Castle Super Beast - CSB 272: JORK MY PEANITS & RAGE Compilation

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps Why is IHNMAIMS that it is Made Noise Now? Because Amazing Digital Circus Multi-Worse-is Megaton Musashi: Good Games With Dark Patterns Crow Country: Another Perfect Resi-like How Microsoft is Supporting Blizzard Esports! Watch live: twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Go to http://shopify.com/superbeast to sign up for a $1-per-month trial period. Everything announced at PlayStation's State of Play (May 2024) Totillo interview on how Microsoft is reshaping Blizzard esports Don't expect big reveals at Summer Games Fest, says Geoff Keighley MULLET MADJACK is a single-player fast-paced FPS that brings you directly inside a CLASSIC ANIME Frostfire - Gorgeous 2D indie fighter Metal Slug Tactics - New trailer | Coming Fall 2024 Riven | Official Launch Trailer | Available June 25th | 4k The PSVR2 PC adapter launches August 7th, priced at 60 dollars  

["Sailor Moon Theme"] Hey, Hoodie Woolly, what's up? I just... I... Man, I have no patience today. I... Oh yeah? Yeah. Oh yeah, I know exactly no patience today. I Mean I'm in unk mode. I woke up with my Bluetooth earpiece in and I got time for foolishness I got time for none of that shit trying to get my day started. What do we what? Yeah, I just I have no patience this morning Yeah, yeah, how you doing?

I'm fine. Okay. I had a good morning with the baby Took the I woke up in the early in the morning And then I put the baby in the in the stroller and I'm like, let's go grocery shopping, baby And then I got to the grocery store at like 6 45 and I'm like hell Yeah, I'm doing an early morning and then I'm like this fucking place only opens at 7. I'm a fucking moron So then I went on a slightly longer walk with the baby and you know got some essentials Yeah, you know what that'll that'll actually that'll calm it down the Chilling with the baby would probably increase

the capacity for foolishness. At least somewhat. And then I fed the baby, and then I kissed on the baby, and when, behold, I held him up and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, and all that stupid shit. Yeah. And then I hopped on Twitter, and I'm like,

yo, what? Have you fucking played multiverses since it came back to life? I'm I'm good on that Man um I I so it seems like Okay, I Now like but it's like it's easier to Go. Oh now forget that shit forever Because of the fact that it got so much worse like it's almost like a relief because it's like I don't have to be like

Oh, what's going on over there? You know there's Baffling like the way it went away was so weird and That was all a huge like okay. You could have announced this better, but Whatever if it comes back, and it's an improvement and things are better than sure I think my take away at the time was like it wasn't that it was announced Properly is that it was like a lie yeah, because and the essentially people who bought stuff was like, well, what about the shit I bought, et cetera, you know? But like if you were if you were just more transparent about the fact

that it's like, hey, this didn't reach the numbers we were hoping for. There were, you know, the the WB is bringing it back in. They want us to take it back into the shop for a wee work. We've got to relaunch this so they can make more money because it's free to play engine And so on and so forth and just if you just were just straight up about a lot of that shit It would have been negative, but it wouldn't have been as negative whatever Like I'm checking it out, and we're on our fifth iron giant infinite since the relaunch sure yeah The game have you have you physically seen it with your eyes?

Just just clips of those bugs okay, so I Was like I must be mistaken So I took a look and I watched like a because we were we took a little bit to set up so I watched like 10 minutes of a guy playing it like a Smash bro guy and the game's running at like 50 maybe 60 percent game speed oh it's it's way slower yeah it's it's it's like half speed it looks like it's running in slow motion yeah I saw the the infinites and the bugs and shit and then yeah Reggie was pointing out to me he's like yeah the speed has gone he's like is that because someone that's like on the production team is like, oh,

This game is like slow it down so that we can other people can play it or like, you know, So like where they instruct it from on high to change a lot of these things and that's why it's becoming this Apparently that was due to feedback, you know And then the currency decisions where it's like, oh the only currency you're earning through fights is like for perks the perk Currency exactly the cost of unlocking characters has doubled for some p in some cases It's quintupled in some right and and just like it's like this is just an overall Worst product you took time it runs worse you took time to bring it back to the kitchen and make it worse. I also ran.

I dug a little deeper and discovered people complaining about phantom inputs. Oh, like, like shit is coming out that they didn't input, like, like, like just straight up. And like shit is coming out that they didn't input like like like just straight up and Saw somebody break down What is actually happening? for some reason

Multiverses has a 30-frame input buffer for every move. Oh, Jesus Christ. So it will buffer 30 frames worth of inputs. Oh, Jesus Christ. And then just bust them out the instant it can. That doesn't.

So wait, is it really an engine switch? Because that's what that's. Yeah, no, it's Unreal 4 to Unreal 5. OK, it is like, it is. Of benefit to no one. It is It is like it is a benefit to no one It is a complete engine switch and a million like weird issues associated with that being found That would make sense for where all these stupid things that weren't happening suddenly now happening are coming from Yeah, I think like

The one thing was like oh well, there's that taunt where the Batman who laughs says to Black Adam, oh, weren't you supposed to change the hierarchy of power or something? And it's like, ah, you got your jab at the rock for forcing them to market Black Adam all over the front of that game alongside the Gremlin. So, yay. You got your jab. I've never seen a game just become like way, way worse. That's not true. I probably have. I just can't remember. But this is a sterling example. It's really wild to be like, it went back in, took its time,

and came back out worse for it in every conceivable way. It's like, oh, man. On the microtransaction way, on the gameplay, in a gameplay way, in terms of old characters that used to work and now not working, speed-wise, it's baffling. It's so insane. And then, yeah, to find that... It's way less stable, like as an application. Like it's just...

And the thought was like, you know, we need to make this launch in a way that is going to be the... Because this has to be... It has to be a gas game, a free to play game that is like, I'm sure in their heads, they're like, it has to hit all Smash Brothers numbers and then some because it's free. It needs to, you know, become a platform essentially for every WB like marketing, you know, shortcut that they want to take for anything they're releasing. I'm sure that's what they wanted it to be and

Like the idea of it coming out and its initial reception was like oh, yeah, okay Yeah, this is a you can put this in the oven for a little bit. Yeah, exactly It's a fun. It's a fun platform fighter The 2v2 stuff is unique compared to you know the I mean they're pushing cruise mode as opposed to pushing 1v1s and Yeah, and I legitimately had had a good time with it, when I was kind of playing that early version, or its initial release. And then, yeah, the thought of, like,

okay, this is now going to go back in to become a huge platform, or whatever changes they're going to make to it, only for it to sputter out worse. And like, again, it simplifies and makes it easier because I'm like great I can just focus on rivals to as the platform fighter worth paying attention to I think I think haddock you follow haddock on Twitter. No, oh, hi. Hi talk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah hat talk. Yeah, I think hat talk Whatever they'll get back to us at some point how to pronounce their name But I think they really nailed it

They made a tweet about this a couple days days ago in which they said it feels like part of multi versus is like like plan Was to just constantly roll out characters because WB has just a billion fucking things they could put in the game but Making fighting game characters is super fucking hard and takes forever So instead what if it took you 73 hours to unlock one extra character? I Mean yeah, hey grind it all out and then you know like and then the the thing where it's like Oh people are still complaining that they have to

actually play the game. It's like, fuck off. Fuck off with that ridiculous straw man, you know? Yeah, if I handed my fucking baby a pile of blocks and took away the fucking the fucking cylinder, the square and the triangle and left him only with the ball, and he went, oh, oh, I'm like, play with your ball first, idiot. I mean, look, I already hate, just from a TO perspective,

it's annoying to me for like multiple systems having to unlock a bunch of shit over time in a way that is like, yeah, you know, annoying for setup purposes. I already hate that on that level. But then just the one where you're like, oh, anytime something has a, like, oh, you can do this if you want for free But the amount of time it takes and the amount of the ever retreating couch is just a bullshit metric That's like again, it makes it absurd to anybody that's actually trying to get you know, a couple of characters going

It's like yeah, this is this is a lie. This is disingenuous. So like I would say that it transcends poorly made or Poorly thought out and go straight into like active deceit or Scam you you get there pretty quickly. Well, there's there's a there's a really my my threshold for scam is low It's quite low But in this case, it's like it's really it takes forever to grind out a character So you have to buy them, but you can't Try out new characters in training mode anymore. Oh, they took that away. Yeah, so now you just have to

Hope you like the character My my friend buy them my threshold is is weird when it comes to free to play games, because it's like your cost of entry means a whole lot of quote unquote expectation and entitlement are like removed. And I mean like literal, I mean correct entitlement. When you pay for a game, you should get game. When a game doesn't have that entry point, there's a whole lot removed there. So I'm like, all right, what are you going to deliver then for whatever is free? And to me, it just seems I'm like I can see a version of the story

of what happened here being like while they pulled it back in to relaunch and it was proper, they were aiming for some big, huge thing. WB was on fire and shutting everything down and firing everybody. And it was all going to shit so we literally dealt with some of that like 30 minutes ago yes us ourselves feeling the ramifications of the WB shit start shit show that occurred over the last few months. So I'm sure waves of that must have hit.

And there could have been a point where it was like, release it in this fucked up build state or it's canceled, right? It could have hit a point of like, you have no more time, you have no more money, this needs to start making money right now. And any extra time it's spending in the oven is money that it's not making get it the fuck out there

So it could have been that listen the You know it may be undercooked and it may be scammy and feel like shit and have infinites But hey get excited for Ruby coming to multiverses Yeah, yeah, they should have taken that the fuck out Wasn't there wasn't there something more like didn't the license revert though or something like that where it's like The characters like not lost for I have no idea I don't think Ruby is gonna be coming to multiverses Okay, I heard something about like like oh

It's there's with Ruby like IP rights. It was a different situation So the it's not lost forever with our T shutting down or something to that effect. So Yeah, they have their own company that can still do things It's funny cuz talking about multiverses, like I remember like at Combo Breaker I walked by and like stared at a screen where like a top eight was happening and like I just squinted and like rubbed my eyes because I didn't know what I was looking at. What is this? But it wasn't multivers like and like Reggie was staring too and I was like, oh my god it's Nick all-star brawl 2 and

I didn't know I'm like there's a like I there's a character. I just don't recognize Someone was fine. Like I was just I just didn't know what it was. I'm like, I don't know what cartoon that is I don't know what's happening. I don't I existed. And it made me sad because Slap City, the devs are the ones that made that, and Slap City was an awesome platform fighter. You know? You know, like, so last week when we were talking about Game Journal shit, and you were like,

hey Pat, hold that into your heart whenever you are like, but this is your job, how could you not know? You remember that specific bit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just think about, but I was like, yeah, this is your job, how could you not know? You remember that, that specific bit? And I just think about like, but I was like, yeah, that would be ridiculous, unless it was a fighting game. But then you mentioned Nick All-Star Brawl, and as you were saying it,

it took me until the end of you saying it for me to remember what game you were talking about. What the fuck I was even saying, exactly. That thing got buried into hell. Oh my God. And they did another one, this one had voice acting this time, What the fuck I was even saying that exactly that thing got buried into hell that oh my god And they you know they really did another one this one had voice acting this time and etc And you know sure there were some ideas, but it just yeah It sucks just to release to ghost form immediately to speak to the grave

it's terrible, and it's like um just give birth directly into the plot. And I've, every time I bring it up, I'm like, they made Slap City, which has one of the coolest ideas ever for a fighting game is a button called the Clutch Button. Where as soon as you do a move, you can press this modifier button

and it changes your character and whatever they're doing in some particular unique way You know whatever the move is whatever action is happening the clutch button can change that to something else and I'm like that's awesome I'd love to see that I'd love to see that in almost any genre really Just a press this button to make what you expect to happen a more fun or wilder Very you know, I don't want to better sure you I want a weird sure you yeah no exactly like have your have your your fucking Falcon Punch slide along the ground before it does the 180 version and gets powered up you know like yeah anyway so they had that

and I'm like that that's that that was a fun platform fighter. But honestly, at this point, I'm just like, okay, Rivals 2 is the only one that I'm looking at right now. I'm going to go look at a video of Rivals 2 right now because I can't remember. It's polygonal, right? Yeah, so Rivals of Aether 1 was all sprites, and it was like retro style, and it was like one of the best playing of all of them.

And then this time It's 3d, but it feels and plays great, and it's a lot of fun and Yeah, just the way they they built that was good and their skills and the things you're doing in it are just like Tight refined and unique you know I'm looking at a dog with the laser sword, and they got a cape. I'm in yeah There's the hyper light drifter very character basically it's like it's not but it is and also the aether like franchise in general there's like a card game there's like all these spin-offs like they're trying to do stuff with that's I'm like okay right on you know respect for that but um anyway that's fucking weird um You know what else is fucking weird?

What's that, Woolley? So For some weird reason The I have no mouth and I must scream LP we did from back in the day. Yeah was in the day was popping off and getting, people were tuning into that and it was getting boosted and showing up and I was like, what? Okay. What, why?

Why all this noise about fucking, I have no mouth now, right? And it was like. That's like 25 years old at this point. It's a billion years old, right? And it was super, and I was like, okay old at this point. It's a billion years old, right? And it was super. And I was like, OK, what's happening? And it's like literally they the like every episode of that

just huge spike in views and whatever algorithm, et cetera. And it's like, what's going on? And I'm like, OK, let me see if I can figure this out. And from and like, okay, let me see if I can figure this out. And from, and like, I'm literally even going over just to take a look at it. And some people, and like new people are going up and going like, god damn it, why are they talking over all the cutscenes?

I'm like, yeah, that's how this, welcome to the channel. You know, whatever. Welcome to 2016? Fucking, who knows? But anyway, I was like, where's all this coming from? So then I go to look it up and I'm like, there's a whole new fandom for I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream that's popping up on like Twitter? And then I'm like, hold on, on YouTube? Yes? Now?

And like people up and they're all there's like fan art associated with it. People are drawing like fan art from like the book to the game. And it all seems to have started two weeks ago. And I'm like, what is, no, no, this is making no sense. What is happening? I need to dig. Is this because of the AI or the TikToks? And so that's where you're like,

okay, is TikTok gonna help here? And the problem is that you could, with TikTok, if something's happening, it's harder on that platform to get to the bottom of the epicenter of something that pops off or so So but just like in the in the noise, it's like Twitter. I can't parse it out because it's just like They're fan arts and hashtags, but there's no there's no source and then and then eventually there was a YouTube video that was like I

Have no mouth and I must scream. The game or the story that inspired the amazing digital circus. And I was like, oh, wait, what? That other thing? That new cartoon that's like online that everyone's, all the kids are into that new thing, right? It's like, yeah, that's the thing with the little like clown girl and like the, that looks like Marks from Kirby and stuff. And it's like, yeah, that's the thing with the little clown girl and that looks like Marks from Kirby and stuff. And it's like, oh, what's happening here? And it's like, apparently, the amazing digital circus, the new YouTube thing that's popping off,

has some heavy inspiration that it took from that, which has led to a massive popularity increase. And then someone or somewhere, some videos were made pointing out these references, which led a bunch of that young new fan base to go back to look up everything related to in the Hames including finding the old LP and diving into it because like they're going they're trying to draw the connections and that's why everything related to I have no mouth is now blowing up. It's so weird and baffling. I have and I'm like what the like this weird little cutesy fucking clown shit and Harlan Ellison's Am are connected I suppose now and and you know, we're seeing again fan or fan art for

gorister and and Ellen and like and it was it was hitting in a way where I'm like the way this like fan art it looks it looks like this would have been like a almost the way like a fan fan art and like Stuff would pop up on my tumblr back in the day, right? So I'm like this like that It has a tumblr ish vibe to it. So like what is that exactly? I'm like, oh it's because of it's directly from the fan base of digital circus or so and yeah, that is a

like not on but would have been a tumblr fandom style so like I I see the connection I can see why somebody could make a YouTube video based off of our tick-tock it's like digital circus is inspired by I have no mouth and I'm a screen but like for that to trickle down that far is strange yeah yeah I just it's weird because I'm like there's stuff like that where I'm like, I don't know I've never can I haven't seen it but I it has a particular energy to it and Homestuck had that energy and I've never watched it But I'm pretty sure has been hotel is also something like that

Because it just it seems to it seems to just give that aura off, you know And I'm sure if I ever if I checked it out I'd probably get what was going on with like why that's such a particular distinct flavor to it, but Oh has been hell of a boss and amazing digital circus all exists within the same like Animation cache. It's a thing right. There's a thing that connects these things Yeah It's a thing, right? There's a thing that connects these things. Yeah, there's a feeling that connects these things. And I can only tell by standing and seeing the door and hearing the music from outside the room and being like, yeah, okay, that all goes in the same

folder I can get. And so that has led to this now and going back through this game. And I'm sure people hitting a rude awakening on some of that content unless of course the direct references are much more explicit in the digital circuits. It's a digital hellscape nightmare but clowns. Okay clowns in a in a a clussy sense or in a no it's it No, that's no. Okay. That's just that thing that people do Okay Where they like the character and then they just start drawing the character more and more and more a certain way

I just I just keep seeing my brain keep seeing marks the Kirby villain keep seeing, my brain keeps seeing Marx, the Kirby villain. You know? It just, I- Well, that's an old fashioned type of clown. It is, it is, but like the, but the face and, and, the little, the big eyes and the little jester hat, you know, anyway, yeah.

There's a, there's a, there's a, there's an auto correct that keeps happening whenever I see that girl. Yeah, they, they all live in this space that feels like... What if Newgrounds was a movie studio? Sure. Yep. 100%. What if those people making Flash animations had the resources to blow them up into what they actually wanted them to be the whole time? And then release straight to YouTube, I guess? resources to blow them up into what they actually wanted them to be the whole time.

And then release straight to YouTube, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Right. That's that's the thing too. Right. Yeah. OK. Anyway, so, yeah, I have no mouth in 2024. Get in. Get in play. Man, I can't wait for like, like fucking like 30, 40 years from now. now just like why is the cat lady blowing up what's happening like huh tormentum well the cat lady's blowing up because of some kind of British scandal with cats and yeah. i gotta watch fucking smiling friends.

just based on- like i've watched all of hell of a boss and i'm somewhere in has-been i forget where and i saw the first episode of digital circus but for some reason i haven't seen any of smiling friends. i haven't either and i would chalk that up to- despite the fact that we'll be on it next week.

