Castle Super Beast - CSB 265: Nikke Derangement Syndrome

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

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["Sailor Moon Theme"] Hello. Good afternoon, Woolie. How are you doing today? Doing all right. I'm currently enjoying the day after Cabana Sucre. Oh! How's your tummy? Yeah.

I haven't hit the system with that much maple syrup in a very long time. It's kind of sickening how much is ingested. So to those of you who don't speak French, which is 99.9% of this audience, Cabane à sucre is a Quebec tradition which roughly translates to sugar shack, which is where you go out of the country, you get a bunch of good-ass breakfast food and you just douse the whole fucking thing with maple syrup. Homer with the propane? Just all of it.

Just fuck it up. So you're eating a full breakfast out of a puddle of sugar. Yeah. So basically the syrup maple farms up in the wooded areas and stuff, when they make a whole bunch of syrup, you got to figure out how to make byproducts and you got to figure out how to make your land worth it. What can you do? And they make maple butter, which is incredible. They make all kinds of things. And then they have usually a giant barn area where you'll have multiple school trips. I've had twice as a kid, I remember.

I've had two or three, yeah. Yeah. And you have everyone come up. You can just also book and go there as a restaurant thing. But it's like a dinner that takes place all at the same time, one giant mess hall. And then- A banquet. Giant banquet hall, and you sign up to go and sit at one of the many tables.

And then, yeah, they bring out breakfast for dinner, essentially. And everything is just doused in syrup. And then at the table, if there's not enough for you You take like a pitcher of juice Except it's not juice. It's just syrup and it's just and it's there for you to pour even more on everything you eat You know, what the fuck are you doing? You're drinking coffee. You better pour syrup in that coffee. You're having your ham You're having your potatoes. You're having you know

Whatever just thinking about this the other day about how the natives who got here first Right were truly given like a blessed piece of land by God More than almost anywhere else in the world because nowhere else does candy Literally grow on trees on trees grows on trees. Grows on trees, yeah. And then once you've had your insane syrupy dinner, breakfast dinner thing, you have your pudding Chomar for dessert, which is the poor man's pudding, essentially. It's good. It's amazing.

It's such a misnomer for how good it is. It's the most basic cake mix, it's just basic cake mix and then brown sugar underneath it and those two together warm is unbelievably good. And yeah, that was like it was named as such for it being like ghetto pudding. And then after your first dessert, you got to go have your second dessert, which is outside where you do your terce la neige. Yeah, just fucking throw some fucking maple syrup on the fucking snow. It's candy now. So that you guys might have seen or heard, because it's the most like, what the fuck

are they doing weird one, but it's like you have syrup and you just pour it on snow and then- Now it's candy. It cools down a little bit and then you stick a popsicle stick in it and now you got candy, exactly. That's it, it's toffee right there, bam, done. Yeah, and yeah, that stuff, you know, like again, it's usually pretty good considering

I haven't had this much sugar in my system for a long time. It was a bit much for me bit I'm not blowing your shit off Yep, yep like like like fucking Murphy. You know just a little bit like RoboCop, but You know and then you go into the to either well when I was a kid It was like then you get on the horse ride, and then they do over yeah You know the buggy and the farm or some shit in our case It was a pretty sad horse and it was just watching the horse poop as it walked down the road and it was it

Well, it was pretty sad This time around it was sometimes you pet some goats or something Yeah, there's a little petting zoo thing and you in there and you know There's some animals and you can feed them and stuff. And then of course we have to be Checking it out right behind the fucking douchebag Mid-20s kids who think it's hilarious to pretend to feed something and then take it away So it's like oh hey goat. Uh, uh, uh, and the goats like for a fucking goat to bite you Go fuck my piece of shit get back here and then then the horse like, oh, oh, oh,

and I'm just like, I swear to God, like, please lose a limb. It's, it's funny that you mentioned that because farm animals don't work on the same sets of like social conditions that like a pet does. So if I was, if I was walking Zangief for the dog out and right, and somebody went and got in his face and like Zangief the dog out, right? And somebody went, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, and got in his face and like Zangief bit him, the dog would have to go, right? You can't have a dog that bites strangers on the street, right? But if somebody was like fucking with your goat at the farm

and the goat bit their finger right off, they'd be like, yeah, don't touch the goats. I mean, it's wild. Like, and they're all on top of that. They're already clearly petted out, you know? So they're doing like the pet thing for the head. And the horse is trying to get away from his hands. He's like, literally leave me alone.

And the stupid fucking kids are just like, ah. And it'd be one thing if you're talking about, I don't know, some single-aged digit child, and then their parent is like a seven-year-old. Hey, Daniel, I like this. You know, whatever. But it's not that. These are like a group of bros, you know,

again, like probably mid-twenties or so, just laughing at each other as they're fucking around with it. And it's just like, you're the worst. There is no grander example of a person's personality than how they treat creatures or people who don't have the ability to defend themselves either socially or physically. The way somebody treats a waiter at a restaurant, the way somebody treats a cat at like a shelter, etc, etc, etc.

It's the shopping cart test for a living being. There's no consequence for treating- The shopping cart test is some fucking stupid 4chan meme. It's incredible. It's amazing. But it's like what no one's looking. Do you put the shopping cart back in its thing or do you just roll it and let it hit another car and walk away?

And so if there's no consequence for treating these petting zoo animals like shit, are you the kind of person that's going to do it anyway? Because lol. You know? Or worse yet, yo check out how funny this is. Guys look, you should do it too, etc. While also, again, giving non-consensual pets, you know, what it's actively trying to get away with.

It was just super annoying. Hey listen man, all I'm going to say is that the San Diego Zoo Tiger had a point. That was a hell of a leap to draw a conclusion there. Yeah, it's exactly that and and and um that that like poke it with a stick kind of like Mentality as well that I just I don't know I I got properly bummed out by that right quick And I was like okay. I think I've had enough of this this little Yeah, I saw a raccoon just hanging out on my fucking in my backyard like like three feet from my back door when I was out there doing something and Page saw the raccoon. Oh my god a raccoon

What if it tries to break into the house and like honey the raccoon is not gonna try and break it The records don't break in your house. Also, it wasn't garbage day. So the raccoon was chill Oh, okay, because yeah, they would know Raccoons are are really friendly six days of the week And they know that other day But yeah So usually a spring comes around. That's one of those traditions exactly I haven't gone since like school though like elementary school

And I kind of remember too that like Yeah, so especially for me back then it was a big old waste of time because when they bring out plates of here's a giant thing of eggs, here's a giant thing of ham, here's a bunch of bacon, and here's some peas and beans and stuff and I was like, I literally want none of this. I'll just poke at these potatoes and call it a day. But yeah, this time around, you know, again, I was able to enjoy it. Hey man, if you're like unhappy, you can just always fall back on just throw a bunch of ham on this fucking plate. Exactly.

Or okay, so this was one I somehow missed as far as like Quebec traditional things go. I didn't know about the pork spread. Do you know that stuff? It's such a... I forget the name of it. I don't particularly care for it. Yeah, it's something. I don't know.

And I was like, what the fuck? I fucking forget. Yeah, there's this, but it's like, it's pretty good. It's pretty tasty. My grandma, my grandma would offer it and I'd be like, no, thanks. And she'd be like, oh yeah, there's this but it's like it's pretty good. It's pretty tasty my grandma My grandma man would offer it and I'd be like no, thanks. Come on. She'd be like, oh yeah party It's not but it's not it's not party. It's um, though the word they had for it is a different word But the consistency is like party No, you you're if you if you're not from Quebec, you're not gonna know the

Ham in a in a If you're not from Quebec, you're not going to know the word for this. It's ham in a butter form. Cretan. Merci. C'est Cretan. Cretan. Yep, that's it. But Cretan is an existing...

No, I'm thinking of croutons. Not croutons. Cretans, yeah. Anyway, yeah, it's a fucking ham spread. It's like ham if ham was peanut butter. And I didn't know that was a thing and I had some and I was like, yeah, that's pretty good. I can see... That's fine. I'm not a big I can see like, you know again old old

French people sitting around just being like like that's that's how you pass your time in retirement is spreading Creta one on yeah Yeah With your Maywest and your Pepsi Yeah, no, it was not that was that was alright too So all in all not bad. But I guess just the, yeah, like the level of like, like the diabetes demon inside is like, whoa. Oh, are you summoning-

Is it the sugar cause do you get like horrible nightmares? It can, yes it does. The way- How'd you sleep? The way, I was okay, but the way you fight it is with waves had you sleep the way I was okay but the way you fight it is with like you chug water essentially if you chug water you dilute all of that but no that that that is a that demon is awakened by the maple

that was cool and I'm gonna be just like going through this syrup fog for the next couple days, I think. Yeah. It's, it's, oh, it's not a sugar high the same way. And because it affects your sugar differently, maple syrup for some reason, affects your sugar differently rather than like sucrose or sucralose.

But like, yeah, no, there's definitely a fog. There's definitely like a, oh. Mm-hmm, mm, there's definitely a fog. There's definitely like a, there's a little bit of that. Like it's, there's almost like a hangover to it. Yeah. Is this the way I describe it? Yeah. Um, and if you get the, um, again, maple butter, which I, it's exactly what it sounds like, but it's just incredible. Like, yeah. Yeah. Me and page were having breakfast this morning and we just had eggs and toasts, like super simple breakfast, right? And, uh, we're putting butter on our, on our toast, right? Like simplest, most normal thing in the fucking world. And I'm sitting there and going like,

man, it's so fucking bullshit that when I was a kid, fucking bullshit that when I was a kid the Butters fucks your shit up butter's terrible for you. I lived in a margarine exclusive household Yeah, yeah Literally no butter every single thing was margarine We had margarine for years, but we switched over we said like there was a switch over that happen Cuz you know butter is bad for you except it's not margarine for years, but we switched over. Like there was a switch over that happened. Well, because butter is bad for you, except it's not margarine is actually worse for you.

I mean, again, we've had that discussion multiple times, but it's like that and is milk good for you? Who the fuck knows? Probably. And yeah, the various degrees of dairy and its effect on you and shit just going back and forth. I can tell you with an absolute certainty that non-pasteurized whole milk can be bad for you. I know liver King might tell you the pasteurization removes the nutrients, but you know what else it might remove?

Fucking cow and cholera. You don't want cholera, do you? Well, that's not- I don't want fucking cholera. That's not a very primal attitude of you. How are you supposed to be alpha with that? Dude looks like a human sunburn. I um... I Yeah, I feel as if the that like just any anyone that had to live through an era of like Discovering things about foods that were unknown up until that point that that must suck man. You know I don't know who to trust man. I don't like so lunchables are fucking About to say like there's there's always Lunchables you can trust right okay?

So Lunchables are crock full of Milk it was bad for me then milk was good for me And then milk is one and like it reminds me of like one of Lewis Black's Is milk good for you or not? Yeah? No our eggs good for you, okay? Cuz he had them that he had a bit about milk, and it's like is it good is it not it was yeah Was it and buddy also had one like like our eggs good or bad? And the crowd goes Like I have watched eggs flip-flop like five times since I was a child welcome to post-truth politics, bro

five times since I was a child. Welcome to post-truth politics, bro. I don't fucking care for it. That's where we live, dude. There's no way to know. That's all just disinformation on Lunchables, who the Lunchables company stands by the rent. No matter what, nevermind the reports of the lead or anything, they stand by, then

they confidently support the... Bro, you want to have a good time. Type in like, hey, I'm thinking of getting this stroller or car seat or whatever, and you type in the company name for your baby product, and like invariably a news article about the lawsuit over a would be recall comes out to the point where you have to be like, well, this article about a lawsuit is eight years old. That's not, that's pretty far away they probably fixed all the yeah that's yeah that's bad that I don't even yeah I don't even know how to where to go from that cuz it's like okay so what is there a like the recall is that a

specific type of product or is that to all of it all the reviews and there was one where it's like there was a lawsuit against a fucking company because the fucking wheels in 2013 would fly off the stroller and some babies fell all the way out of the stroller and broke bones. Wow. Okay. And I'm just like, I just want to get a nice stroller! I just- Is it- is it all of the EVs that are gonna have the gas pedal that shoots off and then slides and creates a death trap?

Or is it just a Cybertruck? Is it which which like what kind of recall are we talking about here? Is it Tesla wide or is it just is it just a little groove underneath the Cybertruck? I am like what's the level of recall we're talking about? I am so obsessed with the Cybertruck dude I follow a guy on TikTok who his entire account is Okay, so this Cybertruck flipped over in a in a pothole This day going 15 miles an hour. It somehow totally inverted itself Or my personal favorite driving along after its delivery and every light in the world Starts flashing on the inside goes pull over immediately and the acceleration doesn't turn off.

Just wanted a thing that didn't get stupid on the gas. That's all I want. That's all. You know, I'm one of those people that's like, yeah, when I get into the game and when I'm getting into driving and all that shit, I want something that's more battery oriented than fucking gas oriented. And I'm like, ooh. Hey listen man, the best part about the Cybertruck is that it is the Xbox 360 of trucks

in regards to its exterior chassis because you can't let it get wet. Yeah, the stainless steel with no primer on it. So like every cyber truck in the world is going to look like a rusted brown fucking butter knife by next year. So, so, you know, when when the shit kids are taunting the animals, when the when the cars and the baby seats are being recalled, and when you can't trust whether you can eat butter, milk, or eggs, and you can't trust anything. But we have each other and isn't that all we really need? More importantly, that's when you turn to Nikkei. That's when you turn.

That's when you turn to the the goddess of victory, the goddess of victory. You just turn to the phone and that's the place to put Is this where is this where you tell me you've been playing Nikkei on your phone this week? I've been playing some Nikkei. Alright, let's talk about Nikkei and Goddess of Victory! Oh man! Hey, you know what?

That game's alright. That ain't bad. Oh shit, really? Yeah, it's alright. I like it. It's not bad. The shooting is... You peek, you shoot. It's reminiscent of some of those old, like, wild guns or any kind of cover shooter thing.

Gears of War without the fluff. Cover shooting bits, exactly. I mean, again, you go back before Gears of War, you get wild guns, you get Sin and Punishment, I guess, but that's more of a rail thing. Boss fights are pretty cool. You know, you're like, yeah. And then you're switching between these different party members on the squad and then the grenade launch or the rocket launcher, you charge up, and that one's got a shotgun. You're like, oh, shit, okay. And then you've got the automatic fire mode just in case your fingers are getting in the

way of jiggling booty because you can't appreciate the jiggling jigs. The 2D live anime booty needs to be like your fingers are in the way while you play. So it's quite interesting because again as someone who's like toe dipping in and out here and there, I have a perspective on mobile games that is coming from, I guess, like the world of, you know, some tap-in and then some ridiculous fishing a million years ago and some ports of things that we care about. But this is the first game I've played, I guess, that's a more recent modern mobile game

where there's giant, super expensive, high budget anime cutscenes playing Music is through the roof triple-a production menus over the top Just because you didn't touch any of them a ho-yo none of the ho-yo nothings Yeah, so I'm just like wow look at the money go Every two seconds as it jumps from medium to medium, and it's like that's I guess this must be standard now, but no That's something I'm going to talk about in my session. OK.

OK. Because it's like, wow, look at that. There's a loading screen as you have multiple mandatory updates. And I couldn't actually, so when I got it first last week, I couldn't play because there was a service period for a couple days that, you know, whatever. But then it was after it fixed, it's like, there's always a,

every time you boot it, there's an update. Every time you boot it, there's a mandatory download. They're all like that. It takes forever. You can't just boot and play. Like, it's wild how much. There's like a really genius aspect of that, where like, say you're like,

I'd like to play Punishing Gray Raven, and you click on it and it downloads on your phone in one second? And you're like, that's crazy. I can't. Oh, oh, it got on. That's that's the downloader. That's the that's the every time the file that just to get the icon on your phone. Because then you hit it and they're like, we're downloading 20 gigs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then that completes, and then you get your stylish anime title screen, which I'm like, this is only going to stay minimalist and stylish for like a half

second before you start throwing gacha windows aggressively at me, right? And it's like, well, no, we're going to put you through the tutorial first, but then yes, afterwards. So going through that, I was like, oh yeah, this is actually, again, not bad. You're looking at the highest quality PNGs bouncing and jiggling and live 2Ding their way at you. I would say from what I saw, I haven't put time in an EKA yet, but from what I saw I haven't put time in an EK yet but from what I could see I would describe that

as going so far as to be accurately described as flopping. Yeah they are. They very much are. Jiggling. It's like sometimes in games there'll be a thing where so Dragon's Nogma 2 has this where like if you load up a character model on the pause Screen and then you switch over to like a pawn Like you'll see as the pawn loads in from T pose. There'll be a just an instant jiggle Yeah, and like you can switch to another character and switch back to them and it's like a jiggle jiggle That little gravity is that is the same internal game logic mechanism as Picking up a fucking object in Skyrim and having every object on the table

Teleport up one inch and drop Yeah, so that it feels like everyone you're talking to all the all the the Nikkei's in every cutscene are all just constantly Doing that they're all you know what they're really cutscene are all just constantly doing that they're all you know what they're really perfect gestures just bouncing their way up and down I'm glad to hear that you don't have Nikkei phobia oh is that a is that a thing I see that is a term in that game for people who irrationally hate the Nikkei. Oh no! Nikkei Derangement Syndrome? Uh oh.

