Castle Super Beast - CSB 263: When You Take Responsibility, Great Power Will Come

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps Balatro Defeats Mind Goblins Morbin' Webb  The Dogmacast: Tig Bitty Riftstone Marvel Rivals Caught Overwatch Slipping  If Waffle House Says No, Make It Roger's Pancake House Watch live: twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Go to http://buyraycon.com/superbeast to get 20% off your Raycon order and free shipping.  Go to http://expressvpn.com/superbeast to get 3 extra months for free.  Marvel Rivals is a Super Hero Team-Based PVP Shooter Harada: Why do some communities send me requests for "Waffle House"? Truth is Unclear: No foreigners are allowed to play in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Japan Championship qualifiers EVEN IF THEY LIVE IN JAPAN PERMANENTLY. Final Fantasy XIV players on Xbox are reporting that they’re being banned after using the term “Free Company” Embracer just sold key  Gearbox Entertainment assets to Take-Two Interactive for $460 million. Layoffs Hit Gearbox Staff Hours After Embracer Sale Someone just ran on stage and broke the trophy at the CS2 PGL Major  Phil Spencer blames capitalism for games industry woes: 'I don't get [the] luxury of not having to run a profitable growing business' Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom is coming to Steam on April 9th  

["Sailor Moon Theme"] Hey, hey, well a happy Easter happy Easter just kidding. I wasn't really dead. Ah Back from the dead. I'm alive. It's me Jesus. I got you April fool Easter's fools Got him Easter's fools is that everybody who believes Starting nuclear starting nuclear. No! We can't start there! Can't do it. The first prankster. The first prankster.

Jesus. He never, you know, He stayed dead and everyone was like Damn, he came back. That's crazy April 4 I showed up to a party with some booze and Thanks Jay, bro. I don't like that. I shouldn't have said that Jay, bro sounds awful that sounds like a whole different thing Sounds like a very awful different thing. Yeah, no, don't trivialize it or say, thanks Jesus for taking one for the team. Apparently, uh, uh, uh, Travis-

He did take one for the team. That's the whole deal. He did, but when Travis Kelce tweeted that out 10 years ago, a whole lot of people got very upset at the levity with which he was taking the situation. Anyway. Yeah. Hey, let's focus on the actual important Jay person today The Joker from Bellatro and why isn't it on my phone right now? Why is it on? Why is it on my fucking phone?

I hear the music all day all day in my head you're fucking there you go you played you're in wooly I I bought this two days ago, and I have eleven and a half hours into it. Yeah, you do Like I've gotten to auntie 12 with two decks there you go. Yes, okay So I just started I went on to Twitter and just started screaming why bilateral not on phone I already response was they're working on it So I already response was they're working on it So I already looked on my own to see if I could get it on my phone to which I found a bunch of fucking scum copy things Called like bilateral tips and it's just some game that has the assets of

Bellatro and you can just buy it and it looks like it It's just we're trying to confuse you into thinking you're buying a mobile version of this game that you're not so this This is the most money on the table port I could ever have seen in the history of my entire career covering video games. Like we were complaining about, oh, why isn't Unicorn Overlord on the PC? No, this guy can buy a solid gold house, put the fucking Bellatro on my mobile phone. Isn't it really fun?? Is it really fun? So yeah last night? I think I cleared all the I cleared all the base decks That's I have found some of them to be a million times

Oh for sure for sure right so there's all the base decks and the colored decks And then I cleared all I cleared all the base decks and the colored decks and then I cleared all I cleared all the base decks and all the unlockable Without without upping to the second difficulty Yeah, so second difficulty says no reward on small blind like I don't know I'm not gonna touch that for a little bit But yeah, the they're just creating builds is so much fun. Hell. Yeah So what do you do? What's your clear amount looking like?

The two decks that I cleared with were the yellow and the black. The yellow one was easy. It was so easy, starting with 10 extra dollars. And then I just re-rolled it. I was learning the ropes and then I just re-rolled it until I got one of the multiplicative dollar amount jokers as the first turn, the rocket ship. Oh, where you keep getting. Yeah. Okay, hold on. So you just started and quit until you got... No, no. I played and then I would get to... I do the first blind and then the big blind and then I'd be like, I'm really unhappy with what I have here because I'm starting with 10 extra dollars. I don't even have anything I want to buy. Okay. Right. And then I started to run in which I got a holographic,

which is plus 10 multiplayer multiplier rocket ship, which every single round gives you more and more money. And I closed out that at like $180 at Auntie 12 and I got the goddamn joker that gives you extra chips for every goddamn dollar you have. Oh, that was a rocket ship. And just started multiplying and I got way out there and then ever since then I haven't been able to like I squeaked out a black deck win

Okay, like Black man black deck was hard. Yeah, that was an extra Joker slot black deck is feast or famine Like did you get it? Yeah, like I got a the one that I won. I got black deck and a negative Joker So I had seven jokers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that works. Which is like, okay. Well, I'm gonna win this one I'm gonna win it having a whole bunch of money without rocket ship ends up biting you in the ass though Because if you invest in a high cash like hand a build early on it feels as if there's not as many Opportunities to capitalize, you know The feeling you want to be going into the last bit blind with is like I have more money than I need and I can afford to

reroll and waste my cash before doing the final boss, you know? So, we talked about Belletro last week and, Willie, you described it as you're cheating with jokers and you're playing cards. It's solitaire. I should send my dad this fucking game. Like, my dad plays regular ass solitaire all the time. So much more fun. So I want to take a different route and that different route is, Bellatro is so good that it has taught me how all card games actually work. I played Slay the Spire and there was like a long series of shit. I'm like, why would I not pick up a card? I beat the stage, I get a card, I get it, I have more card, better, better thing. And just that's like the most, that's the one we talked

about on the cast. More card power good, more good. There's like a million different variations of just some kind of mental pothole that I would fall into with the card game. And then I got to, I forget the name of all the jokers, they're really hard to remember because they're all very similar looking. But I got to the ability which is adds a multiplier

for every card underneath 52 you have. So yes, like I was imagining, because like there's all, there's without that card, there's still a benefit to having, let's say a deck where I'm like, I'm gonna delete all my clubs because clubs are the least valuable of what I have here, right?

Like I've turned my, like there's a lot of, there's weird powers you get with spectral cards and stuff where you're like, I'm gonna decrease the amount of clubs in the deck and thus increase the amount of other things. So deleting cards actually has an advantage. But in addition to that, you can get a joker that says, the more cards you delete,

the more powerful your deck is, period, one to one. That was the end game win for my yellow deck in which I got down to something like 45 cards and it ran. But then the next time it actually clicked into my brain is I was one of the spectral cards that turned every single, you go to the tarot thing and it lines up like eight cards and they were all hearts, diamonds, and clubs. And I clicked on it and it turned every single one of those into spades. Yes. And suddenly, I went for having an even split to having like 20 spades. Exactly.

And then the rest, and then after like two more arcana and like a couple things, I'm rounding out the gate with 35 spades in my deck. It is impossible for me to not get a flush on every hand. And you are being an idiot if you do not try to. Every time I can, I'm like, I'm destroying a heart or I'm destroying a diamond or a club. So all it is, so this game pronounces the advantage of deleting cards in a really exaggerated way. And every version of this is just more subtle

right yeah it's just from here all the way back to the normal 52 deck it's just a more subtle chance of increasing your your odds right so smart because all these jokers are representing like some of them are good and some of them are bad right but all of them represent an idea of how you could try and run it like there's one that's like replays two three fours and fives yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah fucking 10 fours, which are usually garbage. But now they're multiplying on each other. 10 four walkie talkie. Yes.

So the interesting thing too is, I don't know if you've started, have you started using the LT button where you pull up the short readout of how many cards are left? That thing is- Oh, I'm using it, because I'm holding the baby. So I'm using the mouse. Using the mouse baby okay so I'm I'm using the house using the mess okay

use click down there so you know I'm starting to look at it and I'm starting to see okay a calm really I really wanna four of a kind with a 10 I have three tens and this is my like last discard how many other cards are still left in my deck a ton yes and a common thing that happens is you'll have, you'll be like two cards away from a straight, but also two cards away from a flush. And you're like, ooh, which one do I go for? And you're like, they're both even leveled. So they'll

both, you know, like, like the flush will be, will net a higher points than the straight, but there's still a decent chance of getting both. what do I go for, right? You pull up the menu and you see I have more hearts left and I need another heart to get a flush here and I have more of those left than I have sevens, which are what I need for the next straight. So you just do a little quick math and you go, yeah, I have a better odds of getting a heart, let me just go for that instead, you know?

And then you get into the situation in which you're looking at and you're like, is a, oh, the flush would be really great here, or I have a potential for a royal flush. Yeah. Right, because I have four of the five. And then I look in and it's like, oh, that's right, this is the deck that I have nine jokers in.

Sorry, nine jacks. So yeah, there's a pretty decent chance it's like a 50-50 shot of Jack is going to show up. So there's all that part of it. But then there's the last part of it, the part that I never internalized playing any other card game ever in my whole life, which Bellatro I got instantly, which is my question of when I would stream it or talk about it to people is, well, how do I know of Small Deck better? And then people would say, well, learn it. And like, what do you mean exactly?

Just do it over and over? And then I'm playing Bellatro and I'm like making decks'm like making decks and builds and, and doing it on the fly. I'm not having a problem. Like why is it so different? It's like, Oh, I know why. I know how a poker deck fucking works. I know every single card in a poker deck. I know what every hand in a poker deck is. Yes. Yes. Your brain gets it already. Totally. I've known it like since I was like six years old. So with that knowledge now, when you grab something like, so there's something you'll unlock called the abandoned deck, right? And that's one of the unlockable decks that is

all the full deck with no face cards in it by default. It has none. So what do you get out of it? So you get the ability to make all of your plays without face cards and you have a more there's a higher chance of the thing you're looking for showing up more often. Yeah, because there's less like if you there's less, you know, face in general, that there's a tighter net for your for your for that that and then if you get a card that says There's a card that's like will increase the mult Multiplier with the amount of hands you play without a face card in it. Oh, yeah, then you then you're and now you have a Incapable of playing face cards. That's free money, you know and shit like that Well, you'll start to see like like oh bike increase the are pre-increased with just rolling with this deck.

It's great. Yeah, last night I got a clear with which one was it. I was using the... Okay, the ghost deck is the one that you get spectral cards in the shop, and that thing's just busted. It's incredible. You could buy a spectral card and put it in the top right and use it whenever you need to. So like I, you can literally like I'll be on my last hand where I'm like, I'm not going to win. This is game over. And then I have a spectral card that says turn everything into the same do some stupid game breaking into the same rank, you know? And it's like, oh yeah, that dead hand is now a five of a kind. And then five of a kind, a thing that's not on the list will show up, you know?

Or what was the other one? I got one today that I had never heard of, which was like a royal house. Royal, yeah, flush house,ush house. Flush house. Flush house. You can get it. You can get a flush house which makes no sense. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You know and like that and like you see it pop up and then you and as soon as you unlock once you start to see it's there and planet cards for a flush house will start popping up in the decks in the in the in the packs as well. You know, you'll start to and then there's then there's different so many different ways to like work your build out. You know, I was ignoring I was spending money on stuff besides vouchers for a lot

of, you know, the time and like seeing now the power of like double vouchers and stuff like that, where you can just grab something that's like yeah permanently increase your hand Double down on whatever skip blind you're about to get ability You know there's you can lean into cash you can lean into planet cards tarot Everything you choose to do which I was just like hey man three of the kind is going to fucking space. Yeah Oh, whatever you choose to make OP is viable One of the easiest things I find is like of all the hands you can make, I find getting because it here's an aspect of the latch or that is not, not actually math, but it seems as if the starting hand you get in an in a round

is not random. Right? It feels as if there's a split distribution that tends to favor giving you a couple of pairs for each number. And even if your hand increases, you'll see a bunch of two pairs popping up. So because of the game's algorithm that pushes for two pairs showing up more often, it gets easy to get two pairs. So if you backs out two pairs, and then put a bunch of stone cards in your deck. Are you sure that's not just confirmation bias?

I've played a lot of the game at this point. I've played a lot of the game at this point. It feels like the opening hand you get in a round is aggressively like handpicked. There's a certain there's a certain state of opening hand that they want you to have. And it's not completely random in that sense. It's controlled random, you know? And so you get a bunch of it's biased in a way. And so you get a bunch of two pairs fairly easily and you throw a stone card with that and you're like that card that would otherwise be worth nothing is now-

Hey, now it's adding in a way. Hey. Yeah. And then the other thing of course is if you get the winning fucking unstoppable God to your combination, that is every card you play counts for points. Shortcut, which lets you create a straight by skipping over one number. Can you skip over one number? Like, can you do like two, four, six, eight, 10? Six, eight, 10, yes.

You can? Yes. That's free! It's insanely free. That's free, man! So you go shortcut go shortcut two four six eight ten or four five six Not eight and nine You can skip one or two. It's fine. It's insanely busted You get that you get the cup the thing that makes it so that all all five of your cards count

No matter what and then you get up to four cards, like four cards will still count as a flush or a straight. It doesn't matter if you don't have the fifth card, if you have four of the same kind of the same type, or if you have a lineup of four cards, that'll count for the full points. And those three in congruence, you're not gonna lose. Like it's fucking insane, you know?

So that's one build I hunt lose. Like it's fucking insane, you know? So that's one build I hunt for constantly. It's unstoppable. Like I remember I got a card that was like, all cards are face cards. Yes, they count as face cards. Yeah. And I'm like, what the fuck is the point of that? And then I got the Joker that's scary face, which is all face cards give plus 30 chips when they're scored. Bam. Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, and you're going great, you're killing it. You're going, you're doing amazingly well. And then you get to a big blind that is all face cards don't count. And you're dead. And well, you are, unless I've learned, because I've had the run killer, that that exact run kill has happened to me A bunch of times and then you go well now I have to sell that Joker right now

All right, and in the middle of the boss fight you sit in the boss blind you know what's funny You sell that would have probably figured that out because there's a boss blind That's like all cards are diffused until you sell a joker. Yeah, there you go. So it teaches you, hey, sometimes you might have to sell a joker to turn a mechanic off. Sometimes if the mechanic, yeah, if the boss blind is asking you for way too much, you sell one of your jokers, which is fucked because that's a really big advantage, you know? But in that case, it's the only way to survive. Another one that's fucked is an amazing card is all

Hearts and diamonds count together and all clubs and spades count together That's so gross It's so strong and it feels great as you just grab a straight a floral flush made out of two two You know, types. It's too good. It's so good. And then you hit a boss blind that says, all spades are debuffed.

And it's like, hey, your clubs also count as spades now. So those are debuffed too. All your wild cards, debuffed, because if it counts partially as a spade, it's no good. And then you're like, fuck me, I have to sell this amazing card. And it's the one that I happened to put a multiplier on that's holographic. Yeah There's so many fucking like amazing builds that then come back to bite you in the ass

And that's why the slots at the top right are your insurance in some cases, you know, have you gotten the Cavendish? Which one's that? So there's the Gros Michel, which is the banana. Yeah. Well, if the banana dies in your run, you get the ability to buy the Cavendish, which is the good banana. Oh, interesting. No, I haven't, because I usually ignore Gros Michel. Okay, so the good banana, the Cavendish, has a one in a thousand chance of being destroyed at the end of the round. But instead of giving a plus 15 multiplier, it gives a times three multiplier.

Times three, that's so much better. Anything that is a times multiplier, just lean heavy into that. So I found that I'm at the place where I'm like, okay If I get a good run and I know what I'm doing I can get to anti-eight I'm still working on the base decks, but I can do it but It's very clear. It's very obvious that for anti nine and up You need to you need to move your whole game plan into multiplying. Like, times multiplication.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I need multiplying on top of multiplying on top of multiplying. Because I looked at those numbers. I have never seen a game use scientific notation for its score. With the exponents in shit. Oh, the exponents, okay. So, because I haven't, so I've only've I've done all my clears at anti eight. The the reset and anti thing.

I've only done that like once, you know, it does let you power up quite a bit. I did notice because I but I I just never fucked with it. I was always clearing it on anti eight. And I did endless and I got to 12 with my good yellow deck. And then it started to get into the millions of points. I'm like, I clearly need to do more math to figure that out. What I usually do is once I clear it and I'm in endless mode, I'll just start skipping

straight to the boss blind until I die. Because I want to unlock more. So I'm like, I'm down to kill the run and start a new progression point. But yeah, if it's not clear, Ballet Row is fucking, it is very addictive. It is very fun. It's so good that it's making me want to play Slay the Spire on my phone. Because I understand Slay the Spire way better now. And it's the thing about it too that's again it's a very deliberate choice but it's so

like muted as a video game you know? Yeah it's CRT themed, it runs at 720p. And like there's a little joker just talks a little bit of trash to you but ultimately there's not much else to it because it plays it's basically like you're playing a video poker screen with a little bit much else to it. It's basically like you're playing a video poker screen with a little bit of character to it. You know? Oh, I'm getting information now that Malivellon Creek

has finally been liberated. Oh, shit. From the bots. Okay. Does that mean- Good job, Helldivers. You fucked up your major order yesterday, but. So, okay. So does that mean that there's no freeing?

