Castle Super Beast - CSB 277: Contractually Obligated Criminal Pantpissing

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps Whaling for Butler Wolves  Early Access For The Wicked GUESS THE NUMBER Are You Lake? Contractual Invincibility Watch live: twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Go to http://shopify.com/superbeast to sign up for a $1-per-month trial period. - Go to https://hensonshaving.com and enter SUPERBEAST at checkout to get 100 free blades with your purchase. (Note: you must add both the 100-blade pack and the razor for the discount to apply.) - A Better Paradise is out now and available everywhere you get your podcasts. - Go to http://awaytravel.com/superbeast to see the new softside luggage from Away. Riot was working on and has canceled a new platform fighter that was to compete with Smash Melee: Pool Party, unannounced Smash Bros. style fighting game - A team of 70-80 employees was staffed to the project: a Melee-like platform fighter set in the League of Legends universe. Executives at Riot were spooked by what they perceived as the failure of MultiVersus. DOTA 2 patch adds new fighting game minigame featuring motion special moves, frame data, and even rollback netcode: Sleet Fighter 2: Immortal Combat 343 Industries Has Allegedly Been Downsized Considerably, Upcoming Halo Titles To Be Largely Outsourced Baldur's Gate 3 won so many awards that it started to "affect development", forcing Larian to send "rotating teams" of devs to ceremonies TERMINATOR ZERO | Official Teaser Trailer | Netflix Shinji Aramaki Talks Aliens vs. Predator Anime, Gives Title & Story Details Disney has allegedly been hacked.1TB of data is said to be stolen, including unreleased projects, login credentials, raw images and codes, and more. Capcom and Tango Gameworks veteran, Ikumi Nakamura, and former Capcom and Platinum Games director, Hideki Kamiya discussion: “Okami was supposed to be Clover Studio’s signature title” but some staff were “weak” MGS at Home: Black State is the first game from developer Motion Blur, an independent AAA studio based in Istanbul Folder Dungeon - Announcement Trailer Nobody Wants to Die - 10 Minutes of Exclusive Gameplay Zenless Zone Zero x Street Fighter 6 Creators Roundtable

["Sailor Moon Theme"] Alright, so I see the people are now taking bets as to whether or not you will be frozen. And how many ghost dicks will be in my mouth when it's frozen. So should I just like, for those people who bet for like big ghost dicks, should I just talk and then rest my mouth like ahhh. Every once in a while put a hand up, just get positioned yourself for maximum. Oh like instead of like going like we do it but it actually looks like looks like, ah, yes, exactly. You got to keep, you got to keep servicing them. The ectoplasm. Well, look, we're trying out a different hardware acceleration and I also have backups on standby, but you know, we'll see what can happen today. The ectoplasm, Woly. Indeed. Okay, so hello, this is a podcast. It's called Castle

Super Beast. My name is Wooly. Hi, what's up? I'm Pat. He's Pat. And yeah, okay, so all I've got is, for timestamping purposes, if you're somebody who's in the far distant future from the year 2024, and you're listening back to this MP3, and you're wondering where we're at in time. Just for the record, this is the podcast right after a bullet whizzed by Donald Trump's head. So that's just where we are in time. And that's if you need any sort of major markers on the, you know, if you're fast forwarding and trying to find a certain episode after something goes or something, this is about where you're at right now.

This is the pre or the post. We're in the post now. We're in the post. It's the one right after by like two days or so. So for you, future listener, time traveler, archivist, this is just to help you out. You know, it feels nice now that like, I'm like, my biggest worry is whether or not the Prime Minister

is in blackface right now or not. That is? It feels, it feels lighter than before. Yeah. A friend got on the phone with me and was talking about like, oh, the multiples of, yeah, surrounding to the nearest five,

the Blackface scandals, and then the SNC lavalier scandals and the various getting paid corruption ass moments that Trudeau's been up to and so on and it's just kind of like yeah that is um it was a big scandal a couple weeks ago because somebody told Pierre to shut up. Oh Pierre Was an assault on the decorum of the House of Commons Did Pierre get told to shut up did he he got told to shut the fuck up? Yeah, damn Actually, wow um and and you know and and and folks are just not real happy with Jagmeet for conceding too

much to the liberals, you know? Jagmeet Singh is currently, he's NDP-ing, but he's not NDP-ing in a leftist enough way. Isn't that the NDP way is to cede ground to the liberals? But it's also to, but it's, but it's exceeding ground. But it's also like, if you're if your entire platform is on just denying conservatives from getting in, then you don't have enough actual progress happening on your on your, your mandates. So that's that's currently what Americans probably don't know how this feels when you have like a five parties, but like you get this new flavor where it's like, oh the party I like isn't doing anything. Well that's because they know they're going to lose and they just want to be buddies with the party that will get into power for surezies. This is what happens when there's three of them and every once in a while two of them can be like, yo fuck that third one, right? And they're like, yeah. And so it's like, we're not going to get shit

done, but we're just going to block this third one from doing anything. Or we're going to team up on various things and so on and so forth. Yeah. It's that's how that goes. We got somebody in the chat saying Canadian politics sounds so boring. They are. They really are. And isn't that a good, isn't that great? That's fine. Isn't that okay? Isn't that a good thing? That's just fine.

I'll take extremely boring. I'll take it. And blackface times five in the inventory. You can put, you can take that to the bank gentlemen Yeah, I Mean shit like what are you gonna? Do like you have the item stop it like four or like seven? It's got to be multiples of five right that's that's how you that's how you do it

So you're storing those items up. You got to keep it You know anyway Hey, so what's up with your week? I had a week of Jumping into a couple different things and I saw I Got a big flavor for some Indies One tiny little indie game from a little known developer, little game called Zenless Zone Zero, decided to- Oh, do you mean like that company

that's building the new type of nuclear reactor? Are they building a second sun? Is that what's happening? Yeah, no, they're behind that. Cool, cool, cool, yeah. The tests went well! Okay, that's good, that's good. We need to be careful with that too, because, well no, it's like, my family WhatsApp chat

sent around a video of the China is building a second Sun video and it's this thing of like a light ball launching into the sky and people filming it and just like No one will no one hit Google for a second This is where global warming is coming from! The second sun made by China! Will no one hit Google for a second? This is where global warming's coming from The second sun made by China! Not even Snopesing it. I don't even ask for Snopes anymore. Just can you just hit Google for a second? Anyways, no To which there's a very very boring article of a very

Pretty impressive looking machine that is the actual thing that they're talking about exactly like an actual fusion reactor but that's not what you're gonna share on fucking black whatsapp you're gonna share you're gonna share the here's what they're up to and it's a literal like sky bomb launching into the air that looks like it came out of a fucking protoss device and then everyone's like going whoa and they're like China's at this level now what are we doing over here did you know that your roles on Ellen the sharkmaid actually help out the future of energy independence okay all right now we're

talking let's get there so what you're saying is if I wail for my butler wolf it's all right you can't you know you can I wail for my butler wolf, it's sorry You can't you know, you can't wail for your butler wolf. You can only currently really wail for your shark girl But wailing you can wail for anything if you try hard enough. Oh, you'd have to okay Oh, you know what? Let's let's just go for the start of why you want like a like a on like on like in like a like in like in I want to say it's just like like a therapy the sexy wolf man with the BDSM shit yeah he's bail wolfing yeah he's got the kicks he's got a lunar phase and he does charged fucking strings in the middle of his kick 13 you know set up well you can

either get really lucky on the standard banner or you can roll 300 fucking times. And then when you roll 300 times, I've learned that you only get to do that once ever in your lifetime and then you have to literally end it all. So the main reasoning behind that, Willy, is that people don't spend any real money on the standard banner because you get banner, you get rolls for free on the standard banner. Like they give those out on every event and whatnot.

Rolling on limited banners. I'm just like, these are words that now have to mean something that didn't. Yeah, because you know what they mean now. And you probably talked to mom over the past week and she probably explained half this shit to you. Dude, I know that Gacha is, it's always been rough and there's been that,

we've talked about over the years how crazy it's gotten and all that and so on. And in the whole bit where it's like, okay, people are considering what Hoyo's doing not on the worst end of the spectrum of how bad that gets, it still is kind of jarring, because at some point, in my estimation, I was like, okay, there is likely a system in place.

And when I just vaguely assumed how bad it was, I more or less thought the cost of a full disc game for getting the character you want is probably what they're going with these days. You know? So it was very much to my surprise to see that it was way more than that for way less control. I thought that the whaling would be like spending 80 to 90

on getting the one character you give a fuck about and then if you really want to get them all and go nuts, keep spending that money and so on. So what is your current understanding of Gacha banners as of the miHoYo system? Well now looking at it and breaking it down and going into the actual web page that pops up I can see that it's like, okay, there is always a level of multiple currencies for the sake of busy work and little tweaks and upgrades and obfuscation of your spending. Because we know that besides the fact that leveling and busy work and little things like

that can keep you occupied and interested, there's also studies that show you that if you convert money into points, then a points or a ball system is like, you don't actually associate the value. So spending 125 points into it, you don't think of that as spending a dollar or whatever. My whole thing is like, okay, so you have the limited banner, which is the this new character and or this characters who were giving you a chance at getting. And if you roll an S in your slot machine pull, then there's a 50-50 shot of that S being this main character. And a 50-50 shot of being any other S. Exactly.

And then same for the A characters they show you, and then that's why you want to roll on that banner, aka pull the slot machine while in this flavor. Then there's a second page which is just for upgrades of if you want to get limited spheres which are just for, you know. Yeah, don't do that. Well, that's, I mean, I'm like, what? That's for the deep sickness.

Yeah, look, what kind of creatures from the depths are? That is for the deep sickness. What type of fish creatures are rising up from the scary depths and pulling their fucking slot machine pulls on the backpack to tweak your characters? Yeah, no, that's- That's so insane. That, those people are highly ill. Don't fuck with that. Boy.

Don't do it. Yeah. We're not even looking at that. And then lastly, there's the third banner, which is the regular slot machine, Don't fuck with that. Boy. Don't do it. Yeah. We're not even looking at that. And then lastly, there's the third banner, which is the regular slot machine, which is if an S pops up, it's going to just apply the regular rates to all S's and to all A's characters. To all non-limited S's. Oh.

To all standard S's. To all the ones that are not in the limited banner. Okay. Yeah. So like when you click on it and go to details, it'll show you all the ones that are not in the limited banner. Okay. Yeah, so like when you click on it and go to details, it'll show you all the ones you could pick at 300. Those are the ones that are currently in there. And then when you go to see the actual numbers, which I don't know if China and Australia forcing this has led to others, to these games like volunteering the information or not,

but you click on it and it says you have a 0.6% chance. Well, the main thing is that China is the biggest market for this. So if you want it to exist in China, you have to put it somewhere. And then if you're going to put it somewhere else, but you hide it in Europe, for example, but you can still see the numbers on the Chinese version. So we're just going to go there. Yeah. So is it just we were trying to hide it wherever we legally could, but now we give up because

we're going to find out what the fuck wasn't right story like a couple weeks ago How the where the shit was zero so I just I just assumed that when you're really trying to get your nickel-and-diming Everybody in the worst possible way you're gonna also be like yeah Well, if you want to go work for it, then log into a Chinese server and get those numbers We're not gonna show you the percentages is my assumption, but yeah. Turns out they do. So here's the, so basically you're like, I want Wolfman. I want the Wolfman now.

Yes? Yeah. So, Wolfman's part of the standard banner, which means you will eventually be able to get him guaranteed. But who'd you get for your guaranteed pity on your standard? Okay, okay, okay. So when you say guaranteed,

are you talking about spending your 300? All right, so we're gonna roll all the way back. Okay, so you roll on the thing and then you have a soft pity and a real pity. Uh-huh. Okay, so, and a real pity. Uh huh. Okay, so. And the standard banner has its own beginner pity. Zenless aka no chill.

So the beginner pity is I think the standard is like within 50 polls, you're guaranteed to be... To get an S rank character? To get an S rank. Which is faster than normal. Okay. And you got, I'm being told you got Soldier 11. I got... Right? Is Anton an S rank character? To get an S rank, which is faster than normal. Okay. And you got, I'm being told you got Soldier 11. I got... Right?

Is Anton an S rank? Anton? I don't know. Anton's A. Is Pilebucker Kamino? Okay, no. All right. No, you got the girl with the flame blade that has life.

Sure, yeah, that has X act. Yeah, right. So after you do that, you engage in what's called the soft pity, which is when you hit 70 rolls, the percentage chance of getting an S from 70 to 80 is increased. Okay, so pause. One, zero to 50, you are going to have a soft pity that is... No, that's a hard pity for the standard start roll

when you start playing the game only. Okay, so the first 50, you're going to get an S-rank character. Yeah, and they also give you 50 rolls for free for starting the game, so you're gonna get them within like three days, you're like guaranteed. Okay, and that is because in the worst casecase scenario you would get an s-rank backpack at

No, no, you you would get an s-rank backpack Maybe but you get to 70 and then you start soft pitying all the way till 90 at which point you get You get an s though. The standard one can give you an s-rank backpack, which feels bad, man boy. Okay All right, right. So then you hit that then you go into the sec the soft pity which is Yeah uh 70 Okay, and what does soft pity mean in this soft pity soft pity means that every roll from I think 73 to 90 Is a higher chance of getting an s

So like it's points.6. It's like 1% and then it's like a point and a half or something like that. Okay. Okay. Soft. Right. Sure. Okay. That point, the point is 70 to 90 is your soft pity. That's all you got to, and then once you hit 90, it's your hard pity. And that works for limited limited and standard which is you're definitely going to get an S but it either will be the character on the box or any other and there's a second hard pity on the limited banners so say Wooly you wailed super hard and you rolled 90 times on Ellen right now like right now and it took till 90 for you to get her, right? It happened on the hard pity, right?

Except you didn't get her, you got Wolfman instead, right? That means the next time the game gives you an S on the limited banner, it will have to be the character that is on the limited banner. Because you haven't Scott and her yet and. Because you didn't get the one on the limited banner, it will have to be the character that is on the limited banner. Because you haven't Scott and her yet and because you didn't get the one on the limited banner last time. So every dice roll is one ish percent. And then when you get at 70, it's a little bit bigger.

When you get at 90, it's 50 50. I have never seen so much effort put towards breaking down something that you have zero control over. It's like understanding it is somehow going to affect the outcome even though it completely fucking doesn't. So that's the trick because gacha freaks have figured out how to assert control. By picking the right banners. What's that?

By choosing between one banner or the other. So the two forms of control are for your first pity that's from the standard banner that you're always gonna give up, what you can do is you can salt your email. You can enter your email as your email plus one, your email plus two, your email plus two, your email plus three and roll new accounts until you get the one that you wanted, which is horribly

time consuming and I would not recommend it. Right? Man, I did that. We did that once when we were as kids when when there was a Monopoly 7-Up McDonald's thing and it was like you get a free reward piece after you sign up for this email and then there was a service where you could go in and create the email after the winning one. So you would just go down the number and then be like, okay, whatever this email, this number, bam, this one wins a free Big Mac. All right. now go create the email account to receive it after the fact.