Yeah, no, no. I don't have any of that. I'm fine. That's really genius. Like, in-universe thing for like, I can't believe people don't like us. They're discriminating against our fat asses I mean the last commander was an asshole. He was the worst What a jerk good thing he got himself killed and also yeah, and then on top of that

That's why we have to rotate every three missions You can't have commanders in their kneecares working on too many consecutive missions together because things get really dicey. So, yeah, et cetera, whatever. Commander, PSan, whatever name you want to call. In Ark Knights, it's the Doctor. There's always some kind of... Oh man. Yeah.

And they definitely introduce you to your gamut of personalities right off the bat. And it actually has a pretty, it's like an interesting intro sequence that gets the game started as you have the one you're paired with and then some of the other supporting characters start to join. But something interesting is that like, so for me, I guess, the weirdo that I fucking am when it comes to these things, I see the presentation of various waifus.

You've got the pure of heart, just genuine one that cares about you and will fiercely stand up for you. The girl next door. Yes, but she will fiercely stand up for you if anyone badmouths you. You've got the aloof goofball who's like, let's get out of here. We don't wanna die, fuck that.

And just being all goofy. And you can hear or feel the little fang that should be sticking out of her mouth even though she doesn't have one. And then you've got the dead serious, the nimmu, canrio, like the perfect I'm just going to be a soldier, yada yada, by the book type. And, you know, so you take your whole pick.

And in the process of them showing up and then you got your calm girl who's like, hey, I'm the, you know, the happy go lucky CEO. And then they introduce like the grunts who joined the team. And they're just like the the background soldier Good news is the girls that you know, they don't matter But they're wearing helmets and face covered suits and like just uniforms and with their weapons and shit And I'm like, I want to I want to hang out with them I want the non-descript ones that are completely meant to be disposable forget about them

They're not main characters. Their faces are hidden ones are the ones that look the sickest they have like it's a mass produced there's so much cooler than the main ones that are like you know they the main ones look like the the the the whatever you know like you're wearing fucking plug suits yeah cuz you have like the you have like the Xeno Saga looking type, you know, it says like, that's just Cosmos! You have the VTuber types and then the and such, and then you've got a couple that are just like, yeah, they're wearing full uniforms and then they end up like that, or like Zero Suit type shit with a weapon and a cool helmet.

And I'm like, yeah, that, that's actually more interesting to me. So when it does its like role where you're like here's a bunch of squads and you got all these characters and then like the C rank garbage low tier ones are like these helmeted uniformed ones I'm like that's the cool shit give me that I want the low tier garbage ones this sounds like the kind of talk from somebody who shouldn't who should have gotten into Nikkei when they had the near-Otamata crossover. I mean, perhaps.

But it's interesting because as someone who's like, I want helmets and armor and I like the ones that are suited up in that way, all the main expensive outfits and costumes and things, I'm just like, this bounces right off of me. I have, I don't care about, you know, going into our spending on any of that shit. I want the low rank free shit. I want the generics, please give me the grunts, man. The grunts rule. It's so much cooler.

Hell yeah. So that's that's a funny like, you know, like you're looking at them as if these limited ones are like one per case and here's 19 grunts and I'm like, I want to score a squad of all grunts, please. The that aside though, like, yeah, it's legitimately it's pretty fun. The cover system and again, you're different types of enemies and it works out. It uses the vertical screen in a way that I think. So I loaded it up to get the download in and I was shocked because it is the only one that

I have on my phone that is like, yeah, vertical. Play it vertical. Yeah, it does make sense. And there's times where you're like, oh, I feel as if I can't see enough to the left or to the right. But that's where you switch between the different ones on the bottom. And they're all lined up in a row. So some can cover one side better than others, you know. And then yeah, there's like some missions that are just again, like your wild gun style mission, like you're, you're, uh, what you're shooting at a boss. That's like a train that's going by and like everyone can like target different areas and different new, different specific abilities and yeah, yeah.

So it's like, yeah, that as long as the gameplay itself is fun and moving through it is fun to do in addition to or regardless of whatever the gacha shit is. I'm like, yeah, I'm down to spend some time with this, but I can't see the way its current appeal system works getting me to spend a single solitary cent on any of that shit because that is just not what I'm looking for. It's just not to, it's like, here's a bunch of tulips and you're like, I really like the vase that these tulips came straight up. I mean, like, you know, I don't know what to say, but that aside though, I guess I'm

going to have to go a couple more missions, because you're also like railed aggressively onto like, so you do a tutorial act, and then you do like tutorial training, and then there's like, there's like a solid, maybe hour of rails, I'd say, before you can do your own thing.

And yeah, I still don't know about the full list of currencies and crafting things and all that stuff. And I don't really want to. All I want to do is just shoot the gun. There is the reality of all of these games that have any free-to-play elements to them at all is drowning in currency Absolutely drowning in currency I'm waiting to see where I'm gonna run out of energy or run out of life or just you can't play anymore

Until you go buy this or you have to wait for your daily healing or something, but I have Yeah, they'll all hit you with that at some point. I haven't seen it yet, so perhaps I'm just still too early. But yeah, so far I've been able to walk around the map and I'm looking for like, is there like a step counter that says, oh, you can't walk any further or some shit and doesn't seem like there is right now. So yeah. Oh, people are saying Nikkei does not have any stamina. Okay okay. It just gets hard.

There was a yeah there was an EX mission that popped up in the middle of a normal one and like that thing was like oh you're not ready you're didn't seem like I was just like underleveled for the challenge or whatever but yeah that's that seemed alright. I look forward to various appeals to, I guess, just... Like, there's characters that are showing up that are like, here's your commander general dude, and like, he's also just like the... He's like the solid... the military soldier man that's also kind of live 2d jiggling and has all that energy about him and then there's the CEO lady who's also just everyone's just blasted with that. I Have to admit I was looking up some Nikkei stuff as you were talking and I was shocked. I Was gobsmacked to see the men are in that game at all. Oh, yeah

smacked to see the men are in that game at all. Oh yeah. Yeah. Like astonished. And the one that you meet is like, yeah, he's, he looks like he's from this world. Like if there were, if they were to do their like dude Nikkei's, then he would be one of them. He's, he's barrying all over the place with his fucking perfect hair and, and, and chiseled everything. But anyway, yeah. I mean, not much to report on until I go further in, but as far as I can say for now I'm not gonna start listing off names and the price tag of how much money I spent on each one, but we'll have to see. I think the 2B near stuff is all like gone forever anyway. Yeah, it's gone

So there's like there's there's a this this segues perfectly into so I got the new phone Hello new phone and I have a story about that phone later But I'm back to playing honkai star rail because it runs perfectly at max settings on this phone And I really really liked star rail And when I went back to it, it's the anniversary, and I, it, maybe this is just Star Rail, but I loaded it up and it took me almost two hours Just to click on every new

Like there's a new thing button on the menu to get through all the pop-ups No, no, like in in Honkai Star Rail. You have like a menu in game, which is like your cell phone your character pulls up There's oh, yeah, that's a Nikkei too2. Yes Yeah, they all do it and they have like here's your mail. Here's your yes Here's your shit, right? They added so much in the six months that I had not played the game that it took me hours. Oh Clear the new features. Oh Jesus Christ. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, like every little icon with a red dot that's getting your attention Notifications new update and yeah, yeah fuck man There are two that really stood out to me as actually being worthwhile to mention One of which is that these types of games these gacha phone games tend to have limited events

Though a really good example is Nikkei had 2B show up. 2B was there for 25 days, whatever it was, right? 2B is gone now. Do you want to play as 2B in Nikkei? Buy someone's account off eBay. That is how how right? with honkai third impact Oscar was there for a couple of weeks Do you want to play as Oscar?

time travel to six years ago right, um, I load into honkai star rail and one of the biggest Options they have is like listen here is a gigantic like, like tree of every how every event and every quest feeds into each other with all their prerequisites. And you hit this button and here's every limited event that they have ever done that had any unique content at all. And it is here forever. Okay. And I went, oh, oh, that actually makes like a huge difference. That like cool.

They had an event that was like like a minor Pokemon game that they ran for a couple of weeks for rewards. And it was apparently pretty good. And I'm like, oh, it's a bummer. I feel like I can't go back to the game because I missed it. Yeah, it's still there. Well, but the thing is, is every for the everyone's usually going by the rules of the forced scarcity makes urgency creates a sense of, oh, fuck, I have to play it now. Even if I know some of the time limited rewards are gone, but the ones that matter are still there and the actual mode is still there.

So like, oh, okay. Yeah. Another thing is that again, not Genshin, well Genshin, but Honkai Star Rail has a stamina thing, which is like you have 240, you get 10 an hour and you you bang that out on your dailies. Right. But I hadn't played in eight months. I hadn't played in seven months. And now they have a gigantic pool that your overlap leaks into. So since I hadn't played, like my daily energy just leaked into this gigantic fucking pool that represented like a month of that shit. So I understand that that's a positive, that it didn't go to waste,

but it's still like celebrating a cancerous system that is like not, you know what I mean? Like it's like, oh, the shitty thing that limits you is now pooling up in a way where it lets you play the way you probably should be able to play a game regularly. That's nice, you know? It's like, I get it, but that-

I have been numbed to death by dailies and MMOs. I still feel that. I still feel that. Look at it and go, this is disgusting and shitty and stupid. Like, I don't like the, like, oh yay, today I'm getting quad bonus on my energy. Doesn't make me go, wow, look how generous they're being.

You know? And yeah, and I guess with that, I still have the feeling of like, as I'm booting this up and I'm looking at the event notices, the daily login screen, and the amount of shit you clear to get to the gameplay, which is, I know that this is the state of phone games, and that's pretty much how that's been for a while now. I know that this is also the state of a lot of, you know, console and PC games as well.

I just, it creates a very negative response for me the moment I boot up a game and I have to get through all of that to get to the thing, you know? Well, I should mention that in Star Rail and Genshin's particular points, and probably Zen-less, the real game, i.e. side quests and main story content, and the vast majority of modes have nothing to do with the daily stamina thing. That shit is only for grinding. Like literally just for grinding content.

Well, I mean, for the longest while, I remember when talking about Gacha to the audience and kind of learning about this, I was legit confused. So I was like, every time we talk about this stuff, it's just talking about unlocking characters, SSRs and ratings and percentages. But I'm like, what is the actual game that you're playing

in a lot of these cases? And I legit wasn't too sure, with Fate and a couple of the other ones, I'm like, I don't know. With Fate and Grand Blue, I was really confused for a really long time. Yeah. As to what those actually were. I was watching my friend play the card game in Japan

with, you know, that you put the, it would print out cards and then it would interact with the mobile game in some way, but it seemed like an auto battling kind of thing. That is correct. Yeah, and like when it's all like, so I like the gacha element, like can be dropped onto, I get just about any genre, I suppose.

And to me, it's like, if the, if that is dropped onto something that you really just don't play, well, in this case, you can auto, you can set the game to shoot for itself and do whatever. But yeah, I'm like, it can't just be collecting JPEGs. They're not there has to be a fun. Yeah, no, they're there.

We had a whole it was like an hour and a half conversation about like, it has to be more than just the JPEG. Yeah. And the whole stuff has had fun action, right? Is what you're saying. The stuff if you're into the genre, they they do. They're really good. Yeah, the Hoyo stuff, if you're into the genre, they do, they're really good. Star Rail is like a pretty goddamn good JRPG.

I can't- oh boy, that is an unfortunate place for you to freeze. Oh no! Oh no. Oh no. Here, let me help you out there. You can still hear me, right? I can still hear you, but. Oh, fuck. Let me help you out there. That's really embarrassing.

Okay. Aw, come on! Here, let's try to get Discord back on track for a second here. Aw, my camera's back. I'm moving. You're not moving for me. I can see myself moving. You're not moving. For me. You're not. This is bullshit. This is this is in fact bullshit. Maybe drop the call and rejoin.

No. Okay. Here we go. Bye. Oh my God. Oh, okay. What's going on? Discord? Discord is struggling. Well, yeah. That might have to be a BRB, folks.

I thought we could do this organically, but it seems like we're gonna have to BRB. So, BRB. All right, there we go. Sorry, I was I was I was using my daily energy there. No, I wasn't. I did that at three o'clock this morning. It's always it's always those like freeze frame moments that are like the cretine faces. Oh, that's a poll. You know, but like that's like that's what I think of when I just think of like the like just the the the the the pod the screenshot of like the worst possible moment for the

worst. The protester I'll kill you. The show and again and shake. Yeah. No, but just how they would screenshot like his face in the worst possible moment in a sentence. In addition to the dude having a condition, you know, that was just like, oh, man, that you that it can't look any worse. All right. You're moving in your.

Remember, there was like a big political ad that was like is where they took a photo of Christian like mid-sentence and his because our former prime minister and it's not gonna say he had a stroke at some point in his life. So he had a little bit of droop face. He's an older guy. And so like they took a photo where his head looked like it was melting apart. And they were like, is this the face you want for your prime minister? And like they do that. They do that to everyone. Like they get any any political bullshit they get someone mid-speech of going Oh, you know to make them look stupid, but in his case where he had a stroke it was a Not work yeah, no

No, you want to make fun of can't say you'd make fun of the fact that nobody who spoke English or French could understand a fucking thing he was saying. Couldn't speak either language. Or, or that he like pulled an undertaker and basically chokeslammed the motherfucker. Yeah. A protester. As if you were a striker at the latest WrestleMania. Anyway, so the, yeah, the Hoyo shit has actually decent gameplay and absolutely and any of the games that I guess like are gacha on top of a visual Novel like I just I mean then it would depend on hey, do you like this? I guess I guess but so like this goes into something you were talking about earlier

We were like well, you're playing Nikkei and Nikkei is fancy looking. Nikkei is animated and you're like, I guess this is the standard. It is absolutely not the standard. It is approximately a coin flip. Interesting. Because I fully expect it to come here and go and go wow look at the money flying out of this fucking titty simulator This titty jiggler so and and like I was expecting everyone to go Yeah, no shit wooly titty jigglers have been like this for ten years now, and I'd be like ah well you know

so mihoyo versus games which would be honkai with their modern which would be Honkai, they're modern games, would be Honkai, they'd be Genshin, they'd be Star Rail, and upcoming, Zenless Zone Zero, are like the, like this is a real ass video game on your telephone levels of production. Then you have something like Punishing Grey Raven, and there's a one upcoming called Woodhuring Waves, which is very annoying to try and say out loud in English all of these

names dude what was punishing what punishing gray wave on a sing gray raven gray raven okay yeah all right yeah I'm not a sing great Raven sounds like an armored course it does no no. No, no, no, it does. It does It does absolutely it just like like goddess of victory and stuff. Yeah, but you want to talk about withering waves. That is just God damn it So these ones are like these these like fucking PlayStation 4 game with like China or Korea like aesthetic on it, right? So I'm like, you know what when I was like, hey, hey folks. I got a new phone Asking galaxy s24 ultra

What would I have a plan this like like 40 people were like dude you gotta play Ark Knights Ark Knights is all I play On my phone. Oh, yeah. Yeah that I've heard of that thing So I load up our nights and Arkights starts out with fancy menus, good presentation, excellent art, visual novel kind of thing and it loads up into like a fucking tower defense game that looks shittier than Plants vs. Zombies like 15 years ago. Oh this is top down? Yeah, no, it's like and like it's a bunch of like incredibly tiny little pixel, sorry, chibi like Rumblefish like Newgrounds looking flash animation shit.

Yeah. Okay. Mm-hmm. And there's something to be said too, I guess. And I think I've brought this up before when I forgot what the game was. There's a game that was played during the Game Awards where the characters, the game was shown off and the characters were all so far away from the camera that you couldn't get a good look at what they actually looked like. And as someone who loves character design and shit, I'm like, this is bothering me

because they're all just the top of their heads and the back of their shoulders, but I can't see you. I can't see what the art is. I can't see what was designed. Who am I using? So with the way that Nikkei is set up is like the character in cover and then shooting is right in your face.

Yeah, it's right there. Taking up half the fucking screen. You can't miss the character's design and everything about them. That's what miHoYo does. They're like, listen, you're gonna roll on this character or you're gonna fucking do your passes or whatever the fuck the

gacha equivalent is. Here's a fully 3D model with full voice acting and a shit ton of animations that fills up like a third of your fucking screen when they're there. Yeah. Yep. Yep. This tiny shit, I hate that. But it's it's it's a it's a very specific thing. So I'm going to send you a fucking tweet about Path to Nowhere.

Somebody recommended me a game called Path to Nowhere. And I just sent you the tweet, and it's got like four images in there. And they're like, hey man, it's a tower defense. It's really cool. I love the art style. Okay. Right?

And so you click on it, it's like got a bunch of portraits Got some visual novel art That's very pretty art. Yeah, it's very pretty right? Yeah to which I like look the game up on YouTube Yeah, and this is what the game looks like Actually looks like grid super far Super tiny characters. And like I shit on chibi art style, but I think like a way bigger deal is like, man, these are tiny characters.