Trent or whatever the fuck so Tybis or what yeah Tiber so what happened was is that they did the major order to push back against the bots But so many like 25 percent of all players are obsessed with malevolent Creek And so they didn't focus enough on the actual objectives and failed the objectives So nobody gets their points. So now Joel is Tilting to be like we have to take back the creek Okay, so something that is Maybe I was looking through for instructions on it

But when the when the major order is to free a planet that you can't select is that because you have to sell you Have to get to it from the planet next to it? No, it means that you have to fully liberate the planet to its direct border, or it already got liberated. And it's over. And so forth. So okay, okay. So when it's, because when it says, because I saw the thing that's like liberate this planet and I'm like, I can't select it. I can't interact with it at all.

And at one point the planet right before it was available, but then when I looked again, it was two away. Yeah. And it was like, oh, so. I think the way the major order works for the reward is like if you interact with any of the listed planets once you you'll get the medals. It seems like incredibly. Yeah, that did happen on one of them. Yeah. But I saw yeah, it seems as if you have to just you have to get to you have to stretch

across and get to the planet next to it. from the planet next to it you will then get to that one. So apparently there are literally only three bot planets left on the entire galaxy map. Hmm. Which says to me that the new faction or some nightmare enemy type is coming in within like a week. And it's gonna push the gang back but regardless the good job on the creek guys the bilateral I was gonna say you just violently distracted over very distracted I'm so sleepy today I'm sorry okay well no just I mean black balachos balachro blatcher or whatever I'll say it and then another

thing so as you as you're unlocking unlocking stuff, did you notice the title screen ace as well? No. Okay. On the title screen, play around with... I fucked with it a little bit. Yeah. You will see that ace will dissolve and become something unlockable and it'll usually hint at something that you

can try to go create. So it'll be like a- Oh! Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay! Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can move it around and then it'll show you an unlock condition. Yeah, unlock, have at least 30 cards with spadesuit in your deck.

That'll change a couple times, but that's another thing to just... Oh, that's fun. Secrets. Fun stuff, yeah. So yeah, the crazier decks that you get after that are not the colored decks are fun where you get starting the run with like you start the run with two with like two crystal ball with two copies of the fool for example which is okay that's right which is just like the ability to just whatever you get that you like you can triple it right away of a kind thing okay well I guess I'm gonna roll four of a kind level ups

Three times in a row and just immediately be like and build on that and it has a crystal ball voucher Which is every time you open a foil pack the type of hand you play the most will be guaranteed to be inside of that pack It's just a deck based on good feeling. That's a good vibe. Yeah, it's just a, mmm, mmm, you give me what I want and it feels good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, this is a perfect little time kill. Yeah, there was one run that didn't go very well, but I was cooking. It just didn't work out when it needed to,

which was, it was like give plus multiplier as long as you play any build that is not your most played hand. Yes, that one's hard. That one's really hard, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I got it combined with times multiplier, sorry, plus multiplier for every hand played, right? So what I did was I would just burn high cards for four turns to build up the malt. And then

high card was like far in a way the most popular hand. And then I would play like a straight or like a flush and it would multiply onto itself. Another way to do that is there's a joker that makes it so that whatever hand you discard first gets increased by one level. Yeah, I got that one, and it's tough, because you wanna use a good hand, but it has to be a hand you think you're gonna see again?

So instead, just play as normal, and what will happen is playing normally, high card gets juiced fucking high, right? And so with- Oh, yeah! By just playing normally and discarding normal things, high card will get really, really high, and then when you need to, you can just play a single hand. High card will actually be worth something.

Exactly, so you get no bad hand You've been buying those blank vouchers Yeah Keep doing it yeah, I know I bought I bought three Hoss like I and I'm like I am NOT gonna not look up what that does it cost ten bucks I'm like I am not gonna not look up what that does it cost ten bucks, but it's fucking worth it And then I looked up and what well what is it unlock when you buy ten blank vouchers? And then it's like I want that the best thing that you can yeah Yes

That's the best voucher in the whole game the thing that the thing that you want more than anything else the thing that you will Destroy your entire build to get yeah do it Yeah, yeah, okay. Okay. Bellatron coming in nowhere with swinging at game of the year. Every single topic that gets brought up, potential game of the year. It's real good lately. It's going well. Man. I had like, God, my brain started crunching some numbers just yesterday when I had a build where I was getting a lot of spectral packs where it would destroy a single card to replace

it with four enhanced ones. And then I'm getting spectrals that are changing, or not spectrals, tarot that are changing certain cards back into hearts or spades or whatever the suit was. And looking at the distribution and seeing how asymmetrical it would get, and then trying to create symmetry with the enhanced cards because I picked up a joker that was called a flower pot. Yeah, flower pot.

Right, and flower pot is you want one of each suit in your hand for a big bonus. I got flower pot and did not have, I did not have what I needed to make flower pot work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes you get a good Joker way too late in the run. And it's like, this can't help me now. If one of the Jokers that's like, I'm going to devour a Joker every round and I'm going to increase my multiplier. And that's it. And it'll increase whether or not you feed it a joker But the point is is this is gonna be your only joker You get that from the start and you're fucking golden

But you get that halfway through when you've already set things up and you're like no garbage. Yeah Good shit good shit What else what else Well What else? What else? Well, sat down and watched a movie with the wife when baby was asleep. Yeah, you did. We sat down and watched that Madame Web from Sony Pictures. The Marvel property that deserves all of your attention right now. No.

So there's a lot to be said about this movie. The first of which is more than the movie being terrible is that it's a mess. Like, it's two full hours. And it feels like a totally disconnected sequence of events. Now, you are one of the few people that can actually put this in its proper context as you have- The Morbius context. And Craven or no? I I forget I did not see Craven No, okay, but you have more on the table

Morbius is like a terrible movie, but like it's like a movie Where things? Go and they happen and they happen in the order and you're like, okay and they happen and they happen in the order and you're like, I, okay. But, um, I don't want to go over like every detail and cause like the, the plots a mess and it, it doesn't even make any fucking sense. But like there's, there's a, there's, Madam Web is the only film I have ever seen in my entire life in which the following happens.

A character looks at the cast and goes Can you excuse me? I have to leave the movie now Yeah, yeah, yeah and walks away into a different movie yes for 15 minutes and just says, hey, everyone involved in the plot, stay here. I'll be back in one week and just leaves the plot. Just completely

leaves. Lest we forget Rick Grimes died for our sins except that he didn't and and cloud falling into the lifestream and and then they come back and They're like I'm back from the other movie that I was in hell. Yeah So I don't know what the spoiler criteria is on this, but basically they go on Madame Webb we're good.

She goes, I need more information about all this spider shit. I'm going to go to Peru. I'll be back in one week. Stay here. And the entire movie just stops for a week as we go to her traveling to Peru so she can have one conversation with one guy and then come right back and goes I am now back in the movie now and it's fucking weirdest and the weirdest part is that's the second time she does that earlier in the movie she just leaves all the characters in a spot and goes, stay here. I will be back later. And she just drives away,

does a different scene and then drives back. And are these moments the clues we need that lead up to Madam Morb? Are we getting our Madam Morb or aren't we oh you are? You get the whole There's so many little details that are just like astonishing I Thought I was going because we were listening

We I figured out how to have two Bluetooth headphones connected to the computer so that the TV doesn't make any noise so me and Paige are watching it and I thought that there was something wrong with my setup and I'd like other people to confirm or deny this but the main villain of this movie I don't know what the actor's name is he is terrible he is he is like he sounds like Neil Breen. I'm not even joking like you know when you joke and you go like ha ha they're just as bad as Neil Breen. Thanks, Spider-Man 2. I'm not even joking. You know when you joke and you go like, Haha, they're just as bad as Neil Breen. No, I don't mean that. I mean the actual cadence of the way he speaks actually reminds me of Neil Breen. Wow, okay. And

he is so bad and Okay, okay. I'm not crazy Like half or more of his lines are 80 yard. Oh, it's all in pickup. Yeah, okay, I'm not crazy. Like half or more of his lines are 80 yard. Oh, it's all in pickup. Yeah, okay. Not all of it. And the 80 yard is terrible because he'll be talking to somebody

and you'll have the ambient room audio and it'll be shot like a movie set. And then he'll turn away and you'll be looking at the back of his head and then the 80-yard dialogue comes out And it sounds like us right now. Yeah it sounds like he's doing it in a boat in a booth and it's and

It's it's he's bad. He's so bad They showed off the trailers of the girls and all their their their future spider outfits Which will revealed on a Tide bottle I believe yeah, those are those are Those are a movie trick Because those are in visions of the far future of what may be oh It was a set up for yeah, yeah, okay? Costumes and doing that shit for approximately 90 seconds God of in the entire movie. It's like the Snyder peek into the future right yeah, yeah, okay, okay?

the um Willie Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay. Uli, how do you feel about Pepsi? I sure hope you were drinking one while you were watching the movie. So, I'm trying to be hyperbolic because it doesn't, sorry, try not to be hyperbolic because it doesn't sorry try not to be hyperbolic cuz it doesn't need it Right, we know we all every like it's like it's the breakout fucking meme of this whole bit has been the level of plot centric Fucking product placement has reached new heights. It's kind of incredible so she goes to the barbecue where Uncle Ben is at and they hand her a Pepsi and she goes,

what? You're not going to give me a beer? It's a barbecue. And he goes, well, you can't drink after you have a cardiac arrest, some bullshit. And she goes, okay. have a cardiac arrest some bullshit. And she go, okay. And then she holds the Pepsi like logo out for the whole scene. Brand rotated towards the camera. She holds it for like multiple minutes. And it's like, I get it dude, I get it, it's a Pepsi.

I mean, at least Snakes on a Plane had the decency to like zoom in from the Red Bull on top of the TV Wow slowly into the frame Also, I'm just gonna say it right now Um, a Pepsi billboard kills the villain Yes, yes Pepsi is literally the hero of Madame Web Through the power of Pepsi.

That's awesome. The P of the Pepsi logo is what crushes the villain to death. Yeah, I want it. And me and Paige are watching it and we're like, bro, she dropped an ambulance on him going like 90 MPH earlier in the movie and he shrugged it off. I don't know why the fucking Pepsi P weighs like 10 tons or something. And the thing is that according to movie tropes, we've all learned that when the villain gets crushed ironically by some kind of billboard or product sign, it's usually like a statement

about them and their undoing. Yeah, it's like like a statement about them and their undoing. Yeah. You know, if only you drank Pepsi, you would have lived like usually. Yeah. It would be like there's always that bit of like, oh, you got beat by. I can't think of an example, but you know what I mean. You know, it's like the thing that you ignored your whole the whole time. This was here.

And now it's just like if you drank Pepsi, you would have lived. But you did so. But I really can't like like he like So in the first encounter with not spider-man she hits him with a taxi and he's like, oh and Then later on in the movie where she's got to save all the girls who the dudes trying to kill I'm like, what the fuck is she gonna do? She's gonna hit him with her car again. And sure enough. She just to kill. I'm like, what the fuck is she going to do? She's going to hit him with her car again. And sure enough, she just blasts him, like does a big jump and like just blasts him with an ambulance that's like falling from the sky. And it is, it looks like he should be a smear. And he

just gets up and dusts himself off. Um, and then later on a little sign falls on him and he died. And I'm like, I don't, I don't understand. I guess it's fate But more than all of that more than all of that Well that and the actress hates it Oh playing mad is like is like She's acting she's doing a pretty good job. But like you can see like the disdain You can just feel how mad she is The amount of clips of just yet Dakota Johnson just being like not interested in them

Like though like why is this a meme? I don't get it. It was out of content like just not feeling it. Um There was wasn't there the like there was a thread I want to say, that popped up on Twitter that was like, here is a collection of all the insane marketing decisions they made from top to bottom and they just put it all together. But more than all of that, there's movies that are written with a second screenwriter and there are movies that are written with the author of the book that you're adapting, you know, that kind of thing.

This movie had whoever was writing it at their desk, as I am sitting now, and right here, sitting directly behind them, as if to look over their shoulder, was a lawyer from Sony Pictures making sure that they didn't technically say the words Spider-Man or Peter Parker. Really insane nonsense In which well her paramedic Partner is obviously Ben Parker He's a good guy Shit okay, and it goes deeper and then the shit okay and it goes deeper and then the uh one of the opening scenes of the film after we've established and you know she had a little accident and fell off a bridge oh you really gotta come cassie you gotta come to the family get together you gotta come down here and she's like oh i don't

care about that shit i don't get roped in uh whatever so what is this family event that Cassie Webb, her name is Webb by the way, her name is actually Webb. Cassie Webb, what's she doing anyway? Well, Ben Parker is hosting his sister's baby shower. Mary Parker. Now granted, they're not going to say the phrase Mary Parker. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mary. Yeah. And then she's just like, oh, you know, Richard's out of town. You know, it's annoying. He's got to work. He's doing important things. doing important things and then they start doing the baby shower and the big thing of the baby shower is like hey here's the game we're all gonna play at the baby shower well you know what kind of games they play at baby showers guess the baby's name what's it gonna be and they don't guess it

Is it Paul And so that's like Fucking weird yeah Thing it's just you're really strange So what you're describing is a very specific legal energy and the only other instance I can think of is everything I've heard about the show Gotham where that child over there is looking awfully dark and nightish. He is brooding and there is a crazy guy hanging out over here and Alfred is up to some stuff look at that Butler do his thing

And oh, there's a commissioner, but We have access to some things maybe not others, I don't know so you know it's like whatever you write Let's say okay, so well the movie will continue and it goes on the plot the bad man. Who's not who's not spider-man and so they they get attacked's not Spider-Man. Um, and so they, um, they get attacked by not Spider-Man and, um, he's in, he's like in reverse color. Yeah. Spider-Man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He just has the costume for no, like they don't, they never address it even once that he, why whatever um and the girls are like that's crazy Oh my god. He was crawling along the walls like some kind of

Spider person How unoriginal and lame is it for spider-man to come into this world where there's been like eight things before eight spider-man And then they're in the cab driving away and right after they say that they go I don't know what to do. We should call our parents and then the the the black girl who I think her name is Maddie Goes ah I know what to do. I'll call my uncle Jonah and starts dying Well, well just finish the phone call. She doesn't finish the phone call. And that daily truck goes by them.

But that's not even the stupidest, weirdest shit. There's two more. And you're just like, wow, they're just dancing on a legal document with the writing of this script. So when Adam Webb goes to Peru to talk to the magic spider man, they just chat and he talks about how she's got magic because of some nonsense about how she got bitten by a magic spider in Peru because it's a magic spider. It's not a radioactivity.

They're magic. Mad Fientist Oh, good. That's it. Yeah. It's important because in the Amazon when you're researching magic spiders. Yeah. Mad Fientist Yeah. And he gets like a full shot.

He gets like a full wide-frame shot of him dead center. And he goes, Oh God, what's the fucking quote? It's when you take responsibility, you will have all the power. But it's like, it's so fucking ridiculous. Let me get the fucking direct quote. When you, hold on, when you take on the responsibility, great power will come. Yeah! And it's like, first of all it's very obviously worded that way just to get away from the legality, but also that's the opposite meaning!

No, no, no, it's the precursor the you end that sentence with and Right dot dot dot. Oh Yeah, so Here's where the movie completely falls apart in the in the desire to tie it in to shit that they can't tie it into Which is this so it's kind of weird that the main character of your movie can just leave the movie for a week and nothing can happen, right? Well the reason why that is, is because the three girls who will later on become spider people, but currently are just teenagers, well they're hiding out in Uncle Ben's house. And as long as they don't go outside where they can't be seen by like a camera or like, you know,

then they're fine, they're safe, right? They're in Uncle Ben's house and it's a safe house and they're completely safe, right? And they have been safe for a week, maybe eight days, right? Well, now that Cassie's coming back to New York, well, the plot has to go somewhere. Right? Now, what could get Uncle Ben and all these people outside of the house in the most contrived way possible that doesn't? That's right! Richard Parker isn't home! He's abroad! And oh my god, my water broke three weeks early,

we have to get not Spider-Man to the hospital to be born. Right, right, right. And then they all pile into the car and me and Paige are going, why do they have to go to the hospital with Mary Parker and Uncle Ben? Just, what are are you gonna do? Sit in the lobby and eat peanut? What, just stay there. But we have to go so that we can, so the plot can go back up.