And my brother won a Discman like that. So yeah, that happened once. It's horrible. Anyway, go on. So the second way to control it is the way that most gacha players control it, which is you go to the website where people data mine the game to determine what characters are coming like six months in advance and then just save all the currency you naturally acquire to blow a maximum of 180 rolls on the character that you really want.

Yeah. So for example, there is a little fox girl that has Virgil's moveset that you meet in the story. She's probably like four months away. If you just didn't roll at all until she showed up, you would definitely have enough rolls to guarantee her getting onto your roster. When she hits the limited banner. Yeah. Now the thing that I, yeah, guarantee her getting onto your roster. When she hits the limited banner.

Yeah. Now the thing that I, yeah, it is, it's so weird to kind of see that like, another aspect of this is essentially, again, saving up to get the thing you want. That was always an understanding that I had of what you could do in these games to somewhat be like, I'm just gonna not play this rolling game and wait for my thing

But the fact that that 300 pick your own special bonus Aspect only happens once is really nuts to me because it's like I guess that Saving up things still has to be within the time frame that that banner is available If you if you ever choose to or want to get something that's not on that banner, you only get once in your lifetime to ever do that. All standards forever. It's never going to leave. But you get one. Yeah, you get one guaranteed. The reason for that is because rolling on the standard banner,

they literally send you in the mail or every event will just give you standard banner rewards So you will naturally accrue that over a year or two years, right? So after about two years of just using Exclusively free rolls on the standard banner the game goes. Okay fine. You roll 300 times You didn't get the one you wanted so you can grab Wolfman the reason why Like that whole system is a pity because let's say you rolled on what's the one coming up, Jane Doe, the mouse girl coming up, and you lost the 50-50 and got Lycan, that means when you do eventually hit 300 on your standard banner, you would probably not want to choose Lichen again. You would want to choose one of the other

S's that you never ended up getting in the time it took you to get there while rolling. But if you ever were to be like, I stopped playing this game and I came back to it and I missed like three or four characters. Oh no you can never stop playing. Yeah yeah yeah yeah that's it. If you missed a couple banners and you're like oh I might want it to like there was a 2B banner or something right. You missed that one you come back to the game after that's gone. You have to then go and spend the one in a lifetime 300 to select them. They will rerun characters, but they don't rerun characters

at the rate that they came out. Oh, they do, they put them, they put other, they put the same characters back on the banner. Yeah, so if you're like, oh, I fucking missed it. Oh, well now you gotta wait. I see, I see. Then you just hold that shit in reserve for when they come back. That's how they do it, okay. Anyway, so doing some quick maths,

I was able to, at the end of this second stream, conclude that it cost about $500 to buy the character you wanted one time. Well, so the core of it, genuinely, is that you can't, you have to not do that You like you had you literally? Like you have to let go it was absolutely it was five

$100 to buy let go not even though not even the film reels the black and white film reels But to buy the black and white screens to convert into film reels, the black and white film reels, but to buy the black and white screens to convert into film reels. Because one step more of obfuscation makes it easier to hide the pain. The equivalent that I can bring up in my mind is it'll cost this amount of money to win at the casino at the game of my choice, instead of just playing every game equally.

And then seeing what happens. Right? I only want to win on this Strap Machine, Slot Machine. Yeah, so that was... Actually, don't listen to me, because I got Lycan. Sure. So like, I'm like, oh yeah, the system works. It's right, yeah, for sure. Did you want it? Did you yeah, the system works. It's right. Yeah. No, for sure.

Did you did you want it? Did you get or did you get or want Anton? Yeah. OK, well then. Yeah. OK, there you go. Oh, no. Hey, let me tell you, let me tell you. Hey, let me tell you. OK, I'm not a good example here because I'm playing Alan Wake and I'm like people are like plays endless. I'm like, guys, I'm not gonna play Zenless

unless I can roll on stream and I'm not allowed, my wife says I can't roll on stream unless you guys send in donation dollars specific to the amount. And then people send in the amounts and then I rolled it. And then I got Ellen and Anton and Tsukaku and Lycan, yes, et cetera. There was that moment and I decided to instead go and calculate the maps on it.

Oh, by the way, I've been told that you have $30 sitting in your pocket that is explicitly intended for stream rolls. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. So I got that and I was like, I hope it's okay that I didn't do this. You'll have to do it eventually. I will. Okay. Well, you'll have to do it eventually. I will I okay well Let's that's that stems the rules. Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, we'll find out what kwee kwek has to say you have to you have to Oh, I spoke to me. He said said pull it

He said remind wooly he owes me $30 of poles, okay, okay, all right I see and it's just you know that it's not gonna be the fucking wolf butler, it's gonna be some children with weapons. Yeah! It's gonna be the fucking- A lot of kids on this roster! It's gonna be the little girls, that's the thing, that's the problem. Why are there so many?

Well, you know why. I do. I'm like sitting there rolling and I'm like, man, I really hope I don't get Nekomata, cause that character There's right in the garbage when you when you're trying to Shotgun like like, you know when you get to the second arc of a new manga and it's the tournament time and you tell It's time for a bunch of characters to walk on screen and you're like, oh, yeah, there they are

Okay, here we go favorite, right or even when the voices when the voice is kicked in of like the other Lock box A eyes right or the the whatever them the sinister figures and I was like, I'm like, oh, let me guess There's a silhouette of like a big buff one a skinny one a small freakish one and then a girl And it's like oh, yeah, is that exactly what that group is? Oh, okay. You know. So anyway, you get your spread. But yeah, you know, as you scroll down that list, it gets pretty concentrated towards a certain type, I suppose, you know? But hey, we got our bear. And, uh, he's free by the way. He's part of the, you got him for free.

He's guaranteed. Yeah. That's cool. all thrilled cuz I think he's cool as fuck Mm-hmm What's the what's the the distro like in in Genshin? little little something for everyone quote unquote no Genshin's Genshin's for like For Twink Twink fans and fujos, okay, okay Well Yeah, it was otherwise. Okay. Well, yeah.

It was otherwise, I was like, you know what? This is all right. The actual action is like, it's fine. I think a lot of folks were expecting me to like grade it on a DMC scale to which I'm That's ridiculous. That's not what this is doing and that's not what I think I'm going to do here. But having discussed it a little bit last week and setting expectations accordingly, I'm like, Yeah, what this is doing is fine. In that it's it's fun enough to so I was talking about, you know, just doing your basic mashing

x type thing doing damage and then occasionally paying attention to the defense. Well, switching between three characters keeps that interesting and there's enough individuality with the basic combo system you get with the characters, which is not... Yeah, people's kits have enough going on in them. It's not particularly complex, right? You have a string and then a couple of variants to it based on their system. But like they serve different roles. And I was like pleasantly surprised by the like, okay, well, here's your support. Here's this person that's going to do some electric damage. Here's another

that's going to fire and the interplay of the types of damage and the system and the tagging and then defending parrying versus dodging. And then occasionally using your super is enough. There's enough going on there, especially if the boss is doing cool stuff, that I'm like, yeah, this is a video game, this is fun. One of the other things that I noticed, I haven't gotten there yet, but I saw people who are freaks really going hard on it.

If you level those characters up enough, their kits get more to them. So Billy, the gunslinger, like you know, you can hold the button down, he'll start shooting infinitely and then you can roll out of the way to avoid attacks. Once you upgrade his kit to a certain point, those become real dodges and can trigger perfect dodge. Okay, okay. I see. Are you talking about the upgrades that come from getting him on pulls and then...

No, no, no. The get tokens to upgrade his specific skills upgrade system. Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. And that, of course, is... I mean, yeah. I think I'm just averse to any game that breaks down upgrading and tweaks to that. It's not just the percentages, but even not just the percentages but even in this case we're looking at percentages in like sometimes you know 15 to 20 or so. Oh that is a dupe thing. Oh never mind. It was a dupe thing? Okay. Yeah it is a dupe thing. Um I-

That explains why he's on the banner next week! Ahhhhh that's funny. I had a moment of realization where it's like every characters every button can be individually You could add passives to In addition to the dupe buffs in addition to the sphere buffs which the spheres on On the character based on their class have their bed their benefits and then you level those up and then you feed Duplicates into the level up. Yeah, I had a really hard time level those up and then you feed duplicates into the level up.

Yeah, I had a really hard time understanding. So did you get so Kaku? I don't think I got him. But so she's the little only girl. A little blue. Yeah, a little blue. So I got her. I got her like six times. But I

had like such a hard time understanding her kit because she's a support and her kit is super, there's so much text. There's so much text on her support. Only for me to figure out eventually that is if you tag her in, and she does her fully powered flag attack that tags somebody else in,

that person gets a massive, massive buff for like 15 seconds. So the way that I have it is I have my starter, and then I stun them into Sukaku, who then stuns them again into Ellen, who then has this massive damage up and she has the highest attack Yeah, and I imagine that like a lot of these small tweaks start to add up over time and then you get something like what you probably can get like a

insanely strong character that melts the game or whatever if you go all in and spend all of your You know strong character that melts the game or whatever if you go all in and spend all of your you know like electricity currency on the electric characters moves buffing and and then you know again backpack stuff it is I just any game that is even whether it's a you know free-to-play or full retail any game that I guess goes down to that level of granularity is more than I want in anything. And you know, if you think I'm like, oh, it's, anyway, whatever. I just, I hit on, there's an amount of that that I hate that I'm like, I would rather this was much more straightforward in terms of how you handle things. Well, the problem is, is that it can't be because you're only dealing with more buttons. So the complexity has to go somewhere so that there's actual depth here.

Yeah. And the also and like some of the screens, like just even how they're laying things out as well and you're as you're navigating through them, I'm like, this is also like, holy fuck. Like well, I'm like, this is also like, holy fuck. Well, I've got good news for you. I think I've played video games my whole life and I'm going cross-eyed trying to figure out where to look at what. I have really good news for you, Woolly. It might take you a little bit of time to get used to this Endless Zone Zero interface,

but if you did get used to it, you could actually go and play Genshin Impact or Honkai Star Rail very easily because they're exactly the same. Like all the icons are in the same fucking location and they just change the actual icons and the names of them in most cases. Yeah, I get that feeling that I know is the case now because I'm coming at these things with fresh eyes and giving the impression I have of like taking it in for the first time in this way to which what I'm hearing back is like this has been standard for a while now. This is for like six years.

You're just you're just not you're just late to seeing something that has already been this way and I'm like, okay, cool. I still think it's not great, you know? But if there's a single thing that you can pop in there and I guess like minimally if you try, because I know that I have my way of going about things where I'm like, let me just not interface with the starts with the stuff I don't care about, to which people go, ha, you're gonna have to fucking interface with this stuff you don't care about regardless, you're gonna get forced to. If you jump into a quick mission, play with some characters you like, maybe, you know, spend some claimed pulls on getting something limited

or whatever and then- Oh, you can totally play it like completely, completely cash free. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, like, the same experience with this game I suppose is is attempting to Just you know jump in and out and such in that way you still have to deal with way too much downtime between the missions and fights As the story oh miHoYo loves talking they boy do they? You still have to deal and then of course, you know All that leveling up stuff is not talking about

passives like going to get cook, move food, and so on, which is not dissimilar to like, I guess, running around the base in Monster Hunter World or so. But you gotta deal with the fact as well that, at least for the first chapter that I was playing, a lot of those environments were like, you're running around the same construction yard fighting in like a two or three room little stretch or so Which this is where the mobile game element starts to kind of come into play a bit where you're like

Oh, yeah, you're not gonna get a full stage stage. Oh, yeah, the games also like huge on your phone already And I've seen people saying that this actually is very similar to how DMC Peak of Combat goes. Apparently, yeah. Right? So having not actually even taken a look at that in terms of booting it up or whatever, like yeah, they're saying that there's a lot of similar cues to the scale, the size,

and even how the game plays. I have a strong feeling that the reason why there is so much dialogue and talking in these miHoYo games is because when you finish that and you're doing like You're training for character upgrade stats or you're running hollow zero. There's nothing Like there's there's no fucking dialogue or story consideration at all It's just like I just ran fucking hollow zero like six times in a row yesterday There's no fucking dialogue or story consideration at all. It's just like I just ran fucking Hollow Zero like six times in a row yesterday.

Yeah, I guess, so I haven't even done, yeah, I haven't done that little, that part, right? Because that's the other way to get a lot of pulls saved up is that little Hollow Zero. Well, there's like, on the tutorial screen, you can see there's like six different things you can spend your your your battery on. Oh, yeah.

Battery. Right. Right. Right. The training mode grinding and yeah, yeah, yeah. True. The battery limited element. Well, at least the story doesn't require battery.

So if you do know it doesn't progress through that, then it's not going to be like fuck you you've played too much. No the story is going to require like probably just use your character upgrades on the team that you like. I think, but yeah, again there's enough cool stuff here that I'm like, yeah, I do like the gameplay when it's happening and I like when I get the ability to build a team and fuck around with their abilities and the synergy. That part is solid and it's shallow, but it's fun, right? So I'm not going to disparage any of that.

I do know that the other hoops and things that I find unpleasant to jump through and stuff might be the kind of things that stop me from feeling the need to get pulled back to this on a regular basis. If I can just boot up a regular action game elsewhere and just go through that normally and get, you know what I mean?

Something more satisfying that doesn't have these extra hurdles, hoops and stuff in the way more satisfying that doesn't have these extra hurdles, hoops, and stuff in the way. So that's the one thing is like, I don't know, like while this is fun, I don't know how this beats out possibly going over to an action game that isn't asking me to do a lot of these things. So, and I guess this is where falling in love

with the character comes into play or so, you know I thought about what we were talking about last week about the comparison because you're comparing it right now Like you're sitting at home. Do I want to play do I want to sit down and play? Zenless or what? I want to just even go back to DMC 5 or something else, right? And that is the most fair comparison ever then then you you start to argue internally about like, well, it's technically free versus $60 or $70. How much bullshit are you allowed to get away with when a game's free? So what I did is I played a fairly significant amount of the game on my phone over the past

week. Most people that I know are using their phone to literally blank bang out a daily and then So that they you know or run the battery so that they don't goes back and forth right right? Play but I went on console What's that you played first touch on PC or on console PC? Yeah, but PC and console are identical and But no I went through like the edge Certifications on my phone for Hollow Zero. My takeaway is that compared to everything else on my telephone, this is from the future.

It's ridiculous. My phone gets so hot as shit. My phone gets hot, so hot the game told me to turn it down because they were worried about overheating. You got the battery warning message? Yeah, I got the battery warning when I turned it all the way up. My phone is brand new. This is a Galaxy S24. But yeah, after playing it a bunch on my telephone, I was like, yeah, no, as a telephone game, this is incredible. If I'm stuck somewhere, or I'm trapped and the baby's sleeping on my chest, right?