I haven't either and I would chalk that up to the fact that we'll be on it next week Okay, oh you're not smiling friends is in some ways Defined by people from our era of YouTube just appearing on it Okay, is that nostalgia critic was on there last week. Oh, and fucking... Plinket did a voice, right? Yeah. Right, early on. Okay. Yeah, Mike Staclassa is there in the pilot. Mm-hmm. Again, I'm just seeing the art style in screenshot form is fucking wild. But hold on, that's airing on like Adult Swim and stuff, right, that's where. Yeah, I believe so. Okay, so yeah, anytime something is airing on Adult Swim

up here for Canadian purposes. Joel Haver was in it this week, okay, well there you go. Then it's not gonna, there's no TV to switch on to an Adult Swim here in Montreal, so I'm gonna have to seek it out and find it. You'll have to somehow figure out how to watch this digital broadcast well fortunately when I decided to do that with fallout it was quite easy it was I watched the first episode of that oh you

finally got around to that first episode yeah yeah. Yeah, I mean so I mean so Mainly cuz punch mom was away for a while, but now that she's back. We're like okay along. Let's do it So first episode all that happens is they introduce the the three main characters mm-hmm and You know just kind of I guess set up the set up the setting You know, just kind of, I guess, set up the setting. It's funny how much- You didn't get a really strong taste of the Ghoul-ussy yet? He comes- the Ghoul is a badass. He comes out and he does his thing and, you know, frees himself.

But it's interesting to watch this knowing- Not playing the games, having the intro of one of them from doing QA evaluation on it and then otherwise having just outside understanding of the setting. It's interesting to watch where I'm like, okay, I don't know the details of any of these things but I'm like the fucking Adventure Time cat that's like I'm like I have approximate knowledge of many of these things You know like oh those Knights those are the guys on the box you have like very base general osmosis Yeah, culture yeah, you know those Knights are the guys on the box

And they're the coolest suits of armor that that you that you you know the game it marketed markets the for the first games market Themselves, you know, the game markets, the first games market themselves on, you know. Then you've got your like vault tech stuff going, but they haven't introduced any of the like weird vault story stuff where it's like, oh, there's infinite vaults and they all have batshit rules going on inside of them. Right. You know, which is I'm sure, that's a pretty good hook for any setting really. Because post-apocalyptic, you can do that in a lot of different ways.

You know, straightforward, Last of Us is one, Death Stranding, Genius Kajumbo is another, but here it's like, oh yeah, you've gotten the vault gimmick is like a solid evergreen, what the fuck's happening inside there? We have no idea. And on top of that, you have your faux 50s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like time stopping in the past is also a nice aspect to it. But yeah, I guess I'm like, seeing how it's sort of set up,

it's always been curious because I'm like, I don't know I realized watching the show. I don't know how serious versus goofy it takes itself I feel like runs the entire gamut I feel like it's always been predominantly goofy in my brain with then sudden moments of oh shit Right is kind of the expectation but like everything about little Shit right is kind of the expectation but like everything about little pitboy and you know nuka-cola and all the little like, you know the irony of the ad the ads and stuff

Or like how seriously to take it if they have an episode opening a vault and then a bunch of dudes named Gary Show up, you know, so um, I said it runs the whole gamut, but somebody in the chat actually said it much better. It's a coin flip Um There's not actually a whole lot that exists in the direct middle. It is it is actually like oscillating wildly between serious drama and Complete tomfoolery. It's almost like a dragon-esque. Okay. And the reason why that is, is Fallout 1 is predominantly serious, and Fallout 2 introduces

a bunch of fucking zany shit. Okay. And then after that, the games like kind of wanted to have both, so you just ping pong between the two things. Okay. Because like, in the middle of the big horrendous Raider raid shootout in the first episode, you get a very clear punchline of, get out of here with that flan cake! And then it gets shot and then

the you know they get shot and you're like whoa and they get the gun in the mouth you know and you're like oh this is this is funny rough goofy black humor okay black yeah got it eyeball everything getting stabbed in the eyeball happens but like happens more than once you get an eyeball stab yeah so I I had this feeling watching the first episode and I wanted to give it credit but I can't accurately do so because I already know everything from those games but you don don't, so you can perfectly answer this question. But you didn't know these characters and their adventures

and what they were up to. No, no, because they're brand new. You're just the settings, yeah. Yeah, no, all the setting details. And that's what I'm talking about, which is, a lot of video game adaptations have like this thing in them. Like I think Last of Us was good about this too, video game adaptations have like this thing in them. Like I think Last of Us was good about this too, but they have this tendency of like holding up

a fucking item in front of the camera and going, this one's from the game. Do you get that this is from the video game? And I felt that fallouts first episode did an adamant job of getting an absolutely stupid amount of in game mechanics and itemology in there without going see, see it's video game shit. They did and I felt it but I also it's like, it's like if I were the type of dude to stop and grab Punch Mom and be like,

that's the bobble head of the little mascot and oh, that's the syringe that heals you and all the Pip Boy on the arm is the interface, then it's like, yeah, okay, every two seconds you would have one of those. Their set people went crazy with background shit. I would even imagine, I could just also imagine the gun she was using, you know, with the needle.

Yeah, like it felt like everything was like, oh yeah, that's probably a game thing, sure. But like, it, I guess it all lingered for like a half second and then they move on with it But coming at it with again, no no real foreknowledge whatsoever It was like, oh, yeah immediately immersive and then I have again the tangential punch mom had zero and it's like Oh, the premise of this setting is is interesting right away post-apocalyptic people stuck in these vaults. What's going on outside? Who knows? It's a mystery and it it's funny because for her,

it's almost like a more of, the vibe is more of like an attack on Titan, like what's outside the walls kind of energy. You know, like, oh shit, there is a surface. Oh my God, how bad is it out there? Versus I'm like, oh yeah, I've heard about the weird mutants and I've heard about the weird groupings and then you always happen across a different bunch of people surviving in fucked up ways and yadda yadda. So the

potential of the unknown insanity of the surface or what's inside the vaults is a huge like grab for anyone who knows nothing about the setting. And at the same time for somebody who does does know a little bit of the setting, what is inside any particular vault is a similar graph. I say Attack on Titan, but it could be literally any example of a mystery thing where you don't know what the... I could be talking about the fucking cube. Remember the cube of the movie? Like, why are they in the cube?

Any mystery thing about, like, we don't know a big detail about the setting and why that's there Let anybody make movies back on the day, right? What the fuck is Gantz? Why is the man in the ball? I don't know guess I got to sit here and read until we find out Holy shit. It's been a year. What's happening. It's been to eat. There's vampires now aliens What's happening? It's been two years. There's vampires now aliens What's the ball? Wait? against the blackface blackface Detailed very very detailed manga panel and it was like immaculate. Yeah, you're okay white boy. Yeah

blackface for mass shooting purposes, which is ultimately the like that is that is you would probably want to go white face for that type of crime just based on I don't I don't know what I my brain was trying to say but like all right you said blackface for mass shooting purposes and my brain went that's the last thing you should be using blackface I know what's that what is it? Regardless. Yeah I'm reading your brain your mind on that one that's okay yes there was it was very weird it was very weird and it was also like really long it was like that entire volume was like a silent volume of just watching people get shot It was pretty fucked up

Anyway, but the point is is that I don't know what's happening in the setting there's a big mystery to hook your brain in and and In this case, you know if you have no foreknowledge and the show is incidentally doing that so that's pretty good so The show is incidentally doing that so that's pretty good. So the fallout cultural osmosis is relatively Tame on you right now. How do you feel walking into a television program? knowing The the the You got there after all the freaks attached themselves to the ghoul.

Like, you're walking in knowing that there are a legion of insane ghoul fuckers out there. There's one right over there, like 50 feet that way. Yes. Yes. So, and which, like, yeah, and I did promise thoughts on the matter however He's had one scene so he doesn't get a whole lot. You know he said he comes out of the ground like the devil Yeah, he he comes out like Brandon Heat beyond the grave And he cowboys and he'd done that's cool. But I don't I have no preconceived

notions about what we're going to watch or where we're going to go. But I will have one. And that is whenever there is a bucket on the ground in front of them and a lady kneeling by the bucket. That's the I will have there will be one preconceived notion that will come to mind and then I will continue to have no preconceived notions. That's the only one. Hey, did you watch The Shield? No, but I hear it's very good. Okay, the reason I say that is because Walt Lengagens plays the ghoul and he also played

Shane in The shield. Okay And he also plays A character in a TV show that me and Paige watched the first season We've discovered that if we stay up late enough the baby just passes right the fuck out and then we can watch a TV show So we watched Danny McBride's TV creation. You're familiar with Danny McBride? Oh, um, Righteous Gemstones? The Righteous Gemstones. Oh, god damn it. Starring Adam Levine and John Goodman. Okay, yeah. And of note is Walton Goggins playing Uncle Baby Billy.

Okay, so I've seen Eastbound and Down and it's one of the greatest. That's an all time classic for fucking, you know, for Mount Rushmore. But I haven't seen Righteous Gemstones but I've heard a lot about it and just every time I hear a bit about the insane like yeah just it's a full piss take on business Christian televangelists right like it sounds infinitely up my alley

I super want to go watch that. So it's so you're familiar with Danny McBride right? Yeah. So Danny McBride is a weird Hollywood actor in which he somehow manages to play his own Character in whatever the fuck movie he's in every single time. Mm-hmm He always plays that fireworks guy from Tropic Thunder going hell. Yeah, brother and blowing everything up. Yeah, I mean he's got he's got to be a mullet guy so whether you're Kenny Powers or

He's got to be a mullet guy, so whether you're Kenny Powers or Rex Kwon Doe type energy shit, it's got to be, you've got to be mullet energy the whole time. He knows his deal. So Righteous Gemstones is televangelist preacherism in the universe that that guy comes from okay that everyone to some degree is Danny McBride-ing all over the place and it's fucking weird it's like I didn't expect so much of the laughter of me and Paige to have to be uncomfortable, weird ass, what is this shit, laughter? Like just like, oh! Have you seen Eastbound and Down?

I have not. Okay, okay, so that's him doing that character as a baseball man. And yeah, that's the energy. It's incredible every time. It's literally, like it's one's that's the energy. It's it's incredible every time. It's literally like it's one of the funniest shows ever. I'm dead serious. Like it's super good. So this is not surprising in the slightest.

Everyone is great in it. Of particular note, me and Paige are like there's the sister, Judy, who when she showed up on camera, I'm like something about this woman makes me feel weird and as the show continues like I am like physically uncomfortable whenever this character is on camera it makes me upset and Goggins as uncle baby Billy who was like a 90 year old fucking man with his, because Goggins has a super thick southern accent. Just like south preaching all over. So like Danny McBride is one of the actors I would say

that he's one of the people that has a PhD in trailer park energy. Oh yeah, he sounds like American Ricky. So that's like, yes, it's right. It is like trailer park energy is a very particular thing. It's a flavor and he is a master class in that wherever he goes. So that I fucking can't wait. Incredible. And also we're on the second season.

Both of the seasons that we've watched also feature like a really heavy like mystery element. Okay. That I didn't expect. It is actually really fascinating. Hmm. Yeah, I mean... It's fucking great. You should watch that shit. Yeah, I know I really want to. Because I mean, it's just such, it's also like a source material that's just so ripe, so rich to pluck from, you know?

Like the other day, I was just quoting the fucking, what was it? The like, oh, so hey, pastor, are you are you calling your congregation demons on on on planes? That's why you don't want to take a plane that's a public flight? And it's like, well, Nick Cannon made that plane so affordable, we had to buy it. And they just like, literally just like the evil of whatever the fuck that dude's name is, not Pat Robertson. what's the fucking, anyway. I don't know these fucking people's names.

He's like literally just a devil, like you can hear Satan inside of this dude, a televangelist, and like he's getting called out at his house as he's getting into a car, and they're like hey, why do you fly private everywhere? And what's your deal with taking everyone's money and spending it on these private flights when you could be using this for whatever other purposes?

And it's like, did you really have to spend all the money on this? And he's just justifying. Oh, right, yeah, that guy. I know the clip you're talking about. Yeah, and it's like, Jesus would have flown private, clearly. And it was so affordable, I had to buy it. And it's like, why can't you just fly, you know,

around with everybody else? And it's like, there are demons on these non-private, on these public planes, and I can't be up there in the air with these demons. It's like, are you calling people demons? And he's like, eh, eh, oh, yeah, hold on, you caught me off guard now. I think nothing sums up Copeland's tone.

Kenneth Copeland. Of the show always like, it feels like a roller coaster that's just teetering over to the side and it like the show's like about to fall apart in its own nonsense at any given moment. And I think that the best thing I can mention is that in season two, here comes Eric Andre as a fellow mega preacher. And he's not Eric Andre-ing all over the place. But his physical presence on the screen makes me like Low-key anxious that something bad is gonna happen

Man yo prosperity gospel Goddamn, what a grift man like he's just running the black Scientologists skit as a character. Okay. Okay sure Yeah, I'm this is'm, this is infinitely, infinitely of interest. And like, well, I mean, I'm sure, like, I'm sure that with the, with the trashy hilarious energy is funny, but I'm like, there's that, on that level where you're like, I'm sure, just, whatever, whatever's happening behind closed doors with those type of people is like the most ins- like actual ritual sacrifice, I'm sure. Oh yeah. Just full on, like you want to talk about the fucking adrenochrome type insane conspiracy? You know what's going on behind the scenes, Woolie, is a bunch of car pranks.

Okay. Alright. There's a fucking sequence in which a massive car chase and car crash is attempted to be explained away by, oh yeah, those are the guys I do car pranks on. Yeah, we love it. As they're like dragging themselves out of a burning wreck. Man. That's just great. Yeah passing around the collection plate with a fucking tap in a swipe For your card connected to it Shit yeah, okay. I gotta watch that for sure cool. Oh what else you got going on this week man um Yeah, so besides

checking out a follow-up one which Follow one besides checking out Fallout 1, which... You just said Fallout 1? Episode 1. Fallout Episode 1. That's different! Also, maybe... I couldn't quite read the Maximus interrogation scene completely. It's like, oh, was he just... He was really badly lying.

Are they just stupid and they bought it or were they like, hey, we kind of like that you're mischievous and probably bad and we want one? Was he lying? I don't... Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. That day, they're correct. That was the correct read of the scene is, I can't like like yeah, I don't know. I don't know that day That was the correct read of the scene is I can't read the scene. I can't read the scene felt like yeah good. All right

Cuz like me and Paige but so I watched the whole show and then Paige watched it with me and we both had the identical Experience with that scene of like oh my, he's like the worst liar ever. And they're like letting him get completely away with it. And then like 10 minutes later, we're sitting there going like, but wait, what, was he, was he lying? Yeah. I don't, I don't know.

There's enough plausible deniability between that and him and then Dane later talking about it. And then the other thing I guess I do is like, oh, my brain also tells me that walking around with the dog, that's a main character, right? So... Uh, that's a... Cause you get... Wait, you say, you mean the dog or the guy walking around with the dog?

No, I'm saying like in Fallout, you walk around with a dog, right? Yeah, well you always get a hold of a dog at some point. Yeah, so I'm like, oh there's a dude with a dog, they gotta go find. That feels like you gotta... That's just some point. Yeah, so I'm like, oh there's a dude with a dog They got to go find that feels like that's just a thing. Yeah, okay Anyway, so besides checking that out I played a good bit of Megaton Musashi w wired and This is an interesting one cuz they're all you wired God. That's awkward to say Yeah, because Megaton Musashi is the name of the well

It is the name of the game But it's also the name of the anime that was made because there was a this it got adapted to an anime So I think to distinguish the game that is also being ported from a gacha style setting into a Like full online or offline. No, what am I saying? Whatever? You know what I mean? the proper non The proper console slash steam release of this thing that used to be a gacha thing It's got the the suffix w wired. You know, this skill tree looks like a nightmare so

Game so I all I knew about it and going in was I'm like, oh, yo, cool, robots, cool, fun design, go nag guy stuff and some fun send ups to super robot like energy, you know? And I quickly saw the trailer for like two seconds and I was like, okay, yeah, let's just take a look at this. Because I also had it brought to me as something that people were saying, yo, this game is a cool mecha thing and it's getting no attention Whatsoever nobody knows about it. So it was released with very little fanfare seems like it needs all the help it can get So I was like, alright, let's take a look

And yeah, like right out the gates. You just get this really awesome like full of You got just protagonist that's full of burning spirit, passionate energy, ready to jump in the robot. Like I said, if you've got any getter or, Ryoma energy is kind of like what the pilot's kind of has. You can basically see the hot-blooded anti-Shinji style protagonist who's like, takes a punch, dishes it back, he's got a bully that he fucking scraps with all the time, and then the kid

with the glasses is going to come off to the side and be like, yes, of course. Oh, curly glasses. You know? Get in the robot. And it's like, wait, like course. Oh, curly glasses. You know? Get in the robot. And it's like, wait. Like, the get in the robot line can't fucking come fast enough because it's like, wait, get in the robot. Oh my god, Shinji, wait, where?

The fuck, he already launched. Holy shit. There is a meter that is a, when you're not in the robot, you're walking around doing 13 Sentinels, like walking and talking. And whenever you do something that gets you closer to getting in the robot, it fills up a little meter

that says you're almost there, right? That's pretty fucking funny. And just so you know how far you are from getting in the robot for the next mission, which I greatly appreciate, because it's like the world is there, you can go explore and talk, but only when you do something that's important

will it move up and the meter as it goes up of course it's not just an awesome thing for like not just LP purposes because you get to know when your next big story beat is happening but like it's also syncing up with like revealing more plot and like as your as your fill as that bar fills up Your character is in game getting really motivated to get the fuck in so it syncs up nicely, you know To the point where yeah when you eventually do launch you're like, oh, let me at him I can't wait to fucking go get those I'm in this robot. Yeah, I know and To fucking go get those I did being this robot. Yeah, I know And yeah, the megaton mousashi is of course a combination of three different. Yeah

Ships so like you and your two other partners all Gattai together and and you've got your fucking x-strike and you've got your giant rocket punch and you've got all the all the trappings You know what's also? and you've got all the trappings, you know. What's also interesting and unexpected going in was like, okay, so you've got the action game itself, which is like very basic run around third person. Looks kinda SD. Yeah, the proportions, they're not completely,

they're not really SD, but they are kinda cute. They're not completely human proportioned. And yeah, the combat seemed pretty simple, but it's like you can switch between a bunch of weapons and get a bunch of powers and it seems like a good amount of customization will take the place of particularly in-depth combat. Very similar in simplicity and options to the Grand Blue Relink game. You're not getting, from not too long ago, it's like, it's not super duper in depth with its combat,

but it's doing what it needs to, the basics are there. You can combo, launch, dodge, do a special, have some basic fun with it. And then, yeah, and then you've got your you're walking around, again, plot stuff, and that even the walking around the city stuff looks pretty good. Character designs are quite distinct. Everything about the art style is strong. And, you know, every line is voiced, every NPC you talk to is

voiced. And I was like, Whoa, that's really cool. And then that's still impressive. Yeah, after all this time. And then... That's still impressive. Yeah. Even after all this time. And then at random, you will walk into a plot moment and then it'll just switch over to full animated anime cutscene. We're watching a Super Robot TV show now. And then back into one or the other. So everything is just like really like, yeah, really awesome. Like starting out with just switching back and forth between all those

things. It does take a while for you to get back to that gameplay, although you can go train around in an arcade machine. But the onboard is certainly like about an hour and a half before you get back into the robot after the first uh little mission you do. Um the game is called Megaton Musashi W Wired to repeat it again and- What an awkward name. There had to have been a better name available. I think Megaton Musashi is an awesome name. I totally agree. I just think that the extras they put there because they didn't want-

I think W Wired is really hard to say. Yeah and I think that's there because they didn't want it I think W Wired is really hard to say. Yeah, and I think that's there because they didn't want it to be confused with the anime, which is just called Megaton Musashi. So they did something. They could have just said the game, but anyway. It's a re-release and there's other features and yeah. So there's a bunch of stuff too where when I picked it up I was like oh there's a ton of DLC here oh my god there's a lot of whoa this is a almost dead or alive

fucking bikini level of little purchases, knickknacks, doodads and you can buy like a I gotta go look at this and it's like you can go HOLY SHIT You can buy like a I gotta go look at this Holy shit! You can buy like VTuber voice CO's including Korone So I was like, okay, let me grab Korone Grab that for Reggie

And I guess we'll see what that becomes But that's a lot going on there And then Two friends own this game. Huh. You're not the only crazy person on my friends list. And then you get a bit further past a lot of that, the stuff I was describing, you get that first mission or so.