Like how do you expect me to fucking sit here and go, I got a whale for these waifus when you can't even see the waifus. And the thing is like even a game like one step from Eden where they're doing Battle Network style a similar angle to this Screenshot, but you can still get a really good look at the side of the character even as they're moving along the blocks here It's like just because your your cameras here doesn't mean everything needs to be this zoomed out You know it doesn't mean every asset needs to be that small like like Nikkei Understands what it's doing and it's Nikkei is very honest It might be the one of the most honest games I've ever seen

Is there like do you want to see a bunch of these these chicks? Fire a gun. Did you watch that video of a girl with huge boobs firing a sniper rifle in in fucking? What's it called? High school the dead.? Oh, with the, with the, yeah. Then boy do we got a game you can play on your phone. Mm-hmm. No, it's, it's, it's, it's real. And, and even, yeah, no, I just, I like, I feel as if even like 13 Sentinels, right? Which was just mentioned. It's like, that's a game where the combat is like all abstract and zoomed out and you're looking at portraits on a basically a war room, you know, diorama. But there's a whole visual novel, like conversation section where you're walking and talking and you get to see

the characters. So you don't feel like you're missing out on that. That here, I'm sure is like cutscenes in between story as well. But the visual novel. But I guess it's like. It's in 13 Sentinels, it's a full third of the game, right? Like in this case, if you're going to split it up in that way, it needs to be a significant portion and not just kind of like the the lead in and out of each one of these missions. It's hard to care when you can't see the fucking characters. Yeah. So like in one of the other things is like a huge proportion of these

have visual novel elements. And I mean, that's fine if they have a good story and you like them, go for it. Visual novels are great. But I feel like particularly with the telephone games, when somebody says you should check this out, I should just say out loud, by the way, I hate Danganronpa, so we can just delete two thirds

of this entire fucking genre from my consideration. I love Danganronpa. That's just awesome. I talked about it on a podcast like a year ago. I literally could not make it more than like 10 minutes into the intro of Danganronpa 1. It was like, I'm the best, he's the best baseballer and he, she's the, am I, all right, fuck this,

I'm done, I'm out, bye. Yeah, hyper goofy, insane exaggerated visual novel into Phoenix Wright, our course argue, a case arguing gameplay. But it's far and few in between, it's mostly just antics. It's a murder mystery and I fucking love murder mysteries, but if I got into the game and every single person who died had me going yeah good awesome hmm

Well, it's a death game in addition to being the murder mystery right yeah, yeah, I Mean the other element too is like the way you do logic arguing and stuff is pretty fun. It's like, oh, like, shut, they're going to say a bunch of shit. Shoot down that word. That's the key word you need to fucking refute. Okay, here we're going to follow the logic path train of thought. Isn't the subtitle the first one like trigger happy havoc? Yeah, yeah. And the truth bullet Danganronpa is like a pun on the idea of a truth bullet. It's firing from the gun. And so everything in the

HUD is loading up a six shooter with bullets of truth and then firing the ammunition while someone's like lying to defend their case. It is. Yeah. Or something like that. But yeah, no, it is definitely not the standard. There is a, on your telephone, there is a wider, like, chasm in between visual styles and visual fidelity than in any console generation that has ever been. You have, you run the gamut all the way from could release right now on PlayStation 5 like the ones that have released right now on the PlayStation 5 Right and you have game that Like in Grand Blue case is literally a browser game And so and it's all the more reason why? In when you see that actual screenshot where

shit's all super tiny and yeah, you can't see anything, but you're supposed to not just give a fuck, but like care enough to spend money collecting extra assets and costumes and shit for these characters. It's like, like the trick to the whole genre is you want me to think that character is cool enough that I'm going to make is you want me to think that character is cool enough that I'm going to make a dumb purchasing decision because all that character looks really cool. But when I'm like, I can't even see the fucking character. And that like, I want the characters to be cool enough that I like them so I can see

them. It's a weird, it's a very specific thing for just the genre is is Is Nikkei like one of many or is that the is what is that what the only one? I don't know of anything that's like Nikkei because again Nikkei seems to it also again. It has this like it has The button up top left where when the jiggling gets too much for you And you need to do something about it, you can just turn on auto play.

Too much. You know, you're just like, all right. You can hit the auto shoot and then auto super as well and then turn it back off. So I'm like, I don't know if there's anything else that is, again, is as honest about what it's doing, but that feels, again, right out of the page of Rumble Roses with the mud wrestling mode with the skin colored mud and one-handed controls. I had a really funny moment talking about,

like bitching about Ark Knights. I'm not bitching, like I'm not angry at the game. It was like, what? And I'm like, you know what they should do? I hear Ark Knights is really popular. They should just take all their Ark Knights money and they should make a version of Ark Knights that's like a real video game

and looks like a real video game to which someone informed me that I had actually watched a trailer on one of the game award shows of a game called Ark Knights Enfield which is literally exactly that. Okay. It is the it is the same fucking game but it looks like a PS4 game. Okay yeah yeah. And I'm like oh they should they should do the thing that they're currently doing I guess. That's I mean, again, that's what I would say about Grand Blue, you know, and then relink happens, right?

That's it. That's exactly it. It's like, hey, I want to I want to respond to a comment I just saw in the chat, which is Pat is wrong about Ark Knights. It's really fun. I need to be so clear. I'm not saying Ark Knights is bad. I'm not saying it's not fun. I need to be so clear. I'm not saying Ark Knights is bad. I'm not saying it's not fun. I didn't get that far. I'm saying that if it's a free game and I download it, it is up to

that game to pull me in and be excited to play it for more than five minutes. And if it doesn't, it just gets deleted off my phone. No harm, no foul. Somebody sent me, I am going to play a game called limbus company this week on stream and somebody sent me, Oh, Sarah and sent me a 20 minute tutorial of videos. Like, well, the in game tutorial is not so good. I'm like, this makes me want to delete the game off my phone right now. Okay. It's the, it's Limbus Company's job to hook my ass in five minutes! I'm not watching no 20 minute video tutorial! Or- or gameplay tutorial, but you're still- it's highlighting sections of the screen to tap, so you might as well be watching a video.

Uh, okay. Question for the universe. Question for shivers out there. What is the least scummy feeling of these types of gacha things? Like what is the what's the game that is like the most direct and honest feeling right off the bat? You boot right in, you don't have to get through too much bullshit, you get to some gameplay, and it's like go over here if you want to get some other stuff. But the is still primarily the game and that's the focus of your attention and then... I mean I'm not an expert, definitely not. People are saying Limbus Company.

People are saying Genshin and then a lot of most people are saying none actually. Most people are saying none. Yeah. All right. So like I remember playing like I played like a full afternoon or like full evening of star rail before I Encountered any of the gacha shit And then they flood you with free shit like free characters that you can use to free to play your way through the game Well, there was that afternoon all in on rail tutorial

No, the first dungeon. Oh, playing openly. And then a side shit opened up. Okay. Because, you know, because I remember when you were, when we talked about Runeterra, for example, and it was like, oh my god, it gives you so much shit, right? Oh yeah, no, Runeterra is like the anti-nightmare, if that makes any sense. Right. is like the anti-nightmare if that makes any sense right runeterra was so fair

that it is no longer gonna be supported okay they're the single-player parts of runeterra are ongoing but they're not gonna be making like new expansions for the competitive card game okay anymore because there's no reason for you to ever spend any money in it. But like the energy was generally pleasantly surprised, expected to get ripped off, but it turns out they're giving you more than you can handle in terms of just collecting stuff.

And then there's the vampire survivor style. I'm expecting to be nefariously pulled into possible small places to microtransact or do things, and it's like, no, no, no, no, no, that's here. This is actually just a game, and you click and walk around and all that, but it's not, loot boxes are not really loot boxes.

You know? Yeah, it's kind of like a Darwinian market. Somebody in the chat summed it up really well because the types of these games that are like super, super fair get left in the dirt by the ones that are like just unfair enough that people don't mind. But they make money and the ones that are crazy unfair also don't do that well because fuck that everybody just feels ripped off all the time but there surely are there's like a balancing point but there's there's fans of this that must

have gone we're making our own with blackjack and hookers and they went and they did and it was fair but it was too fair and then it didn't make enough money and then it that's yeah and so like then you get weird stuff where like I believe punishing gray raven and Wuthering Waves are made by people who used to work at miHoYo. Okay. And when you look at Wuthering Waves and you look at gameplay, you're like,

wow, they stole every interface element from miHoYo. Like the color, the size of every interface element the shape of the stars on the character like Stolen it's hilarious. I Mean Marvel rivals to overwatch levels of them. Yeah Yeah I feel I feel legit curious about just like, what is that sweet spot of,

please spend money over here, but if we don't bother you and annoy you at least somewhat, you're never gonna actually do it. And for some people that are more immune to the push, it needs to be FOMO bucks. We need to create a real sense of like, ah, fuck, I don't really feel good about this. I don't, like how many people that have like,

not even wailed, but just like occasionally, like dolphined, I guess, you know what I mean? Like grabbed a couple things. Like how many people are like, yeah, I don't regret spending what I've spent on this. You know, who feels good about what they've collected up to this point? That's what I wonder if that's out there.

Yeah, I know a wide variety of people all over that gacha spectrum. Okay. People who play exclusively free to play, which you can occasionally hit roadblocks, but the games, the good ones anyway, provide enough for you to pull through. Ones that get the monthly sub essentially,

or a monthly pass, which is like $5. Right, pay for itself, yeah. And then what they do is they save up 90 to 100 days worth of shit, and then they go, when something they really desperately want drops, they just blow it to make sure they get the pity, that kind of thing. Okay. And I also there are there are there was somebody in this fucking chat earlier that said I used

to play five gatches and had to stop entirely due to financial things. Yeah, yeah, okay. And I'm like, Dad, you shouldn't do that. You should just not. Dude, you should not engage with these. Because it feels as if there's a- That was in the prelude before the podcast started. Well, because just the feeling of like, I've been playing this for months or perhaps even a year or so, and the whole time I've just gone with what I've earned

and I haven't spent anything on it. So I feel good about the fact that I haven't, you know, given in or gotten ripped off by that. But then you're like, okay, you eventually see something and you're just not gonna have enough time or credits to get it. And you're like, it's a feeling of like, okay, you eventually see something and you're just not going to have enough time or credits to get it. And you're like, it's a feeling of like relinquish and like, fine, you got me. You know, where that is not fine.

You got me is is a not good thing to have a feeling associated with a game. You know, I don't like that. I don't like when I want to buy something going like, oh, fucking. All right. You know, I don't like that. I don't like when I buy something going like, oh, fucking, all right, you know. I did that. I think I did that with like Overwatch 1 originally with some of the costume shit there, you know. But there are times where like when there was the, here's the, it was like Street Fighter V's like bundle of like here's a stage or some costumes and here's the

extra like fight bucks or whatever and then this is gonna go towards the the Tournament prize pot itself or whatever your group contributed. I was like, oh, yeah happily. I have no problem supporting that, you know, yeah, I kind of The the the people that seem the happiest That I know playing the the like Star Rail is the one that I know the most people who play are the ones that are honest with themselves and They go once a year or once X amount of time

I will allow myself to throw a hundred bucks into this for that whole period. Right. Okay. People who basically treat it like a subscription. Okay. Like like if it's probably wildly unshocking to you that a huge proportion of my friends that play Final Fantasy XIV are also on my Honkai Star Rail friends list. The same ingredients. There's direct overlap.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I don't know, so yeah, I only played Nikkei, but with the new phone, you must have covered a bunch of... So what I've been doing is I've been playing the Honkai Star Rail anniversary event, which is enormous. The whole week of playing phone games has been literally diving into the Honkai Star Rail anniversary event, which is enormous. And catching up and grabbing,

like I had a bunch of rolls saved up, so I got the banner character named Akron, who is bananas. I got Dr. Ratio before he left, which I'm disappointed because there's a character named Dr. Ratio that is left, which I'm disappointed because there's a character named Dr. Ratio that is about right angles and like geometry. Oh, boo!

But when I was told that the character was called Dr. Ratio, I don't know why I thought they were going to be a social media character. Yeah! The modern redefinition of Rat ratio is so much better than the original and just like fucking Rebuilding up that new team and going in a simulator universe blah blah blah blah blah This week. I'm gonna be doing a stream in which I check out the four games that are most

In which I check out the four games that are most recommended to me on the telephone But they all happen to have PC clients, so I don't have to stream off my phone because that's a nightmare And I hate it. Yeah Have you actually done it I? Did it once and it was it was I was a wreck. I was a I was a fucking wreck the whole time I was terrified the whole time. Yeah. Yeah, I did it for Teffen. And like I turned off every notification, all things, the screen stay on. No calls can be made. Like, you know, you go through it,

but you're just like, but what if? Like I was talking about it on stream like a day or two ago. And like, I start to stream off my phone and I'm a hundred% certain that my mom is Trying to send me like a fucking care package in the mail and the text message comes up and goes is This still the street you live on and then like your address and it's in the drop-down, but like And then just dick pics you never took are just suddenly happening. That's not even my dick!

Yeah, all of it. No, I know. It was quite, it was quite... Nerve-wracking. But yeah, so I'm gonna play Limbus Company, I'm gonna play Nikkei, I'm gonna play a game called AFK Journey, which someone warned me about its chemical use, in that it gives you the good chemicals and Punishing Grey Raven away from keyboard journey. That's right. Okay, it's an auto battler. Okay, and Punishing Grey Raven is the one that I'm by far the most interested in because it is It's basically character action game.

Oh, no. That you can play on your phone. And all of this, let's be honest, is just me actually. I'm excited for Zendla Zone Zero to come out, which I've done more research on and I've discovered what kind of game it is. Oh, because you asked me about it and I was like, oh, like, yeah, that's definitely up my alley in terms of style and the trailers I've watched, but I didn't think you were me about it and I was like, oh like yeah, that's definitely up my my alley in terms of style in the Pre and the torch trailers I've watched but I didn't think you were interested in it. Yeah, I'm extremely interested in it because it's Hades Oh

Gameplay wise no kidding. Okay Hades from behind the back like I saw your traction Yeah, I saw that it was a third-person action thing and I was like, alright, I'm content with that I'm you know, yeah, it's the primary mode for it is roguelike. No shit. That's pretty cool. Well, that's a great fucking basic game genre to go into for something that looks incredibly stylish. Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah. Okay. That's- Yeah, these telephone games. Crazy. That aggressively now has my attention then. Like I was just like I was like it looks cool But that that the fact that it's Hades. That's pretty sick. Okay It's Hades and then the instead of so like your your basic modes of rogue like where you'll be going through

Okay, it's not This is the this is a very frustrating thing where I look at something and I go Oh, this reminds me of this and I go, it's like this. And I now look down and see a bunch of people in all caps screaming, it's not like 80s at all. Oh, oh, oh, trust. That's me. And it's like, wait, it's, it's, it's not, I thought, cause I watched like an hour and

a half of footage and it really did quite look like you were going room to room with, with buffs that you would get in between individual encounters and with your character and you would fight enemies in actions. How is that not like Hades? Yeah. So I'm just like I was I was I was loading up Nikkei to try and get the names of the characters I was referring to and like Most of them don't even have names. They're just called soldier Fa or

Generics they don't need names. Yeah, or like oh soldier. Oh a our product. Oh eight I think it's it like just literally like, yeah, nothing. So anyway, all right, I gotta scroll all the way down to the bottom of my squad list to find the ones I care about. Beyond that. It's a strange problem to have. I'm down, because it means it'll never be expensive.

It means it'll never be that much credits or whatever coins to fucking buy this shit if I do want to get anything. But keep hating on the things I think are cool. Please. I have no problem with that. I was talking because you play. Do you still play Tepin like regularly or is it just like a... Not recently, no, because I know they had they had a big update with like rival schools I think But I haven't I haven't played it since Virgil. How did you interact with that games?

like systems for getting new cards like Crafting thing in there. They're like Yeah, there's basically by fighting enough and high ranking enough stuff and matches you get you build up like essentially like experience currency which you can then go and convert into into packs and then you can buy like giant groups of packs at a time and You got all the new cards And then any any duplicates get turned into you can you, you can turn duplicates into a currency

that you can use to buy a specific card. Okay, yeah, that's extremely familiar to me. Yeah. So by playing a whole bunch, I would basically be able to formulate a deck around whatever cards I was able to buy for that season. And then there'd usually be one or two cards that you would need to make the whole strategy work out

you know and then I would just like okay like Trade in that or did you use the the the free gift packs? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah all the time constant. Yeah, okay That's why I thought somebody told me you didn't and I'm like, that's insane. No one would ever turn down the free gift pack No, no, no, no every time gotta be a lie there was there was I think like once or twice when like I missed it because there's like you have a limited time to open it if you don't open it within whatever amount of days from when you get it. Yeah I know there's something like that for Honkai right now where people are like if you do the, oh what the fuck,

the Vignette of the Cups event you get a free character. I'm like I'm not gonna get to that event in time. It's like 22 days away but I have to do the entire remainder of the game story in order to do that Okay, yeah So anyway that aside You fucking see X-Men 5 You fucking see X-Men 5? Oh yeah. Yeah, okay, so... I saw it last week, but...

Oh no, it must have been after the podcast, because of the way the shit rolls out. It just feels like forever ago. Okay, well, hey, um... Little bit of spoilers if you have not seen the latest X-Men episode of X-Men 97 5, because that's a big one. Five, four, three, two, one. That is one of the best half an hours of television I've ever seen. Animated, ever.

It's, I can't believe how, not just like, nevermind how good the actual hype moments are and like how well choreographed the fight is and all the shit that builds up and the musical direction. Like just, I'm in awe of the pacing of how many things happen and they don't feel rushed. It felt like it was an hour long.

