Castle Super Beast - CSB 259: Goonmaxxing On The Ice

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps Castle Super Beast Shirts: http://tinyurl.com/CSBshirts Ed Resists His Scumbag Destiny FF7 Rebirth Early Impressions Ballatro: Save The Children From Fake Gambling Game Not Selling? Rename It Helldivers 2 Invest In The Smell Market Watch live: twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against Tropic Haze LLC, the makers of the popular Yuzu emulator that the Switch-maker says is "facilitating piracy at a colossal scale." Nintendo is "basically taking the position that emulation itself is unlawful." Yuzu to pay $2.4 million to Nintendo to settle lawsuit, mutually agreed upon by both parties. The new game from Titanfall’s director is reportedly set in the same universe IT’S CLAIMED THE PROJECT, WHICH ISN’T TITANFALL 3, IS STILL IN THE PROTOTYPING PHASE So Bomb Rush Cyberfunk has custom maps now and I didnt realize this. So I did what any sane person would do and changed it into Sonic Heroes. No, Helldivers 2 is not 75%/50% off on Steam. Someone else is using a different game and renaming it exactly like a Helldivers 2 listing as a scam DBFZ Rollback is FUUUUCKED Saber Interactive, developer of the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake, will leave Embracer in a $500 million deal to become a privately owned company — the biggest move yet in Embracer's ongoing cost-cutting initiative Spyro, Crash Developer Toys For Bob Going Indie, ‘exploring a possible partnership between [its] new studio and Microsoft',  Game Scent has been announced - Sophisticated AI releases real scents alongside your gameplay including smells of: Gunfire Explosions Racing Storm Forest - Upgraded DLC scents include: Napalm Human Exertion Ocean Golf course  Sonic Frontiers Developers Say the Game’s Success Was Pivotal for the Series’ Future: once found themselves in a state of crisis: "If we fail here, there will be no chance"

Music Hello. Hey, Willie, how are you doing today? Pat, did you know that eSports... did you know? Yes. Yes. I did know that eSports. Okay. Because apparently eSports...

eSports? Even. Electronic sports. Like an electronic male, but sports. I didn't think so, but it turns out it turns out eSports. Yeah What about eSports specifically? um, I Was I was I was able to I was say I did a I did a red bull thing and it felt very official

I saw shiny cameras and and I saw shiny cameras and I saw big transition lighting and cool stage effects and shit going off and I was like, whoa, it's a whole professional thing. I have two questions. One, Woolly, you're from that dirty, grimy, non-professional non-professional FGC, what are you doing over at Esports? Eww, the grossest. It turns out that every once in a while, or actually for the last couple years, Red Bull has been trying to pick up this thing, this dirty grimy thing, and blow and wipe and clean it off and shine it up and present it, you know Wait, are you saying?

That red bowl would take a homegrown Thing that doesn't market well to a broad audience and just put it in a shiny can to a broad audience and just put it in a shiny can for mass consumption? Yes, and to- The Red Bull would do that. And to pick up said thuggery and market it properly. Who better than to get Yipes and Tasty Steve on commentary, mind you.

Look, look, look, look. Like, it's, no, it's pretty sick. I love, I like that the Koumete stuff that they're doing over there is kind of like in contrast to the Capcom Cup style of event that's happening. Fighting games are happening, folks. And yeah, so Street Fighter... They won't stop.

No matter how hard you try. And Street Fighter 6 just did the big, yeah, the big million dollar prize last week. And so, right hot on the heels, there's the Red Bull Kumite events, which are like literally the antithesis of the concept. So whereas Capcom Cup had region specific champions that you could only enter from that region and a number of upsets based on the expected top players internationally not making it in. There was, there's the Koumute is an invitational series where you have 16 slots and like 14 of the 16 are just given out to whoever Red Bull deems the hypest I want to see that guy fight that guy that haven't paired up in a thing in a while I want to see who would be better. There's no fronting or pretending it is straight up a

Whoever we think is the hypest is getting an invite. That's it Can this crab beat up this beetle right maybe and and you know that and so in some cases it's like if there's been like a player that you know from a long time ago that's like not necessarily like killing it in Street Fighter 6 but it's still just like yeah that's a

that's a that's a household name they might show up at the the kubitai in New York in two weeks But they do have Two of the 16 slots are slots you can you can fight your way in from the ground up essentially so It's always interesting to me to see like the events that

People care about to certain degrees and they all vary now depending on entrance, what's the word, entrance requirements, where like even though Evo can be a mess and it takes forever, right? Because it's open, it's just like, anything could happen. It's legit. But that think anything could happen. It's legit. But that means anything could happen.

Yes. So like the way that I that I'm looking at at fighting game tournaments now is there's like, well, the kumite is you go into that place you like and getting that meal that you had that you get. And you know, it's always good because you've had it before. You have had it before. You have had it before. Seen it before. Yes, yes.

And to be fair, like if you're watching online tournaments every week, you're also seeing the international competition like face each other on a regular basis. You're going to see, you're going to see Big Bird and Angry Bird and Punk and Ending Walker or these fake guys. You know, they're just going to be. They birds there? Yeah, absolutely. The birds are killing it

So He doesn't commit to it does he? Big bird and angry bird are the birds. They're the FGC birds. Yeah, but he doesn't commit to it does he commit to it I mean, yeah, he doesn't show up in a fucking eight and a half foot tall Yellow prosthetic bird costume. He doesn't need to play fighting games. He plays Marissa. He doesn't need to. He's killing it with the big champ.

Anyway. Yeah, I was talking about Big Bird from Sesame Street. Yes. And I realized and stopped caring midway through. No, you Big Bird is a wonderful creature. Big Bird's great. Super chill, had a fun conversation with him at Evo. I'm about to see a lot of Big Bird in my fucking future.

There you go. Um, so anyway, yeah, the idea is kind of like, with a lot of other games and MOBAs and stuff, there would be a lot of invitational based events, right? They wouldn't have this idea, FPS is as well. There's not this idea of like walking off the street and just win, because you're the best.

There's that, there's a- Well a team game, that's hard right off. You have to have a sponsored team. The sponsored team has to register and then exactly, you have to have these build up in seasons and leagues and playoffs and you're watching the NFL or the MLB or you know, like you're watching that type of thing go on. It's a professional league.

And yeah, I mean, but like everyone that like likes fighting games and stuff does like the fact that like, you know, someone with a dream and some sick reactions can get really far into a bracket. You know, man, there's the best. Is it is it is it is it? That's sports. No, it's not because that's what the word kumite means. You know that, right? Yeah, I know.

OK. Yeah, I'm aware it's the one because we're talking about death sports. I can't talk about that. Sports that would be gauche cliche even. No, I'm just thinking of like, yeah, you can't really do that with like League of Legends because you need a five person team. And I thought in my brain, what if you just didn't use a five person team?

What if you had an open tournament and they sat you down and just threw you in a matchmaking with the other people sitting at the tournament and just saw what happened? I mean, I mean, well, you get, there are round robin events. I mean, Capcom did get to that and like, No, no, like a bracketed tournament where you can't pick your team

and the guy who lost you, your league match is right over there. So you get teamed up with random people? Yeah, man, just throw them into the matchmaking system, just people inside the building But are but there are teams like I don't understand like you're using the on the in-game matchmaking system No, no, you see you sit okay You go to the league tournament and there's like a thousand people in the building sitting at their computers

Okay, and everyone justues at the same time. Okay. And then the results are recorded as if they were brackets. Oh. And all the teams of those their matches are forced to leave. Okay. And then before they leave, they put you with your, your, the people you played with in a physical space. And you, they have to talk to each other for 20 minutes.

What if you get matched with your own teammate? The truck it doesn't work like I just want to put people who lose league of legends matches into a room with each other And force them to have to interact okay? I'm like what is there are knives on the floor? What is the core of the bit? Okay? There we go the point is that you get on the floor? What is the core of the bit? Okay? There we go The point is that you get you have to flip them in the eye got it the the anyway, the idea is

Yeah, that you you have these kind of invitational events where you just bring in who you want and it's it's the You know the the history to kind of like matchups and players and stuff But anyway, they had the Canadian qualifiers for the two slots that are the was you can fight your way through They had the Canadian qualifiers in and the slots in the Invitational that's got to be vicious It is and it's so vicious that they have to go through Three events to get into the final event, which is, it's bullshit, it's crazy. There's so many gates in the way.

And it's like, yeah, they know the format is insane, but it's one of those things where they're like, okay, like America gets four entrance to the playoff for the final slot, Canada gets one, I think, like, and then like different regions all get like their given slot And they send the player for that or whatever. What are they gonna do with Uma's slot considering? He might not show up Uma is not gonna be showing up Uma is gonna be celebrating his birthday He's decided to not show up. I'm pretty sure Uma has decided to celebrate his birthday at the

the to celebrate his birthday at the, uh, the, uh, the idol event that's going on or whatever it was or a hollow live event. A Vtuber event. We'll, yeah, it's a hollow live event. So it's, you know, he's going to be, he's too busy at hollow fest doing, doing the dances with the glow sticks, man. He can't be bothered. And you know what? He can afford it. He can afford the time. I've got a million dollars and I proved that I'm the best. What do I need to go to this inventational for?

I guess, uh... Fuck it. He was wearing a jacket. He was wearing a VTuber jacket, like a piece of merch while he was up there getting it too. I mean, dude knows what he's about. Oh, I just saw somebody in the chat say that people have been watching him spend

like thousands of dollars on stream on his VTubers. He's spent 150K on super chats. Holy shit. That's real, that's fucking insane. Oh my god. Oh No time for vTubers to get way into fighting games. Oh, can we just just have capcom just redirect the check straight to fucking holo live That's so good. Oh, that's great. Wow Okay, okay 150 so good. Oh, that's great. Wow. OK, OK. Oh, 150 K yen.

Oh, OK. OK, all right. That's different. That is madness, guys. Madness. All right. Anyway, so yeah, he's celebrating his birthday. And you know what?

He deserves it. Absolutely. But no, it was really cool. I basically flew down to Toronto for the weekend. I mean, Reggie got to go check out the the Red Bull Studio, the eSports room. They have set up and yeah, Yipes and Tasty Steve came through. Rufal Monger was there. We jumped on commentary for the, yeah, the four top four players

that were going through the bracket and yo, just awesome chill time. The coolest motherfuckers alive, you know, just as chill as you would imagine to work with and hang out with and stuff. And yeah, it was just one of those things where there's been like ample opportunities when kind of James Chan and Ultra David and Sejam would come through, either came through Montreal a couple of times or they'd be at mutual events or I got to talk to them and everything like that.

Yaip's and Tasty Steve, it's only been a little bit more than passing here and there, so it was nice to finally actually catch up and shoot the shit and just real, real, real cool stuff. And yeah, just real, real, real cool stuff. I'm and yeah, just, you know, good times as well. Just hanging with Rufal who made it out from the the boonies in Ontario to to the event as well. Oh, it's from Ontario. I didn't know that.

Representing Brockville. Really? Yeah, it's wild, you know, so such a. That's a cool thing, because I just remember like seeing that name back in the day when I used to run brackets, you know. And like I'd see like, yeah, there'd be like cars from Ontario coming down and he would be on it and a couple other players from some of the two hours outside of Montreal areas, you know. So, yeah, just a really chill.

Yeah, good time, good time all around. And I guess with that on the, you know, doing some Street Fighter analysis and everything, but as well shout outs to, you know, the whole Red Bull crew over there running a proper production suite behind the scenes is insanely impressive. Watching the oh, is that where the operation or idiots get to see people who know what they're doing

and put the cables together as someone who clicks buttons on OBS, you know, and has been doing so for the last decade. When you get to watch what is only comparable to Gendo and the nerve center. You know, like sitting back and then counting down and calling out the shots and everything. It is magic in action. Incredible real shit, super talented people over there. But yeah, that was a good time.

And with that, I also had a chance to play a bit of Ed, check out his story mode in Street Fighter 6. And it is fun to see that along with the character coming out and acknowledging some of the bits of Street Fighter 5's lore, Baba Moa Limu, the monkey, is getting pushed harder than ever. I brought it up in advance just to let everybody, because I'm letting you know, and I'm letting everybody know that there's a crazy ass piece of edlor where he's chilling with a hyperintelligent monkey and I don't know what-

What about the dolphin, man? What they're gonna do with it, and now they're just expanding. Yes, they're expanding out into a full-on Saturday morning cartoon crew where you've got him in various states of like cool dress and he's like the smart one on the team the Winston kind of thing yeah the guerrilla lore and he's constantly referencing him too in his win quotes against like Blanca and stuff he's like man I'm not afraid of you I got a real guerrilla on my team you're not a beast whatever so they really want everyone to be very aware

of Baba Mualimu. So what is the deal with all these these psycho powered animals? Are these just like Bison sitting around going, what if I want to put myself in the body of a dolphin? So it more or less turns out that the the Bison scientists were, yeah, working on various organisms and bodies and how they handle psychopower. And of the experiments, they didn't limit it to humans. There were a lot of humans. There were a lot of different intensity treatments that went through, but they said, let's run it on some animals too. Let's see what happens. And in some cases, you got a dolphin, you got Totsugeki ready to go for future reference. And in some cases you got a dolphin,

you got Totsugeki ready to go for future reference. And then in other cases you got your Winston, you know? And then they also set up as well like the rest of the crew in a way that is very reminiscent of like Kami and Delta Red. It's like, here's me and here's my background buddies. You will never see them again. Yeah, they'll live in my ending slides.

And Udon comics every once in a while. And you'll be like, oh shit, Udon remembers George. But it's, and so like, yeah, they're like, hey, yeah, once Ed came about and rescued Falk, then like that whole crew got started Once Ed came about and rescued Falk, then like that whole crew got started and Neo Shadolu was born. It is interesting though, because with his story in the arcade mode and then in World Tour

where you go meet him in the subway and advance your relationship a bit, you actually get, it's his story, I guess since it's like, right, it's like this, late into the DLC, it's like the third to last of the characters. They're just straight up telling you what's going on with JP, you know?

So like his second or third interaction with you, he straight up just tells you what's up and then you see them in their arcade mode as well have an interaction. So basically JP just goes, hey, yeah, so I'm the former finance minister of Shadowloo. I'm the guy that was in charge of all the money and of all the experiments and shit that like got burnt and destroyed. Like you're the best living example of psycho power. So we kind of want you to run this whole new remnants of shadow loo thing. We want you to be the new king, essentially. And he's kind of like setting up the throne for Ed to take over. And Ed's like, fuck this, I don't want it. I don't

want to, You know. I guess they'll just have to clone Bison's soul from a pile of dirt. With all the Seth clones and the bottles and shit like that. Yeah. And then as well and from talking to him more I didn't complete it but from going a bit further into his thing. So he's got that right. He's like, here's the keys to the evil throne. Take it as soon as you want it type of thing. And he's like, fuck that. And then there's also the part where he's like, and in anyone who has psychopower inside of them,

it's kind of like also making them kind of crazy as well. And they're freaking out. So when you see random people running around like the final area with like psycho power inside of them, even if it's just a little bit, they're completely freaking out and losing their minds and getting violent. It has like a Satsui Nohado kind of effect on people,

which if you're like able to control it and do cool shit, you know, row style or so, all the more impressive. So once it's inside of you, it's also fucking making you go crazy and all that. And then on top of that, Ed is also straight up like, yeah, so Balrog wasn't the best dad. Like what? Like he wasn't like abusive or anything.

He actually cares for me and he treated me like a person. Even though when he first met him, he said, ooh, I picked up a good payday, right? But he cared for him and he raised him well, but he wasn't a good person is what he's saying. He's like, as a role model goes and you're like, he's not a good person. Shock?

I can't believe it. But he did treat Ed well enough. Again, that's weird. Yeah, so they want, that's really strange. And I think they wanted to kind of underline that it's like, hey, when it came to like, he found him and he's like, ooh,

I'm gonna sell this kid and get paid, you know? And then he went, actually, let me raise him. And he brought him some clothes. And one of the artworks is like him handing him some new gear and getting him dressed up and stuff. And more or less kind of like, yeah, he did raise him and treat him dressed up and stuff. And more or less kind of like, yeah, he did raise him and treat him, you know, the way he describes it is like,

he treated me like a real person instead of like a psycho experiment, you know? But while treating Ed decently, he's also a terrible person. So that's your role model to follow. So Ed is basically just by a thread, not a ginormous evil piece of shit. Like he's really trying hard, you know. And he's like, that's why he's full of attitude and he's all got all that spunk and he's all

about like trying to go and save people who are, you know, from the group as well and all that. But there is a giant fucking slide towards insane evil that Ed should be, that he's like barely not falling into at this point, you know? So good for him, I suppose. Good for him and his willpower. Hey, let me ask you, you played a little bit of Ed. I saw people joking around, but I didn't quite get it,

which was how is Ed a boxer, but he forgot how to throw a proper jab. Good joke. That's pretty good. What is that? Does he have just a terrible light punch? So, animation-wise, he's throwing out a nice little one, two, three, and he's got like a little jab straight and then a hook, right? And it's like, oh, he's doing the real shit. As far as in game properties go, his jab is very bad. It's, it's-

That's fuck, that is hilarious. It's super stubby. It's insanely stubby, right? And I mean, his whole kit is, it seems like he's probably going to end up being like, yeah, like low made or so. Like he, like right now he's got issues that basically are like yeah, like low-maid or so like he like right now He's got issues that basically are like gonna prevent him from being super duper strong It's very early. So someone might still invent some crazy shit with him, but

He is as far as his kit goes. He has a very stubby jab and you have to get really really close to use it You know, it is very it is Properly like fast, but you have to yeah, you have to be really, really close to use it. You know, it is there. It is properly like fast, but you have to. Yeah, you have to be really close and you can't. You can't cancel his crouching jab into a special. You have to do a crouching into standing. So anyways, the nitty gritty. It's really strange considering his dad has like the longest arms

of anyone in Street Fighter other than Dalsin. Well, I mean, to make up for that, he's got Snatch, right? He's got the flickers and his snatched range is not a problem for him. The cool stuff he gets is the ability to zone, you know, he can do the, the, yeah, like I said, snatch from a distance. And if he pulls you in with that, even if you're blocking, he's at an advantage. He moves you anyway. He pulls you into him, even if you're blocking and he gets to move advantage. He moves you anyway. He pulls you into him, even if you're blocking,

and he gets to move first. Oh, I love that. So that's really good, right? And like, because he gets the ability to do that, they're going to take other things away from him. So they take away from him, for example, he has no overhead. If you're crouching and blocking,

he has nothing he can really do to just like open you up, you know? So, yeah, the entire way he's built is essentially around the idea of counter hits and like plus frames, I guess is the whale, you know. And- He's a counter puncher. He's a counter puncher. And he's really about like, yeah,

opening you up up making you afraid And if you start doing things like going like I'm gonna drive impact from like full screen or I'm gonna parry So that I don't get pulled in he can go from like his little you know like he's got like a yama zaki kind of like Flicker hold so he can go from that into like dashing up to you and grabbing you So there's a little mix up there where like yeah If you if you are afraid of blocking the snatch He can eventually like throw in a mix and move around and stuff not to mention. He's got a really good Charged heavy punch which he used to have that now goes through fireballs and then like crumples you so I mean that's appropriate

Yeah, so he's he it feels like he can fight JP really well Just like dad would have done appropriately. It's pretty good, you know. So, um, it's just, you know, it's, it's the nature of like street fighter existing on an exclusively 2D plane. But the idea of like all these fights and Ryu is like dead ass straight ahead of you. And just everyone just completely refusing to move one foot to the left out of the way of the fireball, except for only ball rock. Sure. Well, I will say that like in his super and his wind poses, which I like that they're doing this more. He's he's stepping into and out of the screen, right? So like he's got a wind pose where he's like, I got a whole lot left in the tank and he starts doing like a little jab sequence as he's side stepping.

He's like, I got a whole lot left in the tank. And he starts doing like a little jab sequence as he's sidestepping. And he's doing a proper like one, two training regimen. And like he moves from his back towards the camera off the line of the fight, all the way to being behind the line of the fight. And that stuff looks really cool. I love when you play with that, you know?

And yeah, like the idea of, I don't want to get into Fatal Fury's line system where there's like, you know, like the idea of I don't want to get into fatal Furey's line system where there's like, you know, like, oh, you can jump into the background or whatever. I mean, fucking Vega used to do that and this shit's bullshit. But no, it's just visually it looks very cool, you know, with Ed. Yeah, he's if you're going to want to play him, he's going to be work. He's he's probably one of the most, yeah,

he's a very technical character. You're gonna have to put in a lot. He's not gonna like carry you at all. You're gonna have to learn proper timings for stuff. Which is interesting, because he went from being super easy execution, you know, to being, again, still like now normal in execution, but he's got, for example,

the ducking kind of move, like, you move, like the Dudley kind of dash forward. And the follow-ups are not based on what strength you press of button, it's based on how early or how late you press it. So if you do it in the first half, you get one type of uppercut, you do it in the second half and you get another, you know? So stuff like that is pretty cool.

