundred and fifty gold tokens and then just keep running the robot until you get all 30. I can't believe you can't believe her. Wow. I can't believe you should believe. Anyway, anyway, already four is good. If you haven't played a good game, excellent, excellent, good game. Yes, good. It's definitely worth your time. I feel like an attach a case is like creates an image

of a professional secret agent man. And then the moment you have charms hanging off of it, it's just an entirely different thing. It's just a it's just a fashion item now. It's you mean the attach a case that is never actually depicted ever. Correct. Exactly. Yes, that you never see that comes out of mallet space. That's what I that's what I liked about the the recent fortnight collab

because you can play as Leon, but put the attach a case on his back. Ah, nice. So it just like he looks so dumb, like just running around with it, like hanging off his back, dangling around. You know what? Speaking of this is the actual final thing I have to say. They have finally righted a wrong that has been annoying me for 20 years. The first thing you can unlock when you beat the game is I want to play with the jacket on all the time. Oh, cool.

OK, so you could do it. OK, well, it's I assume it's just a costume pick, right? Yeah, it's just a costume. Yeah, yeah. But it's like we'll no longer lose his jacket. He will keep it forever. How has the armor looked? It looks sick. Actually, his armor. Yeah.

Yeah, actually, his armor is now like a reward for beating the game on like, what is it? Like hardcore under five hours or something like that. Yeah, well, do you want to see it? I could see it. Yeah. Is it just like Artorias armor? Is it just like some rad shit? Like it's it's not Artorias, but it is very souls looking.

Let's see it. And and just like the original game, if you aim your gun at Ashley's face, the visor closes by itself and you just see her cute little eyes like poking through. It's so I found this out today. I'll send you some that the game's final unlock for beating professional under five hours with an S plus is adorable little cat ears for Leon that match his hair.

And they're not they don't look like Leon's wearing cat ears. It looks like Leon has little adorable cat ears. That looks great. Yeah. OK. And she has a tiny cape on the back that's like split into like two points. OK. It's really cool. Yeah. But I'll show I'll show you it with the visor closed because it's even more souls. And then we got Catboy Leon.

Yeah, and Catboy Leon doesn't need to use ammunition. It's the it's the Metal Gear Bandana. Infinite ammo. But but yeah, breedable Catboy Leon. Oh, my. How bad do you want that ammo? Like, yeah, like, it's nice to see that they are turning into it. Nice. Yeah, that's very that's that's it's the Demon's Souls.

Yeah, the the fluted the fluted set. Yeah. OK. Right. It's very cool. I love the game so much. Like there's so much replayability and unlockables like that. Super cool. No, if they wanted to fully lean into it, Pat, they would have made it bunny ears, actually, for Furley. They would have went full Viera. Oh, man.

I don't know it's like people are already running around with like tramp stamp Leon. I yeah, I saw I saw I saw a picture of the trap step. I posted that. Oh, by the way, speaking of if you want to get it on the personal computer, it runs incredibly well on the personal computer. There is no first time ever. Oh, my God.

The the RE engine remains probably the best, most performance good performance, good engine. It's great. Any reports on the final version of the PS4 edition? It sucks. Yeah, still. Yeah, there you go. There it is. It runs bad and it looks like shit. Also, here's a fun fact.

If you play with the game with an Xbox controller, the controls are fucked up. That's what I heard. Yeah, like the Xbox versions are on the Xbox controller is like three times as big as the PlayStation controller. And that's on PC. If you use an Xbox controller as well. Ah, hmm. So for some reason, it's the way that they built the way the analog sticks

work on on when you're using an Xbox controller. Is it like all input or specifically? No, an Xbox controller, because when you like the hardware. So, um, Resident Evil five, sorry, four, Resident Evil four remake is the first game I have played that I used a wireless PS5 controller through direct input. And it still knew that it was a dual sense controller and switched my buttons to PlayStation buttons.

OK, it's the only game I've ever played that did that. And then it's almost like Capcom knows almost like they know I switched my dead zones to the PlayStation equivalents, which are really small compared to the Xbox ones. That was the funny thing, because I remember hearing a lot of my friends be like, is it hard to aim for you? And I'm playing on PS5, like just getting shots nonstop, like, like. What if I want to connect my Wiimote and and and dongle?

Just hell, yeah, that style of play. Fuck, I had something to say. It's gone. Oh, OK. All right. Oh, are you for good? Go get it. Yeah. All right. Oh. And if you're playing on PS5, you might want to turn off the hair tech because it does tank the frame rate sometimes.

Yeah, I heard that there's going to be some kind of update or something. On PS5, the first half of the game with the the fancy hair on on PS5. And I had moments where the game was dropping like 40 frames and then I turned it off. I will never turn it off. Rocks all the whole time. Shout out. I will never turn it off. The fancy hair isn't worth the frame, Susie. Shout out to Tres. I suffer for for.

Oh, my God, Tres, a fucking Tomb Raider, right? I mean, that technological fucking dead end that I just made. Yeah. And then you're testing it and you're like, oh, look at the. Wow, it's so. Wait, what's it do? Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, it's flying at the camera. It's everywhere. It's just it's in QA.

The nightmare that was testing. It's built and then it's like, OK, this is so awful. And it's causing so many bugs that we're going to send to pre-mastering a build that hasn't just turned off. So Laura's just bald and anyone else that had hair that used it was just bald for that build because you just had to test around it because it was that fucking it was a whole thing. Anyways, all right.

Quick bath, definitely more stable than that, by the way. Cool. Quick bathroom break, if you don't mind. Oh, yeah. Yes, yes. We're going to run the RV. Hello. All right. Hey, what up? Yeah. So.

With that up top, let's get into weeks. Susie, I played for. Yeah, the sides are for remake. Anything interesting of note in for not weeks, literally, but they can be months and yeah, I guess I could talk about it. I alluded to it on the Twitter and it's back up now. But my RE4 remake review had to come down because I am. Yeah, I am a dummy who did not read the fine print of the embargo

where there are massive red letters that say reviews should not exceed 10 minutes and mine was approaching 30 minutes. So as you know, I remember remember seeing everybody's reviews come out. I'm like, GameSpot, IGN, everybody 10, like literally 10 minutes and one second to accommodate for their. Yes, yeah. And then Susie's goes up and it's 27 and a half minutes long.

And then it's like in depth, like, yeah, so. But I will say, you know, Capcom, you know, good on them for not being like, hey, delete it, delete everything. They were just like, hey, you could private it and then put it back up on release day. So that was kind of what I was. I was counting down the days while playing the game of being like, OK, well, the day this comes out again, people like Pat

will have spoiled more of this game than I did in my video. You know what I mean? Susie, you gave me the end to talk about this. Exactly. So I had such a weird sequence of events trying to get access to this game from Capcom. I talked to the person at Capcom and I said, hello, I would like a review code for Resident Evil 4 Remake. And then they say to me, they says, Mabel,

they says, there are very few codes. And I'm like, that's not true. My friends all have codes. Oh, whatever, whatever, very few. We might be able to get you one the day of launch on the 24th. OK, whatever. Then I go to the Capcom Discord and they have the review code, you know, the fucking survey form, right?

And then I click on it and I go, I would like a review code. I'm a big shot streamer, blah, blah, blah. And they go and then after I send that in, an announcement comes out. We are highly limiting the amount of codes sent out for review because of leaks. And I go home. OK, whatever. So then I'm sitting there and go, I don't know what to do. And then I spy to KZ Excellent, who tells me, hey, did you know

that if you buy a game off the Sony PlayStation Store from New Zealand, the game unlocks 19 hours early? And I go, yeah, I didn't know that actually. Yeah, technically, it is tomorrow over there. That is true. So I went and I went and bought some gift cards and made a Sony PlayStation account and then I flew to New Zealand. I got a whole space set up.

It looked exactly like this space. It's a gorgeous place, really. It just happened to be in New Zealand. They gave me this Lord of the Rings book when I showed up, Wallaby, Wallaby. And then I'm playing Ari for remake the morning of the twenty third. And I'm like, this is great. And then at noon, at noon, I get an email from Capcom that says, here's your code along with this enormous amount of embargo details.

Let's say, don't show this, don't show this, don't show this, don't show this, don't show this, don't show this until the game officially unlocks in your region on the twenty fourth. And I go, well, that's too late for that. And then two hours later, I get a different email from my original contact that says, here's your code. Go stream it. A day before they said you'd get it. You told me it would be the day after.

So I'm sitting here in New Zealand with three Ari Force because they told me that you couldn't get me zero. I can't believe you wasted all that money on the flight. Like, God, listen, I got a good deal. I thought it was real. I picked up a seat somebody didn't fill in for. Well, while you're there, try the pies and visit the South Island. I didn't have time that, you know, I had a fourteen and a half hour

flight that I needed to make in seven hours. Gotcha. Gotcha. So I had to tell the pilot to go extra fast. You know what my favorite part about that is? My favorite part. I will sit here in the same room and go, I am in New Zealand and I'll look over and someone will ask, did he really fly to New Zealand? Like, no, it is a lie. It I'm I'm I'm playing a goof.

It is a joke. You have you have mastered the art of the code bag. I feel like I feel like you have it down to a science. That's that's that's pretty good. I wanted to I wanted to say this to just about the whole review thing. Another good on Capcom, but they actually sent me the like as kind of like a of an apology for the review thing. They sent me the collector's edition of the game like super early, you know.

So I was like, OK, that's really nice of them, you know, to do. And comes with a big statue and art book and all this kind of stuff. The box was massive. I opened the box and I got a special, a very special collector's edition, guys, one that had a physical massive list embargo inside of the box that said, OK, Susie, now that you have this again, do not say anything about any of the contents of this box, do not post any pictures until it really stay.

And I was like, I read it. Probably like a week before. OK, it was very shortly after the review thing happened. But I just I was sitting there just like laughing at myself, you know, tell us what the fourth word on page 76 is to confirm that you have read this skill testing question. And no, I guess I guess they were there just trusting me to mad, considering you didn't read the first one.

I wasn't mad at all. I was I was I was extra nervous the second time. I was just like, OK, I will not. I will not do anything. Yeah, to be fair, you completely ignored the giant red. I sure didn't. OK, fucked up. OK. So that was my week.

Cool, cool. Everyone, you can go check that out at the Sphere Hunter. Yes. And yeah, I mean, do the plugs while you're at it right away. All right. Oh, yeah. Sphere Hunter on YouTube, Twitch and Instagram and Twitter. The review is back up.

It's doing good. There you go. Completely spoiler free, if you want to check it out. Yeah, no, it makes more sense to tell them now and not on our three or four when they make it here by Friday or Saturday, like, you know, so. Yeah, yeah. And you, Pat. So I went and I played that Diablo four beta.

Oh, yeah. And I saw people talking about it. And my takeaway was I think the funniest thing that could ever happen in regards to Activision Blizzard in the wake of the most massive scandal ever for over a year and the constant, constant fight with the FCC over their merger is that if Diablo four came out and was really good because then it would just make everything

conflicted and confusing for everyone. Hey, guess what? Diablo four feels really good. That's interesting. I played it for an hour and people will complain about the balancing of the characters. But I played it for an hour and it feels really, really, really good to hit enemies and have them do the explosion

and the little items fall down. Would the world not be simpler if it sucked? Oh, it's super easy. I've been saying this about like Blizzard for every every time anything ever came out of Blizzard. I said, hey, it's really easy to boycott something you weren't going to buy. And it's really easy to get mad at somebody and stand on a high horse when there's nothing that they make that you want.

Right. Overwatch turned into poop. And then fucking they fucked up the Warcraft three thing. And there's all the shit with WoW is like, oh, man, Blizzard, what? Oh, right. Diablo. Everyone likes Diablo. Those games are great. Sure.

And this one feels great. It feels fun to play. I played the Druid. I hit a button and I turned into a Wolfman and slashed a man. And then I cast a spell and I D Wolfed man to cast the spell. And I went, oh, damn it. That's all I ever wanted from Diablo two was switch quickly between Wolfman and not Wolfman.

So I guess, yeah, my next question was going to be, is it getting so much praise because it's like another take at the sequel to Diablo two, as opposed to the sequel to Diablo three. No, I think people like it because it's Diablo is the skinner box dist skinner box video game that has ever skinner boxed. The Diablo is a slot machine with flashing lights. And Diablo is the predecessor to vampire survivors. But with gameplay.

Like everything that you like about vampire survivors is Diablo. OK, and it feels good to hit the buttons. Oh, I should mention to those of you who don't know what a skinner box is in the audience, a skinner box is a box made by B.F. Skinner to influence the behavior of rats. They would hit a button and they would get a treat. Eventually turns out you don't have to give them a treat anymore. They'll just mash on the button until they fucking die

because they're so conditioned to hit the button and get a treat. Now, I don't know that Diablo two started playing itself when you got to a sufficient level. But I guess I guess at a certain point, like you're kind of starting a character doing a build and then. Does it just become a joke at a certain point when you're? Yes. OK. Yes. You just get open the whole game.

Just OK. I don't know if this happens to you guys, but you ever use an example and you didn't really think very strongly about that example, but then the further you describe it, you actually realize that you perfectly encapsulated it. Yes. No, Diablo absolutely begins to play itself just like vampire survivors. Interesting. Some classes more than others like necromancers in Diablo. Well, you fucking sit there and your minions will do it.

Like if you played a boa zone in Diablo two, you would just shoot the strafe like the wide circle of arrows and everything in a direction would just pop. OK, how much of the I guess how long is it? How much of the game is in the demo or I think it's the level 25. But the beta is over now. It was only this weekend. I played it for about an hour in that hour. I discovered that you can customize your character and they have cut scenes

with your character that look really nice. The buttons feel good. The interface looks good. It ran well on my PC and it is now a pure multiplayer game. It is now like it is now like a like a tiny baby MMO. OK, like you are playing this online, which meant that some people were like, I'm playing this on hardcore and got fucking killed due to a leg spike.

That sucks. And the answer is, yeah, it does. It's been like that since 1998. It sucks to to play the game online hardcore and get killed. Also, it gave up and let you play with controller on PC. I was I was actually going to ask you that question, but I was going to ask you this other one. So is it just like you run around and there are other players that just show up?