It's so crazy that that many things happened in one episode and none of it felt rushed. Everything felt like it had time to breathe. The entire rogue Magneto relationship It's so crazy that that many things happened in one episode and none of it felt rushed. Everything felt like it had time to breathe. The entire rogue magneto relationship had time to breathe. The gambit thing, the tensions, the proper introduction of Genosha on the ground, not just flying over it type of thing. Establishing the culture of Genosha, like the kind of like the same way you walk through Wakanda type of thing, you know, establishing the culture of Genosha, like the kind of like

the same way you walk through Wakanda type of thing. Like all of that happened in fucking 30 minutes, you know, everything got its space, everything got its time. Everyone got their moment into a relay. They spent time having a full dance number in an awesome like club scene that's beautiful and lit and Rogues got one of the best fanservice designs I think she's ever had. Coming floating down as the Queen, so to speak. And then all of that and there is still time for an incredibly dramatic fight with Master Mold and the Sentinels and the Gambit scene. Like,

wow! Holy fuck! What a good episode of television. So, it does something really, like, kind of incredible because you've got an episode that deals with the Genosha and Genoese culture and the political situation of mutants. And then it starts to deal with the rogue and Magneto and Gambit and this whole love trying to all this fucking mess. Right. And it feels like the whole episode is dedicated to this very complex interpersonal relationship interspersed

with this regional experience with Genosha. It is building on this and there's no reason you had any expectation other than the remainder of that episode was going to be the fallout between Rogue and Gambit and their interpersonal drama because that would have felt totally appropriate and it would have been a good episode that you would have remembered because the interpersonal stakes were so dramatic. Yes, and then with an introduction to the whatever bullshit the Hellfire Club is going to get up to because you know they're going to get up to some shit. And the cost of apples and all that being like something they'll probably zoom in on

on like what lurks beneath the surface, you know? And not at all. Psych, bitch. Insane fucking it all goes to shit immediately. You don't even have time to go into like, the, if there's a dystopian element to Genosha's running because like, yeah, a mass casualty event just goes down. And, you know, obviously you kind of have to look at it

and go, Magneto is being too good right now. There's gotta be something to break him off this path, right? There's gotta be a catalyst, a moment has to occur. And the way it's done, where it's like, oh yeah, this is gonna shake him up, but it's the statue of fucking Xavier is falling on the fucking, like falls on the crowd. It's so brutal, it's falling on the fucking like falls on the crowd. So brutal. It's so fucked like and you're like, oh my God.

And it's happening in a way where you're like, oh, is this that moment where they're going to fly in and say, no, actually, it's horrendous. The giant look at Professor Xavier is the thing that just flattens a crowd of mutants. It has the strongest like statement from like the show runner or the animators of almost anything I've ever seen of like we are no longer fucking around energy. Yes. And and like coming into this show I can't stress how much my expectations were like yo you know when you boot up like Like what the fuck was it called Christian Whitehead Sonic recently Mania mania right and you're like yeah, just just deliver on the Sonic

We remember and do it really well, and it'll be awesome, it'll feel good, and it'll be a lot of fun, you know? And then like, that's kind of here where I'm like, oh, so far, X-Men 97 is great. It's a, just as we talked about it in the recent weeks. Exactly what I thought it was gonna be. Right, a really solid revisit to that old thing and all the nostalgia and so on. But no, but it's actually better

because we're having some cool choreography, some fun fan service, some fun shit that only works to like, hearken back to that era. Great. And then it like is going so far and beyond that exceeding that. And this is like an establishing moment of like, okay, yeah, this is not just like,

hey, remember the whole show and the old show and that's it. Like it's going beyond that. I highly applaud the fact that it's like, we've had four episodes of like cool I remember that was great and now we're going places and if it continues at this type of pace like it's just a fucking Incredible solid new entry into X-Men period and not just harkening back It's like I was thinking about like maybe I could compare it to like Transformers the animated movie Because of the the fucking wipeouts people getting wiped out in this movie

but like it's probably it's probably the most sudden and and Vicious of anything because Like you don't even see the attack. It goes from like, like green effect to unconsciousness and flame. Yeah, like you get, well, you get cable running out to give the warning, you know? And then it's like it's because it's transitioning right out of the club scene,

obviously, but it also happens in such a way where as it's starting out, it's like, okay, that's a crazy escalation, but we're still gonna get the band together and we're gonna do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Yeah, so that's where we're like five minutes and fucking save everybody in really cool ways, right? You get you get like the moment that that like there's a bunch of shit in that final sequence that is just excellent But it's like very clear

That the people making the show needed to establish That the stakes for this scene were different than they usually are for X-Men For the like because like you said you expect like oh, Oh, no. Okay. Where's everybody? Okay, we're gonna we're gonna get the gang and it's like so what's the first thing that happens? Banshee is flying by going well, you have to leave and he gets hit by a beam and crashes into a building but he's like gone off camera you know oh man poor Banshee and then like an atom bomb goes off where he hits and you're like oh he Banshee got like six words and he is dead he is fucking dead I mean I'm looking at fucking nightcrawler like yo there he he is. Oh, no, please, please. No, not like this. Yeah. I mean, I think I

talked about like, like, like, hey, how sick would it be if there was set up to get into an age of apocalypse or something like that. But it feels as if, like the steer is towards not necessarily something that dramatic, but certainly, like, at least as far as Genosha is concerned, a major planetary event of some kind going. I don't know what arc you go into from this, if you even still follow previous ones or if you just go into brand new territory. It is an adaptation of the Chris Claremont run. Yeah, and I just like, looking at how, one thing that's really cool too is how much they really are, they know how the idea of like a fastball special

is super sick, and so there's multiple, just like team up double tech moments. All the time. Lighting up the claws and fucking, yeah, just everything with Gambit, and yeah, all these double techs occurring, or finding new ways to like use the powers and shit i mean the previous episode when with the video game reference stuff which is pretty cool you know um future jubilee doing like advanced stupid shit advanced fireworks powers like oh yeah oh skating around and making

blade shields and yeah how come you don't do this Jubilee? Come on get on it Mm-hmm. No, that'd be that that that that shit's tight. I like I like that but um and a mango sentinel reference, of course Yeah There was a very this is building up to like Glob Herman and the other fucking losers that you see near the end of that episode Becoming your new batch. I fucking love Glob Herman. Morelock people?

Glob Herman is the fucking freak with no skin who's just a shallow skeleton. With the eyeballs, right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah, no. And then also, what you fucking call it. Yeah, there was an establishing shot with a not so subtle Uatu the Watcher in the sky. The one they panned down from, and it was just like, you see a big dumb bald head and a clear like shape of his collar cape thing.

Oh really? Yeah, yeah. I did not notice that. It's like a silhouette it's like a, it's a silhouette in the sky kind of thing, but it can't be anything else. So they just, they just pan right down to before- That's that, that nerd that just,

just hangs out and watches crap, right? Exactly, and then chronicles what's going down. And then yeah, and then right before Cable shows up. Mm-hmm. Incredible. What a fucking great episode. What a-hmm. Incredible. What a fucking great episode. What a- Clam down.

What a, just, yeah. And like from here, wherever it goes, it's like, fuck the nostalgia shit. That's fine, we're past that. Like, it was really good, but now we're doing something super interesting and fucking amazingly directed. Yeah, wow.

I- Were we entering the fucking Magneto was right era. I mean, there were signs. There were signs that literally said, you know, Magneto was right. Yeah, no, but like I would say that like the, up to this point, I might've been, like if it continues this way, like it switches from something where I'd be like

Oh like for punch mom Maybe if you don't remember watching the old show and you don't have any of that as a reference point or a springboard Meh, you know, it's you could dodge it It's mainly like if you remember it and you want to fucking enjoy that But if it swerves into this and it's like, oh no, this can be potentially good to watch just on its own merit. So anyway, that's about it. Oh with your wig you mean or about X-Men? Oh just about X-Men. What else you got? Eddie Gordo. Yeah?

You know how they say Tekken is three? They do they they've said that. That's because Tekken is is three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three is is three three three three three three three three three Three three three three three three three three. He's back. You keep pressing three. He's fucking back He does the he does the whole combo Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's back and he's as exactly what you would expect You can certainly still mash those kick buttons out and beat the fuck out of your friends nonstop. But within a lot of that, it is interesting to just kind of pick him up. And I was like, I remember learning how to play him properly a little bit back during Tekken Tag 2 and then coming back. Did you get way worse when you you learn how to play properly. Oh, I mean so Better at fighting stronger players worse at fighting brand new people that were man. That's so weird Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah like there's a style of play that will help you win against stronger players, but you

But you you'll suffer to people who are just going in and don't know what they're doing and don't care because you're in that middle range where you're reacting to things with the right counter, but if the person does it with no intention, then you don't know what they're doing. If I'm not reacting, I can go so much faster. So, but no, it's getting back to him. It is pretty sick to just pick him up, get the basics, and then you can just see right,

this is what it You can tell a strong character is about where within 10 minutes of just messing around you're like, oh, here's a really nice safe poke Here's a really nice way to get into a stance. That's good. He's got his He's got like like a little install kind of feature where he goes into a banana tree stance. And from that, he can get moves that are better by landing. Literally, like there's a move that's called a banana, which is banana tree. And then there's one that's called Mandinga, which we were just obviously calling Mandingo. So if you go from level to Mandingo into banana and then and they do his special

kicks, you get a knockdown and whatever. And it just like it's like Eddie Gordo has never been about like any sort of other meters or things on his character. But now there's like a, you know, Brazil install like it like he gets a little Brazil level two thing on him. Every hit he does is like a little Brazilian flag that kind of bursts and shit. It's great. It's great. It's just a lot Brazilian flag that kind of bursts shit. Um, it's great. It's great It's just a lot of fun to play and like you can see within five minutes of picking him

Even if you do want to learn more than just pressing the one button or the two buttons together Like he's got a lot of shit to just track you homing left or right He's got pressure that you can't deal with, you can't do anything about after you block it. He's just privileged, like a DLC character ought to be. So, yeah, no one, if you paid money for Eddie, you're not gonna have to work that hard. He'll do the rest. Here comes Akuma.

Yep, 100%, 100%. Thank you for buying Akuma as a reward. Akuma will now carry you. Do you have to play Akuma? Yeah, Eddie's sick. And as someone who has no issue with the Killmonger hair, because I think that shit looks cool, that I love his new outfit. But if you do, you can go to the character customization and you can put the old hair on as well That's that's right there off the bat. So oh cool. That's fine if you want to do the old dreads and

Yeah, I mean I briefly mentioned it and when we were playing but I think when that graphic came out that was like here's all the Modern characters using the killmonger hair, which is why we don't like it anymore. There's a lot. It's been overused. I know, but I'm like, and I've played none of those games, so I don't give a fuck and I have no reference of giving a fuck. Even in the case of like, I didn't play Spider-Man 2, you know, yet. So I'm like, when Miles changes hair in that, I'm like, yeah, I played Miles Morales, the

original, but didn't see the hair change there. Echo, I saw an arcane, don't play League, but I saw I'm in Project L, so there's that. And then there's a bunch of screenshots of, I have no idea who that is, so I just don't, I didn't run into it as much, thus I don't care as much, thus I still think the Killmonger looks dope, and I feel like I'm on the outs with that.

But that's fine. Can't be over saturated if you weren't saturated in the first place. I guess, I guess. And then there's DJ, who I think I'm like, that's that. You can't be over saturated if you weren't saturated in the first place. I guess. I guess. And then there's DJ who I think I'm like, that's an upgrade from DJ's old hair. I like it a lot better. You know, I don't know.

But I realized that me and Kenny are like in the extreme minority on this and that's fine. It is what it is. Still looking at Eddie now with the fucking fucking outfits and the you know switching back to either Like the hairstyle or costume whatever he's just one of the coolest looking motherfuckers like characters designs ever He's great, and I'm just like yeah, I like 20 years ago. I wanted to be him And I still do 20 years later. I'm like yeah the closer I could get to looking like that fucking dude he's still incredible so that's so it helps

that capoeira is like a incredibly visually flashy martial art yes yes yes it's it's it has its own dedicated niche of aesthetic that is completely unique to itself? 100%. And yeah, it's like, and it has Only the Strong, which was the movie that I feel like put it on the map for a lot of people as well. And it is the idea of like, you know, Brazilian dance fighting is like that was born from, you know, prisoners who couldn't use their hands because of handcuffs is such an incredible like lore, like the history of like how this style came to be that fuck yeah, the more you have that represented with characters like him and Elena and, you know, I mean, even vaguely in Bob Wilson and Richard Meyer.

That's awesome. So create the meme, thank you for everything, and then on Lucky Chloe, not you. You've done for us. You know, I have to say, like, Harada making fun of Americans who hate Lucky Chloe would have hit a lot harder if that character came back. Like the fact that the character wasn't popular enough to make it into the worldwide roster

regardless. I mean, only if she can come back to just be fucking dunked on by Eddie over and over and over again. Like that's it. You know, she should exist off camera in a way where he can get his revenge. Um, but anyway, um, yeah, that's, that's, that's cool. And as far as all the other microtransaction bullshit, I just ignored it. And like, like I saw the pop up for that and I was like, yeah, I know. Fuck you.

Um, from what I can tell, there's there's the you know spend too much. See willy you're ready to play these gacha phone games already You play fighting games. Yeah I've also just I you know me I've got a very strong ability to just Chappelle push the shit out of the way just out of my face I don't care. I'm not looking at you. You can't make me. And as long as I don't have to pay attention to it, it's all optional, then I will not. Oh, jeez.

All right, anyways. I'm very sleepy today, so I'm gonna be yawning occasionally. That's not to say that I'm bored. I'm just literally on no sleep at all. I'm still maple syrup crashing. This works. This works out really well. It's maple syrup crashing, so. Oh, this works. This works out really well.

It's good. Yeah, so that's it. Gonna continue. We're working our way through Yakuza. We are out of the Cabaret Club hell, and I say that lovingly, because it was incredible, but we finally. Oh, I know exactly what you mean.

I know exactly what you mean. It was so, so good. Because you beat it, and you're like, I had a great time. And we are back to cure you. So you know, trying to remember the basics of CQC. And yeah, a little bit of that and some other stuff this week. I'll let you guys know on the schedule, but we're also going to go back to Guilty Gear because Test Your Luck,

AKA the strongest Nagori Uki is coming over to do another Guilty Gear session with us. So we're going to hang out for a bit and play some of that. And I know there's, there's this giant crowd of people wondering, when are we going to get back to DNF Duel? Well, hey, don't you worry the millions of you, don't you worry. We're gonna go play Monk very soon. God. There was a really interesting discussion about that game recently because it's like, seen as just like a peak Kusouge just like a peak, uh, cause so gay, um, representation of what happens when, uh, you balance upwards only, you never nerf anything, you know? And it's like, yeah,

and that's why this kind of, this kind of fell off cause it becomes a game where like everyone being busted and turns out is not the way to go. And I'm like, I respectfully disagree cause I still fucking loved it. Like, I think it was great. I had a great time with it. I wanna play a game that has the balancing chops of Mugen. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Uh, but uh, yeah. So that's coming soon. Anyway. Do you mind if we take a quick break? Yep, BRB. Thank you. All right. Anything else of note? Yep, BRB. Thank you. Alright. Anything else of note? Oh, yeah, tons. Yes.

So, uh, I beat Infinite Wealth. Oh shit, okay. And I saw the end of Kiryu's story, which all I have to say is Good job on that. Excellent job. Everybody. Good game. Excellent game. Very good. Um, there's like one major, major problem with the story that I can't talk about because it's a spoiler. Okay. Uh, but it's basically a massive disconnect between what's happening in the main story and the side quests. Okay.

That's in a way that makes no sense at all. So that's as on brand as you could possibly get. No, no, no. Like it's a problem because there's side quests that relate to characterization and like main story stuff just off to the side, not the side quest dimension. Um, basically, there are events in some of the side quests that have to deal with the like, the characters that are ignoring really big things that just happened in the story. Okay.

Like, like. Written apart from each other with no one talking or sharing notes. Imagine Ichiban shaved his head and a bunch of side quests that unlock only after that are like, man, your hair is so incredible. Right, right, right, yeah, okay. Okay.

Absolutely fantastic. Did not expect for the game's primary inspiration to come from where it did. Like, you know, you've got a crime novels, you've got like certain historical things or current events with the Yakuza that always managed to find their way in There's some current events that somehow got in that made me think that maybe somebody told the developers of this game before they came Out to the press. Okay, because the timing is so perfect But I did not expect for so much of the game's fantastic story to actually be about Jesus. Oh wow. Okay. Huh. Like Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior for realsies. Now I don't mean I don't mean that like they're running around, oh man, this is just about all that Jesus.

Jesus is never mentioned once. Right? I'm saying the story is telling you which characters are literally Jesus Christ in the Yakuza series. Gotcha. Okay. There's always, yep, there's always there's yeah There's got to be one fair enough and it's and it's like Really over like it's way more overt than I would have thought which makes sense

I guess if you're gonna have the game take place in America It's it's crazy it's crazy. It's crazy Fucking it's fucking great I did not finish a bunch of the side content cuz I Is there can I? where At the Last Supper does the chicken and the man with the spike ball arms fit?

Is there place for a Mr. Lobito at the Last Supper? No. Okay. No, it's a... Okay. All right. Gotcha. But there's a lot. There's a lot in there and it starts to get really obvious in the back, the back last half of that last chapter. I mean, I just got a, like of all the different ongoing franchises where you're like, where are we going to be at? Looking at what P6 confirmed to be green or whatever. That little, it's not barely a story, but it's like, hey, green paint bucket, guess what, we're going to do that. Seeing where the latest entry is in that, you're like, okay, cool, that follows. Seeing where FF16 went, it's like, yeah, that's a cool thing.