And then you get out of that first mission and then you get hit with a daily login bonus screen while I'm holding a controller looking at my my my my PC game and I was like huh okay and up to this point you've been picking up with you've been picking up multiple currencies and you're like okay yeah some of these are for unlocking some stuff and there's some parts and customizing which you know sure are you frozen again it seems you don't worry about it this is perfect just keep talking about what you're talking about okay Pat is frozen this is way better

than what I do my god okay yeah and and then you're getting you're getting your your currencies then it's like you can customize by going into the garage though, and you unlock a lot of parts, rarities and such, that resemble Transformers weapon unlocking, for example. It's like, oh, okay, there's the same weapons, but the yellow version, there's the purple, there's the extra rare, et cetera.

This one has a slight stat increase on that when I go, ah, okay, I don't really care that much for that. But it is always fun to jump into a Armored Core style garage and like switch out an arm, put a new arm on with a cool part and you know, let's change the colors on it a little bit, put a little decal there. Yeah, customize your robot, right? Because that's a big part of like um what's fun about these things too and play with your toy rotate it see the angles so i'm like okay that's cool i'm in you know um you got your pilots and such um couldn't access the the my coronate voice for a while still have to complete some more missions before that but sure and again that was wasn't too cheap either i gotta say you really you really fucked up. You could have had Jinbanyan from fucking...

What is this fucking thing? Yokai Watch? That fucking horrible cat? The Yokai Watch, the little Yokai Watch cat is there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know... I can't escape that freak. I have friends of mine who have that mount in the fucking FF14.

But when I boot a game up and I see right off the bat they've got a Yo-Kai watch tie-in, they've got a combattler tie-in, they've got Korone, and they've got Getter and Mazinger. It's like, oh, this is a Gacha game that has had multiple... Oh, there we lost him.

Oh, there we go. Let's try to get him back. BRB. Oh, I'm alive! I can move again! Awesome. Great. Yeah, I don't know what the fuck Discord's doing, man.

That's... Anyway. Yeah, your Discord has been fucking for like three weeks now. It's... it's... Shit's updated. I don't know. Anyway, but. You remember when that camera shit happened

on my Discord for like two months, three months, and I just could never figure it out, and then, then it just stopped? It ended up figuring out the problem? Yep. Wasn't that awesome? You connect and then it would die, and then it would just, yep, sick.

Anyway, so, you get the impression that you're like, oh, with all these guest characters here at launch, this is a gacha game for sure that had a bunch of events. There was a Yo-Kai Watch event at some point in the past. And now- There was the fuckin' Corona event. And so now you're getting all of that just available in post as you pick the game up and

such, you know. But I'm like, okay, my spirit dies a little when I see a daily login screen, because it's just not what I want video games to be. And I get it. If you do, and you're used to that, that's fine. I just I hate it. And same for multiple currencies, same for rarities increasing for little pickups. I don't get excited when I see the same weapon five times

and you have to break down four of them and keep the best one. Right up until you said the weapon part, I'm like, you mean like fucking Street Fighter 6? Yeah, no, it's everything now It is everything and the more you put that in things that didn't have them the better monetization you get so you know I woke up this morning and played some Street Fighter 6 and it was like hey make sure to it's the anniversary get your drive Tickets, I don't give a fuck about that shit man Give me that my matches

Yeah But I'm also ten years ago the person that's complaining about fucking DLC shit and and battle passes and things like that when it's like Okay, well that's just accepted to be part of the game now, right? I think the difference is is that For all of this is that you were right to complain then and you're still right to complain now Yeah, you but it's just- You're not wrong, like you're literally correct. But we've just gotten used to it, so whatever.

The frog in the pot has withstood the temperature as it's increased. The earliest thing about like, Brood War was not a quarter of the Mona Lisa carved out. It was actually a separate thing. It still stands. For a good campaign, when it's like it is genuinely extra, that's okay if it's an expansion and such.

And of course, because of how expensive and long games take to develop nowadays, you can't start development after the release, so you have to plan that stuff in advance. All of these things, I get how we got here. I understand the decisions that led to this shit. The point is that when I see a daily login bonus, I'm like, okay, all the games that I don't like this on have this thing. I hate seeing it here.

I hate seeing collecting all of these parts and these things because I know that all of these parts and these things, because I know that all of this is meant to play on rarity, desire to not experience FOMO, collectible, you know, whatever, like little hooks and things in your brain, that lead to you either spending time or money, preferably money, to get rid of the annoyance, right? The whole point is to hook you in with shit That's gonna get you to spend extra and I'm like hi

It's weird cuz this is a gadget game that got turned into a real game But it still has a daily login and this is where you can think about when I played Mega Man cross-dive offline Right right right right. It's like oh that game. That was like. I just want away a Mega Man game And it's got a bunch of characters and stuff. I'm to check out, okay, cool, took the thing, turned it into a real game, okay, I'm okay with the gacha game turning into a real game and packaging that later, but it still has all those gacha-isms and every time you hit those it's like, oh, that's just a fun stopper. And so, you know, I'm like, I mean, you can, you can fucking.

You can put anything you want a baseball field, but it's still going to be the size and shape of a fucking baseball field. It is. It is. It's just. Usually, like things like unlocking progression and bonuses and stuff like that, Like if that is gonna feel like, hey, to unlock fucking Dante and Virgil, Dante and Virgil, zero and X, you're gonna have to go through this event at this thing

and you're gonna have to get these particular currencies. You're gonna have to go to the, and then you also can spend that currency powering yourself up by making each buster shot 0.2 percent more powerful and You know, you're just it's like I I just that is like I would hate that in any format But knowing that it came from one that is just like you're trying to get me to spend on micro here Makes it extra frustrating because it takes the fun out of rewards, right?

so all this to say that Yeah, you start to see more and more of that. And I'm like, okay, but I loved the on the start of this game so much. It was so cool. Let me just ignore that stuff, right? Which I tried to do with cross dive. I was like, okay, if I just ignore these currencies and just play, it should be all right. Hopefully. Let's see. And then you hit another tutorial where you're like, here's where you buy your new moves and your new skills. So it's like, oh, cool, it's going to be a tree. But then you're like, that skill is way over here. How do you unlock?

How do you get to it? You're going to have to do a whole lot of 4% tweaks, 2% tweaks to get to it on your big sphere grid thing. And you're using the currencies. And I'm like, whoa, okay, zoom out. How far, oh my God, it's just this massive thing full of minor build tweaks in addition to the already tweaked mods you can add to every part of your Mecha. So you can already put little mod chips on and I'm like, oh no. Oh no, it's happening again. It's happening again. There's like

You've added so much granular customization that it's not fun customizing anymore. It's just tedious Midisql, but okay. There's a start button and it'll just auto equip chips, right? So I don't have to think about that Okay, let's just let's just ignore that to function and go forward, you know No buff should ever do less than 25% more. I Agree, I will leave it. Yeah. I so hey, I'm even more reasonable. I'll say double digits I'm I will accept double digit mods to things as a consistent to take them into consideration mods to things as a considerate to take them into consideration. So, you know, but I'm like, yeah, okay, I'm still liking so much about this. I'm just, let's just move past it.

And yeah, you get to the next main mission, some cool stuff starts happening, new characters, you have a little fucking go hang out at the school, and it's identical to every Japanese high school in any game or anime you've seen. And you run around that. And again, 13th Sentinel-esque, including a Luffy character running around chasing a cat that's been programmed to trick character into getting in the robot.

Like legit, super for real vibes of that. And also Ava-esque stuff happening. You know, he said 13th Sentinels-esque and like, you know, this is so stupid because it's such a minuscule part of that game, but you know what the most definitive like noise from 13th Sentinels is in my mind? It's pills! My pills! Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. For me, it's got put on a show for Yuki, Chad That line lives in my head for free forever And yakisoba angel you know yakisoba pawn, but anyway the idea of like all of that stuff back on the main line, main mission stuff is like solid and you know,

the characters are fun and everything there is going great. And it's just like, it's like, it's fun to go back and see a little bit more, but it's getting depleted, that fun and energy is being depleted by this, the gacha, the specter that lingers in the air behind everything you're doing. Yeah, the episodes are coming out now on the channel. So far, we're still having a good time.

But there is an air that deflates, unfortunately, by the time we get to the end of that. Good. And I'm like, not just me, right? Reggie, I'm like, you not I'm like not just me right like Reggie I'm like you're here for reference you can feel it too when I took the break I went on break at two hours into the game like Super hyped up loving it screaming out the robot lines as they're doing shit getting amped on the theme song and just like oh God, it's all my jam. It's super right up my alley in every way.

And I went to break and took a, and basically was like, when I come back, I'm probably going to say, yo, we're going to do a couple more sessions of this. I was legit like, we can do, we can, we can play this a little bit more on the channel. I'm very excited to see where this awesome robot game is going. And it was right as I got back that it just it all started to just compile and compile. And yeah, by the end of the stream, it was like, God damn it, there's a really cool thing here that is being bogged down by the remnants of Gacha. And it's not even remnants because they're still alive and well. But I've also like, this is not a free to play game.

I've purchased it. I don't want to deal with this. My tolerance for this is high at zero. At anything above zero, your tolerance is low. Once again, the game is called Megaton Musashi W Wired. When I buy the game, I just want you to take all that out. Let that price be- Holy shit it's 67 fucking dollars!

Let that money be the thing that gets all of that bullshit out and just gives me a normal game experience. I thought that you were talking about a game that costs like fucking thirty bucks? Holy shit, that is outrageous! And there's over a hundred fucking dollars of DLC to buy, and the Korone fucking thing was like ten 10 bucks and it's just ridiculous with all that shit. You can't do all of those things all at once. And I'm like, man, you had me. You had me.

I was there and willing. And if the game continued to be what it was initially, I would be happy, you know? I'd have no problem with that experience to continue for however many hours into it. But it fucking just doesn't, man. And like all, like whatever time they could have took to change things around, they just didn't de-gatchify it. And I don't think any of these games ever will I suppose.

I got that burn with Cross Dive, you know, but like looking at it here it's just like yeah I guess if you can, yeah I suppose if you can find your whale, right? If you can find your whale then that'll be worth it so keep that shit going in this type of game. But I would... I'm actually willing to shell out the money to pay for a game that I want to play full of the content like this, to just not have that level of bullshit in its subsystems, and they just don't do it. You know? So... Okay, okay, alright.

We had this problem... here, everyone stop. I had this problem while I was talking. I'm stopping, I wasn't doing anything. Sorry, audience listen, all right? I had this problem. The live audience that is. And while I was playing the game live on stream as well. I don't know the word for what you think

the thing I should be talking about here is. If the word is not gacha, if the word is not freemium, free to play, if it's not... I don't know what the word is, but it's the mobile game shitty thing that is not all mobile games, but the ones that try to get you to pay for micro that are all the things I hate that regular original console and Steam and shit games don't have. I mean, you just say live service service that probably covers like damn near everything it does But not every life service game has the daily login bonus mo character tie-in get your Microtransaction thing here with the currency exchange rate to do the bullshit obfuscation not every game does that but the ones that do

Whatever the fuck that word is use that then if it's not gotcha then I don't then then use that word Because the point is is that it's dark patterns. It's a dark pattern game. Okay? And I'm sorry if the language is getting up your craw, but it's a dark pattern game. There. I mean, when you're talking, let's say it's loot drops and therefore it's a grind, but we're talking about a grind that exists in something that used to have microtransactions to mitigate that grind. The reality between that and a slot machine is minuscule. Like the difference between those. So when I say Gatcha, you understand that I'm trying to refer to games that Gatcha,

Gatcha games tend to have the things I'm describing. But if that's not the right word, then what is Gatcha then? Well Gatcha just means the slot machine game. It's the slot machine? Is that all that refers to? Gatcha means the Gatcha pawn like, you know Toy box shit. Okay. So when you twist and you put the coin in you don't know what you're gonna get out the thing It's that's got show. Okay, specifically. So when everything else is just live service and shitification

Okay Now the denotation of a gatcha game now is not just a little twist and put the coin in getting that is that is that It's that's your that's your catch-all for the for every mobile game that has a Random type of character you can get with rankings and ratings and sex. That's great. Okay, so Yeah Dark pattern freemium then I suppose is what we'll call it. I mean you just say mobile garbage Yeah, but then you get the no not every mobile game is like that you can go play

Who gives a fuck these people who play mobile games? Okay? Well the problem is is when I humans sure But but the problem is is when do I say who gives a fuck do I do it at the level before that? Well, I think you said that at the beginning of today's show when you sure you had no patience exactly So if the if the step of you said the wrong word here, that's not the right one to describe it. It's like, oh, so then I'm wrong on the gadget term. All right, I won't use the gadget term. Don't use the who gives a fuck there.

So when you use the who gives a fuck what on the next level, on the next level, that's the right place to say who gives a fuck. I don't know where I'm supposed to say it. Yeah, whatever, man. It's all good. Enough. I think everyone who's played a game on their phone should be quiet forever, and yes that does include me. You understand what I'm trying to say.

The good, cool, mecha-th game has a bunch of the shitty, stupid mobile shit in it that I paid fucking full price for, and it sucks because the good shit is still in there, but you can't get to it because you have to get through all this annoying shit in the way. And even if that annoying shit is simplified for, okay, maybe the shop is not the same. Oh no, the shop is there. I just didn't even go to it. Whatever. Even if that shit is still given to you with like, here's a bunch of free currency to go unlock all these micro stupid purchases with, that's still an annoying thing, right? The concept of taking one of these really annoying style

Made to annoy you games and putting it as a proper release after the fact should come with a Complete rework of its economy and reward systems. Yeah, you're completely right because It's clear that like the we're trying to annoy you system is Like you can get away with that. And I can give I can give leeway when it's free. We talked about multiverses a second ago. I'm like, there's an idea of like, I know you're going to be annoying about this because I didn't pay anything to start playing the game. And that's how you make your money.

And you're trying to get whales. You're trying to get FOMO. You're trying to attack the little addiction inside people and make them ultimately fucking, you know Lose control of their ability to purchase and and and whatever so I get it right you're trying to What the fuck was that called the Terrence and Philip fucking? Whatever fart. Oh, I know what that shit was. Okay. Well, there's there's a stupid phone mobile game thing that South Park did That's like you're trying to get at that right fine

So like I'm gonna hold up my hand for a second sure a really good example of what you're talking about That is not a gotcha game like explicitly not And didn't have a battle pass or anything like that was Diablo 3 with the live money auction house I don't know how well you remember that. But basically I remember it was a shit show when it happened. The original version of that auction house was that the game was tuned so that it would intentionally drop items your character could not use to incentivize you to put them up for auction so that Blizzard could make like a penny or whatever the fuck the transaction fee would be off of the transaction of you going to the auction house. And they'd be

like, well, it only costs you fucking 30 cents to but it was supposed to like be a whole system and that ruined that game on launch. It was it was goddamn fucking awful when they decided when they one fired the guy who did that, he was the director and he left, they got rid of him. They then had to do a complete overhaul of every single aspect of the game's itemization, which was a massive amount of work to get all of that number and statistics and all that shit out and replace it with like the way a regular video game would drop your own loot and that was a massive undertaking and I think it took like a year or a year

and a half or something like that what you're describing is not gotcha or whatever you're describing a piece of a system that was built to extract pennies out of people from annoyance yeah, and then instead of Completely remaking that entire section of the game They just turned off the part where money goes in and all that shit is still there anyway But they didn't because the part where money goes in and all that shit is still there anyway. But they didn't because the part where money goes in is still there. Oh, it's still there?

Okay, well then. There's a shop that I just didn't go visit, but it's there. I would further say that the other problem, and this is getting into a level... Now we're interfacing with shit that I can't fully understand because it's just not me, is there's elements of loot drops that are like, oh, but this is, some people like loot drop rarity shit. Some people like that. So when I played Transformers and I saw the fucking shitty stupid blaster

that was the purple version, and I'm like, oh, okay, dig good, that's the one I gotta use, sell the yellow one. Like, that's not fun to me, that's annoying. I don't enjoy that. We are now activating two to five people on our timelines, and they will be starting to tweet about Stranger of Paradise in about 10 minutes.

And it's also an aspect of, well, you've talked at length about the power of Nioh that you hate, right? And I'm like, I don't blame you on that, because yeah, it is annoying to have a bunch of built-up garbage. Could you imagine? It sure is, isn't it? It is annoying, isn't it? Like, the thing is that the game is so good outside of a lot of that annoying shit that you just kind of like like I you can for the most part Try to ignore it and get away with that So I'm kind I was able to do so but I think that's kind of where my thing is I'm like how well how much can I ignore this or like automate it with a start button, right? Nia was fucking fantastic

how much of could you imagine how spiritually draining it would feel if How much of, like, could you imagine how spiritually draining it would feel if, like, in Armored Corps when you get your Basho arm, it's just, that's the common Basho, and you've got to go redo the mission to get the good one, but you don't know the chances of you dropping it, so you've got to put on a special use item that works for an hour, that while you play this mission over and over for an hour that while you play this mission over and over for an hour, then you have a higher chance of getting the better version of the rare basho arm. Could you imagine how fucking garbage that would feel in the middle of otherwise

enjoying this game? That wouldn't be great. It sucks. Wooly is absolutely wrong in thinking the money stuff isn't it still. Why is there $127 worth of DLC and a Shop that is right there on the fucking phone. That's what I can go I actively was like I'm just gonna ignore this I'm trying to enjoy the good thing What are we talking about then is it that is it that the mic the many currencies are? No longer associated with buying

$176 and 61 cents the shop is just selling, the shop is not selling currencies. It's all, okay, it's all the cosmetics and it's the bonus characters and the tie-ins and stuff. Got it. Okay, understood. So there's a lot of money they're asking you to spend on stuff that is not currencies, that is just the cosmetics and the bullshit and whatever, that is still exorbitantly ridiculously priced, mind you.