I don't know. I didn't actually get that far. OK, gotcha. But I was going to ask if like the art style kind of is like more Diablo 2. Yeah, yeah, that's what I was because like that's a very distinct style. And like I just did a quick look and I'm looking at it and it's like, oh, yeah, no, they're they're bringing that style back for sure. Very cool. The proportion did either of did either of you guys get really scared

of the cover art of Diablo one when you were younger? I not if I didn't get scared of it, but I was forbidden from playing it. I could imagine. You could imagine that is not going to go on installed in a Christian household, Susie. That is Satan under no circumstances to which my friends in school would always protest.

But you're killing Satan. He's the bad guy. What's the problem? Fuck out of Satan. And it's like, no, no, that's just a way for it to lure you in. It's glorifying it. Look at this giant pentagram, you know. And I mean, literally, we're in a situation where like a depiction

of a pentagram on artwork in any context is like that that has power. This this this booklet has power now, evil power, you know. So yeah, no, there's elements of what I played in the beta that feel like. The feel like no, no, guys, it's going to be a good old Diablo game, just like the older ones, because like the color pallets a little more muted. They have classes that haven't been in the series for like a bunch of games. And like it's such a minor detail, but the opening shot of the fancy astonishing Blizzard in-house CGI trailer is a rickety ass house is a window

shutter slapping against some planks of wood, which was the opening shot of Diablo one's original trailer like back in ninety six, I want to say. Yeah, felt good. It's probably going to sell a shit-zillion copies. It's Diablo game. Did you like any Diablo game? You'll probably like this Diablo game. It was better than Path of Exile, which is ironically enough,

the other Diablo game made by the other people who made Diablo. Is there that does not feel as good? No, is there going to be an auction house? No, OK, they took that out of three, if you remember. And the guy who invented it left, a.k.a. probably was forced to leave. But what if they reinvented it for four? I don't think they're going to do that again.

OK. I like Diablo one and two. I played them a million times, but I'd never played three. And four was really cool. Three is like fantastic, but only when you play it on a console. That's what I always wanted to do, because the controls. I remember watching a friend play it in real life, and it reminded me of kind of like a God of War classic kind of feeling, if that makes sense.

It's I kind of get it. But the main thing is that like it was so silly because like Diablo three came out and like there's only five buttons you can hit and you're and you're like, oh, they made this so that the controllers can play it. Right. Yeah. And then it took like six years for it to come to consoles. And I'm like, what the fuck? God, oh, I'm seeing somebody to chat like did not know.

Yeah, in Diablo three on console, you have a dodge role that doesn't exist in the PC version. I think that's what it was, like the right stick or something like makes you dodge like God of War. OK, in the Diablo four beta circle is a little dodge move. And I'm not certain if it's specific to each character, like the the druid I was playing at just did a little little hop old dodge. But it says like evasive action on the controller, which makes me feel

like the sorcerer will get blink and so on and so forth. That's what I was just. Hey, what games did you play this week? Oh, Ari for and Diablo. Yeah. And Baldur's Gates coming back soon to five, dude. Jesus Christ, here we are. It's crazy. It's crazy.

Man. Well, yeah, that's that's pretty much for me. I'm not super sure what I'm doing this week on my channel. I want to play more Ari for, but I'll wait till mercenaries comes out. So I'll probably play a bunch of indie games like dredge comes out this week. I'm very excited for dredge. So you go down to twitch.tv slash Pat stairs at for dredge. Probably some other stuff like the seafood arena update is this week as well.

Can I mention something I completely forgot? Are we going to talk about Street Fighter at all today? By all means, go into it. OK, but there's nothing like on the docket Street Fighter related because I was going to try to like slip this in there then. But I don't if there isn't, I'll just say it now. I mean, not necessarily. There was some cool dev matches that we finally got some footage of like the characters.

But I wasn't necessarily going to go into it too much. OK, I'll I'll just say my thing. I totally forgot about this. But on on April 7th, which is when mercenaries comes out, I'm not going to be able to play it. I will be on the Capcom stream, the Capcom fighter stream for Metro City Academy. Nice. Learning how to play jury.

Good for you. Nice. Yeah, so that's been announced. So I could say it. I'm excited. So yeah, congrats. Very cool. That's coming soon. Thank you. Appreciate it. What about you, Wally?

What's been going on with you? So, yeah, as of pretty much right now, if you check out on Wally versus the first episode of FF nine just dropped. So Wally versus Final Fantasy nine, we're doing it. And it is the Moguri mod. So that is the PC version that's had lots of improvements done where they had, like, for example, full widescreen backgrounds, high res, just visual improvements, top to bottom.

And I'm blown away by how gorgeous it looks. It's so pretty. Um, I just every time they enter an environment where, like, it used to be like a really cluttered city or just like an interior of, like, you know, where, like, like some of the buildings and such, like, you can just see how you there's like one model in the beginning of like a town and you can just feel how blurry it used to be.

You know, it used to I can just feel in my soul. This used to be a blob JPEG. And like it's now this this crisp image that's really detailed. And like, yeah, overall, just amazing kudos to the Moguri mod, like, for making that game look beautiful. Um, and it also has an orchestrated soundtrack, which is not the original. So some people made it very clear that they, you know, the original is the preferred way to go.

You mean the people that are saying that in the chat right now? I so I didn't notice it when I started because I was playing the game. But apparently when it for the first hour or two, people were being violently aggressive about the music. Which I switched over and it was like, yeah, no, I can hear that this sounds pretty cool. Like it does sound good. The the the whole thing, though, as well as kind of like last time

I uploaded FF six parts to YouTube, they the music got us in trouble. So I don't want to enter into that with this. Let's play as well. If I could avoid it. So like we're we're checking, we're testing it. And right now it seems like they're being just as aggressive about it, too. So like the music is getting you music is getting claimed. Yeah, content ID, man.

It's a fucking PlayStation game from like 2000 or whatever. Videos get demonetized. All that stuff gets flagged. You know, I didn't know that. So that's really good to know, though. I mean, it helps that like the way I record, you know, like I have the the stream and then I have the game feed and then my audio all separate from each other so that in those moments we can like replace the game

feed with something else, you know. But yeah, but it made it really rough for FF six. And so quick test upload took a look and like, yeah, we're getting the same kinds of stuff with this for nine as well. And even some of the orchestral music, even, which is odd, because it's like, I think it's also it's not just square content IDing. It's like anyone who wants to click the button to pretend it's theirs or whatever. Right. So yeah, so anyways, all this to say, we're going to try to play

with original music as much as we can, but for the stuff that's really, really aggressive, like we're not going to be able to keep it on. And I kind of knew this going in, to be honest, it's a final fantasy game. It's to be expected to some degree. But yeah, just so you know, you know, there's no streamer mode for FF nine. We're not going to click a high fire rush button, unfortunately. But yeah, I'd love to make videos on those games at some point on my channel. So I didn't actually know that was like a thing that can be nice.

If it wasn't. Yeah. And again, it's not even the ones where it's official. It's like there's a bunch of unofficial ones to get claimed as well. You know, yeah, yeah. So blame whoever uploads it first can just pretend it's theirs. You know, it's mine. Yeah. Oh my God. And it's up to them to decide whether or not your your counter claim is viable.

Exactly. So when we played Paper Mario, the Thousand Year Door, the intro to Paper Mario, the Thousand Year Door, the music from that intro apparently owned by some shitty fucking 90s era punk band or whatever. Boy, like whatever garbage fucking thing it was. And like they claim everybody who uploads anything from Thousand Year Door that plays that intro then because they took the opening notes of it

and put it in their music and now they own it. Right. So. Anyways, you made this. I made this. Yeah, exactly. So. But all this aside, FF nine. Yeah, it's it's really it's not surprising that it starts in a very traditional way. And it feels like I was calling it like the final gooch, because it's like this is the the, you know, the era of the it's the final gooch.

In it, right? Because it's not actually, but it's like the era of the hot boys has come, right? And Cloud and Squall have hit and everybody gave them rave reviews. And now you're going to come back and follow that up with an aggressive return to form. Yes, you're making a statement. You know what I mean? You are trying to say something.

You're like, no, no, no, we want to do this the old school way. And then after this, it's going to be hot boys forever. Hot boys and summons till the cows come home, you know. And I feel and ridiculous swords. Yeah, it's the most ridiculous looking swords. Yeah, gun swords and giant buster swords and water sword. And again, once you once you open the fucking the box on that and you can't put it back in, like there is there is a look

to what Final Fantasy is these days. But FF nine aggressively being like, no, look at these little goofy goobers here with the with the art style and everything. It's it's really charming. And it's not just the art style, but it's also like the fact that they have the game starts with the airship pulling up to a castle. You know, where you're like, right, like seven and eight. Definitely more like we're now we're moving towards that that more modern

sci-fi element, you know, tech and such. And and in this case, you're just like, no, here's like an old ass fucking airship and an old ass castle and there's a princess. And it's a garnet of Tifa Renault take three. Whatever the case. Yeah, the whole thing is like, hey, what if we made FF four again? Kind of but newer. Yeah, it's got a lot.

Nine has a lot of those like little hallmarks from one through six. And it just like it all like feels good. Yeah. And like a lot of feels right. It's so what's interesting, too, is like, you know, the you're you're meeting the little the races and such. And it feels as well. It's like, oh, this is the world that Mugles come from, where there's a little hippo person standing right there.

And, you know, like I've got a tail. And there's but just all kinds of creatures just hanging out. And it's also the world that like, well, I mean, because FF 14 obviously has a bunch of different races, but like you've got the large humanoid races. And then you've got the potatoes, right? So it feels like the world the potatoes come from, whereas the rest are doing their, you know, oh, yeah, for sure. Like when you when you see VV the first time and you're like Black Mage,

that is a literal Black Mage. Wearing the colors, right? Given 3D form. Absolutely. It's beautiful walking around blue, blue robe, got the hat, everything. And and yeah, I was always like, VV always looked cool, reminded me a lot of, like I said, a orcro from He-Man, right? And and the the FF one, of course, Black Mage.

But I was like, what's his vibe? What's the deal? And it's like, oh, this is a nine year old kid. That's just like, I'm sorry, it's OK. And then like, please don't worry about me. And then he's going to cast the strongest fucking spell and waste whatever is coming at you. And I'm like, this kid's the best immediately.

Yeah. What if this precocious nine year old child had a gun, right? And was really conscientious, you know? And then here comes the big knight, Steiner, Prince Rush, right? He's super classic. Walking off of the storybook page into the game and you're like, oh, OK, he's probably going to be like, oh, fucking magic. I hate it.

And he's actually like, oh, VV, hey, Master VV, you're the best. You're awesome. I hope you're OK. Fuck this stupid, weird, tailed creature. But you, you're cool, you know? And they're like, like, oh, the knight wants to protect the mage. That's awesome. You know, so they have a little fun thing.

This is your first play through. First time. Yeah. Oh, my God. I almost said that I almost said some things while we were talking. I was like, holy shit. Oh, my God, I forgot. Well, nice catch. Thank you.

It's yeah, yes. The other party members. Well, I was going to say, can we put fucking emote mode on you? No. Yeah. No, but yeah. So then and then you have exactly the other the other party members you've got. Um, so it wasn't said in episode, but I do believe an upcoming title for

maybe part three or four is Rufi Goku was here to protect girls. Yeah. Because here comes Rufi. Hey, I know it's fine. It's a joke. Relax, everybody. No, but but it is kind of funny because they're like, we're going to go kidnap

the princess. That's what we're doing. And it's like, all right, how do we do it? It's like, all right, Zane. Slip this in her drink. God. And I'm like, so what now? And she's like, no, no, no, it's OK.

I want it to be kidnapped. Don't worry about it. You're like, oh, OK, well, I guess if you're down, you know, and throw the whole glass with the roofie in it, you just fucking. OK, yeah. Hey, right along, right? Just right this way, right off the balcony, right? And she's wearing the white mage head, of course, you know.

Yeah, yeah. But Steiner rightfully concerned and, you know, about this fucking child who was about to, like, roofie the princess. And and then interestingly, too, like, again, you want to hold, you want to establish the classic vibes, old school town, old school princess, old school, everything set up with the flying ship. And and then you go right into like what would be like the opera section of FF six, you know, like you go right into like, oh, we're on stage.

And we have to like play while like doing our heist and stuff. So, you know, yeah, a little little classic fantasy hijinks as well. And and then you you take a detour to evil forest. And it's like they're this is. Yeah, I can practically see like the loading screens being replaced with pages turning, you know. But definitely I'm liking what they're doing so far. And yeah, it just it does feel like knowing where everything

FF related goes from here on out, it does feel like an aggressive return to form, you know, for one last dance in this kind of style. One last gooch, one last gooch. So I don't remember a hundred percent, but like the reality of how you're describing this is so strange because you're in twenty twenty three playing a game that in the year two thousand was let's make a game from yesteryear. Referring to games from the early nineties.

Yeah. And like you're so far out of the context of that time. But I do remember them showing off nine, ten and eleven all in a row. And like and to like to like soften how weird and futurey ten looked and how online eleven looked. They're like, but guys, don't worry, we're going to give you an old fashioned one now. But then you'll get that new weird stuff later. But I remember that at least with my friends at the time that ten was seen as like the real sequel to seven and eight

because it was leaning more towards the realism and that voice acting. And yeah, well that, of course, you know, but like it was it was going towards that style, which for, you know, what, especially like some of my friends at the time were like, what is the most realistic looking game? That's the one I want to play. That's what matters. Look how serious this game is, you know, and the the opening to ten was one of those cutscenes where they're like, holy shit, square

on on the level of like Blizzard with their 3D FMVs, you know. So nine being like such a weird little little thing was akin to Wind Waker, right? Yeah, it was one of those like it was going to bring that up. Yeah. And you remember how Wind Waker went down when that got announced? Yeah, not good. Fucking hated it, you know, yeah, especially because the Space World demo set expectations up for something like, oh, a real and even more serious, realistic Ocarina was such a mistake, retroactively.