I didn't expect them to go full action game, but then again, we kind of did because they've been slowly building up to it over the course of the recent games. For Yakuza's franchise to just fully be some other guy playing Dragon Quest in America. That must be the most insane violent whiplash after like 14 games of hanging out in the same spot and then occasionally going to samurai and zombie times. It's not. Like it's it's really not. Okay. Alright. Like I Like so you're not that deep in your you you you're you're you're like muscle way through zero and you played a bunch of seven right, but like There is some

Fucking absurd shit that each some of these games ask you to take at face value for this. That is way crazier than anything Ichiban does in like seven. Okay. Like the plot of four is, it's fucking crazy. I guess just like by the bullet points, if you describe-

The rubber bullet points, if you would. If you describe like a dragon, you know, seven and eight, that sounds like a spin-off franchise and not the mainline thing. In a world where you actually have the spin-off franchise judgment and the other spin-off franchise, the man who erased his name name which is actually like the older thing so and and this actual spin-off game Gaiden which is a spin-off of the main characters story from the end of one game linking them into the next one it's crazy so so eight it's in, and there's a lot of Hawaii and American-centric content in the main story as well,

about stuff that has to do with America. I mentioned it earlier on that there is a literal cut scene where the characters stand around bitching about rent prices in Hawaii. On the nose, boop, right? But then there is also like a bunch of shit, so much that I can't even talk about it, that is setting up Ichiban of like, hey listen,

this is Ichiban's equivalent of this exact thing that happened in Yakuza 1. He's mirroring and becoming like a protagonist by going through similar trials. Who is literally Ichiban's Majima. Who appears. And I was like, I'm not sure if that's what that is. And then you get there and you're like, oh, that is totally who that character is. And this character is being set up for spinoffs as I speak.

Like you're watching the cut scene and you're like, Oh, they're going to do a game with this guy for sure. Okay. Okay. The future of this franchise is, is vivacious and has been set up. Okay. All right. Um, all right. It's, yeah, no, it's great.

It does get a little messy. So you're ping ponging between Kiryu in Japan and Ichiban in Hawaii, and the game is really long and it's really big, and it does legitimately have a problem where you're doing the main story stuff and you're super invested Oh, what's gonna happen next and they're like, well fuck you It's curious turn in Japan in Yokohama now

So is curious stuff. Well, it's curious stuff less compelling than the Hawaii stuff No, it's just that you're gonna if you're doing side content, you're gonna be over there for fucking 11 hours. Okay, okay. And then you're gonna get all emotionally invested in that and then you're gonna, oh, it's crazy, what's going on? And then it'll kick you back to Hawaii and you're like, fuck, I don't wanna be in fucking Hawaii.

I wanna be, right? So like Zero kinda has that has that zero currently feels like that Yes, like admittedly every time things get really exciting with one character You jump over to the other and cabaret has just completely wiped all other priorities off the map completely Yeah, and the idea of magic like also cabaret magima is just a different person You know he's this like awesome boss that believes in the team. Completely different person. Meanwhile, we go right back into the main mission with, you know,

Blind Girl and Lee and stuff, and he's like, man, fuck that guy. Don't save anybody. Let's get out of here. You know, like that whole game is is like, wait, how did he? How did he go from this guy to that guy? Well one of the weirdest things we just encountered was finishing off the cabaret, you unlock the mad dog style, and- Which, okay, so- I-

That is video game ass shit, he doesn't know how to do that. Like what about that moment inspired him to just go knife crazy like what there's nothing there that led to a like ah now I'm this guy like if you do that shit if you do that shit right away Like I think you probably did you probably did like more or less as soon as it unlocked It's a video game ass like, hey, you beat the big mini game, here's his future moveset. And you don't, it happens before you see the inspiration

for the moveset. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, all right, fine. Like if you had gotten that at the end of the game, it would have made way more sense. So they just, it's a move set that applies to his future, but they've also like that moment or whatever it is that makes it happen, doesn't happen. So it just, it's the wrong reward for the wrong time. Yeah. Like Kiryu has the same thing. When you finish the real estate game, he gets the

dragon style, which is his old style. Okay. And that's, it's not, it's not that like that's it. The inspiration is not there because Kiryu was always going to like integrate the three styles into one, but it's like, he shouldn't be doing this dragon shit in Yakuza zero. It's, it's too much. It's too much. He's integrating slugger, thug, and break dancing? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, because he's doing weapon spinning and oh, shit. Okay.

I only got into a couple fights with it and I saw him do a couple breaker moves with the knife. Yeah, so the way that the- But I didn't realize it was a synthesis. So the way you're thinking about it was actually backwards because you played with these styles or saw these styles for years and years and years. And then when zero happened, it's like, well, let's take the spinning knife moves and put it into breaker.

And so they split it into three. And also the first weapon that Majima ever uses is a baseball bat, not a knife. Okay. Okay. The first fight in Yakuza one you find baseball bat, not a knife. Okay, okay. The first fight in Yakuza 1, you fight him in the batting cages, so he's a bat. So that's why he's got that as the regular. Okay, that makes so much more sense now, yeah. Because yeah, when he started using it, and I was like, oh, is this a new style?

And it's like, oh, it's a layer on the others, but it's like, no, it does do breaker moves. It does do weapon shit. And I guess thug is in there too, and just how brutal it is, you know, yeah in infinite wealth Cuz curious older and has the cancer He's back to using the three styles from zero. Oh, he's got rush beast and and What for what's the blue one slugger? No, no, no Rush beast. I forget. Yeah,, I forget I forget but but that maybe no thug is like a smudge about

Brawler brawler brawl so yeah And he doesn't have access to the dragon style anymore unless you use like a special move And that's the move that breaks the the turn-based system And turns him back into that's sick That's cool, and he's the only character who that's sick. That's cool. And he's the only character who can do it. That's pretty dope. And all fights work.

Oh yeah. That's great. Everybody else is limited to the turn-based world and Kiryu's like, no! And they are... Sometimes. And well, I mean, everyone's alternately designed to fight in a real-time way in addition... Oh no, you just addition to their fucking asses No when I say he breaks out

Individually around him are still stuck That makes way more sense. Okay, cuz the idea of we made it also an action game, but only for him sometimes is wild. Yeah No, you just you just whoop their fucking ass. It's a it's a It's a power-up. So they know it well this fucking incredible It's also they were not kidding about how long it is. It is easily the longest of all of them Like by a huge margin I'd say it's like 20 30 percent longer All the other ones. Here's a basic question Is it better than the than the last one?

Yeah, okay. I would say overall. Yes good sequel. Yeah, cool. Oh absolutely Yeah, so the swapping between the two characters thing has a secondary problem It's not just like I spent 15 hours figuring out what's going on in Hawaii in this part of town and then we switch over. It's at the beginning of Ichiban story is more interesting than the beginning of Kiryu story. But the second half of Kiryu story is way more interesting than the second half of Ichiban story. Okay. So the lulls are brutal because of the contrast. Yeah. And you're like, Oh, not back to Hawaii, which is like stupid because like half the game's poll is that we're going to Hawaii. Right.

And that's that's because Kiri doesn't have any side quests. He has no side quests. Okay. He has a different type of content, which it works under the side quest system, and he has like 70 different quests that are all, do you remember this guy from Yakuza 3? Here's how he's doing it. Oh, fuck. Okay. You really can't appreciate Kiryu's. Do you want to find out what happened to the Muna and Cho-sept after all these years sure a peepee

well here you go every single one of those is like that like digging as deep as the series can go so the last thing you were saying was that like the dongo island or whatever it was like all the assets from previous games yeah every single one but now it's just actual story content is all callback as well Okay, yeah, like there's there's a bunch of there's a bunch of characters that I'm like I this is the this is the most throwaway loser From a side quest from one game

And here they are. Here's how they turned out and here's how they're gonna interact with carry you and be like hey man Thank you for convincing me to get that surgery or thank you for Helping me Reignite my love for pocket racer. So yeah I will so here's the thing like how like did you met? Did you actually catch all of it and how much does it all it? Okay every single one of it? And how much does it matter? so it's tough it's tough to say as somebody who has done every single... I

remembered and did every single side quest all of those mentioned over the past 14 years. Yeah. So I cannot possibly tell you, like, I cannot possibly tell you if it's still worth it if you didn't play those because but they explain and they flashback they do like you know the screenshot of whatever the fuck it was way back in the day because there's like there's a massive poll to when I go down to Kamurocho and I get a little side quest and curious like, oh, this man on the street needs a doctor. And my brain goes, well, isn't there a doctor's office like 25 feet to your left? And he goes, wait a second, that's right.

There's a doctor's office 25 feet to my left. I'll go in there and oh, the doctor there is really old because that was from Yakuza 2. So let's meet his daughter and find out how that worked out. So that's the thing is like referencing like like Shora PP and and pocket racer is like it's all side quest nonsense, admittedly, but stuff that's going to reference mainline plot is important, right? To like what's going on there. I would be, I guess it depends on how much the references is gonna be like, does this plot point make any sense whatsoever or not?

I know that- They explain everything, they sum up. They explain it as they go. Whatever the fuck, wherever. Like, Kuri will literally stand there and go, this is the medical clinic I hid in when the secret Koreans attacked us Right who's it to okay?

Because here's the thing right and it's totally fine if it doesn't but it's like if someone said hey, yo Um, I want to play Metal Gear Solid 4 and I haven't played the previous Metal Gear solids. Is that okay? No, don't play Metal Gear Solid 4 without playing other games the other ones literally don't it's a waste of your time You will get nothing from this Metal Gear Solid 4 without playing other games. The other ones literally don't. It's a waste of your time. You will get nothing from this. So you get something from it, but you get something different. What you get is if your first game was Infinite Wealth, right? You start the game going, why the fuck is everyone sucking up to cure you?

Because he's a legendary figure, but he's just a guy in a black shirt right okay And what you would instead get is the this feeling of this Ridiculous breath of like wait what he did all of this It's it's stupid okay Look how it's dumb look how much he's been is done. Right, right over the course of that Yeah, and that makes sense given how much it is I am look if it's if it's not a series where well

we've okay, we've had multiple iterations of part skipping as it applies to the like a dragon franchise and you know as I will always understand that playing through the entirety of The of the thing is the best way to get the full context and if you don't see that context you can't complain about what you don't Understand also assumes you did every side quest. Yeah, I also however I just and with full respect to that. I will I am like I know that in this lifetime I have on this planet. You can't I will I just I will not do it and that's I know that it'll beam a Subpar experience in some places and I'm gonna have to take that and now see See your damage. I have to take you know

You're in a completely different position because you're playing through zero and also you play a lot of video games And you've known me for a while and you know a lot of you have a lot of friends who play these games, right? So there's a general fucking osmosis of Kiryu story Right. Yes, there is a bit nonsense. Yeah, you've seen over the years I'm not gonna come out the other end of Stardust Crusaders going, well, some cool shit happened, but I don't get any of it. That was kind of weird, I guess. I don't know.

Like, I'm like, no, I know that I don't know, and that's how I have to take this and go, that probably has an explanation I haven't, you know, I just have these burdens. So you, instead of having, you, instead of eating 70 steaks in a row, getting to Infinite We wealth side quest content with Kiryu, you would have what is essentially

a charcuterie board. Oh, look at, oh. So like there's a, this is all over the place because there's the side quests that are like, hey, remember, hey, let's catch up with this person. Then there's a much more in depth version of that for characters that really matter, some of whom only appear in singular games.

So like, there's like a, hey, let's go have like a really in-depth scene with the manager of the taxi cab company that Kiryu drove for in secret in five. Right, like. What, what is the, like not not crazy person, but like, I guess mainstream Western fans exposure to the franchise like I don't know. Because even when three was

dropping as the one of the first ones that was translated and shit, like, it was not, none of this was big at all. In fact, again, you guys were influential in putting it on the map. So like, what's the first one that like made its way out there? Zero, okay. And then seven. So like, yeah, so like, is there a sizable chunk of people? Like in the same way that there's a sizable chunk of people

that started at Stardust Crusaders and just went from there or. Yeah, it would be zero. Okay. So and then from after zero came, how many things before, until seven? After zero, it went to seven. Straight to seven, zero, seven, then. Yeah here. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Oh

Wait, Kwame one and two so the remakes of Kwame of one and two. Okay, so say it's six six came out Oh man. Oh god. Okay, so safe to say that like mainstream popularity wise there would have been a number of people that only did zero, Kiwami 1, 2, and then 7. I would say the vast majority of people did zero, seven, and then infinite wealth. I see. That's what... Like seven has... Seven has like a fucking line in the sand that's at some point in that game that goes, you don't need to know the old shit.

And because what you're so what you're describing is flying over most people's heads. So instead, what you get is you get situations like Kira, you was walking downtown in Yokohama and you have one of those little party chats where you hit triangle and the party just starts chatting. And Namba starts talking about homeless guy fishing, right? Cause you know, he was homeless and whatever. And then Kiryu starts to talk about that time that he fought a giant squid. And they're like, what? And Kiryu starts to explain that it was a tough fight because they both had a lot of pride at stake. But he came out on top in the end.

Okay. Right? Yeah. Yeah. You don't know that Kir you fought a giant fucking squid I played Yakuza 6 where there was a weird swimming minigame in which yeah The final boss of that is carry you fist fighting a giant squid in the ocean Which is the weirdest part in the combat system? Yeah, you know he fights it in the ocean using the games combat system No, no, no using the minigames combat. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay

right But as somebody who didn't play you who's the six and didn't play that mini game You kind of have to wonder If is cure you full of shit, is he crazy or not? Is this yeah and the part that matters? Oh right. He has a spear gun. In my mind, it was his fists. But you have to decide whether or not he's full of shit. And the trick is that you talk to somebody who has played all the games like me, and I will tell you every single fucking thing that they mentioned ever did happen at some

point. And this is all matter how fucking ridiculous it sounds. Yeah, no, that did happen that one time. And this is contrasting Ichiban who lives in his own Dragon Quest world. Yeah. Well, so the infinite wealth does something really interesting with the main story. So at one point, because they have to split up and the game has to work. Kiryu catches Ichiban's mental illness.

I remember that. yeah, yeah. He gets it too, yeah. But more importantly than that, because we're dealing with VTubers and Hawaii and all that shit, the, what I've termed the side quest dimension, bleeds into the main story and is here to stay now. They are no longer separate worlds because main story

Kiryu talks about some of the dumbest shit that's ever happened. Because the main story needs to sometimes follow Animaniacs rules. Yeah, and also there's a couple of boss fights on itch a bond side that are just straight-up cartoon shit, okay But that's the main main story stuff But yeah They go they go crazy deep on this and like some of it'll fly over your head because you're like I don't know who this guy is you're showing me a picture of this guy You are describing a situation with this guy. I've never heard of any of these fucking people

Hey, who's the fucking dude in Zero that wears like a brown suit and throws money in a dude's face? Oh, oh, the Kiryu guy that works for Tachibana. Yeah, what's his fucking name? Oda, I wanna say Oda, yeah. How do you feel about Oda? So far, pretty cool.

Okay. At first he was a shitbag, but then it's like, I see what you got going on here. So Oda gets a mention in Infinite Wealth. The first game, like, Kieru hasn't talked about him in fucking 25 years. No, great, the 80s? 35 years. But when you're going by Cafe Alps, you can be like, oh yeah, I remember when I had coffee here with Oda, 35 fucking years ago. Okay, okay.

Yeah, no, he's a piece of shit to the guy who's like, he's dealing with the squatting hobo attack, and then he's, you know, for Tachibana, but then you find out that the guy who's there holding out is actually the shit bag, and Oda's's you know for a touchy-butt but then you find out that the guy who's there Holding out is actually the shit bag and otas you know so I it's all up in the air Yeah, basically what I'm saying is that if you have like like collective unconscious knowledge of curiou a

Lot of it hits because it's it's like a greatest hits of all sorts of stuff But but you are the fucking 1% that has done. I'm the person that it's it's like a greatest hits of all sorts of stuff But but you are the fucking 1% that has done I'm the person that it's for all of it and side quests as well, right? Okay, right? Okay, and then you know, there's there's some there's some that hit in different ways Right. I'm thinking specifically because there's the side quests and there's like walk up to a sign and then Kiri will have a little blurb Right and there's one that that stands out to me about a character you've never met named Makoto Date. It's the detective that hangs out with Kiryu in Yakuza 1 and is voiced by Goofy's voice actor Bill Farmer. Okay. So he has done a bunch of joke interviews where he talks about what if Goofy met Kiryu? It's silly as fuck. But

it's a picture of a helicopter. And Kiryu goes, you know, this really makes me think of Date. It feels like every time Date's around, he's just in a helicopter and points like a picture of Date in a helicopter from Yakuza 1, I think. Okay, yeah. And it's like, that is weird that he is always in a helicopter, but you would be like, what, who? And why are they in a helicopter? But at the same time, it feels as if the context for all of this stuff is like, it's either the like,

walking a trip down memory lane or look at the breadth of this man's work, look at his legacy in a way. And- Yeah, it's very legacy based. And yeah. It's basically, hey, look how all these people turned out after you helped them. And that's like, I understand that,

that is a context where if you're not getting it all, you're still understanding it's the impact that he had and thus it's fine, even if you don't get the specific thing that is being mentioned there Yeah, instead of hey, man. Remember all this shit you did wasn't that crazy? It's can you believe all the shit that this guy did? That's crazy. I'm trying to think of an example in another media and I'm sure there's a better one but like even just I've talked about like turn a Gundam where there's a better one, but even just, I've talked about like Ternay Gundam

where there's a moment at the end where, spoilers for Ternay Gundam if you're, but there's a moment at the end where you see all other Gundam universes in for a second, and it's a little bit of like, okay, even if you don't know what that one is, third from the left, it's fine. You get the idea of what they're going for.