And it also like makes him more reminiscent of ballrog in a way by having like dashing uppercuts and dashing straights. It's like, yeah, he did learn how to do that stuff too. But overall, yeah, I mean, again, because the style feels so good, no matter how good our baddie is to play, I'm gonna mess it around either way.

But lore-wise, it is interesting to I'm just like, okay, so they're setting up the reason why Ed more or less returned is because like he's being set up as the reluctant Rock Howard. Well, I don't want to storyline wise. The reason why he returned for real is because the game doesn't have a boxer. Well, there's there's that. There's that. But like in terms of like setting up future seeds for stuff or whatever, like he is was one of the most obvious like here's a here's a seed for a future character in the in the form of Balrog with the kid.

And then they actually had him become, you know, a part of the storyline as well. And like, again, Phelan's ending in Street Fighter 4 was like a dagger that then turned out to be Fong's dagger and shit. So, you know, a lot of the time they're like, we don't know where we're going with any of this. We're just going to do something and then I don't know, let Bengus figure it out in five years. You'll pull something out of the bag. And then even though the character we set up wasn't the character that we set up, we'll say it's the character we set up because't the character that we set up, or I'll say it's the character we set up.

Cause Fong doesn't use daggers. No, not really, but it's a part of the poison group or... Anyway, whatever. Um, and like I think, yeah, I think Ed has a quote where when he beats Aki, he says like, ah, you remind me of this loser from a couple years ago or whatever. You know, so. Oh. Yeah.

Which, and to be fair, you can go find Fung in the World Tour mode just standing under a bridge now, right? So. It's so weird that he's just... He's there. He's there to confirm that he will never be in the game proper. Hi there. I'm Fung from Street Fighter.

You may notice that my model isn't as high quality as many of the other models you've seen in this game. That's because all it will do is stand here and not move. Speaking of quality too, I do like as well the, yeah, with him, the continuing trend of lots of extra animation, you know, when you finish doing certain moves or certain things, there's a little extra baked-in taunt kind of thing, like we started seeing that back around when Cody came out in five, where he'd have like a lot

of tie straightening or like little arm rotations where it's just like, you know, like it just, it's a little extra flair in the fight where you're, nothing's changing about your hit box or your hurt box, but with Ed, you see him doing a lot of boxing movements and like head sways and shit that fucking gets me excited. about your hit box or your hurt box, but with Ed, you see him doing a lot of boxing movements and head sways and shit that fucking gets me excited. So.

Hey, let me ask you, how do you feel about what I would call Street Fighter 6 pre-akuma? Because as we're sitting here talking about Ed, we're like, yeah, there's gonna be people picking up Ed, but we are like a couple months away from like 40% of all fighters. Oh, being Akuma.

Yeah. So, so you're talking about what is the early access Street Fighter 6 right now. We are in early, I was saying this to Rami the other day the the akuma player from here just like oh, yeah We're in we're in early access until akuma drops because once each once he does we're gonna get One button teleports we're gonna get we're gonna get drive rush demon flips We're gonna get so many insane things on that character That I don't even know what modern mode will look like because they have to choose what to cut, right?

Think about it. It's like, okay, you want to give modern mode Akuma his fireball button? Sure. Is that going to be the regular or the red fireball? Right? Then there's the air version. You know? Do you make it so that he can choose to bounce back off the air fireball or he gets to drop

with it or you give him both all both tools? You give him his demon flip you give him his Tatsu variations Do you give him that crazy shit? He was doing in five or he could do sure you can into Tatsu into air fireball or what do like it's great It's madness, you know Yeah, the the exactly in Tekken certainly Isn't isn't making him seem seem any more of a chill character. He's probably gonna be immediately top one.

I just saw somebody in the chat say, imagine Akuma comes out and he just sucks. Akuma isn't allowed to suck in Street Fighter. Never, ever, ever. He's gonna come out, he's gonna have two level 3s, because he's gonna have the big new level 3, that might be a version of the chop somehow, and the raging demon's gonna be there. And they're gonna sell you the big high demand character

who's also gonna be fucking destroying the cast. It's gonna be the Yen and Yang edition. It's like there's- Like the whole character is built on having a move set where he can do things that other characters aren't allowed to do. And so the only way they've ever balanced him is like, yeah, make him make him take hits like a wet diaper.

Yeah, he's a glass cannon. He's a glass cannon. Yeah. I mean, I think and also not only that, but like fighting games as far as like DLC goes, they figured out that the optimal strategy is not to take a chance trying to sell you a brand new character You may or may not like or care about right? How do you feel about Aki? I don't know. I think she's cool I really like her but it's I mean maybe

I don't know I'd have to figure it out. Let me let me think about it right sure well use a rental ticket to see if you Want to okay? Yeah, no, okay, they figured out that it is We're gonna take the character you want the most Put a man we're gonna me and we're gonna make them put them at the end And we're gonna make them really strong so that when you do get them you also win a lot and that's gonna feel good It's gonna feel good to win with the character you love And that's how we get you back if I like ackee versus people just Like frothing at the mouth going when am I going to get to play based

Coomer again. Oh You want your you watch your bike in you want your fucking dizzy guess what you're gonna have to wait Yeah, so That's that's that's the bit you know and and the fact that Like yeah, the fact that they like they kind of they teased it They showed a little bit of that artwork It got leaked etc, but everybody knows that like as soon as a kuma drops Street Fighter 6 is now out of early access for fuck's sake. I play a kuma

I'll play showdown. Yeah, I'll play a kuma. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there you go ever since he does the little he does the hurricane kick into the shoryu. I'm like, oh, it's cool. I love that I the hurricane kick into the shore you I'm like oh it's cool I love that I can't wait to have to fucking deal with 18 different moves and then the drive rush version and then the burnout version and then I can't I can't wait to deal with a meta completely defined by can your character deal with air fireballs. No, die. Like he, or like his double roundhouse kick, you know, like just drive rushing into pop, pop from super far away. And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gonna be a good time. I would hope that, the one thing that a lot of the discussion you know, I've been having with people is just like, okay, so for some characters or level two is a utility super. So for Akuma, it's generally always been, you know, like fireball, uppercuts, and then you can go with either the third strike Tatsu going upwards, so you can go with the big chop.

Do you give him instead like an install that kind of resembles his old V trigger? So you can just have him do anything into anything for as long as he wants, you know? What, but? Yeah, you know what? I don't know if Akuma is strong enough in this version. What if we turned him into Yon from Third Strike as well

and had his good super be the install. Just give him a good agent anyways. I mean lore wise, which I always like to see incorporated into the gameplay, it would be interesting to find something like if him as a character, like what can you what else is there to do besides he's gone beyond human and he's insanely evil and he's just he's always that right. It might be interesting if there's something inside of him that is like, that like echoes or harkens back to Goken somewhat, you know, in the way that Ryu has like gone to the next level and he's got the sash and he's kind of... Oh, like Goken moves but evil?

Or something, you know what I mean? Like something to just show that like there's another dimension over what he's been doing for 20 years, you know? Like it might be interesting to work in like, oh, yeah, something about his brother and his style is like he's come to some conclusion, right? Whatever his philosophical Satsuno Haido bullshit has been, he's reached the end of a journey. And that's going to show what he's been set. Akuma is just like, I'm the strongest creature ever. I'm Mr. Shakedown of Street Fighter. And then we look over to Oro and he's like,

yeah, but can you like telekinetically levitate rocks with your brain, Akuma? How come you can't do that? So put that though, yeah. If you're so strong, lift this rock with your brain. While also protecting a little turtle behind you with your other arm idiot No, no fucking kill count low ass Katie ratio having motherfucker

Yeah, it would be sick if it's only yeah, I would be sick though I definitely would not mind a wind pose of like teleporting back to the fruit stand Dropping down and handing a kid a fruit. Yeah. Never forget the business. Um, anyways, so, um, at his co- Oh, before we move on, Street Fighter 6 also got a very small patch that makes, moves the didn't work, now work.

Geef's level one is now usable Your patch notes Geese level one now functions. Congratulations to Zangief Oh, and uh Larry's jabs on the ground now work correctly. You can now Larry it into Level three with gate Geef as well Yeah, so you can come on and drink on it. And Jamie can drink on a forward throw. Jamie can drink off of a throw, which is great. He definitely needed it. And also, it's a patch, but let's be real,

it's fucking a bug fix. When you- Yeah, these were like, these changes shouldn't have shipped like this. Jamie no longer loses drinks when he does level two and then comes out of it. That's a bug. What the way that was a thing.

Fuck were you thinking guys, yeah. And if anything, his level two should have given him a drink to skip, you know? So now if you drink two levels and you do his super, he goes to four for a while, drops out, and then goes back to two. Whereas in the past, it was like he'd dropped to zero. Madness, you know?

So, good for him. And JP, players in shambles, look, you picked that character, you knew what was coming. Like, okay, JP has a bunch of, he has an incredibly cool aesthetic as a player. Like he definitely, I remember when we talk about Was his name Gaganos in killer instincts I got us. No, no, no, no the gargoyles Okay gargoyle man, right and how he felt like the most like a final boss playing playable ever because he was doing teleport punches

And throwing minions JP really does embody that for Street Fighter. SNK character. All over the pressure and all that. SNK bossing him. But like most people picked him up because he destroyed people at various intermediate levels. Takes little effort, easy to win with, he will carry you. He will carry you.

I know what they think. He will carry you. He will nerf his crouching heart punch. So his crouching, yeah, so his, he used to have a really great button that stopped you from jumping in on him. And now it trades almost all the time. So like you have to switch to other anti-air is now admittedly, it shouldn't trade all the time.

It should just be from specific angles because for most characters, depending on how you jump at them, like there's some angles where like with Gile, for example, you wanna use his heavy kick to stop someone from the air or you wanna use his fears, or you wanna do a flash kick if you have a charge. There's different situations to use different anti-air. So with JP, he just had one button that solved all problems.

I have to say, as somebody who was playing characters that were jumping on JP, having to fight the whole round to get to him and then him having an incredible Anti-air that was a single button. Yep felt unfair felt very it felt felt bad didn't feel good So I did all the work to get through this nightmare and now I get here and he has a better Anti-air than half the cast. More egregious than that was his ability to essentially do his amnesia, the OD amnesia version and it's he played wrong so he got knocked down.

It's your turn to apply pressure. You have earned your turn and by correctly applying your pressure and guessing either rock or paper he has he has a He has a double rock paper counter scissors play that he has a scissors made out of paper made a scissors made out of paper Right that immediately activates and then when he beats you with it He gains meter and can combo into his level three. What the fuck? So they made it so that by landing his counter now, he no longer builds meter during that combo, and the damage that it does to you is heavily scaled back. So yeah, because it's not supposed to be a tool for offense when you're being forced to use it as defense.

Thanks for punching me idiot, I win. Yeah. And like for a while, like then there became the level became, all right, JPs are going to wake up and do the amnesia flash counter. So let's just wait a second and then blow them up afterwards. So then the next level JP player, like Flux Waves here and all that, they're like, oh, let's just wake up, do nothing for a second, you do nothing for a second, and then I do it.

And you're like, this is bullshit. This is completely bullshit. I like how this Rock, Paper, Scissors game on, I knocked JP down, the advantage is mine. And now the whole game is being played inside the JP's head and the options are do it now or do it in a second. It's not jump away or try and throw or whatever. Give it a sec or don't.

Sick, you know? Like yeah, yeah. And again, you're covering two out of three options at all times there. So, yes, rightfully, and they didn't even take it away from him. They just made it so that when it works, he doesn't get the whole round afterwards. And not to mention, of course, that if you worked to get all the way in on him and you took him to the corner and then he landed that,

he also knocks you full away full screen away. I'm very aware and you're and you're him to the corner and then he landed that. He also knocks you full away full screen away. I'm very aware and you're back to the starting line, you know. Yeah, that fucking theme song playing during all of Capcom Cup. Just everyone is just triggered by the JP theme now. Anyway, so yeah, he got a big, a big adjustment as And it's they said it's a little light balance patch, too It's like a little one just to just a tide. It's an appetizer and then the big one's gonna come Luke got up got his catching medium punch reduced and I would re you got a lot better I would pull a whole drink out of Jamie's system. Mmm. I would make him on a three drink system

No, I wouldn't do that. I would just give him more ways to get it I'm okay with that the idea of giving him more like again off of the throw is really you know I'd be good with it So the the thing with that is like that's needed But it was always it was kind of there But it gave him a weird situation because Jamie could always safely drink after a back throw Because you had right they were on the ground for longer Backthrow because you had right they were on the ground for longer

It meant that if you put them in the corner and you wanted to guarantee drink you want to back throw them out of the corner to get your drink If you're you know if you're saying make it permanent you don't know what you're talking about That's the character is not designed for that. That's like even Manon is wild with that In fact, they should give him a button that drinks all four drinks Yeah, sure No, I definitely I definitely I would give him again the ability to do the level two and Gain one out of that as well. You know, that's fair. You spent some resources take it. He's coming out. He's hair hair of the dog But yeah, all that all that is pretty nice to see. And I guess once Akuma drops, we're going to get the full adjustment balance patch across the board.

Are we, or is that going to come after Akuma? I'm assuming, like, I'm assuming so, yeah. So what we're going to see is listen, guys, Akuma's out. We're not going to tell you if he's really strong, but here's a bunch of buffs to every character in the game so that they can keep up with this freak. We're selling you. I mean, like if anything, like that would be the point to like let the game sit, right? So it'll it'll drop yet around with his update, probably.

That's that's the idea. Yeah. And at the same time, though, while we're discussing like buffs and nerfs in Street Fighter Six, like, let's not forget that this is a really healthy state to launch it. Oh, yeah, it's good. You know, like, we're still pulling the microphone, the magnifying glass out, looking at this stuff.

Oh, absolutely. It's a really great launch state for the game. These are nitpicks. Like I play GEEF, so like, and maybe this is not the most balanced conscious thing, but this is more of a flavor thing. It's genuinely upsetting that Larry, it doesn't hit on both sides of his body.

On both sides, yeah. Because the animation and the history of that move, he's spinning in a circle with his arms out, like come on. And again, his level one just does not do what it's supposed to do, which is crazy. Really what I would probably do with him is make Tundra Storm real? Like, oh no, I would, hey. Here's another make it a real thing. You know, here's a bug fix for for Geif. You know, his standing medium punch chops.

Yeah, one, two, three. How about you make it so that that can't miss on counter hit? Oh, depending on the spacing. I don't know what part of the game's engine is going off on this, but I'm getting punished counters at like medium range with a fucking target combo, and it drops, and it leads me to get blown up! Okay, here's one. You land a tundra storm, which is the kick counter, he catches any kicks, and when you land one, you gain one green hand back. You get to do one green hand after landing the kick counter. And then it's back to zero and you got to earn it again. Oh my god, yeah.

Anyways, anyways, he got it. His lariat buff did allow him to do some pretty sick full corner carry stuff now as well. Anyways, yeah, good stuff, good stuff. Looking forward to it. Looking forward to the absolute reign of terror that Akuma will bring across everything. I'm excited.

Everything below diamond is just gonna fucking Will be scorched earth. I am excited because there's a really specific kind of a kuma player that we're loading up for which is People that love to do a kuma buttons because a kuma buttons makes everyone die But don't know how to handle pressure at all and so they'll die and like a single combo the if they I mean at all and so they'll die in like a single combo. The if they I mean, if are they gonna are they gonna do him like they usually do and actually go full glass cannon?

Cause like, oh yeah, dude, come on. He's gotta he's gotta have like, I think everyone's health is normalized in six. It's not. There is slight increases on big bodies and slight decreases on smaller. Kimberly versus. So yeah, I can like 700 or 800, whatever it usually is.

But it's not as extreme as it usually is though, admittedly, right? So, yeah, anyway. I, yeah, so I spent some time with that. I also, well, I'm sure we'll get into it I really didn't want to sit down and get started on rebirth But you know as I was saying before I couldn't I just it was too tired You've been busy with traveling didn't get the time and I also have to go back and do integrate right so Yeah

You mentioned that right when we were doing the the OBS is not the OBS the audacity said I've well He mentioned that he hadn't played integrate Integrates great mm-hmm mm-hmm I do need to do it. Right when we were doing the OBS, it's not the OBS, the audacity set up, Wally mentioned that he hadn't played Integrate. Integrate's great! And the thing you were talking about with the whole two-player system of fighting together, that sounds... No wonder you didn't know what the fuck I was talking about. Yeah, that sounds rad as shit.

So, no, I'm going to go do that as well. And yeah, so for rebirth, I'll be doing it in my own time off camera so that I don't. So that you can enjoy it. So that I can enjoy it, take a second. That's right. This only happens once in a lifetime, right? We're only gonna get.

Well, actually, technically it happens three times in a lifetime. Maybe three times in a lifetime, but I'm only gonna get it. I enjoyed my first like play through of Ff7 on my own as well without fucking anything So I want to enjoy my second you're ten, you know So yeah But with that though I did play

So there's a game that popped up Recently on steam called Balatro. Have you heard of it? Balatro? Or Balatro? Do you mean 18 plus gambling evil game for gamblers, Balatro? Is it? Oh, okay.

So I guess you didn't catch this in the news. No, it's so. Balatro, you know what? Go ahead and explain the basic crux of what Bellatro is. It's a poker, roguelike deck building game. And you basically, you play through like a progression of stages and you unlock abilities and you do all the things you would. And again, in like a roguelike or a deck builder, but you're playing poker as you do it. And then you gain powers that give you the ability

to cheat and make your hands better and you get powers and stuff that is very reminiscent of like Slade Aspire, you know, and even Dicey Dungeons, which you know, I was playing through a bit recently. And yeah, if you are in if you are like into Poker and stuff This seems like a pretty good way to like get better at it and practice a little bit while playing a fun sort of single-player run-through and there's essentially You have like three three stages per like area I guess there's like a small blind a big blind and a boss and you have a poker boss fight, the boss fight will have an ability like two cards get discarded from every hand you pick up.

And you're playing hold them kind of thing. And like, you got to use your powers and cheat to fight back against it, you know? Do things like switching the suits to make them better or, you know, casting disposable spells and things like that. So that seems like a cool little roguelike game with a gambling poker theme.

Yes, that's the experience I had. I got it on Steam and that's what I noted of it. So that's why it's rated E10 and up in the ESRB classification for quote unquote, gambling themes, which is totally appropriate. Peggy, however, the European Ratings Board, initially gave it a three plus rating in October and this week went, oh no, no, fuck that.

It's actually 18 plus for gambling and you have to delist it from stores and pull it from shelves. What? Whoa! There's no real money. The game's already out! It's already out and they just changed it.

That's insane. That's insane. Okay, okay, okay. So then they're making that call either based on thinking that it's real gambling because it's cards and poker and that's what it's associated with or because they already rated it. They already looked at it and rated it three up. So, so because it's reminiscent of real gambling themes because it's real poker hands and cards, even though it's in a game contextual environment, they're going to treat it worse than if it were, but no, but they didn't. That's the whole thing that's so fucked up.

It's that they did rate it and they went to stores. No, I mean changing their mind about it. You can't, you're not supposed to be able to do that. Yeah, no, of course. That can happen. Okay, so if something like fucking hot coffee occurs, obviously, or hidden dildos. Yeah, that's unknowns.

Unowns that show up later or so that change something about the game. Yeah, nothing changed in this game at all. And in this case, but what I'm guessing is the stupid board looked and went, oh, wait, like if my kid is playing this, it's going to look like real gambling, and that is a gateway towards degeneration.

So let's go back in and overcorrect on this, as opposed to if it were a poker game that were using fucking triple triad cards or inscription cards like nonsense, you know? I would like to point out that the Peggy rating for FIFA is three plus for children appropriate. That's so stupid.