I mean, I don't think the reception would have been like that much better, but the expectations set up a fall, you know, because people really thought they were going to get that. Yeah, that Link walking down to the basement fighting Ganondorf in Space World demo look and retroactively. Now we're like, oh, yeah, Wind Waker is awesome. That was a great creative decision at the time. What a charming game.

Everything's cool. But it was an era where you just couldn't you couldn't be serious enough, you know, top 10 most serious games. So yeah, so it's fun to it's fun to to be going through this and kind of feel that vibe knowing what's before and what's after it. And you know, how weird is it? I wanted to ask you how weird is it that like since then we haven't really had that? Maybe like you could say like 14 a little bit has like a bit of that

that vibe for her explicitly like that. Yeah, so 14 like my impression of 14 is that it it's like because there's so much customization, it's that plus the other stuff that FF is more known for. Right. And that kind of the way that they tend to break it down in 14 is the art style and reality are going to are going to depend on like expansion, but more region. So like if you when you're playing Heaven's Word, tons of dragoons,

tons of dragons, like there's a lot of like there's a lot of influence from there. Then you have raids that are just straight up Final Fantasy Tactics locations. It's it's a lot. Yeah, you go to Ivalice. It's definitely going for like four, five, nine. Yeah, in generality. And then, oh, this place will be all futurey, like the futurey parts of Final Fantasy VIII or or so on and so forth.

I mean, I feel like at least by the point we're at now with the realm reborn and all these expansions that it's really just FF Omni like all parts have been represented in all styles, all things. It's such a massive thing that it's kind of just like Final Fantasy history celebration. So whatever you recognize is going to be represented in this way, you know. One of the weirdest things that happened with nine because you were describing like the the you know, the seriousness.

So you had FF seven, which was all still pop eyes. Yes, human people, human people. Yes, in in in cut scenes and in battle, right? Yep. And then you had Final Fantasy VIII and they were like fucking humans. We're humans now. Yes, we drive cars. Tall, they have legs and shit. This is what we're doing from now on.

And then FF nine comes out and you're like, never mind. So back to back. So so this is what I kind of feel like happened. And this is out of my ass. But I feel like Final Fantasy one through six exists where you've got these cute little sheebie sprites walking around the world and then you get into fight with artwork. Yeah, concept art pops off the page and starts

fight and throwing shit at you. And I feel like those two worlds, this row of sheebies and this beautiful boss have split and this the row of sheebies came back for nine. But this beautiful realistic art went on to be the rest of Final Fantasy. Yeah, this thing of like if they're making it in 86 to 1990, like, did they really want to have like tiny little adorable people? Or is that what they the best they could get away with on the Nintendo? Right, right.

But here's look at this amazing monster, right? When when you and you're fighting, you're going through Sabin's backstory and then you go to the mountain and you fight his master and then his master just turns into a fully detailed kung fu met like like, you know, and you're like, oh, this is what little Sabin's supposed to be, you know, inside my head. But instead, it's this little fucking dude with the ponytail going. Yeah, every single character would be a fully animated version of the Amano art.

Right. But they can't do that. The superintendent would fucking explode. So this is what it is, right? Can I just say I love I always used to love that like as a kid because I played like back on PS1 like Final Fantasy anthologies, you know, which was which was one and two. But like kind of prettied up the the the gameplay balance in those was like pretty fucked according to, you know, super fans online

that know like all the minutiae. But I always loved that where it was like because as a child, essentially, at the time, like I identified with those tiny little baby sprites like going up against like a nightmare concept art because it was like, holy shit, like you're growing up and like you're going out into the real world and the real world is scary, you know, so like, OK, I always fucking loved that like dynamic of like the two worlds of art, you know, like going against each other.

Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to bring that up completely off topic. But no, but that's that's that's a that's a cool thought because I mean fucking like a character is as innocent looking as Ness staring down the you know what I mean, the like fucking earth, the creatures and earthbound and shit. It's like, yeah, the little bit of that like the scary of the scary outside world. Yeah, but you're very right about that. Like with the with the like crazy concept art going off into like the realistic zone because like FFVIII is like has so much of that.

Like, do you guys remember when you're on the train and then you have to get what's his face, the leader of so and so. And he like mutates. Yeah, I was like, I didn't want to say it because I don't know how to say it's the final fantasy names out loud. But he turns into like a fucking zombie. He turns into like a zombie monster with like blood and gore. Yeah. And you're like, holy shit, what's happening?

And like not only that, but like you look at as well like the way summons were in the original like in the older sprite games. And then the way they're represented again in something like eight, you know, like they're just these unbelievable classical works of art, you know. So there's yeah, there's just a real deliberate choice to that. And but that world exists while the Moogles are jumping around and the Chocobos are going, you know, so I remember at the time I played a crystal chronicles like right for whoever wants

to fucking reset the clock on that. And that game as well went for that sort of nine art style and proportion, you know. Yeah. But anyway, it's it's it's a it's a fun little romp so far. And I do appreciate that. Like also really early, we got double techs immediately. So you got yo, VV do a flame sword, right? Let's get that chrono trigger box art going right away, like minute 30. And I love me a good double tech.

So so that's fun. Otherwise, pretty straightforward battle system as well. You know, learning skills attached to armor is, you know, a little bit of a twist to it, but not much because it's the most straightforward. It's just like it's yeah, it's like learning your summons. It's the same kind of magic, you know, in six. So not much to that. The morgary mod does enable the the ability to do like a turn based mode,

which is kind of interesting where it essentially makes it so that the wait time between ATB is gone and you just act as soon as the next turn is done, you know, so you kind of get like a much more old school RPG wait vibe to it. But I did read that it messes up a couple of fights, so I might just like switch that off, but I was just testing stuff out with it. But overall, yeah, a fun start. Trying to find the the voices for each of these characters as we're

you know, like kind of reading out their lines and such. And right now, it's just it's all about VV. I we can see whatever else the story is going to cover and wherever else we're going. But I don't give much of a fuck. It's about that kid right there. I want to see what's next for VV is the best. Yeah. And I'm just thinking I have a VV hidden back there. Oh, yeah. I see it.

I'm just thinking about the way that we were just talking about the description of like the your serious or I'm going to say human shaped Final Fantasy games versus like the more fantastical chibi settings. And like, I think the strangest thing about FF 16 is that it is the first one ever that's both it's the serious human looking people in the the fantastic like the fantasy setting. Like all the all the realistic human being ones have all been in the pseudo future. Yeah, the the ones that have like fantastical technology.

Yeah, mostly magic. Even like even 12, like you think it's going to be like that. But then it's like super cyberpunk sci fi fortress in the sky. That's it. Is it going to lean more fantasy or sci fi? Right. And a lot of the where there's like a laser security, laser grids and stuff. And you're like, how does this work?

Like what's going on? Fifteen had its moments of like, you know, Noctis being in like castle like areas and fantasy type things. But you're pushing a car around and you're driving like. I think that 15's decision to take place in like. Texas. What's a mistake? It's here. It's where I live. Like it's in Vegas.

Like I Final Fantasy looks just like I'm driving a car with a rose. We're going to go to the gas station and then fight a turtle. I don't know, man. I don't think that setting worked at all. You know what fucking sucks about 15 when you play that game for like hours and it is that it's Texas. And then it's like, oh, now I'm in like one forest. But it's like, oh, now I'm going to Altisha and I'm in like Italy.

But then you take the train and then you see Tenebrae, which is a like, which is the most concept art Final Fantasy massive castle off in the distance and then you cannot go. You cannot go to it like it's off in the distance. And that's I like it isn't like I didn't here's like I didn't beat it. Right. I stopped before Altisha. Yeah. So for me, I just got that open field in the car. And I didn't mind it.

It but it was definitely like the vibe they want to go for is we're on a road trip and this is what a road trip feels like. And then we pull off into little Italy, like you mentioned. And then we're getting back on the road and there's a gas station and there's a little fucking 7-Eleven. And we're going to, you know, and so like I got on board with the idea of the road trip and then, oh, let's get off at this exit and run out into the field and fight a fucking monster out there.

And then get back to the car. You know, I completely understand. And I was also super down with that. But my issue was that when I wanted to play a final fancy game about a road trip, I wanted my boys to be in the car having a road trip through what looked like a final fantasy setting. I see. Instead of a road trip through the area, like 10 miles from my fucking house. Yeah. Yeah.

It just looks like. Like it looks like they might as well be on the fucking 401 from Montreal to Toronto for as interesting as most of that scenery is. Well, it's almost like inspired by a road trip the team went on, you know, probably and just went like, hey, how cool would it be to like go take a piss and then fight a fucking dragon and level up and then get back in the car, you know? Yeah, it is.

It is. But I did. I got that vibe from it. And once I understood that's the vibe it was going for, I was OK with it. But it would definitely have been a ton of fun to see that through a much more fantastical wild setting. There is a. Did you watch? God, what was it called?

The Midnight. The Duncan Trussell animation with Pendleton Ward. No, no, I did not. OK, Adventure Time creator and Duncan Trussell, they worked on a thing together, a project that was really cool. And there's an episode of it where they're they're they're like going on a trip. They're on on there.

They're like riding a carriage through this insane setting, you know, but it's and it's like the setting is just kind of background and occasionally things get in the way. But really, these characters are just having a conversation as they just ride the carriage through this world of madness. And like there's something to that idea that like you can see executed in that episode. The Midnight Gospel is what it's called. I just remembered. Of like, yeah, if you look out the window and you see like fucking Bahamut,

just, you know, like blowing some shit up over there. And you're like, oh, oh, shit, OK, why that window up? Like, let's, you know, like there is there is something to that. Yeah, that's what 15 should have been like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's Diamond weapon. Cool, just right over there in the marsh. But no, good start to nine so far.

I'm very happy for you. Nine is one of my faves. So yeah, it's a great game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I did want to comment on something. I don't know if you've ever seen it. Bully or or even Pat, but like Desidia and T does the weirdo thing where they take Zidane and make him a a human proportion realistic final fantasy boy. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, and it's a little weird. It's a little weird, like. Wow. OK. Desidia and T is like. The worst thing ever. I'm mentioning that. Yeah. In my chest. Whoa, look at him go.

Game is like the potential the definition of the potential. Oh, what if what if FF nine was actually what if we went for another pretty boy? Yeah, yeah, yeah, look at him. That's so interesting. This could if they they could have made him fall right in line with with Cloud and Squall. Desidia and T does a lot of weird things

because they because like you should look up Ramza to what he looks like because you're like, wow, that is not looks like like a adorable, pretty little girl of an adorable, pretty little girl. I was like, that is not what I imagined in my mind. It they they translated the art style directly. And it's like, oh, yeah, Ram's really pretty. Yeah, like super cute. I was like, what?

Also, I'm overjoyed to see the return of the trance system. That's that's a bit of a joke because of the trance system in six. I had some some struggles understanding how it worked initially. It's now here to replace limit breaks. And I think I get it after reading that little Mughal tutorial about it. But the idea of everyone having a terror like trance is kind of nuts. So it's like, are they super cool until you realize you have absolutely no control over when it turns on at all.

Well, because it just fills up and pops and then you got to use it. And then it you have no control. You would hope that it would pop for a boss fight. But no, it's going to pop the fight right before the boss fight. So this is what we were kind of questioning. I was kind of like, will I be able to use this like a limit break strategically? Oh, OK. You'll use it when the game tells you that your character glows pretty.

Yeah, I love it as a lore thing for Tara. I don't know about gameplay implications here, but we'll see. Well, are you are you playing a version of this game that has like you can skip the battles and stuff or no, is it just like you do every single? No, there are sheets available on the PC versions. So all square FF games have a skip battles button if you want to press it. But I'm not pressing that button. Yeah, no, but I did I did get the OK

from the universe to put steel rate to one hundred percent because it's just a slot. Otherwise, what? I'm going to tell you right now who's played through every single one of those games. Yeah, no fucking. Oh, my God, just fucking turn it on. Wasting turns going for a steal over and over. It's like you play you play like FF 10 to and you're like, OK, Riku, you are canonically a warrior or something. You are not a thief. I don't care.

Like you are switching your whole like job right now. Yeah, it's it's like there's no pity on the steel. Like so if the steel is like 10 percent, you could sit there for like 20 fucking minutes. Yeah, if fucking it's so bad. No, and that's my thought on it is like, I'm not going to jeopardize the fight to waste turn stealing when I need to do other things. So yeah, I'll probably throw that on. So yeah, that just started.

And other thing of note. Yes, so I joined Chip and Ironicus on their podcast, Dogs Must Die, a Jojo podcast. To talk about the end of Stone Ocean. They just wrapped up with the finale because Stone Ocean is yeah, well, as we know, it finishes off, you know, this this chunk of of Jojo. And we just kind of had a fun little chat about what the fuck was happening. And that is the

that is the most Jojo ass moment in the animated series so far is the way that's part six ends. So I can understand the desire to call in someone to maybe go like, hey, do you understand what the fuck just happened there? And I might I kind of went, no, but I have ideas. You know, really fast. Yes, it went very, very quickly. And so that was that was a fun little bit to do.

And yeah, obviously to that note, like finishing off Stone Ocean as well. It was really interesting because so have you guys finished part six? I don't know. No, OK, all right. I have only seen part one and two. OK, no worries. Well, that's OK. I'll I won't get into it too much.

But I'll just say that something I was really worried about or not even worried about I was but I was expecting there's a there's a huge like momentum shift that occurs with part six of Jojo that. I remember reading. I remember being very confused by and I remember feeling, you know, depressed by basically I felt really sad about it. And I remember it took a while to kind of like have discussions and read things online and kind of go over that that that part a few more times.

And and over the years, it kind of was something where I was like, OK, I see and I think I get a better version of what this what happened here and what this was about. And then the more you look into it and the more people point out things that you might have missed thematically and such. There's some really great stuff that's happening there. So part six has like, you know, one of my favorite protagonists, one of my favorite antagonists, one of my favorite settings.