And then Madame Webb, man, she hits that guy with that ambulance like I told you, and then that saves Mary and Uncle Ben and all the girls from getting blown up by the evil spider guy and Then then Mary goes off and she's like, oh I'm safe now with my baby who I love and is very important and Then the rest of the movie continues and then they kill the bad guy and then they kill the bad guy and then we smash cut to the monologue about the future and all that crap, which is little baby Peter Parker being born. Oh, he's, he's going to do great things because life is so special and wonderful

and you know, what are you going to call them? And then they just don't, they just fade out and they don't say it because they can't and and Here's here's one of the last lines in the movie is The girls are talking to web who is now blinded in a wheelchair Because she has to get her Bret Hart sunglasses on so that kind of looks a little bit like Hell yeah comics. Hell yeah, and Sunglasses on so that kind of looks a little bit like hell. Yeah comics. Hell. Yeah, and

They go. Oh, you know hey, where's been at? Oh? He's out doing whatever He's he's not ready for all this uncle responsibility and she smirks behind her sunglasses and goes That's what he thinks Yeah, yeah, that's I'll bad and then and then we see a vision of the future of all of them in their costumes and They all look like shit And then they go, you know what the best thing about the future is it hasn't happened yet and then it cuts to like 90s music and it's like you're looking at four characters that will never appear ever again ever you know Bruce when the day comes that you choose to smash then you will Hulk go Hulk. How do you even?

So like the whole movie and here's where it starts to really just fly to pieces. The whole movie is like, I need to save these people's lives and I can see the future a little bit. So I'm going to change the future to save their lives, right? But she's sitting in her chair going like Yeah, Ben's gonna fucking bite it. Yeah Well, we got to have spider-man so Suck it. Oh How did the blind how did she how did she get blind? Well, she fell into the water

And when she was in the water water she got hit in the face with firework and Despite the fact that she is visibly uninjured and completely fine as soon as it hits her in the face When they pull her out of the water the makeup team remind remembered to put the scars On her on her face. Okay that weren't that weren't there when she was in the water because doing that kind of makeup in the water would be hard. So they pull her out of the water and once oxygen hits her face then the damage shows

up and she's blind now. She probably hurt her back falling into the water also. That's probably why she got the wheelchair So in in in the like in the last bit where they're all doing their hero pose I should mention like Madame Webb is also doing her hero pose and she is just flying with psychic energy and Bret Hart sunglasses and It's it looks it. It looks really bad. It doesn't look good It looks very bad

So the other movies a confusing mess and the whole time you're sitting there going like oh my god, they really Desperately desperately desperately want Marvel to let them attach these and they can't so they're just gonna get it right up to the legal limit. You know Batman all it takes is one good day to turn the craziest person into a normal sane happy guy. That's all it takes It's um... It's um... It's um... So there's like a There's like bad movies in which you're like laughing the whole time And there's bad movies in which you're bored

Me and Paige were both just like What? Huh? What? Like the whole time Just constant like why Why'd you make the movie like this? So the funny part is is that like I find when like on a macro level zooming out for

Years for decades at this point. It's always been man I can't believe Marvel fucked up that deal and they gave their rights away and now we have this weird Fox Sony deal and they gave their rights away and now we have this weird Fox Sony alt verse thing going on and oh boy are they struggling to get it right and then okay they figured since the nope they're back to struggling it's embarrassing you can really see that all of these actresses were told they were going to be Marvel characters in the MC well so the and then like so the MCU stuff happens and then it's like, oh, there's a good side to Beon. And that's the side where Michael Jordan, Michael B. Jordan is like,

fuck, I'm on the bad side of the MCU. No, you know? And it makes the jump and switches over and Killmongers his ass into the good side. And then you get things like Spider-Verse happens where it's like, oh fuck, oh Sony's doing a cool thing. Oh shit, yeah, okay, they figured that out. So it's animation studios.

The animation studios is like turning the Sony branded thing into like, hey, that was pretty good. And so you actually got a little bit of fucking, you know, you got some goodwill back there. And then just to like, quadruple down on the- they announced the sinister six verse years and years ago. I remember I first I like It was it was when spider-man 3 got announced right when there were trailers up for spider-man 3 I remember Being on the bus in like angry area and I think I was talking to you and like someone else and there was an ad. Kind of familiar.

And we were and there was an ad on the fucking bus terminal for the Spider-Man 3 and then there was like, oh yeah, they've announced recently they're going to be making a whole spin Sinister Six spin off series, you know, so from way back when they had this whole like all thing in mind And instead we just went straight to venom and then now we're morbying and now we're cravening and they're getting around to it And the idea that you have to pull them all together into this Giant roster of people that are orbiting around Tom Holland and Tom Holland wants nothing to do with them And is trying to pretend they don't exist and it's just like Marge just being like,

Oh fuck, are they still here? It's a- it is- it is so strange. Incredible. Yeah, oh. Not- not good. I- you know what? I'm gonna put- Put your foot down. Not, oh. Not good. You know what? I'm going to put... Put your foot down.

Not a recommend for Madame Webb is what I'm going to say. I mean, did you like... When this decision comes down, I have to... I imagine you and Paige are like, like, okay, so you're clicking play and then like you're just opening up a content.txt file and just writing notes that like it's. So you know what, that's usually what it's like, right? We'll watch some trash and like with the intent to talk

for me to talk about on the podcast or what have you. That didn't happen this time because we were just like, like kind of mouth agape, just like kind of like stunned. We finished, we started watching that two nights ago, but then the baby woke up, so we had to take care of him. So we finished the last 15 minutes yesterday. We started to talk about the movie for like the first real time, like this morning and just like, she just left the movie. And like I was talking to her about it right before I came over and I was like,

the movie is strangely unclear in my mind. I just watched it and I do remember the basic events and some of the scenes, but it is, it is starting to leave. Waiting for the post credit scene for your, your Nick Fury setup. No post credit. Is no, that's old and busted. That was an entire phase or two ago. Why wait till the end of the movie when we can do it in the middle of the action?

Why wait for the credits for the sequel set up or the tie ins? We can do that right here and now. Strange. Strange film. Morbius is a way, way better movie. Wow. Way better. Okay.

Yes, and Craven is actually not out yet. So the trilogy is not here. You know what Morbius had? You know what Michael Morbius, the living vampire movie had? It had one person in that movie that actually had fun being there and that was Matt Smith. Right, right. He was actually like, I'm a vampire, ah, but I'm British and was like like dancing with the suit and all that shit and so like there was like one person that was like I am acting in a movie whereas this like the fucking main villain is like in an audio

booth fucking dubbing over himself because his accent is too strong and he's a shitty actor. I guess if you have to go like if you have to just go trash fire like Marvel shit. If you go this way you get the absurdity of everything just described, and then the ability to escape in the Madame Web Indian helicopter. I don't know if you saw that, but in India, there's a helicopter that's Madame Web themed. It's just like if you want a helicopter in style,

and all that shit. But then you get the other side of when these things go bad. And it's just the Netflix iron fist post Daredevil shit that just got more and more. It started good, and then it got not as good, and then it got worse. And then it just ends up being like boring, you know? And it's like, oh, boring is so much worse

than mind numbingly, insanely stupid and hilarious and brand dodging. This movie is like, it's worth watching. Just if you love confusion. So I just remembered something really specific. And maybe this is a nitpick, but I feel like parts of the movie did not get updated when they changed drafts. Like some scenes stayed in from older drafts and were not changed to make any sense.

So, the villain's name is Ezekiel. I'm just saying that for convenience, right? The start-up of the movie is Ezekiel and Madame Webb's mom are in the Amazon and Madame Webb's mom is pregnant with Madame Webb, right? You got me? Good. They're trying to find the magic spider and he's been hired as security, right? To protect her in the Amazon because the Amazon is dangerous. She finds the magic spider, then Ezekiel, because he's a bad man, shoots all the other guards and goes, give me that spider. I always wanted the magic spider. I tricked you. And she goes, no. And then he shoots her and then he runs away with the magic spider and then she gives

birth in the Amazon in the spider cave. Okay? That's how that happens, right? Sure. She's like, wait, what? I thought I just hired you. He's like, no, I've been searching for the spider for years, right? In the final confrontation, Madame Webb is like I'll stop you and he goes your mother underestimated me. I mean, so are you and I'm like what? She didn't even know you were a guy Doing security that's from an old draft of the movie Okay, how to confrontation and she knew and he found out what was going on, right? That is from an older script?

A cut that was made. And they never changed it! That doesn't make any sense at all! She was literally pregnant at the time, right? Like, not even, baby not even born. How did she underestimate you? You showed up, said, give me that, with a gun, and she went, no, I don't want to! Like... me that with a gun and she went, no, I don't want to.

Yeah. I don't know, I don't know. Good stuff. Also, like, hey, villain with a look, like a masked look, gotta pull that mask off so that the actor's face can be out right. Of course, of course, of course, of course. But then you have to cut to shots of him from the side because they have to ADR his voice in. And so it's like, just leave his fucking mask on.

Right, right, right, right. Like you're having to cut away from his face to have him talk because he's a bad actor So just put the fucking mask back on and just dub him over entirely What a weird thing where like we again to just we have a thing where sinister six is now a You have a mixture of the Rose Gallery where you get just fucking blue collar awesome vulture and, oh shit, you're dating my daughter, right? And then that's the energy or goofball Jake Gyllenhaal Mysterio, you know, there as well.

And like one half of these characters are like cool versions of them and then the others are just fucking Did you see there was an interview with Michael Keaton in which they were like hey Why was the vulture in Morbius and he was like, I don't know man And they asked me if I wanted to do it and I want yeah, okay I mean Look you could ask you could add why would Michael Keaton have that answer? You know similar Why would why would Dakota you would you ask Dakota? Hey name the other spider-man movies? Like why why would she you know?

Spider-man here he comes that spider-man he's he's back again it's awesome like I I you know what's really awkward having a spider-man villain that doesn't have webs chase after you. He's just jumping and running? He's just jumping on cars like a weirdo. Sick. And you can just... Every encounter with the villain is solved by just getting into a car and driving away.

All right. driving away. I mean he's fast but he's not like a spider-man. I look forward to the trilogy in Craven and then eventually, yeah, our Assemble movie, Madame Morb the Hunter. Wully, this movie posits that by the time Peter Parker shows up, he is the fifth New York Spider-Man. Spider-Man. Yeah, yeah. And that they have been active for 20 years No, also also there's a whole bunch of

West-coast symbiotes having a war in LA a Symbiotic war is breaking out on the other side of the country Peter has nothing original to bring to the table other side of the country. Peter has nothing original to bring to the table. Like it's it's double weird because it's like now we've instituted like I know I know Spider-Man comics actually have like spider totem and all that stupid magic shit which I think is dumb. But like okay. Wow. All these people have magic spider powers. What you all you have radioactive spider powers. Oh, crazy. They even have the audacity to make the fucking spy the magic spider blue and red in the same shades. Like like it's a Spider-Man logo spider. Yeah, yeah yeah that's that's how you got it that's how

you get the fucking wall that's how you get the the pog face you get you gotta go yeah it's good it's good so I wasn't when you take responsibility he then comes the power let me pull it back up. I just had it Let me go When you take on the responsibility great power will come And hey, I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna complain about a weird costume thing So the three girls they have their their future vision where they're spider ladies and the villain's having a vision of this so he wants to prevent his own death. That's like the whole crux of the movie, right?

And so they're all wearing like spider masks, right? And the Spider-Man outfit, but they're wearing like, I don't know what to call it, like a comic book character like girl mask in which it's like just yeah just the eyes and you just see who the fuck they are yeah and you I'm looking at that I'm like that doesn't seem like a good costume and the movie agrees because the entire reason why he's like, I'm going to kill them when they're younger is that he's like, Oh, I remember what they look like from my dream. So I'm just going to do police sketches of them and then feed that no computer and the

computer will DH them five years and Oh, there they are. Okay. We found them and the mask did nothing. Well, yeah, nothing like, like nothing. Like their hair is all the way out. You can see their eye color and their whole fucking face below the nose. And you're just like, what?

Why do you even wear the fucking mask at all? I mean, it worked for Robin. No one figured that shit out forever. Robin's covers his eyes. Like your eyebrows and this around your eyes and the top of your cheekbones, that's actually very distinctive. That is way more like a Lone Ranger shit. Yeah. That is way more anonymous than the spider goggle where you can just see through the glass to the whole

person. But again, they wanted, I mean, you got to see the actress. So you have to. Well, I'm sure the the plotted sequels and oh, yeah, those are going gonna happen with with an entire cast of people who are actively vindictive about being tricked to star on the movie in the first place and also and like also have not seen it and are continuing to have not to not see it yeah get shit all right anything else in particular I

played a ton of Dragon's Dogma mm-hmm ton of Dragon's Dogma. Mm-hmm. Ton of Dragon's Dogma. Yeah, I can jump in there. I continued poking that with a stick as well. I know! You saw the levels? Because on a whim I went to the official pawn thing and I was like, I wonder if Uli had actually played it. Like level 24!

That's considerably more than poking it with the stick! Yeah, I feel like there's like an obligation to make sure that the pawn feels useful. You know? So, Wooly has continued to level up, but I haven't done a class switch on him just yet. I mean, usually you just max it out. You'd say, oh say I'll try this one. That seems interesting. Mm-hmm Where'd you get to? I? Got to Batal, which is the the yeah. Yeah. Okay And I mean for anybody's watch my stream or listen to us talk about dragons dogma prior It's it's more of the same the the the story

breaks prior. It's more of the same. The story breaks when you get to Batal in that the main story just stops and becomes like a side quest haven and becomes a lot more focused on side stuff and exploration. Now, is that because the weird way that they're going about this? Because I got to the point where you get the letter and it's like, oh shit, there's a letter to Batal, right? And then you also have to find a library for the prisoner that is like, put me somewhere with a lot of books. And it seems as if the main way the game

is delivering its story is you're gonna go to the bar and talk to Brandt and he's gonna have the entire main quest line in conversations. So not technically true. Brandt only has a full 50% of the game's main quest line. 50%, okay, it felt felt crazy like it kept growing and I was like, Oh, you're just the mainline quest giver, actually. Which I didn't expect to be a thing. He has 8 quests, there are 16. Fuck. And a couple of them are getting to Brandt. Yeah, okay, okay. So when you get to Batal, I think there are like three or four main story quests to go and

Some of them I'm being warned. Don't do it. You'll trigger the fuck a world thing change. Okay I yeah, it's it's an interesting way of going about it I suppose in the sense that like if you have other games where it's like go to this Red point on the map and that'll be where the main quest Is gonna start or continue? But here there's just there's a guy who will hand them to you and you can take on more than one of them if you Want to but it's Probably bad idea to do so

Yeah, I did I did I scoured the whole map and then did most of his quests and did them in like a minute mmm, and then did and then was like told to go to Batal and then did most of his quests and did them in like a minute. And then did, and then was like, so hold on, go to Batall. And then I fell into Batall by accident. Okay. Like I was just exploring Vernworth and I accidentally crossed the border. Oh, okay.

It feels as if there's some part, like I noticed that there's like, okay, so then there's literal gates that say, get the fuck out of here until you show permission, right? But then while doing some of the mainline stuff you will have a notification pop up or like the for example, like the scene occurred where you meet the the head courtesan of the the Rose house or so.

Oh, Wilhelmina. Right and then then it's like oh You you've been invited to the coronation so you can get prepared to set up for the coronation But the main batall thing has not been settled yet I've never has done that that coronation is like a fucking goof It feels like a trick. I don't I haven't done anything with it yet, but oh the coronation quest is 30 seconds long oh really, oh anything with it yet, but. Oh, the coronation quest is 30 seconds long. Oh, really? Yeah.

Oh, Jesus Christ. OK, because I'm like, why are you giving me a mainline quest while two others are active right now? Yeah, no. So it literally says if you do the coronation, you'll fail all the other quests because time will move forward. So you do all the other quests, and then you go and do

the coronation, and you walk up to the castle and then go oh chickening out and leave and it's like a single cut scene and then he goes go to Batall and I'm like what the fuck but it fails everything else active before that yeah cuz it marks like the end of the first act weird so. So, yeah, the game's story is... I think the story is significantly worse than Dragon's Dogma 1's story. I heard some people talking about how Dragon's Dogma 1 had a whole lot of lively NPCs you got to meet and hang out with that were like remarkable. They were So there were way less characters in Dragon's Dogma one But like they're more interesting and also you got to talk to the dragon more often

Indeed he won. Okay It doesn't count when you're just rolling down the road and then a fucking dragon rolls up and so goes Yo, show me what you got bitch. No Okay, cuz that happens like three times now. It's like fuck. I'm not ready get away from me like no Uh, let's go we going We the streets player get your mail. So like I love the game so much, and I can't stop playing it Yeah, it's it's also a mess like it's so fucking weird and it has such high highs's it's also a mess. Like it's so fucking

weird. And it has such high highs. And there's parts that are like, fuck, I would call the weird lows. Okay. Um, but what's not a weird low is that I found the Sphinx. Um, and the Sphinx challenges you to her riddles. That sequence is incredible. It is amazing. It works in and outside of your perception of how the game works. Is that a character, is that someone in DD1 as well?