Despite the fact that FIFA and that ultimate team mode is the most disgusting gambling micro transaction shit in video games. Games, games where the fucking with the next on rating that drawing that drags your chance of winning down to zero are appropriate for your kids, but not the game that has poker hands in it, apparently. God damn it, man. Yeah, I was like so confused when you said that because I'm like, wait, no, it's a full price, not a full price, but it's whatever, it's like 20 bucks or so. I bought it and

then once you buy it, I'm not- It's not as use as poker as a theme. Yeah, it's that's it. You're making you see, Willie, poker reminds the old man at Peggy of regular gambling. He doesn't know this, this internet loot box scam. Oh, what that is. If again, if it had goofy characters and they weren't numbers and suits, but they were just fictional, whatever, you know, like fucking Fortnite character like it doesn't matter. It'd be fine. Like yeah, it that's so stupid Yeah, no, it sucks because the game was like really really blowing up and then I had to get delisted and it's upward trajectory like in Europe Okay, it's like that's not fair

They don't deserve that they were on this big wave of people. Oh my god Bellatru this is crazy Well, what I can say is the game is really fun. It's yeah, it's definitely especially and it scratches a particular itch I've had to where I'm like, I've always wanted to get better at poker, you know, like I've always like I do like it and I and I and I've learned enough of like how to just kind of play, but I'm very bad. I know how to play the statistics of the cards in my hand.

Oh, me too, but that's not poker. No, no, that's not poker at all. It's to play against the table, you know? That's why I'm terrible at poker. I remember sitting down going, I can remember all the numbers, That's why I'm terrible at poker. I remember sitting down going, I can remember all the numbers, that means I'll be good at poker. I lost every fucking hand I ever played.

Learning the odds is just like, that's just the beginning. It's not about that at all. Yeah, that's for blackjack. You bring that mentality over to the blackjack table. Which is why I do play more unperferably, blackjack. Cause it's easier to kind of just be like, oh, I can just do the odds and play that yeah The dealer has little to no control other than the fact that they win on ties. So okay

Yeah, no the exactly the vibe manipulation that comes in poker is something I've always kind of wanted to you know Pick up and get a little better at so in this case. You're're still doing full on fucking PvE cheat poker, but it's but it's still fun to do. And like it does like kind of present me with situations where you're like, you're holding way more cards than you would in a real poker hand, you know, and you're like, is it better to discard and try for a straight or should I go for the flush, you know, or the the two pair? What what's what am I what are my odds here, you know?

And then there's a, yeah, a pretty fun system of like, there are 150 jokers that you can add. That's a lot. And each joker has a different, unique, wild thing that it does. Oh, cool. You know, it's like a massive modifier to the way your points stack up in the money that you make works.

So you just, like of all the different Joker cards, you just lay out the five that you slowly get and they can turn a really bad hand into an insanely good one. And this is where the whole rogue like effect and the thing comes into play. But because you can only have five, if you see a really good one,

you've got to destroy one that you already have. You know? And there's a lot of like, there's a lot of power ups too that are good for one moment or for one round and then it's gone forever. So you've got to like constantly evolve your build and stuff. Yeah, very, very, very cool.

Didn't expect to click with it as much as I did, but yeah, but it does, it scratches that same itch that again, Dicey Dungeons kind of hit of just like, sit back, play some kind of goofy cards and play cheat poker and find a way to cheat the the cheating boss even harder than it's cheating you. Hey, well, speaking, since we're, I don't know how, when's the next time we're going to have this on topic? So as we're talking about poker and cheating, poker and cheating. We are in agreement that the game of cards of poker is secondary to the game of lying to the people at your table of poker, right? Of course. The Howells Key

makes it. Like that's not a real game is lying to everyone in your vicinity. Correct. Have you ever felt very strongly about watching a poker tournament. And there are people wearing the biggest hat and the darkest sunglasses and a beard to cover just every single part of their fucking face. I mean, I feel it's like it's goofy, but it's also at the level where if you're sitting at that table and you're on TV and you've already made millions in life,

getting good at this. Even if your face was exposed, it probably, you probably have trained to not react, you know? I feel like I don't believe. I don't think I bet you would. I bet you even the slightest tell like at that level, you've probably, again, you've probably gotten good enough that it wouldn't matter. I do agree with you, but I also be like, no, you should have to, you've probably gotten good enough that it wouldn't matter. So like, I do agree with you, but I also be like,

no, you should have to, you should be sitting at the table unadorned. Because some people don't do that. Okay. And it always, it always looks to me like people are sitting there with a, with a, it's within the rules. I'm not going to say an unfair advantage, but they're, they're sitting there with like a genuine advantage over their opponent. Well now-

Because they're trying their best to wear a fucking ski mask over their face. Well now you gotta go back to the days of Doc Holiday and you know, it'd be like, okay, so if I'm gonna sit with my back turned towards the lamp in the room. I'm gonna, and also wear my big cowboy hat. You're gonna have an extra hard time seeing my face. And the shadow was gonna be in such a way where I have the advantage because I'm extra obscured and you cannot pay attention.

Whereas you are in the light, yeah, yeah, like, you know what? Like, exactly. We get to a whole other level of that shit. That is nonsense. I love that. And. And. Which would be way worse for the spectator.

They all have to wear big head boy hats and sunglasses. Okay, but here's the thing too as well. Like eight out of ten of the people that are at that table on TV have gotten really good playing poker online where there is no video. You just look at the numbers and then there's and you just react to the stimulus, you know? Like there's zero in person, anything to it. Like they could play that tournament

in isolated booths at their PC, you know? So- And they should. And they have. They do. But like, so like And they should. And they have. They do. But like, so like, yeah, it's a different thing entirely. No, no, hey, new rule. If you're gonna show up to a poker tournament,

it's gotta be like a college sports. You could never have played online poker. If you're gonna be in an in-person poker tournament. We have to separate the two. You have to have only played in-person poker. If you're going to be in an in-person poker tournament, we have to separate the two only played in-person poker. And you verify this how like what you make them sign a little piece of paper that says I promise I never did. And I never stood next to my friend and suggested moves while while they were doing it either. No. Yeah. Um, yeah. Yeah. It's it's a formality that they even sit at the same table and talk shit. You know, yeah. Um, I would not be surprised if like, you know, well, I mean,

since they already have again, virtual poker tournaments that go up to huge, some huge amounts or whatever, when you want to televise it, they could get to a level where they're fucking on Yu-Giguyo stages. You know, like a football fields apart from each other. And like you like from the other end of the goddamn field, you like they're like, oh yeah, there he is with his hat or whatever. But the giant screen in the middle is projecting all the all the action. Um, I just, oh man, just I become become, as I've gotten older, I've become increasingly fascinated by things that aren't against the rules, but seem to feel really, really, really unfair in like any competition.

We talked about it a long time ago with like the debate over coaching and fighting game coaching and fighting games Baseball's signal stealing is what's just say baseball? Yeah, like every single detail of baseball that isn't throwing or swinging a bat is Some kind of nonsense. Well the fucking Sammy Sosa Mark McGuire era, which I remember my whole family was tuning in for, was one of like, is it cheating? Yes, but is it hype? Also yes.

Therefore who knows, right? Yeah. But with the whole thing of like now the, oh, the concept of giving a signal secretly from the pitcher to the catcher. And we have, yeah, Ukrainians in the dugout, right? Staring at the signals and then putting it into a database, decoding it and feeding it back

to the person who's going up and then giving them a little electric zap that zaps them two or three times to tell them what pitch is coming. What the fuck are we doing? Like, sign stealing is so fucking fascinating to me because when you phrase it as sign stealing and you have people like breaking into fucking stadiums and shit to steal like paperwork about this.

Okay, yeah, that's probably cheating, right? But like, when it goes to the, like, dude, Yakuza 5's plot is like literally entirely about sign stealing. It's the whole story. Interesting. That's why there's a character on your crew who's a baseball player. Okay.

He got kicked out for being accused of sign stealing. Hmm. Right? But at the same time, it's like, if you're just like, aware and can decode their little, Yes. like elementary school, like tin can phone conversation.

Why would you be punished for figuring out that they're trying to talk secrets? It's hard, it's card counting before they realized, oh fuck, people can count cards. Let's put way more than a plausible amount of cards in a given boot of Blackjack and also kick you out if you happen to win too much. You know, so yeah, exactly like the natural rules of the game. I should mention allow some smart to exploit it.

Like my perception of this is like horribly skewed because I had to listen to my dad complain about how card counting rules and how it's not fair to get kicked out of places for card counting. If you were that smart, you fucking earned it, man. But like, cause there's two types of card counting. There's the team card counting, which is a whole operation. Yes. Which you need to do for poker and Bachrot and games like that. But you can do card counting in a blackjack table

and just use your fucking own brain. Just remember every card. Playing Asuka in fucking Strive me requires a card counting skill. You know, um, anyway, yeah, that's that's bullshit. That it's like, hey, we're going to kick you out over that. But, um, it's like, what is the amount of punches allowed in hockey before we go, all right, the fight's done?

Until the refs decide that one guy's got it out of his system. Yeah, okay, okay. So until a heat action is performed, the fight may continue. But only above the belt and one hand must be on the jersey and the gloves have to come off and the helmets have to come off. You can't, that has to be the start state.

So Canadians or people who've lived in Canada for a long time are aware of this, but like Americans or people from other countries may not be particularly aware that like it is not an unknown property that a hockey game can occasionally start in which both centers put their sticks down and throw their gloves off on second one of a new game and decide we are going to fight now. There is a position that is called the goon that is a person who is hired that cannot skate that cannot shoot that cannot pass Can't do anything, but they're huge and they can fucking swing and their entire job is if you try to hit our

Star player or fuck him up or hit him up against the boards or whatever. We're gonna have our goon goon on you. The goon is coming and that's it. My job is to be his stand. I'm on the payroll. I'm not making anywhere near the amount of money the rest of the team is making by the way. You know what my favorite part about this whole discussion about hockey fighting is? Is that I have not, I have never been able to figure out and I've never had

somebody be able to explain to me why sometimes you get two minutes for fighting and sometimes you get five minutes for fighting. Because it depends on the ratings at, it depends on when the next commercial break is coming, you know, like they legitimately had to see a couple seasons of them going, hey guys, we're going to turn down the fight, tune down the fighting. The violence is a bit much and we decided to, you know, like be a bit more strict about it. And people hated it. And they went, OK, I guess we'll allow it to go for a little bit longer. Like the refs legitimately clear out. They make a space. The camera zoo. There is an angle. The hockey camera has a specific fight angle ready to go.

You know, so somebody in the chat asks the important question was, why is it that in hockey and hockey alone, there are allowed to have fist fights in the game? And one is the reason you just said is that the fans love it. It is the NASCAR car crash God of hockey But the second one Arguably more important is that they are going to fight hockey players are going to fight other hockey players and even if you make it extremely

Taboo and give them big penalties They're gonna do it because they did it in their fucking minor league days and they did it in their high school games and I have seen elementary school students swing on each other over a hockey game. It's just built in. Parents in the stands telling their kids to go for it. But hey, there's also gonna be a timeout

and everybody can catch their breath for a little bit and then We'll get back on with it And then they make sure to put the two boxes that they're you're gonna put the guys in right next to each other So like it's sware at each other for fucking two feet away with a little piece of plexiglass in between them Yeah, yeah, exactly. No like I like I'm honestly shocked that it never got to a point of Like I'm, I'm honestly shocked that it never got to a point of when they, when the fight starts, we don't see stats from the previous fight for each player pop up on the fucking sides. You know, it's,

I think the goofiest thing is that hockey fighting is so weird and lame and specific because there's only one way to do it. You grab their shirt with your left hand and they grab your shirt with their left hand and you both grab your shirt with their left hand, and you both rear back and just go and one of you falls down. There's no fucking jujitsu, there's no UFC, there's no movements or anything. It's just... There's no defense really.

But yeah. No, because you have to hold on to them or else you'll slide apart. Yeah, and to be fair as well, I mean, the era that we're coming from with that, like if you're willing to take a puck to the face at full speed, what's a fist? Well, how hard could a puck hit you, Willie?

Hard enough that your entire bottom row of teeth will have to be replaced. I mean, shit, if you see old hockey uniforms as well, your entire bottom row of teeth will have to be replaced. Yeah. You know? I mean, shit, if you see old hockey uniforms as well, like the fucking little, like slight, they had an aviators cap essentially as protection back then, like the old hockey masks and helmets were just nothing.

Anyways. Yeah. And that's in the rules. In the rules. There we go. Oh, you know what? I have, I'm gonna, you're the only person I wanted to talk to about this because I talked about it on my stream the other day. So I'm on TikTok and I'm scrolling through the TikTok, right?

And every now and then I'll see like UFC fights or I'll see like Pride fights or K-whatever right? Because aggro dudes punching each other in the head, that's cool. Sure. That's fun to watch right? And I scroll up and I watch the UFC fight and the bell rings and one of the gentlemen Lies down on the floor with his back on the dirt on the mat And starts scooching towards the other guy with his asshole. He pulled guard And he pulled guard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I then watch the most farcical thing I've ever seen,

which is instead of just kicking him in the mouth and destroying his brain utterly, I'm watching the guy who's decided to stand, kind of walk over to him and then they touch hands and then they start to grapple. And I'm like, what the fuck is this? Kick his head off! Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Did you just say Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to completion? Yeah, like I'm not gonna be able to break down

exactly what the moves are and what would need, what would the optimal thing to do is. But I can say this, that is a comfortable starting position that people who roll in BJJ start with, they start with themselves on their back and you and someone on top, and then they have so much knowledge of how to stop you and use your own shit against you

from that position that people prefer starting that way sometimes, and they're very ready for anything you're gonna do. So that's so, this is what I went and learn. And then the second thing that I learned is that the reason why they do that is because you're not allowed to kick a grounded opponent in the head in UFC. Okay, well, allows them to just scoot around on their bum because the guy's not allowed to hit them. At the same time though, like, it is known as, and it has become a, like, style of choice for street fight type situations, because it is the thing that is prepared to handle anyone coming at you.

I don't believe that for a second. It is the thing that has- That when a Brazilian jiu-jitsu man is attacked in an alley, that his first response is to lie on his back and go, come at me, bro. No, no, no, no. Don't kick me, though, no. I'm not saying that, like, that is the 100%

the starting position, but I am saying, from any disadvantageous position, they are able to handle the person who is just gonna run, swing, do some push, or something stupid, you're able to completely dismantle that person. You're able to, so wait, hold on. If you're able to completely dismantle anyone

in any situation lying on your back, then why are kicks to grounded opponents outlawed? No, no, no. Just let them kick him in the head all day. If they can expertly move around the ground against. I don't know enough to fight that point. I mean, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in general is a really good street defense thing

that people are learning. That's what I mean. Starting on the ground with that rule being in place, I don't know what the expert way to deal with that is. If there is anyone that does know that they can tell you. I was informed. I have no idea. I'm not gonna pretend I know, I don't.

I was informed that in Pride that doesn't happen because guys who do that get their heads kicked off. Okay. Yeah, I'm not gonna pretend I know what the answer to that is supposed to be. But I'm just saying in general over recent years, like it's become a thing that has, you know, through like the graces and all that, like started to dominate and become an answer to multiple people's other styles of fighting and also like random

street fight things where you can just be like, okay, this is just gonna, I'm gonna know how to manipulate your limbs and body in a way where if you're trying to be a Drunken asshole starting a fight or even just not a drunken asshole just an asshole starting a fight. This is a really good way to manipulate you out of it and keep you safe on the ground Contained over here while somebody goes and gets help doesn't it like give you this feeling of Watching of fighting competition and one guy is lying on his back going come at me bro Cuz you can't hit me because of the rules that they are not like a massive massive fucking pussy. I Like they are the biggest pussy that has ever existed I don't know enough about the fight game to go much further into this than where we're at.

Anything beyond this is me just throwing conjecture out there. I have no idea. I'm fully out of my depth. Put a picture in your mind, Willy! You're fighting a guy and he blights on his back! Yes. When his asshole open going, egg, you can't hit me, you can't do it.

No, the rules say you can't hit me. It's wrong. Like, put a picture in your mind I mean I at the very least I'll say the reason why a lot of that shit came about was because UFC one had almost no rules And it was awesome Because it was the closest thing to a death sport we ever had because a dude doing sumo almost died I am so I'm so yes, right right right right okay, okay? Okay? Okay? Okay? No hold on So I'm so against the UFC calling itself the ultimate fighting championship because it's supposed to be

Styles okay, so disallow eye gouging and disallow fish hooking, right? But don't artificially limit some people's styles and artificially buff other people's styles with rules that say you're not allowed to do this because it's too dangerous, which leads to people abusing those rules. Like lying on your back in a UFC fight is the fucking fighting equivalent of fucking. What's the word that when soccer players have their pussies fall off when a yeah, I'm taking a dive to diving. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sure. Yeah, no, I mean, I would love to see where and why each rule came into existence and what the reason was for getting to where it's at. You know, the regulations are obviously to such a degree that like the thickness of the glove you use must be supposedly the UFC rule that leads to no like strikes on grounded opponents was because a bunch of guys has got their heads blown up. Sure, like really bad. I mean, motherfuckers lost eyes and shit.

Like, yeah, it's crazy, it's wild shit. Again, like the, you know, everything from UFC One Forward is a learning experience, you know? A, that rule is probably written in blood type of, type of list that we go down. But yeah, no, again, I don't know. I'm sure at some point, like someone in a hospital, a doctor somewhere went,

can we fucking tell them to not do this thing anymore? Can we find a way to? I just saw somebody make an interesting post that I can I guess I can leave this on Good my blood sport tinge for the day Somebody says this is why I wish the NFL removed their helmets I want to see the brain damage happen if the NFL moved helmets and padding tomorrow You would see way less brain injuries. You would see way more all of the other injuries. You you would see rugby.

Yeah. It's it's it's called rugby. Yeah. It's the you know, the theory goes into into almost like the yeah, like when people when there's less protection, you're not going to hit each other as hard because you are feeling it more on both sides. Yeah. Like the vast majority of sporting events having boxing fatalities was post the invention

of the boxing glove. The protection that then lets you go even more crazy. I mean, look, a thick 60 ounce, throwing that at fucking devastating speeds when you are one of the greatest of all time is like, yeah, that is a murder weapon still. No matter how soft, you know, how much padding you put. And the idea with the bare knuckle thing is that you would, there would be a limiter on how hard you could hit based on the self-inflicted damage.

But what if you do that? Which is, the counterpoint, the counterargument is, but what if you do? You know, what if you legitimately are like, nah, I'm gonna swing hard enough to break your skull and my own fucking knuckles, you know? Cool. Sure. And, and, and last we also forget, the art of Muay Thai involves deadening your shins and Fucking forearms so that you can hit an elbow harder and you won't feel the pain that you're supposed to be feeling because you've killed off those nerves

So yeah, you're buffing yourself by taking the pain in advance and making sure that it doesn't fucking you feel nothing when you do a the pain in advance and making sure that it doesn't fucking you feel nothing when you do a leg breaking shin kick, you know. The idea of like checking kicks, I don't know if you know, like so, yeah, so you throw a kick, it's all five kicks. Exactly. So the whole point of checking a kick is not that you are stopping the pain, not that you're stopping the damage, you're putting your foot into a position where whatever you do to me is gonna fuck your foot up too. So it's just mutually assured destruction. I can't stop the damage you're about to do to me, but I can make sure that you eat it too

by lifting my leg up and checking it. And then as we're both walking around the fight going, ah, ooh, mm. So you're gonna stop trying to kick me because now you're just gonna hurt both of us, you know? In theory, unless I'm insane and I decide to just do it anyway. I think poker players that wear sunglasses

to televised matches should have to fight BJJ guys on the floor and not allowed to hit them grounded. Man. Fuck, I had a, shit, there was a final thing on that anyway, whatever it's gone, but God what was the fucking thing there was a Whatever it's it's it's it's gone. I should have wrote it down. Well, I want to rewind a little second Did you really mean to say the phrase? I don't know all the moves in BJJ

to completion? That's the phrasing you wanted to go with? No, no, I don't know enough about BJJ. Like, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Like, I know sounds like you don't know enough about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to nut. Is what it sounds like you're saying. Oh, because B- because B-J- okay, I didn't understand. No! To completion! That's what that phrase means! Okay, words. I'm just saying. I- all- I'm trying to convey that because I say a phrase like pull guard or checking a kick doesn't mean I know what the fuck I'm talking

about because I don't I just but I do never be able to to not so don't don't pretend that me saying oh I recognize what that is means I understand everything about it because I super don't know I don't understand what it is either that's the the the whole context was hey person who doesn't watch UFC yes you ever seen these guys lying down on the floor yes and I was yes and I heard that there's a good reason for it that's it that's that's what I got for you yes and I heard the people who know what they're doing have a good reason for it, and we got here. I don't like how gooning has become a different word because I talk about a hockey goon

and everyone thinks they're, I'm talking about, I mean, when you get as many goons on your team as possible, you're now goon maxing. Hmm. Don't. Hmm. Okay. All right.