It's got like so much that I love. And then it's got like some parts that I fucking hate. It's got some it's got it's had my favorite stand in it, right? Survivor, as I've mentioned before, but it also just has this like right, it has this lull in pace moment that occurs. That's real like, oh, and then there's just a third act that is bad shit. And going over it now, watching it animated, it's so interesting because I was like curious to see how the world would kind of receive this

and watching it with Punch Mom. I remember the feeling I felt with each page turn. It felt like time was slower because you're moving at your own reading pace. And then like everything that you you took in, like you digested it more. But when that happens in the span of like two episodes that are compressing three chapters per episode, so each chapter is about 10 minutes long. Like you barely feel some of those beats before you're on to the next. And it's so interesting because like the the thing that I felt like there

almost wasn't time to process it for anyone who is familiar. They're all like you just it moves so quickly, which, you know, like is this the nature of animation? And this part they could have took their time and went longer with it. But, you know, the the 38 episodes is what they've been kind of aiming for aiming for with other parts and all that. In the end, too, you combine that change of pace with the the binge drop, which we've talked about in the past and how that kind of killed the momentum of this part.

Oh, you mean how I have yet to watch every anything from the second part because I didn't realize when it was out and by the time it was out, everyone's talking about it because it was months ago. There you go. Right. And the same vibe, like talking on on Dog's Mistyce, same thing. Like they felt the same way. Everyone, everyone in the fan base that kind of go went into this looking for that next part felt it like the hype just gets killed.

And we've been over this in the previous week. So I don't want to just wake up early to fucking get the new episode. Did this fucking day that it came out every single time for five fucking seasons? Right. And we get to part six. I'm like, oh, did it come out? Bop, bop, bop. No, yes. Right. So that momentum killer fucking sucks. And we, as we know, and I've even over this, but I just bring it up again

to say that this time around, it's especially weird because even if that was not happening, the pacing would have been so accelerated and nuts as this ended. And this just adds a layer of like, oh, my God, you really don't have a chance to feel any of these little like little beats happening, you know, because you're just on to the next. Like if you think about like, well, no, I won't even get into the end of Stardust Crusaders, but just, you know, each of these parts of JoJo, the every part of JoJo, the end just starts throwing shit real quick.

Like powers start changing, though, setting the world, what's happening, the stakes, everything starts getting. I really want to finish this up. I just want to I want to move on to the next one. I want to apply to Hawaii. Yeah, or whatever, well, before that, actually, we got other things to do. Let's get on, get on old old Bessie over here. Or or.

Yeah, start picking at your nails, God, I don't know what they're going to do. Anyway, so all this to say, just like six animated. The ending doesn't hit. It doesn't hurt as much because of how fast it goes. And you're just kind of left with the emotional tones, which overall. You know, it are to the positive, but like when you read it back in the day, there was this real slow, bitter sweetness to it that you're that you're left with, you know, a real like melancholy.

But but like, OK, yeah, I get it. You know, we got here, the journey is over. And that just kind of blows right by, you know. Anyways, it was it's an interesting it's an interesting thing to note. And the the I thought that people were going to head into a a dark age of Jojo after this, but it seems like no, not quite. But shout outs to David production as well, because like, you know, they they yeah, as they bring this part to a close and they kind of like wrap up the promise

of the first Sonochino-Satame intro, the first thing you see is Jolene, you know, the promise to do at least six parts of this thing. They read they did it, you know, and they gave it the proper send off. And like I was talking to Reggie about like we were like he's because he just watched Berserk 97 for the first time and he's read it. But like just watching it and you're like, yeah, could this ever happen? You know, and I'm like, well, you have to realize that Berserk had it shot then and that was, you know, old, but it was a good show.

And then they had those great movies and then you had 2016, which we don't fucking talk about. Um, and the problem is it doesn't matter how awesome the story is. You need a team like David production that's willing to dedicate 20 years of their life to this project. It's an insane thing to ask a super talented studio to just work on one thing for the next decade and then some and then some. Right.

To take us into part nine, that's another 10. So Berserk would need that level of dedication from some amazing talented studio out there to finally do it justice, you know, I'm just thinking as you're describing this of like, you know, the JoJo originally started in 2012, the anime adaptation. And I'm just thinking of like 2010, 2011, walking up to a bunch of a bunch of dudes at the productions. Like, listen, you want an animation team to take care of the JoJo franchise?

We'll do part one. And then part one does, well, we'll do all of them. Right. Um, so are you folks ready to sit down and work on this for 20 years so that in 2024, everyone on 2chan can yell at you about how ugly the CG horses are. I can't wait. I'll get my pencil right away. Yeah.

You know, it is it is definitely like a wild thing to ask of a talented studio. Um, and, you know, Berserk absolutely deserves it. And more, it deserves all the accolades and all the, you know, the dedication to getting that shit. Right. But I, you just, you just have to realize what you're asking of the team that has to take that project on, you know. Anyways, so go check it out.

Dogs must die. Um, I think it's episode 90. Uh, yeah, fun little chat. I was going to, I was going to ask, um, how many adaptations of the Golden Age arc are there? Like, is that just it? Is there only two? Yeah.

Not counting video games. Okay. Well, video games don't tend to even touch on the Golden Age much because it's all human beings. Well, the busso game did, if I remember correctly, did it? I want to say it did forgot about that game. Existence, that game is trash. Okay.

Yeah. I played it for like an hour and was like, Oh yeah. Okay. I'm going to press these same buttons over and over again. You know the deal. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah, anyway, um, go check that all out over on, uh, woolly versus, uh, as

well as on woolly versus the algorithm, second channel with the shorts. We just released, uh, woolly versus whatever, uh, the slop of an average human mother, uh, good, good, good times, good stuff. Um, yep. Reggie put in his hours. Yeah. He went, he went to work. Um, so yeah, all of that continues as this mass effect.

Is that where he, is that the, the, the clip in which he floats the idea of cringe off with my wife? He floats the idea. That's yeah. Yeah. He, he, he puts it into the ether and then I think I grabbed it and shoved it back in his mouth, like just, you know, um, indeed, indeed. Uh, yeah.

So no, though, those are, those are going to be dropping. We've got some other shorts coming your way as well. Um, and yeah, uh, this week, uh, I've got a lot going on with the research program that I'm in with this, uh, this whole, uh, diabetes program. I gotta ask, when you're done with this, are you going to be some kind of more than regular human? Cause you just described it as a research project. It is a research project.

I am, there are people with clipboards standing next to me on the treadmill. Like it's kind of, it's, it's happening. It's kind of interesting. Does that ever make you feel like what is, it's, it's can't be that bad. And you're talking with scientists and with a clipboard. No, it does. It's kind of like, yeah, we can rebuild him stronger and faster, but we don't want to spend the money.

So, um, we're doing it this way in the meantime. And there's also a little bit of, I guess it's like, Hey, can you take a couple weeks of drinking nothing but like fucking, uh, pro protein slop? If so, then we can invest our time in you, you know, um, yuck. So yeah, that's, that continues to, to occur. I can't wait for the end of this journey is just like, okay, so we're going to inject this into you. Fingers crossed the end of the journey is I get to be hot and that would be cool.

So let's see where we go. There's just going to be a podcast randomly where like it fades in and then you just have like a whole K no I like, and you're all like, it's cybernetic. I mean, I'm, I'm, it's, it's like, yeah, we'll see where this goes, you know, but like there is, I'm like, I remember one time, like I was on the phone with like the dietician they assigned you and like while I was on the phone, I got a, uh, uh, an incoming third call from like the doctor in the program who also had a scheduled meeting at the same time.

And I'm like, this is insanity. Guys, you have to talk to each other. You have to coordinate. Like I can't, you know, and I'm like, I'm like, hold on. I'll call you back and I'm getting on the phone to talk about it. And it's just, it's, it's fucking wild. Right. So all of that is overlapping.

And, um, all that to say that, yeah, uh, probably won't get a chance to, to jump on stream this week, but, um, the parts will continue to flow as we've, as we've recorded them. Um, but yeah, the end of this program, uh, you know, it's, it's going to take some time, um, it's, it's going to run for a couple months, man. But so far so good, you know, so far so good. You look good. Thank you.

Uh, it's just, it's just like the, uh, man with a clipboard exhibiting you as you eat the slop that the scientist has created just has like a real, real fucking tone to it. Well, I'm not concerned until the scientist is standing in the next room behind protective glass. So far they're right next to me. So we're all good. But if they ever are like, okay, this time we're going to be back here,

but we're out, we're over here. Don't worry. Holler, if you need us, I click clunk. I can't think of anything that would be more threatening that could realistically occur other than you asking what something is for and being told, don't worry about it. The details aren't important. No, it's fine.

Yeah, but, um, no, all in the end, it's all worth it, all worth it. So, uh, yeah, that's, that's, that's the state of affairs. It's going to be weird living in a world with a, where you look like gigachat, though, right? I don't know about that. But if I start uploading black and white photos and didn't just like take angles of me, right, doing the pose, like, yeah. No, um, either that or just start JoJo posing casually more often.

You know, just, just start doing it. That's what I do. Yeah, I do it. Like every time people want to take photos, it happens anyway, but just doing it for me now, right? Exactly. All right. Um, yeah.

So I got to use the bathroom again. That's another part of the program is the level of fucking hydration and yadda yadda. So, uh, BRB and, uh, we'll get into what's going on. All right. Okay. Alrighty. Uh, yeah.

So incidentally, um, I heard, I, I read a review and I heard that, uh, some folks are enjoying Bayonetta origins. Apparently there's, um, some similarities to, um, the way it plays and like it takes two is what I saw. Really? Yeah. I saw like a comparison to that, um, and that the, um, yeah, the puzzles are kind of fun and that it, uh, it has like young Jean walking around doing

stuff that like she's running around helping you. And yeah, some people are, some folks are saying that it's, uh, it is a, a, you know, surprisingly, uh, fun, uh, follow up to three. And, uh, that, you know, could be interesting. So, um, I, I, I look forward to finding out what's going on there. I have heard one thing about that game and it is something I can't even talk about because it is the last thing in the game, but apparently the final boss sequence, like everything about that is just fucking a plus inspired.

Okay. Like, I'm excited. I literally have it and I haven't played it yet. So maybe I'll play it. Which is not something I could say about any other Bayonetta game. Um, from what I saw, it seems like it's like a lot of this is, uh, introducing the, the fairies and all that bit. So it's like, so I guess it comes a little less out of nowhere, um, based

on this and maybe they should have put this out before the other game, but yeah, yeah. And, uh, and, um, what was it? There's the, there's the Bayo's teacher character as well that, that gets introduced, uh, Morgana, I want to say or something. Yeah. Um, so no, um, it takes two was good. And that's a good point of comparison.

Certainly. I'm, I'm interested to hear more about that. I have a friend who's played it for a couple hours and he was like, it's just really great getting to do Bayonetta stuff. Like do magic and demons and in the forest and it looks like Bayonetta and not robots and toothpaste and in modern day cities. And I was like, okay, that's a really great step in the right direction. Um, and then there's the meme that was, I believe Kimia posting, um, uh, play

Bayonetta origins, uh, find Sereza cute, want to have a daughter, a daughter like her go make one birthing crisis solved. That's it. That logic only makes sense if they admit their own complicity in the birth rate crisis by making a sexy digital wife to, to lust after instead of your regular human wife. Yeah. Oh, okay.

So they're actually back to zero because if they make you want to go and have your own kid, they're just undoing the damage of a digital life. All you, all you people attracted to tall giraffe brunettes. No, you got to have kids with real people. Something, something. Bayonetters. Something. Uh, every single podcast I'm going to have the word Bayonetta in the title.

It's so bad to save the future this time for posterity's sake. Oh yeah. Okay. Bayonett to save. All right. Look, what's going on? Stop workshopping it. Come on.

Nope. No workshop. Uh, sponsors actually. I love sponsors. Uh, I will turn my microphone off for this part. I don't say anything stew. Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, please do.

Thank you. Uh, it's fine. This week, the podcast is sponsored by Hello Fresh and you know the deal. It's food, folks. Food's important, but it's especially nice when it can be brought to you. Healthy food, that is, um, good food straight to your door. And when you can make cooking easy, fun and affordable, right? You got to eat.

I've used Hello Fresh and it was fast and easy and I ate the food and I was happy. There you go. Um, looking at the little card that follows the instructions, uh, for you. You got real simple. Like I don't think they've ever gone above like four or five steps tops. It's like, you know, open the package, apply heat, wait, put it on a plate, get a fork, you know, maybe move it around a little so maybe fancy, but that's, that's to taste, you know, it's, it's all the same in here really.

So, um, in the meantime, though, uh, you can definitely, uh, get yourself, uh, a ton of different options. Hello Fresh is delivering, uh, over 40 weekly recipes to choose from for different occasions, preferences. Of course, you can take your pick if you want to get, uh, soy glazed salmon. I'm doing the fish kick recently because, uh, that's, that's, uh, the, the healthy meals are being reintroduced alongside my protein. You got to mock the fish by using a term they can't actually reciprocate do.

They're not having any legs or facial expressions. Fish, do they know they're, they're perpetually shocked. They can't, they can't really be shamed or you can, you can shame them, but they're not really, you can shame a fish, you can shame anything really if you try hard enough, but I don't think the fish is going to display any signs that it really minds, you know, um, what, except for a blob fish, a blob fish. They always look really upset, but okay. No, but here's the thing, Susie.

They don't because it turns out that the blob fish only looks that way because that's what it looks like when you take it from the deep ocean and violently pull it up to the top and the water pressure changes and it becomes this gross weird blob thing, but in its actual natural state, deep in the deep ocean, it looks completely different. It's much more majestic. And less of a time that you're going to say cooking hello fresh instead of botching your own meals, you could spend time looking up interesting facts

like that instead. We are the raw, are the problem with the blob fish. It's because we have to rip it out of its environment to look at it and you see how it fucking gets all weird, but it looks totally different when you don't do that. It's kind of amazing, but only does. It's, it looks really cool. Actually, right?

The folly of man, a sad guy. Look at that. Look at that. It's amazing. Do I know, but only half as amazing as hello fresh when delivered straight to your door as you go through tons of options, you can get yourself protein, smart, you can get yourself vegetarian. If you'd like that, you can get yourself regular balanced for two, for four,

you know, tons of options and you can customize them week to week. You can add extra sides. You can add extra proteins, whatever your preferences. You've got lots of options. And again, it comes in fresh at your door with little cooling packs right under the box to keep everything good to go. So, yeah, it doesn't taste like it's been sitting in plastic processed for weeks, if not months, right?