Fair. It's not asking you to buy the money that you're converting into all these points. So all these stupid little currencies even, like like continue to be in the game just there to annoy you With no actual then go spend money to buy the super currency reason It's just an annoying factor because that's how the game was originally made then that sucks That really sucks. You don't have to buy it at all Fine You still have to deal with this stupid amount of like don't defend the shitty part of a really cool thing

Because what's happening in the game that's really cool? I love that stuff. You know, it bumped me the fuck out man And now that you're like I'm seeing defense running for that type of shit. Now I'm just getting annoyed because it's like, no. Oh, well the people will defend anything. Please! It's very clear that the way that shit started, the people that were making that, they got it. They get the cool robot fucking anime

that's all awesome. And it's bogged down by this needless track. I just saw a really great question in the chat that dives into the heart of this. It's not defense. It's clarification because you're incorrect. All right.

All right. Fine. I'm wrong about the store because you don't buy currencies. You only buy cosmetics that you don't have to buy. You can choose to ignore that. I take that. Fair. to ignore that. I take that, fair. I continue to be annoyed by the price, the egregiousness of all that, followed by the fact that you still have these annoying systems in the game

and none of that is simplified, and the fact that you could have redone this so that you get a simple reward that is perhaps the best for... Whatever the case you want to do, all these little minor tweaks that you have throughout the game, all these little things that are customizing, more granular, more annoying, more just full of all that little fucking bonus login bullshit didn't have to be there, but yet they are and they're taking away

from the experience of a thing I paid money for. That sucks, that's my point. You should've refunded it on that break, but it only hit you at the It only hit you after you'd already gone for like four hours, right? Yeah, that's that face hey, so somebody asked a really great question I believe it was urs. Kaiser They asked hey just quick question for wooly Do you view something like borderlands to be gotcha coated or dark patterns or whatever?

I've only played Borderlands at PAX as a demo once. Right, and you've never really got into Diablo either, right? No, so things that you play in the main game dropping loot. So I'm going to imagine a game where you kill thing and it drops a random item in a pile of shit Yeah, like a souls like way I'm gonna drop up that thing dropped a piece of its armor But there's a chance that the armor dropped was the good version of the bad version and there's multiple different colors up from Common to rare to well, it's about like suffix and prefix

Okay. Well Neo had that and Yeah, I didn't like that aspect of it. I wish that when I dropped the, when it dropped the Kasari Gamma, it was the Kasari Gamma and that there could be different Kasari Gammas, but I wish that it wasn't the one that was the specific version that's purple glowing with those shit or whatever. I would say 99 out of 100 times I agree with you. I love that when you have the matching armor set, there's bonuses for putting it all together. I like that I think that's cool, but I don't want there to be Infinite variations of each thing you can pick up equip yourself with and or mod tweak

Into your slots and if there's a mod slot, you know, I don't want that. I hate that aspect of things That doesn't feel fun to me. That feels like needless repetition, rarity playing off of like, oh, it's the good one this time. And I'm like, yeah, okay. But it could just be the thing. And that would affect the gameplay

because the whole point is, I guess this is where you get into another philosophy of like whether or not hitting the thing harder with the bigger number popping out versus getting the move set of the weapon is your reward. If I get the weapon that can do a move that I couldn't do before, oh, bone fist lets me do a running drop kick? Oh shit, that's cool versus picking up a fist that's just another fist, but this time when you use that fist, it makes a big damage number go off. Right?

I think that my tipping point here is that despite the fact that they're arguably like the same on like a spreadsheet, I think there is a massive, massive difference in how I feel when I get something. I would rather say I do a because I play FF14, right? Let's say I do something 10 times, right? And I get the thing that I want on number 10, right? Like one out of 10 times, right? 10%. I think it actually feels way better for there to only be the thing that I want, and I get it one out of 10 times, than to get functional garbage for the other nine times that I do it. I kind of actually feel like it's better to get nothing than getting the not good thing

When the good thing is over there agreed. I don't think that gambling implementation into your game design Usually makes it better. I think most times it makes it worse. There are examples where I can think of where I, if I'm, if you're, when you're rolling through vampire survivors and you don't know what's going to drop next and you can pick from the thing or whatever, there's a randomization element to that or rolling through Hades or any like roguelike that gives you a couple options where you're like, Oh, okay. The random control element thing here is part of what you're doing.

Like, I can, there's those situations there where I think I've been able to enjoy it, but I think there's a bunch of them where I just don't, right? And I would say that the more the game, like Nioh for example, like the combat is asking a lot of you that's very rewarding in and of itself, it doesn't need to then be bogged down

by this other little granular element that adds like a linear, it adds repetition, it adds replay value, quote unquote, it's not real, it's just grind. I don't think that makes it better. It doesn't improve anything to me, you know? Let me enjoy the content and reward me with unlocking a new piece of content. Don and reward me with unlocking a new piece of content.

Don't reward me with unlocking a better version of the existing content I already have. Nine times out of 10, that's where I'm gonna go. There's probably examples that you can find and dig where it's like, oh, but you enjoyed this and that makes you a hypocrite. I'm like, yeah, probably. If it was implemented, game design is a very,

it goes up and down as well. Yeah, no, game design is really, really awkward because there's a bunch of rules and then in the asterisks is like, unless you really nail it though, you can break this wall. Unless you really nail it though, is a weird asterisk that always applies. But yeah, if Nioh's combat was not so fucking awesome,

I would be way... I wouldn't be as focused on that element of it, you know? Cause I'm like, yo, I'm already trying... I'm already fully engaged with your stances, your pulse system, the moves you're unlocking as you branch through each weapon. Like, the granularity after the fact of like, you know, everything else, yeah.

Or even like, Souls after the fact of like, you know, everything else. Yeah, or even like, Souls, where it's like, you have the sword, and from here you can upgrade the sword, you can even possibly make it a fire sword if you want to add to it, right? You can take something you love and keep it going upwards, but like the re-roll randomization aspect of it is just doesn't fucking do it for me, man. It doesn't do it at all, you know?

And it hurts because it's in this package that you would otherwise be super into. The way that I feel about this kind of mechanical obscurification is it feels like, oh man, I'm really enjoying this movie. And then like every 10 minutes, a guy walks over to you and waves his hand in front of your fucking face as you're trying to actually watch or play. And you're like, can I fucking... And you have to spend two or three minutes like pushing him away. Okay, now I'm back to the movie. Well, he's making the game seem genuinely worse than it is. Yeah, so for the most part I liked it and it looked decent.

Yes, I did and that was the case. However, especially getting into this now with the extra levels of fucking frustration from this conversation, it's quite annoying. It's quite annoying that that's the case. I mean everyone's tolerance for this stuff is like, wildly variable.

I mean, we've known people who just get to a cut scene and hit fucking start. What I was about to say is, your tolerance for what I'm describing may vary, and I know that as somebody who has, for the most part, been and deliberately out of the things I don't like. I don't get into the things I don't enjoy. I tend to like, I'm like, nah, that's probably going to annoy me. Let me, I'm going to avoid that. Whatever. So I know that I have a lower tolerance for

that shit. If you have a higher tolerance, you can probably appreciate all of the awesome parts while having the things I'm describing bother you less. But I really, really didn't like them in Mega Man Cross Dive. And here, it was pervasive enough that it bummed the experience out by the end of it. And I think by the end of the last episode of us going through it, you'll hear it. You'll kind of see it in the vibes of what's going on. The vibes are down. And I would say that to the point where it deflated my desire to go back in and continue playing. I was genuinely excited to do a couple more sessions of that

and I kind of don't really want to anymore and that's how I left feeling. That's a bummer. So that's it. And there you go. There's my proper healthy, completely impatient day of I'm going to directly talk at chat. And I'm sure that's annoying for you MP3 listeners.

I apologize. But in the case of you don't know enough about this thing and you're playing one of these things and it's been a thing for a long time, so you're uninformed, I'm like, okay, then here's what the feeling I'm trying to communicate is, which needs me to play off the wall of people listening to this, because I legitimately am looking for information about something I don't know about. So that's

why I'm more than willing to engage at this point with some bullshit. I love this shit. Because the feeling fucking sucks. And if you can nail down why the feeling sucks, then great. It'll help me understand how to avoid that feeling in the future. I feel the same way listening to this as I do seeing people mad on Twitter that the new fucking Fortnite season is a fucking pile of shit if you're one of those idiots who gentrifies their neighborhood when a shot goes off because people are just driving cars through their buildings and killing them.

That's got the same emotion right in my chest which is, ehh. Yeah there was an emotion I kept feeling while winding down which is like, oh no, I'm going to start running into this more and more in things that I like. Oh hell yeah. And I just have to like it's just going to be this grating wearing down of like okay how much can I ignore it until eventually you can't you know. Oh man get the fuck ready for Assassin's Creed shadows where you're like hell yeah yes gay and they're going to be like pay me four extra dollars or yes gay has no dialogue.

Yeah. Or whatever insane shit they do with that. I mean, yo, yeah, look, Zedla Zone Zero has my attention on the aesthetic design and a lot of those elements. But I will 180 on a fucking dime if that's. Oh, hey, let me tell you, man. So I can tell you right now, Genshin and Starrails, like let's say Gacha mechanization is exactly the same. Like there it is exactly the same between the two. So anybody who plays either of those games can just like, you know how Zenless Zone Zero

is going to work. Like it's going to work exactly the same as the other two. The core of it is going to break down on like, yeah, you probably want to do some kind of weekly thing. Do you find the gameplay enjoyable enough to enjoy that weekly thing? Yes or no. If not, then you'll just bounce right off it. I mean, if you can sell me a version of the game that's not the free to play one that is just what and not make 400 billion dollars a second What are you? Stupid if you could just sell me a priced version of the game that is a here is the characters

Here is the things you unlock as you move through the story and all the normal video game shit, okay? So I listen I bet you and all the normal video game shit. Okay, so Wully, listen. I bet you the math on that shit works out to here's your $450 game. Because the people who wail on that shit wail so hard. We're talking like Saudi Prince wailing. We're talking like Ruin wailing mm-hmm mm-hmm. We're talking like ruin your parents lives wailing

Yeah So wasn't it like wasn't it warframe that was the one where like you could just actively Ignore everything that you were not did that you didn't find cool, or you weren't interested in oh yeah I just put all your time into the one thing and just... Yeah, no, Warframe, you can earn generic ass non-prime rhino and get a couple of items that like... I bet you could get super vandal relatively easily now. And you could just go.

So this is one of the better examples, and that's profitable, right? How bad was grinding in that? Warframe grinding is fun, but Warframe did, did have a unethical grinding thing in there. So everything in warframe was you either grinded it at like a like, you know a vendor, you know rep Whatever thing, you know, it's do do missions whatever or you'd grind out skill points or You would do random drops out of relics that kind of thing, right? but there was something called a Riven Which was a mod that so mods in Warframe, you'd stack them on your

weapon. You'd stack like eight mods on your weapon and be like, extra damage or extra acid damage or whatever the fuck, right? And those were all set. You would build them up, but like this mod always did the same thing. So people would recommend, oh, dude, this mod for this, blah, blah, blah, blah, and here's how you can go get it. Riven mods were mods that came out of super hard content and they were completely randomized and they could do anything. And sometimes what they did was increase the potential of a Warframe war weapon by like a million times. And you could trade it between players. Was that the only way to get them? Yes.

So you could get it randomly and it was very hard and you could trade it to other players and you could trade it to other players for platinum, which is the in-game currency that you pay money for. And so like a significant amount of Warframe's like incoming real dollars was to buy platt to give to people for their busted fucked up ribbons So you could get a completely overpowered character and then that person who got all the platt for it could spend it on micro You know cosmetics and whatnot. Okay Okay, yeah

Okay Okay, yeah It's just it's gonna be ever pervasive going forward man, it's gonna happen more and more and it's so just worth it to put annoy you features in and Yeah, go ahead that would be a way bigger bummer if I didn't have 158 games on my wishlist right now. Right. And like over 60 games on my Beat the Backlog that people suggested that are nearly universal, cool ass indie shit that I'd never heard of that would take me multiple years to go through even now. Yeah, it's just that this is the cool one with the specific super robot energy and the you know.

That's that's that there that that's the that's the trick caring about things specifically. Yep, that's that's the stupid part. Yep. Because if you go man, oh I love Assassin's Creed and black people. Well guess what? There's only one no there's two there's two games no there's three. Hey that's pretty good actually. There's three games you can buy one no four holy shit. That's great actually. Um Two of them are like standalone games that are like not fucked up and Then the other two are standalone games that are horribly fucked up Yeah So I guess if you know

If the shit I'm describing doesn't bother you then enjoy And if it does I guess you can go watch the anime because I heard the anime is pretty good And it feels as if you spent a lot of your time just watching a lot of that play out anyway, so cool great Favorite is dude you watching the anime does not free you of this conversation Not necessarily. I remember when I was watching Persona 4 the anime and they're like, do you want to actually watch the last episode of this show? Buy the Blu-ray for $140. Do you remember? That still happens. That still happens. Okay, well assuming it's not on a streaming thing anywhere, but yeah. Oy, oy, oy.

Anyway, so that has become the annoyingly hyperbolic experience with this game. And you can see it over the course of the video. So you can go check them out. There's still, I think, a couple episodes going up over on Woolly Versus. Before we get too far away from it, I think we'll talk about this later. I'm fiending to piss real bad, but we'll talk about this in news.

Silent Hill is the ultimate of like, no, stop caring about it. Because you care about the thing with the name? Only sorrow will follow. Yeah. follow. Yeah, well it would be a little easier I suppose if like Megaton Musashi W wired like if this like like OK Silent Hill 2. So this conversation would be different if that thing said Gundam on it. No, you know what girl no no no no because this literally has get a robo and and massacre. Oh it it does? Yeah, yeah, it does. Oh, shit.

It's got the tie-ins. It's not even that. It's not even that. But I will say this. No matter what Bloober Team does, Silent Hill 2 exists. That's becoming less true over time, actually. I think that's where it's actually fucked. It's like, that's actually not a hundred percent true

They're taking it away. They're deleting it through from time harder and harder to get every day No like legal way to play Silent Hill 2 Outside of buying it off of eBay You're getting a ps2 the the releasing of the remake and the simultaneous delisting of the original The original was never listed you got it. You got your your collection version, I guess No, no, you don't. Oh We won't talk about that Okay about that. Okay. Yeah. Alright. Fair enough. Fair enough. Alright. I'm gonna piss my pants. I gotta I gotta go. I gotta go. I'll be right back. BRB. Piss time. Awesome. Great. Cool.

So, now that everyone is completely understanding and reasonable. Um. I understood you perfectly, but reasonable, I don't know. Yeah, Well, I did we did we did say that This was vibes based games journalism. Did we not I'm trying to emit a vibe I'm hoping that most people were able to catch the vibe and if you weren't then fucking Hey, you want to hear some vibes based game journalism that ties in a? Let me just what we're talking about. I, but let me just end by saying this week, you can tune in over at Woolly Versus on Twitch or on YouTube where I will be continuing with Yakuza Zero.

And I'm going to also check out Nightmare Cart, which is now available. That is a Bloodborne Cart rename that Bundleth made. out Nightmare Cart which is now available that is bloodborne cart rename that Bundleth made so that's going down and then there's also a game called First Cut Slayer no wait First Cut which is a weird kind of samurai sort of fighting thing, but also there's like a single player thing in it, so I'm going to check that out too. And of course, going to check out Slayer and Guilty Gear on the get to fight games as well. So yeah, should be a fun week.

So let's talk about vibes based game journalism. So in the live service hellhole that I live in, that I play FF14, right now it's every week on Sunday nights with my buddies because we want to get a mount. And so you got to run the boss over and over and over, right? And my good friend, Vel, who I've known for many years, you beat the boss you walk up to the chest you hit the chest and whether or not the whistle for the mount is in there is like a 10 chance whatever and uh every time every single time for multiple years we walk up to that chest he gets there first and goes, hey, regardless of what's in there. OK, no matter what, no matter what.

And so like six, seven times a night, I'm like, oh, I did it. Oh, you motherfucker. And I pointed that out and he stopped doing it and I felt so awkward about it that I did it anyway because it felt weird to not have someone pretend to be excited for the drop even though there wasn't anyone. Okay, yeah, I'm trying to follow here. So someone is lying about finding a good thing in the drop. That's annoying.

That's right. Every time they get to it, hey, oh wow, it's not there. There's nothing. I got excited for nothing. That's a further... that is watching the loot box click open and seeing the purple thing fly through the sky only to land and be brown. Yeah All right, is that everything for your wig man pretty much Yeah, I'm just It's so annoying all right yeah back to watch it go back to watching Fallout and Righteous Gemstones. There's no microtransactions in there. Not yet.

Not yet, no. Yeah. Actually there was because I believe it, I've said this before, but when a show is streaming, I do often go like, oh, can I watch this? In Canada, how can I watch this? And I'll give it the real shot and in this case? It was like oh, yeah, you can watch it streaming on like Prime video or whatever, but just commercials and then there was the like

What's the not what's the I don't want commercials button and then I clicked that and that was a micro transaction. Mm-hmm. So I did I made a $2 purchase To make that go away, I'm enjoying when I'm watching a show and someone goes hey, where are you watching that and I go um? Yeah, I'm watching it Amazon I guess yeah No, I I am like I always I give it a shot and those the second I encounter resistance Anyway so

I know it's not a big deal because you are much better at Street Fighter 6 than I am But Zankief's buffs have had me coast comfortably into diamond. There you go. And if, like, I remember talking about this, like, at length last June, in which, like, I love the game and I think I'm doing okay, but I think the character might be very bad and I don't know what to do with that feeling. And now that the character is buffed and I have sailed a full gem rank higher. I'm like, I was, you ever like, you're right but you don't know what to do with it?