So, um, anyway, that's, um, that's a good that's good stuff. I will be back to, uh, yeah, a little, seeing if I can finish off Half-Life 2 this week, I'm going to, uh, come back and yeah,, a little seeing if I can finish off Half Life 2 this week. Going to come back and get a little bit more of that. Yeah, because as your cabaret club, I was told something about your Half Life 2 playthrough that I legitimately do not believe. That the last time you sat down, you went, oh, the combine are aliens. Is that accurate? Is that accurate?

I don't think so. I remember there was a scene in the jail where we were going where we were listening to the guy talking about the the state of the humanity and whatever is going on. And we were I don't remember, I don't, like, I- Oh, okay, well. What's the context? What's the, what, like- I was told I was streaming and then somebody came in and went, well, he just found out the combine were aliens and he's like most of the way through half-life.

And I went, huh, what? Okay, well, people are gonna fucking, you know, to say or do whatever. I mean, from the old game, I remembered and went back and tried to refresh on stuff, but like, I remembered the Zen and the Vortigaunts and the fucking brain lords that took over and shit. Oh, what was that thing called?

Nile and Yes, that sounds about right the term combine I forgot about prior to it coming back up in Half-Life 2 So if that's a term from Half-Life 1 that was being used. I actually wasn't in Half Life One. Okay, well then I didn't have that term until it was presented when I saw it in the fucking like. Okay, my mistake. What do we like?

Ugh. Man. Anyway. People. Yeah, whatever. That. I am, um, despite the fact that I get a, uh, a. That... I am... Despite the fact that I get a...

A churn in the tummy after sessions of that game. I'm still enjoying it. Oh, is it still affecting you? Yeah, because unfortunately the prison level is like very hallway driven and it does have like a... There's a particular area where it got particularly bad because of the walls and everything. Despite all that, and despite the fact that I play like ass and don't fucking know how to do this and I'm making my way through it,

people are out, people are being really fucking insufferable about it to some degree, but I'm still enjoying the game a lot. Am I becoming the avatar of someone's insufferability leaking out? I'm sorry. That's okay. It's okay. It's just... I do not mean to. That's a no, no, it's fine. I'm very much enjoying the game for especially the time it came out in and like there's a lot of cool shit happening. People's I guess just memories and expectations and shit that they can't held in comes bursting out in really annoying shitty ways on it and I'm kind of just ignoring it and trying to continue enjoying myself. So for what it's worth, the game is still really fucking cool. I just get a stomach ache a little bit as you know, getting through some of those areas.

It's really strange to think about Half Life 2 as like a really old game. Yeah, because like the the go go ahead. I think I think we knew each other when that game came out like I think That was 2004. I Half-life was like my bro me and my brother no half-life to specifically half-life to okay. Yeah. Yeah sure Yeah, one one was yeah me and my brother one PC way back one so yeah for yeah, we knew each other at the time um on PC way back when so yeah four yeah we knew each other at the time um yeah but anyway as far as the like picking up the the scene mise en scene details go and and such for two I still we still don't have the full picture from where we're at

we have I don't we still I still don't know exactly what the time difference is between the first and second game, but I do know that whatever has happened in between then and now the homeworld Zen got conquered and we saw the newspaper clippings. We saw the seven day war practically or seven hour. What like it was so such a blip of a war. It was nothing. We saw the idea that yes, humanity got conquered and that this

combine, I guess, is introduced and that the fucking asshole in his turtleneck and jacket is basically the one who is the retainer for the humans. And we have our breeding rights restricted and the Vortigaunts are janitors with us and we're locked up in these ghettos and the soldiers running around are enhanced, not fully human people as well. And that's kind of the gist of it at a surface level. And then we know that G-Man stepped in and gave us the job. But there's very few things beyond those intro speeches. I'm going to save you like 20 years of frustration.

You said like we don't have the whole picture quite yet? Sure. Sure. That's fine. Fucking big shrug and that's okay. But I mean, the story doesn't end. It just stops. That's totally cool.

And look, if we're gonna spend an hour hanging out with a crazy ass wild priest, you know, doing cool shit, that's not going to give you a ton of lore. It's just going to be a rat ass detour through a town where we're like, ooh, bad things happened over here. But when we do get those couple of like monologue moments over the comms and a couple of the moments with Alex talking to her dad into fucking shitbag lady, God awful woman, I forgot her name. Anyway, you get, there's the evil scientist essentially

that is just like- I don't remember them at all. There's a shitty other scientist that Dr. Hoffman was it I think? Where she's- Oh, Hoffman, Mossman? Mossman, where she's like, and then you see the comms on her later being like,

oh, but you said we would betray them and you would be nice to them or whatever, you know um, I'm awesome So head but that's it. Yes. So if I you know, so that's just like to the person who's fucking Sniffing their farts getting mad at the idea of the combine being introduced in one speech at some point that we're not fully piecing together the whole thing yet. What like Jesus Christ, man. My mistake. I'm sorry, man.

That's fine. You know, old beloved thing, old beloved feelings, nostalgia, but it's fucking great. So hopefully we can finish it off this week. And are you gonna do the other two episodes and then read the paste bin? Oh, no. Not a paste bin. Yeah, dude. Come on.

Really? That's where that story leads. Mark Laidlaw just came out and was like, fine, fuck it. Here's what it was gonna be and put it in a paste bin. Have they at least like done a thing where they got maybe like the voice actors to read it out in a cool way or? No, man. Oh, okay.

Well, yes. It's just such a wet fart. It's just like, oh, okay. It's been clear enough that the extra episodes at Alex and so on are all mandatory. So at some point I will, but I'm not gonna say that I'm gonna do it immediately after, but I'm gonna do it to find out what's going on. So here's the thing, you know when people say like, oh, it's mandatory because of the story?

No, those are just mandatory because like if you liked Half-Life 2, they fucking kick ass. They're just better Half-Life 2s. Fortunately, the lore is like not the biggest deal running through the game and using physics to do some rad crazy shit is shooting a missile out and then like aiming it from a side angle to take out the helicopter that can shoot it down from the front. That's the point, you know, catching a fucking grenade rolling at you and throwing

it towards a bunch of guards around the building like that seems to be or some Summoning at Lions if you do go on to episode two you you got to know me You got to know me it up. Are you familiar with the gnome? I do not So this is back in the day way back in the day when achievements were like just getting their their their feet wet and They thought you know, it'd be really good. There's a rocket ship somewhere in the Half-Life episode too. What if you grabbed a garden gnome

from the first room of the game? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And you dragged that motherfucker all the way to the end and sent that bitch into space. I mean, I did carry a can with me for a while from the first vending machine. You know, I did. I did carry a can with me for a while from the first vending machine. You know, I did. I did a little bit of that. I also carried a tear a turret around Terry. The turret was rolling for a good bit. Yeah, I've definitely persisted with holding thing

for longer than the game wanted me to quite a bit. At the same time, though, like, you know, because of how good the crowbar felt in Black Mesa, I have a higher, the un-than-realistic expectation of like how good it's gonna be here. The reason why the crowbar feels so good in Black Mesa is they decided to keep its nonsense bug behavior. And that was great. But also, even in its nonsense bug behavior, it's still really fun to crowbar things.

So there are situations where I'm like, yeah, I'm up close, and I'm gonna switch over to the crowbar and take that dude out instead of just shooting him. Because fuck it, I like crowbaring a thing, that's fun. And I'm getting griefed over pulling the crowbar art and having fun. And so like why won't he pull out the thing

and do the other? And I'm like, because I like to do this, this is a fun cool. I like the melee, it's dope that it's there and you can use it I wish there were more with melee weapons, you know I I know despite the fact that the way Gordon uses the crowbar and Half-Life 1 isn't replicatable It's like my head cannon for what's happening in Half-Life 1. I would hope so I

for what's happening in Half-Life 1? I would hope so. I want to know that at least like one room of SWAT dudes got fucked up by a dude in a crowbar with a heav suit on. You know? Or at the very least like, canonically when a headcrab is jumping at you, that's the way to deal, right? He smashed the shit out of it out of midair or when I want to fucking

What was it a man the blades the flying blades I Forgot the term. What was it again? Anyway, all the man hacks man hacks. There you go when Gene Hackman is flying at you, you just fucking take it out. Yeah, so probably gonna finish that off as well. And I'll see if, yeah, I didn't get a chance as well, too busy to crack open Unicorn Overlord, but the full thing's dropping. Very shortly. Yeah, so I might just wait for that.

How long was the demo? So, before I talk about Unicorn Overlord, I should mention that the devs sponsored me to make a video on Unicorn Overlord where they're going to pay me money after I invoice them for making a video about Unicorn Overlord. The Nilo-Hand. So my opinions are sponsored.

The demo's seven hours long That's a full-ass day Yeah, and you know it's seven hours long Because it just runs a timer in the bottom right of the screen It says here's how much demo you got left and I played it for six hours and Did not feel like I was coming anywhere close to whatever the end of the demo was. God damn, okay. It's really good, also you can carry your demo progress

right over, so you might as well just start now. Is it the first six hours? Yeah, okay, great. And your data carries forward. Great, great, great, great, great. might if you wanted to you just started today and Unless you play for seven straight fucking hours, then you know You'll just continue on the full release when it happens. What is the pie chart breakdown between new original shit and kind of

Fire emblem and kind of other tactical things we know this this is a gumbo Okay, this is a gumbo game as you once so described This is Okay, so the best way I could possibly describe it is by using other games first of all It's primary inspiration is ogre battle. Okay. It's oh it wants to be ogre battle really bad and It's it looks like ogre battle and it sounds like ogre battle and it plays like ogre battle. Okay. It's it's wants to be Ogre battle really bad. And it's it looks like Ogre battle and it sounds like Ogre battle and it plays like Ogre battle. The strategic map when you're like pulling out units to send them out at people is like 13 Sentinels. You're there's the you're all moving in real time and you pause it and you send them

to where you want to go. And when they touch, they'll have a little fight and when they have a little fight They'll have a little fire emblem fight. Yes, okay between the units that you set up But but the actual map is real-time units going where they okay. It's like it's like a slow RTS So it's a little bit of like Fine, I'll do it myself. Says George Kamatami, or battle wise. I don't think George worked on this. Oh, it's not him. OK. No, I don't think so.

So the basic gist is that instead of like a fire emblem or what have you where it would be, I pick my Warrior Unit and send them out. You're sending a full party out that you've built. So and you can build them in any order and any unit combination you want. And then you go into their party formation and you go and use the FF12 Gambit system on their move set. Okay, so two things.

One, how many people are in that group? And two, what does that mean? So you will start a mission and you will go to the fort or whatever and you'll go, I would like to pull this unit out, right? And the unit can be comprised of one to six characters. Okay Right you upgraded over the course you start it to within the demo I was able to upgrade to parties of three, but eventually you get to have a full party of six as

One unit on the field. Okay is a party of six Fighters individual that you and you choose which yeah, okay. And then you go into the menu, like prior to the fight, and you say, listen, I want my spearmen to focus on columns of enemies because they have a spear that hits multiple people straight through, my archers to focus on evasion enemies, and you tweak them to all do what you want, then you'll see their turn order, and then you'll flutz with them so that the guy who shoots out poison hits the highest HP target, who gets,

and you basically build the way your unit wants to, you want your unit to function. But once you've built up that six man unit of six different people and tweak them, they now function as just a single chess piece on the board. Yeah. Someone rightfully pointed out, yeah, the Super Robot Wars squad system in Alpha 3. Yeah, you have multiple units.

I'm not familiar, but yeah. Multiple units becoming one unit, and then they're together and then you, yeah, you function, they function as one. So basically what you end up doing is you start the game and it's like you have like ten characters or something like that and You only have little parties of two, but then you upgrade it to parties of three But the idea is is that even even if you are building a fight with like

40 characters You're actually still only gonna be controlling like five units. Right, right, okay. And so all of your like complex theory crafting building shit, it's all before and then when you're in the fight, you're just, I'm moving my guys around and I know what my guys, well I know what this unit's good for, I know what this unit's good for I know what this unit strong against and is each unit kind of Self-sufficient to a degree if you make them that way, okay? So like you could make a unit out of six archers

That will just kill any flying unit they come across like you'll you get a perfect preview of how much damage is going to happen. So you'll get to see like total loss or total victory and or like how much damage do you take out of this? Love a perfect preview. So what I did, I used this example for my, I used this example for my video that I made where I picked the main character, Elaine, who has guarding spells, but also increases

the amount of stats you earn. And then I put a thief in the front row and thieves can dodge almost anything. So every time somebody would attack the thief, they would just dodge. And if they did go to hit the thief, Elaine would run forward and block the one hit that got through.

Meanwhile, I had other guys in there a lane would run forward and block the one hit that got through. Meanwhile, I had other guys in there that would just attack like 10 times in a battle. So I would be taking no damage and they would be taking 100% damage, they would just die outright. And that thing carried me for a while until I got to flying units, which none of them could hit.

Right, okay. And so that unit against flying units, which none of them could hit. Right, okay. And so that unit against flying units became just non-viable. It would lose every encounter, couldn't do it. So I had to build a archer shield unit where the guys in the front would just take damage. And the archers would shoot high evasion targets. Is there stuff where someone mounted takes up two slots instead of one or something like that?

No, but your your your party, your unit speed is a combination of all the characters individual speed. Okay. So if you have multiple cavalry in a unit, it's going to zip. It's going to go. Interesting. You can also have, You can also have archers provide support to other units in their battles if they're close enough. And units can have like, the party leader will have like a special ability they can use. So like, if the party is being led by an archer,

then they can provide ranged support to anybody in their vicinity. If it's being led by like a cavalry guy, then you take way less damage on magic attacks. If it's being led by a guy with a giant shield, you take less damage overall on physical attacks. Stuff like that. Is every single party member someone that you know

from your group, or is there like heroes that are like one assigned to there are unique characters, which there are like There's like there's like 10 pages There are there's like 60 or 70 unique types Hmm, okay each of those has multiple characters, but after that, there's generics that you can load in. So for a good, a decent group, you'll pick one hero and five grunts. No, no, you get a lot of unique characters.

Okay. Grunts are just to fill in spots for specialty. Like if you're like, I want three archers on this fucking team Yeah, but there's only two unique characters that are archers. Okay, then you'll throw the third guy in which would be Permadeath when your units die. No, no, okay. All right. No, they just they just they just go nap time. Okay, cool And they're done It's it's Frictionless as as like a strategy RPG.

It is it is great. Oh, somebody pointed out. I forgot. Is that who said that? Necrus points it out. All the unique characters have affinity meters that go up when they're in the same unit. Oh boy. Okay. And then they become good friends or maybe kiss Okay, okay, so there's a little bit of a

Little bit of a relationship managing to do as well So the other thing is that that affinity meter chart is like a little hint about what units may be good with each other because not everybody has Affinity possible with everybody Like the main character has him with everybody Put that but cleric next you know the beef and the big guy they have them together. Yeah, okay Interesting, oh, it's great. It's it's so good So how this is actually the the main question for a vanilla where title how often are we in vanilla where mode?

Like so I didn't in the demo. I never even got to unlocking the food mechanic. Okay Okay. But every single after every mission or before and after every mission, there is a narrative section where people Walk around, talk to people. Or walk around talking, stretching, animating, even though they don't need to. Yep, yep, yep, yep, vanillaware mode.

Yep, okay. A lot of heaving bosoms. Oh yeah. Couldn't have it any other mode. Yep. OK. A lot of heaving bosoms. Oh, yeah. Couldn't have it any other way. OK. So there is there's proper usage of all these characters that we get to hang out with them outside, but also like brief battle scenes cutting to the the units fighting and vanilla wearing all over those other units looks gorgeous all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, it's great. OK. And so and based on, I guess, the the the initial six hours or so, if you're comparing it to like Ogre battle and stuff, I'm like, so does that? Are we talking like how well, how long is each fight, I guess, is the question? Are you because it's pause, right? You can pause when you're making your decisions. I found that each fight took me about 10 to 15 minutes.

Oh, OK, that's that's that's not bad at all. OK, I was wondering if it was like half an hour or so. I spent a lot longer in the system telling them what to do before the fight than I did actually fighting. And I assume I would have spent a lot more time fighting overall if I had not tweaked them to have the behavior that I wanted. Okay. Now, yeah, to be fair, I am definitely in my time scale comparisons.

I'm thinking of tactics. I'm thinking of like, yeah, some of the missions and like tactics advance and then some of the front mission three missions, ones are as well. We're like, oh, you're gonna be here for a minute and this fight's gonna last. Yeah.

It's not like that, okay. It's really fast because when two units meet, it's a pure auto battle. You have no control of the fight. It's just you attack them. Oh, what they, okay, okay. So archer versus flying is just a, yeah. Die flying thing.

It's a class, yeah, there's no picking what they do. is just a, yeah. It's a die, it's a class, yeah. There's no picking what they do. Okay, okay, okay. Right, and so as a result, the, the, so like building your team and, and tweaking them is where you would be doing all of the party commands in a regular RPG, but instead you front load all of that. And the actual strategic battles are comparably

a lot easier to follow, even when there's tons of units. And the actual strategic battles are comparably a lot easier to follow even when there's tons of units. Okay. Because it's just this unit is moving here and it is good at this. Yeah. Advance Wars unit fighting is like that too as well. Yeah. Okay. So what is the gambit system? Okay. So you load in and you have a thief and the thief has a poison sword. So the thief has access to I think it's steel, which is two dagger hits and swipe the poison sword and they also have an evasion ability and those are listed as one, two and three. So you have the category of actions for the evasion ability and you can say use every single time you have points to use it. Don't save it, only use it. Like

use it every time you possibly can. But if you wanted to, you could have it set up to only use the dodge ability when being attacked by this type of unit at night. Okay. If you, if you, like the way that I set up my, my thief was that I had the first attack be the poison attack. So I had it attack the highest HP unit on the enemy team. Okay. As move number one. And then the secondary attack was attack the lowest HP unit on the enemy team because that would play out after the second character acted and they had their thing Focus on debuffing armor because I chose and I told them I would like you to use your crush attack as the first attack and

Decrease armor and then I would pick Elaine who has a health gain back when he kills people and I would have him go and attack people that had the lowest total health. So what would happen is the guy would throw out a poison and then the second guy would hit the whoever had the highest armor and decrease then and then Elaine would kill the armor guy because they had the lowest health.

Then the poison would proc. I get it. I get it. Okay, and the thief would mop that guy up Okay, so basically instead of picking the individual skills that the given unit will do when they get into the fight You pre-program an AI set of behaviors You train your your gang you give a little program some behaviors exactly and there's conditions You can create so you can get a more elaborate and specific with it And then that will be a more optimized way of Targeting system, okay And if you the most interesting one that I would tell everyone to do is that there's a when you have healers

Yes, their default healing is like heal it tries to heal people up to full HP No change that to heal the person with the lowest total HP. Okay. The one who's the most likely to die. So if you have, is how big of a difference is it leaving it on default versus? Massive, it's massive, it's huge.

Okay, that, it's the difference between like, a like rock, paper, scissors where the losing matchup can have better gambit set up and overtake that. It's the difference between winning a fight but losing half your health and winning the fight without getting hurt at all. Okay. It's not necessarily a win or lose,

it's how efficient you are at it, okay? Yeah, cuz what what what types of party members are in the thing are gonna be the number one by far? Mm-hmm, but you can always tweak them to be stronger Mm-hmm now like the healer thing cuz the healers want to heal people up to full So if you get like if there's a there's a fight where you fight these gigantic berserkers with axes and they swing and they hit a whole Rose of your party. Mm-hmm. And the healer tends to focus on the the cavalry unit that has the highest health and the most defense anyway It's like no you need to focus on healing the shitty unit

that's gonna die next turn if they get hit again and As someone who loved the Phantom Brigade fucking time setup fuckery, I'm super down to go ham with behaviors. Are you able to basically, is there enough room to change its behavior on every different unit type when it encounters it? Like how much room do you have to build out of behavior? There's a lot, there's like 10 slots for behavior.

And the behavior has to be associated with a move. Okay. Because it's when you use this move, in what order do you use this move? It's like first it's a priority system. Like what attacks do you want to use in what order? And then it becomes, where do you want to send those attacks?

Interesting. And then is there a preset list of behaviors you can choose from or you kind of just doing it from scratch? No, you have the default and then it goes, fuck with it if you want. Default or custom, okay, okay. So like, yeah, there's no quick template for like,

and then heal up all my archers, you know, no, okay, okay No, you would set it to So you can put two conditions on each move So you would have the heel move and your first thing would be prioritize Low HP or lowest percentage of HP and then your second condition would be prioritize Archer So if the archers are Undamaged they won't target them at all. They'll target somebody else But if they are damaged, they will prioritize the Archer with the lowest HP

Cool. Okay, you you can you can just You can make them do an act however the fuck you want. You can save templates. Yeah, well it feels like the smart way to make a system like that would be to have it be as open, but then kind of give you like, here's an overall, like maybe three or four defaults you can go into. Like full aggro, full defense. Like if there's like a cavalry set of options

that you really love, you can save it and just put it on every cavalry unit you encounter. Okay. Wow. That's way more in depth than I thought. Okay. And then it's in depth, but it's also easy to control. And you only do it once and then you then the pieces you go and then you're just moving your boards on your wargame thing. Interesting. Okay. And so the only downside is that I didn't happen to me, but I can see it in the future. You can totally end up with like a war rolling into this fight. And this is the way I've built my army and you load in and you're like, I am going to lose. I didn't know what was coming.