This blows away everything else I could probably play on my phone until Bellatro comes out. Yeah, okay. So by metric of the phone for competition, this is a go-to that you can... This is a 10 out of 10. If, and like, fuck spending spending anything like the free version of this game is 10 out of 10 on your phone. Yeah, on on on on your PC. It's a seven to nine, depending on your tolerance. Yeah, and I mean, then you have to it gets to live in that whole ecosystem. Then it gets to live in that whole ecosystem. It's such a weird new discussion to have like, okay, for it to be a 10 out of 10 in the context it has, it's also like, by also ignoring the bad parts in a way,

and you're like, okay, so, if you take another game that you do think is a perfect game but then it has shitty thing attached to it, like bad micro, like fucking buying red orbs or dragons dogma, you know, it anyway, it gets it gets weird because I'm like, the stuff that I don't like about about those endless stuff, like gacha stuff is gross. But like outside of even that, like stuff with the story and the pacing and the and the the the passive tweaking and such is all just like, nah, I

still don't enjoy that part as much. So I'm quite lucky is that I'm actually really digging the whole presentation. Like I actually really like it. I really like the characterization but to be fair Part of that is I like it in comparison to so like because I ran through that fucking gamut of mobile games a little while ago, right And one of the things that really stood out to me and it's mihoyo's own fault because I was annoyed by this in their Other games so you pick wise or bell? When you start the game And it's miHoYo's own fault because I was annoyed by this in their other games. So you pick Wise or Belle when you start the game.

Which one did you pick, Willie? The girl you picked, Belle. OK, so I picked Wise and this is a perfect example. So when you pick Aether or whatever the fuck the other one's name is, Illuminae in Genshin, or you pick, I don't even remember their names, Stella and something else in Honkai Star Rail. The other character dies and doesn't exist at all or is part of the story but doesn't talk and like it's just a non-factor. I'm very happy that Wise and Belle are both there and both talk and both interact

with each other and that it has just shifted over a perspective thing instead of the other one not existing at all. The goofy thing is that the one you want to talk the most is the one you shouldn't pick. If you want Belle to have more dialogue, you should pick Wise and vice versa. What's the significance of any of this? Is this just like guy trainer, girl trainer in Pokemon? Is it just... Yeah, yeah, okay. But they're characters this time around instead of being kind of nothing. Okay.

It's like think of Astral Chain as an example. Sure, all right, the twins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how it was kind of annoying as fuck how your twin didn't have a voice at all. That's usually how it is. I was I was confused initially because like, I was like, why are there two layers of character select going on here? Because it's framed as character select as opposed to like, yeah, your profile, you know. But when framed that way, that makes more sense. Right? Okay. Yeah, so that's kind of, I suppose, what it is. And I think to some degree that might apply to just me and anything I play, but there's

lots of different ways you can... There's the pure fun experience of what a game can do when it's firing on all cylinders, right, in a set piece type moment with the gameplay engaging you, giving you full control and such. And then there's how you play with like, breaking down the feeling of powering up your character over time. And there's a lot of ways to go about it. And even if you're talking about not just buying things and Proud Souls or whatever as your metric, but things where you have pickups that are temporary or duplicating and such. We talked about Neo, for example, where it's like, oh yeah, all the armor stuff

and all the weapon buffs and all that stuff is like, it's so overwhelming, right? And you kind of felt that like exhaustion from it. And I kind of was like, I definitely agree that I'm like, there's more to that than I'm willing to engage with. But then I was able to, I suppose, just kind of be like, well, I'll put it out of my mind for the most part and just hit the gameplay and keep running until I hit a wall of some kind and go like, hmm, I wonder if I

should think about my weapon. Yeah. So the wall for you would be at some point they level lock you and then you would go, oh, I need to get like, so the, one of the things that it does, it's quite nice is that say you go, cause, I need to get, like so one of the things that it does that's quite nice is that say you go, cause there's the character level, right? So you get Amby to level 20.

And then you go to hit, I would like to upgrade her to unlocked so that she could level from 20 to 30, for example. You click on that and it goes, you need to do this. And it lists the thing out that you need to do. And if doing that is an available action with your place in the game you can click a button and it will just bring you to that activity so

you can do it so I did see that yeah I wanted to upgrade because Lycan has like these ice I want to upgrade some of his shit so I clicked on it and I didn't have enough ice bullshit and so I just clicked bring me to where I get the ice bullshit and then I clicked on it and it brought me to the training mode and set me up with the right enemies. Right and it is interesting too as well to have a game where like you because you know how like there's games of like it's about the difficulties based on skill and in some cases the difficulties based on time spent making yourself stronger like In this kind of game you can just play until you get so strong that you melt everything right like you don't have to hit that

like fighting game level of you know well the the the trick to it, so you know your internat level which is Maybe the worst name for anything Pretty bad pretty not oh oh my god horrific don't do it is maybe the worst name for anything ever. Pretty bad, pretty not good. Oh my god. Horrific, don't do it. Also, did you notice when you read the subtitles

that it used to be just called the proxy network, but then the subtitles at some point changed it to the internaut? Ah, I see, interesting. Because they say the proxy network, but it's written internaut. Awful, oh my god. Anyway, when you hit certain thresholds,

you can pass a certification that will unlock more shit for you, but it will also raise the global difficulty of literally every single thing in the game by an order of magnitude. Yeah, and I could feel that when I hit some of those characters, some of those bosses and certain enemy types that were like, oh, this requires more of your attention. Like the guy that was bobbing and weaving and Dempsey rolling a bit was like,

you have less time to dodge and parry his attacks than you do other earlier enemies. So I can see that there's going to be these jumps in difficulty that are going to be like, nah man, you got to get way better. Or play a lot and get yourself a lot stronger so that you can still fuck up but when you do hit, it hits that much harder and you don't have to fight the enemy for as long. The other thing is that, like with my experience with Genshin and Ankai, is they will eventually, once your onboarding is completely finished, allow you to do optional shit that is just legitimately very difficult. And some of that will be statistical and some of that won't be. But the difference between

fighting a boss that has decently fast attacks that will kill you outright is still pretty difficult, especially after you've just played Elden Ring. A limited optional stuff as in, like... Like when I was playing Honkai, I am like stuck halfway through the simulated universe. The stimulated universe scales upwards a lot and that would be the hollow zero equivalent in this game where it's a their rogue like mode that you would do for weekly rewards. Okay and I guess you know again while very much enjoying what's going on here and seeing like these archetypes that you're familiar with. And we've been staring at this type of industry and type of media for long enough that you're

like, I see everything about the... I see everything about fucking pile bunker camera. And I'm like, yeah, love that. That's great. It's a remix of the things that you already are familiar with, but you know the archetype. And he literally fucking says, he calls you Kyo-Dai and all that. And I'm like, cool, you know what you're working with. When a lot of the stuff that does bug me in a game is there, but I think the overall like thing hooks me, I feel like I can put up with a lot more, right? And I think that applies

to a lot of people. If you're pulled in by not just the character, but everything else happening, I'll be drawn back towards it in a way. So in this case, characters can appeal in with it uniquely in that way. And I as well the style being you know from the initial trailers all that jet set like fucking amazing design and element to it I found really rad but um it like it didn't grab me in the same way that like um something out of nowhere that I felt like attached to very quickly was like Hi-Fi Rush and its characters. Right. They were very fun, charming, awesome. Well, I mean, miHoYo has like an incredible, like within that, because you have like Zelda shit, you have space RPG,

and you now you have like a Jet Set style hip hop like action game. It's all like overwhelmingly mihoyo. Like that it is a really violently so and and Honkai Impact third. There's a flavor to all of those things. Yeah, it is their house style. And I think that that house style probably has a limited appeal to me no matter what. Yeah, I'm fucked because I actually I'm I'm crazy about miHoYo's particular aesthetic. Okay, interesting. I fucking love it.

And I think that that's the same limiter that is in place for Grand Blue for me as well. I think I kind of had a discussion about this when I was playing Grand Blue, where I was like, okay, there's stuff here I can like, I just kind of just like- Yeah, Grand Blue's aesthetic doesn't really hook me the same way, yeah. But there is a level of just overall something. There's an intangible element to the world and it's the setting and the lightness and the seriousness and how it handles these moments and when someone comes out and does something really badass and it's those big high tension moments of like, this is supposed to be your equivalent

of the things that I freak out about and have popped off with for years now. And I'll see those pop off moments and be like, oh, that was pretty cool. That was sick. Okay. But I'm not like fully grabbed and pulled in. And I think if I don't have that, there's going to be something that just kind of is in the way of me wanting to think about this game and turn it back on and go to it.

Because that can make up for, like I said, the feeling of the shit I don't like, and that can also make up for gameplay being less than what I'm looking for in some cases. And yeah, I think I brought up Hi-Fi as a rush, as an example of a game that like very quickly, within a couple of hours, I was like, I love the world and characters and setting here and I want to, I want more of it, you know? And then- Yeah, it's this super strange thing where I'm sitting here and in my mind you're describing it and comparing it to Hi-Fi Rush and

Part of my head goes that's not really a fair comparison and then the other part goes no it is it is a fair comparison No, wait, it's not and then I'm realizing what the issue is is that the comparison has to be compared to like Price points. Oh, okay. I thought you were going to say the developer. So a person who is free to play playing Zenless entirely will never spend a dime. Comparing that to Hi-Fi Rush in which they would have to spend money is ridiculous. But it's not even that. I just mean the characters talking to

each other, the types of jokes they're making, the things happening with the bits that are funny and the bits that are serious and actiony. You know, all of that. The appeal of the setting, I suppose. You know what the worst part is? The handcrafted multi-year development cycle for an absolutely perfect gem versus the multi-year dev cycle for a live service game that's meant to get as much value out of its assets as possible. Yes, High Fierce is absolutely much cleaner, better, more interesting, better written. They probably redid a bunch of those scenes a bunch of times. And that company's bankrupt. That company's

gone because it didn't pull in your fucking banner dollars. Now, if this is the flavor that you get from everything Hoyo related, then I'm like, okay, I'll take that for what it is. I can even say that, what the fuck is it? Fucking Titty Company. Titty Company? That could describe multiple companies. That could be Tecmo Koei. Current, current, currently. Current Titty Company.

Nikkei Stellar Blade. Stellar Blade? Nikkei Stellar Blade. Nikkei Stellar Blade. Yeah, yeah, okay, there it is. Shift up. Yeah, Nikkei just paid for Stellar Blade, yeah, yeah, okay, there it is. Shift up. Yeah, Nikkei just paid for Stellar Blade. Yeah, yeah, titties.

So there was a moment in that Nikkei intro with the fucking gun and shit where I was like, oh, whoa, whoa, yo, okay, cool, huh, interesting. And there was a little moment of an eyebrow raise to a narrative thing that's not going to matter at all. And it easily could just not be there, because you're like, I'm here for fucking cover shooter jiggling butts and whatever waifus.

But when something like that does happen, I'm like, oh, OK, interesting. And this is not in any way like we know how fucking dumb and the story in Bayo and in DMC is and all that shit and I mean fucking right in The story DMC is good. God damn it the thing is is like as Part the things that don't make sense. There's still an element of like, I'm brought, I'm pulled in to the things that are there that I do, that I like, and there's a sufficient amount of them, you know? And in the same way that you're like, what the fuck is Ryan talking about for half of Revengeance? But then you're like, no, but him and Armstrong fucking having this insane political battle at the end is amazing, right?

It's God tier dialogue. Except they're not, except they're not! That's the whole point. It's just like, you're just a stupid asshole. All the things you're saying don't make any sense. Don't mean anything! It's great, it's great. And that's a deep, rich enjoyment of those cutscenes

that is not me parrying and doing an awesome slice. Right. It's a thorough enjoyment happening that's not me watching a badass action cutscene either. It's just, like, look at them go. They're yucking it up, you know? I'll tell you one thing that I would really appreciate from miHoYo's stories. They don't believe in setting up their setting like at all. Like you show up and they're like,

you just know the whole setting. I'm like, I don't, what? What is a hollow? What is it? What is a hollow? What the fuck is it? There's so many jargon words. I don't know.

I don't fucking know. There's so many jargon words, it's't know. I don't know. There's so many jargon words. It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like jumping. There's some sci-fi animator. You jump in, and you just get dropped into the fucking lexicon, and you're like, keep the fuck up. These words are not going to be in yellow,

and they will be on the test. But anyway, and I think anyway, I'm not sure how much of that is generational or not, you know, but that's kind of where it is for me is like, what I'm coming back for is going to be the character with the cool movesets and some of the synergy, you know, but I do to what's going on there. And I can see this game as well over time with getting as it gets bloated up with features and crazy shit like Oh Honkai Star Rail is so bloated up with shit after a year. It's fucking intimidating. It's crazy. That's what I'm saying. This is the launch and like everything I'm talking about now I can see coming back to this and being like, yo, here's three characters you love that you can then go into the new Bloody Palace

mode and just go nuts. And I'll be like, oh, okay, cool. One of the things that is crazy about Zenlis's super long tutorial is that there is a major system mechanic that is left unused until you hit fucking rank 30 and that is going on fucking dates with every single character in the game. Oh man there's that there's fucking confidant. Including? Including. So you know how there's fucking you know how there's um there's times of day, like morning, afternoon, whatever? Somebody yesterday was posted on the Reddit that if you fuck up and don't go, they send

you like passive aggressive emails to your phone about how you didn't show up and how they waited around for you. Do you have to go during real time? No, no, it's the in-game stage. I think it was somebody set up an afternoon date with Ben the Bear and they did a mission instead. He sent this email going like, oh, hey, I waited around. You weren't there.

I didn't know what to do and I took work off for this, but okay, okay. That's fun. And then you can make them work at your video store to get your passives. Yeah, man. That's great. Cool. Anyway, yeah, I know it's the, anyway, anyone that loves this and is hooked in is not going to want to hear me going on about how I'm not. But regardless, I fucking, I can see myself like, I'm not going to go and I can, I can see myself, I'm not going to go and, I can probably see myself waiting until like, the wolf is on the, is the wolf ever gonna be on the banner?

I don't know. Never, never. He's a- The people in the standard banner will go live in the standard banner forever. Okay, then I can see myself- So the only way for you to guarantee Wolfman is for you to play the game every day

for the next 600 ish days That's I guess that's gonna be that then We'll see Or salty or salt your emails Before we leave I should mention. There's your whale. There's your, I don't know what the free to play people are called. What's the fish equivalent? There's dolphins.

Yeah, I know. I was about to talk about dolphins, but what's the people who just don't spend the time on it? Minnows? Minnows is Minnows way. The dolphin way, the way that it maths out in the mihoyo games is like they've calculated it so perfectly Right so you get so it costs 160 of your fake-ass currency to do a roll, right?

And if you do your dailies you get 60 right and dailies in this game take literally like 40 seconds It's it's really literally just they want you to open up the app. Like once on your phone, right? Okay, sorry, when you say dailies, because I had another moment of, excuse me, there's daily stuff that is under a certain banner, but you're talking. It's literally called engagement. Okay, yes, okay, that one.

You schedule the tasks. Go take a picture of a cat. Go take a picture of a cat. Yeah, yeah. So your errands tab, it's literally go scratch your ticket, take a photo, have a coffee. Because the thing called the dailies was not actually the daily. That's why I bring that up. I know.