No, no. It's something they talked about in the previews where there is a monster out there called the Sphinx Okay, and she will challenge you with her riddles And There's a lot of riddles. Okay, and they're they're They're not difficult But they require you to change the way you think about a lot of the stuff in the game

like Solving the riddles in many cases is as simple as maybe picking the right item out of a list or Something like that, right? But you have to be you have to put yourself in the headspace of This mythical monster and it's so cool and the animation associated with it is So awesome and the voice acting on the Sphinx is great And then I finished all of the riddles and then they flew away and said hey guess what idiot you want more riddles go find me again I do want more riddles. Okay, okay, they're great Okay, so this is not like a

Okay, I was too sorry for some reason I was thinking of this as like a boss fight where you had to answer certain things Or something, but this is just I mean I'm sure there is a like if I felt like it I could probably attack the Sphinx and that would be a boss fight, but But yeah, no incredible absolutely amazing Probably the best encounter in the entire game. How are you handling upgrading the shit you wear? Because I'm not okay, because the feeling of putting money into something that's fine, putting in consumables and then replacing it with just a better thing at the next shop sucks. I think it's I think it's like I Think it's usually a better investment to sell

almost every Fucking like cuz you would get upgrade material to parts you get so many But yeah, maybe sell 50 of those fucking slate horns are not going to use. Right? Yeah, it's the numerical increase on getting a new piece of gear is so much stronger than upgrading a piece of gear. It felt like it. So I was just like, I'm like, is this a waste of time?

Fortunately, thank fucking God, the game lets you use resources that are already in your box that are not on your person While doing upgrades. Yeah, it's really nice. Oh My god, that's so it's nice to not have to worry about that. It seems like the kind of thing where upgrading Your gear is mainly like oh Do you really love the way this thing looks and want to keep it for a disproportionately long period of time? I was wondering, yeah.

Then upgrade it. That being said, the first upgrade is always just cash. Yes. I do one level exactly. One level in cash is fine, yeah. I'm running into the issue where, so the further you go into the game enemies start giving you more experience Of course they do but they also start giving you more discipline points So as you move from east to west

You start burning Through the vocations faster and faster and faster And then I run into a different gear up problem, which is well, I'm not gonna buy a fucking full set of archer gear so that I can switch back to something else in three hours. Yeah, you get it from the switch over and then you get like the base level. Yeah. But then if you sell that, then it's gone and it forces you to wear something that you shouldn't be able to. But then you'll be like, for example, I sold the sorcerer staff

and are the mage staff switch back from sorcerer to mage. And then I was just unarmed. It's like, yeah, you're a mage, but go buy a staff idiot. Yeah. Did somebody in chat points out like they changed to Archer for the first time in Batall. And then the first time they killed something, they got four ranks in Archer. Wow. OK. OK. Like it's much faster. I also had a mini panic attack when I

saw like I I got the royal clothing. That's like, oh, this is what the posh people wear. You know, whatever. Or the vestments or whatever the fuck it's called. Sure. And I'm like, OK, this is what the posh people wear. Oh yeah, the courtly vestments or whatever the fuck it's called. Sure. And I'm like, okay, I have too many copies of this now. I got it from like three different quests or whatever. Oh, it's all over. I think I have five. It's ridiculous. Yeah. So I'm like, let me just sell the extras. And then I go to do that and then like you

go to the guy who sells them and he's selling them for like over a hundred thousand or some crazy amount. Oh yeah. it's disgusting. And it's like is it what I'm what like did I fuck up by selling these extra copies or? Nah that's just to punish you if you if you somehow don't lose your ability. Okay okay. Um and then the other thing is like uh what's weird about this is with the getting shit back from the rift when you sleep it in is like, I, you know, mostly getting, you know, some drafts and some whatever like meat. But then every once in a while, someone puts a fucking piece of armor on or so. Apparently there's a whole bit where if you make your character pantsless, people are going to be like, God damn it, put some pants on and then you get free pants. Making fun of like IGN for that.

OK. We're like, oh, I'm losing all this money putting pants on your on your pawns because I'm a massive prude. Nice. But the someone gave me a there's a big deal. It was the ring of fucking the wedding ring, basically. Eternal bond. Yeah. Yeah. And I was was like that thing sells for more money that would solve all the problems I'm currently having finance. Yeah, so you can get one that's a pre-order bonus and there is one you can get in the game and it's at the bottom of the

The list of Vocation training stuff right when you tune in discs, I think, or something. Oh yeah, yeah. Right. Okay, then there's two, I think. So it's like, I get. Right, so it's like, this is, I guess this is the ring of you give it to an NPC that you want to be in a relationship

with and it just locks that in. The way that, so I don't have this for sure. So I'm only going off of Dragon's Dogma 1, the way that it worked. So there's a hidden affection meter in the game. If you do quests for people or give them gifts, blah, blah, blah, you can raise their affection. And if you max out their affection, when they talk to you, they will have a weirdly horrible blush on their face. It will be super pronounced. And if you go to pick them up instead of throwing them over

your shoulder, you'll princess carry them instead. Ah, yeah. So that's how you know. Right. But here's the fun part. I'm pretty sure it works the same way. I'm pretty sure it works the same way as it does in DD1, but at some point the game will be like, this is your beloved.

This is your boyfriend or girlfriend Right and the way that it determined that was Okay, these characters are maxed out Because it's easy to max out affection. All right out of these maxed out characters, which is the last one you talked to before starting The end game and it will go this one. So this is how you get into situations where, wait what? They're my fucking beloved? I did a, what? There's no actual choice you make or answer a thing. If you have the ring of eternal bond

and you put that on them that will max out their affection instantly and then lock them in. So this is where the question arises where I'm like okay that's cool to know that that's what that does. I currently need cash and yeah I can I'm certainly you know you can go grind it out for sure but I haven't met... Selling monster parts is like the fastest way to get get money. Yeah I guess I for sure. But I haven't met- Selling monster parts is like the fastest way to get money. Yeah, I guess. I just, I'm like, I haven't met any character at all

besides the first girl, maybe? That's like- Oh no, it can be anyone, bro. Pawns included, literally anything. Oh no, not pawns. Pawns don't count, they have no free will. Yeah, because you're surrounded by these NPCs that are rolling with you, but they're not really people

Bro, you know that okay, you know the You know that archer that's in the middle of verne worth The the guy who's asking for a human bow. I Don't think I have oh he's right next to the smithy. He's the only elf in town Okay. Anyway, so like I did his quest and now when I talk to him, he's like, hey, and so is his dad. So like if I if I like go to the elf town and fucking talk to them before the elf game, sorry before the end game, like there's a possibility that like elf boy or elf dad will show up as my

fucking beloved. Okay. Susie got her pawn as her beloved. Oh, okay. Ooh, how the fuck do you do that? Okay. Because I'm cool. Yeah. Well, because essentially, I'm just looking at this thing. I'm like, right now, I don't know what the value of any of this fucking about it is. Don't worry about it. I really want to sell it though. So Dragon's Dogma 1 on launch had one of the best stupid design oversights ever, which was that affinity would go up with characters if you spoke to them. Just spoke to them. Which meant the tiny old man who has no hair and is like a gross old guy who says Masterworks all you can't go wrong because he's the weapons dealer for every weapon in the game ended up being like most people's beloved if they beat the game fast

enough. Because you talk to him all the time, man. That means you love him. That means you love him. So many games have figured this out. That's crazy. Yeah. Okay. So now you have figured this out. That's crazy. Yeah, okay, so now you have a ring

to just confirm and lock it in. Yeah. Okay, now I guess the other question is, does it even mean anything besides picking them up in the blush? No, not really. It might later, might in the ending, but nah. Nah, who cares?

Because I haven't, because I also haven't heard anyone refer to if Any game where relationships matter people talk about that stuff a lot there was a here. It's not being discussed There's like a discrete scene with Alarca and there's a discrete scene with Wilhelmina Like a romantic thing, but they're like super dog shit and don't matter. Okay and not exclusive You know reminder that I'm coming off of fucking Mass Effect No, you know So no dragons dog is obsessed with one thing and one thing only and that is wandering around the wilderness and fighting fighting a bunch of monsters though, I was talking to some friends last night,

and the enemy variety in DD1 is very similar to DD2 before the expansion came out. But you seem to fight a lot less large monsters in DD2. Like, Whites and Chimera and Ogres and Cyclops seem significantly rarer than they do in DT1. I'm running into those fuckers every 10 minutes, dude. I don't know what you're talking about. They're all over the map constantly to the point where I'm like, yeah, I'm just going

to ignore you. I don't feel like dealing with that. I've been running into the Minotaurs and the fucking just big ogre types. Mad Fientist I really like the Minotaur. That is probably my favorite enemy in the game. Mad Fientist His rush is pretty cool. His rush is pretty cool. But a bunch of them I've seen. And then the one, and even just like hanging out at the, around the campfires and stuff. And then the griffon is of course doing its own thing. Dragon's doing its own thing.

Yeah, I don't know. I, I, I've, I've. That's strange. I hate enough of them that I'm now like, I'm okay to run from this fight. I don't feel like dealing with this right now. You know? A Minotaur also broke its way into town.

Oh yeah, that happens. So, a final Cyclops and an Ogre in the middle of town. And it's awesome when that happens. When you start to see the NPCs just freaking out, you're like, what's going on? Oh, that's going on! But then anyone who can fight starts joining in too, that's pretty cool.

Yeah, like yeah, I was fighting an Ogre and there were like 30 guards plus me and my pawns just beating on it. So like, am I supposed to grab onto the griffon and fly away, and when it flies away, stay with it? Yeah, if you want. Because that fucker, I can't get him to, I can't get him to not run away.

And I'm on like round eight now. Oh really? So there's basically two things. If you set his shit on fire and whoop his legs hard enough, you can still lock them. But yeah, you can grab on and fly away. I did that. You had and you had enough stamina to maintain the entire right? Oh yeah. Well, when he's when he's like when he's like just flying, you don't even need to grab on. You just stand on him. Like when he's like just flying you don't need to grab on you just stand on him. Oh Okay, you know You know when you're crawling on a monster But like you you're like in a place that you could reasonably stand static or has like a very slightly different stance If you let go you will just stand on them and start regenerating your stamina

And that's how you can do like certain attacks directly into their eyes. Okay. Okay. Cause I tried grabbing on once and I'm like, this is impossible. Now I fall and die, you know? Yeah. Okay. Um, and also again, like he just, I'm like, let me just try to stun lock and get him on the ground and do enough damage. And each time so far, it's been on the last life bar and it's got, away forever so I'm like I don't know if there's some sort of like extra thing I need here to finish him off but yeah all right you just need to hit him harder basically fair lighting is shit on fireworks really well like really really well in fact lighting everyone on fire works really well

Yeah, I said the the the the the trip after I followed the griffon to its nest was for real mmm it's also like um, I Don't know if I guess the like, okay, I assume the intended progression is, it's kind of like you go wherever, but if you happen to find yourself in a town where the armor they sell is a little bit stronger than the one you're currently wearing, you're probably where you're supposed to be, right? Sure.

Like, the, it has, the basic basic the basic path for the game is an s Okay, like like through the map It's like you start at the top and then you go to the right around and then the capital and you just do a C From there. Okay, it's basically a straight line Cuz yeah, like I because I I didn't get to, cause I went over to, like I said, the hidden village and I ignored, um, Harve for a while. And then I jumped on an ox cart and then teleported to checkpoint rest town and I bought checkpoint towns got great shit.

And I bought a staff there that was like three times better than the current one I had. And I'm like, wow. Yeah. that was like three times better than the current one I had. And I'm like, wow. Yeah. So I got to Batal and the stuff from Batal is the upgrade from the checkpoint rest town. OK. OK. OK. Yeah. Well, well, it's and it looks cool. It looks like cool shit. But I yeah, but I also definitely had some points when I did go to Harv and Clear out there that issue and stuff or it's like hey come check back in a couple of days and I'm like bitch

I'm teleporting in and out leave me alone like I Definitely was like yeah Yeah, yeah Well, they put a stone there, so you can- Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not there yet, so this is an assumption, but it's really strange how much of a do-over Dragon's Dogma is over- sorry, Dragon's Dogma 2 is, because the quest in Harv to go into the basement to fight the Saurians is so similar to one in Dragon's Dogma 1 that I am in kind of awe.

Because you get down there and you see a weird ruin that you can't interact with. And you go, what the fuck is that and then I go oh, it's later Okay, it's it's for later Have there been I know the answer to this question as I ask it it is obviously yes, but I'm gonna ask anyways Where are the complete psychopaths that have gone up to the ballista aimed it and? Psychopaths that have gone up to the ballista aimed it and Actually hit the Griffin out of the air knowing its trajectory. Oh, that's tough man. That seems insane

There I seen it. I can't imagine that's actually a thing But what else could that be for I hit a there's I can tell you it must be to study the path of the Griffin Aim it up wait long enough and then get it the way You there is a there are the beggar one point in which there's like a ballista That you can aim at a grounded opponent. Oh Jesus say and I missed and or didn't hit the weak point I asked for like 25 minutes. Yeah, it'd be my fucking shit. Well, fuck you you deserve it Don't miss But that's like it like okay grounded aiming it down. That makes quite a bit more sense

But the idea of just this thing that flies across the sky sometimes and it's gonna maybe cross your path And you've got to not only like have that preemptively locked in but you've got to fire and anticipate the car it's madness it's madness. Yeah so here's the here's one of those fun things. If it was hitscan maybe. One of the best things about this game is that the griffin is way more aggressive than it was in the first game.

In Dragon's Dogma 1, most people would fight a singular griffin. And it was like the core of a large quest. I mean, it feels like I'm, again, round eight with this fucker. It feels like it's an ongoing battle. No, I've killed a couple. They are definitely, there's definitely more than one griffin. Yeah, you know what? Looking at this ballista setup, goddamn Rusty from Armored Core is a badass. How fucking sick is that?

Oh, it's hard. Okay, I'm sure there's a clip of someone out there that got that. I'm curious. There's so much like, there's so much I love about Dogma 2 and I think it's great, but I also think it's terrible The jack is overwhelming it is overwhelming. It's so here's the here's the here's the I've I can only think of I can't think of anything that I would describe this way, you know, like two steps forward one step back

think of anything that I would describe this way, you know, like two steps forward, one step back. Dragon's Dogma 2 is one step forward, one step back. Like, wow, the world map is so much larger and more fun to explore and it's's Dogma 1. And the enemy density is so high. It's so high. Yeah, like, I feel as if I have the same, I have a similar level of curiosity to Breath of the Wild's what the fuck is over there, right? When looking at this map, but upon arriving, it's not this majestic gracious moment.

There's no Elden Ring like, oh. It's very subdued. And then not only is it subdued, but like whatever it is, even if it is impressive or kind of cool, there's like eight little janky NPCs pathing badly around it going, ah, we're out of my way. What? But Batal has like a getting stuck on an ox cart. Batal has like a fun little addition to the way the game works with the enemy density. So in Batal enemies have like new variations. So there's like a gore cyclops, or there's like a ogre that has like more fur on it.

And they work as like variants. But the main thing in Batal is that the way that the levels are structured, enemies are so close together that the likelihood of multiple different types attacking you simultaneously is really high So like okay. Yeah, that's happened once or twice in the main verne worth area You like fighting some some goblins and oh, you know, we got a little too close to the wolves

Now we're dealing with goblins and wolves in Batall. It's like I'm fighting Harpies the the Lizards, goblins and wolves simultaneously. And they're running up on you and they're all just kicking the shit out of you. No, night fights are currently skeletons, ghosts, and probably wolves in unison coming at you, a bunch of the maps.

By the way, you've changed Paige from a warrior to a thief and you fucked up my team composition. Well, Paige has been, sorry, Big Paige that is, has been rotating around the cast. She hit rank six in fighter, then she maxed out in warrior, then she maxed out in archer, then she maxed out in thief, and she's currently halfway to maxing out mage, and then will be sorcerer, and then she'll be done. The only available ones I have are the two low-level fighter ones and then the current class so yeah. I was like rolling with those. Just go get a real pawn. Yeah yeah. A non-free pawn. I did start going. I have more than enough money. I'm getting stupid amounts of RC. Although

it's weird to find Rift Stones and then they're like, okay, this is a Rift stone that you can't choose anything. You take what you can get. Yeah. So now here's one behind that. Right. And then here's one that's like, you can choose, but you can choose from like 10 dudes that are here.

And okay, so I can explain that. So the ones that you just spit out a random pawn, that random pawn is always going to be three or four higher levels than you. Like that's the idea behind that. It's like, oh, here's a high level pond. The problem is that I have a lot of RC, so my ponds are always way higher level than whatever that thing spits out, so it's totally pointless. The second of which is that it's like,'s pawns and it will always have some kind of Criteria and there's a lot of those right here's really tall pawns. Here's pawns of quests Here's pawns with maxed out tits is as I saw big titty rift stone. Is that real? Yeah, it's totally real oh my god

That was like oh, it's gonna be about their temperament. This pond is always calm. Yeah. Here's all simple ones. Here's all straightforward ones. Yeah, there's tons and tons and tons of them. Big titty Riftstone. And the thing is, is that when you go back to a regular Riftstone, you can actually search for all those subtypes if you found them.