I'm like, I was right, the character was very bad. So yeah, well what it means in the math works out to like every bad decision means hurts you less and every good decision rewards you more so that will affect your win ratio and it's like it wasn't me it was my taste god damn it you're frozen again I did deserve those wins well well hold on I was playing GEEF with the GEEF that I have now hold on back then I would have won did your decision to to wake up level three get jumped you know cuz if so you you deserve what's coming down on your head now that's right god damn it what the fuck okay this is gonna be a pretty ugly monster so

delicious so do it alright mmmm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm Apple's BRB Anyway, I am good at fighting games Yeah, that's that's that's that's that's a good bell. Yeah, good balance good balance patch and and he he he did need it He did need his tweaks that much is clear Though scares the shit out of me now the the idea is certainly that He gets the ability to do And he excess PD to you and melt a third of your bar No matter who you are and at any point if you eat a level three that might probably be the game, right?

Yeah, and that's fair. So that's the most like there's nothing in that game even at his unbuffed state That is more terrifying Than going in on and trying to to play footsies with a GIF who has a level 3 That's just the round in one fell swoop decision. So you're balancing around the idea of a character who can melt you in one shot So it's really interesting So I follow Keats on Twitter. So Keats is the creator of Divekick and he worked very heavily on Killer Instinct. Had a good chat with him at Combo Breaker. Right, he's a good guy, friend of the show, right? And there's something that I'm very interested in seeing. He has made this opinion known before and he just retweeted somebody talking about Akuma, in which Keats does not appear to approve of, this character has every tool, but we've balanced him around having low life.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. His philosophy tends to be a bit more, let's find the thing that is fun that people who play this character want to do and make sure that you can always do that and enjoy doing that thing. So the reason that I find that really interesting is that Akuma can do anything.

Akuma can do anything that he wants but he dies like a bitch. Swiss Army life. However I on the other hand am very familiar with the archetype of this character has no tools and in some cases no answers at all to some situations but we've balanced them around having a lot of life and And and the one thing which is a completely on my button the die button which activates when you stand next to me Yeah, yeah, and I wonder I wonder how that like arc that feeling Like gets across to the idea of,

I don't like characters that can do anything, but they're low life versus, some characters I've played, grapplers oftentimes have no options. I played Taker versus New 13. That was a nightmare. I mean, I think you can look at the KI and see what the specialists all look like, you

know, and Guilty Gear has a lot of specialist characters as well, but Potemkin and Eggzard, for example, though, is like a grappler that gets to melt you for standing next to him, but then he just gets all the other stuff too, where you're like, but hold on, why can he also do everything? I think I think grapplers should be top tier in every game because big people are scary. Sure. Yeah. All right Just there you go. Thank you. I've said my Your taste should be the winning pick every time. Hey, listen, man It's but I someone has to say it cuz we got people out here with grappler slander all over the fucking place Everywhere I look whoo grapplers aren't fun. Nobody likes grapplers. I hate it. You're wrong

I'm I'm ultimately okay with the concept of a knowledge check character, right? That a knowledge check character being if you try to fight Honda like anyone else, you're just going to die because Honda does things that are Honda specific and you got to learn those things. If you try to fight JP like anybody else, you got it. You can't wing it. You have to know how to deal with you should fight JP outside the game.

You cannot before you sit down. You can wing it against Kai. You can wing it against a bunch of characters. You cannot wing it against Axel. And it's not that Axel is going to be the high tier or anything, because once you do know how to deal with things, then it becomes less real. But if you're just handling that from, I'm not

too sure what's going on, you hit a wall that is, this will beat you every single time no matter what you're doing. There's a full screen ground grab and if you jump in the air, he's got a jab that'll keep you out from getting in. So too bad, right?

Knowledge check. That's ultimately okay. Boy, some types of knowledge checks can just get so annoying. And like, if you make something, if you make it so that you can round start some types of knowledge checks can just get so annoying and Like if you make something if you make it so that you can round start carapot buster me your weakness better be Insanely clear and obvious and insurmountable

Like you know like just make it so that no matter how good that feels to get it It's got to feel equally as bad on the other side of it, right? We'll see what happens. I don't know that Gif is like over tuned compared to what he was before. If anything, he's under tuned still. But the fact that he is statistically the highest climbing character that is moving the furthest up in the rankings and beating the most high MR ranked players compared to before and such is huge.

It is huge. It's so fun to talk about buffs and nerfs and all that stuff in a fighting game compared to something like FF14 is a good example. Everybody in 14 is within like 4% of each other. There's really only the one metric which is DPS and then some utility things. Just the absolute shit meltdowns people will have over BART IS USELESS! It's like it's 3% under dense or fucking calm down, man! When the worst matchup in your game is like a 6-4, but you're still going nuts. So the thing is that the concept of downplaying is a deeply spiritual experience.

Right? Because you have the unique journey of playing your character and you only, you know the struggle and everyone else is experiencing, like when you beat everybody else, when you do that insane shit and steal rounds, you're just like, well yeah, that's what I'm supposed to be doing, right? And you're not experiencing their side of it going what the fuck man, right? The the GEEF round where like he just destroyed Akuma for Looking at him twice like it was it you know, like um, and then I had I had a set where I online Last night where I double perfected in Akuma and then he double perfected me on the rematch. Right, right, right.

And both of those felt like 9-1 matchups in either direction. Oh man, dude. Yeah, just downplay. It's wild. You can't experience it until you're on the other side. And not everybody is going to Shang Tsung their way through the cast, learn how to play everybody, and feel the whole game. Very rarely do people do that. So you just get your experience, you know?

I think what's way more fun than anything is like, yeah, Kuma's not even good. If anything, That's if anything if anything There was a period in There was a period in and Walker where Dark Knight was so overtuned that somebody ran the math on it and was like paladin at optimal per second perfect rotation loses out to a Dark Knight who is literally just mashing the keyboard. Like just like, and not by like a little, but like a lot.

Like this huge performance delta. And I remember looking at that and be like, yeah, mm-hmm, yeah, that's fair, yeah, no. They're not even, if anything, if anything, they need to buff Living Dead. I mean, come on. Ah, God. So, something super interesting,

and I'm sure it'll come up in the future because there's a lot of meat on the bone, but something really interesting that Keats was talking about was this, there is a chart that is an ongoing poll that sampled, I think like two million or so different gamers and asked them what their favorite word was. And the results might surprise you. Would they? Would they? No, no, no, no.

What's everyone's favorite gamer word? No. They asked like, yeah, so close to like 2 million people that played games, like what their reasons for playing games were and what their reward, like what their reasons for playing games were and what their reward like incentives were, right? And it's really interesting because like a lot of it's something that kind of like it even changed some of my perspective on like what types of games would appeal to people in the future, what types of fighting games stand to do well and which ones don't and stuff. And it's very because it's and because there's such a large

sample size, it breaks down into, and he can definitely get into this in fuller detail, so I'm just gonna do a terrible job summarizing. It breaks down essentially what that, there's a lot of categories of different types of rewards, some of them, whether it's story, your ability to immerse yourself in the world,

competition, multiplayer. Everything is going to go down the extrinsic versus intrinsic objective versus subjective, experiential versus tangential. It's a huge list and then what it works out to is when you broadly categorize the results, you get nine different types of people that play games. And fighting games covers two of those groupings. One of the groupings is people who enjoy online and or offline competitive play.

They enjoy competition. They enjoy skill. They enjoy the complexity in gameplay, what the game asks you to do essentially. And the difficulty of learning to do those things and then proficiently performing them is something that it elicits a positive response. The other type is people who are into every type of game,

no matter what. You can't make a game that they're gonna hate They love everything and the fucking gamers, right? There's a there's a type of person that's that but the person who likes these skill things and these online and these competitive aspects Or so there's another profile of player that looks a lot like that Except when it comes to the skill aspect that's all the way, where if you ask skill of that player, they actually hate it. It's a deterrent. And there are things that you can do that if you try to switch up like an element of your game, you make it not just a neutral aspect,

but an anti-interest point that's a deterrent for the person who's like into skill and competition, right? And the person who's like, I want online, I want to compete against other people I want to have this experience and fight against the community and so on but I don't want there to be skill is an FPS gamer And that category is the person who just wants to win and click and feel the feel the good part Without the element they bought the reward for it right? Oh, we got these three modern warfare lobbies, bro. I was like oh

Shit, that's so that's amazing like I think the profiles line the fuck up Yeah, I think the argument of every time skill-based matchmaking comes up. It's like the most embarrassing thing ever It's so it's so cringe Like I'll actually shed all over and. I have Call of Duty's bad skill-based matchmaking, but like, oh, man, you gotta get these baby lobbies or these killer lobbies with the terminally ill children, bro. We hate it because we want to win, and the place we win the most is where people are not as skilled

There's something really interesting Yeah about cuz that's though these you're talking about people who in like a mover would be smurfing sure you know smurfing to hell Yeah and It makes me there was an article million years ago we talked about on the I think the friend cast of article a million years ago, we talked about it on the, I think the friend cast of like interviewing people who spend like a thousand dollars a year on cheats for like multiplayer games.

Yeah, that was so interesting. And like it all, it just broke down to straight up. I want to have fun and I don't have fun unless I win. So I will make sure I win. And, and like, that's it. Yeah. Like there's no depth beyond it I kept losing I'm playing on my brother's account and and I just wanted to win for for once so I'm buying these sheets. What's the problem now? My brother's?

That sucks. It's just that it's just that simple and it's like it disconnects any aspect of other person other Element of reward has nothing to do with like what you did You know, it just doesn't matter. It's just I just want to feel like I want against somebody so here's here's the the kicker You ever I'm sure you've encountered this in your life, right in which someone says Who's gonna know say say what again? this in your life, right? In which someone says, who's gonna know? Say what again? I'm sure you've encountered this in your life where someone has looked at you and said, Wully, Wully, who's gonna know? Oh. Who's gonna know? Right? And I've had this experience a lot and I go, I would I'm right here. Why that's why I'm playing man No, Jesus Christ, yeah

Yeah, I just Sure, I can go beat up a training dummy all the way to grand finals. What the fuck is the point of that? What's the fun, man? I think I touched on that. And that's why we are sad. Hey man, depression correlates with education and intelligence. If you could just sit there and play your PUBG and hit the kill everyone on the map button and it goes you win and go AHAHAHAHHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHAAHA I think the I like I brought that entire thing up to say that the downplaying

Comes from that part inside where you're just like I just want to win and it feels good to win And it feels bad to lose. I mean hey, that's that's inside no one no one is free right and and and um Yeah, what I was like like said when I was a combo breaker And I had that moment of like, did that person plug my controller in incorrectly on purpose? I don't know, but that's a weird thing, right? Whatever there's things like,

whatever anyone's doing, like, yeah. Whatever, if you want to just cheat your way through, the literal, you cheated yourself, your victory's hollow, you've learned nothing, Yeah, yeah the whole view It's just like I don't I don't even understand what the point of showing up is then it just it just doesn't make sense to me I don't know. I don't get it. It sucks man Like how much we're talking about this and I look over and somebody says can't wait for 2x ko But like okay, let me come at it. Let me switch gears here.

Yeah, let's hear it. Right, like, let's take it from, fuck this honorable noble bullshit, garbage. Yeah, fuck that. Let's switch over to the selfish mentality, right? The like, give me, I want it. I want it. How much more thoroughly can I fucking shit on your head

if I'm even playing field with you and I dominate you on every level? With an even fucking playing field, right? So it's so much more of a compliment to how godlike I am that I beat you when the odds were fair so I've I I've talked about this on stream and You're completely right. That is a great feeling to go with the selfish route like to get there the other way you go through Let's say if we're talking about fighting game, so we'll use a fighting game, but you know, this can be any sport This can be chess right? This can be anything and you can like you hit you hit the moment you hit when you hit flow and You have made every right decision and they have made every wrong decision

That you this happens a fucking football and basketball hockey like everything. Yeah, like I did everything right and they did everything wrong and it was Disgusting. Yeah, it was embarrassing like disgusting. It was embarrassing. Like, Diago and Justin and Evo 37 or like every trick hockey shot where the fucking asshole picks the puck up on the stick and does woo woo woo woo and just tricks it behind the goalie's head or the backflips, right? It's incredible. And that's like a flow state, right? I genuinely think that one of the issues That you run into with people who know it's one win

That's all I want right is They don't have the patience to learn a form of technical expertise in anything and Thus never reach flow ever. Never experience what it's like to actually win in that way. So to those of you who, because I'm using the word flow pretty liberally, flow is a situation in which the difficulty of your task perfectly meets your skill level. And you get into a kind of trance state,

a lot of people just call it in the zone, right? Where everything just works and goes and you feel it and you're feeling it and it is the mental state to chase. It's the reason why people play video games. Like, huge proportion of people play video games. and it is the mental state to chase. It's the reason why people play video games. Like, huge proportion of people play video games. But if you don't actually have any skill or practice or desire to improve,

flow is just not gonna happen. Sidebar, if you are actively chasing that state, I have never felt more of a reward in for that effort than with the character Asuka in Guilty Gear, because when the cards pulls all work out and everything is lining up and you just, again, Exodia on your opponent, you're more, that is the most pure version

of being in the flow state than any other fighting game I've ever played. So it's hard to... It feels incredible. It's hard to explain flow if you've never felt flow, but what I can do is explain, in fighting game terms anyway, anti-flow. when you hit a button and your brain goes, you just killed yourself. Falling off this edge in Smash Brothers to a self-kill. I'm specifically thinking of like Zangief and hitting a normal and the normal, I'm watching them wiggle. Like I'm waking up in a corner and I hit a button and I'm watching them shimmy and I'm like, I'm watching them wiggle. Like, you know, I'm waking up in a corner

and I hit a button and I'm watching them shimmy. And I'm like, they're going to, like in the millisecond that the button is starting to animate, I'm like, they're gonna block that. And I'm gonna die. Right? I have made, my skill is like, wildly out of place for this situation.

And I'm stuck. I'm not going nowhere. Let me let me do you one better you're Nagori Yuki your blood pops and you're nowhere near the opponent. Oh you're gonna die. I'm in danger. You're like yeah I'm flowing I'm in it I'm oh fuck damn yeah. So the funny thing about this is that this is describing a type of person

who cheats to feel something that they never would otherwise be able to feel, right? And they're doing so to scratch a FOMO itch that they're left out on. The other type of cheating that comes about is the pressure of delivering the way you used to when you have two people that are actually really close in competition

at a high level, but this person is juicing just a little bit because the performance expectation of them. Well, now we're up to extrinsic motivator. Now we're up to reward, prestige. Exactly, and come on, if you just juice it a little bit if you've got the fucking baseball Electro Nodes on your body, you know or whatever the case is you can find that perfect little edge

I mean everybody everybody understand that like listen Eva was for what a million dollars? Not even the capcom like a million dollars Yeah, and what have you had a 15% chance extra winning if you told your doctor He had the ADHD and he gave you a shit ton of Adderall help you focus sure sure right do whatever do what it takes to What have that got you just a little bit closer to a million dollars million dollars I changed a lot of things and then there's also the like, is it legal? Is it, and it gives it to give you an advantage?

Then why not do it? You know? So that's one of the most interesting things. I remember having like the longest discussion with somebody about soccer. So soccer has a cheating problem that is like outrageous. It is so crazy. Taking dives is baked into the system.

It's baked in. Cheating is baked into soccer. And there's a breakdown of perception, of huge proportions of major sports, and is cheating unsportsmanlike, or is it just part of the game? Is it against the spirit of the rules or is it within the rules as a resource to be tapped out?

Right. If I request a seat change to the other player side in the middle of our grand finals and it gives me an advantage in just stopping the momentum and making things a little more uncomfortable for you. And that's legal. Should I not do that every time? Is that, what's the line here, right?

It's the Super Bowl, and you know what? We're gonna save them up and just call every time out we have available back to back to back to back right as we're losing. Playing optimally, no matter what it's going to be. So what's interesting about things like that of course is whenever there's a moment where a controller disconnect for example occurs, right? That's a common one. There was a controversy over this just last week. Yeah, in Tekken at Daytona there was on the

game winning combo there was a controller connection pop up on the screen that like had a controller sign in prompt at DreamHack Dallas and it was yeah it was not Daytona Dallas and it was in the worst possible moment you know and that shit sucks because it's like that's a connect. That's a controller connecting that is attached to the console that should be deleted and Every time you got to disconnect controllers and go through the hole, you know Go to the settings Bluetooth disconnection, etc and it just fucking sucks because

Like that could be miss made so much easier if Sony gave a shit, but they don't. And so it's on the tournament organizers to make sure that you clean it every time, et cetera. Whenever something like that happens, there are moments where, for example, when that happened with Mena and Angry Bird, he just went like, fuck it, run it, run it, continue. They looked around, they're like, yeah, resume, let's keep playing.

We're both hot right now. We want to keep it going. And everyone's like, yeah. And it let's keep playing. We're both hot right now. We wanna keep it going. And everyone's like, yeah, right? And it's the hype thing to do in the moment to just continue the match and be like, we're not gonna take that. I wanna beat you on fair and square on our terms and continue this feeling.

Some people might be like, no, I'm taking my round. Officially, I'm allowed to get one or so. But to avoid that entirely where somebody is perceived to be like, you know, shitty or not, or killing the spirit of the moment, what's supposed to officially happen is like if the judge can get there in time, the judge makes the ruling so that the players have no decision in the matter, so that it's not up to them to be chill or not about an unplug. You know, the judge has to force the outcome, therefore you can't be like, hey, why didn't you just continue?

And that's a way of cutting past that type of advantage moment. Yeah, it's a weird one, man, but I think that every time any sports or any e-sports or any fucking competitive anything is gonna get to this granular level We're like what you ate for breakfast that morning will have an oh, yeah on your outcome Then yeah, if you don't have I believe the way you put it was Ukrainians in the dugout You know adult stealing signals and and tapping them on an electric fucking signal or machine back to your picture, then

you're now behind in tech because every other team has that. So now the game has evolved. What are you going to do? Not keep up? Well, that's stupid. I mean, is it against the rules to have a barbecue at your house and accidentally poison it so that everyone but you gets horribly ill right before the big tournament. Maybe Happen yet, so we don't know

You know and I know an MMA for sure there's that whole Everything you can do to get around do Sara everything you can do to you know, like certain types of things You can't eat certain type of things you can't Everything you can do to you know, like certain types of things you can't eat certain type of things you can't whatever circumvents testing but is still performance enhancing or Even just little things like I mean what I was talking about how like GSP was like yo frame data We're creating frame data for our opponents and so on, you know, there's a level of that where unfortunately You know, there's a level of that where unfortunately, it's not fun to have to think about the rules at that granular level, and it defeats the spirit of fun, hype, competition, etc.