So just get off my back. All right, go. So that takes, that gives you 60 of your fake ass premium bullshit, right? Yeah. If you grab the daily login thing, which is about, I think for Americans it's five bucks, I think for Canadians it's 650 a month for 30 days. That gives you 90 every day that you log in, right? Which brings out to 150 a day, which is 10 less than a poll, right? So then the idea is that if you played the game at all, you would get an achievement and you'd get up to 160, okay? So let's say if you dolphined out and bought that daily battle thing, whatever.

The battle pass. The daily login bonus. Sorry, no, the daily login bonus. Not the battle pass. Okay, not the battle pass. You would get one pull a day, right? Well, their patch cycle is exact It is always six weeks always to the day So six times seven is equal to 42, right? 42 times 160 blah blah blah. So basically,

the ideal is that over the course of a banner, you have 42 plus 42 would be 84. banner, you have 42 plus 42 would be 84. You would essentially get almost to the way to a 90 guaranteed pull, but the thing is that you would have to decide, do you want the one in the beginning of the patch or the second half of the patch? Okay, okay. So there's a baked in, if you keep up and play it every day, you will get Yeah, yeah. Every patch you'll be able to get one of the two S-rank characters. Right, right, the battle pass that kinda pays for itself or the self-sustaining economy that is your time.

And the months that you go super hard on it and you totally max out the pass, then spend your money on the pass because then you get all the rewards. But don't get it at the beginning of the month. You'd be stupid as fuck if you got it at the beginning of the month. You'd be stupid as fuck If you got it at the beginning of the month because maybe you get busy Maybe you don't know what you're doing, but on the month that you just like oh, yeah I just played a lot of Zen lists this week and got like 89 on the pass without even thinking about it. Mm-hmm. Okay, interesting

What I think about how I played this versus how I played like something like teppin for example as well I think another thing besides the like oh, I like these JPEGs and I care about them, right? Besides that element, I think it's also the fact that Teppin was a PVP thing and I think a PVP style mobile game is also likely to pull me a bit further along. So- Oh, PVP style mobile game with a card is like the the grossest most intense gacha ever because the ability to just have fucking Character strength and card strength just increase over time and the and the again forever the retiring of old decks and all that But all this to say that when it comes to the previous Hoyo stuff, it's always just PvE and new PvE missions coming out over time, right?

I don't know of any PvP thing at all in any of them. Okay. That's the standard fare of what I'm assuming is going on. And then there's little arcade games where you can connect to other players and I believe so oh there There is there is a co-op arcade game in in fucking Zenless, which is I didn't expect It's snake. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw that Because like because like you know as it turns out now when you when you like You I think gacha should probably be like a one of two words describing the type of game. Yes.

You know, if it's, if it like, because genre, tone, sure. Yes. Space RPG, hip hop action, whatever. Because not every gacha game involves you dodging comboing and you know, yeah super ring or whatever, right? So I'd like to actually respond to somebody in the in the chat if that's alright somebody said that they're extraordinarily bored by catcher conversations that we have on the podcast because we invariably get like stuck in the in the mud of Describing how roles work and how that like the all the

economic systems work. I think it's like, I think, talking about the way the economics of a gacha game works is the most interesting thing about any of them, but also it would be irresponsible of us to sit here and talk about Zenless and pretend that money doesn't enter into the game at any point. It is also incredibly fascinating to watch like how the Metro like the things we're talking about, which are video games are starting to shift towards for, you know, in this decade, which are like a free to play game,

which you give more leeway to do bullshit, but how much bullshit is too much, you know, is a weird thing to have to navigate. And I think we're kind of seeing it play out. And I also know that if we were not recording, if we were having these conversations back in college right now It would be going the same way. Oh, I would be so interested in just like wow these things that don't work on me

Necessarily or that I'm not like feeling drawn towards but are the main appeal here. I want to understand how they work I want to crack this open the figure out we're back in for back in college I want to crack this open and figure out. Well, the other thing is if we were back in college, this conversation would go slightly differently because someone in our immediate vicinity would be like an absolute fucking fiend. A hyper whale. And just be like, no, you don't understand! Ah!

And it's like, okay. Whoa. But I would be so interested in breaking down how these things plan their strategy and what exactly is happening. Because whenever these things do work, and they work well, and again, this is like, this is, they had two successful games before this to then put this one out there.

Oh, they had, fuck, they had Honkai Impact 3rd too. Like, we don't talk about it. Oh, about it because we became aware when Genshin showed up Impact and then again for that star really right that had one before honkai impact third Which was apparently like just straight dog dog water just bad. I see but I would buy like looking at this is always an interesting frame of reference because when we see Parts of this picked up and dropped into the things you are familiar with right when when Mario Has a battle pass in it

You're gonna want to know why and you're gonna want to have Some reference points to figure out where the fuck we are in time that this new Mario game has a battle pass you're right it's because of the Chinese nuclear scientists so yeah I think that's I think it's by the way they're not actually building the reactor they're just funding great people who do science crap with with nuclear fission okay now so yeah that's that's the Zed-less experience. That game's way better on the phone.

So okay, that game's way worse on my phone because it's actually, like I don't know how if you've played any of the action stuff, because I was like smoking all the action sections. It was so easy. In Grease I did the first couple parts, yeah. But when you play any of the stuff on your phone, it's way harder. It's way harder.

And just for reference. With the touch buttons. What's your daily commitment been so far? So maybe a total of half hour. Okay. But that's not spread evenly. Okay, got it. maybe a total of half hour. Okay. But that's not spread evenly. Okay, got it. That's spread between logging in

and busting out the training mode battery in like five minutes, four days a week, five days a week. Okay. And then like one night I stayed up and did like the hollow zero shit and some of the story. Okay. So it's not like 30 minutes a day.

It's like there one time I sat down and played it for four hours and the other days I hopped on and played it for 10 minutes. Okay. Interesting. So, I'm curious about that because, so I jumped back on just once to see if the banner updated or something because I thought I saw someone say something about Butler Wolf being on the banner and I went to check. Nah, man. He's going to live on that standard forever.

So then that was that. Something else I played was No rest for the wicked That is sounds familiar the creators of Ori and the blind forests right making a souls like Diablo perspective Shown off fantasy action here. Mm-hmm I think that's shown off like this year. The perspective is high up isometric, but in terms of combat and making a build in weapons and such and building up your character, it's souls-like, but the death and bonfire style thing is complete. There's no corpse running or anything like

that. Okay. It's like a regular old action game in terms of death and all that. Yes, but instead what you do now introduce is an animal crossing- like town and building a homestead where you can put up furniture and build crafting materials and things like that. You're chopping down trees, pickaxing ore, and then refining them at your house. Are there timers on anything? There are. When you're refining some ingots to go upgrade your weapons There's like a seven minute timer on that Uh-huh, but if you go and make a major renovation like getting an elevator that takes you from

The bottom of the marketplace to the top of where you go level up your character, right? That takes four hours Congrats, you're playing Warframe really interesting congrats like many years on how about that finally you have finally put your fucking foot in something that I'm like yeah no that's Warframe that is literally the crafting experience of Warframe now there's and v rising't know if you remember that game. I remember. I saw V-Rising because it advertises a lot. Warframe's multiplayer elements work in what way exactly?

Their co-op. Okay. In this case, you are... I think... What is the it it's like there's there's a kind of like a there's a community chest that you can I don't think I don't know that if there's anything that directly connects to other players or not in this but what you can do is create a character and then make multiple realms and those are kind of

like different saves aka different almost like servers you know right and you can take that same character that's powered up and drop them into a new save and then go and do other stuff in there oh like like like Valheim or be rising but it's odd because this is a single player experience but a single player yeah and But a single player. Yeah. That's fucking weird. That's what I'm saying, right? Timers and stuff like that usually are involved with multiplayer things or things that are maybe free to play or such.

But this is a full priced regular game. But you still gotta go make the thing and wait an hour for it to go, and in one case, there's like, yeah, the major upgrades are going for four hours or so. So I'm like, I don't know why the timers are there when it's just single-player stuff. Calm the fuck down.

So that's probably, if anything, one of the more annoying elements of it, just right off the bat, is like. The timers in Warframe exist so that you can pay fucking currency to make the timers go faster. Like that is why. Right. And otherwise you can just be patient and I guess play the third thing. The other reason is so you chill the fuck out and don't blow through a year's worth

of development content in a weekend. In seconds. Yeah, okay. Okay. years worth of development content in like a weekend. Yeah, okay, okay. So yeah, I know in this you're just going at your own pace, but what is interesting is those moments are, when you have to animal crossing, is when you hit a wall of difficulty with the enemies and such.

So I did a stream of it and got the first couple hours in and it took a while to kind of just get used to like what combat was asking and like some of the way your build works because you have all those, you know, stats you'd be familiar with from like a Guinness Souls game. But like every item you're picking up is randomized. Okay. And it's randomized everything in it and everything in the chests is randomized. Okay. Everything people are dropping. And like, it's randomized with a like, you're within this low level range. So you're only going to get up to this. So it like things Yes, yes, but you don't know what you're gonna get at any point with what requirements for what so? It is really

And then also when you leave areas When you like while you're done when you die and like respond everything that you killed is still dead but if you leave an area for long enough, and I think the time of day changes, then it repopulates and chests repopulate. And so it's this kind of odd thing because like, you're progressing through it and you have like these really hard areas. And you can spend all your consumables trying to kill something. And then if you don't kill it, then it's like, well, you're out of consumables. Now that's that. Yeah, that's how it is. Yeah, right. But if you do kill it, then hey, well, it's gone. And

then you can get to hit the next, you know, whatever checkpoint. The as you kind of go back through the areas you've been to when you get you eventually get to town and you can see a whole lot of Stuff to build out and you can spend your time Upgrading the town and or upgrading your character. Yeah when you go backwards to the areas you've already been to Everything is scaling with you. So you're only ever stomping things in that game when you're at like I think the peak of the things in that game when you're at like I think the peak of the

thresholds before it drops the next tier of enemies on you, you know, oh so before you upgrade your Your hollow investigation certification or perhaps if you finish this mission, whatever the case is, right? But like and then immediately everything in the world I know like you're only you're only stomping anything in honkai or Genshin or fucking Zenless until you fucking decide to do your world upgrade. And then it all fucking gets nuts again. But so after that initial like first look at it, I went back in because I was just like, let me give this another shot and see what I missed and stuff. And sure enough, I did miss a lot. There was a whole lot of areas and secret things that you had you could kind of shuffle around and and climb towards and stuff. Because I hit a wall in progress and I was like, I literally have no idea where to go. Something really weird and interesting about it is that it's gorgeous. It is beautiful. It is one of the best looking... So I've been looking at it pretty much the whole time. Yeah. It's incredible.

I got to say, because you're talking about all the mechanical depth around the game's internalized systems. But what about the juice? It is so pretty. And whenever characters are in cutscenes that are all in-game and it's moving up to people doing shit and whatever up close, it's one of the best looking games I've ever seen. Because it looks like the way arcane episodes play out.

It feels as if the in-game engine is like you're in arcane. It's gorgeous. In fact, it looks so good up close that when you zoom the camera out to that isometric view, you feel like you're losing out on all this incredible detail that you otherwise would be getting. Well, I'm like you're losing out on all this incredible detail that you otherwise would be getting.

But I'm looking at the zoom out and the zoom out also looks incredible. Yeah, no, you run past a fireplace and then the sky and the shine of your blade in the dark as everything's lit perfectly perfectly. It's incredible. A lot of moments where kind of like in Hades when you walk up to a cliffside and the camera pans out to show you this beautiful vista. Lots of amazing vistas in this game. The thing, and this is from the Ori and the Blind Forest people, so of course it's going to visually stun you, right, that that's

what they're doing. The way this is made possible, and to some degree the trade-off, is that you cannot rotate the camera at any point No, that's totally normal. You are locked into the angle of view, right? That's that's super normal for this type of game Yeah, yeah The risings actually super weird that you have full camera control. Huh, okay Because that allows everything to look incredible at all times, but it also results in, and the game's in early access, like full ass early access, that allows for moments where progress is in some cases locked behind weird angle dips where there's a cliff and you have

to go down a hill that's hidden from view. And you're like oh I'm supposed to go there or you're supposed to push up against the wall and do a little shimmy sideways but you couldn't tell that that was a cliff that was meant to be shimmied on you know and things were like the beautiful camera is Obscuring a path you're supposed to take mandatorily that keeps that happens a bunch and It's frustrating because you're like I ran in circles in this area five times. What the fuck is the way forward? To which it's this little dip over here. It's this little dip, you know, and

Every time you run back past past some fucker that'll wreck your day in two or three swings, you're like, God damn it. That gets frustrating. Something about the game as well that is insane, I don't know know how if any other game, especially from this viewpoint, uh, compares the, uh, Horizontality of combat is extreme footsies are full screen With everything that you do and everything coming at you enemies regularly like not even zoners coming at you. Enemies regularly, like not even zoners,

enemies that have like a hammer or a sword or a spear will from the back of the screen come flying at you to do a regular stab and you have to roll out of the way and then you do- Yeah, no, the enemies like wanna close distance before they start their attack bullshit. It's crazy, like the amount of distance closing and like when you dodge something,

it's essentially you going from the middle of the screen to the to the end of the edge of the camera. Um, it's so nuts. And that results in a lot of moments of like something that was nowhere near you aggroed off camera because you can't turn the camera to look in its direction. And then it's stinger you from fucking down the street. You know, and you got rocked and dropped off this ledge and good luck, too bad.

The inability to rotate camera, but also having a Souls-like lock-on system creates difficulty because, can I lock onto that? Are you in my sight? Well, you're in the enemy's sight. So, you know, you're gonna get constantly, you can't scan for archers

because they're just above you off camera in an environment where you can't look around. You're always gonna hear a sound of maybe a sword getting pulled out to know that you aggro'd somebody. But for the most part, you will know you're being zoned because you'll get hit with a bomb or an arrow, and observation skills couldn't really save you. So that's a bit odd. I didn't even know this came out.

Early access, right? Early access, yeah. Folks, people were saying, I looked it up and I saw the people said like oh the first 10 hours or so is in this this initial early access chapter I went back in and did more than that and there's still a lot of game going So you should try out v rising because v rising has like a lot of overlap with this But is completely finished. Okay. It's 1.0 now.