There you go. Mankind can, can we can fuck up by trying to pull a blob fish out of its environment, but what? But if you damn it, OK, look, just hello fresh. Go to hellofresh.com slash super beast 60 and use code super beast 60 for 60 percent off plus free shipping. That's hellofresh.com slash super beast 60. And you use code super beast 60 for 60 percent off plus free shipping.

That is America's number one meal kit. Don't eat a blob fish. They, they, your hello fresh will not come with a blob fish. I can guarantee you this. No, wait, what about hello fish? That's that is not the same company and you need to stop. Please hit that mute button again. Thank you.

Hello fresh. You had one job. She briefly mentioned the blob fish and then you just fucking tie raided the fuck out of here off the ad that was on you. Yeah, no, it's OK. It's fine. Let her cook cook the blob fish. No, that's it.

That's all we got for the week. So let's let's get out of here. Hey, what's new this week? How about this? Instead of your game shutting down prematurely, how about we just shut down for at least six months and then come back next year and then call the period of time that you played an open beta? Are you talking about fighting game of the year 2022 multi versus I mean,

there is there is some hustle to it that you have to kind of admire the idea of being like glad everybody enjoyed the open beta. Glad you enjoyed it. As as we always knew, that was a great successful test. We're going to be bringing this thing back inside the oven for a bit and we'll be releasing the final release in next year in 2024. Sure, hope you didn't spend any money on anything recently for the upcoming season because there will be.

So they fucking they did say that it was an open beta. They said the open beta will start and then they ran it for like how long has it been going like eight months? They ran it not for eight months. It's been shorter than that. But it's at least how long has it been? Let's find out. But they ran it long enough that people spent money on on cosmetics

and July of last year. So that's the seventh month. So it's five months and smart. So eight months. Oh, shit. There you go. OK, yeah, so eight months. And when something's an open beta for more than two weeks, people are like,

oh, so then it'll just become one point. Oh, well, you expect it to roll into the final version, right? That's the thing. You expect it to just be like, yeah, here you go. Right. Um, I think ultimately if like whatever is happening in terms of like the downtime, it's going to it's going to go back to to to to change things or so before it gets re-released again.

Um, I I'd wonder if performance and and like it's staying open long enough for it to like experience a dip in popularity and such. Like I wonder if that's part of, you know, what we're looking at here. It feels almost like probably they're like, OK, we saw, I was thinking that. So I looked it up. What do you think their average player count for the last 30 days has been? Uh, 500, 527. Bam.

Wow. Yeah. Very close. First of all, wow. Actually, yeah, that was a great fucking guess. Thank you. Yeah. Second of all, what's more interesting is the December was 1200.

January was 951. February was 735. And now in March, it's 527. Yeah. Wasn't this game like the biggest thing when it first came out? It was massive. It was it was it was when it dropped, it was a huge like, oh, this is a free smash game and it's going to have meme characters like LeBron James.

So this is destined for to be huge. Sure. There and I would I would say that it continued to be because it also like had a really interesting 2v2 full cross platform bit to it had a lot going for it and does have a lot going for it. But, you know, as with anything that approaches the genre, there's going to be a fade off, a fall off. There's going to be an interest drop.

And and I think in this case, ultimately going down for six months to to work on the game and bring it back up and add more to like ensure its longevity is not a bad thing. It's it's better than, you know, Rumbleverse, which on ceremoniously like was supposed to end at the end of the month and then died a couple days before that even due to technical shit, because just like getting caned off stage, you know, like old school, so I'm digging through it and I'm like, they are gaslighting us because the season one patch is called multi versus season one

patch one point. Oh, well, there you go. Yeah, I don't think anyone felt like they were continually playing a beta up till yesterday or so, including people who, again, spent money on the on current stuff. So that's the main thing about this is like, it's a huge like bummer for anyone that bought things in the with the idea that they'd be able to like, you know, upgrade a season pass for the next couple of weeks or whatever the

duration of time, and you're not going to get any refunds for that. When Rumbleverse went down, they gave everyone a full refund for whatever they spent. I remember checking my email and I suddenly saw a bunch of refunds from the EGS and I was like, oh, shit. Yeah, I bought a bunch of cosmetics for that game. I really wanted to support it. Well, they don't need to refund anything because the game's just going to be

available in nine months. So your purchases will stay until then. They will stay. However, sometimes if you're buying something time limited for the immediate future, your hope is that you'll be able to fucking use it. Right. So all right, let's stop being reasonable. This is bullshit.

I think if they if they gave if they gave you a refund, this wouldn't be anywhere near as disrespectful as it as it feels, right? Like if you got your money back, then it would be like, OK, well, they're pulling the game down to work on it. It'll be back when it's ready. But if I just bought some shit and I can't fucking use it at all for this period of time, then no, fuck off. Like do give them the refund.

And this is something that can still change because if Rumbleverse can refund anyone who's ever spent a dime on Rumbleverse, then there's no reason Multiverses can't refund anybody who spent money for anything that's currently active, right? Even if you didn't want to say the entire time the game's been out, you can say fine, anyone who spent money in the last whatever month, like period of time where they're the thing they purchased would be still available, that they're losing, give people at least within a reasonable timeframe a refund so that

they didn't just spend their money on nothing. I think what I don't know if it's worse or not, but what definitely adds to the matter of my gut feeling of like this fucking bullshit is that every single fucking thing that has been trotted out as like, oh, this was the plan all along to fucking liar, you're so full of shit. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, I think like that little flavor on it where you're like, yeah, we this is this is absolutely thanks for participating in the beta foot.

Like that's a real weird way to fucking angle it instead of saying like, oh, we're going back to rework on on, you know, the shit that we're going to add a throw button so that it's just Smash Brothers or or where we're going to directly compete on the switch, you know, whatever the case is. It's just the financial angle is the main thing. That's that's the bit that I find is like, Rubbleverse did that right. And they didn't. And like, because this is like a WB game to make a mega mega corporation.

Yeah, so what's funny is that they can absolutely had that merger. And you remember the WB merger with Discovery had that fucking whole thing where everybody's projects got fucking killed and canceled and fucked up. Yeah. When that happened, Tony, the guy who the lead on a multi versus came out and said, our deal predates this merger. So there's no possible issues with multiverses where everything is set in stone, et cetera.

But I bet their new deal that they made now when they're pulling the game off the market for nine months. Yeah. Is it will be affected by the new WB Discovery? Oh, yeah, for sure. Like there's a possibility this game just doesn't come back. I think the fact that they announced like immediately that there's a there's a re-release date of twenty twenty four.

Or well, it's said six months. No, no, they said they said a release date of twenty twenty four or maybe earlier or maybe or maybe later. Yeah. So so minimum six months of shutdown is what we know is what they're saying. It might come back with a different title for all, you know, like who knows. But I wouldn't be surprised if this game just disappeared. I I I I imagine that they're going to do what they're saying here.

I don't, you know, I would hope at the very least because it's a good game. It's a it's a good game. It's very fun. I like the ideas. I like what it has going on. There's a lot of cool shit that they demonstrated a willingness to kind of like, you know, play the two V two angle really unique, not just following the smash footsteps, but make them make their own, you know, like assist based

like gameplay decisions and stuff. And I would love to see where this fully goes out, especially with that leak list knowing that like they basically had a leak list of characters that included like Gandalf and like just full internet meme nonsense coming down the pipeline. But did they ever put Darkwing duck in that game? They did not. They did not shame. They did not.

I think you'd be great. I think Black Adam and the gremlins were the last the last updates. Yeah. But man, everything about leveling characters and dealing with the dailies in that game was fucking miserable. It was one of those games that like they'll have dailies for like here earn points so you can level up your characters and blah, blah, blah, whatever. And the all the dailies they give you are shit that sucks to do in a fight

that you'll have to go into a fight going, all right, I have to knock guys out on the top of the screen. So I'm going to try and knock everyone up on the top of the screen for five matches until I get it. So yes, everybody, Darkwing duck is a Disney property. However, that I just looked it up right now, but but that list included the Hulk, the Disney Marvel property as a guest character that was going to come to the WB multi versus game.

So yeah, Disney characters was clearly not a barrier because they were already going for that. Yeah, I just I also looked it up and I understand why I got confused, but I won't but you were actually way more on than you thought because they were clearly talking to Disney about getting characters, right? Yeah, they're willing to license. Anyways, so we will see what the fuck happens. I I I don't know.

I'm hope like player first games did did a good job with it, you know? I just think that WB obviously can be trusted as far as WB as far as you can throw them in this regard. Do the fucking right thing. Give people their money back, right? And make this throw which I can't a corporation at all. Well, that's exactly it, right? Because like if you're like, oh, well, he's trusting in the corp.

It's like, no, I'm hoping for the best because it's a good game. I want I hope it comes back as a good game that we can play. If it never comes back, that would be bad. That's what if it comes back as a significantly worse game? God damn. Thanks for the wait. Please enjoy. Rumble versus minus two.

I can't fucking imagine. Minus two. Yeah, no, I there's now less characters, actually. We took them out. I just yeah, your characters have energy and if you want to play as them, you have to stop playing until the energy comes back or pay us to get your energy back. I think I think, you know, like because the other thing Rumble versus did right before it ended was it unlocked all cosmetics

and and purchasables for everybody and then gave you all your money back, right? So it's just like, yeah, I think this announcement happened pretty much right before we went live today. And if people are like, yo, what the fuck? Where's my money? Like, I hope hopefully they can like be oh, oh, oh, and also addendum. Here you go. Here's a refund window or something like that.

That's not going to happen. There's no way maybe people kick up enough of a stink, you know. They got epic to do it. That's like, no, no one got epic to do it. Epic, like that was part of the original announcement. Like that when when Rumbleverse announced that it was going to fucking die, part of the original announcement was, hey, by the way, we're going to refund all your stuff. No one had to bug them.

No one had to yell at them. No, but no, no, no, sorry, but that's my point is, is if you were to ask me, would Epic give refunds to people who spent money on a game? I would have said never, right? Oh, absolutely. They totally do. They have the same refund thing as as fucking Steam does on their store. It's just more annoying to get to because you have to go through their shitty store,

I suppose, but they're also in legal trouble for dark patterns right now going through the courts at a series of predatory practices with things relating to Fortnite. So they wouldn't be high up on my list of trusted mega-corps that are going to give you your money back, you know? Yeah, of course. However, I feel like the fact that they're in in court right now for dark patterns may have actually influenced their desire to make themselves look good by not putting a game in the dark and took everyone's money.

Fair, fair. God. It's just all rise the court, you know, in the case of Epic versus the people, you know, charged with dark patterns, like, man. All right. Anyways, that thing continues. That sounds very sus, dark patterns. Yeah, it is.

It is sus. It's basically describing the act of, like, tricking kids into spending money, you know? Oh, I didn't know what that meant. Yeah, it's referring to, like, how a lot of this cycle is, like, you know, the V-Box, the buttons, the way it's set up, the button placement. Like the number one thing was don't ask for confirmation when you buy something. Oh, yeah, because they definitely don't. Just click on it and oh, it's bought.

Wow. Feedback. You know, that, you know, when they put Chun-Li in Fortnite, that was, like, my tipping point. I was like, oh, she looks so good. I want to play Fortnite. And I installed Fortnite. And before I was even playing the game, there were, like, three different screens that were all different options of how I can spend money on Fortnite.

You got the Pro Pass, motherfucker. Do you want the Battle Pass? Do you want the... Yeah, what do you want? Do you buy a VIP fucking thing? And none of them were Chun-Li, either, by the way. Exactly. Right?

Of course. It's never what you want. By the way, if you buy anything off the Fortnite store, make sure to use Creator Code, Pat Stares at. Oh, yeah. When you, when I, when that trailer with the movement options popped up and I was like, this looks fucking crazy. And everyone's like, yeah, the current season's really fun, but this is not super representative.

And I was like, yeah, okay. Cause there's like 3D maneuver gear and shit like that. And then someone posted a clip of Leon doing fucking Bionic Commando swings through off the rooftop, landing and then shooting somebody. And I was like, okay, but there's still that going on. Like, there's shit in that that looks fucking rad, man. I mean, well, did you like Apex Legends? Fortnite is like a shoot gun murder the other people as good as Apex Legends, if not better,

depending on the season. Well, I mean shit, like Apex had one character with a grappling hook. This, it seems like you can do whatever, right? Depends what month you play the game. Yeah. No build mode. Um, anyways, anyways, dark patterns, that's what they are. Dark patterns.

Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of dark patterns, um, I would say that like, yeah, no confirmation of purchases, getting kids confused as to what money they're spending is a dark pattern. I would also classify entering your social security number into a video game as a dark pattern. Maybe. I don't know.

It depends. It depends. There's a discussion to be had. Don't give anime women your social security. What is this game? What game is this? But hold on though. Right.

But hold on though. What if she's really cute? What if she's raised? What if the tax waifu is adorable? We're talking about tax heaven 3000. Okay. So a game came out called tax heaven 3000. And in it, there is a, uh, a cute anime waifu whose job is it is, it is to file your tax

returns. And as you play through it, it asks you real questions and it fills out information because the goal of the game is to have you actually file a tax return and US government. Yes. And, uh, you're like, what? And she goes, Hey, um, I have an embarrassing question to ask, but well, could you tell me your social security number? And then you literally get prompted to type it in and everyone is like, what the fuck?

And valve is like, what the fuck? Get off our store. And they're like, no, but it's no, no, no, no, no, you're off. You're done. And they got, they got booted off of steam. Right. Now here's the thing. The big story to this game is that it's, it's made by mischief, right?

And mischief are the ones who did, um, the blood sneakers, the Satan sneakers with a little Nas X, they did a bunch of like prank installation art projects and things like that. Um, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they've been known for a couple of different projects. This is the latest in, in, in, in their like series.

And the whole thing here is they're like, the statement is, um, Turbo tax and tax filing online sites and stuff are very predatory. They try to confuse you because they're supposed to be free for filing for most people under a certain bracket, but they, they instead exploit you and confuse you into, into spending and all kinds of bullshit. This is a, a parody of that showing a, an anime waifu who asks you questions about your income and you could, and then it fills out a real tax or tax return that you can file with the government.