These are, you're looking at the- Yeah, people are saying it's kind of like Paul Noreff in Vento Oreo talking about, you know, back in my day, we went to Egypt and saw a vampire. Sure, sure, right. And you go, wow, man, that sounds crazy. And yeah, and ultimately you're like, I get the energy of what this is trying to say,

even if I don't- Is it you had your own story that was just as bananas as this shit. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm or like the or mazinger zero with the with the the big fucking Finale on that were a bunch of silhouettes of like do I know that robot? Oh, you know what that one is Do you know that one? You might recognize that one. That's just the Neva You know like so yeah, okay cool Yeah, it's stellar. It's fantastic Final final hour count um let's click on steam

Let's find out what we got final our count for me including 92 point two And I did not I did not I barely interacted with the donko Island I Did not even finish all of Ichiban side quests, okay? Fuck all right fair So speaking of things that are excellent You should check out that fallout TV show I so I heard I got messages this morning saying yo You should watch fallout the TV show

it is um as An introduction to the to the world of fallout sure okay Fuck it. It's great So it really says a lot so the game the game that wow it really says a lot that I refer to it as the game In my head because it's fallout 5. Hmm It takes place chronologically after all the other ones. Oh, it actually is its own thing taking place in the in the okay It says a lot that like so it bins dropped on Amazon. The whole thing is out. Yeah, and When the first the first thoughts I saw about it

was this fucking thing sucks. They fucking ruined the cannon. Oh, and like I'm watching it. I'm halfway through and I'm like, Oh, you just disagree with the fact that it takes place after the games and you don't like what happened to some of those places or people or like they didn't ruin anything you're just mad you're just you just don't like it you said that I in my mind this is what happened but but no they prove they're writing their own story and for the use of their own story. They wanted to do it like this. Yeah Bold decisions are made to make it make sense

I would say there are some at least one absolutely insanely bold decision That is made in this in this show That is Surprising the Bethesda gave them the okay to do. Okay. But... How many episodes? Eight.

Cool. Hour long? It does something... So the length of the episodes are lies. So the first episode is an hour and 14 minutes long. Except it's not. It's like 50. It has like 10 minutes of this season on Fallout previews and then like 20 minutes of credits.

Weird. Okay. Like it's, it's really strange. It's fucking weird sure so it is a it is a Feature dramatic TV show based off of video game property and It does a

Lot of great things from something being adapted from a game and it's not doing a lot of bad things that you would expect from a video game adaptation. So let's take product, let's take like callbacks, right? So Fallout has a million items, has a million side stories. Fallout has like a huge breadth of games that have tons of details in it, right? You're at least casually familiar that it takes place in an alternate like 1950s kind of nuclear age thing.

But then bombs, right? So you've got serials like sugar bombs, you've got Grognak the Barbarian on TV, things that you would recognize. But the one that always stood out to me after I watched the first episode like once and a half, like I went back to watch like certain parts of it again. So there's a healing item in fall called the Stem Pack. It's your basic healing item.

You use a Stem Pack, you're healed, right? In the first episode, there is a point in which somebody is injured and needs to use a Stem Pack. And what they don't do is hold up a fucking Stem Pack in front of the camera and go, oh, thank God I found my Stem Pack. They just run to the fucking medicine cabinet, grab it and jam it in their gut.

And like, it just looks like a prop. It doesn't look like a video game reference. It's just a prop for its own setting. Are you looking at a cast of characters that are just all new to this show because the setting can work that way? Okay, so you don't have to rely on recognizing people and things. No. No, they set up everybody you follow a cast of three characters and

What they have done with that is Incredibly interesting and it's the part that's the most like a like a game But they've used it to like an excellent like multi character narrative She have three main characters you have a vault dweller the girl that you see in blue you have a Initiate in the Brotherhood of Steel, which is those power armor night guys and Then you have the guy who Walter Goggins plays which is a ghoul which is those Power Armor Knight guys. And then you have the guy who Walter Goggins plays, which is a ghoul, which is a irradiated old man

with no nose, he looks like a zombie, who plays a bounty hunter. And the most interesting thing about these characters, and you're following each of them as they go throughout the various adventure, they meet up, they split apart, each of them as they go throughout the various adventure. They meet up, they split apart. Is that all three of them are potential player characters from your would be run of a Fallout

game? Oh, cool. Okay. You have a character that is an idealistic good karma goody two shoes. You have a completely amoral psychopath and you have somebody who is essentially doing shit for the Quest rewards, but as characterization. Chaotic neutral. Yeah. Okay.

And watching how they go through their own narrative and ping pong off of each other is great. It's like Walter Goggins is fucking fantastic actor. I'll watch anything with Walter Goggins in it. I fucking love Walter Goggins and the other two main actors are fantastic as well. And it's just like a really interesting, well shot, well directed, fascinating show that happens to take a lot of shit from Fallout. It's great.

Okay. Um, yeah, the only thing I heard beforehand was when we talked about how the there was the the nose, the makeup on the guy's face. Yeah, he should look a lot uglier. He should look fucked. But um, what are you going to do? Oh, it's Walton Goggins. Walton Goggins.

Uh, hmm. Yeah, I'm just I'm just checking because I'm like, I haven't seen Justified. I haven't seen Sons of Anarchy. But Hey, Phalate was fucking great. You seen the shield? No. Oh, man.

He plays a fucking scumbag. Um. Django Unchained. Oh, yeah, okay, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, right. Yeah, no, it's just great. Invincible. It's a more faithful adaptation than Last of Us is, despite the fact that Last of Us is a one-to-one adaptation.

Interesting. Okay. And this is a faithful, but again, self-contained thing that takes place after all the other things and doesn't, I guess, clash with any of them. No. And you're calling it Fallout 5 because it feels like... This could have been a game called Fallout 5 with where it is narratively. Interesting, okay. What they do do something a little strange

where the characters, like Lucy, the main character from The Fault, characters like Lucy, the main character from the fault, is like literally the Fallout 3 main character again. Okay. Like, their story is exactly the same. And it's kind of funny because they really, they clearly really liked what was going on with Fallout 3. So they just said, we would like to have our main character be, have the core narrative of the fall three main character. You finished the season yet?

No I'm exactly halfway through. Okay yeah okay so I guess the the question is is like well is it a is it something where like you because if this is successful, you can make further seasons and you can go further places with it, but like... I have a very sneaking suspicion that there are already setups for at least one other place you could go in a second season. What streaming service was supposed to get this? Or got this? Or not that it matters particularly up here.

Let me check. Just to make sure I send everyone to the right place. Yes, of course. Is it, yeah. Amazon? Amazon, that's where I'm watching it. I gotcha. Okay. Okay. Yeah, cool That's great. I I had no You know, I've got no fallout anything besides

doing some QA evaluation for It might have been New Vegas or what a three or game of the year edition or one of those things. I did the Iran the create a character pit boy tutorial a bunch of times. And yeah, I've certainly again through osmosis and you guys and everything heard enough about and seen enough of the old timey videos and and whatever the mascot kid. What's the little blue guy? Oh, Pip-Boy. Is his name Pip-Boy? It's not just the thing on your arm? Okay.

Oh wait, Vault Boy. My mistake. Vault Boy. The arm thing. Yeah, so I've gotten enough of an understanding there, but the feeling I've gotten from over the years has been that it's like, okay, the original game specifically like two was this wild experience of like an RPG that let you break the rules and kill NPCs and do all kinds of crazy shit that is never really going to happen again. But the other games are still pretty good fun stories that let you do enough that it's a fun, that's a cool franchise, but like every third game is good. And then there's shit, there's garbage in between.

I'll explain it to you. I'll explain it to you real quick. It's very simple. One and two were made by Black Isle and then Black Isle became, well, fell apart, and then people who worked there worked at Obsidian and made New Vegas, so New Vegas is not quite, but it could be three. Okay.

And then Bethesda Game Studios made Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 and Fallout 76. Yeah, okay. And Bethesda Game Studios said, what if Fallout was like Skyrim? and that's why it's like Skyrim and the two two branches are very different and

they absolutely, they absolutely did a great job of Like Bethesda, one of the smartest things Bethesda did is they set all of their games on the East Coast We're all of obsidian and black isles games are on the West Coast really there's a geographic Line that separates the quality from the the chaff That's it like they they set it on the east and west coast so that they didn't fuck up Each other's bullshit. Yeah, okay, do whatever you want over there.

They're so far away from each other. You're not gonna mess with me over here. Aren't gonna fuck it up. That's so funny. Is there any franchise that does that? I don't know. Where like, yo, okay, Star Wars, this side of the galaxy, this is the one you're allowed to touch and work.

Yeah. So what's interesting. Or the Treyarch and an infinity ward, you know like Split Wow, that's that's okay Each of the games takes place usually in a different state And of note is that the fallout 5 TV show takes huge inspiration from the Bethesda games as well But takes place in California in the west coast part. To the point of even visiting some of the specific locations from Fallout 1 and 2. Okay, so in terms of shit that matters, 1, 2, New Vegas.

Yeah, you could say that. Yeah, okay. That's what I would say. I think Fallout 3 is really good. I would not say that Fallout 4 is really good, and I would definitely not say that Fallout 76 is good at all. Okay. That's pretty cool. Look at that.

I might get into One Piece and Fallout this year. That's great. And these little... You know what? I would put its accuracy despite being like a new story. I would like put it on on like that level of like you know you did you like this then this is then that is exactly what you're going to go and get if you just move over here to the different medium.

Neat. Awesome. This was I would have pegged this for disaster. I would have assumed this would have been a horrendous, halo ass fucking terrible show that everyone was gonna shit on forever. I very strongly expected it to be terrible. And I watched the first 10 minutes of it and the first scene in that show is a plus it's incredible and then you cut to the vault and I'm like this is a this is well

directed interesting and well acted and it is also made by complete freaks who are obsessed with fallout because every set piece every Every single item of set dressing every costume every detail is perfect Which is something not something you usually get to say we're like with an adaptation but like no it's it's all perfect And calm o'lin's there I don't know if you're familiar with his acting roles Kyle McLaughlin the guy who plays Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks the guy who played that father on SVU who shot that kid in court the Uh... The original Pesky Paul in Dune. In the original Dune, yes.

I mean, I'm looking through this list of showgirls. Season showgirls. Yeah, I love Kyle McLaughlin. I think he's great. Okay, all right. And he does a really good job pretending to be Liam Neeson in this in this in this TV show Okay The Flintstones movie no shit, okay, the fuck do you play fucking fun stuff? He was the mayor of Portlandia. Oh

Cool. Okay. Nice Cool. Okay. Nice. Nice. That does anything Um I'm sure i'm sure i'm gonna keep watching it. I'm gonna encounter some plot bomb that uh, everybody is mad about um But I don't care so far so good. Yeah so far so good and Uh, they could This series has been retcons to hell. Like every single game

retcons the shit out of the last one. So I'm really not too worried about it. But it's also like it's just the setting, right? It's just anything can take place in this post-apocalyptic setting. Yeah, but the setting is also historical. Okay. So you can change parts of the setting by dotting an I here or who's responsible for this there.

But it doesn't sound like the ending of any of these games, and you can put on a poker face if you need to, it doesn't sound like the ending of any Fallout game is ever. And then we terraformed Earth properly again and it became totally normal and the nuclear radiation was gone. So, you know, like it seems like you are you are describing one of the reasons why I think it's so stupid that people so I encountered one of the biggest setting altering moments in the TV show. Where I go, wow, that is a huge change for the future of this series. Because they have changed something that isn't important, right? And I go, well, every single one of these games had massive open-ended possible endings.

Mm-hmm. So you kind of have to write around them, like all the way around them, because you can't accommodate for the fact that you did the goddamn Yes Man ending in New Vegas. So they didn't pick one and go, that's the canon one that happens. No, they have to go around it. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Which makes sense. Okay.

Yeah, so far so good. Cool. Yeah, anything else for this week? Phone, Fallout, X-Men. I believe that's it. Oh, Infant Well. Yeah. All right. What's the schedule? Schedule this week is tomorrow I'm playing FF7 Rebirth. On Wednesday I'm playing a shit ton of phone games on my personal computer. On Thursday I'm going to be playing Beat Your Wife at video games with L.A. Noire. And, I'm gonna be playing beat your wife at video games with LA Noire And then I'm back to ff7 on Friday over at twitch.tv slash Pat stairs at

Okay, always stellar blade out this week Susie. I Should I care about stellar blade I mean if Nikkei puts you in the mood for asses, then you might just be warming up. Will they just keep playing more Nikkei then? I suppose so. But if you want the shiniest Hyungtae Kim asses, like the really, really, really greased up ones, because at the end of the day, like, the Nikkei ones are, you know, they're not max shiny.

They could be more greased up. We can- I don't know why. We can slick this pink. We can slick this pink. We can slick this pink. We can slick this pink. We can slick this pink.

We can slick this pink. We can slick this pink. We can slick this pink. We can slick this pink. We can slick this pink. We can slick this pink. That's awful. That's awful. That's awful.

Wait, it's the same people? Is it? Well, there you go. Well, there you go. No way. Incredible. Incredible. All right.

Yeah. That's that. That explains that. That's that that explains that. That's there's no way. I'm looking this up right now. Holy shit. Shift up. That's crazy. That's the hoardiest studio in video games. Dude, you fucking lasered in on that. That's wild. Yeah, just like cuz it's it's not just any kind of loot it's like it's not just like like like general-purpose gooning it's ass focused it's ass focused that's it's a particular flavor it's going for okay Okay, there it is. All right. Understood. Let's just move on. Well, I mean, hey, I gotta use the bathroom again, so BRB.

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Alright. What's going on? Uhhhh... Couple of things, but... All right, what's going on? A couple of things, but I would say first and foremost, if you are out there and you are trying to get your hands on some bootleg Pokemon, you might want to think again. Because... Well, if you live in Japan. Yeah, in particular, we've got it from Kyoto Prefecture, a 36 year old man has been arrested

by Japanese police for creating and selling rare varieties of Pokemon online. An interior decorator used an unspecified modification device to alter the stats of Pokemon and was offering them for sale and apparently managed to rack up a couple million yen in sales and has since been arrested and he confessed to the police that he did it to earn a living. They're further investigating the full extent of his modifications to his illegal modifications to the Nintendo Switch hardware and his save data of Pokemon, which are also again illegal, as he violated the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, something that was passed in 2019. And...

Oh, this seems like fair competition that Nintendo is using the police to stop unfairly. And faces potential years in prison. Depends. Years in prison. Depending on how this goes. So, yeah, modding, like, okay, anytime a mod goes into a selling situation, like with the paddle world shit and all that, you always know it's gonna get legally dicey.

But police came to this dude's house and fucking arrested him for modding Pokemon, is where we're at. Like, Japan actually is willing to pull you in and potentially have you arrested for years. And the thing is with that, if you consider, I guess, the nature of any law that you can be like, that's not like a financial crime that you can be arrested for, is one that Means that failure to comply with said law could potentially escalate to retaliation of violence, right?

So if someone were to in a situation like again resist or anything were to ask to go beyond that point You're you're basically having something where like the idea of modifying a game save file and saving that Could lead to someone getting hurt or killed. It's just that there's like a bit of a thought experiment as to like every time you have something that people can be arrested for, is it worth it for them to potentially face like violence as a result? The idea that Japan will arrest you for Pokemon modding is fucking insane. Even the financial aspect.

That's wild. There's a lot of nonsense that you could think of in your mind here. You could think of, bro, Nintendo's willing to put people away for years over their Pokemon shit. What were you all yelling about with fucking Power World? Right. Like, you're nuts.

So the thing is too, like there's always a weird element to it where like, you get the feeling that like, this is again, the cops are busting in and like, pulled like pulling the dude in down to the precinct, right? You get the feeling that it's like, no one is gonna kick your door down and drag you away in handcuffs if you were bootlegging monster ranchers

You know if you had if you had counterfeit fighting food on I don't think that you would be getting pulled into potential a jail time for that yet Because Pokemon is this big important National franchise that is such a big deal, it has this extra level of, I can't believe you're fucking with our national shit. I can't believe you're willing to, like, if you're fucking with Pokemon, that's important. And now you have to pay the price for it. I mean, the second thing that I think of about how absurd this is is like fucking thank goodness.

Now, but here a watsuki didn't have any bootleg Pokemon on his computer next to all that child pornography or he might have actually done jail time. Oh no, not Kenshin. God forbid. Once again, the hero, the manga legend that is Kenshin, that is an international exported important thing that, you know, the commonality here is you need to protect the thing that is important and big and popular that is a major part of our culture exported. It's crazy. It's crazy. I-

This is like the absolute most absurd like when people are like, yeah, the cops only exist to protect the capital of the fucking business class and yada yada. You're like, whatever. But like this well stupid shit is so crazy well so in America it's what can we do what can Nintendo do we can get the Pinkerton's at your door can we get the cops at your door to your house we can't get the cops at your door no can we get the Supreme Court on your ass no probably not but what can we do? We can hire private. Goons! We can hire private.

Okay, cool. Back home? What can we do? Oh, we can get it in, official. We can get actual cops showing up? Cool, all right, run it. Yeah. Did you dress up like Mario at Halloween?