Yeah, I did see that. I did see that. Yeah, okay. So the category ones unlock the filter for you later. Yeah. Okay, that makes more sense. The other thing that I've been deep diving on this shit. So you know the augments, the things that you get for maxing out a vocation and they're the passives you can pick you can carry over the last the last The last list yeah, they're they're called augments. I discovered

That there seemed to be some math errors With with the augments Most of them are statistically worthless most of them represent 5% increases Some worthless most of them represent 5% increases some some are flat increases like the final the final thief augment which is increases strength it increases your strength by 30 Wow okay which is nothing which is nothing wait not percent 30 the number. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, but it's nonsense The only two augments in the whole game that are just like Amazing and they do what you think they do is the first fighter augment and the first mage augment which is defense and magic defense

are 30% buffs to defense and magic defense specifically. All the other ones are like various little flavor of 5 or 10% you would never notice. Those first two for fighter and mage are incredible. Okay, but the thing is is that like I'm currently not multi classing. And a bunch of the shit to unlock is like, I maxed out those skills I think are useful that I need to have. Because I'm also like, like, okay, if we'll leave, what's your your Risen's class again? So mage and I switched over to sorcerer didn't like it switched back to mage,

the ability to heal is too important especially kids really good the squishiness And then yeah, I put on I put on the ice power geyser The Light yeah lightning is great 11 is incredible and then Take a hit of armor and heal me,

and or heal you, heal anybody. Yeah, okay, yeah, those are good. Yeah, those are, right, and so like I try, I'm like, oh, stalk a spell, that sounds good, fuck that, it wastes time. The stalked spell doesn't come out faster than just casting it anyway. Oh, that's one of those really fun ones in which stalking the spell will ruin a pawn's AI if you put it on them. Because they just start doing non-spells.

They just start stalking them all the time. Stupid. So stupid. It sounded amazing because I'm assuming it's like you don't have to do the cast animation when you release it. And of course, no, that's not what it's going to be. It's going to be you still have to do the cast animation. So the entire point of stalking it is defeated because I'm just doing the same length

as casting it anyway. There's also some goofiness with... So like the master skill for Archer is called Great Arrow and it's just like you blow your entire stamina bar on one big arrow. Okay. Right? It's like dire arrow on crack. Right. You can't give it to pawns because pawns are like, see that wolf over there?

I'm gonna spend 10 seconds charging up a shot to shoot that wolf. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Meanwhile, see that ogre? Mm hmm. Regular arrows. Right. And so it causes the pawn to like turn off. so that's where and so this is where when I'm like when I'm giving I'm buying abilities for just fighter woolly you know I'm like okay you're probably gonna need for just utility purposes I'm like you're probably gonna want a pawn that can do an aerial attack to get like a harpy that's flying because there's aerial shit

and if they can't reach it that sucks. All right here's a counter block and stab you know here's a stinger and then I was like oh here's the I'm going to launch you up because I'm sure advanced classes are going to enjoy and need that utility and it'll be fun for getting up to heights or whatever but there's a bunch of times where like I said like if they just run up to you and run away from the fight to go like hey I, I'm going to get you up there. And I'm like, but I don't need to jump right now. That's a waste of time and damage. And then some of the other abilities I can give the pawn are not as useful as the spread

of skills I currently have. So the only thing to spend the points on, since I'm not multiclassing, is those augments. So I've gotten all of them. So there's a massive thread that Blastio Boots made, getting data mine shit and just figuring out what do these fucking do numerically? The defense one for fighter and the one called one called through which is 10 extra kilograms of weight Those are good. Those are really good. The magic defense one for mage is really good I mean, yeah, I'm wearing both rings that are like carry more shit. Oh, yeah, just do it and so on and so forth But like the the magic defense and and defense ones and the one with

extra weight, like those three are like the best by far. Okay. By far. Everything else is like to taste, right? There is one detail about vocations that you should know, which is really interesting. If you do get far enough into the game to unlock the final class, the Warfare, the one that's all classes simultaneously, it splits discipline points between all of your other classes. Oh, that's interesting.

They all get up. They all get all level up. When you get Warfare, half of your points will go to Warfare, and half of your points will go to ranking up all the other classes nice Okay, so I will take a sleep So if there's classes that you fucking hate But you want their augments. Yeah, just run warfare that being said

Yeah, the three occupants that I mentioned are the good ones all the other ones are like, yeah, it's fine. It's okay I'm just like I'm not buying the boons. I'm not casting them on people I'm hiring the boons are incredible the pawns I hire do the booting. Yeah. Oh, there you go. Yeah So my current my current my current deal is the two the two pawns run in Right wooly and Paige or wooly and fighter pawn will run in extra pawn will do boons and some extra support shit. And I hang back with a bag of potatoes and just cast lightning or ice and just eat potatoes.

Yeah, that'll do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it. Like shoving chips in the gut and just power geyser-ing things. The boons are way better on pawns because they can just aim them with AI. They don't have to follow people around they just

perfectly target Archers are better as pawns Straight up because they have perfect accuracy Like I don't know if you've had an archer pawn and then seen what the goblins in the fight look like after you're done But they they all have just lit up. Yeah. Okay. That's pretty good Um, I noticed that like targeting a healing spell is also kind of shitty. Yeah, that's not good. Like, again, you can't do a hard lock-on,

so I'm tracing the character who it says, I'm like, two people are here, one needs help badly. I target them, and then they move a little bit, and the other one runs in front, and it's like, actually, this'm like fuck no I can you not that sucks. I hate that learning curve The learning to come to compensate for the auto targeting system being garbage Yeah, so one of the interesting things is that like Your pawns learn from you and if you play a class of vocation And then you put your pawn as that

vocation they will do some of the things that you do if they're good ideas. So like Big Page when I changed her to a thief, she's a really good thief. Also thief is the best vocation. Like numerically and statistically and strategy and it has the best and strongest skills and it has the best and strongest skills and it has the best master skill interesting I just noticed I hired I hired a thief that was like yo one Here's 10k if you kill a griffin, so that's a nice reward and then to Your map is now glowing with materials that I'm gonna get for you fucking thing. I want materials can be anything

It was like I just I was like, oh shit, that's that's a nice utility. So you know, doing that for now. But like, OK, I guess combat wise overall, too. And stealing shit in the middle of the fight. Oh, clarifications from Susie in the chat. Hey, Susie. She disagrees and says the magic archer is the strongest. I you're probably right.

But I was mainly talking about pawns. The strongest person you can put on a pawn is thief. Yeah, magic archer has a move that just kills every boss in the game directly. Oh, wow. Okay. Their master skill is like an arrow that you burn health on. The whole bar, the lost gauge doesn't even exist. You just burn it. Okay. And if you burn it down to like almost dying, it'll one shot anything.

Interesting. Okay. Cool. Yeah. I kind of like if I can multi-class in a way where I can hold on to that defense spell or that healing spell that might be good Well, that is for the last unlock. That's the last thing Okay, cuz I like when I switched over to sorcerer the secondary ability which was get stamina back instead of heal I fucking hated that I was like this sucks slowing slowing me down to get stamina back It's not what I want to do. I want to put up a healing bubble and contain damage when the powers are being stupid and then I'll just fucking eat potatoes to deal with my stamina. That's the reason why warfare is the strongest.

People did, you remember they said the warfare had lower stats than the other classes? Yes, yes, yes. It's like 5%. It's not even big. You would never even notice. You would never notice. And you're like, well, they have to burn one of their skills on switching weapons, right? So you're like, oh, darn, you only really get three skills.

Being able to grab three skills and all the weapon abilities is so fucking busted. You can equip a mage staff just for the heal and levitate. Levitate is so good. You don't need any of the real skills. Yeah, levitate is incredible. Platforming game changer, fight game changer fight game changer just put fucking I don't know if you've seen it but there's a move called gut and core uh gut and run and draw in quarter which is a thief move that hits weak points it's when you climb on somebody and you

just stabbed something at the point I've seen it yeah yeah okay yeah just put that on on warfare for the times that you climb on them why not just do it you'll just it'll just kill shadow the Colossus yeah um mad was mystic spear hand is not the best class but it does have the single best skill in the entire game one of their skills is a bubble shield that goes around you. And it goes around anybody within 10 yards of you and renders you fully invincible to everything for 10 seconds. Jesus. Wow. OK. I mean, the current thing I have lets the team tank a hit, which is really nice.

But yeah, that's pretty fucking invincible. Yeah. No. As I was saying, like, you just meet a guy who's using spear hand, ask him about his fighting style, and then he says he made it up, and then you just get the class. And you're like, cool, I'm a Jedi. Huh, okay. So, I don't know if I was talking to you, but I was like, oh man, that Mystic spear hand class really looks like Darth Maul. Because it's got like telekinetic stuff, like a Jedi.

And then I started to play it and I'm like, oh, they literally like used episode one fight choreography as like the basis for some of those animations. Oh, actual Ray Park flippy flop moves. Like the critical hit on a standing opponent is the move that Darth Maul kills Qui-Gon with. Okay, okay. Like the slash behind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, turn. Yeah, interesting.

I did see, I did get a double-sided sword and it said, like, this is for later. Yeah, that's for that guy. Shut up and put it away, idiot. Oh yeah, people point out it's also Virgil because it has doppelganger and trick and summon swords. Okay. Like it's... Well, if anyone gets to fucking do it, Capcom certainly.

Oh, there are two NPCs in the game called Dante and Virgil, and they're the ugliest NPCs in the game. Oh, yeah Dude, the pawn called M bison is awful. Yeah I don't know what what do they mean by that? What did they mean by this? Like literally why even do that you take it takes me a full 30 seconds to load that pawn up and walk him to him In the rift and go you know, know, expecting some cool guy with a hat, maybe like a fun sort of bison like reference, not at all. No man, just some ugly piece of shit.

What a dumb, I hate, don't do that. Yeah. There's also, have you gotten sick yet? No. There's, there are are there are elements in the game that make getting sick a little unavoidable, which I think is really great. Okay. Um but it's still easy to deal with. I mean, I'm I'm I'm assuming I'm assuming eating

rotten food is a bad idea and I'm just not I'm not doing that. I mean the pawn sickness.. No, no, no. I mean the pawn sickness. Oh yeah, that hasn't happened yet either. Yeah. So what's really funny is that do you know what, you want to hear what the best way to protect yourself from pawnery is? Hire high level pawns and keep them for a while

The less pawns you hire The less chance you the less chance you already get sick. Oh, so it comes in with a new pawn So there's two ways you can I assumed it was my pawn coming back with it There's two ways sorry three ways you can get it. Yeah You know the Drakes. I'm sure you fought one. I sure did. Okay, they can pick up your pawn and infect them. Oh, fuck. Their grab attack makes your pawn sick.

I'm glad I ran. The second way is that your pawn can come back with it by catching it from somebody else's pawn. Yes, yes, that's what I thought. And then the third one is that You know what I'm not gonna say it There's a third one yeah, yeah to be fair to be fair like I You just that just those the second one I assumed would be the case like in a random unlucky thing

The first one that I was fully gonna get fucking rocked by at some point. Yeah. All right I am I so because we are using Pawns that are highly popular The likelihood likely of big page or wooly coming back sick is extremely high. I'm certain. I'm also not sure. So far all they've said is, damn, hope we don't get that. We'll have to keep an eye out.

Yeah, that's crazy. But I had one. Okay. I had one that was sick. Because I'm just going like, yo, toss them in the fucking river? We just brine these fuckers or what? Yeah, just brine them. Give them a bath. Yeah, okay. Okay.

The instant any of them start to act up or be weird, the whole party, dead, kill them. Reduce. You can't be too careful. Start from scratch. Yeah, and here's the fun part. When your pawn dies to the point where they have to go back to the rift

and you have to bring them back out of the rift They recognize and they're like man. I died and they have a scar somewhere on their body Interesting I've so far. I've just gotten oh man. I'm such a fucking loser. God damn it. Sorry. I died. Oh fuck Also, I saw an article that was like hey, it it's who knows, like, yeah, we're working really hard on making pawns not say the same things over and over again. That was really annoying in Dark Dragon's Dogma 1. Really? Yeah.

Was it? Oh, man. You, you. Jesus Christ, guys. I would I would say the pawns Repeat themselves about five times less than they used to Except when they see a fucking ladder I suppose it leads somewhere And I've already been up the ladder, by the way.

I've already been there. So in Dragon's Dogma one, encountering enemies or hitting certain parts of the level would cause them to say something every time. And they only had three or four things to say about any given enemy or any given spot. you heard that shit all the time in Dragon's Dogma 2 they seem to actually like to talk about like their pawn history or like the arisen history or like the makeup of your party yeah yeah yeah yeah because

it's it's pulling from not like the spot you're standing it's pulling from something else right except for lad, because when you get within a certain fucking radius of a ladder, they go, oh, a ladder, whoa! I once had a master, had an orison that only hired me for half a day. Oh, that's crazy. That's raw.

We'll never get anything done that this rate It all do now get in the it is all duty to follow dragon's dog experience right now What do you mean to gain from this or is in? They're trying to save you from not falling off the cliff page Christ I did an escort mission and I just fell right off the cliff, Paige! Oh, hey, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen. Jesus Christ. I did an escort mission, and the guy just fell right off the cliff. And I was like, well, I guess that's time. Yeah.

I did that guy's quest first. Abby, spoiler alert, she fell anyways. And then I was like, oh, god. And then I ran to the bottom of the cliff to administer CPR. And then when when I ran to the bottom of the cliff she teleported to the top of the cliff Yeah, that's my day to day and I'm like But your body was at the bottom of the cliff and I just took a while to push to get around Bullshit that game's so awesome. I love it so much. I Love it so much. I

Love it so much. I you know you said it's not poking with a stick to get to level 25 But I disagree not I am I am still aggressively poking with that stick Yeah, no, but what I mean is like you've been float you've been you poked it good. I Might be I might be currently performing surgery with two sticks Yeah, no, there's there's even from like a like perspective of I don't like you don't love this game Like I do but there's like it's like why is it weird? Like oh like if I do what is that? Why why? How aggressive is the palace gonna care about me wearing armor versus me? I don't know How aggressive is the palace gonna care about me wearing armor versus me wearing armor? I DON'T KNOW!

WHY IS THE GAME- The first game was exactly the same way. There's like three or four stealth missions despite the game having no stealth system of any kind. I didn't chance it, but I was really curious. I'm like, if I take my helmet off, is that gonna matter? I ran up to the fucking, uh, the countess and she's like, hey. Yeah, yeah, yeah, same. Same. And I'm like, didn you fucking kidnapped me and put me in a like a fucking slave encampment You're not even okay, but then but then the kid knows it's you. Yeah

anyway Going in both games going into the castle is like the shittiest part of the game by far Hey, you know what? You want to hear something really strange? I'm talking to people who've already beaten it. The game has no level scaling of any kind in New Game Plus. So you go into New Game Plus and there's like new mechanics for upgrading your character, but like you're one-shotting literally every single enemy. The enemies don't get stronger? No. Whaaaaat?

Why? WHY? I don't know! That's so weird! Someone says you can romance Diza? Yeah, you can. That's fucking bad. What is this game?

Anyone you can talk to in the whole game, you can romance. Including the fucking villain. Yeah, okay. Oh, bro, when in Dragon's Dogma 1, because of the way there's an endgame quest worked, you could accidentally end up with your beloved being an eight-year-old girl. Oh, sick. And the cutscenes would be like, I love you, eight-year-old girl, let's go to bed. And it was like, I love you, eight year old girl, let's go to bed. And it was like, oh fuck. Uh.

The jank, it's so like, like it's a jank that screams not enough QA, is what it is. But they worked on this for so long. I know. And then it's like, it's the same game again, it's so weird! It doesn't, I don't under, like, cause this is like where teams drop polish on top of

big open things where, you know, it's too much. It's so weird. I, dude, this is the same team that fucking did Devil May Cry 5. And it's like, for every square foot outside of the corridor, it gets janker. They get, when you fall asleep on a cart and then wake up as you're pulling into town, it gives you a solid minute to get off that cart

and wander around. Because if you wait long enough, depending on where the cart parks itself, it might just block all the NPCs from leaving or going past it. It might do that. Because it's parking diagonally across the one access way. God. Yeah. All right. So there's prob- there's very- and I'm gonna say this with a degree of certainty, there is a extremely high likelihood that there is a expansion for this coming within the year.

Okay. So that was a fucking Dragon's Dogma cast. That was very big, long segment. We do have other things to cover, but let's- I gotta pee, that's what I gotta do. Let's take a break and get to it. All right, we're back. Let's take a quick word from our sponsors.

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Bro, bro, you want to talk about soft ground wrestling Uganda? No, I there's a couple other things because I mean double the Dragon's Dogma and Balotro are very- I just have one thing to say. Yeah. So you know how Lord white died Lord white is dead Okay, no, he's not cuz it's Easter Monday, and he just crawled out of his grave But then they beat up Jesus

Just back from the dead I saw I saw soft ground be like Jesus was on the cross and everyone was very sad and then the soft Ground wrestlers did a Marvel three style sequence of finishing moves on the Lord and savior. I literally just watched his fucking undead white hand come out with a W fucking hand symbol like this. Damn. Screaming, ah! And it's like, your fucking hand symbol like this, screaming, ah! And it's like,

mainstream wrestling is too cowardly to kill a character in the dirt and have them come back to life. Mainstream wrestling is too cowardly to get a kayfabe racist who works himself into a shoot It's a great it's great how convincing Right why go for kayfabe when you could get someone that really doesn't like black people Well, I mean if you're talking about pro wrestlers, I don't imagine it would be too hard to find one.