I didn't know what I was dealing with. And my shit is too specific. Yes. Yes, yes. Okay. I would count that setup time as mission time, because instead of being in the mission, it's just beforehand, you know? But that 10, 15 minutes on the fight is like, it would have been plus the decisions you're making on the fly, but here you did them in advance. Like you could make a unit that is six archers,

which means any evasion, all thieves and flying units that they attack will just die. Like they will have no, nothing will live through that. But it means everything else that touches them will kill those archers. Right. And if you can make a highly specific scalpel, or you can make some units a hammer. Or you can be, I can imagine you could be super balanced and underwhelming by having one archer, one heal knight,

one healer, one. Yeah, that's probably too balanced. Yeah, yeah. You'll just kind of be underwhelming when you run up into anything. Yeah. Okay. And then there's an overworld that you run around and you help villages and you talk to people and do little quests

It's it's it's it's cool Part like part of the thing of like they they paid me to make a preview video for it and Part of that is like by the way, there's a demo you can you can do on every platform That's like a full games worth of content and. And I'm like, why are you? What do you need a goddamn video? Tell the demo is right there. I could just play it right now and see what you feel about it. If the vanilla ware game is not locked on the one console, then good.

Let them get their word out. Well, Willie, don't you worry. This game releases on the Nintendo Switch, the Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. And that's it! Don't ask about any other platforms. Definitely not the platform that you want to play it on. Every single one, except for the PC. Okay. Okay, so it's deliberate. It is a deliberate decision.

Every single one. There is a there is an unspoken reason that this is the case every time. And with that comes the kneecapping of the full distance this could go. And the timing. comes the kneecapping of the full distance this could go. And the timing. Oh, I think said with the forward compatibility that we are currently now enjoying, it's a lot better than it used to be. Like I've played Dragon's Ground on my PS5, you know, and Odensphere Lift.

Yeah, yeah, it's just there's so many people that would be so down, you know, every time. OK. It's it's here's hoping. Yeah, but no, but but that's like the the the multiplot with that level of fucking like Nuh is a very specific decision they're they're making for sure. I don't know if it's based on. Yeah, just handing it to someone else to do or they don't have,

you know, I couldn't imagine what, but it's been too many times in a row that they just fucking don't want to do the PC version. Okay, cool. Great. You want to talk about fucking FF7? You want to take a little break? That would not be a bad, but I will say, since I forgot to as well, yeah, this week on the channel,

tune in, Wally versus on YouTube and on Twitch. Gonna, yeah, Half Life 2, gonna do some Yakuza, going to fuck around a bit with Ed, and yeah, I think that's it. I might throw something else in there, fuck around a bit with Ed and Yeah, I think I think that's it I might I might throw something else in there, but I wouldn't mind them Trying to hammer down as much progress into yak is as possible that cabaret club shit is fucking fun and I want to do more of it, but unfortunately it seems like it's like there's progression So you can't just keep doing it off-camera you know. So when we did the LP way back you you do the cabaret club to the absolute edge of the stage and then you fight the

boss fight and then progression will happen. Okay. And then it'll launch into the next stage. I think there's four stages total. It's basically the exact same progression as the four kings of real estate in Curious side of the game. Got it. Okay.

Yeah. So, gonna go try to hammer in some some progress on that. That's a schedule. OK, let's take a quick break. I'll be. Burp. Would you eat? Would you eat? I just made a quick slice of peanut butter.

Hell, yeah. So I while I was sitting here, I went and took a look at Ogre Battle 64 because it has been like decades since I've seen what that game looks like. I remembered that game as Tactics Ogre. Oh, that's what I thought that was. Oh. So Unicorn Overlord is so similar to Ogre Battle, it should be called Unicorn Overlord 65. Like, like it is literally...

Not Tactics Ogre, Ogre Battle specifically. Ogre Battle. Yes, and not FF Tactics either. Like it should be called Unicorn Ogre Lord 65 instead of 60. Like it is a direct sequel to a game that they never made. I mean, there's definitely like, yeah, yeah, it's the, we wanna make our own version of this thing we love years later.

Nobody seems to be doing anything. I still, I struggled making that video to not call it unicorn overload. Like every time. Yeah, I, it's just even writing it down exactly. Yeah, like, because I just think it's so much funnier of a name Unicorns tree overload. I got two in these unicorns, man Yep, oh

You know before I have seven I'm gonna give a quick baby update baby is now reaching towards your face with his hands Okay, touch your face and being cute Which is awesome. This has also led to me having to just tacitly endure Getting slapped right in the face Yes, okay motor control ain't there. Mm-hmm So like just every now and then just a back right in the eyeball Getting getting in early getting that getting that hook you just got to be like it's a baby I can't I can't fight him that'd be weird and insane. No, but what you can do is start counting

do is start counting. So that FF seven rebirth came out, huh? It did. And so did you did you play that demo? Played the demo. And yeah, like I said earlier, gonna do integrate and then start that a little bit sometime this week. So I'm gonna give a piece of advice for everyone that played the demo and that's don't You should probably not you should you should probably so the way I played it is because the game was coming out at 9 o'clock I did the demo at 7 right and then I went in and it was like oh cool now I can skip the part What that I played the demo, but it asks you yeah, it asks you this led to an Extremely bizarre sequence of events an extremely bizarre sequence of events.

In particular, and this is really, really important. Can we just, before we go any further, just give anybody who's listening a heads up as to what to expect in terms of how we're gonna talk about the game? Okay, so in terms of story stuff. Because people are definitely coming into this going, what should I leave? What do I do?

Yeah, okay, in terms of story stuff, I'm going to talk about extremely broad strokes, no details, only vibes and narrative contrivance. OK. In terms of gameplay or quest stuff, I'm going to talk about the first two areas and maybe a bit of the second area's proto relic quest.

Okay, so no spoilers, just vibes and early stuff. Yeah. Okay. So when you start the demo, it'll show you the, it shows you like the, like what happened last time kind of thing of like the gang escaping Midgar and like the the the the whispers Going all crazy and shit, and it's like a news report, right? and then it leads into the Nebelheim flashback and So when you play that in the demo and you do the Nebelheim flashback And then it stops at the end of the demo and then you play the full game and it starts the same cutscene again

Right, it's like that's it's the you know the news. It's the exact same one don't Skip that cutscene because you saw it before. Oh, yeah, okay Yeah, because the end of that cutscene doesn't dovetail nicely into the Nebelheim flashback Of course not it would it would have to end with them crawling down into the fucking It to leave in midgar. It leads to something very different. Yeah, okay, um I would have been I would have been very weirded out if the game teleported us to calm you got you got a yeah I mean it still does

um It'll lead into something very different and then um And then after that the flashback will start and then you'll be in calm and you'll you'll do that stuff There were people in my chat. They're like Oh, I already saw this, this, this cut scene. I'm going to skip it. And then they ended like fucking the ending up in the Yakuza seven hobo dumpster camp,

essentially. Okay. Right. Like some people like there was a Yakuza seven meme about like skipping the cut scene where you confront our car and then the next scene is you waking up in the garbage. That's pretty good. Right. Okay.

It's kind of like that. So don't do that. In fact, if you can, the pacing is way better if you just didn't play the demo at all. Yeah, okay. But you should play the demo. You know what? Because clear data on the demo gives you materia.

I will say, I mean, for sure, the, yeah, I was gonna go through it again no matter what like that felt also pacing wise like if I want to kind of have that experience going through this in the way I remember you'd want to go through it with you know the the the flashback into the rest of it so the new thing I did catch though which is it it might, it might be nothing, but it is kind of funny. Like now on PS5, when you go to boot up a game, you'll see the like last quest or last thing you did. Or if you didn't do anything yet, it'll have like the initial first one.

And so the first titular kind of quest thing already implied something So the first titular kind of quest thing already implied something before I even booted the game up. And I was like, OK, I might just be reading. But either way, it would be funny if like the game itself has a preemptive like telling you what's up moment before you even press fucking start. The game gets into weird shit right. Oh, right away, right away. OK. So do you remember how in remake

there was a long portion of you playing remake not you specifically like the Royal U and this is assumptions on people's feelings right where you're like wow that that time whisper shit that was that's weird oh well back to ff7 as I know it. Yes And then as you went further and further and further it started to just You know diverge a little bit That is not how this games vibes are okay The same basic structure progression and dots on the map are the case, but it makes a very concerted effort almost to the point of having a character look at the camera and

say things are different now. Oh yeah, I mean even the demo's like little opening video went and now who knows? You know? Like, this is what happened and now... BLEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR Really? We're gonna do this now? Okay Things that I was expecting to occur in the next game Okay, gotcha like right away And then they they have a fun little time and play with it while simultaneously Going along the same basic beats like I mean you go see Chocobo Billy and you're like I got to get past the

the snake in the swamp because you know It does it does it would stand to reason that this would echo the vibrations of The rebuilds where you start with a little bit and then you vibrate a little bit more and then you don't even recognize where you end up, you know. Yeah. So then you get to calm and you get to explore calm. And so in FF7 Remake, there was this like feeling of like, wow, I can't believe I remember when Wall Market was was two screens or three screens,

if you count Cornio's Mansion, right? And now it's this big sprawling metropolis, right? But it's still like relatively muted in size. We're now at a different thing where you're like calm was one screen in FF seven. And now it is a city larger and more complex than Rabinaster from FF twelve. OK, I don't even have the reference. Enormous, but it's it's it's larger and more complex than like. Literally every single location in Final Fantasy 16. OK. Yeah, it's it's huge. than like literally every single location in Final Fantasy 16. Okay. Yeah.

It's huge. It has a bunch of side quests. It has hundreds and hundreds of NPCs. It has every type of shop. It has chests hidden around. And most importantly, your party will wander around and you can talk to them and you can hold down a button to see how much they like you.

Because the entire fucking game is a dating simulator all the way up to the gold saucer. Wow. I was waiting for you to say it has queen's blood. Oh no, that's, I'm saving that. We're gonna save that. All right. So you walk up to red 13 and he's like,

hey man, am I doing a good job? And you're like, I love you red. This is a paraphrase. This is the conversation as it occurred in my head. And then right it goes, aw shucks. And then you get a goddamn message on the side. Like your relationship with red 13 has changed your relationship with red 13 has Deepened and you'll see a little pip go on next to his little is starts with a little sad face

But then oh maybe the smiley face now And that is every time you and the party split up you can go chat with them And you're given a selection of answers as to what you want to pick like Tifa will ask you like Hey, you're over that shit from Nebelheim? And some of it's like really obscure. Is it a zero sum game? No. Everybody in my party thinks I'm the shit.

They all have little smiley faces. And the basic idea I believe is that when you get there, if you have one that is the highest, that'll be your date. But if you have ties, if you have one that is the highest, that'll be your date. But if you have ties, then you'd be able to choose. Okay. But I know that after you beat the cane, you can go back and you can finish up side quests

and then use those affection levels to go back to the Gold Saucer like chapter and redo it no matter what. Oh, okay, interesting. Side quests are also associated with every character. So every side quest that you do is like a Tifa side quest or a Barrett side quest or a Red side quest. And that's the character that you're gonna be talking

to the whole time. And if you succeed in the side quest, that's the character that's gonna like you more at the end of it. Okay. So one thing I'm curious about, I guess, that I forget if it was in the trailer or not, because admittedly I was also kind of like,

preemptively deleting. That trailer was a flashbang. Yeah, I was preemptively brain deletingdeleting as it was going. Um, have you seen, have you done the, um, fucking invasion mini-game, uh, thing yet where you send the defenders down to the sh... Are you talking about motherfucking Condor Tower? To the, yeah, yeah, yeah, with the Shinra invaders coming up. All right, so, Woolly, heads up.

Condor Tower is Intergrates main mini game. It is super, super intense over. Oh, that's where it is. Okay, which makes sense because that's where you write it to you. Yeah. But also when you get to the June on section of the game. You one of your one of the, the, so each, each region has its own, uh, unique batch of side quests called proto relic quests.

Um, so the one in the June on section is, Hey, you need to go play Condor Tower. And, uh, it is a fully realized amazing Condor Tower, which transforms the gang into their little chibi polygon Popeyeselves. Okay. And they get Isakide into Condor Tower and you gotta play four games of Condor Tower. And let me tell you, those last two games of Condor Tower are hard as fuck.

Okay. So yeah, okay. They represented a wildly disproportionate amount of my last stream. Hmm. Just. So the, yeah, the Shibid version of the characters represented a wildly disproportionate amount of my last stream. Just so that, yeah, the shebeed version of the characters from the trailer. That's what that's what that was. Yeah. It's in Condor Tower.

Okay. Perfect. Um, and there's one in, um, there's one in the, so there's the grasslands and there's June on, and I don't know what the remainder of the areas are, but each area is going to have like a protorelic quest in their own basic map. The first proto-relic quest has to do with characters from Remake that have incredible music. And so they're all like very different.

They're like the big bespoke side quest of the area. But then you're in calm before you get to that and you get to Queensblood. And Queensblood is the card game of Final Fantasy 7 rebirth and it is just straight up better than triple triad. Oh Let's go It is yes, it is just yes It is just better than triple. Oh fuck. Yeah. Hell yeah, it looks pretty interesting

Okay, slightly more complex than triple triad, Oh, fuck yeah. Hell yeah, it looks pretty interesting. It is slightly more complex than triple triad, but it's very easy to understand. We are making up for goddamn tetramaster. Hell yeah. It is excellent. There is a game spanning quest line about becoming the world's best Queensblood player. Sick. That has a narrative to it.

Sick. I don't mean it's like, hey, I love Queensblood, and then it's like, oh, you should become the best. No, I mean, I played enough fucking Queensblood that I started getting fucking flashbacks and cutscenes and shit. Okay.

Is there a challenge NPC to Queensblood button that you can press? Okay. No, each area has dedicated Queensblood players. Fine. So Calm has three. And then you do a side quest there and there's a fourth and a fifth Queensblood player.

Okay. And you earn cards every time you beat somebody and you go to the shop and you buy booster packs, and if you get every card in a region, or like a sub region, you can go into the Edit Deck menu and go, I have enough cards, give me a pre-made deck that the devs made. So the devs have a generalized deck you start with,

and then you get all the cards in Calm and that gives you an Empower deck and then you go to Junon and you beat everyone there and then you have enough cards to do a Destroy deck. It doesn't use all the cards, it doesn't use all the best cards, it's not the best pre-built deck. But it lets you play. But if you don't know how to build a fucking deck like I don't, you can use that as a basis and go, I would like the destroy deck, but I'll replace this with the mindflayer card or I'll use the ally deck

and I'll replace this guy with fetch Hoka Boat. I will say there is something nice to this psychological effect of knowing that there is a triple triad button or a tetromaster button because it implies a commitment to this game. That's the span of the entire thing, right? So I understand why they were able to do that because triple triads rules are really simple. Queensblood is significantly more involved.

And as a result, the players that you play in Queensblood have like appreciable styles per character in the way that they like to play. Interesting. And the cards they like to use. Is it like right off the bat, like, oh, this is ready for the app store? Yes.

Yeah, okay. Absolutely, absolutely. Six, six, six. And we are going to be complaining about how Queen's Blood is trapped inside FF7 Rebirth. Until it's four's for many years. Find if find the new game to ransom that's you're doing so because we love it that much as opposed to fucking that dreck like stop complaining about Blitz

ball guys start complaining about Queensblood and FF 14. It's it's stellar, it's really fantastic. I played the original FF7 Remake on performance mode. I'm playing this one on graphics mode because boy, it is not, it doesn't have a good performance. Oh yeah, it doesn't have a good performance. Frame rate doesn't matter then. The frame rate is 60

Most of the time instead of all of the time it's most of the time and you are going from 4k to like Christ I don't know like 1100 like it becomes so Blurry and uglier looking Like it is a blurry and ugly or looking like it is a massive massive step down. Okay. Well admittedly, so wait, you're playing on Wait, no, what am I talking about? There's no 5 game. There's no P. There's no PC till way later. It's a PS5 game or a PS5 game. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, right. All right, I'll see how that looks. I just, I definitely did performance

the whole way through on remake. I kinda, you know what? Yeah, fuck it. Tell me that at some point you hop on a dolphin back and you get a fucking wave race ass minigame before you jump super high up instead of just the little like one jump moment. So I haven't done that yet. Okay.

But yes, that is there. Yeah. So probably too much. So like infinite wealth and FF seven rebirth have something in common, which is do you remember that RPGs used to always be filled to the fucking brim with extra shit and extra modes and extra little games, like games, if you would breathe in your lungs to do CPR, good. Yeah.

So, what? In why? Literally why. I have done stealth missions on Chocobos. I have played Fall Guys with Frogs. I have. I have- I saw that, I saw that in the video. Played for a shit ton of Fort Condor.

Man. There's a lot. And there always has been a lot. But it's just taking it even further now. I played the piano. I've done memory games with summon shrines and so on and so forth. Even the even like around the map, there's like little battle challenges. The battle

challenges aren't fight this dude. They're like, learn how to fight this dude. So maybe it'll be like trigger the enemy to do a deadly attack and then dodge out of the way or Pressure them and use the stagger system or make sure that none of the enemies use their poison move and you know shit like that The game is also like Really so I okay, so Pray face. I'm somebody who plays video games as a living so So I play a lot of video games, right? On normal, the game is like perfectly balanced.

Like perfect. Fodder out in the world is trash. Many bosses give me a real fight. And the three boss fights that I've done, I have finished with almost my entire party dead and one person in the red. On all three of them. Wow, interesting. Like, scraping my corpse off the ground to get one final hit in and managing.

Okay. Huh. at one final hit in and managing. Okay. I feel like just from my experience with it, like there's a huge difference between cloud running around solo versus cloud plus one single other person. And the moment you have one other person at all, everything becomes insanely more manageable. So they pick it up, they throw more at you as a result.

Remake, you spent like most of remake with a two-person party. And here, not only do you have a three-person party, but switching between party members takes less than one second. So you set up presets. So it's cloud and then my preset would be like red and Tifa and then they bear it in Arith

and then like red and bear it. And then when you switch. You're not PHSing. No. Oh. So I don't know why they didn't show this off clearly. Oh. But it's really important.

This is one of the most important minor features I have ever seen in an RPG ever. The whole party is with you the whole time. So I have if I have Cloud, Red and Tifa and we're fighting Barrett and Aerith are still there and they're still fighting. They're just doing very little damage and I can't control them. Whoa.

You're just picking three to control but they're all to get, whoa, that is weird. Okay, this means I currently have a party of five, Cloud, Barrett, Tifa, Red, and Aerith, right? That means by the end of the game, I will be wandering around the field with Cloud, Barrett, Tifa, Red, Aerith, Yuffie, Vincent, Kate, and Sid.

Mm-hmm. That is nice and capable. All together, and you just control the three you want. And they will all be there. That's crazy When you're riding around on your chocobo or riding around the whole gang is right there with you the whole time They're there. Definitely, you know all those moments of like hey who you're rolling with who you're gonna pick everyone so When you hit X to get the command list

Hmm you just hit L1 or R1 and it switches who's in the your preset party layout So when you hit X to get the command list, you just hit L1 or R1 and it switches who's in your preset party layout. And so what happened? Like when you switch, like my team number one is Cloud, Red and Tifa. And team number two is Cloud, Arith and Barrett, right? When I click X and hit R1

and you see the little party list change, the only difference is that when I'm running, Red and Tifa slow down a little bit and Barrett and Aerith pick up a little bit so that they're the ones right behind me. Interesting choice, okay. It kicks ass, it's awesome. So I guess no more like Barrett being salty that you didn't put him in the party type moments or things like that.

No, because he's there. He's there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Cool. That's great. And you still get sections. Like there's a very early section in which they're like, we have a bespoke area, so we're gonna split the party and mandate these two parties because the boss fight is gonna be built for these two. Yes, right, right, right, right. And the limit break interactions and double teams. This is like the most complicated part of the way.

Yeah, nice. Okay, so I didn't understand this for a long time. So hopefully I will be able to explain to people how this actually works. Okay. So you have your weapon and your weapon has a dedicated skill on it. This was like in Remake, right?