But if it's for the million dollars, people are going to do that every single fucking time. Yeah, maybe. You'd be stupid not to, right? Maybe. Anyway, all this to say, that's where downplaying comes from Akuma isn't even that good. Come on guys. Yeah. Yeah, he's not even good I'm I'm okay fighting characters that get the kitchen sink and then some and then they die in one I'm I'm like that I've gotten used to to Seth back in the day and glass cannons, etc. Like as long as you melt accordingly

You can't get everything and then also have the highest life ever fuck sentinel from vanilla Marvel 3 Anyway And you know what though and it's not it's but the Gif is not the only one eating as we talked about, right? Aki and... Aki feels like a character from Marvel. Aki feels crazy. I don't know what to do. Don't stand in the poison. Don't get hit by the poison. There are poisons everywhere!

And stay away from the poison. Don't get hit by the poison. There's poison everywhere! And stay away from the poison. Don't take it. It feels like playing against Aki is don't get hit by a light. Yeah, she's got great conversions in that especially, yeah. So here, while we're talking about Six actually, I was immensely curious about what the fuck Akuma in World Tour mode was gonna look like. Have you taken a look at that at all? Yeah, I did. I got his costume.

Oh, okay. Okay. So you did, what does that entail? That entails like- It's miserable. No, but I mean, does it mean like you got to him and then did a bunch of his skills style up to a certain point? What do you do? to him and then did a bunch of his skills style up to a certain point? No.

What do you do? No, you go get a hundred gifts and feed him a hundred gifts in a row. Yes, yes. Okay. You feed his master meter up to a certain point. Yeah. So it's just interesting because for lore and whatever, Street Fighter plot depiction purposes, I'm like, what are you going to

do about this psycho fucking murderous asshole that's been around forever and make him acknowledge the player and have to like talk to you and hang out with you kind of. And you know, the answer is pretty much like, okay, one, he's going to always call you a fool. He's going to always be like, pretty much fuck you, but you're standing here, so I guess you'll get the reward that is my move. He's off on Akuma Island, of course, you gotta go do that. And he does not use his cell phone,

so he does not message you on the phone, right? We've circumvented that whole bit. But what's- He likes fishing. But what is odd and interesting to see is the retcon here, and maybe it's not a retcon as much as it is like an elaboration on things that were kept vague, but the idea of like Retsu and Ryu and a couple other people in this storyline being like, you know, Akuma is not really a bad guy. He's just really dedicated to his path.

And that path involves slaughtering people should they decide to step in the ring. He's destroyed hundreds of opponents that have agreed to put their life on the line. Therefore, it's all good if they're consenting, you know? Like, if you consent to what I'm about to fucking do when I wreck your body, and if you consent to having your head ripped off with a shoryuken, then, you know, I guess you signed on the dotted line, so it's fine. And there's kind of this, I think, of like, he's okay with the murder.

So he's not, like, really a nice guy, but... So this kind of falls apart, because they also canonize his Street Fighter II ending, where he just drops in on Bison and murders him. And they show you that with him having done it. But the idea is like well Bison was well one Deserving as he was an evil asshole or whatever, but two a worthy opponent and You know by Akuma's fucking knockout game rules

If I shunned Goku Satsu you in the streets and You didn't see it coming, if you're worthy, then you shouldn't have gotten hit by that shit. Bison should have been holding up. Right? You were worthy, so? It's actually funny because it's very vagabond, right? There's a whole lot of vagabond where it's like, hey Musashi, you're the tough badass

that took out the whole Yoshioka school. If I just walk up to you and shoot you and no one's looking I'm the guy that killed you. So I'm gonna just do that. How does that sound? This is pure headcanon. Like there's no basis for this at all. This is all my own ass. But I actually always liked the idea that I made up for myself. That the reason why Akuma just saw Bison and was like, it's on site, and just killed him without a second word, is because Akuma's whole life is based around his obsessive need to learn and be the best. I like the second one.

Yeah. And Bison, by the best. I like the said canon. And Bison, by the other metric, stole all of his power. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not his. He's a fraud. He got psycho power from Rose, and then he's switching bodies up, and he's doing everything he can. And this is a classic trope, right, of the villain that steals everything and acquires from others, you know, without earning it, and without walking the path. Yeah, sure, it certainly could be. It certainly could be.

But the the whole bit, you know, seems to kind of play in that it's like, yeah, like Ryu and him have a complicated relationship, right? It's not the like, it's not the like, you killed my master and I'm out for vengeance thing, as much as it is, like, it was that, but then I turned from the path, and now he says the line where it's like, it's not that he's rejected, like, the, the, the, it's not that he's rejected the Satsui no Hado as much as it is, is he doesn't acknowledge its existence, right? It's not an acceptance or a rejection. rejected the Satsui Nohado as much as it is he doesn't acknowledge its existence. It's not an acceptance or a rejection.

The path though, the power of nothing is the whole like, okay, emotions are there, but it's almost like the Shintoism inside of you is to not fight that thing that you're calling evil. It's to accept its existence, but also not particularly concern yourself overly with it. Mm-hmm So I look over and chat and I see everyone getting somewhere that's way funnier Which is bison is the guy who only has fun if he wins Bison is the FPS player who pays for cheats He gets psycho fucking cheats going yeah

He gets psycho fucking cheats going. Yeah, absolutely. All the scientists working on the hardest wall hacks. Like, even down to the way he treats his own body, he's like, I don't care what character I play, I just want to win. Bison goes down to Atlanta every time he needs a hit. I think. Bison has groomed a collection of dolls hey whoa whoa whoa whoa what what what what I think is Drake and Akuma's Kendrick

I think that Akuma's gonna sorry bison's gonna be on the on the list for the season two like there's text in World Tour that literally says he's still alive. Yeah, yeah, okay, you're right. I think there is a 0% chance that he will be in his old body. So there's the hat on the chair. So I saw some people referring to the fact that when you talk to Rashid's questline, he makes, he actually talks about, I think the Illuminuminati and he says that they found someone in the desert like Riding a horse, but I think that's Gil riding a horse That's like probably or so or something but like yeah there and then there's some people theorizing. It's like oh Bosch is body is gonna be resurrected as the new bison container or whatever the case. I mean man that I saw a saying Falke could be the new container.

Because that would allow Kira Buckland to become M. Bison. That would be that. But we didn't... Didn't we see a piece of art in Ed's story where they show you, like, Neo-Shadaloo in modern day, and Falke was just kind of in the background next to Baba Moa Limu and the other guy. Okay, fuck it. Just have him take over the monkey. Take over the monkey. Yeah, that's the best.

Let's just do that. I think that's awesome. There's also like- Well, how would you feel about M. Bison being a non-human animal? I am infinitely okay with anything that means he's not the same dude. I understand, like the argument about me going like new characters over returning faves and all that the hot take the the spicy one I understand that everyone wants the thing that they know all the time and I'm down Give me someone that does scissor kicks and a psycho crusher. Just let it be someone else

I don't know why I didn't get the root chat. A literal bison! A literal bison, yes. The fucking moocow with the fucking hat on him! Yeah, if he has to return, and his whole thing is about switching bodies, I'm A-OK with someone new showing up that does his moveset. That's totally fine. Psycho power, etc. I really do wish that, like, we didn't have to be so anchored down

by the past, but I also know that a lot of people feel super differently about this, and they're just like, the character should be in the fighting game that is the one that I know, and it shouldn't matter. We've gone over that a bit. So find like find a half measure that you I think compromise on it I think I've I've said it before and I'll just say it again just for posterity I Think having your storyline in your fighting game Determine who's gonna be available as a as a character is this who gives a fuck? Like how you can't have Nash again. He's dead again

Who gives the shit make it all skin so that the old bison can be on an alt skin and that can be a cosmetic From a flashback, you know, you can definitely like Like bring back. Hey Hachi. I don't care. Whatever you'd say to me. I don't care. I want to play as a Hachi Find a way to implement it.'s clever and not just, he survived. Here's a way to implement it. Have a picture of Harada when you turn on the game and he goes, I don't care. Yeah. There's always the classic go to a black and white or sepia toned part of the story where you're just playing as the past. There is's that there is that too where you're like oh he exists in the game because he was literally in just a flashback

Yeah But the version of events where it's like yes somehow bison returned somehow Palpatine is back Like I just it's it just that makes me anti-hype Yeah, so I agree with that but at the same time I'm not playing as Emperor Palpatine when I'm watching the Star Wars Whereas I'm playing as the M bison Like I want him bison back. I really like playing as M bison. He's one of my favorite characters Yeah, so just fight find a way to make a little girl or something I'll give a shit find a way to make it cool and and do something else

Yeah, just find a define an interesting way to do it. Hell even if it's the same guy make him like actively falling to pieces Like way worse than Nash was like he's disintegrating I mean the idea of him being trapped with JPS like thing is like you see a part of his the ghost in there So it's like it feels as if that's kind of what's going on You know and it seems like that's they certainly wanted to hint at that with the way the attacks of the ghosts come out and stuff But yeah, and then you see the hat and you're like all right. I guess you know I just I'm preparing for It's him. That's it nothing fancy there He is and that'll just be the most boring version of it, but you know

I feel like they can save that if they have a world tour moment or like where you and Akuma see him go really Yeah You know the the fucking Mega Man like the X seeing Sigma and going god damn it man Like really you were doing this again. You know it's just Can we not can we not?? Yeah, that's it. Just find a way. Find a fucking way. And you know, I wouldn't hate it if... I mean, okay, so here's the other question, right? Are you okay? I know you are. This is a fucking facetious question. But are you okay with aki replacing fong right?

I mean that's not even a question he's directly replaced fong, but the move said it's not identical right? Yeah, that's true, so it's it's the moveset. He should have kind of always had okay. Get get a little spicier Are you okay with Ed replacing Balrog? I think it has replaced Ballra but are you okay with that? Yeah. Okay. Okay I thought perhaps not but fair right because I can it's like no, but that's not wrong. It's not the boxer I know and love it's not that feels like that's not the thing. I want the boxer and it's like yeah Yeah, that is true. That's that's that is the case, you know But you as you you know, should the spiritual successor have the identical move kit? No, I don't believe in because then you take away from the they can be their own thing

So yeah, it gets it gets a little bit gets a little messy with that, you know But anyway, I I know that they're like having had this discussion multiple times. times, I know that it's like, okay. Somebody in the chat said, well, what about when Zangief gets replaced? I'm like, ah-ha! One, that's never going to happen, and two, Hugo rules! I play Hugo! Hugo's awesome. Hugo's pretty fucking great.

He sucks, but I like him. Oh, he's fun. I like Darun too Hakann erasure Hakann was erased the day he came Man when you could get his theme song the hardest decision in the game is picking the right 30 songs for that playlist, because you can only put 30 on any character. Now Third Strike takes up 18 or so tracks, but if you want to get all the other good ones in there,

it's gonna be a real tough choice. And Hakan's is in there so you can get your blah, blah, ba-ba-da-ba-ba, ba-ba-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. I feel like, yeah, anyway, I feel like I'm well aware that if everyone is down with the Smash Brothers solution of everyone is here and then some, but I just know that that's not realistic. That's just not gonna happen and or the there will be there will be you What do you sacrifice for that, you know? Yeah, so like

Like 2x ko is in a weird state in which like we talked about it more or less every time but it's like that roster roster has like hundreds of potentials and like every second of that game existing ever will be people going where the fuck is this character who will never be in it. Ever. And whenever something does come out that's a big scratch, then it's like, oh, holy shit, they're here finally.

That's a big- Should have been Mordekaiser. Should have been Fiddlesticks. Here's the one thing is I do not envy anyone on that team that is currently trying to pitch a brand new character as an original. Like, could you imagine the venom? What is that? No! Like could you imagine the venom? What is? No, it could you like imagine try to pitch an original new fighter for 2x ko just like 30 voices in the room

going shut up Out the fucking window and that's sad. That's a bit. That's sad. That's a little sad. You know, um Hey, ArcSys is gonna make their Android 21, they're gonna make their Labris, you know, they're gonna take their time to make their character, but like fucking everyone, everyone into XKO has to come from that list. Man, people would be so mad. Yeah, shout out to Rain Dog in

multiverses. Listen, I don't even care about League of Legends. I would be so mad if they took up a spot with an OC. You spent time recording lines, creating animation, creating costumes, making supers. You did all that for some brand new shit we don't give a fuck about what if it's the coolest character ever shut the fuck up it's not yeah yeah all right we all want Makoto now but there was a time when we never would have asked for Makoto we you know I love Marissa now there's a time when you never would have asked right you know, I love Marissa now. There's a time when you never would have asked. Right, it had to just come out of nowhere. You know, I have to say,

one of my favorite things about Street Fighter VI, and this is probably the last thing I wanna say about this, is that it's given me a really good excuse to just say the word Marissa all the time. Okay. I have made a concerted effort to exclusively and unerringly refer to that character By the name Mowisa because it's really funny to me

Why that's it? It's just really goddamn funny They actually smile funny. It makes me smile. She puts the extra emphasis to make sure that it's not even Marissa but Mariza. Like there's a whole extra stank on it, you know? Alright. Let's move on.

Anything of note for you? Yeah. What's going on? I say three minutes, three hours and 13 minutes into All right, let's see to beef though. I mean there were some again we we I had to break down the exact nature of What is a? Dark pattern game and I have to yell at everybody over that so talking about Street Fighter. That was content

All right, let's see Others really oh, let's see. This is the there's Silent Hill transmission in here, which is where I tried to kill myself But that's for later. Oh, what the fuck is up with the sorry? What does that put that Bisa mission in fucking yak as a dude I got to the Bisa mission Do you remember the Bisa you got it? There's this girl who's like on the ground and she's hurt and she's like I need Bisa and then you're like, oh, yeah Okay, I'll go get you pizza and you go get her pizza and she's like no Bisa I need a Bisa and she needed to learn that she needed to get a visa and

Then her fucking trafficker comes up per pimp trafficker is like hey you get back in the fucking house well how dare you escape and then you beat his ass and then he's like oh I was just afraid that I was gonna lose you I love you actually woman that I trafficked and will you marry me and she's like okay but no more funny business and then like it cuts to the beat the pizza guy delivering the pizza. That's like yeah Mission solved oh yeah this this motion you're right, okay? Willie do you know how many fucking side stories away from that I am? Fine fine. I'm like

600 side stories away from that. I just I'm not I don't the morality of this game series is just it's hurting me. It is aggressively like trying to whiplash is out of control. It's dude every time every Yakuza sorry every like a dragon game that I have streamed. I talk about like get your politics out about like, get your politics out of games or get your morality out of games. And it's like, the Like a Dragon series is so incredible because you will have characters,

like the old school macho idiots like Kiryu, be the most based, like open, accepting, tolerant people ever. And then they will turn around and you will see like the director of the game Writing his fucking manifesto on why we shouldn't allow Chinese people in the country Yeah, I mean I have I keep hearing about reference to secret Koreans, so I'm sure I'll find out eventually but just it's Batshit how they go about a lot of and like again something you're taking the piss out in some cases But I'm like it's like okay

So you have you have that and that was bookended this weird like it's the overly forgiven the overly forgiveness trope with which? Which is the shit that drives me crazy? Orochi Maru running around the village You you have this mission with the pizza in between rounds of pocket circuit racer where the dumb little child is like, be my boyfriend and Kiryu's like, oh, what? And then her dad is secretly spying and going,

oh no, this creep is near my girl and oh no, they're in a relationship and then he's like instead of Reporting you to the police if you can beat me in pocket racer you can prove how fast you are And it's like ah Of course that's real right there if why would you get dragged to the police station in BS if I fight you and I beat you in a Pokemon battle Then it proves that I'm the greatest Pokemon master. So yeah, actually you should date my daughter like I think I think the the funniest and like most unhinged moral lesson of that whole game is

The side quest I don't know if you did it yet, so spoilers if you did, I didn't, where you have to buy a 10-year-old boy a bunch of porno out of a vending machine. It's pretty early. It's in Kamurocho. I might have already done that four years ago. Okay. He's like, I really want the thing in the magazine in the vending machine. And Kiryu's like, okay, fine. I'll, this is a scary alley, right? I'll do it. And he goes up to buy it and he realizes it's like hardcore pornography. Yeah. And he's, and like Kiryu's crisis is I should not buy this child hardcore pornography

But that means I'll break my promise to him and which is more important Right like the decision. Yeah. Yeah makes is This child being able to trust adults is much more important right then right and it's like what? Never just walk back and say fuck off. Can you know word is bond? We're committed. Yes sneaking past the old ladies. Oh my god, man Yeah, so I just I'm like this it's batshit. It is batshit what like Whether or not this is again Negoti like This is again a negotiate like Who ever is writing it at the time?

Whoever that whatever their opinions are on the matter or whether they're taking the piss out of every battle monster slash my My Beyblade split the Red Sea. Why wouldn't it be used to solve world politics? Ass solution to problems and and just the level of like also there's a side mission where a puppy kicker runs off and then Kiryu just stands and watches it and then goes up to the guy afterwards who was getting picked on and beaten up and is like, oh, you're a pretty good guy actually and lets the puppy kickers run away. And you're just like, I don't, but why wouldn't you stop them and heat move them into dust while they're hurting the puppy? Like, I don't, what is Curious?

You know what's wild is that judgment does not have this problem. And like judgment does not have like nearly as strong as like a wild tonal disconnect with like your your it does. Oh, do I not remember? Does he because I'm like he's all justice and law right? Because he'll beat up a bunch of high school kids. Okay, just to do it. Okay. Just to do it. Okay. Um so like the the the the like a dragon games are so much fun and they're so much fun to talk about because I

think they're incredible. I think they're amazing. They're also from a different culture and usually that doesn't include any friction. Right? Because the themes of a particular piece of media don't actually clash. But like the Lyca Dragon games have the highest incidence of like story happening and I go, I don't agree with that. I think that's actually really bad. Cause it is another-

If you're doing that, it is another culture, but you are also playing as a gangster mobster in another culture. And it's also being as a gangster mobster in another culture. And it's also being satirical at the same time, you know, it's, but the parts that I say that to are when it's being sincere and like there, you're playing zero and there is like a perfect pin on this conversation, but it is from the ass end of the game, so I cannot even make reference to it. I feel like it's every time a Harry Dubois moment happens, and then there's that deeper scratching underneath of like there is a pure, strong, powerful,

real character underneath here who is incredible, it's like what if we never get to that part and we stay at that fucked up red check? And then it starts playing sincere music over the red check. You know? Like just, ugh. I don't get it man.

I don't fucking get it. But I'm sure. All I can say is he was the coolest guy. That's like the worst out of every game in the whole series. They'll be like, you know what? You really stuck to your guns in the end and I can respect that. And I'm like, I watched this guy eat a baby in the first chapter of the game. What do you, what do you fucking talk? Did you forget that? Did the character I'm playing forget that that fucking happened?