Yeah, I got a lot of emails to potentially check that out for sponsorship purposes, but I didn't really look into it. But I've heard about V-Rising a good bit. In this case, I mean, this art style fucking immediately has me sitting up and paying attention. I don't know that anything is gonna compare on that level. No, this looks immaculate. Unbelievable. And fairly quickly too, you get a couple weapons that I was like,

oh, the weapon crafting, not crafting, but customization in this game as well is also really cool. Wow, the effect of, I'm watching footage of somebody like using a, looks like a staff to throw, or maybe a sword to throw like fireballs. The enemy is on fire animation is incredible. Like specifically that is incredible. Every, like there's so much of the, just every time you, again, go to your quote unquote

bonfire or you just like get lightning coming out or all the effects, it's just full of miasma and glorious particles and everything's just wonderfully lit and it feels like a game where the concept artists got their dream faithfully adhered to, which I would say Ori games are also probably that, right? So when it comes to the other thing that kind of had me booting this back up and putting a lot more hours in after I streamed it was when it comes to weapon customization you get everything you pick up if it's I guess what do you call that white items is that the term or gray items whatever it's like base level you know oh yeah common rarity so does this

this is a pet peeve of mine but does this use like the agreed upon rarity structure because like some games try and fuck up the colors and it use like the the agreed-upon rarity structure Because like some games try and fuck up the colors and it's like the worst fucking thing ever You go from basic common gray to blue is rare to blue is One level up from that like somewhat rare. I forgot the terms purple is Actually rare. Holy shit and then best is gold Okay white green blue purple gold

Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's the correct one. Yeah. Yeah, okay, right like there's been a couple of games that have like inverted blue or green and it's so Confusing wasn't there I feel like there's a game where there was a yellow for common, and then it went from Oh, that's awful. That's awful as fuck. It went from white to a goldish yellow, and then to blue, and then to purple. Or so.

Somebody asked, where's red? Red means unequipable. Red bad. That's the level. Red is bad. It means bad. Or broken, or something. Anyway, yeah, so in this case, you take your common

item and then whatever the whatever it is, you have four rune slots and four infusion slots, right. And what you basically get is material slots on every weapon. But the first four are when you pull the weapon out, each face button does one of these special moves that uses your special meter. And it can be a weapon art essentially. So imagine you have like, so you have your- Can you describe the materia slots, what they look like slightly more?

Sure, so I mean, it's just on the weapons, like information screen, like you'll have a great sword two-handed, and then it'll be like, Y button has this rune slotted in, which is a overhand swing right okay B button a button X button are empty go find a rune okay okay so what this is this is path of exiles fucking action thing but assigned to a move set instead of just

raw statistics okay but as well path of exile has that materia system for its weapons yeah but it's but it's like unlocks a move and then all the fucking The you know supplemental additional statistics onto that move whereas this one is each Button is a different move, but it's also what you described because each of those four buttons on the face Are so you have your weapon right right? Again, greatsword. You have your basic greatsword sequence combo, and your roll attack, your running attack, et cetera, running combo.

You have a parry, and if it's one-handed, you can have a shield out. If it's two-handed, you're committed. And then you hold your special move button, your focus button, and then you can do, yeah, one of those four abilities that you put on, right? If you pull one out, the weapon breaks. So you-

The whole weapon? Yes. So whatever you put in- Well, that's, okay. Whatever you put in is a permanent choice for what those moves are for that weapon, right? If you find a duplicate, you pull one out, the weapon breaks, and you put it a duplicate, you pull one out, the weapon breaks and you put

it into the one you love. Okay. So then you get your four moves that you that you you have and you like or whatever. In my case, I put for example, a giant sweeping overhead swing launcher thing and then I put a healing spell into the second slot on the rune, right? Separately from that is these other slots that are, there's another four slots, and these are passives that are electric damage. Okay. Okay, that's a lot.

Adds healing on parries, or does extra poison damage, or whatever. So you have four slots of passive thing on the weapon that you can customize, and four slots of move list to customize with. Right? So you can aff fix whatever you want to it. I can't wait for people to optimize all enjoyment out of this system. So, uh, the way they do for path of exile. It's there's, so there's,'s there's there's those elements to it. And you have that with your basic item that you pick up and so on. But if you then go and upgrade its rarity to make it a better

weapon overall you lose three of those passive upgrade slots and two of the move slots. So you get a bunch of other shit dropped on your weapon and its rarity goes up and its strength goes up, but in exchange you don't have that. I have to admit this sounds miserable as fuck. It's not that bad. It is much simpler when you're kind of looking at it, but the overall feeling I get and the reason why I didn't mind it compared to what I was describing with the say like minor tweaks in Zenless, for example, is that like these are major customizations that affect your entire move list.

Right. No, there's a visible new button to hit. Yes. Which move do you want to do with your sword? You can do a bunch of them. So if you want to equip ashes to your Elden Ring weapon, what if you had four ash slots? And then if you wanted it to just be elemental aspects to it, you can add that to a different set of slots, essentially. And then as you upgrade its rarity so that

the numbers do more or whatever, then you lose the amount like as you upgrade its its rarity so that the numbers do more and whatever Then you lose the amount of ashes you can put in exchange for all those other things that happen It's it's I'm describing it in this way, but it's actually pretty good. It's it's it's oh no I get it just like there's um There's like an emotion that happens in my chest when you describe pulling items out destroys the item that makes me go but like I understand that you have a really good gem you want to put in a direct replacement for the weapon that you just got mm-hmm right you got the same great sword but better pulling the rare gem that you want and put it but

still and then those same things that I'm describing, you can also equip into your armor if you want your armor to be like, hey, the thing that makes my sword fire or my arrow fire, if I put it on the armor, it means that something that hits me is gonna take a point of fire damage. So there are very drastic ways to affect your build and such in playing this.

And you can customize pretty drastically while doing all of this independent of your stats. So that's something that I thought was really interesting because if you commit to a strength build or a faith build or an int or such, it'll restrict what types of weapons you can use certainly and things will scale better if you focus on a faith-based weapon and a faith-based spell

or whatever the case is. But these other separate elements I'm describing allow you to really do things with your character that are not tied to those stats necessarily. So in the end, it allows for a lot of freedom with the type of character you end up creating, which I find pretty cool, again, because it's like they affect your build in drastic ways, not minimal ways. You know? Okay.

So one of the things I was thinking about Well one I saw footage I'm watching the footage as you're talking and I saw them chopped down the tree and this is such a stupid thing to say That's a really good chop down the tree You hold it like you shop be if if you're gonna be doing like daily task type shit The the the behind it it actually helps a lot The second of which is this will have co-op I was like thinking here like why the fuck do they let you go to other servers? It's so fucking weird they took co-op out for the early access release because it wasn't okay

And because they good because there's a community chest that lets you share items between servers And I guess this is where the multiplayer start will yeah No, it will have co-op multiplayer at some point, which now makes all that server shit make perfect sense. Now another element of it that is interesting too, and I don't know if this is standard elsewhere, but here certainly it's like you have experience, you kill things, you get the XP, you level up, you put the points into the stats. And then, every time you kill a boss or a major story thing, challenge or so, you get

an item that you take to a place and it opens up a type of slot on your character that is either like, get an extra ring slot, get an extra right hand or left hand weapon slot, get five extra resource slots, get five extra items, et cetera. That sounds like V-Rising. I can't remember it very well. Is that what's going on there too? That sounds like some of those where bosses have permanent long-term upgrades associated with them. In this case-

Wow, that is a really good tree chopping animation. It's all inventory. It's all like, because you're like, God damn it, my pockets are full and I want to carry my resources back and I found some new ones or whatever. The temptation to like, at first you're like, well, yeah, I want more weapons on my character. That's the whole point. It's like, oh, but I keep having to drop good shit to pick up other good shit. That's annoying.

Or more ring slots. Inventory space is incredible in these types of games. You can never have enough. And then there's times where it's like, oh, one of the first things that randomly dropped for me in my second run there was a weakass pair of gloves that have slow health regen on oh dude I love and you're like well I'm never gonna take these off it's over this slot is locked so time like you know you can get something else that has health regen yeah yeah so you're like time to spend my upgrade getting a different slot

over here because this slots gone forever you know yeah you should there's a lot that you're saying that is v-rising sounds adjacent yeah like v-rising gotcha okay but also like this everything about like base building slash action game like aesthetic like there are like they're like 40 of those now. Okay. Like the difference is what type of action game you're doing other than base building. Like Sons of the Forest is like technically in that genre,

even though it's about, you know, horror and nightmare shit. Well, I mean, this one is the pretty one. That's very, very gorgeous to look at and 2d 3d Patiently Pretty on everything everything is just painterly and gorgeous and amazing and also setting story characters

Great, very cool. Oh, yeah. Yeah so far so good Great. Very cool. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So far, so good. Everyone you talk to has is fully voiced and has multiple multiple lines of dialogue, random people walking around town all have tons of things to say. Do more people show up in your town as you build it up? Yes. Ambient people. Yes. So I like that. I like that. So the old the old Bar wench that was complaining when you got there She's like, ah, my useless husband got himself lost in the forest and then you go find the husband and you're like Oh, you brought him back and she's like, I guess he's back and she's like, ah, whatever like they like hate my husband Why'd you keep bringing back exactly and then you upgrade their inn and now a bunch of new NPCs are around town that go to the inn or stuff and whatever.

Someone from the intro of the game came back once that inn popped up. And then as you upgrade the inn, more and more levels, I assume, there will be more characters to talk to and things going on as well. And yeah, and just in terms of like setting up the, you know, the whole who you are, what's happening. There's a bunch of just fucking characters, just incredible people right away. There's shitty Joffrey type motherfuckers. That's quite a claim right off the bat. Like royal assholes that establish themselves right away. You've got mouth of Sauron style cultists with their whisper line delivery.

You've got a whole bunch of just characters all doing it and they look great. They sound great. The voice acting is fantastic. Yeah, people simp it hard in the chat for the zealot mommy, exactly. And you know just yeah nothing in terms of visuals artistic story elements etc to say except it great stuff there the 52 dollars in early access, how much $52? Canadian? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Oh, that is for real. Okay. Well, it, it's a it's a it's a full ass game, I guess. I don't know what the limit on on how close I am

to the wall of content is, but I've noticed that after, it's been about maybe 15 or so hours or so, I think, after each major chapter section, and the world resets and the difficulty increases, I'm at a new challenge where it's like everything in the new story quest area is annihilating me in two swings and I'm barely doing anything to them. Yeah. If this follows the type of general feeling as like a Valheim or v-rising or whatever the new new like

divisions will be like a Completely new game like start the fuck over in terms of your whole progression So like you're already back to being a little baby, right? Like so I mean what you so by opening up I made us a home file versus the the stream file So by opening up, I made a home file versus the stream file or server or whatever. And then was able to just blast through obviously with the stronger character initially and catch back up. But once you hit that wall, then it's like,

okay, time to go chop some trees, build some resources. Time to go chill the fuck out. And when I upgrade the town, that means the blacksmith can make my weapons better. And by making my weapons better, I can go to the magic lady who can infuse them and make my moves better. And when I have more moves and better shit and all that, now go tackle that super hard area and see how you do.

It is fascinating that the amount of games we're playing now that are Built around capital G gamers need to do it right the fuck now mm-hmm right like Why we're taught we talked about Zen less we talked about this and both of them have enormous amounts of systems that are just like Why don't you just chill the fuck out? Why don't you just fucking just put it down for the day go relax? Yeah, so there's a bonus, okay? People go no, okay, okay, so besides the timer clock there is a There's beds that you when you make the in you can go lay down in a bed or if you may Yeah, you buy a house you can make a bed Lying down in the bed. it's like time passes or whatever, but your character

just sits there. And then it's like, if you log out of the game now and four hours pass, when you log back in, you will have buffs for sleeping. That's great. So just make sure to go quit while in a bed. And when you come back next session, you'll have shit, right? Rested XP, is that the deal? Yeah? Okay. So... That's Rested XP, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, there you go. So it's got that in this, again, so far single player context. Rested XP, I don't know if you're familiar with the history behind it, but it's so fucking funny the way that the mechanics on the original batch of Rested XP happened. I think you described this like many episodes ago. So World of Warcraft invented Rested XP. And the very first time they did it, they said, hey, when you're logged off, you'll

accrue a little bonus XP. And what happened was that while you're rested, you get 100% XP for everything. And then as the time goes on and you get tired, you get down to 75, then you get down to 50%. And it was like one of the most wildly hated fucking unpopular things ever. How dare you kill my grinds. It was so intensely reviled. And then they went into the fucking numbers and they changed it that when you arrested you got 200% XP. Wink. There you go. And then you would fall all the way down to 100. And they changed just enough of the numbers to make

it look like you were actually getting it But it was still slower than it was before and like so the amount of experience didn't double you just the number It told you you're doubled compared to what it would be when you're not resting So like FF 14 has a psychology And so if you're if you're if you have a character that's higher level than yours That's high enough level and you're low enough level and you have buffs on your thing and you have a character that's higher level than yours, that's high enough level and you're low enough level, and you have buffs on your thing and you have rest of XP, when you kill something you'll get a pop-up that's the XP amount and it'll go like, plus 283% XP. You go, wow, I'm really making a lot of progress.

Oh my god. And then you eventually run out of those and you're down to 0% bonus and you're like, oh well I should stop for the day because it's just not worth it. I Mean if you show the real numbers, which is like in this case You can go on and show damage show stats show poise, etc Then you can see the real number of like that thing you killed that was 50 XP is now going to give you 75 or whatever the fuck. Yeah But anyway, that's how people figured out that the whole thing was fucked right off that like immediately

Like despite the fact that everyone knew it was fucked and it was a trick within like a week It still worked because the number looked nice when I hit the like the psychology of Looking at it is so much stronger than the psychology of knowing it. Okay Yeah, and so the last thing I hit was an area after a bunch of Story shit popped off is an area that is essentially like a chalice dungeon of sorts where it's like you have to spend a consumable for an attempt at this super hard zone and If you oh, yeah. Oh, that's always fun as fuck. If you fail, you get kicked out and have to go get another

consumable. And I mean, I stacked up a bunch, so I have like 30 or 40 attempts on me. But fucking forget losing progress. How about losing Ingress? And then yeah, go farm the world for keys to attempt this type of dungeon again. So I don't know how bad that's going to get. Hopefully that isn't as annoying as it seems like it could be. But again, right now I have like 40 or so attempts, so it seems fine. If I'm ever grinding for that, then fuck that. But yeah, early access.

A lot of the shit it's doing is very cool. Combat, once I got the hang of it, I do like what it's doing. The parry window is a little sussy, but that's mainly because your camera is overhead and not like sussy w that's mainly because your camera is overhead and not like sussy wussy indeed the parry the parry window is very sussy because it is because when the camera is not behind your shoulder and a tracking overhead is coming down on you, if you press it too early before the point of the actual weapon, it's not going to work.

But sometimes the camera obfuscates your visibility in those cases. Fighting a boss from 11 or 10 o'clock is a bad idea because you can't see what it's doing while it's blocking you off. Hey, I have a silly question because you described it has a parrying mechanic. Is the parrying mechanic in this game hit it as it touches you or before it touches you?

Because games deciding that it's one or the other causes me no end of consternation when I'm like I'm hitting it as it makes impact oh is that too slow yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah in this case it is on the moment that the damage noise and impact would have pop okay so see I find that a lot easier to actually internalize. Yes, because you're used to when the character when an enemy rolls up to and goes, ah, ah, right? That's the rhythm of its sequence. Or if it does like a big charge and goes, ah, ah, ah, ah, you know, like you have that rhythm of getting hit, you internalize and then eventually are able to time the moment of impact correctly.