Your weapon's dedicated skill, you have to use it a couple of times or fulfill some condition in order to learn it permanently without having to use the weapon. You remember that in Remake taking like four or five hours per weapon? I don't remember. It took forever. Okay. Here you can get it by the end of a single fight. Okay. Like, like you are meant to keep all of it forever. Like have the whole list. Also, when you have enemy skill and go to abilities,

all the enemy skills are just listed in a row. Like cloud ability list is so long. Are you still going into the weapon sub menu and like leveling out each individual one? No, because that's been moved to something called folios, which is a plus three attack, plus 10% ATB gain, or what's called a synergy skill or a synergy ability.

And this is the game's big, complex new system. The big thing that looks like the sphere grid now kind of thing. Yeah, that replaces it. Okay, okay. Synergy skills are free. You can just use them. Synergy skills are free. You can just use them. Instead of holding L1 and using like Braver,

you hold R1 and you get like a team attack with like Red or Tifa or whatever. Yeah, that was the Sephiroth one in the demo. Yeah, they're free. They're stuff like counter ranged attacks or a perfect guard. Like Aerith has one with Barrett, where Barrett shows up and guards both of them.

Right, or Red has one with Cloud, where if you hold a block and then hit Cloud's button, then Cloud throws you at the enemy, but you're blocking during it. Okay. Fastball special. So they're free. Then comes Sy comes synergy abilities.

And synergy abilities are a step between the commands and limit breaks. They're in between. So you can't use them in most fights because most fights don't last long enough. So the way that a synergy ability works is actually really simple, but it took me a second to figure it out

because the iconography is a little confusing. You go into synergy ability and it'll show how many ATB bars you need to have used since the fight started to use it. Oh, that's the requirement. So okay, every time you use an ATB bar with an ability, it'll give you a little pip. Yeah, yeah. And you cash those pips out for synergy abilities. Okay. So, for example, there is a move that Cloud and Tifa have. You know, I'll use the Barrett one. There's a Barrett and Tifa move called Avalanche 1-2

in which Barrett grabs Tifa and Uses her as like a fucking blunt object to hit enemies with okay Okay It uses three pips of ATB, but what that means is Barrett has to have used three three moves and Tifa has to have used three moves and three moves and Tifa has to have used three moves. And because ATP doesn't build for shit when you're only controlling one character, synergy abilities require you to do a bunch of shit with

Barrett, switch over to Tifa, do a bunch of shit with Tifa. Okay, so in the demo you get introduced to the Sephiroth, the cloud one, right, for the end of that little sequence. Yeah, but they introduced that after you've been fighting for so long that you've built up the PIPs regardless. And it's pretty much the last fight of that devil. Yeah.

So what ends up happening is that you have to learn synergy abilities in your menu. And every possible pairing has one. And some pairings have multiple. Like I have two for Cloud and Tifa. And they're not better or worse. They do different things. So they're all like micro limit breaks

in terms of damage, right? Like you hit the enemy a bunch. But some give you unlimited MP for a little while. Yes, right. That was the last time. Some give you a limit break enhancement, which means clouds cross slash turns into Klim hazard. Okay, some some give you some break the ATB meter

into instead of being two bars, it's three. Okay. And so on and so forth. So basically if you're fighting an enemy for long enough and you have used three actions on one character, switch to a different one for a little while so that you can use a synergy ability because they're super powerful. And then once you do, you gotta do the three and three again. Yeah. Okay. Except every time you use any specific one, that specific one will require more for the next one.

So if you wanna use a bunch of them, you would do here's red and here's red and cloud. Now I'm gonna focus on red and Barrett. That I'm gonna focus on Barrett. In that fight. Yeah. In that specific fight, yeah, okay. Interesting. It's great.

And they're all cool. They're all cool interactions that you would expect. And that way it's built to balance around if you're having a long boss fight, you're going to build up to these as opposed to if you're switching characters. Because ATB bars for your friends, you're going to build up to these as opposed to in the middle of the fight. If you're switching characters. And switching around. Because ATB bars for your friends builds like shit.

It's only the player character in control that builds ATB a lot with basic attacks. Okay. But these things, like the amount of different like cool ideas and interactions with this cast in terms of what you can do, it is the fantasy of like fucking throwing like Thor's fucking hammer at Cap's shield.

Like just like team up attacks. I said it, like the Chrono Trigger double attacks all the way. So a couple examples. Regular synergy skill is Barrett shoots it cloud and then cloud baseball bats the bullets into nearby enemies. Yeah, of course. Fucking red 13 and Barrett use their defenses

to become totally invulnerable. My personal favorite is Tifa and Aerith. Aerith throws down a white mage bubble and Tifa uses the inside of the dome to bounce off and do meteor rain. Sick. OK, that's cool. I'm hoping for a catchy red 13 animal pyramid of nonsense, of power. I don't know, but in the trailer,

the one that Cloud has with Kate Sith, by the way, I'm gonna call him Kate Sith because the English version actually still calls him Kate Sith. By the way, I'm calm. I'm gonna calm Kate Sith because the English version actually still calls him Kate. So Is cloud jumps on the moogle's back and gives the moogle his sword And the robot starts swinging the fucking buster sword around nice. Okay, okay They all have them with everybody and they all have multiple with everybody and they're all fucking cool as shit The game so goddamn good nice and

Yeah, and you definitely know you like you got a you got a jump around the cast to get all that going and that's also There's fights that are like Like like red can't fight aerial opponents. Like he is, he is like, you know how cloud has the advent children shit now? Yeah. Okay. Red doesn't. Cause I was going to say like, um, before it was like, oh,

aerial shit, switch to Barrett. And that's what Barrett's good for. You know, yeah. Ranged. Oh, well, what's fun is because cloud and Tifa can attack aerial opponents now Arith and Barrett have lost their ranged damage tax Like they were the only people who could fight aerial opponents So they were a little weaker offensively than the others also now. They're just as a result. They are now

Okay, Barrett is super fucking strong. Barrett is incredible. What else they're throwing material. So I remember being like, well, what are they going to give us for materia because we already got all the regular materia in FF7 remake? Like we got fire, we got ice. We got this, we got that, right? Shit, shit beyond Midgar.

And so the solution to that is to give you weird new types of materia that I've- that you would never have thought of that are great. So one of the first weird materias you get is Fire and Ice. It's one slot, but it gives you the full list of Fire and Blizzard spells. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh wow, okay. You two, okay, just combinations for better access to it. They give you the ability to get a purple one, which is auto unique ability,

which is you give it to Barrett, he'll do overload, you give it to Cloud, he'll do Punisher mode, you give it to Red, he'll use his like, vengeance stuff. You give it to Tifa he'll do Punisher mode. You give it to Red, he'll use his like, Vengeance stuff. You give it to Tifa, and not only will she, you know Tifa's mechanic and remake, it was that her triangle did stagger damage, and made the damage multiplier go up.

Okay. You're saying, well, hold on, you're saying, now when you give the CPU the ability to go with that. Yeah, you'll give the CPU the ability to use the triangle. Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So in Remake, Tifa was a boss killer because she, you'd stagger somebody and they start up 160% damage. But if Tifa hit them with her triangle moves, it could go up to like 200%.

But you had to use her install called unbridled strength to use her triangle abilities back to back to back. Now if she has auto unique ability on, she is the only character that will cash in her ATB bar automatically for unbridled strength, so she will build her install automatically. Oh nice. And when a boss gets staggered, the fucking character will wait until they are staggered to cash out their damage multiplier moves. Nice.

Okay. So even if Tifa's completely out of your control the whole time. She's still doing it properly. You will, the boss will stagger and she will run up and immediately kick that damage multiplier to 200%. Sick. Okay. Huh.

Oh, that reminds me. There was one of the synergy abilities that I forgot which one it was The synergy of the last synergy ability is use it on an enemy that staggered and it increases the length of the stagger bar So they stay staggered for the like you know how you lose time during an animation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah gives you all that time Just melt. Yeah, okay That's pretty good Also, the music is absolutely a plus incredible amazing amazing music You remember do we can yes, okay? There's more of that. Let's go there

I know there there's there's do recompense, but there's more of that exact style of track Okay next to do recompense. Perfect, perfect. Yeah, man. The combat system was already so fucking phenomenal the first time around. Like, yeah, these little tweaks and such are just like, that sounds like quality of life, but then the entire ability to like add the double text to it. It's it's Wonderful. So there's one gigantic flaw from remake that is gone now, which I'm really happy about it I don't know if this was your experience when I was playing remake

I would save my limit breaks because I would want to kill that last 10% and what would happen is I would get there and I would hit the limit break and the boss would fucking phase change and the fucking damage wouldn't go through because the speed you got your limit breaks at would happen to coincide with phase changes. Okay, I don't think that ever happened to me, but it's been a good one. I blew like half of my limit breaks in remake

on enemies that were technically invincible. Because the first hit of the limit break knocked them into invincibility. And they're doing the whole set. That doesn't happen anymore. Okay. Well, it might, I guess, but it didn't happen to me. The damage is real.

Yeah. There is one complaint, and it's really funny, because the music is so stellar. If this, if the music wasn't like A plus, one of the best soundtracks I've heard, this would be a problem. The audio mixing in most of the games cut scenes is so bad.

Voices versus backgrounds? Yeah, I was doing a quest, I was doing the first games, sorry, I was doing the first prot proto the sorry I was doing the first proto relic in the first area and the music was so loud I could not hear the characters talking. Geez, OK, like it is it is hilarious how loud it is. It's not a particular games like important. Yeah. Marquis cutscenes. That's not a factor But whoever did the whoever did the audio mixing on the side content cutscenes

Fat fingered the knob or something because it is hilarious Which means though because it's inconsistent you can't just bring it all down. No you can't. Ah that sucks No, you're just gonna have to you're gonna be talking to characters in the side quest and you're gonna just be mentally going I can't hear you over this incredible music Fucking spider-verse shit. Oh What spider-verse like that? What the the original release of spider-se 2 had the huge audio mixing problem. Oh, that's right. It did. Yeah.

And then they had to they had to tell people to ask the theater to go and mix it down. Oh, that's like that's before they played it. Yeah. Um, yeah. No, games incredible. It's also it feels like a much more natural stretching out of the area. Like so, FF7 remake, you had some parts where you're like, well, you guys are really just stretching this as far as the section will go. Huh? And with here, it's like the parts that are mainly stretches.

Like you remember that, that area of non-descript fueled in between Chocobo, Billy and the Midgar's alum. Well, now that's an open world section that you can play through. OK, that's what you mean. OK, because like in terms of like, because I'm again, I'm fully leaning into the idea of this one dumb little mini game will now become an hour of your life. Like I expect a solid two and a half spent on how to march in the in the parade. I know about that, but I know that that minigame is going to be

from what I've played so far and the amount of detail they've given to she like for Condor and the other like little side activities. Like that frog guys minigame is really hard and has its own set of controls. Like like the idea of basically taking every little minigame that used to occur and turning it into an entire progression sequence, you know, and yeah, there you go. There's your time filled.

OK, yeah, it's it's it's stellar. The there's a there's one. There's one thing that I'm a little confused by that I will only allude to. There's part of the game I'm shocked I haven't seen more of. I beat the whole first area and did a hundred percent and I did about 70% of the second one. And there is a distinct lack of something that I was expecting. But I guess I'll get to that later.

Okay. Okay, okay, cool. Good video game, thumbs up. I'm really happy to hear about the combat stuff, because yeah, like it was fucking, it was such a joy when it all clicked together in the original, like I'm like, this is, I couldn't ask for a better balance of, old system plus action-oriented shit that just feels awesome when you make it all work together and switching between the parties. Yeah, that's fucking great. Okay, cool, cool,

cool. I'm very eager to talk to you about this next week. You know what? Let's take a quick word from our sponsors. Oh, before that, if you want to look at my stupid show, it's a twitch.tv slash Pat stairs that's going to be infinite wealth and FF seven this week. Shocker. This week, podcast is sponsored by Express VPN. I love you Express VPN using the internet without Express VPN. It's like leaving your laptop unattended in a coffee shop At a table while you run to the bathroom. I see people do that and I'm like, what are you doing man?

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Okay All right, stuff's going down Couple of you fuck had were you thinking about playing a unicorn overlord on the fucking PC? Fucking don't do that You'll go to jail motherfucker So yeah, the big one Especially as we were just getting started of earlier this week Nintendo filed a lawsuit Tropic Hayes, LLC the the makers of Yuzu, the emulator for Switch.

And that then updated earlier today to a settlement was reached. Yuzu is gonna pay 2.4 million out to Nintendo on a mutually agreed upon settlement. Did they fucking have 22.4 million? I don't know, but either way, it seems that would be the end of Yuzu with whatever agreement they took. They basically had the lawsuit filed that said,

yeah, the Yuzu facilitates piracy on a colossal scale, taking the position. And yes, the even though there's been a history of emulation and emulate TERS being being legal because they don't feature the bios or any of the copyrighted material from the company per se, the Nintendo is taking it further with this suit to prove that emulation itself is unlawful. So there's been a history of, like, again, multiple cases in the past that have tried to argue that the emulator is in and of itself if it facilitates the ability to run the game, then that should be reason enough for it to be shut down. And courts have shut that down many times in the past with bleem

with connectix with acolyte and Sega and galube as well, they were able to Prove that like not just the emulator, but also like a hardware that runs you and not a Non-Nintendo or non-sega piece of hardware that can run the cartridge as well as is considered. Okay And yeah with this lawsuit if it had it gone through, the idea would be that they could prove it at an emulator level, that this is the concept of emulation itself is a problem, then admittedly that could lead to definitely a knock on effect that could be really bad for everything down the line with. So Citrus dead, too.

I don't know if you saw that. I did not. So so you know how you might want to play like SMT Apocalypse, SMT for Apocalypse, that incredible 3DS game that there's no real way to play right now because the 3DS store is shut down and all the copies are printed and. Oh, go go fuck yourself, I guess. Just don't play those games that Nintendo will consign to evaporation.

Just don't just don't play them. Yep. Shout outs to the exactly the annihilation of the entire eShop and everything on it. Fuck you. Yeah, it's it's so this is an interesting one because again, I was curious to see how this was going to shake out because essentially by Nintendo pulling this, they were looking to make a paradigm shift in the ruling that would then... Yeah, they wanted an outlaw emulation.

Exactly, to take it back a level. And a lot of their language that the attorney was using in the case was kind of talking about how, okay, so user itself doesn't actually have, again, your BIOS or doesn't actually have any of the material that... Proprietary intention. The proprietary material, exactly. But in its instructions, it tells the person where and how they can get them by sending them elsewhere and The ability to facilitating that in and of itself again should be considered a Something that the that should be considered as the same in effect and that you know

They should still be held responsible for the damages. So It's yeah, it's it's bringing this this whole thing back up again. And it's kind of interesting because I saw alongside this, there's like of all the cases of all the people that could argue about the concept of emulation being a threat and a damaging element to their, you know, to their business or so. Nintendo is the one that is like the absolute worst about digital preservation by a country mile. They're unique in that emulation is like they actively disable or limit the ability to acquire their old stuff and then when you go, can I emulate it?

If I want to play it and there's no other way to get it. The answer is don't play it. You are not allowed if you're in the wrong region or if it's again, like one generation past the timeframe, it's dead forever. Like you're not allowed to play Mother 3 in English. Like if they could basically stop you from doing so they would if if your eyeballs perceive that game in any shape or form that is a fucking tackle and a beat and a beat down

There's an interesting Yeah, the discussion that's come around because of this is, there was a video that popped up. What was the name of the channel? Lex Torius had a video that popped up that was called Piracy is Good Actually is the video. And it's pretty interesting because like it kind of goes down the history of how you know, going from the original anti-piracy ads that would brought up or brought up back in the day

and how like the one of the original anti-piracy ads actually then lost a case because it pirated music from an artist in the middle of the ad. And then, yeah, into the history of, you know, Star Force, Sekhiram, Danuvo, and all these different things that were used over the years where it's like, okay, you've gone from taking over just the, again, the kernel level control of someone's computer to the introduction of this DRM makes the game run worse, which now means the pirated version that people are going to get, it's not just even out of like trying to get the game

for free or whatever, it's literally because the version you sold me runs like shit and fucks up my computer in the process. You have to remember, this is a really important part of context that I don't think we actually go into enough. But when we talk about Nintendo, Nintendo is a Japanese company and Japan's general views on copyright and intellectual property are not the same as Canadian views. Definitely not. And not even similar to American views. I remember vividly a discussion was had about Capcom USA telling Capcom Japan, you idiots, you stupid motherfuckers, everyone is going

to find these Street Fighter cross Tekken characters on this disc. They're going to find out about them tomorrow. They're going to be mad. And the response from Capcom Japan was, why would anyone look on what's on the disc to forget? You can't do that. That's illegal. Why would anyone do that?

They can't do that. They would never. That's insane. Get out of here. What? Yeah. No, it is interesting because, yeah, one of the premises it kind of introduces is the idea that despite what the campaign and such would push at you, it's not piracy, especially in these instances, it's not theft, it is copyright infringement, right? It's, there's a difference between the subtraction of an object that is a physical thing you've taken from a place versus the digital multiplication. I saw, I want to say it was Chris Wolfhardt on Twitter. I believe it was, made an excellent post.

I want to credit to them, but maybe I'm wrong. But they were talking about Netflix shows being pulled from subscriptions. Netflix shows that had never been given physical releases ever. And they pointed out like, if buying something, Mm-hmm, and they point out like if Buying something If buying something doesn't mean you're owning it then piracy can't mean you're stealing it

You can't steal things you're not allowed Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Interesting. Like you can't have it both ways. You can't simultaneously say. Bars, bars, bars.

You're only purchasing the right to a license. Right, right, right, right, right, right. Yep, yep, yep. But they also say that I stole it from you when I didn't. If we're gonna be anti-consumer, we're gonna be anti-consumer. Yeah. That's it.

So, no, so Lex Toreas kind of going through that has a summarized point, which is after, yeah, going through a lot of the different details. Devs deserve more money and to be supported. Piracy is not theft. Copyright laws kind of suck. DRM sucks more and I can get a better experience playing some games because of it. Piracy is the only way to preserve some games and the only way some people can play most of them. And while it doesn't conclusively hurt profits, fighting against it has certainly hurt consumers. And even if it didn't exist, and if it didn't exist, game devs would probably not be treated any better by companies because they'd find another scapegoat to blame. But because it does exist and it isn't going anywhere

anytime soon, people around the world have gotten to play amazing games that they otherwise couldn't. I remember. It's like, yeah. That is. I remember when Ubisoft started their incredibly aggressive, always online plans back on Assassin's Creed II. Do you remember that?

Ubisoft was like, every game on PC is going to be always online. And they were terrible. Like those versions of the games were terrible, because it would constantly connect to the server. And if the server failed, which it did all the time, which it would kick you to desktop, I think. And oh, it would kick you to the title screen, but it wouldn't save your game.

Okay. That was the kicker. Okay. And, uh, they did a bunch of interviews about it and the CEO at the time, I think it was Guillermo or whatever the fuck was like asked, like, so has this, what, what has this done? Like we can confirm that piracy of assassin screed games has gone down by over 90% since we've instituted these systems. And then the interviewer was like,

have sales gone up? And they just responded, we can go, the piracy has gone down by whatever percent they had. And it's like, yeah, no, you made the game way worse. People were probably, I remember people being excited for Assassin's Creed 2 on PC. And then being like, fuck, I'm not buying that piece of shit because it was a terrible version. Um,

Incredible. I was just reminded by fucking Dad S on a story that I myself heard years ago on the giant bomb cast myself heard years ago on the giant bombcast in which Square Enix would not send them codes for games on PC because they were running a website and the rep was like, what? They're a website. They're going to take our game and steal it and put it on the internet because they're not a magazine, you see. That is a, that would, I would assume that would be the dinosaurs that we usually refer to. That's crazy to be coming from Ubi.

No, that was a square in X. Oh, squeenix, okay, that was dinosaurs. Got it, oh, okay, sorry, sorry. Yeah, dinosaurs. I think you have to tell that story about the original FF7, the GameSpot could not get a review code for ff7 because They were a website Incredible

Beautiful, dude. It's like Yeah, the timing of this too as well this particular thing happening in this particular year where the where the ocean is Redder than ever where the blood is still fucking drying on the sand and the industry is particularly nutty because it's like... Piracy laid those people off, will he? That, like, in a time? Yeah, so like back in when I was playing NES in Grenada, and it was like, oh, did you go to the store

and like take that game off the shelf and put it in your pocket? You stole that game and ran out with it. And now they don't have that game off the shelf and put it in your pocket, you stole that game and ran out with it. And now they don't have that game anymore. They don't have that game anymore, it's gone, right? Now, it's infinitely way removed from that. And the idea of like, so anytime a dev, or anytime someone's working hard on something that people play, they deserve to be supported and not be exploited for that.