Yeah, well, you know, I mean listen, there's praying on the fears of everybody by having we are the nation of domination, blaring through the speakers and a bunch of people walk in Nation of Islam style out to the ring. And then there's this guy who's just got some opinions, you know? Anyway. So yeah, I guess just to just because yes, we're we're a couple of things real quick. Battle Troll and Dragon's Dogma 2 definitely continued, but that aside, I cracked open BlazBlue Entropy Effect. What is that? So that's something I've been meaning to get around to and got bumped forward a bunch,

but it is the BlazBlue Rog light platform like action game so what dead cells with blaze blue characters shut your fucking mouth i have to go look at this now i don't believe you okay well that's that's what it is it is it is dead cells with blaze blue characters that you might god it just uses the fucking sprites! Oh my god this looks so weird! It's not the same sprites. But they're doing a lot of the moves and they're doing a lot of the characters so they're doing all the things you recognize.

But it's not cut and dropped in like Guilty Gear dust strikers for example where you played the the fucking terrible pace job there or guilty your judgment but Yeah, it's um, it's basically a Bay BlazBlue themed You know a rogue light and you pick instead of you know how you get like weapons and in dead cells Yeah, so instead of weapons, it's the character Sure. Yeah, so you get Hakumen and with Hakumen you have all of you have his basic combo and his some aerials and some lows and then his big counter special and then like as you progress you unlock more of the

Recognizable special moves but in addition to that you're gaining, you know The abilities you would get on a run through Hades where it's like so weird when you dash you get iframes And you create a blade behind you Every couple seconds really just made that move and now everybody got like the whole Ares power set got cribbed by everybody Yep, when you when you wait a couple seconds a giant ice summon sword, a Fract thing will, well, it's actually more like Jhin, but a little ice shard will shoot out and auto-target your enemies. And then as you progress through this thing where healing, you get a couple heals, but

sometimes you have to go into a random room and roll the dice to see what you get. In between each room, you get an upgrade. What's it gonna be? Build out your Hades build. Yeah. And then eventually you get to fight. Hey, look, it's Ara Kune as a big boss. Oh, that sounds like a nightmare. Fight big stage, full stage Ara Kune, you know? Um, and then you lose, and then you get to run it again,

but you get to keep the memory of the character, and you get to run it again, but you get to keep the memory of the character and you get like two or three of their build buffs that you can carry forward the next time. The weirdest part about it is that all of that has nothing to do lore-wise with what's going on as far as I know so far with the actual BlazBlue story. It is a future where you're controlling a robot who's downloading and running

ragnathebloodedge.exe and then you're now running a program and like modifying its stats as you progress. But there's not actually, it doesn't seem to be the actual characters. But there's a TV screen where you see Ragna standing there and some actual BlazBlue shit's happening on a TV. But I'm using my cyber elves that just happen to be look like BlazBlue characters. Yeah, yeah. You're, you're, um, those are projections. And then the real you is just BJ from 13 Sentinels.

It's a little cute robot running around a little environment talking to other robots. And they're trying to steer you towards the truth. That's all fine and dandy. And there's even a little like, speaking of the truth, there's even a, remember Assassin's Creed, where you'd collect pieces of the truth, there's even a, remember Assassin's Creed where you'd collect pieces of the truth? Yeah.

And then the videos comes together to reveal the fullest thing at the end there. There's a little bit of that going on where you're piecing together these little lore videos about what the entropy effect is and so on. It seems to be some sort of, you know, apocalyptic magic degradation disease particle thing that... Sure. Whatever. So if you tuned in and you don't know the events of Chrono Phantasma... Is this game Chinese?

The dev is, yes. If you tune in and you don't know about what happened to the black beasts after the time loop occurred. Nobody knows. Nobody knows what happened. And the grimoire. That's fine. All you need to do is go, hey, it's Noelle. And she's doing the gun cat-ass.

She has her hat and her gun. She dud she does the the What's the fucking Equilibrium she does the equilibrium and that's cool So yeah, and you know what as far as it being a dead cells like roguelite goes. It's not bad It's alright. It's not as good. Certainly Dead Cells has got more going. Well, that's like, it's kind of unfair. Dead Cells has like 25 years of development. But this is pretty fun. The combat system is, you know, it feels like you, you know, as you unlock more with your character, you get the ability to, you know, put together a decent build and kind of fight and do stylish things. It's very aesthetically reminiscent of Icy as well. That old, similar looking 2D action platformer.

But yeah, it's not bad as far as these go. If you're someone who's just a fan of the characters and you're like, oh, one of my mains is playable here. And I want to... Oh, it's not the whole cast? It's not the whole cast. It seems to...

I mean, yeah, it's not 68 characters, unfortunately. Like, no, there is no Juubei. But it's got a lot of the big hits. Sadly, no Bank Shishigami either. He like no there is no jubay But it's got you know a lot of the big hits sadly no bang. She she got me either But that feels like a big missed opportunity, but yeah, but it's got Ragna gin Noel So got Tager no Tager. It's not gonna play it that well But yeah, and it's got, I think like eight or so. Taukaka's in there, so if you want a Taukaka

to show up and yell about booby lady, you can do that. Yeah, mm-hmm, yes. There's like a bill, there's like a yeah. I could just play Calamity Trigger if I wanna do that. You sure can. But I'm not going to. Squirrel girl, Makoto, not present, you know, yada yada. All your all your no, no, Susan. Oh, but anyways, it's not bad.

It's not bad. It's it's it's kind of a fun one. I might I might go a little bit further. Just the main thing I guess I kind of want to do is I'm like, OK, I want to max out Hakumen and just pick a character, max out that character if you care about seeing how they play. And then that'd be the extent of it, if anything. I...

Yeah. Hakumen's in there? I like Hakumen. Hakumen's cool. And he does the parry. Hakumen Jin gets to be there twice? Well, because one is the Jyn that is infected by Terumi when Hazama has made him evil as a kid, but then the other one is the one who gets to break the cycle by defeating the Black Beast when Ragna falls into the cauldron in 2199.

I feel like talking to somebody who has played BlazBlue when I have also played BlazBlue sounds the same as me telling someone who's never seen Evangelion about Evangelion. It feels like despite the fact that we have both played BlazBlue, it feels about the same level of impenetrable. I played Calamity Trigger when it dropped and got my... My understanding of most of the story kind of stopped there. I played Continuum Shift also. As far as getting what was happening in that story goes, when a brand new fighting game drops, it's my responsibility to get in there.

So that's certainly what I did when BlazBlue was the new fighter on the scene and I got what I could from the storyline and with multiple characters and routes to piece together the whole visual novel thing. Yeah, I'm looking back and I'm like, did I just play BlazBlue so that I could feel again the fucking old Sagat-Zengief matchup? Was that why I played that game? Because Nu versus Tagger is like the worst matchup in fucking anything ever.

Shit. I mean, yeah. You know, I mean, so you say, but then you can take your now it's over says kanji you can you can do you can play that in 15 different ways. Oh, nothing in personas fucking Tager versus new 13. Oh my god, that fucking bitch. Although I mean, if you talk to the the Tager mains, I know they'll usually be like, yeah,

you got the magnetism, but he's not Patemkin. So fucking whatever, you know. Doesn't matter. He's not there. But yeah, that's the entropy effect. It's not too bad. The other thing was Abba in Guilty Gear Strive. Yeah, did some ABBAing and what so it's what's happening in guilty-guerce drive is awesome in terms of like

You know how back in Street Fighter 5? I remember every time a new DLC character came out post season 3 or so They all had like a lot of attention to detail. They started getting way more awesome, just the assets, the amount of stuff, the animation. It had a really weird have and have not thing going on. Quality was incredible. I think one of the earliest I remember moments was when you saw Cody come out,

and after every attack he had a little unique animation for tightening up his tie. Yeah, Cody got a lot of love. You know, like stretching his arm out, little post animation things. And that was really cool. That started mid-season three, I want to say. Yeah. Well, anyway, in Guilty Gear Strive, each new character has a wind pose that is fucking

amazing and better than their original rosters got. You know, Elphelt with her fucking death scream was the sickest wind pose ever. And now Abbas goes even further with her grabbing Paracelsus and jumping into a pocket reality where he's there with her forever. It's super duper cool. Was it Zeku that started that? Yeah, somewhere in that. Okay, Zeku must have been the first. Yeah, that sounds about right. Zeku was two characters.

Fine. Yeah, that sounds about right. I just remember it wasn't the first season of DLC. It's really hard to remember Street Fighter V. That seems like a lifetime ago. Guile and Alex were the first characters that came to that, I think. Anyway, so in this case, you get all of that going on. You get how fun the difference between Abba in Jealous Rage mode and regular mode is. Even just visually, there's a lot going on with her face and the moves, the presentation, the way she crouches and still holds onto the key. It's pretty cool. Yeah, just using her, the feeling I get, and the best way to describe what it's like is

when she is in her default mode, you are controlling Jamie minus two drinks. And when you switch to jealous rage mode, you're switching to Jamie plus six drinks. Okay, I gotcha. She's so much worse than bad when she's in her normal state and when she switches over, she's unbelievable. Hakann is back! Way more extreme than Hakann.

Way more. Oh, that's actually super wild. Way more extreme than Hakann, way more extreme than Juri, more extreme than just about anyone that has the like Feast or Famine style of play. It's crazy. Her run speed, her moves, the range they get, the ability to just touch and explode you with damage, how oppressive and terrifying she is.

And then of course, there's the part where it runs out and she goes back to being bad. But it's a you have the she has a move where she kind of like Pushes the key into you turns it and then unlocks jealous rage But like if you don't get a combo into that after a couple seconds of trying to get something going You can just go fuck it and just switch into it anyways manually, you know It's like if the when the game plan fails, you just go. All right all or nothing and get back in there so plan fails, you just go, all right, all or nothing, and get back in there. So yeah, but she's got some clear issues. Yeah, the key grab, the range is really bad on it. But in exchange for that,

when someone blocks it, you get to act first. So it's very plus on block. Anyways, ABBA, pretty cool, all things considered. And yeah, going back to that game as well, it was fun to try that out, but I've firmly locked in that I'm like, I'm my secondary, even though I'm like, I have a I have a bike in that I pulled together, it's gonna be the fucking cards, man. Asuka is too much fun to play. And I played a lot more of him since last time I tried and I finally have wrapped my brain around what you're supposed to Do I have the game plan? I have the I have a why right? Mm-hmm You know why you can play oscar why and why your brain is there why you've been playing fucking belattro because of belattro Exactly, it's the same thing so I know

Understand how to build Exodia and and play it. I get it now. And when it happens, it's not a checkmate, but it sure is check. It is a near, it is a near checkmate, but you've got to get lucky, but I've got to get lucky too. And one of the funnest things about it as I'm playing this fucking insane card character, near checkmate, but you've got to get lucky, but I've got to get lucky too. And one of the funnest things about it as I'm playing this fucking insane card character, where I'm not even looking at what you're doing, I'm just looking at my where I'm at, and I'm looking at my life and I'm looking at my hand. You're a fucking third party to the card game that's happening with me and Asuka right

now. And when I have a bad hand, I'm like, oh, I'm dead. But the person I'm fighting doesn't know that I'm dead because they don't know what my cards mean. So maybe you're not dead yet. So maybe I'm not dead. There are so many moments where I'm super like, oh, if I get attacked right now, the round is done. Because in addition to the whole

searching for cards aspect of him, is the mana where, I talked about it last time, but any time he does something, it costs magic. And the only way to get magic back is by sacrificing life, super meter, or just standing there and waiting. And it takes forever. You can speed it up a little bit with like,

you've got spells for charging or you can just wait and it'll come back. But it's so long that it's not practical. No one's going to stand there and let you heal. So you've got to find your ways to like sacrifice your life. And like when the fight is going well, I'm near death, pulling my own life. There's no such thing as a perfect. I'm doing insane shit, and I'm pulling myself down to 10% to make it happen. What I'm hearing is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is,

is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is Dragon's Dogma? equals No, you know how to play oscar in guilty gear strive sure sure It's it's so much stupid fun. It's there's so much that is just like yeah If only you knew what my hand meant right now you would know that I'm dead Do you still have moments where you're like if only either

of us knew what my hand meant right now? Absolutely, because Exodia consists of switching to your third deck of cards, getting a card that makes it so that you replenish your mana so that you can play cards more often. You're finding another card that makes it so that the moment you play a card, it gets auto-replaced with a next card. And then with those two working in congruence with each other, spamming everything and just shooting that shit out, right?

And while you're shooting shit out, you're paying attention for a staff, which will fill this, which will allow all the cubes to start floating in circles and doing bullshit in ways where you're just, you don't know. And then you're looking for teleporters so that while the screen is full of shit, you can teleport behind them and back. And that's what you're doing. Right?

You're setting up these three conditions and then the conditions start and then you keep searching as you spam You know, you're just going like I don't know what's called. There it is. I don't know what it's gonna other it is All right And it's just like oh my god game done fucking KO like slash, you know random bullshit go except Every once in a while in the middle of the random bullshit your eye twinkles red where you're like there it is you know but it's a lot of fun so yeah I like the ability to say that I have a main which is Nagori Uki one brain cell spin to win pop blood be stupid go yeah and then on the other side I have Asuka who's hoarding all

absolute polar opposites all the remaining brain cells are over on Asuka's side yes exactly that's a whole lot of fun it's kind of reminds me of the way people describe playing Blanca like the distance between I'm just pressing buttons, right? Yeah. And I'm doing complicated set play here, man. I mean, I just saw Wolfgang shout outs, fucking, you know, the other Blanka, fucking professor, do a dash into crouch, command hop to air ball backwards

to uncross up after crossing up the person so that it looks like they have to block back the opposite way, but the ball comes back to the front so they actually were supposed to, like you got crossed up. No, stop it. You stop it. That's too much.

Like we're only human, man. We're only human. And that is screen specific, position specific blank attack that was labbed and practiced so that when that happened and everyone freaked out, it was like, oh, yeah, no, that's exactly what I meant to happen. Insane, you know? Anyways, whole lot of fun.

And the new stage is really cool as well in Gita Gear. Heaven's Edge from Exert came back, and it looks pretty sick. The new song is fun. It's got that Queen style, jumping all over the place, melody. It's good that strive is fucking still got fun shit coming out for it so hell yeah beyond that last thing I was gonna say is x-men 97 continues to be incredible

no man fucking great I love the hyper condensation of running like the entire Madeline prior arc in like one and a half episodes Let me ask you a real quick question. Why is her name Madeline Pryor? Um, where's that come from? I looked it up and couldn't figure it out I'm I'm not sure but I just like I just know that that's what she's gonna be jeans middle name I'm not I'm not sure like but I just know that back in the day She would that was the clone gene and Goblin Queen. Yeah, and that you know, you get your your Nate Summers cable set up and all that But then she continues to be

Evil much longer into the future instead of the way This plays out where it ends up being fine. So yeah, I can't tell you. I'm just gonna leave and just be kind of a bitch. Yeah, and there's massive gaps in my Chris Claremont X-Men run era, but this is fucking just fun and awesome. And we dealt with cable in fucking 22 minutes. That was crazy. Like just fast, as fast as it can go.

I yeah, I even the weird like outfit that Magneto is wearing with the shoulders exposed. That's that's coming from an old cover from when? Yeah, that's a reference to an old old comic. Anytime you see an outfit like that you know that's what it is you know that's coming from somewhere. Like the X-Men 97 is pretty great I did not expect I did not expect the level of animation blending showing off nightmare thing shit. Oh, isn't that oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was really impressive Shoutouts to some real nightmare horror moments

and and Yeah, like it and like also like just it That's the kind of thing where you're like if this were in 1996 or five or whenever this came out that would have scarred the knee and that would have stayed it was stuck with me That would have that would have fucked us all up real good. Yep flesh horror would have absolutely No Anyway x-men 97 fucking great All right good. I don't wear the fuck they're gonna go from here because the bunch of shits happened already

Good I don't where the fuck they're gonna go from here because the bunch of shits happened already And it's happening at the pace of Insane batshit x-men 92 right it's a same thing with like the spider-man shit We're gonna do Doc OX entire rise and fall between the commercials between commercial breaks yeah Exactly exactly that no time go So yeah this week gonna continue I got Some we're gonna be a bit busy but some of the Days is good. We're gonna be taking a look at double dragon guiding got a sponsored stream coming up for that

and I also wanted to take a look at Rise of the Ronin. So we're gonna be taking a look at that as well. Hearing some cool things. I'm also hearing some cool things. So yeah, that's over on Woolly Versus on Twitch and on YouTube. And yeah, Yakuza as well. Man, that final cabaret battle is fucking intense.