Straight to jail. Believe it or not. Did you not dress up as Mario? Straight to jail. There were, at the fucking sugar shack I went to yesterday, there was a Mario and Luigi mascot walking around taking pictures with the kids, posing next to the Tiers de la Neige, like fucking, you know. That shit lasts forever cuz who's gonna fucking

Tell anyone right little did ever little did I know that that mascots life was on the line putting on that Mario outfit Straight to the lones the dress up like spider-man to go do kids birthday parties That being said Marvel is almost as insane. I will like bulldoze children's graves that have Spider-Man on them. I mean, there is that. Like also full disclosure, like the Times Square, SpongeBob shit makes me extremely uncomfortable because like the further out of the correct context that someone in a mascot costume is

The more creepy and weird and disturbing it is because it's like I who the fuck are you? That you just bought this on eBay and now you're putting it on and now you're hanging around and taking pictures with kids Like who is that? What are you doing? We're not at Nintendo World or Disney or any we're in We're at a fucking sugar shack in the cabin up north. Why is Mario here? You know? And there was also a Paw Patrol walking around and it just feels like out of the context of the place

that the mascot should be, the further we are away, the more weirded out I am. But anyways, yeah, yeah, actual jail time now for video game crimes. Up to five years, potentially five million in fines and... Up to five fucking years. Yeah. It's just like, I don't think any... Well, we sit here and I have to Google where I'm watching Fallout. Like, I-

I'm watching it on Amazon, of course. Of course. Again, I don't think anybody, like, expects that the moment something goes into like, oh, are you selling your mods and shit? Yeah, you're gonna get into deeper trouble than a regular cease and desist. You're gonna get more than a spanking.anking would be expected because that's a stupid move. But the thought is that it would be financial, you know, because you're fucking around with money. It's going to go to that point. Literally getting locked up over that is madness. But yeah, I'm not too sure about the full extent of this law, but apparently it's it's a recent one from only a couple years ago. So Not to get too political, but is it Vietnam that just sentenced that landlord lady to death?

What? I have not heard of this. I believe it's Vietnam Okay The real estate billionaire in Vietnam stole 3% of the country's GDP And as as a result of her financial crimes She has been sentenced to death Holy fuck. She stole like 12 billion dollars.

3%? Like of the national GDP. What the fuck? Hey listen, I will say if you're gonna go big, go as big as you can and that's pretty fucking big. Wow, okay. Into capital punishment, okay. Yeah, I'm looking at the photo of her at the trial. She does not look excited.

Oh my God. Yeah, I don't think when you're doing the land crimes, the consequences ever in your brain that it would be like literally execution. I think in many cases the thought is, well, you take your risk expecting that yeah many years in jail my or giant crazy fines or whatever the case is but Three percent. Holy fuck. Okay. Wow

She just ran like a land scam where she made a fake bank and then had the fake bank withdraw money from the government Just over and over and over and over and over and over Okay, well Just over and over and over and over and over and over. Okay well, yeah, the effect you have on the entire population of the nation is fucking psychotic for the level that we're describing here. I don't know that capital punishment is necessarily, there can be a discussion about whether that should be meted out for this type of crime between that's fucking insane. But wow, between these two neighboring countries of capital says go to jail versus literally death to capital and they have China in the middle there, which is I mean, they'll you

know, they're their deal. Asia's crazy. Jesus Christ. So are we then capital punishment for Pokemon save file crimes? It's only a matter of time. This is the natural conclusion, right? This is where we go. Like Pikachu holding the guillotine. I mean if Nintendo, listen, if Nintendo had their way they would shoot you in the face for playing a Nintendo Oh my god, that's so fucked up. Okay. Um

Do you want to talk about Evil cross Sesame Street? Hell yeah, that's awesome So speaking of Japan evil Japan cross Sesame Street Japan, Evo Japan, Cross Sesame Street is a collab where there's gonna be official merch where you can see- Don't bootleg that t-shirt, they'll kill you over it! Maybe don't do that. But yeah, you got Cookie Monster, Big Bird and Elmo playing fighting games and holding sticks and everything and they're not showing you of course the game that's on the screen

because that might be a little bit violent and suggestive but is there a fighting game appropriate for young children no probably not is there a fighting game appropriate for older children no there are only fighting games appropriate for man children i mean we just need it's just it's fine. This t-shirts exist. It's an official thing They signed off on it So now we can let nature take its course if Waffle House is too coward But Sesame Street will do it then let's put the Sesame Street stage in the game Yeah, it's just me Street isn't even tying to a specific fighting game. They're just like all fighting games, right?

Arcade things playing fun. Yeah throw Fighting games right arcade games playing fun. Yeah, I'll take that throw You know you we almost like four years old Elmo is getting stomped out at Evo unless Elmo the prodigy is doing it Oscar is a fucking plugger You know Oscars plug in that Ethernet cable out Internet my trash cans really it's a spotty. It's got bad Wi-Fi through the trash can. Oh man, yeah. I don't know how that deal was brokered, but maybe Sesame Street doesn't fully know what

fighting games are yet completely. But for whatever purpose, in Japan you can currently get a shirt or two. And I got to get I feel like this might not last. So I want to get in on that. That's dope. You should. Um. Be a little talk about you want to talk about Shadow the Hedgehog.

Yeah, go for it. Shadow the Hedgehog has had their actor confirmed for the new Sonic movie as Keanu Reeves. I missed that. Mm-hmm. That happened about 10 minutes after we started the podcast. No shit. So Shadow's gonna shoot a gun. Oh my god. Oh my god, John Wick. Oh my god. Look, they just, yeah, they did it for the bit. It doesn't even matter whether he talks or not. They just did it for the bit.

Oh god. Yeah, alright. Alright. I mean, who can possibly hate? Like that's- I hate on that. It's great. That's great. That's great. That's fantastic But it's just like John wick is not exactly talking all the time. You know what I mean? Like so it's it's literally just to have this moment right here us what we're doing

Well, you don't know that shadows not gonna do like gun katas and shit I mean a million percent he's gonna do the fucking gun katas and he's not gonna hit anything But he's gonna do them What if he what if he drives his truck? Oh man That's crazy, okay Can't a Reeves shouting chaos control. Oh, that's good Sure, you know canoes had like a really, really prolific acting career and I really

like him as an actor when he's in a good role and he's apparently the nicest guy in the world. Yeah. But like I cannot get his performance from fucking Dracula out of my fucking head like the worst British accent ever put to film I have not seen it oh Oh You gotta go look up some some clips it is it is the worst ever it is it defies belief That this is a professional actor I mean, it's also one of those things where Bill and Ted was way ahead of my time as well. Like I feel like it was...

That must have come out before I... Or whatever it was, it was... When did Bill and Ted come out? Hold on, I don't know. I feel like it was older than me though. Oh, 1989. Okay, I was four years old. Okay.

Hey. Yeah. So, either way, that was nowhere around me and I never caught those either. So for me, like The Matrix was the introduction to Keanu Reeves. Oh yeah? Yeah. Huh. No, wait, was Speed first?

Yeah, Speed was first, right? Yeah, Speed was first. I saw Speed, Speed was the introduction, then The Matrix, yeah. And Speed fucking kicks so much ass. Okay, well now between that and Idris, they've now achieved enough clout that they can pull anybody in.

So anybody. Any A-lister is on the table, wonderful. I want this movie series to go on for long enough that we start getting complaints from moviegoers about how they don't care about all these extra animal characters and all the Sonic friends. I want the cycle to continue in movie form. It's not just complaining about people now. It's complaining about the chaotic getting too much because like yes silver is after shadow and people mark out for silver because they're stupid but like I

want I want to see like reviews for Sonic 5 be like who the fuck gives a shit about all these rabbit friends that live with Sonic now. I don't give a fuck. What are their names even? I Mean obviously Scar Joe comes in as Amy Yeah, you know Cuz that's that I gotta watch that second movie or or Yeah, either that or cream, whatever. Take your pick. Who gets Ruge the Bat? Megan Fox?

Is that appropriate? Not currently, not currently it enough though. Needs to be, needs to be like. Oh, it has to be it? Has to be it, right? Like. It, okay. Yeah, it has to, it's got to be like who's that uh who's that bitch with the giant eyes you know who gets it ice spice gets it right tie in tie in music tie in culture tie in get get a nice get a nice big pop name in there

for everybody and just get the get the get the zoomers in you pull in you pull in some ice spice there you go that's how you do it. And then you get, yeah, that's the casting. I feel it. All right. That aside, yeah, there was a announcement for an invincible game. skybound entertainment is launching a crowdfunding campaign to make this visible game I bound

And they make the goddamn So like the only thing I did shit Yeah, I'm like all I only know skybound for picking up after telltale Left walking dead the final crowd fund that Kirk sees whatever guy has money for picking up after Telltale left Walking Dead. The final season. I'm not gonna crowdfund that, Kirk. Whatever guy has money, fucking go get some of his money. And apparently.

Yeah, so it's odd. I'm not too sure. Like there's the full page. I haven't gone through the whole thing yet because I saw it just before we started. But it's currently at, it's currently at 440. So I think they got investment from outside elsewhere, larger firms or so. They're looking for a minimum of 50 and a maximum of 5 million. And a minimum of 50,000 for a AAA invincible game is ridiculous. That's

laughable. So there's no way that is a real number But I'm a Kirkman made invincible and walking dead he's got these the chivish like so I don't need fucking kick You don't need crowdfunding. Well, I'm yeah So I'm guessing that after I'm guessing multiple attempts to ship this around failed and multiple places just must have said no And so as a probable like, okay, well, last resort, let's just go with a crowdfunding thing to get interest and do a fake campaign to get people to like. Use your own money. Shenmue 3 it a little bit, you know.

It's like Microsoft crowdfunding a Halo game. Like, oh, we just don't know where the money is. It's, I imagine that like, yeah, there's, there's probably been a lot of nose and closed doors from shipping it around. So this is a Shenmue three, like proof of interest. The idea that that no one wants to do it on this super hot property. And they don't want to spend their own money to do it gives me like negative faith that I want to have anything to do with this fucking game. It's a game that no one wants to make. Aren't you excited? No. So apparently they've done a campaign before that raised 18 million for what though?

What? Not sure. New Studio 30 purrpill made up of industry veterans from Amazon Games, Blizzard, EA and Activision. And Kirkman himself. Yeah, I don't know. It's, it's odd because I'm also just like, yeah, like as far as the again, the name goes with skybound, like I don't know other games besides the last walking dead seasons, right? Confusing confusing move, but I think that I feel like the like the Kickstarter campaign for the non indie thing To is not something that people really believe in anymore. Like that bridge is fucking burnt.

Like it is clear that it is a like, all right, look how many people are interested. Now can we go and close this out with some other investors behind the scenes or so. But I imagine that part of the money you're seeing there is already some of that private investors putting in some of that 440. So it's a public facing

thing that could be happening behind the scenes regardless. So like Kickstarter and all that had a really promising start and a bunch of shit. And then it was like ruined when it became very clear that all of these amounts were like tests, you know, for a bunch of big companies. And this situation with Skybound makes me think of Psychonauts 2, which I never bitched about, because I don't care about Psychonauts, but like Telltale, Double Fine had a fucking campaign to bring Psychonauts 2 back. It was like a fig campaign. You remember that? And then they got bought in 2019 by Microsoft. And then the game came out in 2022. It's like, if Microsoft fucking owns you, then give the

money back. You don't need it Do you like Right. Yeah, why did anyone fucking give you any money for psychodots too? Or if you're just gonna get bought by a company to finish the game and if it's about just getting like a vote of confidence for for the publicity it to say that hey look how many people are interested then Don't make it that kind of campaign from the start. Like, it's, yeah, it's odd. I feel like, okay, so here, no, no, here it is. Okay, so they raised 18 million prior to this for the project. So this is a second campaign. And this is, yeah, it's on Republic.

It's not a Kickstarter directly, but I get the way that looking at this, the way it's kind of mentioned with the valuation, minimum investment goals, et cetera. It feels as if this is, again, this is would be something that would happen behind the scenes trying to get investors of few number but large involved. Because right now, the fact that they've made that 18 and then it's at 446 out of 154 investors total.

So I just don't know why this is a public thing necessarily and not just a private privately done thing. We have 18 million, but we need five more from you. It's weird. It's weird. It's very weird. I don't know. But it's like, yeah, when you. I'm rich, but I want your money to to make the fuck off. Like a bunch of the Kickstarter games that I backed were like from companies that were like,

we're broke. Help. Yeah, I mean, you are looking at as well, like less less, like, your perks are not like, oh, you get a poster of Invincible, but there's like, you get points on the investment for potential returns. So this is what it did, this is the difference between this and just running like a Kickstarter thing is like, yeah, there's an actual return. Yeah, no, investors represent a minuscule amount of FIG

and other things, like they're primarily crowdfunding Yeah, again, I don't know. Odd way to go about it. Must be. Remember must be desperate, I guess. I remember for Psychonauts too, people were like speculating that the only reason that game finished is because Microsoft bought them because they had run out of the Kickstarter money

long before that game was gonna come out This wasn't there a bunch of shit with double-fine and broken age and how long broken age took to come out I Don't remember I Guess the idea though is that like with the 18 million that was raised that's gonna Go towards the project and then everything bonus from that 50 is for the ability to do more and okay anyway we'll find out more in the future as this listen I need you to crowdfund me five million dollars so I can put it in my pocket where the five million dollars goes well speaking of speaking of crowdfunding bits, the dev behind Blasphemous recently came out and explained

that during the campaign for that, Larian just donated a thousand and then just never asked for anything in return and just went like, here's some money, this is cool, and ghosted. Yeah, great, because Larian knows what it's like to be barely scrimping by and making your passion project indie game. I have mad respect for that, that's super sick. I like that kind of move, just like, yo, I like the thing, I want this to exist, good job.

Here you go, here's a little nudge. Continue making this exist. And that's it. Oh Yeah, congrats to larian by the way for winning all five game major game of the year publication awards Like all the game industry ones game awards BAFTA GDC like all that shit Like the first unanimous game of the year literally in the history of the industry. Well fucking deserved.

Good shit. At CinemaCon this year, Paramount has confirmed Transformers GI Joe crossover movie is coming out in 2025 or 2026. Oh hell yeah, we've hit fucking market cap on your nostalgia. Time to have your nostalgia kiss. Thing is, okay, I... Oh yeah! Yeah there it is! I see it! I see it in your fucking eyes! So I'm gonna tell you exactly what it is. I have not seen either of the G.I. Joe movies and I don't care to.

They're terrible! I've only seen the first Transformers movie and that was more than enough for me, thank you very much Oh what you didn't see the one where Anthony Hopkins is like an ancient Transformers night. I I did not Um, I saw the Beast Wars trailer and that did It made a little something inside me go. God damn it Beast Wars I love Beast Wars But for the most part what that that movie franchise, the Michael Bay versions of these things has become, I'm good. I'm very, very not interested.

However, understanding that yes, it's peak trash, as everyone says, I have very strong positive memories with a old six issue run of a comic called GI Joe Transformers from like 2006 or four. It was during it was during college era. I was buying them from the during the club spaces and it was a just a short and sweet run where Jay Lee, which is awesome comic artist that does like really high contrast style, just did a imagining a world where G.I. Joe and Transformers existed during World War Two. And it was a fun concept world of

like Cobra finding the matrix and then you're getting a bunch of like you're getting like rumble as a like Almost like Nazi fucking Decepticon weird soldier and a bunch of like you're getting Starscream the fighter pilot from the you know What I mean? You're getting like all that shit where I'm like, ah This aesthetic is also was what would be rad enough on its own But then crossing it over with the two. It was a fun, like concept art into a story thing that ran very briefly. It would never be that, and it'll clearly never be anything remotely resembling that.

But that specific crossover was rad as shit, and I loved it. And that just makes me go, I want that. I want that one little obscure thing that happened one time to exist. But no, clearly the Michael Bay movies clashing together is going to be a bunch of CG that you can't really understand what you're looking at clashing into each other and catamarying around the screen. But apparently, they're not directed by Bay anymore.

They don't look like that anymore. Well, Steven Spielberg is producing though, right? Bro, I don't know. Yeah, so anyway. My knowledge of the later Transformers movies is scarce at best. Like every time a trailer popped for any of, I'm just like, I don't, I don't wanna, I don't wanna.

I saw the GI, I saw the Channing Tatum, the GI shows, and I was like, I don't wanna. You know, I saw those movies, they're fucking, they're god awful. Oh man. They're awful, They're fucking terrible. Yeah. Nope. That comic was dope. We got our snake eyes hanging out with the Autobots and shit was cool. That's more than enough for me. But I have to admit Beast Wars is a curiosity. Just like- You and Paige are the same sometimes. Like, like her brain just off whenever Transformers things happen.

And then I'm like, hey, did you know the Beast Wars? She's like, ah! It's not- It's crazy! It's not all. It's just for the, I mean, for the shit that I'm, that looks like I'm not, that looks like it sucks. I'm just like not in. But Beast Wars was my favorite shit.

And I wanted- The shit they showed looked like it sucks, I'm just like not in. But Beast Wars was my favorite shit and I wanted- The shit they showed looked like it sucked just as bad as the rest, it was just different characters. And I legit, like one of my goals when I was younger was I wanted to work at Capcom. And then when I was doing CG and getting into 3D animation and shit, I wanted to work at mainframe. Rebo I was doing CG and getting into 3D animation and shit, I wanted

to work at mainframe. Reboot was massively responsible for that, but the other thing mainframe was doing was fucking Beast Wars at the time, which was also excellent. So these are massive formative fucking experiences I'm fighting against here. You're not going to win. Like, I'm sorry, just Optimus Primal and fucking purple T-Rexes are just running in circles in my brain. You can't defeat that. It's not going to happen. You could say whatever the fuck you want, you're not going to win. I will. I'm going to do it. Yeah, so we'll see what comes of that. And then a couple of new games were announced as well.

So the Dead Cells folks, Evil Empire, are making a Prince of Persia game called the Rogue Prince of Persia. And seems interesting. The art style is muted and a lot of the rhythm and pacing of it seems very reminiscent of like original Prince of Persia with more advanced combat, but it seems to just be going completely the opposite way from the recent one. Was it Lost Crown or? I can't remember the name of it. It's good though. Yeah, yeah. And it's kind of like weird that there's two Prince of Persia games so close to each other, like just like that, and they're completely different takes on the franchise.