You do that, this applies to also all the character action games we love. Parry timing should be the moment you're, the frame you're getting hit, not early on that. Elden Ring's new just-to-fend mechanic is like that. It's like, are you blocking in the instant that you would have been going through a damage fucking phase? Like a damage reaction. Now, if it's an attack with a guard point, we can give it a range of time and that's OK. If there's like a, hit me now for this window of time

and then I'm going to do something else, then that's fine. But if it's for parry purposes, on the moment. In this case, yeah, you do it, poise breaks, enemy drops, do your thing. So anyway, pretty cool, especially after that first hump. I think the episodes going up, you see me kind of get used to it and stuff, and then I enjoyed it a lot more afterwards. And yeah, I mean, that's the full price you're guess. I guess it's a $40 game in America that you're rather the early access is the full price of the game that it's going to be on release, I suppose.

And they're going to build it out from there. I'm going into this also knowing that, you know, likely going to lose all this progress and saves and stuff. But oh, you're going to gonna wanna start over for sure. Like these types of games that are like long-term meta progression of an environment, like at various points during early access, they'll probably just wipe your progress straight out.

Yeah, I'm fully expecting that in this case, and I know the deal, but, you know, while it's annoying for things like your animal crossing, fucking PAL worlds base building stuff, Um, you know, while it's annoying for things like your animal crossing fucking, uh, pal worlds base building stuff, the skill for that, that I'm learning in combat is staying with me. So I'm happy to just be like, okay, well, at least I can still fight competently and that experience will carry over, you know?

So, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely worth a gander. Um, and I knew this, but I also just feel dumb. I'm like, yeah, I always wanted to get around to the Ori games and never did. Just visually. I really strongly disliked the first Ori. Hmm. Okay. Like, a lot. There was something about the movement and the double jump

that just fucking drove me crazy. Just non-specific general game feel. The second one felt way better. Like way better. Well, like I said, this is fucking isometric, sword and board. And when you roll and swing, you roll half the screen, and then your swing takes the other half of the screen. So, so much fucking horizontal movement. This looks like the type of game,

this looks like the perfect type of, there's only two times to get in, which is when they reactivate the co-op, or 1.0. Cause I'm looking at it, and I'm like, wow, that that looks great and it looks like the kind of thing that will dramatically improve on the way to 1.0. Yeah, what's there for now? What's there for now though is a lot of fun and I do like the ability to again put like four weapon arts or ashes into a weapon and like be like this weapon arts are ashes into a weapon and like be like this or when you pick up a boss weapon that drops for example like a special great sword that one of the first boss drops it

has like four it has a stinger on it a buff a scream ground spikes and then you know what I mean like it's got like four really good moves on it right off the bat and yeah I like move lists modification and how that that plays into your your gameplay as well. I'm way more interested in this than I was in either of the Ori games. Yeah I'm glad that I'm glad they're putting their art style towards a type of game that I'm much more interested in. Sure and the one that can make a lot more money yeah you know over time as it goes so that's's No Rest for the Wicked. Pretty good so far. Just keeping in mind the early access foibles. All right. There was one other game I took

a look at. What's that? And it was called Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. That is on my wheel. Deep in the wheel. From Simogo and Annapurna, so the creators of Sayonara Wild Hearts. And this time around, they are ditching the one hour musical trip journey for a puzzle fucking ass puzzle game and and off the wheel it comes okay so it depends on what kinds of straight- up just pulled it off. Wow! That much? Damn! Do you hate all kinds of puzzles? No matter what? Okay.

No, but like it's always so frustrating I can't have. Okay, because there's the Baba is you style puzzle, which is learn to think correctly, right? And then there's the, I don't know, then there's the the the witness style, like, or, you know, like, it's in there, you can learn using context clues. But like, you're also going to

have some shit that's like, getting really obtuse in its inferences. And then there's this where it's like, you can infer most of what you need to, but the game straight up tells you there's going to be some stuff that requires an understanding of things that might be outside the game. And it tells you, OK, you need to know, For example, it says like, be familiar with it describes it as Arabic numbers, which are the numbers that we all know. Roman numerals. Right.

And those come up into play and such. Astrological signs. Right. A couple of these things. And to be fair to the game, you do pick up notes that eventually that describe these things to you if you're unfamiliar with them. But like, there is a wild moment in solving one of the puzzles in this game where if I'm

just going to spoil one of the puzzles in Lorelei and the Laser Eyes that like fucking brain... This made me realign and readjust my expectations after this. It's a puzzle where you have to figure out, you have to figure out the solution that's a number. And it says, the exact text of it is like, it gives you two or three sentences that are implications of what the number might be. One of them says, count your teeth, for example. One of them describes the element on the periodic table that lines up with the number that is the solution here. Oh, well that's fairly easy then. Okay. And then one of them is, it says Agatha's detective, we tried to call Agatha's detective,

but he moved to a different country They're talking about Agatha Christie, okay now okay now who is now who's Agatha Christie's detective Of course as you put me on the spot. I can no longer remember the fucking name. So Poirot. Oh, it's Poirot, okay. Okay now first of all if you I know Agatha Christie is an author I don't know about her works enough to be able to pull that name out so I just didn't have that knowledge to begin with. Yeah I knew it but I didn't know it. Okay. Does that make sense? Great now where is Poirot from? He's from France I believe. No. He's from Belgium? Yes. Okay. What is Belgium's area code?

Why would you assume that it's the fucking area code of where he used to live because it's a new place Because the sentences we call the sentences we caught right to call Agatha's thing, but he moved to a different we tried to call This is we caught right to call agatha's thing, but he moved to a different. We tried to call So it's that's a sentence that you read and like What the fuck man? I was right to pull that shit off and and while there is a thing that says here's hers Here's some Latin phrases. Here's some rumor Roman numerals. Here's some Here's the the astronomy astrological figures, etc. I did not find any document that says anything about Agatha Christie or her works or what the area code for Belgium might be. So what the fuck, right? But hey, within that same

puzzle if you go with the periodic table clue or the number of teeth clue you might still land at the same answer so it's okay. But there's those moments. If that excites you, if you think that's cool, then you're in the target audience for this game. Visually it looks like a fucking Suda 51 game. It looks like Killer 7. Yeah, it looks very, very much like Killer 7, but black and white. Yes, you're walking around a mansion that's a Hotel Dusk-esque situation,

and everything's weird and creepy. Nothing makes a lot of sense. And you're also looking at a lot of weird visuals that are similar to the way the visuals in Siren Hour Wild Hearts kind of came together, which are cryptic and they imply things, but you're not quite sure what. The overall vibe is strange, but stylish. When you walk up to anything, there's the buttons on the controller, it's almost like it could be a one button game plus directions, because you walk up to anything and then the thing to interact with flashes um and then there's like

yeah there's some cool stylish screens of like your inventory is in is in like eight bits you know when you go to uh interact with a type of puzzle you reach into your purse then you go into this eight bit menu of like what items you have and like, oh, do I put the tampon into the door slot? No, that doesn't work. Okay. I feel I'm trying to like enunciate my issue with that pro puzzle. And I think the problem is the internet. Because any puzzle game that is like, do you not know? Why don't you go elsewhere to figure out this riddle? Okay, I'm gonna type in to Google the text of the riddle because I don't get it.

And the walkthrough that has the solution to the puzzle is gonna come up. I am- And it's ruined. Well, so I am reminded of the Silent Hill 2 or 1 puzzle that was in the classroom. Mm-hmm. Oh, God, what was it? There was a puzzle in Silent Hill, it might have been one, that was in a classroom, and it was a moment of like, hold on a minute, this needs knowledge from outside the game. Was it the piano? It might be the piano puzzle. Because I don't know the, I did not know the keys on the piano off the top of my head.

It might have been, it might have been. I forget what it was, but I feel like I'm remembering a moment of like, oh, you needed me to know something that the game doesn't necessarily teach you, but you kind of just needed to societally have this knowledge. In this case, that was that blowout what the fuck moment, but just about everything else is internal to the game where you're like You're some of the solutions and some of the things you have to deal with our Notes you can pick up elsewhere inferences that come from other places

And if you look at a puzzle and don't have the answer you got to walk around the mansion and find the answer somewhere I just I just realized like man. Good luck beating a survival horror game if you can't read an analog clock. Oh boy luck beating a survival horror game if you can't read an analog clock. Oh boy. What the? If you can't read it, good luck. Okay. How about an analog clock that has three runs of rotational gear that point

towards the, again, uh, the astral astrology symbols. Oh goodie. Yeah. How well do you know your days of the week in their iconic form with the planet as opposed to like the actual letter? Like, you know, you know, when the, you know, when the sailor scouts pull out their, their trans transformers and you have the little like half hearts, the gender icon, you know, like we're like, relatively, broadly knowledge based as adults, like average or maybe a little bit above average.

These are a lot of things to know that you would not necessarily have to know. Well, I will say that what I was enjoying was fortunately things like, I'm like, okay, I know enough about Roman numerals to know yeah I could do Roman numerals because because Rocky seven Adrian's revenge the Simpsons taught me that okay sure I I'm going off of Final Fantasy WrestleMania and the Super Bowl that'll do it, but here we are But you learn you learn enough to know about how to place things but for me. I'm like oh once we get into C M and L, I start to be a little less. Oh, yeah, that's a little bit. We all can figure out how to

work X's, V's and I's. But it gets a little tricky when you're working with MC's and L's. Is L 50? So 100. So you get into what you're getting into 50 100 and then a thousand but also There's a 500 as well. Oh man fucking Romans didn't know how to do nothing, right? So That might be the stupidest thing I've ever said my entire life That might be the stupidest thing I have ever said in my entire life. So you gotta learn about MC, L, and D and what those things look like together. You're okay. Alright. I mean, to be fair, they learned a lot of it from the Greeks and that's right.

You know, and so on. But and anything with the word Alan is Arabic, right? Anything algebra, Algoo, etc. Al Gore. That's that's not. Yep. Yeah. Al Gore. That's not. Yep. Yes. I don't know. It follows along. All right. So when you are, that's where I'm like, okay, as we now have to translate a year into Roman numerals, I'm

getting confused, but there's a reference point you can go back and look at. What ends up happening is, I will say 90% of the puzzles as you're walking around hit you like IQ test puzzles. I was scrolling through somebody's footage and I saw one that was like rotate the block inside your mind. Yes That's that's just an IQ test question Yes, there are straight-up IQ test questions and you solving those will open up some doors for you and make you progress Yeah, some people

Can't do that. I Love those things and I do enjoy them staring at them silently for a while. I also love the cube rotating ones. Yes, right? There's literally, it's like you're looking at like here's some dice, right? And like each die tell me what the missing face is supposed to look like. Right, yeah, no, those are fun. Those are fun.

But like some people cannot do those. Yeah. That's unfortunate. That sucks. It is one element of what they bring about. And you know, I guess like, there's an element too of like, not everything is going to be mandatory for progression. But yeah, for the puzzles though that are like that, that I really find fun, I have a violent,

almost visceral response when one of those puzzles is done poorly. I get crazy upset. Because I'm like, I'm going through this, a book of puzzles you're going through, and they're IQ test puzzles, and each one is solving a different type of lock you need to figure out. And I'm like, okay different type of lock you need to figure out. And like, I'm like, okay, this makes sense. This works. And then I hit one where I'm like, no, this is wrong.

And this sucks because you're not, even if the answer is something here, you're not giving enough to infer the correct, like there's not enough of a hint to get you started in the right direction. Like if the solution requires you to, if you're unable to confirm if you're even walking down the right path to begin with at all, and there's no distinction between walking down the right path and 50 wrong ones, this sucks.

This sucks right away. You're describing why I personally don't like puzzle games, which is that I personally have an incredibly difficult time putting my feet in the shoes of the person who designed the puzzle and figuring out where they want me to go with it. Like I, I with any survival horror puzzles are lock and key. 99% of them are like lock and key, or information, solve it below, right? So I don't have any trouble with that.

But I have a really difficult time intuiting the original design of the person who built this puzzle for me, and often go down tangents. And like people watch this live where I'm like, I'm doing all sorts of math and they're like, what the fuck are you doing? This has nothing to do with the puzzle because I just happen to be focusing on the wrong text

in the question. Right, right. So this is where like the best way this plays out and the way things should generally go for maximum enjoyment is the way things should generally go for maximum enjoyment is the way you hit it with... Even with Baba is You is a perfect example. You're looking at...

Well, no, no, no. Because I know, I know, I know. But here's what's happening when you're hitting these types of puzzles and you're trying to figure it out. You're looking at some information and you can't parse what the pattern is or what it's necessarily, what's missing, right? If it's complete the pattern, if it's like do again, rotate the shape, do the thing that is logical here, then that's one type of thing. But if it's find the relationship between these things, for example, and you start going through it in your brain and you're like, nothing works, nothing works.

And you're like, could it be this? And then you try to make it work and you're like, no, no, no, that doesn't work either, right? And then you hit a bunch of red, a bunch of walls until eventually you go, maybe it's this. And then that one works and you're like, oh, hmm, why? Okay, let me try to repeat that again on this. And you try to repeat it and it's like, nope, it's not that. Okay, I was wrong, right?

So you take these blind steps and then you eventually one works and you're like, oh was the reason because this is the relationship and you try it again and then you get a second one you're like, oh Okay, and then you start moving in that direction, right? But all the other pathways you don't even start moving in that direction because you're immediately like, no, that doesn't work, it doesn't make any sense why that would be that case. If you actually have no confirmation whatsoever and you can walk blindly in the wrong direction

forever until nothing and there's nothing to even, there's no wall to even hit, this sucks. You did a bad job because you don't have that like, potential even moment of like, I was wrong confirmation. That's not fun. That's just abstract nonsense into, eventually you'll hit a solution. Good job, you got lucky.

Wandering 50 steps in the wrong direction. Yeah, no, I wanna put the red gem next to the fucking statue so that the fucking plug comes out so that Leon can jump down the hole. I mean, whatever the case might be, you know, if you take a wrong step in your first attempt, you should immediately kind of realize that you're wrong. There should be something that is like a clear indicator

of like, this is not going to be a progressive way to work forward. Someone in the chat summed it up perfectly. Juan Shonium says, what number am I thinking ass puzzles? Ha ha ha ha ha! Exactly, exactly! That's exactly it! 100%. I'm thinking of a number, what is it? Exactly! Exactly! That's exactly it!

100% I'm thinking of a number, what is it? Nuh-uh, nuh-uh Nah, you close though, was I? No! I get so mad Right? So you have to be prepared To hit one or two of those

And get violently upset with the intent behind this puzzle because you solve it begrudgingly and upset. I'm thinking about how mad I got despite really enjoying Crow Country, how mad that fucking mushroom gets me. The mushroom puzzle is so upsetting. It's so, so deeply upsetting in an otherwise great game. It's great and I didn't have the anger reaction that you did, but I had a totally different one.

I don't know if I described it, but I was working my way through the mushrooms and then I did it and I'm like, huh, I thought. And then someone in chat was like, you actually just have to eat all the mushrooms and heal through. And I went, what? It's not even a puzzle, that's terrible.