Isn't that game awesome? Isn't that, and I don't mean Yakuza Zero, I mean cabaret club fighter. Yeah. Jesus, it's getting real. I'm starting to min-max my tech where I'm learning about tricks. Like as soon as someone sits down, pause the game and like switch to another girl so that you can allow the animation of sitting down to play out in the stopped

time and then and then resume time so that the Timer for money will be as optimized and min-maxed as possible It's it's it's nice to see you getting like your whole leg in I'd say your feet wet But no your whole legs are in there of like this nonsense of like so we're gonna have this one-off minigame And it's gonna be a full game Just just over here Just over here on the side if you want if you feel like it if you feel like it like I haven't been done back To don't don't go island because it intimidates me. Right. Right. Right. Yeah.

Like it's too much. So, yeah. Over on all the versus that's what's going on over at Pat Stairs. That's back to infinite wealth now that I speak of it. And on Friday, me and Paige are going to get back to Pat Beats, his wife, at video games, and we're going to be playing L.A. Noire. We're going to be we're still on the murder desk, if I remember correctly. So go check that out over Twitch.tv slash past stairs at.A. Noire. We're gonna be, we're still on the murder desk, if I remember correctly. So go check that out over at twitch.tv slash Pat's Stairs at.

Okay. So yeah. What's new in the world? What's new in the world? Well, how about this, man? How about the most blatant? Who gives a fuck shameless? We're making our own goddamn overwatch Marvel rivals bro

Goddamn bro China doesn't give a shit so that ease and first of all everyone you yeah That is notorious for being like we don't give a fuck that you made this. There's another thing I made this so I went and I went and looked it up. It's like it's been development for a couple of years Um, dude, I think this game started getting worked on like when fucking blizzard got kicked out of china I believe it. I believe it specifically a overwatch replacement I believe I would not be surprised if Marvel got the bidding or you know or bid it in whichever way that went for we want our characters in a hero shooter because like yes there's there's some fortnight to the aesthetic of what you're seeing in third person as well but like when you make this type of hero shooter 6v6 it doesn't have to have the Overwatch font,

but yet it does. It doesn't have to have the- These look like fucking Overwatch costumes. The outfits, the art style. Yeah, the outfits, yeah. The lighting, the environment, the icons in the corner to say that your alt is ready. Oh, it has the same hit sound effect.

It's crazy. T-t-t-t-t. Like you don't have to do that. The game could just be it's up, but no, we don't want you to think for a second that you're not looking at Overwatch. We want you to feel Overwatch, but now there's Spider-Man and Hulk.

Yeah, which, hey, that's cool. Hey, and you know what? I've been interacting with enough of these games for long enough. Chinese anime art style. I am a massive fucking mark for that specific like the Genshin, the Honkai, and now this. That's like my favorite Iron Man design. Interesting. I love it. I think it works better works for some characters Well, like a doctor strange certainly fits into like that aesthetic. He looks like he always looked that way, you know But from the other bit is and this is you can predict for me third person is awesome. I love that's a big deal I love seeing the characters at all times. That's great. It's really cool to just feel like you're watching a replay.

There are some artists that said that they were working on that game, saying that they were doing trial pieces for weeks and weeks and weeks before getting fired from their internship or whatever the fuck it was. What it sounds like is, yes, there's an artist that was working and there's probably others as well that who were brought in to do trial, to do a trial run and see if they could produce a piece under the direction of whatever they were being given. And in this case, the person was working on it for weeks, like you said, and then not paid for that work. And it's not uncommon to have tests or trials

for someone to be like, hey, are you a good fit for this project or so? But the idea of- Yeah, like a singular piece of art or your portfolio, not like work in the office. But the idea of this being, yeah, like you're taking direction from an actual team lead on where and how to do things.

And then that's still under the trial thing and then you don't Get paid for that work is yeah That is that's goofy shit trials that go on for that prolonged period of time are going beyond a trial also of Also of much more significant note to most people listening to this net ease makes a lot of games of wildly varying quality. Well, are they not amongst the most like, just greedy and awful with microtransactions and- Oh yeah.

Like just anti- No, but I'm saying that the actual games underneath those wildly vary in quality also. Okay. Cause they make a lot. You go to their webpage There's like 40 games on there, and I have not heard of two-thirds of those and some of them I have and some of them I have

So this is a big fat question mark But it's got that Marvel on it, and it looks like it's got money in it, so who knows Okay Yeah Marvel on it and it looks like it's got money in it so who knows? Okay Yeah, um I like I like There was I saw something where it's like almost like the three bees there was like There's a three ends, but it's I mean not quite because it's net ease next on and then I guess ten cent Yeah, but quite because it's NetEase, Nexon, and then I guess Tencent?

Yeah. But not quite. NCsoft, NCsoft for milking players with their shit. Yeah, something to that effect, right? Anyway. That trailer's hot. I signed up for the closed alpha and all that shit. I'd like to take a look at it.

It looks cool. Yeah, the same. And the idea of this coming in right when Overwatch is doing what it's doing, it's like the timing couldn't be better on that. Or they're like like here it is and I am me and page are convinced That that trailer got cut together in the minutes following the announcement of overwatches PvE cancellation Or it was waiting for the next fucking slip You know you know just wait Video and leave it unlisted

That's all it took yeah The timing was like immediate it was within like 24 hours of the cancellation of overwatch 2 single-player Crazy, and it makes sense to that like of course Marvel Who's going into whatever space they can with this shit is gonna, you know, they took a crack at Snap and they took a crack at all these other things like, yeah, they're gonna get into that fucking Overwatch, that Fortnite space, of course, you know, Fortnite is also not even Fortnite anymore, right? Fortnite is now a platform like Roblox. It's become-

Yeah, I don't know what that means. Fortnite is now a platform like Roblox. It's become less about shoot and gentrify and more about like, hey, there's a concert happening. Hey, there's a new tie in for a new thing that has a completely game changing thing. It's become so much more than just- Fortnite is where I do Gangnam Style after I shoot the kids at the wall. Chicken Dinner has become the least of its priorities, so. Yes, and of course, the part where it's like, hey, it's six on six again. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh uh, you know, I hadn't really thought too strongly about that.

It never really, it never really jumped out at me as a big deal. And then when I saw people talking about Marvel rivals in 66, I saw some people describing that they all, them and their group of friends all had to stop playing Overwatch entirely because they had a group of six friends that all hung out and played Overwatch and they moved it to five and had to do this awful juggling of who gets to play today. Rotate around or someone gets dumped. That's fucking stupid.

Also, remember the years and years of speculation on what a Marvel versus Capcom version of a Marvel character's kit would look like? Yes. Now just throw that into an Overwatch game. Do it. Take your entire binder of FLIR Ultra Marvel cards and Marvel Masterpiece cards and go through

and find random characters like Mojo and try to think about what that would look like on a stage or as a playable character. Like Mojo Jojo? No, Mojo, as in like a big mojo. Yeah, that's the weird guy from Future World. Yeah, you know. Not the Powerpuff Girls, but why did I think Powerpuff Girls villain?

You were thinking of Mojo Jojo, but yeah. That's why. You know, and you're like, oh, we're going to put Modok in? Cool. What's Modok's kit going to look like? What do we? You know? And you get to do that for the entire fucking Marvel universe.

And then every possible costume is all the Secret Wars version of this and Hulkbuster suit. And you just admit it. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, do that. It's everything. It's all there. Secret wars version of this and Hulkbuster suit and It's everything it's all there it's all ready to go Yeah, so yeah, we'll see how that looks All right mean like to play that game I am I am curious as well In the meantime, if we take a look over at the Yu-Gi-Oh! side of things, we could have jumped into this from the cards otherwise. Hey, Woolly.

Yes? You've been playing a lot of Elatro. I've been playing a lot of Elatro. You've been playing a lot of Asuka in Guilty Gear. Yes, I have. So you could stand to learn how to play some Yu-Gi-Oh. I might even win some money if I get good enough at it. Yeah, so when would you go down to Japan and take place in the tournament there?

Apparently it's not going to happen. But with this, there's also so there's the story and then there's the clarification, but I don't know where we're at now. Apparently, there was a ruling that said no foreigners are allowed to play in the Yu-Gi-Oh Japan Championship qualifiers, even if they're permanent residents of Japan. Or citizens. So it said Japanese nationals only to which it was like a so it's an anti gaijin rule. But if you are actually a new words a citizen of Japan and you're living there and you just have you're not Japanese it might be it's like it might be describing you. And I saw again, I don't know if this is we all

know who was gonna get turned away. I don't know if this is big if this is there's a basis to this or not, but in that discussion I saw people saying that they believe the reason why this happened was because the previous tournaments had a number of foreigners compete and dominate the entire top rankings. I was also told that, yeah. Is that the top eight last time around was exclusively non-Japanese foreigners. So this must have been in response to that happening. People in the chat are saying that they do this for DDR as well.

I see. So there was also some discussion though that someone was saying that that translation was not accurate. There was another way that it was worded that seemed to imply that eligibility is eligibility to participate is limited to those who have an address in Japan at the time of advanced reservation. And yeah, our Japanese nationals, I guess, but like, there's a debate as to whether or not the translation is implying that someone who is born in Japan or like living in Japan or is a citizen, but not of Japanese origin is allowed or is banned from that. Like, do they give you an eyeball and go, no. You know?

They might. You don't know. I don't. You weren't there. You don't know what they're't. You weren't there. You don't know what they're doing. I don't know if that's actually implying that you get measure headed, you know, in which case, hey, well, you could hire me to take a look at whoever comes through.

That's crazy. That's fucking nuts if that's actually what's happening. But I think we're going to need a better translation and such to get to the bottom of what what what that actually means. But if it's how I'll as it looks. I bet it is Slightly better than it looks Right, I bet it is Marginally better than the version we are describing now. I Mean if it is if it is as simple as you need to have you need to be living in Japan and or have an address then that is not as

bad as you cannot be the wrong shade of color. That is decidedly much better. But anyways, that's happening on one side meanwhile Over here Harada is like why all this noise about Waffle House now So happy so Pete somebody put a big old picture of a Waffle House and said hey Harada son of Tekken Could you please include Waffle House as a stage in Tekken? It would be really cool and Harada goes hey, what's up with the deal with Waffle House as a stage in Tekken, it would be really cool. And Harada goes, hey, what's up with the deal with Waffle House? Many people have asked Harada for Waffle House at this point. Right, but he focused in on this one, and I was like, wow, that's funny, ha ha.

And then I checked it later in the day, and I was like, oh, oh, we're cooking with gas here. Because I thought that was going to be like, oh, that's a cute little interaction, but nothing's going to happen. And then I'm scrolling past like 100,000 likes on that tweet. This is not a cute interaction. This is a gag that's been in the FGC that people have been talking about for a long time. Undeniable super visibility on social media. Because there's a moment where the guy making the game is actually like Wait a minute. Do you actually want this and we've had real discussions going?

Oh, how fucking sick would it be right now the update of course is that he says hey guys well first of all why? What is this? What does this mean? What is that like I don't understand why people want this restaurant to be a stage in fighting Tekken I don't understand why people want this restaurant to be a stage in fighting Tekken. That does not translate culturally for shit. That doesn't make any sense at all. Imagine people just, you know, imagine they like, no, in front of a Lawson actually, we need to have a big Tekken stage right here. Make it happen.

But in any case, the explanation was then, multiple people gave their bits on it, and then yes, the picture I tweeted out with me and Reggie in front of the fucking, in front of the Waffle House Square and up in Florida, got, yeah, retweeted and a couple people saw that. And he, Harada updated and went, thank you for

your explanation of course please understand that the proposal is to be rejected or accepted by the people who own the brand it's a license after all and this course and this is where it's like I this the first thing I thought I'm like okay yeah court now Waffle House now Waffle House is the kind of company that would probably be super down with their crazy Index of disaster index being used in some way where Waffle house has never shut down And if they do something's horribly wrong Please refer to the Waffle house disaster index to see if a hurricane is hitting your town and if Waffle house is still open

Yeah, Waffle house is closed 28 days later is happening outside your door. Exactly. Which is, it's kind of nuts to be like, hey, if you work here, you've been prepared for battle, but also Twisters is happening outside and we still expect you to show up. That's fucking nuts. But the whole bit with like, everyone knows how to fight, everyone wants to see the stage wall break transition. I don't think the Waffle House brand marketing representative is gonna be super down with the idea of You fight in our restaurant and then you break through a wall You can always do a highly similar looking location called Winston's pancake hut And this is where we get to Roger's pancakes house, right? Yeah

You get Roger the kangaroo on the- Oh, fuck yeah! Roger's fucking st- yeah, that's perfect! Roger's Pancakes, Roger the Kangaroo's got his little diner. It happens to have a big window you can bust through, and they love it when a fight starts in their restaurant. They're super down. You can even have someone in a Roger's the Kangaroo mascot, like a blankachan hanging out, you know, or Kenny the crow. Yeah, whatever, just do it. And then you just go, hey, if Waffle House ain't gonna do it, then we fucking do it anyways. Why not? So there's no reason

why this shouldn't happen regardless. And Harada clearly being like the fact that it's like, a lot of people are making noise about this kind of stage Let me actually write up a proposal and ask them for it It's like yeah We're gonna crowd source content into Tekken if you do it if you yell loud enough You might actually get it you guys will put fucking walking dead characters in there exactly walking dead characters have been to Waffle houses That have been open during the zombie apocalypse. Absolutely, they're the last things to close. Oh shit.

That's great. I like that there was a proposal and then we will see where this goes from here. And everyone, yes, we know that the incoming cowardice from Waffle House is undeniable. Oh yeah, Steve,'s going to be disappointing. But what brand would want to be like, we love it when the fights break out actually. I know a cool one.

And have a bunch of chairs in the restaurant that go flying over the counter and then you can have the chefs just parry that shit. Do you remember that like racing games had the shittiest damage model ever for like a decade? Gran Turismo. They'd go to Mercedes and they'd go to fucking whatever and they'd be like, well we don't want to show a Porsche damaged in a car crash. We have official brands but they will only agree

if you cannot actually see the damaged car in the game Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and you're like, oh look how realistic these cars are looking all the brands I remember I was going to school with friends who are like yo Ferrari is in this game. Oh my god Yeah, and it's just like yeah, okay Meanwhile over here in burnout they fucking pop off when you crash Meanwhile over here in burnout they fucking pop off when you crash They love that shit. They can't wait to see you explode into a fireball as you drift on fire around the corners, you know Yeah, I remember that exact time and I remember exactly that like how weird it was when you could hit a

Track wall and like there's nothing happening because the brands don't want it not because they still remember the absolute height of that nonsense was the need for speed game that was just need for speed Porsche and it was only cars am I was like who gives a shit about this am I crazy or like am I hallucinating a game where there were some licensed cars and some unlicensed and the unlicensed ones could get damaged? Oh, I don't remember that. Like, I'm not sure if that was a thing, but I feel like I'm remembering a some cars take damage and some don't moment. That seems insane.

Back on PlayStation. That seems completely insane. Yeah, anyway, I'm not sure. For back on PlayStation. That seems completely insane. Yeah, anyway, I'm not sure. Yeah, so that's that's that's that's goofy shit. I hope I hope I hope they do the right thing. Come on Marvel house. Do the right thing. Speaking of doing the right thing Speaking of doing the right thing How are Xbox players supposed to join a free company in Final Fantasy 14?

Alright, so we're gonna start off with public service announcement public service announcement if you are playing Final Fantasy 14 I'm going to advise you not to use any Xbox interface exclusive groups chats messaging service of any kind because people are getting banned for using in-game terms in those things such as, hey, how do I join Free Company, which is being met with like months long bans on their service accounts. I guess the supposition here is that Free Company implies like, hey, I can be your company for the night for free? Maybe.

On top of that, people have been looking a little more carefully. You know, Final Fantasy XIV is finally on Xbox. What else is going on? Well, the chat filter is so aggressive that it's impossible to understand what anyone is saying. It is looking for every possible combination of letters and little terms with spaces in them? Yes. So something like Harvest Dance has ST space D, and so you get it replaced with a bunch

of question marks. People can't say... Somebody said, was stuck doing raids, and the A-S-S from was stuck and the Aids from raids get question marked into nothing. So the sentence is unintelligible. Actually it's worse than unintelligible. It now makes that R word look like a completely different R word. Oh yeah, yeah it does. Getting censored. So. Hey listen, listen, listen. Night page was like a stunning moment in Dark Souls 2

history when someone attacked page with a Dark Souls 2 character called Night Page, which came out asterix asterix asterix HT space page. And we went what what is that? Oh, oh You can't be so aggressive. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep Because we were just like sitting there like yeah the word night Hey night time and you made it the most racist version of this character's name. I can imagine I've never And that's what's happening here. So here's what's cool. Here's a little piece of history. This has a name. Yes. It's called... The Scunthorpe Problem. The Scunthorpe Problem, exactly. And there is a city in the UK, in England, called Scunthorpe. And it is spelled S-C-U-N-T-H-O-R-P-E.

Back in the days of AOL, nobody from that town could register an account or get online because their entire thing was banned because everywhere the aggressive filter obviously saw the C word in the middle of the town's name and blocked all access for people from there. It happened again years later with Google and its auto filters as well. So this has gone on to be a thing. It's fun that you mention that because the person who got all the attention from getting banned over saying the word free company was like, well, I appealed and was auto denied. And people are like, well, why is this happening right now?