Forgiveness is an important virtue. We should all be willing to forgive those who have done horrible atrocities if they're sincere enough. Like there's a scene in- Oh I can't even- can I even talk about this? Are you gonna play Yakuza 4? I'm gonna- I'm gonna- I'm gonna get- I'm gonna get places. I'm gonna- we'll see what happens but yeah. Rest assured I'm sure. I've encountered more than my share of horrifying moments inside quest dimension alone

Yeah, yeah anyway anyway What's What's what I also I do this week There's only one thing of note for me to talk about and that is a little game called Crow Country. Yeah, that thing. So for those of you who don't know Crow Country is a smallish indie game. It is a survival horror game that takes place in a spooky amusement park. It looks just like FF7 original. It plays just like an old brazen evil game it is fucking incredible looks pretty cool from the trailer purple purple haired character yep yeah

and are yeah art style I mean I would say better than ff7 overworld like yeah but it's it's emulating emulating that yeah yeah yeah it is yet another fake-ass PlayStation one game not really a PlayStation one game it's just pretending um it is absolutely incredible it's very short it's about six hours and that was on the hardest difficulty it is Fluff less Not even a single iota of fluff or filler and it's a resi like

Yes, it is a it is a old-style survival horror. Okay, is it is it particularly about? survival horror. Okay. Is it is it particularly about emulating or feel it vibing a certain number like signal? Yes, Resident Evil one. Oh, this is also one. Okay. Yeah. Okay. It is also however pretty chill about it. So, on your standard difficulty you have 10 hints from like a little hint crow that'll just nudge you towards where you want to go and you all have infinite handgun ammo in the trunk of your car and if you are scrounging for shit and you maybe don't have enough ammo or health you can go to any conveniently placed trash can and it'll probably give you

like an item Okay, and those will respawn Survive the the hard mode disables all that shit You don't have infinite ammo in the trunk of your car and the trash can so I'll give you anything And the hints are disabled car and the trash can so I'll give you anything and the hints are disabled but it's like the the medium difficulty is fairly chill it's just an experience to be enjoyed if you want to play a survival horror game put it on the difficulty called murder of crows and that it is a prop put it like re2 level

difficulty okay how effective are the spooks with extremely with that our I'll put it like RE2 level difficulty. How effective are the spoops with that art style? Extremely. Extremely effective. Yeah. Okay. So it has a fully controllable 360 camera, which it does not gel with its inspirations at all.

Oh yeah, that's true. Yeah. And what this leads to is panning the camera yourself and there was something like right next to you and you didn't notice it was there. Ah, okay. As well as some classic jump scares. It has stop and shoot gameplay. It has very classic survival horror like find all the key items and do all the silly little puzzles kind of progression. The story is unexpectedly incredible. It is very much a narrative of like, what is happening here? Like the what is the big question?

Um, and it builds on it and builds on it and builds on it. And it gets to the reveal and the reveal recontextualizes literally every interaction and nearly room in the game. And makes it just has the, and you get every answer and you're just like, oh, wow! Really? Six hours. Yep. It's short and sweet. Should I run this this week?

And it is incredible. I would recommend it to everyone. All right, fuck it, we're running it this week. Yeah, it's great. If you want friction Play on murder of crows if you want a smooth ass video game experience play it on a survival horror What about piss baby has only played signal or play survival, okay, all right

signal or play survival, okay, all right Because survival horror will allow you to get like extra materials out of like trash cans and vending machines and we'll have a hint robot to help Yeah, I was um this was a probably Maybe two weeks down the line, but at that length fuck it Bob up that so when I when I was playing it and I was watching the ending, I'm like, this is just as good as Signalis. And then I waited a tick. And then I went, that was a stupid thing to say. But I really meant it when I said it. It's almost as good as Signalis.

I see. It's almost as good as Signalis. I see. It's, it's right there. Are you including the secret ending debunk, uh, scraping for signal? I don't give a shit about that. I don't give a fuck about that. Okay. To me, Signalis is about the ending that you got. It very much like Silent Hill two. I actually really disliked people going for Silent Hill 2 and Signals and a couple other games.

Interesting. And Witcher 3. Huh. I see people go, oh, I got the bad ending. All the endings are good. You got the one that you deserve. Huh. And you don't think about when a game has multiple endings, you don't take them into

consideration of your experience. So these are the three specific games that I reference, which is Silent Hill 2, Witcher 3, and Signalus. If the endings are all of the same general written quality and they naturally flow out of the way that you are playing the game, there's no bad or good ending. Okay, I get that part. What I more so mean is like, good or bad, there's just, there's different endings, but like when each ending shows me something else or reveals an aspect of the character, or of the game, or something going on, I consider them all as a part of the whole in a way.

And like even moments where like, what is it, the fucking B ending in Silent Hill 1, or? Yeah. Oh yeah, Silent Hill 1 has five, I think, that are all interesting to some degree. Yeah, like I didn't get the fucking car- wake up in the car crash ending, but holy fuck is that a visceral- oh my god. It's the only one that has a CG cutscene too! And that's a moment that, like, if you don't't get that you should Get it and find out that that exists in the game because it makes that experience better knowing that that's there You know so there's things like that where I'm like I do want to know about the other experiences to know

If there's things like that to consider, you know the brutal ass. Holy fuck. That's harsh. I can't believe they actually put that in And then yeah in two in Silent Hill to I got getting in water I was like I think that was awesome. That was great. I got in water the first time I played the game Hmm. I like in water a lot. I also like leave I Don't like Maria If you want to talk about like I think they're all appropriate I think if you get Maria, that's a downer ending That's way worse than in water. But on that note, I would say signal us has multiple endings that are really interesting for the story

But there's that one super obscure obtuse one So I think that one is kind of perfect in in its own context I think that one is kind of perfect in its own context. So the three standard endings you can get in Signalist do to some degree reflect your play style and in some cases reflect your play style in an opposite way that you would possibly expect. So like my hyper completionist like attempt to do the best play style rep like resulted in a ending that I did not expect

But feels appropriate however The signal is ending that is the weird one that people had to data mine out It's too much only it only makes sense under the context of you data mind this out You went outside the rules the game prescribed to you. It's a reward for those who scraped everything. Well because the context of the signal-less bonus ending is to go beyond the events of the game, and under that context, people who spectrogrammed and datamined it to get there went beyond the game itself.

Like, under that context, I get it. As somebody who doesn't give a fuck about that shit, I would not want or like that ending, but I'm never gonna get it. So the third ending, like the steps were you actually have to datamite, like you can't do it through the rules in the game? Oh yeah, no, people had to analyze like radio signals and shit. But what I mean to say is can you do it without that? Oh yeah, you can, but you'd never have the...

The obtuse-ness is just extremely high, right? Because like Gaster, for example, is like that's in the files of the of the game right yeah but there was um I briefly mentioned this there was a class do you remember remnant 2 that that kind of loot shooter that came out a little while ago name rings a bell but so it's pretty. I wish I had more time for it. But there was a, like a, the character class that was like metaphysical and like breaking the rules of reality kind of magical class called the Archon.

And the only way to get it was to data mine the sequence of events that you needed to do to get out of it. It was a completely impossible to understand sequence of requirements and actions and it was intended to be pulled out of the game because that fits its archetype. Yeah, okay, if that's what they were going for then that makes it a bit more acceptable to me but I didn't interpret the signal ascending that way

I thought it was just an insanely obtuse series of steps that were meant to be almost like the stars and braid Where it's just like yeah, no the stars and braid could be intuited by a person playing braid the the extra ending in Signals would never have been able to be figured out. Why would you have ever done these random things? Extra curriculars. In any case though, all that to say like, yeah, I like taking every ending into account for what they're going for. Yeah, Crow Country has the one ending and it's perfect. Okay.

Okay. And that's it for Pat. If you wanna check out every single game show this week, I will be covering literally all of them over at Twitch.tv slash Pat Stairs at this week. That includes the Indy 3 event at eight o'clock Pacific tomorrow morning. That includes the Indie 3 event at 8 o'clock Pacific tomorrow morning. That includes the Guerrilla Collective event June 6th at 10am Pacific. That includes the Summer Games Fest and Devolver Direct Volvee's Birthday Party where I will be joined by my wife Peach Saliva at 2pm Pacific on June 7th. It also includes on June 8th starting at fucking 9 a.m. Pacific

Future of Play Direct, Wholesome Games Direct, Latin American Games Showcase, Women-Led Games, and the Future Games Show. And then on Sundays, Xbox and PC gaming at 9 a.m. Yeah, I foresee I What silk songs gotta be one of these right? I'm not playing this game. I'm not playing this game every day. I'm not playing this game with you I did not have a silk song. I did not forget that this week was full of game shows I'm simply choosing to play video games instead. Is that so wrong? It is, yeah.

I'm choosing to play the games I'd like to play. And I guess I will find out about the trailers for the cool stuff afterwards. I'm playing the game of hold my dick in my hand and hope for silk song. Look, when State of Play was going the other day, I was in the middle of playing some shit while it was happening and it was like, oh, are you going to? But I was like, no, I'm good.

I don't want to watch State of Play, actually. And then to come out the other side and have people go, that was a waste of time. And I was like, yeah, glad I didn't. Now I can just continue. That was a stream in which I yelled at the top of my lungs that I was like yeah glad I didn't know I can just yeah that was a that was a stream in which I like yelled at the top my lungs I was gonna kill myself and Paige had to be like stop it yep so we'll talk about what was revealed after the fact since I was able to go back and be like hey look it's

astrobot that thing I remember that that cool. And I can just deal with that when I want to. But all that after a quick break. BRB. This week, the podcast is sponsored by Raycon. Hey Raycon, what's up man? Hello. Yes, so Raycon, that is the everyday earbuds that we've talked about a couple times. That's whenever I'm trying to tell you to get wireless into your life, get wires out of your life.

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Thanks Raycon. This week the podcast is also sponsored by ExpressVPN. That's my favorite VPN service. Using the internet without ExpressVPN is like... Oh! Taking a call on a train or bus on speaker for everyone to hear. I have seen people do that.

They're crazy! Oh, god damn it, it's the worst. It's the worst. They're crazy! Okay, okay, okay, okay damn it. It's the worst. It's their crazy Okay, okay, okay, okay? Yeah No if you are on the train or bus or whatever and you've got your phone and Your version of using your phone is doing this and just holding it out in front of you and do it fuck you man

You are not allowed to use your phone. That sucks. I will make an exception. That is if you're with the crew and everybody is listening and vibing, you're listening to something or it's a whole group of people that are involved, then that's an appropriate situation for speakerphone. If you are one person using speakerphone, you're out of your fucking mind. I think a singular human using speakerphone anywhere outside of their house is violating the social contract. It's crazy. If you're a group, go for it.

I get it. That's what it's for. You know? But man, I'm reminded of the days of the PSP are worn around the neck, you know, hook the chain up to the PSP Rock that shit. Oh Fuck man. You know, I will give a free pass to old guy Using speakerphone to just make the phone way louder

Okay, yeah as an accessibility option. That's fine. I'm OK with that. Some people, yeah, if you hit them with the make your computer easier to use, sure thing. The point remains, don't do that. That's terrible. And that is what using the internet without ExpressVPN is like.

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I just have to say I just saw a tweet that said the Olympic fencing committee has allowed me to compete in the event with a handgun because I have 9k health which is one of my favorite tweets I've ever seen about a club. That's one way of interpreting the events I suppose. And then that tweet got deleted while you were reading the ad oh but I saw it hey man he used to have 850 you know some games some games it was worse than others I would love to see you like how far you can turn it down before people are like this is fair I mean so one you've got Seth who is like I think 800 then it was still didn't feel like

enough for Seth Seth was stupid I okay you're a GEEF player so you would you would yeah I would feel that that's like like think that was like the world's the modern world's first introduction to a fucking 9-1 matchup I think was Seth Keefe But Shit fuck was about to say before that. Oh, yeah. No, I hated what it was like Oh like are you like if you're a if you're Chun Li you're just gonna get less cuz you're Chun Li like if you're a if you're chun li you're just gonna get less cuz you're chun li like if you're a girl You're tiny therefore you get less and it's like yeah But is your move is your kit balanced around having less or it's just the idea that you're a smaller girl cuz

This should is it the vagina tax. It's it might be the vagina tax. Yeah, I have really bad news I Actually played a second game, and I forgot about it, and I actually need to talk about it because it's really excellent oh shit okay are you so red candle is the developer that made detention and then devotion which was the horror game that got fucking hell banned off of forever because of making fun of the China yes devotion devotion. Yes. Yes. Yes Reds red candle has put out by the way. They sent me a code for this. I didn't buy it For they put out nine souls That's nine the number and S. Ols. Oh

Yes, is a metroidvania Sekiro like Yes, in fact that Fucking rules Has it has really good Good game feel good Sekiro style parrying mechanic like the primary mechanic is parrying to build up a meter and then your

Cash out of that meter is to put like a traditional talisman on someone's face and then pop it and they explode Yeah plot is incomprehensible Okay It is very confusing This is one of those games that Yeah, I basically from time to time slow beef will just like cold call and just be like yo this Yes, I'll be like yeah, okay, and he's been he's been dead on with them so far So this was one I was like yeah, okay immediately added to cart was gonna pop and in fact my cart right now I didn't I didn, I didn't actually,

my cart before starting the podcast is Nine Souls and Crow Country, both sitting there, ready to go. These are good choices. So I have a baby now, which means the phrase make good choices is gonna enter into my life very strongly all the time. Willie, you're making good choices. Sounded cool from the jump. So yeah, no, the thing with Nine Souls, the plot is totally incomprehensible and I don't

know if that's because I don't know any of the cultural background that it's using or that it's actually just like nonsense. But more importantly than that, the setting is Is Tao Punk, which is super super super far off sci-fi, but Asia. Ooh. Tao Punk sounds awesome. Yeah, yin and yang and rhizomatic energy and all that shit. Hell yeah. I like that. It's really cool.

Okay. It's just really fucking cool. I like the word punk being added as a suffix to things I didn't think you could add it to. That gets my brain juices flowing there. Uh, sick. Alright. Alright, so yes, let's be efficient about this. Uh, state of play, dropped, and with that there was a couple of announcements.

Um, not gonna go over- They announced some Overwatch fucking game that is gonna die Marvel rivals looked pretty good Names gone all right Well here if you're talking it started with this concord Concord yeah, no that games dead okay Yeah, I just didn't even yeah perfect all right long yeah, so God of War Ragnarok Vanilla deal Valhalla is coming to PC

That's and I'm guessing every one of these PC releases is gonna now be that like well fuck you PSN Yeah, yeah, so yeah, that's correct. That's pretty cemented Anyways battle of Antara If you wanted some more Elden Ring energy And you weren't satisfied with shadow of the earthchery here comes something with big Elden Ring energy This time you got a kid on your back. Yeah, that's cool I don't know how you're gonna fight all these monsters with a baby attached to you, but hey, man Didn't like samurai Jack have to do that for a second or right in

You know, there's there's right and did it. Yeah, there's some precedence there That is yeah yeah that's 2025. I mean there's a moment so there's a the energy of like you know like souls like fantasy stuff going down has there's an interesting element where like the timing of the lag the hang time the boss spends in the air before it slams down at you is also like, I'm like, oh there's a souls element to the amount of time spent in the air because that is the Godfrey slam, you know, before he comes down on you. It's so weird because that, it didn't used to be like that. Demon souls enemies just swing at you.

Yeah. But FromSoft then started doing this thing, which is an action gamey thing to do. They implemented a bit more of that. Sekiro did it a bunch too as well, I would say, with the lightning strikes and a lot of the bosses have their, the floating up in your space slashes that you have to dodge from. I'm just thinking of Morgoth just like, I'm going to hit you. I'm going to hit you. I'm going to put it back down. And yeah, and of course, if they're going to do it, then other people are going to copy that homework. And there you go. You felt it in that trailer. There's some PSVR stuff, the

alien rogue incursion behemoth. Sure. Not much. Yeah I remember shit from that fucking thing. Where wins meet seemed pretty interesting so it is boy is it a good time for if you want to play samurai action games there's a lot of samurai ass games coming out or available right now. Where Wins Meet was the the one with the the yin and yang and then though the Umbrella versus the ninja looks kind of jank Is that is that more wuxia is that is that is that Was it Chinese this looks China, okay? Yeah, this looks this looks like this looks China yeah, okay excuse me my mistake So you've got a little of that.

I also couldn't, like, yeah, I was looking up the developer and I didn't see anything, like Everstone. I didn't see that they had a particular track record. Path of Exile 2? We have known, like, so that's almost been a running joke in my house because Paige got really into Path of Exile 1 but then fell off and then they announced Path of Exile 2 and she was like, oh I'm really excited for that and like every two months she's like, is Path of Exile 2 out yet?

I'm like, no, it's four or five, six, seven more years away they announced that so long ago and this is one of the ones that does actual couch co-op like yeah right yeah so well I did not expect these games to be or like even Balders for that matter to be like the return of couch co-op you know couch? Couch co-op for the style of game that P-O-E is a cursed acronym. Path of Exile 2 is a big deal because couch co-op for that type of game rules. It's really great. But it's just like in my brain from years ago, there's a thing of like, oh, the isometric view mouse game is what killed couch co-op actually

That's where online matters and or single-player You know fucking playing that yeah, like I'm like these games kill Play they helped so that's that's quite a surprise and That's quite a surprise. And then, yeah, we previously mentioned Astro Bot as well. So shout-outs to, I will say that, Astro Bot was one of the one really great experiences of PSVR beforehand. And this, getting a full game, is like, yeah, that was really, really cool. It was just a good platformer that felt like you were playing with a toy in a toy box.

And here it's getting a full-ass game with a bunch of Basically looks like a Mario adventure, you know, really I'm As a random Sony like IP thing I'm surprised that they even brought it out this way, but I'm glad that they're like, yeah I'm also surprised because it was it was yeah, it was very it was again the funnest part of the the the VR like some of that launch stuff and I guess other people felt the same way so it's like yeah let's just make it a full thing it was it was legit solid that deserves this this this game and then there was Silent Hill 2. So... Silent Hill 2 looks, uh, bad. Okay, so, uh, lots, lots of discussion about that.