But like the idea that the same companies that are trying to tell you this shit and the same companies that are laying them off are the ones that are sending Pinkerton's to your fucking doorstep over this shit, is insane that it's happening simultaneously. And it's never made any sense. There's been some studies done on it.

And like you wanna talk like there's, you know, And it's never made any sense. There's been some studies done on it and the like You want to talk like there's you know, there's there's two views of I'm gonna go a little off script here or whatever There's two views of the law or justice or whatever There's long and short of it an ethical or moral basis for law and then there's a practical basis for law, right? like do you believe that? people murderers should be Given the death sentence or rehabilitated to go back into society, right? Which one is right for you is whether or not you view the practicality of rehabilitated person versus the justice blah blah blah blah, right? Sure when we talk about piracy is

it wrong capital W, wrong immoral evil to infringe upon the intellectual property in a way that you're not supposed to? Maybe, I don't think so, but I'm sure some people that wear suits think that. But more importantly, it has been shown time and time again that people who pirate also buy the most shit. The reason that they pirate is they need all of the shit and some shit they can't even get so they pirate it. Let's take me for an example. Let's take us for an example, but just me. Just me for legal reasons. When I was a young man, I may or may not

have made thousands of dollars off of selling copies of FF9. I might have. And StarCraft, right? Later on, when I was a broke-ass college student, I might have used a SWAT Magic disc to play a shit ton of fighting games that I wouldn't have been able to because they were from Japan. They were from fucking, uh, from play- like whatever, those fucking Naruto games and the Naruto Matai Zen or whatever.

Pat podcasting live from the jail. It's like an 11-year-old child in a story. Pat podcasting live from the jail. It's like an 11 year old child story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And as a result, I got to play a ton of games. And as a result, I became an adult who's totally obsessed with video games and now spends, I don't even want to fucking think about how much money on video games a year. So I mean, from what I was from what I was from seeing a lot about the studies that go on this, it seems like there's a lot of cherry picking that can go back and forth on the data with it and if they want it to you can skew it

to make it look either way but it's currently inconclusive. But the idea like you said upfront is that the moment you're looking at whatever the version of copying this game and handing it to your friend was back in the day, it's become so much more of an issue when there are entire regions of fans of a thing that literally are not allowed in that country to ever play this or see this. They're not allowed to see it translated to them. Do you live in Brazil? They're- Stop listening to us right this, they're not allowed to see it translated to them. Do you live in Brazil? They're stopped listening to us right now. You're not allowed.

There is like a complete and utter wall up from you ever accessing that. Do you speak Arabic or Russian or... It just doesn't even apply, right? You're not fucking... And then, again, the preservation aspect of it, right? Of all the companies that can talk about this or could complain about it.

Nintendo, the one that literally presses the button to kill the shop and destroy an entire library of eShop games overnight with the thought, and not even with the thought of like, oh, we're gonna sell them to you later on our new, it's like, no, no, no, it's not even, we're gonna sell them to you later, our new, it's like, no, no, no, it's not even, we're gonna sell them to you later, which is what happens on other platforms necessarily.

It's, fuck you, it's gone. We're not keeping these servers up too bad. The idea of the preservation being so unimportant to them, it's like, yeah, there's a million other factors that come into play when you're talking about how piracy in Nintendo works, and the importance of having a fucking emulator that can still run a game

that you will never be able to see or hear about ever again. I think I had a real good laugh for myself and the way things have gone because in 2005, the only place I could find a copy of Yakuza 1 was my local micro play. So I might have borrowed it for longer than I should have. And now, and then I had to go purchase it on eBay,

which did not give any money to Sega. It went money to a third party because they didn't print enough. And then I immediately lost that legit copy of Yakuza 1 immediately. So I had to go back to my other copy. And that got me so invested in that series that now I'm sitting around and I'm getting an email when a Yakuza game comes

out going, would you like some money to tell people about this game I Would never have gotten that far without a CD burner and a little moral flexibility when I was 2005 what I'm 19 whatever Yeah, no look again, it's we've covered it many a time But I think it's it's just suffice to fucking say and then bears repeating it's like if there's an indie dev That is working on a project that it is You know in need of support for that because they made something good that you are playing and spending your time with you You support that there are clear cut cases where people who are making things like that like absolutely deserve a you know encouraging purchase and please make more of this thing. This is good, I want to support your career,

your ability to make more of this, et cetera. Of all the people that can make an argument about this, Nintendo is the furthest, I think, on the list from anyone who can open their mouth about it. I think the best example we can use for Nintendo is the Xenoblade situation becoming so stupid and so dire that it singlehandedly, there were refusal to send, on a regional console, the Wii, there were refusal to allow sale of a game that had been fully translated into fucking English in North America, like caused Wii piracy to fucking

explode. There were every every game website ran at some point. Here's how you hack your fucking Wii to play Xenoblade. And that pushed that series to end up releasing in North America In and I got two sequels I mean just yeah, it's it's um no that it's a fucking it's what Gabe said right? Piracy is a service problem. It's a service problem If you're offering people something that is worse as a service they're going to opt for the

better service over here. And if you can circumvent that by offering a better service, they'll continue to go with you. Like for fuck's sake dude, games on Steam cost the same they cost anywhere else. But it is so much faster and easier for me to play a game on Steam than go pirate it. Why would I ever go fucking some shady website that's gonna give my computer fucking dick disease Unless I use ExpressVPN So that you can hear the cool music that pops up when you open the crack though. It is really good But like yeah, no like hey, oh

Should I should I go to some sketchy website and pirate this thing and open my computer up to vulnerability and have to tweak it and Do the CD keep bullshit or can I just pay $20 to click one button on steam and now I'm playing it? Sure, you avoided DeNuvo But now your PC is just as busy and CPUs filled up because you're mining fucking Bitcoin Yeah, you know it's exact. That's exactly it It is, he completely nailed it on the head there, which is why Steve fucking worked, you know? Why are like pirate CD, key gen music so like shit good? It's so, I think, I think it's like, it's like,

basically it's like the only time, it seems like the only time they really communicate with the public is when they make these key gents and they make a cool fucking ASCII art text file or edfo file and so they want to be like if you're only going to hear from us whenever something big drops we want to leave an impression. Check out this sick ass music, look at this cool logo. We had some artists and chiptunes people make it. And here's your game, don't forget about us.

Never forget. And then also we have now fucking turned your computer into a giant Trojan fucking bloated ass device and we have secured all of your- I mean shit man, I mean we're talking about Nintendo. I'm of the opinion that if Nintendo could get away with it your fucking Nintendo switch would explode in your hands the day the switch too came out One could argue that a

ton of Dreamcast Franchises and the love they have today Would know where be anywhere close to what it would have been If the Dreamcast didn't have the absolute worst Disprotection a console ever did I Would like you to explain that to people who don't know because it makes me laugh every time the Dreamcast had a system where the games were burnt to a proprietary a system where the games were burnt to a proprietary GDROM and what that was is a way of burning the data. So when you burn a CD, you burn from the middle outwards. What the Dreamcast

did, people quickly discovered was they burned from the outside in. It's the same data. That's a genius. In the same order, it just reads it going the other way, but Because the Dreamcast also features a CD player and you play music and stuff It's got to be able to read from front to back as well as well as back to front So when you put the data in in the opposite way You can boot it and then it would play So the entire proprietary nature of it really didn't do much the moment you people figured

out how to tell the dream cast to read this front to back instead of back to front. You couldn't put the dream cast disc into your CD tray because your computer wouldn't know how to read it back to front. But once someone did and then told the Dreamcast to read it the right way, you could just burn a normal CD and pop it in and you're good to go. It was the most basic shit ever. I think you didn't have to do anything to the Dreamcast. No, no, no, no, you literally did.

That's the craziest part. There was nothing. There was no extra step. You didn't have to use a little plastic slide tool to drag the tray out. You didn't have to plug a thing into the back that would trick it. You just popped the CD in and it worked. You did, however, have to be worried

that the laser would die out a little faster because it was reading in an unintentional way. So you would get that noise and like with too much usage, the the lens would start to be less receptive. However, that was fixable by going in and cleaning the lens and tweaking the potentiometer, which then I've learned how to open up the dreamcast. Are you telling me? Hence the wooly Dreamcast fucking repair shop. The Dreamcast would be damaged by piracy, and it would bring down the life of its incredibly poorly made laser down from three years to two and a half,

possibly two and a half. Yes. Like, and yeah, they had to preface that. Like, yeah, no, it would damage the laser, but that laser is the worst. You've had every Dreamcast you've ever used die on you. Uh, I've had many Dreamcasts. I've had many, many, many Dreamcasts, because I'm never gonna be caught dead without an ability to play Third Strike. Fuck you.

I better have that ready to go at all times. Um, yeah. Fuck you, I better have that ready to go at all times. Yeah, so there were boot disks that initially were needed to boot up and then have the Dreamcast read the data in the correct order, but eventually auto boots became a thing and that was entirely circumvented. Only way to play Third Strike at home at the time. For quite a time, in fact.

Yep. Which is how I learned to feel comfortable on the Dreamcast controller I'm gonna leave that there. I'm just gonna just yeah, I'm gonna touch it today. All right. Well Anyways, yeah, Nintendo goes beyond stop pirating and just goes to stop playing pirating and just goes to stop playing. You know, I feel, you know what? Yeah, I'll be, you know what? I think I'm going to do something brave. Well, I think I'm going to be cynical.

Damn. I think Nintendo, one of the reasons they're specifically so anti piracy is that if you were able to play all the Nintendo games ever made, you would discover that they have been remaking 20 games over and over and over since the early 90s. Also, in addition, you could also take a look at the collections of Retro machines that have been put out like the classics where you can boot up an old Nintendo classic or a SNES classic or whatever the fuck officially and

Realize in many cases that the official software the official hardware has Often times an emulator on it that they downloaded themselves and used. Oh, I mean, it's always wildly hypocritical. There's always some shit where you're like, do you use the Game Boy emulator and then fucking try to obfuscate the fact that that's what was running? You used actual Neo Geo ROMs

when you sold Last Blade 2, the PC edition, to Anna and various other SNK games on fucking PC. What? You know? I wonder. There's actual like literally, anyway. The amount of times an LB later has been used officially. I remember when we were like, we have our own custom

emulator for Super Nintendo games, and then we played Mario RPG, Super Mario RPG on the Wii, and came away with the fucking realization that this is a really bad Super Nintendo emulator. Incredible. Like, it looks significantly worse than an emulator you could just grab in two seconds. You know, like, the idea of like... Yeah. Anyway, just the idea of like Yeah, anyway, just the idea of like

Fuck you outlaw this thing and then the next time we want to re-release this game. Oh, I guess I guess it's rules for thee, but not for me I guess we can't re-release it because I you know, I was hoping one of these Groups would figure this out for us and then we could sell it, but oh well anyways, I Want the switch to to come back and then fucking find Yuzu files in the switch to for fucking backwards compatibility for switch one games and They don't even change the names of the files. It just has the same yuzu logo and everything

There's a read me dot txt in there somewhere Yeah Eyes out for the Pinkerton's man. They might be knocking Anyways, all right Anyways, alright. Anyways, what else is going on? Hey, everyone appreciates... Everyone appreciates a little bit of shit getting fucked up every now and then. I do like that, but it depends. Yeah, you're... yeah.

Um, I mean talking about performance issues, uh, you, I know, have been excitedly waiting for rollback to hit Dragon Ball Fighters. Yeah. Well, good news. You know, I remember, I tried the beta and it couldn't get it to work. I couldn't get into one match. Good news.

Rollback for Dragon Ball Fighters is out. Yeah, here. Yeah, there are new features. There's new features. New features. Tell me about the new features. New features include the ability you remember how the game was three on three. Yeah. What if I told you you could make it 12 on 12? That's crazy, how? By trying to play a match and when the game freaks out when you try to connect online with somebody and it copies your character over and over and has them T-posing on the screen,

you thought you picked Krillin, turns out you picked 12 Krillins. Oh, that's amazing. Oh, that's incredible. Oh, that's incredible. The rollback has been completely fucking borked on the release version of the Dragon Ball Fighter's update, which is wild and weird and dumb because, okay, Samurai Showdown did a rollback beta and it was really bad,

but then the final version that came out worked and here it's now just backwards and you could go watch footage of people with like again T posing copies of characters fucking gojira level SSJ4 gojira having a multiple clone attack that gets copied so that all the copies are on screen anyways and you can't possibly tell like it just fills the screen with nonsense right salty bet looking nonsense And then an uzaru form comes in but because it fucks up that they scroll over to the right and you see a tee posing

Uzaru taking up the right half of the screen It is so bad. It's really rough It's in spectator mode. That's where all the crazy shit's happening. OK, yeah, I don't know how this happened that it got worse from the open beta to the release version. It's extra weird because like they've put out a bunch of games to roll back by now. Like the guilty gear and then the other guilty gear and the other guilty gear. Yeah, but the problem again, the reason why this one took so long is because even though it's Arxis, but it's not like, because it's the publisher that controls more of what's going on.

So it's not just going to Arxis and getting them to do the thing. It's like Bandai in particular has their way of doing it on their schedule with their people, and that's not the same as the Strive team, which is not the same as, you know, all the other projects they're working on. Right. It was all Bandai. That makes perfect sense. Yeah. Excuse me, because, you know, yeah, they like, ArcSys is also, you know, like that's P4 Arena got its own. And it seems like it's a publisher handled update to the game after development has ended. So there's, I saw the fucking Dylan Youssef of a bitch meme with Dragon Ball fighters and

Dems Fighting Heards with like the final update to this game breaking the fuck out of it. That's good. I like that. I like that. Team it up together. I, I, yeah, I mean look, this hopefully of course, you know, give it a week or two when they'll get on it. Hopefully. Um, but it's just weird to go from a more stable state to a fucked up one.

And also rollback, like reference experts are now like the people have traded numbers. They're like, like every, every studio in Japan, every, every dev in Japan now has someone on a roll of decks that can run in and do the good roll back for them. So Bandai doing this on their own taking this long and fucking it up is completely them just ignoring what the rest of the fighting game community has been doing. Shit sucks. I was so excited for roll Back in DBFZ and now, like, all of my time, every time I've

tried it, it just doesn't work. I don't know what the fuck happened. I can't get matches. I, again, I hope we got a quick fix around the way, but it took them this long, so I'm not crossing my fingers, or holding holding my breath I should say. But that's not the only reason why I might hold my breath or not hold my breath. Because if I want to smell the latest game sense then I'm going to need to start inhaling and you know should get your Game sense hooked up so that your sophisticated

AI sent release Can match the gameplay and Give you the smells of gunfire explosion. Have you seen anyone try this thing? I've Gershman and he's like, my whole fucking house smells like shit now. So Game Sense AI, which God, just the buzz term that is that word now, right? It is me thing. Game Shark AI, like fucking just every throw the word AI in there. It's gonna like that's what stupid investors are gonna lean heavily into there's a there's a peripheral that you put in your house and

It basically has fucking Vape oils in a dispenser that it has it's literally a high-powered vape machine and it detects audio from your game and it'll recognize What the audio is and then find an associated scent to spray into your house? So yes, the flavors that have been announced With the default package include gunfire explosions racing Storm and forest and then DLC DLC sense will include napalm, ocean, golf, golf course, and human exertion. Whatever the fuck that means.

I don't like that. Yeah, so why stop at napalm and human exertion? Why not go straight to Willy Pete and burning flesh? You know? It's particularly hilarious because yeah, so Gershman reviews it and does his whole bit and like there's a thing where they're like, hey, you might be worried about the fact that your house is gonna smell like shit after you spray it up with all this garbage. So here's a cleansing scent. Don't you worry, there's a neutralizer. There's an air neutralizer. And it'll make it as if once you're done,

your whole house is back to normal, even a little bit more fresh. And the neutralizer sprays out afterwards and it's the worst one. It's a cotton candy flavored vape oil. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, so it's been like probably my entire life. There's been some sort of like attempt to break into the smell market, whether it was scent stories that were like sold at the pharmacy, you know, and various other like, again, like smell based companies try to get into tech smell. And it's nobody, nobody wants to smell anything, man.

It's, it's so funny. It will never work. If I, if I tried this device, I would get so sick, I might like wretch until I passed out. Like this, this, all this, the scented oil thing gives me like migraines that make me barf because it's so intense and like this Thing would probably try and kill me The smell market needs to needs to fucking like they just they keep trying man Yeah, there's always that that thing you have with all kinds of perfumes and artificial...

As far as allergies go, I'll take this over peanuts. Sure. But the synthetic version of all of these things is going to be exactly that. It's the shit that they spray at you when you walk through the bay. You know that's the only person in retail I've ever raised my voice at ever. I threw that out there because I knew it would land. I was walking to get to the future shop and a lady when I walked up to me and said, would you like to try a new scent and then spritz me with Cologne before I could say anything. And I could immediately feel I was getting so sick.

And I just lost it. I'm like, you don't fucking do that to people. I'm gonna be sick all day now. And the problem is that her job description is to do that to people because that's what they decided is their way of hooking you in Yeah Well

I'm like there is someone had to take the fall and yeah, there you go There's like the gross like she ran away So I really bad because I clearly looked insane But then I felt less bad as I tried not to barf on the floor I mean look you it's you walked through the grocery store and someone said would you like a peanut and then shoved it in your mouth Yeah in your mouth. Yeah. Try our new thing and on the floor. I'm yelling try our new fucking barbecue flavored peanuts. Yeah, like what is the fuck you supposed to say? Um,

All right, anyway, dramatic much. It was just a legume. It was just shellfish like, bro, I have accidentally thought you enjoy shellfish straight in the mouth. OK, well, I know that this happened to you. And I know this happened to most people. I would go out for dinner with a group of friends and I had one guy and one girl. And they always said the same thing. They said, hey waiter, does this have seafood in it? We will both die if we eat seafood. No, no, no seafood at all. No, absolutely no seafood. Absolutely no seafood. And then it would show up and there'd be like fucking shrimp on top of it Or or are they'd be like I'm nervous. Can you take a bite and you take a bite?

You're like there's definitely fucking seafood in this thing I Lived with men That's yeah, yeah, yeah dude Like I feel so bad because at this point, like he goes out of his way every time you're out anywhere where he goes out of his way to be like, okay, I don't want to be an asshole.

I really need you to know I have these allergies. Can you please confirm, you know, that this is the case and this is okay? If not, I'll figure it out. Like just does the whole thing, has it laid out? And it comes back fucked up anyway. Oh, every time. And like at this point, it's just like, I feel he does.

And be ready. He doesn't even get upset. He just tanks it and goes, yeah, that's what I get for trying, you know, like it's just like, it's, I'll just go be sick and vomit for a while. I'll just be, you know, I went to my local tie place and to pick up like, you know, like quick pad tie on the way somewhere. Right? And I like I personally when I have pad tie, I want chicken pad tie. Right. So I'm eating the chicken pad tie and I look down and it's full of fucking shrimp. Like

they threw extra shrimp in there. Because they like me. And I'm like, well, I appreciate that except I could have died. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, exactly, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm honestly really like, I'm lucky that I'm just like, you know, I don't feel sick if I eat eggs, I just don't want them so I can like, like, prick them off of the things

whenever they come and ignore, you know, like literally this weekend when I was, I got like an avocado toast with the egg and I'm like, hey, can you not do literally this weekend when I got like an avocado toast with the egg and I'm like, hey, can you not do the egg? And they're like, yeah, sure. That's a preference. I don't think you're actually allergic. It's not like I'm not allergic to pickles, but I am going to take my whole sandwich apart and pull all the pickles out because I'm a baby.

Same thing, you know, there's a couple of foods like that. I'm just like, yeah, exactly. So fortunately, not the case, but it is, it is when someone takes you and goes, hey, I actually really want you to like, can you make sure please, you know, and to not have that little extra step of like, uh, yeah. Anyways, um, if, uh, you haven't been paying attention, the updates and, uh, strides that have been made in the bomb rush cyberpunk modding community Have now made it so that you can customize stages and characters entirely Oh, so someone has basically turned it into Sonic Heroes

and There is a wild ass mod So that you can do what this clip shows you, by Devil Art Miss X. But I don't like Sonic Heroes. Well, if you want to Sonic Heroes while you bomb rush cyber funk, you can do both as you jet set Sonic through that world and grind and run and flip and do all that.