Yeah, Lost Crown, again, sort of mechanic and combat-wise seems like it's more interesting and got a lot going on. But Dead Cells is sick and if they take any of that into what they're doing here, this could be all right. I just don't know that as much as their nostalgia for the old Prince of Persia classic slower paced thing is there, the lost Crown shit and the newer games as well is like I Kind of I care about that combat looking good and that feeling good as well And it doesn't just have to go I just looks for a trailer for this this looks like shit I think I think it's like it's fine knowing that they're going for the old Prince of Persia look and style and pacing They're they're deliberately going for that that thing and that's why it looks that way.

It's, you know... I know, I strongly disagree. I played Prince of Persia back when it came out and Lost Crown is like, feels a lot more like what they wanted to do with that, whereas this just looks bad. I don't think just looks bad. I don't think it looks bad, but all right, we'll see. It's coming out on May 14th. Slay the Spire 2. Yeah, okay. So Slay the Spire 2 gets to go into the fucking bin

with Hades 2 for games that they go, hey, we're going to bring it out to early access like five years from now. Why? Early access in 2025. Shut up. Nice animated trailer, a couple screenshots. I'm not sure, but I'm hoping that with those screenshots, we're going to see some cool attack animations occurring. That'd be fun. Sure Yeah, you know, it's a card based like deck builder and you roll through it and it's not that any of that matters but it would be sick if it if it got to to add that to the to the sequel cuz that so

Mmm, I'll hold it. I'll hold it. I'll hold it for a second. Oh, no. Well, it's just it's just The one thing I think, I enjoyed Slay the Spire. I played a bunch of it. And the one thing I definitely would have loved is the fights to play out a little more than kind of like, you kind of have attacks that sort of float. And it was a simple and affordable way

to represent what the cards do on your character. But making that a little more dynamic could be dope if they had the budget to do so. So I have a problem with announcements way before games come out, but like multi-year announcements for you can. Preview the game is ridiculous. It's absurd. Don't announce early access. If you're going to go early access the day that you Preview the game is ridiculous It's absurd

Don't announce early access if you're gonna go early access the day that you announce it should be the fucking day It comes out in early access fair. Yeah I should not be sitting around watching my child go through life Milestones of multiple orders of magnitude in between you told me a game exists and you letting me QA it for money. That's fucking stupid. It's stupid. Yeah, no fair. And I know that, you know, my early access problem is often too much of the game gets

played before the actual final release. Like will they like, like, because we weren't in the right time frame, but you know how certain games got announced and they took like five, six years to come out and it was ridiculous. It's like, when was Silksong announced? When was Silksong announced? As DLC for the original game, I mean, you can go back to Valentine's Day 2019. Technically you can go back to it's campaign. Valentine's Day 2019. Technically you can go back to its Kickstarter campaign.

But sure, let's say 2019, right? Alright. Okay, so it's been five plus years. Like a kid who was entering into high school would have fucking graduated waiting for a soul song. That's fucking ridiculous! Games should only get two years. That's fucking ridiculous! Games should only get two years. That's it.

You have to put it out after two years. If the game is Baldur's Gate scale, you're allowed. I'll put an asterisk on that and say that you get to be massive and humongous and benefit from everybody playing and giving you feedback that changes how many options and how much freedom you have in the game. It's then fair. But yeah. When was Baldur's Gate 3 revealed?

February of 2023. When was Baldur's Gate 3 Early Access? August of 2023. When did Baldur's Gate 3 come out? September of 20... wait, these are wrong. These are not correct. Initial release date is August of 2023. Okay, thank you. Well, either way, I haven't thought about Sleigh of the the spire in a while and you can continue to Not until it until it's drops

But if I'm not yeah, I don't know maybe I don't know why marketing decided to go at it this early But have you noticed that Google has become like garbage Like you type in like a very clear question and you just get the wrong answer I haven't noticed that hmm Hey, one second. Hello? That's strange. I can't. Sorry. That was me. That was me. That was me. Okay. I had my manual. I had my manual toggle toggle on. Yeah, I thought it was this is my fucking mind.

Um, yes. No, I was I was gonna say, um, to correct myself earlier, I feel that when it comes to Googling people, places, or things, that's more or less normal and the same as it's fine. But when it comes to Googling a question, that has been ruined completely by AI-generated SEO-optimized pages. And that's been dogshit for years because everything best a question just gets an article fed up that's pasting, would you like to know about the length of whatever the fuck and then the thing about this is, and just nonsense, drag and 15 ads and then gross out ads in between each one.

Have you seen the dead internet theory stuff with Facebook and the freaking weird AI generated Santor women that are just generating like hundreds of replies from robots in completely fake threads No, I have not like there's not a single human being interacting with this thing It's just multiple AIs and image generators to itself from talking to each other Incredible not an ad to be found for anyone to click on that's what's crazy I mean shit man, like it's just it's just the nature of that combined with the Here's a close zoom in on wrinkles on an old man's face But the wrinkles are gonna look like something's awfully wrong with them and we're gonna try to creep you out

Like creep out ads that are just, like again, it's not gross, but it's just shy of gross. We're gonna zoom in on like a bunch of beans in a spoon, and like change the lighting so that the beans look kind of weirdly like poop or something, just to make you go, ah! And then you're like, wait, oh, it's just beans. Those beans will be poop soon enough. Sure, but like a bunch of that weird fucking annoying garbage or like here's a ginger root

Have one of these every day says the doctor but the ginger is weirdly late so that it looks like a creepy off-putting Yeah, it's a nightmare. All right. It's all it's all a horrible nightmare All right, so Yeah, I don't mean to be rude but I I have to tell you, I am actually literally fighting to stay awake because I got up too early this morning. No worries, we're just wrapping up. The last little bit I was going to talk about was Gearbox and Wasabi announcing a game called Rakugaki, which looks like a spray paint,

a fly around punk kind of setting, you know, and aesthetically, you would, it would be something that should raise an eyebrow for me. It should. But watching it, I don't know something about the trailer for this, just RKGK. Something about it felt kind of soulless.

It feels a little too clean for the aesthetic it's trying to convey, and it kind of feels more like corporate punk instead of cyber funky. Do you know what I mean? You're probably zooming in directly on it perfectly yeah it just it doesn't feel authentic it's hard and like like the cut the cutscene you're watching is like there's no gameplay in it you're just looking at a an introduction you know FMV or whatever but it just it doesn't feel you know like even the character design the world the setting though the we're gonna fight back against the the cops and spray paint our way to freedom

thing I'm just like yeah I know what you're going for and I usually love what you're going for but this just this feels fake this doesn't feel real it doesn't feel like you you're you believe it I forgot I'm looking in chat while you're saying this and I forgot that Randy Pitchford's nickname is Greasy Randy. Greasy Randy's trying to better than a legend Randy. You know. Oh boy. Yeah. I just anyway I just it's it's if you watch it, you know There's just a vibe that it does it does a vibe check that doesn't get past. I don't know Just because you have a character spray painting and fighting the power and such as doesn't mean you're gonna get me in but maybe the game

Maybe the gameplay will look amazing. But I so far make a game about fighting the power and fucking the system, someone at the high end on the creative side has to be like fucking pissed off at how shit it all is all the time. You need like a Zach De La Roca just on the fucking team just going, oh, this's a fucking system, man. Right, right. Somewhere in there.

And if you don't, it just comes off fake. Well, and then scrolling down the bullet points for the things and in the key features, one of the bullet points is rage against the machine. Restore freedom to the citizens of cap city or any whatever. But is it hobby grade competitive co-op? Again, we'll have to see, but just the first impression I get is just like, this is the game that the architect designed to get the punk revolutionaries to all gather in one place. Revolts, revolt and spray your cans or right over here, gather in this room right here.

I think one of the best critiques of economic theory was the idea that the coolest thing about capitalism is that it can subsume critiques of capitalism into itself. And as you are describing, oh yeah, part of the bullet point is rage against the machine is in this game that feels fake. It's just like hilarious. All right, letters. Hey, have you sent a letter? Send it to castlesuperbeastmail.com. That's castlesuperbeastmail.com.

All right, one coming in from Drink Moxie says, Dear tall guy with hair and short guy with a baby, I know for LP streaming purposes, fully voiced games are helpful, but when playing for yourself, do you prefer the silent protagonist like your Link or Gordon Freeman or Chosen Undead, or do you prefer fully developed protagonists like your Nathan Drake or your Snake or Dante? I could coin flip it by myself. No preference whatsoever. I understand that loud people that talk a lot and quip

and so on can get really annoying, but I don't need to self-insert. I don't need to feel that. It's like it's me. Thus, when he says anything, I can imagine me saying, or not saying anything, I can imagine it being me. I want a character that is their own person, and I want to jump into that person in their world. I don't want to pretend to be me entering a world and then let it be a blank template. I want a Harry Dubois who's got his own history and fucked up shit. Even though Harry is like talking through the clicks of what you're saying, I ultimately want someone who- Yeah, you're always choosing things that Harry would say.

Yeah. I'm kind of done and tired with the silent protagonist. There can still be amazing games that have them. They don't, and it's just, if I have a choice, I always want a protagonist who has things to say and a personality and is a person who is inhabiting this world, whether or not we're there. It's funny because like they mentioned, I believe they mentioned Gordon Freeman and you just went through Half-Life 2.

And like Gordon is like fucking so weird because even in his own setting, they're like, yeah, he doesn't say anything. Like he is his own character. He has his own thoughts. I saw just never says a goddamn thing and it's super strange. I saw like a list of like, here's a bunch of shit that in tears of the kingdom and breath of the wild that link says that are like goofy answers that are full of personality, you know? And it's like, oh yeah, he does like have these things you can say as him if you'd like to. But no, I want, I always would prefer somebody who like exists outside of just being an avatar for the player. So there's two games that come to mind that have silent side quote-unquote silent protagonists

That the games attempt to characterize anyway Okay, and one is New Vegas in which like you get an entire DLC One of the DLCs is about the backstory of the courier Despite the fact that the courier could be anyone and you could have been playing the game in any way And the way that they like play around that is really interesting and the other one is Final Fantasy 14 Despite it being a any self-insert character, whatever

anything possible you get far enough in there and they characterize you in a bunch of really interesting ways. It doesn't change anything that you've thought up about the way you want to play your character or your own backstory, but they do some stuff and it's really interesting. Okay. I would also say that the twist of your silent protagonist is silent for a reason because they have some sort of past of being messed with, created.

You know, like the Quiet Man. It's, you know, whatever the case is. Maybe not the Quiet Man. Maybe, I don't know, pick a cloud or something or a chrono or, you know, any example where there's a reason why the character is like that or so. And it's like, I know that that can be used, but we've seen those. So I'm also like, that's not going to make it a ton better either. I kind of am just like, yeah, make it a person, make it a person with a personality. The further we get from the visual hair protagonist with the student uniform and their hair covering their eyes,

the better, I think. So like, I guess one of the reasons that I'm a coin flip on it is that there are three places here. Good voiced protagonist, silent protagonist, and then bad voice protective right and I find Bad ones just as common as good ones And quiet ones sidestep all that shit regardless

So yeah, I could go I could go any which way So yeah, I could go I could go any which way All right there let's take one over here from El Ron scrubbered how you doing? Nicely done That's one of the all-time best Eric Andre bits. Those black Scientologists. I haven't seen that one, I don't think. Oh, you have?

Oh, man. There's a lot of Eric Andre seasons I need to... Getting New Yorkers to just drop their jaws at some stupid shit is a talent. Dear Leroy and Gon, listening to you guys during the ranked matches of Tekken I was playing seems to significantly improve my performance. Not sure why, my working theory is that distraction relaxes me, allowing me to easily tap into a flow state. Any rituals you use to improve your competitive play?

Yeah, not listening to anything actually. The complete opposite. I've turned the sound on in the game I want to play good at so that I can use all the cues to be better. I'll play right after the match is done, but I need to be locked in. And I would say like at a tournament I always empty my pockets before. Something about emptying your pockets you just feel lighter and thus you just feel like you can respond better. Everybody does it. You put your phone and your keys on the table and you stick your controller in your lap. Yeah, I genuinely think it's extremely rare for me to not have seen that or done that myself. Nothing specific like get rid of distractions. Shocker. I can tell you I it's not about quality or skill or focus.

But if I have a second monitor over here and there's a Star Trek on that I can do whatever task you need me to fucking do until I die of exposure. Rote work, yeah. Because I got real good at looking at this shit with this eye and this shit with the other eye. I see someone ask with question marks. Audio cues, yes. There are sounds that happen in fighting games that

you don't need, but they will help you if you give yourself the best chance to respond to everything happening. When you're fighting JP in Street Fighter 6 and he's throwing his shit at you, you can just respond to what you see. But if you're also listening to him going, away, away, and then he suddenly goes away That's the thing that means that the ghost is coming out to grab you so you have a little bit of an extra thing to listen out for So yeah, that's that's real All right one last one over here. No name. Hey there, Canadian goose supremacist, wooly and self injurious media enjoyer, Pat.

Your talk about Madame Webb this week brought a specific instance of my media to mind. How many bad guys could have been sussed out by a simple background check? Not that Ezekiel's quest for magic spider would have been something to put on a resume, but it always seems like the worst bad guys come from very close circles who need to be the main character. Like Dennis in Jurassic Park or Vincent in Chappie, to pick a few strange examples. Is it narrative structure's fault for creating this villain stereotype or just lazy script writing? Adam Lickman You can't think too hard about this. If you spoke to the writer, they'd be like, oh, well, they cleaned up those records or

blah, blah, blah. It's like, yeah, no, there's a million common sense things you could do to fuck up like the plan of almost every single movie. Just talk is obviously the one that I've screamed about for years, but. You know what? There's one that's like that. It's funny that I just mentioned Star Trek, but this would have been the answer regardless. There's a Star Trek episode that called, um, I think it's called, it's called the effect and cause I can't remember. But anyway, the cold open is the enterprise blowing

the fuck up. And then you watch the intro and then it, it starts a regular episode. Um, and the whole premise of the episode is there's caught in a time loop in which the ship always fucking blows up at the end. And warf stands up and goes, well, if we're caught in a time loop, then we should reverse course to avoid the disaster. And Picard goes, no, for all we know, that would cause the disaster. We should keep doing what we were doing until we have reason to change it. And then they fly into a fucking thing and blow up. And it makes no fucking sense.

It's like you're caught in a time loop. Start doing weird shit over and over. Anything. Anything other than what you were going to do anyway yeah if it all if it all leads if it all it all leads back to the same place then yes how far could you bend it of course it bothers me so much yeah no but the idea of anyone being able to just type a couple names into a fucking search and be like oh yeah don't trust this guy.

For me, I have a little bit of that anytime I'm watching any media where the main characters are kind of like working outside the law or like vigilantes or whatever, something's going on, fights are happening, explosions are happening and places are blowing up. And then as the monster of the week or so is handled by the, the group that is taken care of problems that humans can't handle. Like, like there's never a point where anything resembling a fire department pulls up or, you know, like it's just like, it's like, and there's always just like, I'm like, if you could have,

it always, the more central to a downtown location, And there's always just like, I'm like, if you can have, the more central to a downtown location, something like that happens, and then there's just no response from anyone ever, the whole fight happens. And then we just- Fire departments exist in every city in the goddamn world. They're really important. I just, yeah, that always comes to mind.

I'm like, you can explain it by having everyone leave before they get there but just They're there, right? I'm just thinking you know in persona 3 the very first full moon boss is on the subway You know how everyone is like in like kind of like in stop time in the midnight hour Except for you know your gang Mm-hmm, and then like the boss like makes the subway move and like go super fast and then you beat the boss and they stop right. I'm trying to remember.

Like the first boss of the high priestess on the train and she she holds the lever and the train starts she she okays the lever and I'm gonna go right But here's the part that I don't get um During the midnight hour the train was already moving It just stopped because the midnight hour happened like it just stopped from your perspective It should not be able to move during that time well No, but when it when it when she moves it during the midnight hour that means it's going like four times its max speed And then just stops like two miles down the track from where it was

So wouldn't all those people just slam into the back of the fucking subway car and explode? when the midnight hour Look man, just, you know, everything needs to just follow Clamp's example. Remember X from Clamp? 1999. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about at all. I don't know what that is. The dragons of earth and the dragons of heaven and then depending on which one chooses with

the sword that's birthed from the woman, then you become the good and the evil. The X has a thing where whenever the stupid things are fighting, they put up a barrier and it's a geometric shape. And whatever happens inside of this barrier doesn't happen in real life until essentially the reboot game cube goes back and leaves so if I beat the evil then the destroyed location will be healed and everything will be fine but if the evil wins and it stays destroyed that is some weak ass shit that is so fucking the consequences only matter if we lose, but if we win then it's all good.

That is embarrassing that someone broke that into their story. Game over. User wins. That's, that's, that's right. That is terrible. Alright, look, um, you go take your nap and uh... I'm going to take my nap in five hours. I see.

And it's called bedtime. Okay, well I gotta get out of here because apparently I gotta go join some Nikkei unions. You sure do. Apparently that's a thing. I'm getting messed up. What does that mean? I don't know, but Dash Jiro's messaging euros messaging me about it saying yo join my union, bro So I'm like I will we'll find out I suppose

All right, can I join the union? Well, why I don't know what they do find out. All right. Will it make the asses shinier? Cuz then you know, hey, I'm down. Just say the word.