I saw the one thing with, like, by making Maria look more normal-cloved, you have defeated the purpose of Maria. Yeah, Maria's supposed to look like a trashy prostitute That's the that's the that's the depiction based on his head and and you have Kind of taken that away in making her not look like that The I don't know what the with the the fucking gigachad beam was about Why there's a bunch of gigachad silent hill people are generally unhappy with the character redesigns And so they have decided that they would go with their own character redesigns where they will gigachad the characters I Understand okay

Yeah, it's so like when you look at these remakes, and I'm like you know Yeah, it's a weird one when you look at these remakes and I'm like, you know, if you ask me in advance, I would say like, don't change things about like the game, just make it the same thing in almost the same way, but make it look like modern, whatever, just give it the up, give it the Shadow of the Colossus, you know, just, but, but, but then you get RE2, which is like, actually, we have a better idea, and we can do better things and improve on it. And you're like, okay, that's cool, because someone who gets it is doing this. So it's, it's, it's really a rough toss up, because you never want to say, don't change things when you're doing this. Improving things and making it better is always, should be on the table providing that the person directing it gets it. So this

conversation would be very different if it was easy to acquire a legitimate copy of Silent Hill 2. It'd be a very different conversation. We briefly mentioned it earlier and it's like the feeling of, well this thing is always gonna be around. It's like with Silent Hill 2, there's no way legally or easily to get a regular version of Silent Hill 2. Yeah, because I mean for what it's like,

I played Silent Hill 2 the other day, and I played it. You know? So like for example, when we're talking about Resident Evil 2 Remake, or Resident Evil 4 remake You're like, you know, I really didn't care for what they did for re4 remake Well, luckily you can buy re4 original on every platform that has ever existed

Like Capcom like can't stop you Where I sell to like you have to jump through some hoops. And all I want is an official legally available Silent Hill 2 version that isn't a broken piece of fucking shit. So this game is supposed to be a replacement for that. And it looks bad. And there is one thing that I saw that was really cool, when James picks up a point of interest, he pulls out a physical map and actually marks it in red. I think that's actually

really cute. Okay, so the map is like... diegetic. Yeah, I think that's really nice. I don't like Yeah, I think that's really nice. I don't like anything that I have seen in every cutscene they've shown. You hear a little bit of Mary's letter reading and it's not as good because of course it isn't. That, I mean, that from months ago I was saying like that's a lose-lose there's um, there's no way I

I I don't I I have a sneaking suspicion that it will come out and be praised from people who would never played the original and go and it'd be like oh this is a solid horror game and the good themes and all that and it will be a bunch of people like you or I going no you don't get it they don't understand! That praise will go right on the shelf next to their praise of Detroit become human. Yeah. So, you know, that's fine. I think, yeah, like, I guess the part where there's just, there's no way to ever recreate

like that, yeah, the way that line reading in particular went down is like, that's tall slim pickings. That's brutal. There's just no way around that for sure. Every time Konami was in that fucking dead space, not dead space, while Konami was just like, we don't make games anymore, we're doing pachinko, fuck you. And you're like, god damn it, it sucks,

because Metal Gear and Castlevania and all these things that are awesome are now trapped and locked forever. It's like, oh, they're coming back to games? Fuck. After everyone else is gone? God damn it. We wanted those cool things again, but I think what we really wanted was for you to give them away to other people.

I was watching that stream. Who could do good things with them? I was watching that stream and I was like like it's good that Metal Gear died and somebody pointed out to me today That they are in fact remaking MGS 3 and that I had completely forgotten Delta Delta. Yeah It's like I think I think watching James do pipe combos on the nurses was when like I just went oh Right cuz we all know how that worked out in homecoming. I mean fair. I would try to figure those those pipe cobbler I know I know I was watching that and I'm like, oh, this is for the people like wooly But I I had like a whole, I had like the whole conversation in my head

with myself playing both parts and I'm like, I'm watching James do pipe combos and action combat on a nurse, right? And I go, that looks awful and counterintuitive to the themes of the game. And other Pat says, dude, have you played Silent Hill 2 recently? The combat in that game is terrible. It's really weird. And you just bonk people with a stick and it makes a weird noise. And what do you want them to do if they would remake it? Like they're not gonna keep it that way. To which original Pat says, I don't want them to at all. I don't want them to do anything.

I don't have to tell you like what I would do to improve it when my stance is stop. Valid. Valid. You know, as somebody who, yeah, I'm okay with not everything getting adapted to everything else or updated or remade to everything. That's totally fine. In this instance, I feel as if looking back at the entire Konami catalog, the, like, it's funny because even though PT was like the salt in the wound, like the bad taste that kind of ended out the Kojima's career there, that move was ultimately an

example of the only way I think to salvage things like Castlevania Metal Gear and Silent Hill is if someone who has an interesting idea and knows how to do, tell an interesting story, comes along and says, hey, I have an idea for this. Like if a Yoko Taro wanders in the door and says he wants to do something with Castlevania or some shit like that, you know, someone coming along and doing something is like the only way you can salvage that at this point,

because Konami, again, they're still not really a game company anymore. They're just kind of managing IPs, you know? Also of note for the Silent Hill transmission itself, showing off the Silent Hill 2 stuff and then being like Look at all this awful merch You can buy and like actively like shilling like garbage

bad impression also of Specific note they're like you can buy a replica of James's jacket from Silent Hill 2 They're like you can buy a replica of James's jacket from Silent Hill 2 and they show off a jacket That is not James's jacket Because it doesn't because James's jacket doesn't have a fucking checkerboard pattern on the inside I don't know what the fuck they're talking about Iconic. Was there a price on it? Oh, yeah, it's like hundreds of dollars. Sick I mean, I guess as long as you're coming in underneath

Leon or Dante jacket costs you're probably a okay It's not it's not but it's not a replica of the character's jacket like I know what the who the fuck is it fucking for? Like I looked at it for one second and was like that's not James's jacket well Well, maybe it's the new jacket. Fuck off. The iconic new. Yeah, dude, you're going to be absolutely yelling at a bunch of kids who this is the definitive only experience they're going to have with this game. You know, there's a very conscientious ramp up to have four Silent Hill projects coming out, right? There was the small one the other day, the Sudoku one.

There was the Japan one. The Silent Hill F. Yeah, the Japan one. The Ascension's still going on. A Wuthering here. Yeah, and your ass. Yeah, here yeah yeah for yeah so literally the movie is also sound held to and also looks bad by the way good good so they're making a game to go alongside a movie that is remaking the game townfall

making the game. Townfall. Yeah, awesome. Glad to have state of played with everybody. Yeah, that was miserable. Okay. Well, Summer Games Fest is coming, but Jeff Keighley says don't expect huge reveals, so don't worry about it too much I mean at this point the meme is just like the meme is that it should never come out so that it can get the bit Can continue really? Just what do you even do with yourself if it does you know they did show off a monster in a wilds trailer Which was good and of note is weapon switching which is a big deal for Monster Hunter. Oh two classes. You will be able to at least switch between two weapons. Is there any downside? And also your little your little chocobo whatever the fuck is it can zip in and out and like you can hop on at

will in a fight. Can you switch at any time? I think you have to switch on the bird. Okay, because I'm like, can I fucking, whatchamacallit, the flying... Insect glaive? Can you insect glaive into midair and then switch to... No, I think you have to be on the bird. Insect glaive? Can you insect glaive into midair and then switch to a fucking greatsword? Or take all your buffs from a charge blade and then that'd be nuts.

No, I don't think so. I think you can just change the weapon in the fight. Okay, good. Because that would be crazy That would be too much the game does not stop building that no, okay The Yeah, so then beyond that there's a couple little indie things that were shown some trailers came out there's a

pretty gorgeous looking indie fighter that I saw a trailer for not too long ago and I think it's got a this has got a demo now called frost fire just really cool hand-drawn 2d shit here's a look at some of the way look at the way some of the supers look just like I you show me a little bit of that and I'm like okay I'm already curious to see what you what you got going on yeah lovingly detailed sprite work and and everything when the supers pops off is like, it's cutting into like, not 2D view anymore, going into multiple angles of fun stuff. So, very sick.

On that, there is a FPS called Mullet Mad Jack. Yeah, Mullet Mad Jack looks all the magic was super cool see this thing yeah that looks yeah man what a hotline Miami was first person in it inside of a classic anime yeah good shit there looks like you're punching shit and melee like melee first person stuff is rad as shit. That looks super dope. And that, I think it actually, it came out, right?

Oh, it's out! Yeah, yeah, yeah, it came out this month, or last month rather. Definitely worth checking out there. The uh, oh yeah, they didn't announce it at the state of play, but the PSVR 2 is going to also have an add-on for 60 bucks. You can get an adapter that lets you plug it into PC. That should not cost extra, but I'm guessing the reason why they didn't include this in the announcement is because it's a bit of a like undermining your platform

Announcement, it's a concession essentially that like oh if you wanted to go play steam VR I guess you could instead of having to go buy a Oculus or one of the competitor and I just get an index Well, the point is to be like no, you don't have to get multiple headsets, you could get this one and then it's not... Yeah, no you would get multiple headsets, no you get the one headset, you would get the index. So it's, yeah, it's like, if you want to get PSVR to access but then you also want to get

SteamVR stuff, then you get this. Why don't I just wait for the PSVR games to come to Steam like all the other PlayStation games? Well, what about the PSVR exclusives? Yeah, okay. Those will come to the Steam at some point. Everyone's coming to Steam. Um, after no word, we got a new trailer for Metal Slug Tactics and that is a Metal Slug game that looks like a tactical fuckin' RPG.

Who? And the sprites look correct for Metal Slug and I was like, what I saw- That looks great. Yeah, and when I saw it I was like wait hold on is this like it's not like a phone game that was like because I'm super like like I'm currently still fucking seen flashbacks I'm like okay no wait this wasn't the bad one right that was the other Metal Slug thing that was a shady it's like yes okay no this is just a real well that looks great looks super cool very Very, very down.

That sprite work looks gorgeous. Way to just preserve the sprite beauty and adapt it to an isometric view. It works excellent in a grid form like that. I love you Metal Slug. From afar, I don't actually like playing Metal Slug at all, but I love that it exists. Yes. This has been, been yeah a couple years of radio silence and now we're finally getting an update on it but I just

remember like yeah I was convoluting it because I remember there was another Metal Slug game that was a like self click cow clicker game essentially you know. Shits tight. Check that out coming this year as well. A remake of Riven coming out this summer, June 25th. Did you ever? You know what, that is another game that I'm like, I love Riven, I don't wanna play it, and I don't wanna see other people play it,

but I'm glad that it's there. So I've never played Myst or Riven, I've seen them and it makes sense that like, cause I'm like, okay, whenever I thought, when you think of those games, it was like, they looked so amazing at the time cause they're pre-rendered 3D in an era when we didn't have the ability to have those environments. And now we do. So yeah, you do imagine you're like, oh, we should probably be able to walk through those environments the way they looked in CG except, in 3D except not actually pre-rendered anymore. It makes sense, but I've, yeah, I've always heard them as like, they're classic beloved

puzzle ass games and I've been curious, but you know know never really kind of pulled the trigger. Hey man, do you want to feel really stupid? Like the feeling of like, just like I'm like a stupid baby, I'm dumb. Then have I got a game for you. It's called Riven. Riven? Yeah, okay. Now, I was able to get some ways into The Witness, I'll have you know.

I did. I did solve some of those little puzzles. I played some of The Witness. And I felt pretty smart when I solved them too. And then I got to a video of some British guy talking about bullshit and I felt pretty smart when I solved them to and then I and then I got to a video of some British guy talking about bullshit and I was like oh this game's all the way up its own ass and then stop playing I also babb'd for a shocking amount of time I got way I did more Baba than I thought I could.

So, yeah. Anyway, so that's dope. Pretty much it though. So beyond that, the only other thing I wanted to talk about was that we got a really good look into how Microsoft is reshaping Blizzard Esports. Oh, did you see that before I sent it to you? Yes. Oh, isn't it good?

Steven Totillo at GameFile sat down and talked to them after the acquisition. So you know, fun little exchange there. So I have this in front of me. Would you like to play the part of game file? Sure. So, how has the acquisition impacted what you guys are doing? Microsoft has been nothing from an eSports point of view, but a really supportive and amazing partner in terms of really enabling what is best for the players and the fans.

How did they do that? What did they do? It's been only a few short months, but so far they've been a really awesome partner. You can't tell me anything that Microsoft did to help out specifically? Like? I don't know. You just said they helped out. You said they're a good partner. I'm sure something comes to mind They have been incredibly supportive incredibly supportive on all the different levels And this is where I was told I should just ask people to call me the n-word Miller here, because like, he got media trained to not answer any questions a certain way.

But like, it just completely fell apart right at the end, where the phrase, on all the different levels is not a thing a human being would ever say to anyone. It doesn't even make any sense grammatically. I mean it's hilarious and sad and frustrating and awesome every time someone who's hired to do PR hits that wall and just has no escape and has to become a robot. And says like a grammatical nonsense to somehow hit the talking point. Infinitely fascinating, man.

Just, yeah, like. Yeah, yeah. Like, okay, we just, you can, like, if there was a way to even, no, no, because if you were to say, like, we can't talk about that at this time, or whatever the case is. Oh, you mean you're, well then that could imply

that Microsoft is actually doing something with these ports. Right, so. And we can't have people expecting something of Microsoft. See, that's the thing is like, when you plead the fifth, you know, essentially, like the problem is that that's not also creating a positive, happy spin on things, you know? It's just it's not answering, but you need to leave them feeling good about your answer,

but you don't want the answer to create the impression that you are thinking about doing things or possibly considering doing things, because that would then set expectations up for failure and that's bad. So. I'm watching every single Sony event so that I could see blood-borne like let let people be excited for what like Microsoft doesn't want to disappoint people by having people get their hopes up for shit they have no idea or have no plans to do and their response is to actively tell people to not get excited unless they tell them to get excited which means you're never excited.

I, you know, I just, yeah, there's always, there's a level of like, hey, you know what though? You, you sure did hire the right person that, that probably came from like the fucking White House press corps. You know what I mean? You towed the company line, man. Just, yep. Very supportive. You ran that fucking Jedi defense. Extremely, very helpful.

Absolutely nothing. How'd they help you? A lot. With what? Everything. With what? Everything! Yeah, I think I've talked before about how the word excited has been destroyed entirely by PR departments. It means nothing. Anytime. Please be excited. Yeah, I mean there's I mean so there's that there's the funny like, you know Please look forward to it that do you have a message for your fans? Yes, please be, et cetera. But no, even just from like athletes are talking about how they're very excited to do the thing or to get a word.

Everyone at all times in any business thing is very excited to do the thing. And it just, it means fucking nothing. So I feel, I feel that's the reason why hype has replaced the word excitement. Because no one is going to say, I think you should really get hyped. Well, until you say that now. Oh, I say it. Until the PR departments are just like, you know, we're really hype for our partnership with Blizzard.

You know what we need to do? When hype is been used up by all the fucking PR departments, we need to switch the act the word to actually be excited into something they're never gonna fucking say out loud. Oh, man. So like, hey, hey, everybody, I'm really ready to jork my peanuts for bloodborne at the Sony event. It. Because there's no way some fucking suit is gonna say, Oh, I hope everyone's ready to jork their penis. Yeah, but then Max has to update his videos to the jork my penis and rage compilation. Oh No that sucks man max's brand is gonna get fucked over as soon as our departments Are these stupid businessmen. I really hope they don't catch on. Let's take some letters. Hey if you want to send in a letter send it to castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com

That's castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com Here's one coming in from some asshole. Hey, yo, Kerbo. Apologize if this has come up in the past, but I'd like to know what it's like when Pat plays a Bethesda RPG with his completionist goblins. Does he melt down the scripting breaks, as he often does, and it becomes impossible to complete a save file? Have you actually done 300 plus quests in Skyrim? What's the limit to this behavior? Is it possible to complete Skyrim?

No, it's actually not possible to complete Skyrim Sky off when the interest fades off. I play I play it and if I look at there's so much that I'm like Oh, is this an interesting quest or does this pull me? Then I'll go there. And if not, am I passing next to it? Then I'll check it out. It's weird because the completionist, like I have to do everything, doesn't occur in games where they just dump me into a big open area.

Huh. See, yeah, I do that at all times with anything. But, admittedly, when LPing something, I do think about how it's like, ah, I should probably see more of this to make a better LP because you don't want to miss out on good moments if they're... If you did a top-to-bottom game, but one of the funniest or best sidequest moments was never done doubts that sucks, you know, so Here's one coming in from soggy snake who says Pat wooly

What is mr. Bean is he an alien? Is he an asshole simply autistic? This has been a subject debated amongst beaners across the globe for decades. They're called beaners, apparently. That's news to me. Okay. The show's opening shows him falling from the sky with a spotlight, which leads some fans to debate that he's an alien or a fallen angel kicked out of heaven. Mr. Bean's cartoon ending insists he's an alien, but many beaners debate the canonicity of the series since it takes so many liberties with bean lore. He's British. He's British. Right. True. Let's not call them that.

That's actually not what we should call them. Well. Well. You got me. I guess. Hold on a second. America gets... America got me again. In any case, what are your thoughts on the heated debate?

Um, I think... He's British. Mr. Bean, yes. Yes. That's it. No notes. Oh, oh, oh, I see. This is what occurs. What, like, what's wrong with him? He's British. Huh, okay, because I was, like, imagining, like, him as a class of, okay. A class of non-human? Yes, that's what I said. So, well, he, all of his stats, he's dumped all of his points into Brit. Yeah. And this is what occurs.

The the slapstick dimension, the the mallet space, the hijinks, the luck, the insane. He's a Mr. McCool. Yeah. He's that fucking baby from the the dog is trying to stop on the construction site. You know? But I actually was thinking Mr. Magoo, but Mr. Magoo does ultimately go untouched and is fine the entire time, whereas Bean does actively make situations worse.

Oh, much worse. He is not always immune from consequence Mm-hmm, but yeah, I can I can I can say that yeah, he specked he specked heavily into into Brit As a dumpster. He's just English Nobody so weird. Yeah That's it. right there you go You want to you want to go for another email just really just a little lead-off I Mean no lest I accidentally grab another fucking slur because again America got me

get by accident? I prefer inventing my own shoutouts to spagos. That just hits the ear. Yeah all right. I mean there's a there's a not fun one. It's just an update. Oh I thought you meant like slurs no no We got a fun one no we got a viper update not much a question Just remember. Oh, yeah, he's he's for real criminal now. Y'all cowards don't even smoke crack. Viper. Well, so yeah, deer mint chocolate chip

and strawberry shortcake. One Lee Arthur Carter, AKA Viper, was arrested on January 4th, 2024 for aggravated kidnapping and keeping a woman in his garage. Yeah, that's not good. Nope. In fact, one might say that those are the actions associated with smoking crack and perhaps you should be a coward.

That's no longer no longer a funny joke. It's actually very tragic and sad. You should be a coward and not smoke crack lest you do that shit so there goes viper and all of his fucking insane green screen anime things there was anime stuff yeah because he became aware of the fact that people caught on to his album and so he made a bunch of like shitposty music videos after and just kept like leaning heavily into it. And I guess that stopped working at some point and then comes the actual crimes. So I see. There's your Viper update, folks. All right.

Well, have a good one, everybody. Yeah. Bye. everybody yeah bye