It's literally all together. Super fucking sick. You know, I don't know how to describe this because this mod is obviously, I'm watching the video, will you send me? This is obviously very impressive, but I feel like I can see the engine about to explode. Yeah, yeah. No, the draw distance is not meant for you to be that high above the city, for sure. For sure.

Like, it works and it seems like it runs well, but like the game is like being held together with like tape and string. You know, and it's also a multiplayer build, so you see a second per layers grinding down on the level right next to Sonic in it. But it, yeah, they're pushing it to the max, but I'm sure someone's like working on it And yes, that is kind of the appeal though is the mod of your giant Sonic fucking fan game being Duct tape and string together on bomb rush Looks fucking sick and hey really aggressive it does it does

Meanwhile, what's happening over at Sonic Team? Well, according to an interview with the Sonic Frontiers devs, they were in a crisis, a state of crisis at one point, and they said the game's success was pivotal for the series. The quote is, if we fail here, there will be no chance. So, it's just, there's been a bunch of wild stories about like the make or break aspect of like Sonic Frontiers and everyone being like, we don't understand

what is happening with this franchise. We have to fix it. We have to fucking fix it. It was a desperate, desperate attempt. I don't understand any of this at all. The way Sonic Team has acted, I have taught, fuck it. Sonic Team's biggest mistake, despite being a competent team,

is that they absolutely fucking refuse to use any lessons from the last game in the next game iteration is not allowed Sonic and run and jump and fly whatever but every fucking game is completely different and It's always kind of like mediocre ideas implemented Okay, well work like fuck while trying to service two different fandoms of the new sonic and the old sonic and the new new sonic Yeah, yeah, and then they go. Oh, well, we don't know what to do with sonic What if we spent like a full development cycle on one game? Well, people like it. I don't understand. It's almost like we worked for an extra year on it and it was good

So that but more but more than just that time though it was like it was it was a culmination of all of those failures and not understanding why into a desperate pressure cooker moment of we cannot make a bad sonic game this time. It has to be good. Like it's dire. It's more dire than ever. I don't get it. I don't get it.

These are all adults and professionals who have been working on games for years. And every interview with Sonic Team sounds like people who just got there. Like people who just walked in the door that week and go, I don't know why people like Sonic games. What do they even want? I don't know why people like Sonic games what do they even want I don't fucking know and it's like there's like 50 fucking Sonic games there's a list of the ones people like

make a couple of though I don't I fortunately frontiers includes that list and you know crisis was averted but just them coming out to basically talk about how hard the whole team was sweating while they were doing it is just like, man, it doesn't have to be this way, guys. It's like Christian Whitehead and his guys were able to make the best Sonic game since the old ones, and they don't even work at Sega. Sonic games since the old ones and they don't even work at Sega Well, um, we can now focus on the the movie franchise, so that's sure. Yeah, it's all good Speaking of mascots While while while they were able to

handle the crisis It seems thatys for Bob will probably not be making any more mascot, Spyro or Crash. However, they managed to go independent and potentially dodge further annihilation that is going through the industry right now. However, alongside that announcement has been the exploring a possibility of a partnership with a new studio, with the new studio and Microsoft bit. So hey, they get their independence, they get to leave.

I fucking can't dude. Like it's like crawling out of the quicksand only to put a gun in your mouth In the same announcement Why are they leaving Jeff? Why are they leaving? Yeah? Yeah, um, hey, hey, hey There from so yeah, it's it's whatever you can do to survive. I suppose and that was the That was the proposal. And then I guess with that comes,

yeah, well, no more than working on the titles that everybody loves them for, right? I guess so. Have they been entirely behind all the Crash um, crash and Spyro stuff? I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So, um, so that's what they're doing. And then at the same time, Saber interactive, who were, uh, working on Kotor remake, are leaving Embracer and, uh, basically salvaging themselves in a $500 million deal to become privately owned. And it seems as if them buying themselves back out of the Embracer crash is going to be their way of salvaging the damage. but they continue to they they say that they're planning to continue developing the Kotor remake. So their ability to work with that doesn't seem to be tied to the ownership. Seems like whatever relationship they have with Star Wars is independent.

And it would make sense that for a studio that is coming this long of a way to then hang that up would absolutely fuck them over harder than anything else Embracer would do. So yeah, they say that they're continuing to work on it. I have never believed that a game will come out less. No, I have. Wait, this is the only game I've ever believed will come out less than this Kodaro remake is Virtual fighter online. I remember watching, I've described it. I watched the trailer for virtual fighter online and went, that's not real.

That's not coming out. And sure enough, it didn't. Shen Shen move online. Think it is in a situation though, where again, like it feels like this is all they've got or it's or it's cooked, right? If they're not tied to, or rather if they're allowed to continue working on it or whatever and again Star Wars is not, doesn't give a fuck whether they're with Embracer or with anyone else or such and let's them continue and such then. Maybe they might. Who knows?

I don't imagine they would announce that otherwise, but at the very least, they have resisted the embrace. The deathbed companions embrace has been slipped for now, for now. It says a lot that Embracer. Embracer is like the ultimate example of like predatory economics in that they have just bought all those companies just to destroy them. And now those companies are having to buy themselves out of their impending doom. Well, they wave their fucking dick around while the ink was not yet dry on

their deal with Saudi Arabia. And then when that fell through, they fucked over the entire industry. You know what's something I've been hearing a lot about in every various business thing of like, how about you get your deal with the Saudis on paper before you make any massive changes? But if we don't put our makeup on before the ball, we won't be pretty enough. I've...

Yeah. I've Yeah Uh-huh sure thing sure thing, but It's you know where I virtual fighter is right in fact It's right back here behind the it's it's out back behind the farm. But it's online and eSports focused. We got we got Virtua Fighter right here out in the backyard behind the farm. Come with me. Has new characters with the modern art style and character artists.

Can you see it, Pat? It's right there, right in between those trees in the distance. Do you see it? Look behind you. It's right. It is a reboot of the Virtua Fighter series in development by current Virtua Fighter staff and focuses on major platforms the cross-play and rollback right for sure thing for their sure thing buddy Absolutely right over there

If you look real close you can see it. Oh Wow, it's got everybody in it It's got all the returning characters and then there's a couple of new ones too Dude every virtual fighter game has all returning Tell that to fucking sumo man. He's in there He's in five when did they ditch him was it or there was four that they ditched him right because they only gone for four Because they couldn't figure out how to fucking Get the grabs working

Yeah, apparently the reason why 3tb was the re-release in the arcade Bro 3tb is the fucking virtual fighter game the worst shit ever Yeah, yes in it wealth one So that's because they did all the others and they eventually had to get around to that one the least liked After all this time Anyway Dude, I hate 3t be so much dude. Oh Oh, I hate it asymmetrical stages. What a brilliant fucking idea

Anyway, that virtual fighter rumor is real. Yep. It's right there between the trees. And you know what, you know what though? There is though, you know, when you hear like a leak list or rumor and you're like, I don't know about this, there is one part of it that if true does seem legitimate, which is this title has been restarted many times since 2021. See now, Pat, this is where you point out to me that apparently there is a Titanfall 3

spin-off right in the trees over there behind the right next to Virtua Fighter actually right back in the- Didn't they just cancel a Titanfall spin-off like last week? So, this week in, I put my hands on the stove and nothing hurts anymore. It's claimed that the Titanfall 3 director, or rather Titanfall's director is working on a game set in the same universe and it's in the prototyping phase and It's totally for reals happenings. You guys before it hits the recycling bin. It's super duper happening It's I would I would say it lives in the recycling bin and then occasionally they might yeah I'm gonna in the bin. Yeah, just don't just finish your work for the day

Save it and put it back in the bin and then check and then go home We're not gonna empty the bin, but just pull it out and return it to the bin by the end of the day Just so you know where you're at Well, I so I'm not a game dev and I've never worked in this kind of situation But like I feel like there's a bunch of people walking around Working on games that they feel are never gonna come out. Right? Like if I was working on Titanfall right now, I mean, it doesn't matter what your boss says. Oh, we're very committed

I'd be like I just watched you cancel a fucking Mandalorian Star Wars game last week. Why the fuck would I think you're what? I'll believe you. Yeah. Well, if I'm working on a game that's never coming out at least I'm not laid off Until it's canceled until until your until your yeah, but then hey, maybe you'll get moved on to another project by then So stall for time tread waterreadwater. Treadwater. I saw, I saw, uh, survive 2024. Uh, I saw a game dev to talking about how the layoffs and the culture of layoffs has made game dev way worse and is leading to way worse projects. That's literally what I said last week.

Oh, did you? About like the specifically like the cutthroat attitude and all that. Oh no, I was just saying that the effects on the industry to people coming into it from here on out is gonna be fucked beyond recognition. Oh, so yeah, you, okay, I remember you talking about that, but this post was specifically like,

it's leading to people actively sabotaging each other's departments. Oh my God. Like, encouraging bad coding practices, or hoarding your ideas for yourself, so that the underperformers are the ones who get let go on the next layoff So instead of saying hey, man, don't build your save game system on this

Oh, it's it's it's temperamental You just sit there and wait for him to get fucked up because that'll mark him for the next batch of layoffs That fucking sucks man Yeah, it's getting cut throat. Yeah Like why help out your your your your coworkers they're now competitors Time to fucking You know Time to what was it slip slip fucking

estrogen in the in the workout water to To make man to make the other team less medley so that we're going to stay higher. It wasn't a team. It was a guy trying to steal some due to. No, I know, but I'm saying the game company have one team slip slip estrogen in the other team's water so that they can see the dust chat alpha game. The child the Chad devs will keep their job. Oh,

I talked about this on my, uh, on my show the other day and I was like the output at the beginning of this year is absolutely crazy. And particularly if you like Japanese games and it's just, it's really like wild, how Capcom, Square Enix, Sega Atlas, a different team at Sega Atlas, and the people, I forget who made Grandblue Relink. I don't know who made that, actually. But just all these companies,

like bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, right? Psygames, internal. Psygames. And none of those companies are going to do layoffs and they're not doing layoffs. And one of the reasons they're not doing layoffs is they're not allowed to do layoffs. Like I said, yeah, there is a, you have to prove that your company is in a dire state and you are risking bankruptcy before you're allowed to lay off a large group of people. And I was sitting there talking about that and I saw one in the chat said,

oh man we should focus on making those laws instead of all this stupid union shit doesn't help nobody and I- yeah that's exactly what I did! I put my fucking face in my hands, and I was like, oh my god, you're so close. You're like right there. You're like one step away from understanding what you're talking about. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. How did you get so close?

Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ah, yeah, that's impressive. That's pretty good. I couldn't believe it. I was. Just like, listen.

OK, well, maybe think about maybe what could have caused these laws to have. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. If you're working on a game and your team is currently About to probably lose their jobs and you're like damn guys. There's no money. What do we do? Boy, have I got a tip for you Go to steam Go to the game that you currently have on steam. Yeah edit the game Yeah, your steam database, right? Yeah,. Edit the game to your Steam database. Right, yeah.

Rename the game Helldivers 2. Yeah, okay, okay. Change the company name. Replace the company name and the artwork of the thumbnail to Helldivers 2. And then put it 50% off. 75% off. 75% off?

75% off. So, Woolly, you know what my favorite story is There's a lot going on with this but my Started to look up screenshots of what was happening not only is There a company putting out a fake hail divers to with fake screenshots fake company info pretending to be PlayStation etc There's a second one right underneath it. There's two of them Right next to each other. They're both doing the same scam

20,000 IQ just transcendent I mean to get on steam in the first place, you know, there's that check they run the ticket you're in cool now What um fuck parent confusion marketing? How about just confusion? Just lie just lie and make your game Just say your game is the game that it's not Damn, why I can't possibly stop you you I think the strangest thing is like why are you able to make a case for case title of your game the same because something that is also on the on the store because the stringent approval

all occurs once you first submit yeah but I like why doesn't like the system doesn't go there's something already called that? Not necessarily. It's it's like if you have to update your game because you have a little piece of whatever DLC or we're not going to be to work. Yeah, yeah, change make modify whatever's up there as much as you want. You know, oh, hey, it's coming out. Let's change the artwork so that you have a little ad portrait and oh, let's make it so that, whatever, just do your thing. You're safe, you're clear, we've green-lit you, you're already on the store.

But it's the gate at the front that we need to put all the security on. Well, if you already got in, but you're a complete fucking dumbass, then you're like, maybe we can screw, maybe we can just squeeze a couple of bucks out. In the system that has a massive refund ability, Maybe we can screw a few, maybe we can just squeeze a couple of bucks out, you know, in the system that has a massive refund ability.

Maybe we can get a couple of people before they catch us though. So here's the thing though, like steamed, hustler scam money for like a month and there's a good refund policy like this doesn't work. They're not going to make anything. Hustler scam, bro. It is that is a scam. That is objectively false. I like that is. Yeah, we have people in the chat checking the the fakes are already gone.

Incredible, which is they're just going to refund everyone the dollars. They might hit them with fucking like costs for transaction Congratulations, you're in your company's ability to do anything officially with steam ever again has been completely annihilated Unless you make a new company. That's just the Wait a minute. Well, hold on gaben's email says some company called Square Enix is apparently applying to join. Oh cool, Square Enix. They make those fun fantasy games. I hear that's good. I thought they were already on the store. I guess not. Oh well, green light, you're in.

Damn. They can't stop me twice though yeah they probably can I mean I have to say like it's a scare other it's a scam and the scam is a scam but like the moxie of it you know there's something about the moxie of just yeah fuck you we're hell divers it's audacious it's us. Yeah. All right. Well, um, that's that's that's that's that's fan fucking tastic. Uh, what's six of emails? If you want to send

in an email, send it to castle super beast mailMail at gmail.com. That's CastleSuperBeastMail at gmail.com. We got one coming in from Sebastian. Is there a moment in a game where you immediately realized or highly suspected, oh, this is when the money ran out, or this is when time ran out in development. For example, in Bloodstained, Ritual of the Night, there's a late game area called the Den of Behemoths, where literally it's just a copy and paste of the second area of the game, but everything is five times larger, including enemies, and the boss of the area isn't thematically connected in any way unlike most bosses in the game My favorite PlayStation 1 RPG is Xenokir's

Yes They yeah, all right, and it's it's say last fab yeah, it's so much this exact example That when hi-fi rush also had to cut a level for time they decided to throw that Xenokir's reference in there. For me the most top-of-mind is Mortal Shell. When you get to Eternal Narthex, the giant wallpaper-y black obelisk area, It's a huge beautiful, like it's one of the most visually gorgeous looking areas in the game and it has nothing happening in it. It's massive, you spend like 10 minutes running from one end to the other and there's maybe like 20 enemies spread a mile apart from each other and like five or six treasure

but it is insanely barren but they just scaled it the fuck up. I'm gonna say there is a I love the game but when you beat Sanctus as Nero in DMC four you can feel someone slam their foot on the brakes and go, that's all you're gonna get for levels. Yeah, like I love it as like I like the Dante going from outside in. I do. You know what I mean? Like I don't hate that, but I've also loved it for so long

that it would, you know, getting your own thing would have been nice to her, his own versions of bosses or his, yeah, I don't know. It doesn't bother me as much, I suppose. It is a budget break. It's a budget break. It is a budget break. But I like-

People are in the chat are saying lost eyes, Lith and boy boy are they right. Mmm, mmm. Tinosaur asses as far as I can see. Oh wow, you guys had like 10 minutes to finish this level, huh? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dark Souls is an incredible, like important game

and like an all time classic. But after you leave Enor Londo, like, the quality just dips. I mean, I can defend the Duke's Archives. Oh, I like the Duke's Archives. It's a library. It's the best of the remaining areas. Yeah, it's super different from everything so far, you know. And the Tomb of the Giants has an interesting gimmick But then you start you start you start falling off a cliff

Yeah, that happens a lot with games especially since like the ending is the part people are least likely to see The thing about mortal shell that's so infuriating though about that particular part is that imagine if, so what you just described is what? You get to Anor Londo, you get the payoff and then everything after that starts to slowly drop, right? Yeah. Imagine if you-

And then you die within your like, oh, this is the moment. Right, imagine if you get to Anor Londo and that's when it drops. Like it's the most beautiful area in the game and it's immediately nothing. People are saying Cotor 2 and I don't think that's correct at all. I think you start up Cotor 2 and you're like, oh, we're,

there's chunks missing up. Kotor 2 is like a five star meal that gets to your plate with like a big bite out of your steak. And you're like, what? Who's been touching my food? Only I only played restored content. So yeah, it was it was it still feels like that. Even with the restored content.

It still feels like that even with the restored content All right and And here let's take one From I don't see a name yet. Okay. Well, anyway, the person says, correction, layoffs. I also work in cybersecurity, but in an executive leadership role, I've worked on both sides of mergers and acquisitions, and I've been on both sides of the table during layoffs too. Primarily, the purpose of the layoff being announced publicly, first is because it impacts

the share price. You have a bunch of folks who just lost their jobs, which is likely their only source of income. There's nothing stopping them from calling a buddy who works on Wall Street and making some cash from a hot tip. Companies have a set of things they need to do by law in order to protect against insider trading called SOX. It's something that they need to report on annually and without it, they can't be traded

on the stock market. Very few people know layoffs are happening in advance as a result. Usually it's CEO, head of finance and head of HR. IT gets notified the morning of and then the C levels find out about an hour beforehand and can save a couple people if they need to. Everyone else gets fucked. In general, most execs at companies don't care.

If you take the post-it notes or steal an office chair, but they do give a fuck about people stealing contacts, customer information, and how their stuff works, patents, etc. So you walk across the street and so you can walk across the street and get paid by a competitor. I really appreciate you calling out the pearl clutching that happened last week, addressing the systematic bullshit around layoffs for what it is. I think, hey, people in chat are being unkind. Stop it, this guy's calling in to explain the reality. He's not advocating for it. And co-signed the vid at the end there.

Yeah, like chill, you reactionary bitches. Appreciate the email. Though part of that that I had never even considered about how depressing is that hidden in there was like, well, we have to lay them off in a huge bang so they can't sell their stock and actually get something out of the layoff. Actually hurt the company in the process.

We need to make sure that when we lay them off they can't benefit from it even in the smallest way because that would technically be a crime. Well give it a minute and then they can sell when it means less you know on the way out of course, but yeah in the moment of beforehand. There you go. Yeah, all right. Smells like bullshit. Extremely believable. Do you remember when Carmack went to work for Facebook and Xenomax or Fezda for the VR for the VR stuff that was in his

the shit that he had in his brain was theirs Oh my god That is ringing a bell Wow They're like you you worked at Bethesda We he didn't he worked at it which was your brain and you invented new technologies while you worked for us. Therefore, we own your ideas inside your own head that you didn't even use here.

I'm like, are you thinking about OK, the fuck emulation? Are you thinking about a game from your childhood right now? How fucking dare you? I don't know. How fucking dare you? I own that idea. How fucking dare you says Nintendo? By the way, there's people in here that are talking about how, what they own the ideas in your head. If you work for any corporate entity and you are tinkering with a game dev or art on the side in any way,

you need to be extremely careful and reread your employee contract, because if you make a game in your spare time, yep, the company can try and sue you and say that the only reason you had the technical expertise to make that game was for skills you learned on the job, and therefore they own that. Ubi, Warner, Activision, a number of companies at scale, if you work for them, you sign a contract that says that anything you work on creatively, technically, they can claim,

especially if you are hired to work in a creative position. The idea of we're protecting our ideas from leaking out that the stuff you develop here we don't want you putting it over here is also a if we want to we can say no you did this all while you're supposed to be your brain is exclusively supposed to be working for us during this period of time. So that is ours. I believe this I haven't I don't know the case, but I believe someone I was talking to about this

who signed one of these did say that there was precedent that someone was able to legally fight against it. That it was- Like Carmack did. Yeah. There's precedent that can be pointed to that says like, fuck you, this is sufficiently separate from the work that I do for you over here and they were

in. So like it's not as clet and dry as like we legitimately do win the case if we bring that to you. But part of the terms are that you can at least have to go to court and fight that if they want to. And a lot of people don't have the resources to go to court and fight a big old company for multiple years. I mean, that's the bullying of it, right?

Is just proving that you're not, proving that you're innocent costs time and money that you can't fucking keep up with. Hence, you settle like probably Yuzu did, you know, to something as opposed to the full amount of that plus whatever other life-rooting payments would occur and costs would occur once the legal team has to keep defending it over the course of years. Cool.

So if you, you know, if you do are in the situation before you do anything, side, have a talk to a lawyer about it and see what you're protected by and I mean Also, maybe don't work on any video games while you're working for a company that has these kinds of contract don't have any thoughts Maybe once you quit or get fired start working on a new game that day and start working on a new game that day and miraculously make years of progress in the span of two months because your friend... oh no! Thanks for watching!