And part of that is it needs your social insurance number as well as, uh, other real information about you to give you a printout. Um, so it, this is a terrifying, even if it is like, even if it's like performance art joke, like I, I'm so frightened by this, the idea of what's important here. There's no, there's no proof or even of wrongdoing. There's no implication of wrongdoing. However, the potential for wrongdoing is so, so big, right? That it has to go.

Yeah. So, so, uh, steam says, what if you get a, what if you get a copycat that actually logs all your information? You know, because some of this is like, I like hot babes, like, so, so I mean, we'll throw the most part, like again, steam is like, absolutely not. Now they then read, they have it on itch.io and, um, when you, when you run it, that when you run it, uh, uh, directly, um, it's offline only, like it doesn't connect and they're basically like, yeah, this information is not going anywhere.

It just spits out a tax return that you can submit to the government that you have to submit on your own. But I think there's very like, if you're doing the whole art project thing of it, there's still ways you can do this to make it like, okay, anything particularly sensitive, you can go fill that in yourself on this PDF file that we're going to spit out over here for you. Yeah. It doesn't have to put that in the game in a way where again, the potential for harm

is through the fucking roof, right? It's infinite. Yeah. Um, so, but like, but like they're, they've, they've done all kinds of like whatever, like Banksy style, um, um, you know, art, art, uh, mischief as the name implies, not that far out of the question for them, but clearly it's like, yeah, people can absolutely release a modified version of this game with malicious fucking like, like intentions and like straight up take your date.

Like there's a million ways, right? For this to go. I think, I think simply putting the idea out there of putting this kind of thing in a video game is so irresponsible, like, because anyone could just do that for serious and steal all your information. And it's like, if you want to be like Banksy, like, I don't know, fucking do what he does, like for real, like sell a piece of art and then shred it in front of the person. Like, like, like that's how you do the performance art prank, you know, not like taking someone's

info, like who's like a vulnerable person, signed up credit cards in your name, loser. Like what the fuck? Like it's like the bit is, you know, like Dante quick in order to stop Mundus, we're going to need the credit card number and the digits on the back. Like, you know, like it's literally taking that to the fucking next level. Like you could do this in a way where again, you could have a game that's just a goofy ass visual novel and then based on some not compromising answers, it can spit out a text file, you know, like it can spit out a file which you then have to manually fill in and

submit normally. All it all needs to do is like before you start the game, get a copy of your IRS certificate papers out. Yeah. And we'll fill it in together. Together. And they show the markup. Exactly.

Fill it in. Yeah. Now next, you're going to need to do this. What does it say? I don't know, but type it on the proper form you're working on, not don't type it into my fucking game and write it on the form in your hand that I can't see because I'm not real. There you go.

Right. You could absolutely. And like if the statement to as well as the idea that like people don't know that they're getting exploited by sites like TurboTax and what I forgot what the other one is called. Like, yeah, you can absolutely make just as effective a statement while making it infinitely less sketch. Now listen, when you put in your SSN, Windows is going to pop up a little box that says allow to access private network.

You're going to click allow. It's the only way I can send it to the IRS. Make sure to launch the game using administrator privileges. That's how I know that you're a big boss. If you don't have admin privileges, you're not cool enough for me. You can't be my husband, though. Right. Yeah.

No. This is like some dystopian future shit, like, oh, I hate it. Yeah. Yeah. Like the idea on paper was to stir some shit up and then an execution, a complete F. Yeah. Anyways. So.

It's not news I expected to deal with this week, speaking of things potentially going horribly wrong, not much to this one yet, but just because it happens to be peripherally relevant to the shit that comes up with me a bunch. There's apparently an anime coming out called quality assurance in another world, and it's an isekai, except the main character is a bug tester walking around QA the MMO while fantasy things are happening. That's a test. I really, really hope it goes all the way with that bit, including has having the main

character be soulless, dead eyed while they're reporting their bits, their bugs and the main characters and the supporting cast are all trying to, you know, like, oh, like, no, help us fight the dragon that's attacking our town or whatever. And like just the dead nine to five avatar behind the main character is can be felt. You know, this is this is this is how you play it straight. The trailer showed off like like they're looking at missing textures on the sky box at a point and he's pulling out a pen and paper and like writing, filling out a bug report manually by hand.

And so it's like, OK, you have potential, you have potential, but you need to go all the way. Don't don't go softly with this. Don't be don't be, you know, 75% typical Viennese Kai and then like a little bit of this QA flay like go all the way in. I want him like teleporting out of the fucking zone and no clipping and suddenly coming back with infinite gold. Resetting save files.

Do it. People's hair is disappearing. The dress. Yeah. Shit. Anyways, all right, completely aside, I don't know if you guys got a chance to check out the trailer that dropped for Hideaki Anno's Shin Kamen Rider, but holy fucking shit. This thing looks amazing.

Hey, so what you're telling me is that if I was a cybernetic bug man created by the evil organization shocker and I have superhuman abilities, that if I were to punch some goon, their body would fucking explode into mist. What if Kamen Rider, right? What if it you go? What if you're Takeshi Hongo and it's the old the old days, right? We rewind 50 years, but instead of Saturday morning punches and kicks that have the enemies flying around and landing on the ground, they just explode into pink mist because a super

soldier Kamen Rider hits you that fucking hard and shocker soldiers are just dying. It's the fucking crazy way that like a Japanese production shows gore like this. It's always fascinating because the guys are completely intact. Like they're the guys that are all head to toe in black and they're completely intact. Like a punch is like it's like every drop of blood is shooting out of their body when they get hit with even the lightest kick. Yeah. No, it's it's honestly like a punch and a kick result in a squib going off as if it

were a fucking gunshot, you know, planet terror style massive squibs exploding off of everybody. And then also just some rad shit in general visually going on like, you know, Anno's take on Godzilla was unbelievable. Shin Godzilla was fucking amazing. And this looks to be right in line, right? Like his take on Kamen Rider looks super good. There's a trailer and then there's a three minute clip. So there's two things to go check out.

The crazy like fight scene we're describing is the three minute clip. That's what I'm trying to look for. Yeah. And then there's just like a more general trailer that just looks fucking awesome. Holy shit. Yeah. I just watched the trailer. It does look really awesome.

So cool. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. No. And like I kind of I don't know if he's still in that place or not. I don't know where he's at these days, but I kind of like the idea of like him directing all this with like a little bit of hatred for it in his heart, like, you know, a little

bit of that Ava hatred in his heart where he's like, I'm so I love this and I'm going to do it justice, but I also fucking hate it for how much I love it. As as I don't know, you caught you watched 4.0, right? Well, yeah. Like that that that emotion has gone is long gone. Like like and now he's free. Okay. I hope so.

Like he's he's like Evangelion ended on like a positive note and he is free now. Good. Ava is done. Again, do God. Yeah. Yeah. Also like watching 3.0 plus 1.0 like there's Ultraman shit in there like direct and then hey, look at that.

It's an Ultraman. Shocker. Wow. And he made toku student films. Huh. Interesting. Okay. That I didn't know.

I remember God, what was it called Otaku no video? This real old fucking short OVA series that was kind of like based roughly on the founding of Gainax and stuff back in the day. And then there was a what was there? There was like a live action thing that had a clip of like meeting a young Hideaki Anno IRL. So the actor that played, oh God, I forget his name. You know the homeless guy in yakuza seven that your party member.

Yeah. Forget his name. Yeah. Uh, he that actor plays, uh, I don't know, college days. Okay. Right. And it describes how like, Hey dude, you want to come out and meet some girls with us. He's like, okay.

And then he just sits a girl down is like, so this is about the principality of Xeon. All right. And this is the Zaku too. Right. Yeah. I'm thinking of that story, which is all those are real stories of how much of a fucking weirdo Anna was in college. Right.

And I was like, is the final like attempt at this after Shin common writer to do shin Gundam? I mean, if they would let him, which to be honest, it shouldn't be a question of, would they let him, it should be a question of does he want it? You know, um, the, the, the whole like trifecta bit was the, uh, Godzilla Eva, uh, um, common writer thing we talked about before, and then Ultraman, right? Um, it's four actually. Yeah.

It was Ultraman as well. So I don't know if that's the way it would go, but it would be fucking amazing if he did. Certainly. Easily see Shin Gundam being from the perspective of like a colony civilian, like the whole movie. Yeah. Um, I mean, there have been stories like that in Gundam already told, like the whole like

the fight is happening above your head thing that has been visited a couple of times. War in the pocket is a pretty good version of that. All this, all this in general though, like the idea of him being like, again, like, yes, he's free now. He's gotten that, that fucking lifetime of, of, uh, of Eva off his chest, but the idea of like anybody potentially having an issue with what he's doing to these and him leaning into a microphone and just saying too bad to them kind of makes me like a little bit giddy though.

Um, I, I just, I can't wait to see like how this fucking goes down, you know, and then Ultraman, uh, as a part of that as well. Like it's a, it's a sick ass thing to be like, oh yeah, this dude gets to do what Gact does and he points at the childhood property and says, I want that. And then they go, yes, right away. Here you are. You may have this, you know, and instead of booging, guying his way into, uh, fucking Zeta and, and FF seven and everything.

I hope you don't know, can't stand your use of the word Boojan guy as a verb. That's correct. Stand it. Gact Boojan guide his way into Fist of the North Star. This is what happened. Make no mistake. And if, and he would have kept going if they didn't stop him, um, anyways, uh, go check that out.

If you haven't seen it. Uh, you guys, uh, seen some of, uh, Gact's, uh, tweets about, um, like, like this one, I'm going to send you. Oh boy. Oh God. All I know is he was struggling to LP Mega Man 2. Oh yeah, I remember that. Which one?

About training your penis. Train your penis. Totally. Totally. Yep. Or what about, what about this one? Yeah. I remember that one.

That's famous. Those who can't come themselves will absolutely come by my hand. Yeah. That's awesome. Good shit. Oh my God. That's great. No thanks, Gack.

Oh my God. Look guys, all I want to know is what are, what are we going to get the live action adaptation of Shin the cutie honey? Okay. That's all I want to know. Oh my God. But that's not actually impossible. Uh, I mean.

Cause that art is really good. Okay. But I saw the live action cutie honey movie at Fantasia and that thing was wild. Was it good? Did you? Oh dude, there is a live action cutie honey. Did you not see this? Yeah.

No, totally. Uh, when the fuck did that come out? Hold on. Hold on. I've seen like clips of the old. 2004. Yeah. It was, it was entertaining.

2004 one. I've seen it. Okay. It was completely insane. But like, I remember, I remember having fun. Um, kind of like the live action Jojo in a way where you're just like, this is not what I thought I was getting, but okay. Um, uh, yeah.

I see what you're going for. Mika, you know, sure. Um, yeah. That guy is directed like, like 150 films. Really? He just won't stop. He just won't stop. He doesn't stop working.

Yeah. And like they, uh, and the, yeah, they pretty much bring all of them to, uh, to Fantasia Fest, you know, and you just like, what's the, what's the wild new thing he's fucking doing this year? Okay. We've got like five of them. Let's go. You know.

Um, yeah. No, it's, it's a weird thing where like even as all like Jojo live action, you know, like even as weird and as off as that was, it wasn't horrible. It's just like, it's, I see. He went for a thing and he pulled off what he was going for. Yeah. You know. Um, yeah.

Anyways, moving along from that, um, and still a little more. Cool. Yeah. Well, hey, listen. Trailers. Hedeakiano. Takashi Mika. Yeah.

Tommy Wiseau. No. No. Let's go. No. Baby. No, I'm for it. Why?

Let's go. What? What? What's the problem? You don't want to see Shin the room. Come on. That's made one and a half movies. Like give me a break.

Oh God. All right. So the trailer dropped for the new Tommy Wiseau movie. Big shark. Yes. Oh my God. It's a cult. Shark.

It's called big shark. And guess what? Yeah. There's a bunch of dudes boxing. There's CIA agents. And then there's a big shark. Now. Here's now the problem.

The problem. And you can absolutely feel it. When you watch the trailer. The problem is that he knows. Yeah, he knows. He knows now. He knows. And he's pretending not to know.

But the fact that he knows. Means that the magic is kind of gone. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why when, when you say. Hideaki Anno. And then Takashi Mika. And then there's a big shark.

So here's now the problem. And you can absolutely feel it. And then fucking Tommy Wiseau. I roll my eyes. Right. You should have said Neil Breen. Right. Right.

He's still in his own world. It is true. Neil Breen has made like 10 movies. And he still doesn't know. Each one worse than the last. The moment they know. Right. So here's the thing.

I haven't seen cocaine bear. But I heard that like it's funny. But also it knows. And that knows. And there and like it clearly knows. Right. But like the whole like the whole bit is like. Played for.

When you know when you're doing it on purpose. I guess you can do it in a way where it lands. Like Grindhouse. You know. Planet terror and. Yeah. Hobo with a shotgun. Everything coming from that.

By the way. Thanksgiving is getting made. Finally. I don't know if you remember that. But remember all the fake trailers and. Planet terror. Yeah. Right house.

So like they made Hobo with a shotgun. They made Machete. Machete. Machete. And then the last one was Thanksgiving. And like they're actually making Thanksgiving now. That's cool. I like that.

Yeah. So that's kind of fucking wild that all of those trailers are getting made. But anyway. Yeah. So but the bit needs to. You know. You need to do it in a way where it's still pretty entertaining

if even if you know. And apparently you like cocaine bearer was not quite landing with that. So I get to see it. I don't know. Someone who has watched the room in its entirety maybe 35 times because it's one of my favorite movies. There is such a beautiful charm to that movie to where you can

tell this man has no idea. Like that it's insane. You know. Like it's just crazy the movie that he made. Like he thinks it's like the most serious movie of all time. You know what I mean. Like you watch it and it's just like this person is delusional. You know.

And but it works so well. Guys. I have some insane news for all of you. Okay. Is it on because there's one more bit with this though. That's very important at the end of the trailer for Big Shark. Right. A glint of a hope that he doesn't quite fully know.