Like I was already like, yeah, and I was already like, wait, do I have to know the scientific name of each of these mushrooms along with their casual name? Because that's what I was doing. I'm like, no, that sucks if that's what it is, but it's not even remotely. And it's like, oh, we start bad and we end worse. This is infuriating when other puzzles were much more like,

no, you took the wrong step. You can see that's the wrong step right away. There was no accidental fucking wandering. And yeah, what number am I guessing moment, you know? Anyway, so. Oh man. Every time we talk about this, I just have to fucking think about the witness in my heart

for like 30 seconds and then just be like, that game is the feeling of bending your whole body around so you can look at your own asshole. That game is just... I never... It can't climb deeper in. I never finished it. I hit enough walls and I eventually got tired and didn't come back to it. But I did have moments of holy shit that was

awesome that I hit before I quit playing it. And they're practically like, I'm not going to bring them up because they would spoil a lot of the entire game really to even infer what they are. But like, there's great moments where if you and I can tell as well to some degree, I think this is somewhat of what Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is doing, is like solving puzzles that are teaching you something and then that thing applies at a larger scale in ways that are cooler than you would imagine were there.

There's a method to the madness. You're solving puzzles, you're learning things, and then there's a grand way to integrate all those things together. And once you kind of start thinking about things with this new understanding, the whole thing changes, is a awesome feeling. And the witness, when it did that, the things that did that were like that were fucking great man um

I don't you know I can't I don't want to describe it, but there's there's a moment or two where you go Oh shit, I see what we're doing here Love the part when you got to the top of the mountain and you found the big secret message And it was don't vaccinate your kids the big secret message and it was don't vaccinate your kids. What the fuck are we... Jonathan blows crazy man. What are we talking about? What is happening? I don't even know what that is dude. Just the whole game just felt so up its own ass. You're just walking around looking at a bunch of puzzles and the feeling of fucking oh I'm so smart, oh so smart was just like so overwhelming it was so annoying Again, I just I I hit some moments that I thought were cool

And I thought I'm gonna make a game that soldier boy can't make fun of the game I am I am curious though as to like what? particularly feels that way in um... Well anyway, whatever, it's fun. I can tell you, there's a specific moment that like ruined the whole game. It's when you unlock that fucking basement and you go in and watch like a fucking 20 minute clip of some fucking British guy waxing poetic. Oh yeah yeah, okay.

And I'm like, oh, oh the whole fucking game is just the video jerking itself off And I'm sitting here helping guide the strokes sick the the stuff that Is is happening yet in Lorelei is What's cool about it too as well is that it's bringing you different flavors of puzzles. You might like some more than the others, but there's some that are kind of like, most

of it is numerical, but there's some stuff that's logic. There's some stuff that's just like fit square key into round hole or does it fit? No, yes, whatever. And then there's stuff that's like, oh, here's like a shredded poster, piece it back together. You know? And yeah, like it does give you also one of the most in-depth instruction booklets ever that is like, if you've never played a video game, this is breaking down literally everything about it, including how to think in some cases. Okay, so wait, it'll give you explanation on how video game go, but where does Pyrkul Prolo live?

So, and I think, yes, it's nuts. It's nuts. And I think the reason why it's so descriptive is because I'm imagining play tests occurred. And then after watching people rip their hair out, they went, okay, so this game features money. You will occasionally buy, you occasionally pick up American dollars Those American dollars are not necessary to the completion of the game However, spend them wisely you only get them once and you can unlock certain things with them You know, it's like telling you that like hey these things matter and these things don't right the instructions right off the bat Tell you there is a moment where a character might point a gun at you.

If you then do not solve the problem, your game will be over. You know? So when that happens. This is so fucking weird. Right? And then it'll also be like, you need to save your progress. You will only load the progress you have saved.

And in some cases, if you load a different file or a different disk or a different progress, you will no longer, you will then lose whatever you're currently on. So make sure you're backed up to the point that you're comfortable with before you start playing with your saves and your progress. There's no autosaves going, right?

It like breaks down essentially Here's the things that are that matter to progress Here's the things that don't matter to progress so that you don't start running around going I don't know what the fuck matters and what doesn't what's going on, you know Anyway, so uh Yeah, it's a very strange game and it's very Artistic and stylish and weird and wild and it's doing all kinds of things, but if you like these types of puzzles at all, if you like solving

what I've described, and if you're prepared to potentially grip the plastic until your controller creaks and or rage at your screen when a puzzle is not properly done, then yeah, Lorelai and the Laser Eyes might be for you. It's also like, it's stylish. I'm waiting for the fucking, the music in Sayonara Wild Hearts is one of the best fucking game soundtracks ever. It's so fucking good. And I'm hoping that we deliver on that level too.

But at the very least, I can say that everything else here is cool. And you're walking into, you're looking at fucking crime scenes that are, I get killer seven-esque. You're walking up to locked puzzle boxes where the symbols for each number don't make any sense and you know you're gonna have to learn some outside shit. So yeah, consider checking that out as well

if you are down with what I'm describing, which Pat, you are not. So. No! No, I'm not! No, hold on, let me get, oh God, what is it? Let me get enough of this fucking mustache hair to attach to a gerbil to get the fucking key of whatever the fuck that Sierra nonsense was.

What I think you would like is the specific book of puzzles that are the IQ test puzzles I mentioned. I could just do those online! Yeah, I suppose you could. And then those are gonna be your clues for some other stuff, you know? I got a cube in my head, here I go, I'm rotating it. I saw all six sides. I did it.

Cube defeated. Okay, well, you didn't get cool laser eye powers in the meantime. You know what's funny? One of the things you're like... You remember Professor Layton games? So those games had a huge variety of puzzles, right? I would play each of those games up until I got to a type of puzzle that is kryptonite to me and then I would get so mad that I would stop playing the game entirely okay okay like there's all like you always get to

that fucking square sliding shit or the you have to get a cat a sheep and a fucking tiger across the river. Yeah, it's a parable that you've already heard. And I just completely fucking combust and just like, I'm done with this shitty game, fuck it. Yeah, yeah, I forget what they were now, but enjoying 999, I remember there's like one or two things that fucking made me see red Oh, dude, I cruise through 999 until I discovered I suck shit at Sudoku. There's that was Tragic there's there is that

and This also has some like Map clues. I don't know if to describe that, but like puzzles that are like, oh, pay attention to the map and look at this and then figure out what may or may not be possible from what you see here versus what you experience in real life. Which I'm cool with, I like those, as long as it's not the opposite, which is like Etrian Odyssey type building it out, I suppose. But yeah, no, not bad, not bad.

Anyway, so that's pretty much what those games were I checked out. This week, I'm going to get in at least one session or so of Erd Tree before EVO, so I'm heading out to EVvo this weekend. I'm shocked that you're going to Evo. Are you going to Evo next year? Probably. Probably? Oh yeah, oh you haven't seen the talk

that it's gonna be in Saudi Arabia? What? Oh yeah, okay. Well that's a different discussion. Hold on a minute. There was discussion that, did they announce EVO Saudi Arabia, is that a thing? No, but I saw some talk about Saudi Arabia

is reaching out to do a big old eSports Olympics. Okay, so. Which would include such things as Street Fighter 6 and whatnot. That's not EVO, right? But EVO did announce that they're like, oh, we're going to be coming to a new location. Oh, that's why people were saying. Okay. Yes.

So there's multiple things happening. One, there's these eSports Olympics, whatever, happening over there. Yeah, okay, whatever. The EVO announced they're coming to a new location. They didn't announce where yet, and I guess we'll find out or so. But I definitely, I would not be surprised if- Like not a second one, they're just moving the whole thing over? No, another- Oh, a second EVO. Yes, because there's EVvo Japan, there's Evo Regular. And I think they're at that I think they're going to announce another location

for a different Evo event at a different location, not moving it. It's they do they they're they're in Vegas, they got the key to the city in Vegas or whatever. I think they're going to probably stick around to that or whatever. It's a different event entirely. Alongside whatever other events they're going to announce in different locations, I would not be surprised if Saudi Arabia was trying to get an event like that. I mean, last year they had one month after EVO, they had a big event and then this time around this is happening a week before. So there seems to be a very concentrated effort to being like, we're going to run a big fighting

game thing around EVO timing. So I'd be very, very unsurprised to find out that they want to do their own type of event. But right now with the current thing and what we're describing, that's not what is happening. EVO is not running in Saudi Arabia next year. So. Hey, what time are you going to be back from Evo? We gonna do like a Tuesday or Yes, I'm flying I'm flying back on Monday, so Tuesday, okay, we'll do Tuesday next yeah, okay and That's that works out really well actually, huh?

Okay, yeah, so gonna be down there for that This week one gonna do one Elden string tomorrow. Also on Wednesday, I'm gonna be popping onto a podcast on the last podcast network, Tears of a Clown, it's called. So check me out on that as well. That's bold of you to cry on camera. I think it's just gonna be bullshitting about nonsense. I don't think that it's, you know, I have to.

Yeah, I had my shot, I went for it. Okay, it's not pagly actually oriented, but that's going down. So yeah, check that out as well. And then if you're gonna be at Evo, don't know about a meetup just yet, check my Twitter. I'll let you know there. Might be a bit busy to organize one this time around because it usually takes an entire

night. What are you going to be putting your hat and other ring for? Just six. Just six? Yeah, yeah. This time around, I'm keeping it concentrated to that and then I'm gonna mainly go try to get my hands on some of the other stuff that's that's gonna be around. I saw some folks talking that the the the pools for Street Fighter 6 are so enormous that

your potential for escaping pools by just knowing how to play the game properly at all is like high this time around. Okay. Because the the entrance amount is like fucking super gigantic. I'm never making that bet on myself. No, you always end up with a fucking killer sitting next to you the day you sit down. I'm drowning forever. That's my destiny. Maybe not.

We'll see. We'll see if I get that Chipotle card. But yeah, so either way, no word on Amita just yet. But if you see me or Reggie walking around or what's up, you know come say hi and If there is something more organized my to all announce it so that's it for me We'll reverse this on YouTube and on twitch. What's up for Pat is that I and the dog need to take a piss All right, let's do we'll take a quick break Let's take a quick word from our sponsors. This week Castle Super Beast is sponsored by Shopify. Ching is the

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This week, the podcast is sponsored by A Better Paradise. A Better Paradise. Yes. So this is the podcast from the writers of Red Dead Redemption and the Grand Theft Auto series. You've got an immersive new audio fiction podcast called A Better Paradise, volume one and aftermath as it's getting started. It's a sci-fi audio drama and it's the first story in an expansive new universe from Absurd Ventures. Yeah, it's created and written by Dan Hauser, the co-founder of Rockstar Games, who was the creative director and lead writer on Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption and Bully,

amongst others. And he's also co-hosting with his longtime creative partner, Lazlo, which is, again, a name I recognize from way back in the day, Lazlo doing tons of interviews and stuff back on the ONA days for GTA and Rockstar products back in the interviews and stuff back on the the ONA days for GTA and rockstar products back in the day and stuff. So that's that's a throwback of a name and yeah, they're working together with an all-star cast including Andrew Lincoln from The Walking Dead Shamir Anderson from John Wick 4 and invasion Patterson Joseph from Wonka, Rain Spencer from The Summer I Turned Pretty.

So yeah, check that out. A Better Paradise is out now, available everywhere you get your podcasts. Go listen today and don't forget to follow A Better Paradise on your platform of choice so that you don't miss an episode. Thank you, A Better Paradise. Thanks, A Better Paradise. And last but certainly not least, the podcast this week is sponsored by A-Way. A-Way. This is perfect timing because hey, You're going abroad. I am going abroad. I am going to EVO and I just got back from Greece and my away luggage suitcase is incredible. I still use my other one and I have a new one as well and they're great. They're secure. They have

great space and compartments saving mechanics in them. There's a laundry bag for keeping your dirty laundry, which is tech I didn't even think about. I feel so stupid on day four of a trip when I'm like, which of these are the clean socks? I don't know anymore. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, there's the bits here with like, you know, they've got different carry-on, two different carry-on sizes, two check sizes, four colors that you can pick from. They've got soft side as the new style of Away suitcase that I got. And I mean, legitimately, it's just been, I didn't really think about any of this stuff until I actually started using the

Away Luggish to travel with the for I remember that again the first was I had got had the portable battery in them That stuff's incredible and with these new ones as well You have a really cool thing that has the zipper not at the middle of the suitcase But on the corner of one of the top sides. So that if you need to open it up, you don't need a giant heavy clunk of space to like flip the suitcase open. You can just flip the top flap open and reach whatever you need to if you've got to rearrange something while you're traveling as well.

You know, great wheels, weight distribution, again, all of that stuff just works out really, really well. It's legitimately an incredible suitcase. I super find it helpful, especially when I'm doing trips where I'm trying to figure out is this a giant suitcase trip or a carry-on size trip and like nowadays I'm kind of like let's make it always a carry-on trip if possible. You know, I don't like checking in when I don't have to. And, you know, thankfully with this size of suitcase with the ability to

compress everything, you don't have to. So yeah, it's the soft side luggage is the what you want to check out. In particular, these new ones are great. I got a gray one. It helped me with grease. It's going to help out with going to Evo. It's great. Check out the new soft side luggage from Away. Head on over to awaytravel.com slash superbeast. That's awaytravel.com slash superbeast to see the new soft side luggage from Away. Once again, awaytravel.com slash SuperBeast. If you never have to check in luggage again, you will probably save yourself time and frustration. So yeah, do it.

Thanks Away. Thanks Away. I'm also, I used to be the person that would travel with the setup and the Monitor and I'd be the one yeah, that's fucking crazy Yeah Cuz I wanted to have it and I would also you know people would whatever we went to win a tournament abroad It would be like oh cool. Your rooms got a setup dope. Let's go practice over there or whatever the case is I

Don't want to do that anymore. That's crazy. I had a monitor break on me. Of course you did. Like, it sucks. I used to have a full kit of back before HDMI era, like a like components conversion kit, the ability to like take off the hotel locks on their screens to make sure that you can get any console in there and play. Yeah, yeah, I think those days are behind me now. I kind of just want to travel in comfort, you know. But like, you always walk by and see people with really nice portable setups for like a good monitor that can like plug right into a console, but then it might have lag. I steam deck is probably just the way to go for like yeah purposes. I think a steam deck Yeah, I think it is answers a lot of that

But anyway, we got a guy in the chest I have a steam deck and a portable monitor I am good. Yeah I saw some folks go on the way to combo breaker from Montreal that were like just practicing on the steam deck You've got some lag input for sure. You've got your sticks plugging into something that's going to not make your inputs as precise as they need to. But if you're just doing a little bit of practice to touch buttons and stay warm, then that's that's more than enough. It's kind of like how the the PSP and Vita, the Vita version, I think of Marvel 3

was exclusively for labbing because you had like it's the only version of the game that displayed hitboxes. That was so strange. They had to put a feature in to sell you, you know. I guess but ugh. Yeah. Anyway, what's going on? I mean I'll start with like the absolute absurdity that I just went through. So I went over to the house and baby has trapped Paige. He is asleep. He is middle of nap time. He must not be disturbed. You cannot wake up baby during nap time. Trapped in a compromising position? What's that?