Oh, it's because Microsoft laid off most of their customer service department and AI is running customer service now. There you go. We got to get through these requests somehow, some way. And when you get banned on your Xbox account, it takes all your games away. So this is like a massive, massive problem. Like FFXIV is like the use case right now because people talk and it's got weird terms. But like, oh, cool, Microsoft's customer service

is running robots that just ban you for language? Like regular language. Well the crazy part about it is that like, I mean obviously there's, yeah, so the scunt-thor problem represents the stupidity of a filter that is not practical, that just does not have any edge cases, use cases or consideration for real human usage of language. But there's a fucking region in FF14 called Thanalan that has the word anal being removed.

Right. But free company like you have to stretch and scratch your brain. Oh, yeah. That's the best part is everyone's like, what is this even mean? What does it mean? How, you know, how is that? What about that those words is even triggering the filter at all? Don't know. Christ.

So like, I got XBob here next to me. My Xbox would go to XBob. He's doing a good job. So like, this is a great time to segue over to an interview with Phil Spencer in which he is like, I'm sad about capitalism He says I don't get the luxury of not having to run a profitable growing business Any basic like I'm gonna sum it up he's like, oh it's really sucks that I you know You have to chase infinite growth because I look around at GDC and all these people who lost their jobs and it's like and all these people who lost their jobs, and it's like, you fired them, Phil!

You just did the acquisition and then lied to the FTC and then fired all the people you said you were gonna fire, you fucking prick! So yeah, so sorry, you mentioned this just before we started, but it's like, okay, so what is he saying here? Is he saying, I wish I could work on games where profit didn't matter and I can do art things but that but instead I have

Okay, like so I yeah like I'm missing well when you have an industry that's projected to be smaller next year in terms of players and dollars and you get a lot of publicly traded companies that are in the industry that have to show their investors growth Because why else does somebody own a share of somebody's stock if it's not gonna grow? The side of the business that gets scrutinized is the cost side because if you're not going to grow the revenue, then the cost side becomes challenged. If you can't grow by making more money, this is there. I don't get the luxury of not having to run a profitable growing business inside of Microsoft. Let me just get that sentence. I don't get the luxury of getting to not run because there's

a double negative there. Okay. So people are talking to him about layoffs because he lays the people off. Yes. And he says, well, if we're not making any more money, we have to cut costs because we have to grow. And then he goes on to say sitting here at GDC, I reflect on friends of mine in the industry that have been displaced and lost their jobs and how just I don't want this industry to be a place where people can't, with confidence, build a career. So that's why I keep pivoting back to,

how does this industry get back to growth? You just spent infinity dollars on Activision and Blizzard. Okay. So yeah, the, so he's, but I have to lay people off because that's what the company demands of me. Yeah, I have to make the company more money and I spent the money on this stuff so I have to make it up somehow. My hands are tied. I it's it's really sad. But but my head I have to fire these people because of the things that I did sick sick. Let's let's all right. What he's saying. Let's see that reflected on the on the bonus. You know I it's really sad that I may be the worst.

sad that I may be the worst Xbox head of Xbox ever and that I am bad at running my business and I just spent all this money and that I have to fire the people so that everybody in the stock room not mad at me. I'm so sad about the mistakes that I made. It hurts to fire them. I'm sure I'm sure the bonus this year will reflect that pain. I'm sure I do. So like people have been making fun of this dude all day and all yesterday for the stupid quote and the one that really stood out to me is people going like do you remember when they made that Phantom Dust game and then cancelled it and then made a fake CG trailer and then the team didn't even know about it and then made a fake CG trailer to show E3 and then the team didn't even know about it and the team didn't even know they were fired

until like four weeks later but there were Microsoft executives on the floor telling people how long the game was going to be even though they knew it was canceled. That's a great use of money. I remember that. That's a great use of money. I remember that. Yeah. So you you know that's fine it can it can always just be as simple as an

Embracer just sold off gearbox to take two for 460 this is such a this is I saw somebody make this statement and they were completely right if you have any doubt that money isn't real and that everything about money is the fakest thing in the world, Gearbox didn't lose any staff for going to Embracer Group. Yeah, they did. I know people there. I know people that are there right now. How much staff did they lose? I don't know the numbers, but basically people who work there that I've spoken to are watching as a couple of people are getting a layoff we didn't even cover.

People are because there's a not there's a there's a there's a not there's some obscure there's some information currently being obscured about the numbers on that. But essentially, people were just kind of getting sniped in a crowd and were made to pack up and leave suddenly last week at a point. So that did happen. Do you think that they lost, that those people represented a loss of? $460 million? Oh, no, no, no.

1.3 billion, hold on. Not calendar, calculator. Calculator. Okay, so one, they bought Gearbox at $1.3 billion, and then they just sold it for $460 million. So the discrepancy is so what that would those people represent a value of? eight hundred and forty million dollars I Guess you don't think so. You will you'd also have to include Tiny Tina's Wonderland and

There's any fucking way that this math works out man. Company lost 75 percent of its fucking value because it what you held onto it for two years. Fucking Jesus Christ. Well the the yeah the assets sold off include Gearbox, Gearbox Montreal, and Gearbox Quebec, as well as Risk of Rain Borderlands and Wonderlands. This Embracer Saudi deal is so fucking funny. The ramifications are fucking- They have lost more money selling these places off and closing them down than they could

have even gained from the Saudi deal. Right? It, you know, no, and it's all under the same, it's all within the same framework of like acquisitions and just, again, catamarrying it all together, you know. Infinite growth! Infinite growth and wealth, but just, yeah, it all, it's gonna be great when it all together, you know. Infinite growth! Infinite growth and wealth, but just yeah, it all, it's gonna be great when it all comes together and then it doesn't come together and then the industry is fucking lit on fire as a result.

Cool, so yeah, that's going down. I'm sure there will be, so a couple people have publicly, I'd embrace, a couple people at Gearbox did say, oh, I got laid off and publicly we're talking about that. But I'm sure there will be an actual tally within the next couple of weeks on what's going down over there. But word on the street is not great. Yeah, anyway. Anyway, the next time Phil Spencer is standing up and saying something like that, you could always run up on stage and knock the trophy out of his hand and break it on the ground

if he's receiving an award for it, perhaps. Did something happen? Oh, yeah. No, apparently during a CSGO tournament or a CS2 tournament, someone ran up on stage and then the security tackled them and it broke the trophy that was on the stage. And while they were, I think while the first person ran up, the second person ran up and then they like that like that was what caused it to get knocked over. And people are speculating that gambling sites are the are responsible for this for the stage rush. How would they be responsible? That there's some Oh, oh, you thought I bet on you and you lost either that or there or um

What is it like they're trying to like ruin the event and then run their own next month or something like that What man this marks counter-strike? I don't know the premier esport Because when you're talking about people near e-sport. Because when you're talking about people like losing at the ponies and deciding to go punch a horse, now we're talking sports. And this sounds like when you said Counter-Strike, the whole story just kind of went kachunk in my mind. Like, oh yeah, that sounds like Counter-Strike. Right. So yes, I did hear about the Super Bowl streaker actually bet on the streaker happening because you can bet on that in some places. But here, there was two people that

ran up on the stage. So that's a coordinated thing. There's a vested interest in the interruption occurring and I guess the run the conspiracy tinfoil hats to see what the reason is are and why But anyway the trophy got broke as a result strike You know counter strike is the most crooked video game at the end of the day But at the end of the day the ghost of Marvel politely demanded a money match that was that is a willful misrepresentation of what happened. No property was damaged, merely the ego and... I don't know, man.

Merely the spirit of celebration for Chris G at the time. I don't know, that doesn't sound... He walked up, he walked up and he held the controller up and he said, Yeah, you just won, you think you're kinda nice, but now see me though. And he held the controller up, you know, and there was no smashed trophy in the process. So... Oh god, anyways, um shit is wild

Hey, there's a cool game last little bit here. Just if if if crazy taxi is going to Shoot itself in the foot before it even exists No, then maybe yellow taxi goes vroom Can can can can do the job. That sounds crazy. Yeah, check it out. It's a yellow little taxi that looks like a cute little micro machine car and it's driving

through a what looks like Sonic style level of checkerboard grass and you're picking up people and you're dropping them off while you're doing it. Oh man, this is a fucking Sega Saturn game. Crazy stunts, wild shit. Yellow taxi goes room. Little, little yellow car doing it. Looks fun. It's coming out this week or so. Yeah.

Dumb demo available on steam. You know what else happened while we were talking? You're okay. Get in. Xbox. This is not April Fool's, Xbox put up a store page for Hollow Knight. I heard Silk Song. I heard Silk Song happened. And it has an ESRB rating of E10. I heard Silk Song something happened while we were talking. They sent silk song to the ESRB

To get it rated which means At least the game still exists. Yeah, like I like I said with Titanfall I don't care until I see a press start screen in front of me, you know, that's that's quite fine. That's okay. I'm good It's gonna come out the day after the Elden Ring DLC Yeah to be fair to myself though, I It's not like I did go back and Exhaust everything in Hollow Knight originally to begin with. Oh, no, definitely not that the the they did like a whole second

Third round of DLC where they're like, would you like to fight all the bosses in a boss rush? I went, no, I don't. I don't care about that at all. As we talk about Silk Song, there's like a, if you wanted more Hollow Knight, I could have gotten it. Yeah, but it wasn't the part of Hollow Knight that I liked. Is that in April Fools?

So then what? No, no. It's on the official Xbox page and it's not glamorized and it has a regular ESRB. It's not like coming soon, coming right now or whatever. It's... Okay, it's not, it's not fan, fanbrew Granta-sy? No, no, no, that's, that's, it appears to be real. Okay.

Because I, there's something called fanbrew, fanbrew Granta-sy. And, and there's a guilty-gear comic book and in it Aska's is cooking meat All right, let's take some letters Hey, if you want to send out a letter send it to castle super beast mail at gmail.com. That's castle super beast mail at gmail.com Right ReesMail at gmail.com. Here's one coming in. No name. Dear CastleSoupaBeats, I've been catching up on Willy's backlog and watching the Black

Mesa playthrough. During it, he mentioned loving games with reload mini games. Wanted to mention Lyca, Aged in Blood, a motorcycle based Metroidvania. Yeah, I played that. It's awesome. Imagine something like Hollow Knight, except you're on a bike doing jumps and tricks and navigating the level to dodge and deflect bullets while firing back. To reload, you have to do a backflip or a front flip. It's a great game with good sounds, sharp and deep vibes. You might want to check it out when you have a moment. or a front flip. It's a great game with good sounds, sharp and deep vibes. You might want to check it out when you have a moment.

But this just got, yeah, but this is just a got me thinking, like, okay, when it comes to reload mini games, like, what are, like, is Gears the best? Yeah, it is. That's it, right? It absolutely is. Did anyone ever surpass that in any way? Lycus is cool, but it's hard.

It's a little, it's a little, not underutilized, it's a little subdued, it's a little subtle. I really, really like how much longer it takes to reload your gun in Helldivers if you actually let it run dry. It takes more than twice as long. It's slower when you're empty. It's way slower because you have to fix the pull the chamber.

It's like twice as long or more depending on the gun. Okay. Okay. So like you want to get down to like, When you're flashing. Two bullets to go before you reload it. And that's why it doesn't tell you how many bullets you have.

That's exactly why. I was looking, You just gotta learn it. The most confusing thing about that HUD at first was why is there no number for the bullets? What is that number? Oh, that's the number of reloads. And yeah, it was just, other games don't do that.

Other games show you the bullet number going down and then you know when to press, you know? Yeah, Gears, the moment I saw that, I was like, that is the fucking sickest shit. I can't believe there's a little fun mini game for reloading. Neo is pretty good about it, but it's not exactly a reload.

No, it's pulse. It's chain pulse, right? Yeah, the slash and then. No, it's pulse. It's chain pulse, right? Yeah, the the slash and then yeah, put it together. Like, I mean, if you want to, I would say Max acting and X acting is sort of like that a little bit, you know, kind of. If you if that if that's in the category, then that's my favorite. But that is the but that's why Gears fucking active reload was also so sick.

Because, yeah, the ability to just do it perfectly and stay in the fight is awesome. Oh, you know what? Helldivers, auto cannon backpack, and recoilless rifle backpacks, where somebody can reload your gun for you as like super, super fast. I think that shit's great.

Yeah, it's a different kind of mini thing. It's more just like Efficient team player, but but yeah, that's cool All right, here's one coming in from Tom Atlas says hey mind goblin and mental stacker So I So, I was watching the original Macross series a few years ago and with some friends of mine, they really loved Macross Frontier. Came together to learn that the venerated titular Macross itself, the giant city scale super ship that could transform into a massive robot, at the time was the biggest transforming mecha ever, is actually in fact a giant piece of

shit when they first started to fly it and in the first few episodes they need to... Indeed the majority of the series is dedicated to how jank it is. There's a long list of highlights here as to how busted and shitty and dumb it is, but yes the actual Macross is a big old style transformer, looks almost like a piece of plastic thing that you're like, this is not a dynamic, fast moving robot at all, given its size you would expect.

Ah, it's a big piece of shit. So what's your favorite piece of shit, barely functioning jalopy ass garbage tech that managed to get the job done enough that you fell in love with it in any way? Evangelion fucking units trip over their own fucking battery cable. garbage tech that managed to get the job done enough that you fell in love with it in any way. Evangelion fucking units trip over their own fucking battery cable. It's fucking so embarrassing.

That's pretty good. That's pretty good. You know, when Gurren Lagann first tries to combine and just slams the head into the body and it cracks open the top and it looks goofy and dumb as fuck But then it's just this it's the spirit of willpower and you know that makes it all fucking turn cool. I love that shit That's great I Would also I would also say yeah beggin metal gear Rex like just becoming more strong as the like power of fandom made it more, made it become

more powerful. Like it can barely move, man. Like it's just... And it's dunking on the future iterations of itself. That's insanity. I would also say, I don't know if this fully counts, but there's always been something cool about the the the Hachiroku in In initial D the car the main car that he's driving is just a fucking 86 Toyota Corolla

It's just a fucking car But like that drift racing in those areas was built off of using your dad's old But like that drift racing in those areas was built off of using your dad's old economy car, right? And like by just making it light enough and having the right tweaks and things to it This car can fucking do the job you know And then this if the skill of the driver can hook the drainpipe to make it down This this is gonna go down in history as like a legendary vehicle, but it's just a fucking piece of shit 86 Corolla Like that's all it is. You know, that's always I love that. I love that. It's great. The 86. Yeah.

What else we got? All right. Let's take one more here. Yeah, so no name. Hello, the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu master and pint-sized orb ponderer. Oh man. Listening to the email where the guy explained why companies fire employees, and you guys are talking about the whole incident

with Carmack and Facebook owning ideas in his head, reminded me of the history of the blue LED and its inventor. To summarize, LEDs were around for a while before they became a commercial giant due to people being unable to produce a blue LED. Yeah, apparently it's incredibly difficult. Red and green were easily done. Everyone knew it'd be an absolute cash cow once discovered though, so it was a race to find it. Cut to Shuji Nakamura, the oddball engineer at a

Japanese company trying to make the discovery himself. After a ton of blood, sweat, and tears, Shuji managed to discover the blue catapulting the failing company into huge success. His reward for his ingenuity was miniscule share in the invention's profits, so then he left the company for greener pastures, but quickly his piece-of-shit old boss tried to sue him into the ground for leaving the company, essentially trying to legally force him to return to his old job. Shuji countersued for all the money he deserved from his invention, and in the end, he won the case, but only got enough money to cover the court costs. Today, he's a successful engineer, but it's still infuriating to hear the story of how the company screwed him like this.

successful engineer but it's still infuriating to hear the story of how the company screwed him like this. I mean, you had a brilliant idea. You're not allowed to leave. Hey, gentlemen out there with too much money and shitty taste, enjoying your cyber truck getting stuck in the mud because it's a complete piece of shit, but it's made in the name of Nikolai Tesla, the worst businessman to ever be a scientist who sold his name and all of his patents for basically nothing True But I would argue what makes you worse selling all you selling your name and patents for nothing and dying sad and penniless or

Fucking cooking an elephant in the town square just to prove a point That that guy is a jerk and you can't trust this guy died sad and penniless Tesla apparently Yeah, absolutely did where you know, but if I but or the guy who's who's who's fucking Dragging his name through the mud who's again willing to kill an elephant and also like, like slaves. Oh yeah. Edison was just super evil. So Edison is like a cartoon American businessman, but he was a real person. Anyway, so yeah. Um, you can, you know, let, let, let the crowd, let the jury

decide on that one. You know who should be living in a big fucking mansion and also probably be still alive? Alexey Pajitnov. Who dat? Everything about the creation of Tetris is fucked up. Oh, the Tetris story. Because it was made in the USSR. At the very least, Tesla's name will live on in the legacy that matters, the cool electric

Christmas tree that zaps enemy dogs and soldiers as they rush your base in Red Alert. That's true. You're right. That is... Mmm, that's true. Unit lost.