So it shines through because it fades into a trailer for his underwear because he's still trying to push Tommy. Yeah. Right. He's still trying to push his we so where and like it's showing corny clips because it's like no I get you know I'm doing the bit but he's really trying to sell you his clothing and like has a big logo and a whole go buy them now like he's really going

for it. You know. So I don't know. Street Fashions USA is. Yeah. I was going to ask have you guys have you guys ever heard of Street Fashion USA. I think Street Fashion USA is over.

I think it's just Tommy we so world now. You know. I'm pretty sure if you go to the original website it links to that now. So my God. I'm pretty sure. Okay. What's what's going on.

Well do you remember Twisted Pear by Neil Breen. I sure do. Did you know that as of 2023. Cade the tortured crossing the sequel to Twisted Pear has been submitted to international film festivals for approval. And that at the 2023 Hollywood real independent film festival it won the people's choice and best fantasy film awards. It will be it will be available shortly after it's run on film

festivals. Let's go Neil. The the synopsis is an identical a I twin brother restores an old mysterious mental asylum. He takes it upon himself to mystically train the patients as warriors for humanity and justice. My favorite thing about Neil Breen is that when you go to his Wikipedia entry and look at the filmography it has all of his

movies lined up and then there is a column for director writer producer actor editor and musical director and all are marked. Yes. I'm sending you the poster as you can see him badly photoshopped into a building. You think that's bad. This Wikipedia description of his roles on Cade the tortured

crossing. He was Cade and Kale but he was also director of photography casting makeup and hair production manager set designer wardrobe props lighting design special effects stunt coordinator aerial rigging special makeup effects legal accounting administration craft services locations and sound editor. He made sandwiches like like for himself like this the chart you see on his filmography it dares to challenge you to ask

Oh do you think for a second that he didn't do it all because guess what it all since 2005 he's been doing it all stays doing it all. Yes. Every single one not a no to be found on any of his movies. Oh God. Oh my God. Fantastic.

That picture that you sent Pat like I love how he is literally cut out in like a perfect rectangle like he did not hit the feather tool around his shoulders at all like it's literally just the fucking image. It's floating there. The magic the magic is all in the awareness you know the awareness or the lack thereof like that really is where you know what I bet I bet if you meet him in real life he was

probably one of the nicest people is really nice no no question one of the coolest people you've ever met. Absolutely. He's just some old man who wants to make his movies and he lives in my town and I'm like one day I know I'm going to run into him I just know it well look how many people want to make their movies but don't. That's true.

Right. Yeah. He did it. He made them. They're there. Watch. We've watched a bunch of them. The back of his ball sack can be seen in double down.

It's right there. All right. Anyways so that's what's happening. Imagine if I just appear in one of his movies. I just show up in the back. Yeah. Just because I was just walking down the street. I want to go to the store and I'm just.

Here's the part where you're saying imagine if we just saw you know imagine if you just saw you in the background. It would be. I would be like holy shit. But I was you see I would just assume you went on a stalking hunt to to be in the background of the Neil Street movie. Like I would assume you scouted a location and then went to

get a coffee right at the right time. Full green screen out in the middle of the street. The single green screen. Or the giant mural of trash bags that the love scene is going to take place on top of. Yeah. Oh my god. Okay.

Anyways so a couple of other just quick things. One PSA to check out. There's a game called pro pro droid pro droid delta that is coming out next month. That looks fucking sick. Basically indie inspire indie Mega Man Legends inspired. What's your what's the word. Solar video game.

Solar punk. Right. So the setting is tech and and nature growing together. It looks like it's bringing up a game that has a purple and green Mega Man protagonists. Yeah. Oh wow. But it also has double jumping air dashing sword slashing

gunshot charging laser dodging giant boss fighting platforming action. I think everybody here likes all of those things. Yeah. So putting this on your radar if you haven't checked it out yet. Take a look at pro droid delta coming out because it might be up your alley.

It's it's way up mine. Yeah. Speaking of woolly games. Hey is mirrors edge is getting delisted. No wait. No it's not. No it's not. Fuck off.

It's fine. Just battle for that is that they're going to put out a new version of the game called mirrors edge RTX. Oh. And then their solution. So that hasn't been announced. I got leaked out and their solution to pick that up is to delist the old mirror said.

Destroy history guys. I thought they were going to just release a new version of the game called mirrors edge never as a reminder to that you're never going to get it. Yeah. It just updates and then it grays out and you can't watch it anymore. I love going from catalyst to never.

Never. It's not going to happen. Like you can download it and the data is there but you just cannot click play like it will not be made a sequel to mirrors edge and we made it significantly worse than the original and it didn't sell as good. That's crazy. Wow.

Don't you love being able to skill roll halfway through the skill tree. No. Give me it right now out of the gate. No. My runner lady should be a race car. Yeah. Exactly.

I think I think if they were to if they were to take mirrors edge one and just drop the world of two in for her to run around in that'd be fucking fantastic. It probably feel a lot better. I feel like I feel like the mirrors edge thing obviously a lot of people adore that. And I know that in this room I love it. That's that's what we have the most experience with.

But what's actually a lot more important is that battlefield bad company one and two are also going to be listed and those did not get rolled back. People's complaints. It's really important to note. Battlefield bad company two is the best battlefield game that was ever made. Wow.

Okay. It's pretty like I don't think that's controversial. It's the best one and they're removing it. So so I want like after getting out the the the mirrors edge grievances I did like think I was like OK the next thing I want to bring up in relation to the story is how I hate that this has become a regularly occurring topic now when we started talking about shit with games I remember like we were moving

clearly firmly into a digital age and the fact that like we knew at the time it's like yeah but things going to get things are going to get delisted. Companies don't give a fuck about preservation. People are going to go out of their way steal them. Yeah. People are going to go out of their way to preserve them however they can.

I think I saw the video where like Gerard like literally downloaded every single 3DS game on the shop. The 3DS shut down shop is done. Yeah. Like twenty seven thousand dollars later like he saved every every single one of the eShop games right. And it's just like I hate that this is now a regular thing where even though it didn't actually get delisted the

mirrors edge that is the other two did and now we're just going to have to talk about oh yeah this game you could have you bought and downloaded is suddenly just going to be not available anymore right when before it was just like yeah the physical copies you have them they're there they don't sell them anymore but like you can still like they still exist you know the idea that you can like still track these down because someone somewhere is going to save them and make

sure that you can is like yeah the one saving grace to this age but everything else about the fact that the digital age means things go away I fucking hate it man I hate it so much so so the there's there's a couple things going on here right so the digital age was not just inevitable but also having your old copies was not also like a guaranteed failsafe like it's a couple years ago maybe 10 years ago like discovered like hey yeah disc rot sucks and will happen to all of your

old CDs and cartridges won't last forever either so at some point preservation you're going to have to be digitized for locked in sealed temperature controlled rooms PowerPoint in order to be you know long term but it's like as soon as as soon as you delist a game and be like we have no intention of ever selling this ever again it's like they've opened up the moral if not legal like door to well okay let's go get it yeah it's I would like to buy it know you can't buy it well

I'm going to get it I remember some way Game of Thrones in Canada yep you got interviewed by that fucking newspaper yep where you jump through every potential hoop you possibly could to watch Game of Thrones other than signing up for a new TV cable package I everything shy of like fucking showing up at their building to give them money and they just would not let me so okay well you tried you really tried now it's just again behind every single one of these stories is

well someone somewhere on the internet cares and has saved this and it'll be available you know like the internet won't let it be forgotten generally but like the e shop there's so much shit on that there's so much weird shit you know like I mean back in the old days with the old we shop to like things like muscle marching shit like that there's stuff that can absolutely be wiped into the memory hole never to be seen or heard from again except in YouTube videos that are formatted

to the old format from you know like early YouTube because there was no widescreen at the time like there's there's absolutely shit like that where when new grounds was going down someone grabbed every single one of those games and made a giant flash archive that's crazy it's nuts you know it's out there people care and they are preserving an archive.org has a bunch of shit itself like right on it you know games uploaded straight to it but yeah we're just going to keep

having these annoying stories about like hey that cool thing can't play it anymore and fuck you future generations if you if you you've heard about this and there's no new version that we can make money off of you just will never get to officially experience it. There's a there's a hidden cost here particularly to the 3ds e shop closing down that a lot of people aren't talking about and that means that unfortunately we have missed the deadline for the port of mighty number nine

to come to the 3ds it is now officially cancelled. Oh my god. Officially. Yeah. Today KG Inafune took your fucking money and gave you nothing. Wow. Oh my god. I have been robbed as of today.

Yeah. What is he even doing anymore? Now I forgot about him. Now. Oh my god. There were multiple companies in Japan that fought to be the final Dreamcast game to the point where I want to say 2015 had a release to the Dreamcast right where someone in Japan

just made it a game and just did it and said if you have one here's you can get a physical disc and pop it in like there's always that like bootleg shot outside shot that like no I made a limited run of 30 of them and they're for sale in my garage technically I deliver on my promise fuck you. It's going to be in a food he's like he's like I've got the prototype cartridge guys. Yeah.

Right now. The last thing KG Inafune made is as a striker gun vault three and then I can't find anything about what he's doing after that. What year was that? 2022. Okay. Damn.

Interesting. Wow. That would what a blast from the past early make early days of of I guess maybe not early days but early days of Kickstarter right like holy shit. It was one of the first ones. Make the Kickstarter backers feel like an anime fan on prom night.

Oh my god. Has that ever happened again where it's like a one quote in a trailer just ruins everything where everyone turns like everyone turns. I can't think of anything stronger than that. I mean if you hadn't already turned right like that's like that's the thing. Yeah.

If you hadn't already. Oh I have found what KG Inafune has been working on. Big ups to Kwee Kwee for sending this in so quickly. This is an article on video game chronicles from May of last year. Mega Man's KG Inafune is back with Beastroid a range of NFT. Oh yeah. Oh I completely forgot.

Right. Which includes characters such as not zero. Yeah. Yeah. No no no. So so that got announced and then the company behind it was like look we're doing we're doing Mega Man like style KG inspired right and like they showed off and then they add

they announced it and then everyone went no fuck off hold on. This is some company because people constantly do this. They're just claiming to be officially working with him. This is not official or real. Right. They did it for a bunch of old anime. Someone pretended that they had the rights to whatever

something classic you know. Metabots or you know and then there's a whole like this has nothing to do and then like as they're typing those tweets out in the middle of the discussion the next day KG pops a video up with him personally being like I can't wait to announce our new blah just like just the one benefit of the doubt anyone was willing to give for two seconds and he just came in and squashed that shit.

He did not check Twitter that day. He was he was so late. We've all talked about this at length but I think it is the wildest inversion of any person in the games business ever went from like darling. Megaman stated away at the end of the trailer for mighty number nine and I yelled KG don't die. Yeah.

Remember that. I yelled please don't die all the way to like every single stupid thing Capcom has ever done is his fault. Yeah. Like like fully reversed. My friend a gaming Brit he's been doing the like the Onimusha series on his channel and like he will just randomly call me and be like you will not believe the Inafune article I just

read about Onimusha three where it's like what we're expecting. We're expecting he was a producer on that series but he was like seriously like word for word like we're expecting huge sales because we have you know big actors as the main main characters guys and then it doesn't do as well. And then he's like guys don't have dreams. Our problem with three was that we focus too much on the actors. This is a hardcore game for gamers that doesn't do well.

We should have put more actors in it guys like what the like seriously. You know the best thing about the story you just told is because I'm thinking I was wrong. Not every stupid decision Capcom ever made was Inafune's fault. Some of them were Onos and on Onimusha dawn of dreams. That's the first game they work together. I was I was going to say you said everything on his

shoulders and I'm like oh no. Oh no no no no no no no no no no not quite. Yeah. What a crazy time. Beware of charismatic front facing developers from Capcom I guess. What was the tweet from Kamiya? He is not.

I think he said he said something like he's a business. He's a businessman. Yeah. Basically I don't remember him doing shit. I want to say like maybe Inafune drew like an early box art of Mega Man like a Japanese one like an iconic one and maybe that's where like the inflated ego came from like I created this guys.

I could be very wrong about that. And then later it comes out like on Mega Man one and two he wasn't actually a very integral part of those games at all. But somehow like finagled his way. Mega Man. I made Mega Man. Well look it's either that or you get arrested for insider trading right.

Oh man. Oh you genaka sucks so bad. Which way classic godfather of video games. Which way game developer. Jail or infamy just. I'll tell you what if I had to fight one of them in the street I would rather fight you genaka for the fucking bullshit the virtual fighters gone through.

And you know what after the fight he's going to go and do some more insider trading because he fucking loves it. He keeps doing it. He won't stop. All right. Damn. All right. Look.

Look. Protect it to no smile. OK. Listen I've spoken to the man on multiple occasions and he just he seems like a treasure. Like he's he's a genuine guy. He just wants to ride his bike. There you go.

That's it. And make cool game with his friends. Eat hot chip. He said he said him and his friends go to a cabin. They go to cabin retreats and come up with cool game ideas. Oh that sounds really nice. Yeah. It's nice.

I like that cross guy to make Cavalier and that's cool. Like I like that he marks out over his own characters as much as we do. That's great. Yeah. That's great. Anyways. Anyways.

Yeah. I guess just another little heads up to anybody but the big Sifu Arena's update dropped today now. So go fucking get it. It's free on Steam. Free. Yes. I'm buying it right now.

So it adds a fuck ton of content to nine new locations 45 challenges five game modes overall 10 extra hours of gameplay and lots of customization costumes aesthetic choices and things you can do including the game of death Bruce Lee yellow and black classic. Right. So. Oh cool.

Also there's a fight that's like agent Smith's lined up in the rain like ready to fight you like revel revelation style. So yeah. No. Just go update Sifu. Revolutions. Revelation. Matrix revolution.

Revolutions. Reloaded. No. Reloaded is the second one. No. No. The Smith fight is the third one. That's revolutions.

Not revelations. Right. Never mind. No. I don't think that's a revelation. Yeah. Yeah. Revelations.

I have that by the way. Yeah. The spelling. I have that somewhere. I'm not sure but it exists somewhere in my house. Can I give a shout out to an indie game real quick. Yeah. Please.

It's a game that I discovered recently called save room and it is a literal. Yes. Yes. It is a it's an RE4 attache case simulator and it's like 40 levels and it's really cute and very fun. Yeah. Save room.

Absolutely. That's there's been many a talk about like damn that would make its own great game and we've talked about it over the years and someone did it. Fuck you out of save room. Yeah. Yeah. It's called backpack hero. I'm going to I'm going to vouch for backpack hero the other attache case HD game on steam.

So that's not even the one I was going to talk about. Shut up. I was going to talk about another one before that Jack and Casey which was a game where you fight while rearranging the attache case for weapons and then as they get to the top of the screen they load out to be used by your case. It's like puzzle fighter. It's like it's like there's a scrolling adventure at the top of the screen and then at the bottom the attache case is like scrolling up slowly and you have to like position things

and do attache case and then when it gets to the top it gets used in the fight at the top. Yeah. So Jack and I was not even talking about the. So there you go. That's three right there. There you go. It's a good idea.

It's a great idea. Yeah. Shout outs. And yeah. See if we got its updates. All right. Before you forget in tears of the kingdom when your stick is about to break you can jam a rock on the stick and the durability will reset.

There. I haven't seen that yet. Oh you haven't. Okay. So I should probably. Okay. If you haven't seen the Zelda tears of the kingdom thing here's the features they're showing off.

One you can take two items in the inventory like a stick and a rock or a stick and a bigger stick and fuse them together so you can make either like a sword with a big rock on it or like a laughably long spear and all sorts of other zany shit. They also showed off using that to take logs and pieces of machinery together to make like powered rafts. On top of that you have the ability to teleport through any ceiling to the top of whatever what building that is so they use it to show you getting on top of a house but they also use it to show you going into a cave and teleporting to the top of the mountain.

One of the other abilities that they're adding is rewind so you can instead of time stop on items you'll be able to rewind time on them. You can ride up falling rocks all the way into the sky. I can't wait for the new classification of insane bugs when you interact all these things together. Yeah. That will let you beat the game in one minute. Exactly.

Just launch you straight to fucking the final boss. Oh my God. Yeah. Did you play the update that added like the motorcycle and stuff? Yeah. I am. I personally a hundred percented Breath of the Wild twice on the Wii U and the Switch. Wow you're crazy.

Holy shit. I love that game. I love Zelda. Okay. Controversial take. I tell you what. You like Zelda? I tell you what this time when I play Tears of the Kingdom, you know what I'm not going

to do? I'm not going to leave every dungeon for the end of the game and do every single shrine before starting the main story. Right away one after the other. Yeah. How about that? That was a fucking mistake. I remember I got like the abilities from the dungeons like look a jump.

Oh, you can come back to life when you die. I'm like, I can't believe I played through the game for a hundred hours without this. You could always play through the game for a hundred hours and not know about the sidestep parry counter system. Yeah. That video is grand. Oh, I feel so bad. I feel so bad.

All right, let's take some letters. If you want to send in a letter, send it to Castle Super Beast at gmail.com. So wait. No, no. Castle Super Beast Mail at gmail.com. That's Castle Super Beast Mail at gmail.com. And this week I'm going to add a stipulation, please keep your emails and questions brief. We have had week after week after week of pulling up an email and going, blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah to get to the question right at the end, which is do you think video games have cool guns? Yes. Guys, I mean, anyway, it's it's a thing and if there's a good question, I'm going to like the bottom. I'm going to try to pull it out there, but you can really skip a lot of that preamble. Boy, I, yeah, all right. We got one coming in from Monkey Climb Math Masher.

How are you doing? Says, Dear Strange Reel Run the Jewels. Nice. In 2014, I had an opportunity to see Warren Spector, director and producer of Deus Ex, talk at a local tech institute. A lot of what he said is lost to memory, but I do remember that he devoted a sizable chunk to talking about Epic Mickey. At the end, the floor was open to the audience Q&A and I was one of the people that asked

a question. I had recently been playing Evil Land, an RPG where you quest through various eras of games and had just gotten to the FF7 inspired section. So it got me wondering if the return, if there might be a return to early 3D like what we saw with the return to early pixel graphics. I asked the question, given the reveal, the revival of 8-bit and 16-bit in the indie scene, do you think we'll see something similar with early 3D? And his response was, no, I don't think we'll see that resurgence because early 3D graphics

were so ugly, a 16-bit on the other hand can be genuinely beautiful and that's why it's making a comeback. Guess what, Warren Spector, you're a dumbass. This interaction is the only part I can remember, but it's the only thing I can think of every time I see things like Ultra Kill, Dusk, or Signalis. Oh man, I still think about how wrong he was. Not only is Bloodborne Kart looking incredible, but things like Signalis and Bloodborne Kart are going so far out of the way to hit the aesthetic that they're recreating the way

PS1 games warp their textures across the Z-Rex. And they look, so someone described the FF9 Moguri mod that I'm playing as the way people who played FF9 on release remember it, right? Because it never looked that good, but that's what your brain thinks it was at the time. And I will say there is a point to the idea that there's an era that was skipped here, which is launch N64 3D where it was like fucking triangles, like you were not looking at low poly models, you were looking at balls level, like putting together geometric shapes. Some of the stuff that you got with Ocarina of Time started to create, oh that's Link,

that's a figure, he's got his legs and arms and shit. Early N64, there were characters where their ankles didn't exist because the entire foot tapered off into nothing before it reopened up and then became the thigh. You know, that era, they kind of skipped right past that to- Nobody has the love for that era, the era is for 1998-2001 PlayStation 1 games. Yes, the mid to end of the gen when we got it looking pretty alright, but still blocky as fuck, GoldenEye, you know, and then like sharpening that up to get like, yeah, signal is an ultra kill style, visuals is where we're at, right?

Where we did skip that dual heroes step, you know, that was like early 3D struggles, stunt race FX shit. I think my favorite fucking thing about every single War Inspector story is that War Inspector doesn't really make games anymore, so everyone always qualifies like, War Inspector, the creator of Deus Ex, and it always makes me think of the, I want to say it's IGN, like the absolute shittiest, least critical IGN article I've ever read in which they're interviewing him about how games are made by teams of talented people and that it's a mistake to attribute all of its success or quality to one person.

And then in the bottom of the quote, they say, says War Inspector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, let's see. We got one coming in from no tag given. So, oh wait, here we go. Scott from Australia. Good day, Pat and Willie. Good eye.

If you played the original Double Dragon, you've seen Marion got kidnapped and watched Bimi and Jami run after her. After killing the final boss, the following text appears. Let's fight player one versus player two. And you have to beat your co-op partner to get the girl at the end. Secret fighting game. Any other secret versus modes out there? Yes, tuds.

I believe we've done Xenogears, had one. We played in the past. It has so many fucking characters. Right, just a random last minute, someone on the dev team said, what if action versus mode, though? There's so much of that, unlike the PS2. Like the Bouncer has that and Zone of the Enders has that. It's not secret, because it's right there on the thing.

But yes, there's a great versus mode there. Mega Man 7 has a secret versus mode. There's a really fantastic game that Willie and I LP'd that has a secret versus mode that I'm loathe to mention due to it being a spoiler. Okay. Yes, yes, yes, there it is, there it is. That one has a great, that's a great one. It's the most toxic you and I have ever been to each other on camera.

Just screaming at each other and talking shit for like an hour. Oh, that one, that was a good one. Star Ocean 3 had one. Really? A fucking fighting game in Star Ocean 3 with a full-on character select screen and everything. For no reason. My play deck game. Enter the Matrix.

I have a question. Someone brought it up, but I don't know if this qualifies, because it's technically like an action shooter. But does the ending of Splinter Cell Conviction's co-op count? Because that becomes like a versus mode. Well, right at the end. That's wild. I had no idea.

We're describing the ending of a game as well that becomes it suddenly. Sure, and Double Dragon, same thing. Suddenly two player versus, right? Yeah. It's a great concept. Yeah. This was a bit of a stretch, but technically frame fighter exists in Warframe. There's a, this is a minor spoiler, but it's not super story related.

But in Divinity Original Sin 2, you get to the end, and if you're playing it in co-op, it's like there can only be one winner. Whoa. Oh, I love that, man. God, gotta have fun with that. I love that because that's just like someone on the dev team had some time and they cared, you know? That's great.

That's great. Yeah, that's fun. I remember seeing, I remember hearing about that because there were complaints about it from married couples that had gotten into fights. Oh my God. There could only be one winner. Damn. Was I hard carrying you this whole way?

Sorry, babe. I'm the chosen one. If I had known, it was like, it was a husband who had lost to his wife, I think, and it was like, if I had known that I had to fight the party, I wouldn't have built my character. Something that would. Wow. Wow. If I had known you would get such a pitch, maybe we wouldn't be together.

I will say I did feel bad when I got to the end of the Splinter Cell Conviction because that whole plot twist was like, oh, you're fucking dead, bro. I'm sorry. I was like playing it with my brother. And it was made immediately clear who was the better spy in that fucking situation. Damn. That's cool. Now I want to see a fucking extra wild section of Shava versus Chris in our 5R just for a moment.

All right, last one. Hey, Willie, and will you raise your kid's black or normal pat? Come on. Shooter says a recent podcast conversation about black hair character customization and how it can be difficult to create the ones you want reminded me when I played NBA 2K23 Being white, I wanted to create a white character. The player on the box was also white this year. So I quickly ran to a hilarious issue where I was unable to find facial hair

combinations that looked generic European white. The best I could do was a mixed kid who didn't really know if they could say the n-word or not. The voice actor clearly being black also did not help. Need your expert advice. Is this racist? Thanks from Shooter. No, it's knowing what audience they're caring to. It's but this is funny that it's happening in reverse.

If you play fucking NBA 2K23, of course it does. I mean, no, I would not call it that. I would like it's it's, you know, shitty when you don't get to the options. It feels pretty uninclusive when you can't make a character that, you know, you would want to make after yourself, right? Doesn't feel great. But I also know that like there's sometimes when I'm just like, yeah, I this this game gives you three flavors of generic Japanese student haircut.

They don't know or give a fuck about picking between. This is what we got pale. And I went to Okinawa and I got tanned as the two skin color options. Like it sucks. Pokemon is always hilarious. OK, so there's Pokemon, but then there's again the video that Blessing did where they're covering old animal crossing where the only way to make a black character was to leave your fucking character out in the sun to get a tan, right?

So yeah, this is just, of course, you're feeling it on the opposite end on NBA. And it's fucking stupid. Just give the options, right? Figure it out. But yeah, that's that's all it is. It's just it's just a shitty thing. I have to say, one of the things that I really think is fantastic about Koei Tecmo is when I made the character creator for Nioh 2.

I think it's yeah. Yeah, and Wukong now and the other one. A Wollong. But regardless, they made it and they're like, wow, this is a stellar character creator. And they've just like, now we're just going to take this and just put it in in everything. We're just fantastic. Yeah, why not? Yeah, totally.

I fucking I put the dreds on. I put the the ponytail on and then it's like, cool, you want to bleach your tips? How far up you want that bleach to go? And I'm like, how far up you want my fucking dred bleach? Yo, like, so sick, man. Yeah, ultimate Wolli game. Oh my god. Very happy with that.

That's so cool. Yeah. All right, that's that's I just I feel like there's like nothing lost by just having an expensive character creator. Like, I mean, it's work, right? But so what if you want to create your character? Like just do it. Diablo four character creator.

I didn't spend that long in it, but it's it looked pretty exhaustive, especially for a game in which 99 percent of the time your character is fully armored and seen from 30 feet above the top of their head. Right, right, right. And, you know, the thing is, is a lot of cases we're looking at, it's like this company has whatever like single digit number of employees and also none of them have met anyone black ever or of any other race for that matter. That's it, right?

And you're like, OK, so what are your options here? And it's like, well, you could always just like throw in a full on RGB, pick your own fucking thing from the entire scale. You know, that's not a good solution either. The skin tones don't necessarily map to the fucking color wheel. Of course not light and dark. You need to be able, you need to be able to affect the alpha transparency in a lot of cases or the brightness and saturation.

Yeah, I remember playing Demon's Souls and going, what would happen? I was going to say that character. Oh, that's not a human. But but what I'm getting at is like there's a thing to be said about Street Fighter Six, where like they're just like, I don't know whatever. Everything just make a fucking freak. Just do anything. You know, it's a little.

Embarrassing when like Deus Ex One, like you can make like J.C. Denton black and he actually looks like a black guy. But in Demon's Souls, they're original. Like you can't like you just can't do that. Oh, my God. Like it's so weird. You could make an orange person with like, yeah, like with like a like a curly, like like Jewish Afro kind of, you know, like that style.

Like you just. Jew throw it best. You cannot. It's just like, oh, you know. And then and then I wonder the classic people making Street Fighter Six. We're like really excited to make a good character creator or if they like how many on the team were like, everyone will be a monster. I mean, you know, I think it was just like do like complete freedom.

Do absolutely anything you want is the solution. Was the expectation like because we played the beta like 60, 70 percent of characters in that beta were freaks. It's a called the croninbergs croninbergs. They were fucking croninbergs. Yeah, croninbergs. Right. But then you have, but then on the other end, like a month prior or whatever,

you get fucking Elden Ring. That's like, hey, I know, but sorry. You I know you want to, but you can't and there's always the good old cornrow afro consolation prize if you'd like, but really like you can't really build anything. But here you can be a rock dragon like if you'd like. All right. Anyways, that's satisfactory.

And and you know what NBA 2K3? I'll you I'll tell people to go play that as an example to feel it a little bit. Right. Feel what it's like on the other end for a little bit. Susie, thank you so much for hanging out. Thank you very much, Susie. Incredible cast as always. Yes.

Always a pleasure to be here. Absolutely. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, we did our plugs, but regardless, go check out Susie's review of our Resident Evil 4 remake. And now back up. Yeah. Yes.

It's now also spoiler free. I promise. Now allowed. Exactly. And go sub to the screen. Allowed. All right. And yeah, I'm Susie Hunter, spear hunter literally everywhere.

The spear hunter. So one last plug. Go click. All right. Take it later. Have a good week, everybody. Later.