Trapped in a compromising position. Oh, well the baby just sleeps right on your chest. On top. Yes, so you can't move. So you're trapped. Done. Locked. Trapped, right? Yes. But's you trapped done locked trapped, right? But the dogs gotta go pee, right? So I'm like, well, okay

And then I look at the dog and I look at the baby cuz Paige is sitting in like the chair in the living room I'm like, wait a second. The dog can't walk outside Cuz this big fat dog jumping down from the couch He's gonna make a bunch of noise and then clack a clack clack clack of his fucking nails Gonna wake up the baby for sure all right I guess I'm carrying this 60 pound pile of shit all the way out the house all right putting putting on go back in carry this fat ass dog all the way back to his spot on the couch Okay

So he doesn't get off and click his nails on the floor Now surely there is a product that is quiet booties to put on the dog feet Have you ever tried to put clothes on a dog? Seems like the worst idea ever They don't like it Some of them don't care But most of them really don't like it some of them don't care, but most of them really don't like it I saw a picture of two greyhounds wearing turtlenecks, and they looked racist as shit, okay?

So it was great Greyhounds hate greyhounds were turtlenecks, and they'll they'll deal with it because they're cold Okay, because they have no fur or skin Well, they have skin but very little I mean The meme was like yo these these two these dogs are about to start quoting pitbull crime statistics But let's see what's what's going on what I play this week I can't even remember which is a great sign for the thing I'm about to talk about in terms of my interest for it. Okay, right, okay, now I remember.

So I played about an hour of Fallen Aces. That's New Blood's new game. It's about goons in like the 20s or 30s. That is an immersive sim. Okay. It is its primary gameplay is punching is bobbing and weaving and doing first person punch and combat. Everything is everything's 2d sprites in a 3D environment. Looks really cool, very interesting. It has all the immersive sim hallmarks of crawling around in ducks to bypass locked doors, picking up items to throw them at enemies in order to bypass certain things.

The most interesting thing about it, aside from its tone and its general premise, is that a huge proportion of the game is like pick up bullshit off the floor and throw it at goons like hey grab a fire extinguisher and like spray the guy down so he gets stunned and then throw the the fire extinguisher and when you say goons you mean like fucking Hell's Kitchen motherfuckers in those old-timey hats like oh, yeah, no Fucking hey, are we gonna get them? This thing looks beautiful. Oh, it's super cool also

Gianni is Tuning it up next time big to the point where one of the loading screen like things is getting Gianni Okay, actually I'm surprised That I haven't seen like a bunch of memes of this pop up on the new blood Twitter, which is would be the move Well, I mean Dave Dave sent me the code that'd be Dave Oshry and he wrote gabagool in in that message that was the only message he sent me was the code and gabagool okay and he was like he was his Twitter name was like

mr. gabagool at the time nice it's no it's very it's very Gaba Ghoul coded. Very yeah. No these like I expect er see to be like literally just the sound of you rounding the corner and hitting every day at all times. Um the the the it's it's one of those games and that like immersive sim is no longer viable. Instead we just need somebody in my chat point out It's one of the it's one of those zero four five one games No, God's

Yeah Now it's your time for mental damage. I don't like that Yeah, why don't you like it because that code only works in those games and none other. If it works in one game that is not that genre, that descriptor fucking fails. It doesn't. Guess what? It's them. But like when you walk into your room and there's a safe that's locked and there's nowhere to find the combination, except for the fact that the storage facility across the street has a giant neon sign

with the phone number that's 0415. And you know what, that's good enough. In Gloomwood, is it called Gloomwood? If you type in 0415 into the first chest, it explodes and kills you. So like, I have to say that like this is one of those genres that I only know because you're the only person I know that says that word yeah, so I Take it there's dozens of us at face value every single time

But I assume this is real It is real. Oh, yeah, I'm assuming it's real you tested human revolution It's one of those. I don't know did human revolution self-describe as an immersive soon? Yes! It did! Okay There's Deus Ex, there's thief,, there's Dishonored, there's Deathloop, like, etc. It's that type of game. There's a tag on Steam!

You can type it in! It'll give you game. Anyway. Maybe it just doesn't come up enough because there just aren't enough examples. There's very few. There's prey, obviously. Yeah, no, there's like 15 total games in this genre, like never. Control Alt Ego is an M-sim, but that is a very mean, violently aggressive one.

I forgot that it was called M-sim for short. Yeah. Right, right, right. Bioshock is not an M-Sim actually, ironically. That's the funniest one. Because player choice doesn't matter. Because it's just too dumbed down. Because you're powering up and gunning things. You're not really making conversational choices in RPGing. It's like pretending to be an M-sim, but it's actually just a shooter. Rogue City is an immersive sim! Are they all first person? Ah, damn near all of them.

Because that like is it? Like the vast, vast, vast majority. Is it effectively just like it's RPG but first person therefore? No, no, it's it's so thief and Deus Ex were the the first ones and the idea was kind of along the lines of a The idea behind them is the the fantasy of the city block of Like a game as small as city block that has enough content for a whole game. So they're defined by multiple solutions to problems, violent, nonviolent solutions to problems, levels that have like 10 different ways in and all sorts of zany shit that you

can do, that kind of thing. Soterios Johnson Okay. Bioshock is not one, but System Shock and System Shock 2 are. Yeah, but that's kind of an academic discussion of like, I don't think Bioshock has enough of the good juice to be considered. Bioshock is like, wildly dumbed down. Yeah, no, to me those games are very,

just first person shooter action go, you know, like Well, they're not very action oriented. That's the thing Uh, I mean you walk into waves and then you go into plot hallways and then you go into another action room, right? Have you played this? Yeah, no, no, I'm sorry. I'm talking about Bioshock. Okay. Yeah, okay. Yeah Yeah, no Bioshock has so much action shooting. That's what I mean by the time you get to Bioshock infinite It's just like oh, this is just a fucking weird shooter. I Thought you were talking about the genre in general. Sorry. I didn't mean to be dismissive

but anyway Fallen ace is great. It's using the early access thing that a lot of cultic is, which is, it's early access in that the first full chapter is in the game, like the first episode, like old fashioned shareware, like the first five levels are there. And it's like yeah these are these are 2d sprites getting punched around in a 3d world oh yeah and occasionally the effect breaks super hard oh look up too far and too far down like up or down they become flat

yeah because they stay with your perspective but it also kind of looks good because it's breaking really bad. Nice. Nice. Nice somebody in the paper Mario spin I also played Alan wakes first DLC night springs Which night Springs is the Twilight Zone style serialized drama that goes on in the world of Alan Wake that Alan at one point wrote for.

Night Springs is fucking incredible. It is one of the best add-on DLCs I have ever played. It is absolutely fucking fantastic. There's a bunch of reasons. One, it's really short, but it's the exact amount of more Alan Wake I wanted. I beat it in three hours, and there's three episodes. Nice, okay. Like they're each about 45 minutes to an hour long. The second thing that I was informed by, somebody in chat had to tell me, that those episodes are incorporated into the main game.

So if you were to start playing Alan Wake 2 tomorrow, Wooly, and you had Night Springs installed, then you would find little TVs to watch Night Springs on and it would teleport you into each of the episodes. Oh, in the actual narrative of the game Yes, like you know in Max Payne where you'd like sit there and watch like an episode of dick justice for like two minutes Now you get to go play it. Yeah before you just watched it Before before the DLC came out these oh no there was nothing others, okay, and now those TVs have something in them, okay? That's cool. Although you should probably know that you're getting into a three-hour

Side side so it's only like 45 minutes Right I took a little longer because I spent a lot of time in them gotcha, okay They are all They're all super weird. Like super, super fucking weird what-if scenarios that... How do I talk about it? They didn't happen and they're not canon, but that doesn't mean they didn't happen and that they're not canon.

I mean, I'm already mentally prepared for musical numbers to burst out No, no musical numbers. Okay, so one of one of the I'll give like a very small Example of the very first one where you play as Rose the waitress from Alan Wake one who is madly in love with Alan Just crazy fan And you start off in the diner, you know, pouring people coffee. So to start the the full Rose episode is overwhelmingly saturated in a disgusting Rose filter like the color Rose. Okay, like it is it is eye searing in its in its

strength. And as you're walking around talking to people, they're like, aren't you just the best waitress in the entire world? And that that writer is just madly in love with you. And as you walk outside the building, all the signs in the town have been changed to go that way. He's waiting for you. you he's crazy about you you're the only one who can do it okay okay okay and it is just played super fucking straight and super goofy and it's tons of fun and all three of the episodes are like that they're all like very very very out there episodes featuring characters from across all of these

games. Jessie from Control shows up for her own episode. So that was, I would remember, brought up in the announcement for this was that, yeah, the Control tie-in element. It doesn't tie into Control because it didn't happen, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter. Well, it's a thing that he wrote that's on TV in the world of Alan Wake 2. But it didn't happen, but that doesn't mean that it didn't happen.

It's anyway. Sure, sure sure sure um and we get a really ridiculous Sequence where quantum break is technically owned by Microsoft right and they create a botum quake So they put Sean Ashmore's character into Alan Wake to as a guy named Tim Sheriff Tim breaker as a guy named Tim, Sheriff Tim Breaker. And so the way around this is by going through an episode talking about not Quantum Break, in which they are talking to the character

Sean Ashmore the actor as Sam Lake the game director instead and Talking about how they should make a video game about the event and so on and so forth I mean his name probably should have been Kwan Timothy breaker But so like this whole episode is them just like we are gonna take quantum break back By just changing the names just enough that we can just start doing whatever we want with it in the future There's a thing about that. I guess that's like it's also an admission that we're gonna stop trying You know like there's like the in the future like there's like like now that we've done this

Why even try to figure out the legal future like there's like like now that we've done this why even try to Figure out the legalese like it's done. Yeah No, yeah, no that we're just gonna go with Tim where Tim's gonna be our Cameo character and everyone gets it move on yeah, the other thing is that the unlike Unlike Alan Wake 2 which is a pretty standard survival horror in terms of like ammo and whatnot these episodes give you so much ammunition for the gameplay that the day it came out ammunition was so plentiful that it was breaking and going into the other episodes like Rose would get so much

shotgun ammunition in her campaign there would get so much shotgun ammunition in her campaign, there was a glitch that shotgun ammunition would show up in other characters' campaigns inventories. Like, we're talking like- When you leave the DLC, you keep your stuff? No, you don't. But you get so much extra ammunition

that it was just flooding out into other campaigns. We're talking like hundreds and hundreds of shotgun rounds. Like just pull the trigger and don't stop. And it's a huge change from Alan Wake to in general, which is a little more reserved. Like I don't, like I get that it's a lot, but I don't understand how that number hits the flag to allow resources to go to another section of the game. If I had to guess, it's that in Alan Wake 2, because they have that procedural ammo generation

where it'll always give you ammo for guns that you're low on, I don't think it was, I don't think in the base game you could even hit over 120 rounds of shotgun ammunition ever. Like it was probably not even possible and so when you're playing Rose's campaign and you end up with like 250 it was probably an edge case bug that they had never anticipated, but it's fixed now regardless. Okay It's great. It's fucking great It's it's if you have any interest in Alan Wake 2 at all. It is an absolutely

obvious no-brainer Especially and if you haven't played Alan Wake 2 it's now integrated so it's now just part of the larger game That's a really smart way to do it. That's that's a good way for DLC to be although you still have to buy it though But yeah, yeah, there's gonna be another one called the lake house which is probably gonna be a control sequel tie-in Because the lake house is an area you never go to in Alan Wake 2 that is under the,

it is under the Department of Federal Control's like purview as an even weirder, spookier location with stupid nonsense going on. Oh, was that the original oop that was mentioned in the Control, no, wait, oh, hold on. Oh, was that the original oop that was mentioned in the control? No, wait, no, hold on. No. Never mind. I'm thinking of something else. All right. Also, I watched the ending of the final draft, which is really interesting. And that's all I could say. It's good. I don't think it's worth beating the entire game over again for a slightly different ending. I think it's probably better to just

Watch it on YouTube like I did But hey, if you are gonna replay the game in New Game Plus, it's a great little little bonus for you Is it called the lake house for obvious reasons? Yeah, probably. Okay. It's probably the same Lake house Okay, yeah, Okay. No, there is like, there is like massive Swedish

genius cojumbo vibes coming off of Alan Wake 2. Sorry, finish. My mistake. Like, Sam Lake talks to you in one of the DLCs, and then I used photo mode to read the events of the next scene in the script that he was holding in his hand. Someone wrote, are you Lake?

Yeah, man. That's gonna work forever. I don't know. I saw someone in my chat when I when that was happening was like when are Kojima and Sam Like gonna kiss and I'm like they did kiss There's a Kojima fucking mission in control on PlayStation 5. Oh, yeah, like he's he's in there. Oh, literally in there. Okay, okay I also Page suggested a game that she had never seen and I said fuck it. Let's go for it. It's called chains together You heard of chain together wooly. I think I have Cooperative suffering so if you

Thought that being frustrated with Bennett Foddy in getting over it was not enough for you You need to play a platformer in which you are physically chained to one to three other people as you try and platform up all the way out of hell and Not cause each other to fall off by missing jumps or getting caught on geometry or falling off No, no, no, this is not accompanied with the voice of Bennett. No, no, it's just pure Ambiance, okay, just just condescending to you the entire time. No. Yeah, there's a little devil the talk shit a little bit But he's only between like discrete levels Okay, and if you if you potch a jump a little bit and pull your partner off or partners off

Well, you get to fall for like multiple minutes as you fall all the way back down to the bottom of the game. So yeah I see that yes I that's where the benefit each night and then and then you sit there and don't have marital dispute. Will the weight of one person over a ledge while the other is on the ledge result in both falling off for sure. No. Okay. So it's not realistic in weight.

You can actually pull people up off of ledges. Okay. Okay. But- That would become impossible practically. If somebody gets launched by a catapult or really falls super hard, yeah, they'll drag you off. There's a physics and weight thing going on.

But it's not so mean that like, yeah, it's real weight for one person. No, no, it's it's it's tuned. That would be unplayable. Yeah. Okay. So I think, I think the craziest thing about this game is we played it for a couple hours. And we got to like the top of the second level. And Oh, right. Sorry. This thing with the logo that looks like it was AI generated. Mm-hmm.

I remember seeing this, I was like, that logo looks fucking generated. It just does, I don't know. Anyway, all right, yeah. The goofiest bit about it is that like, we played it for a couple hours, and at least for the couple of hours we played, any individual like platforming challenge is not that bad. It's not that crazy other

than the fact that you have to sync it up with another person. Okay. Because like they're all like all of the jumps are just far enough apart that if one person jumps and the other stays They'll both drag each other Like right off the platform chain physics between you don't actually matter either right, okay No until they do apparently until until chains do it and they don't interact with anything until they do Also, like if you both split like a pole You did I didn't encounter anything that yeah, I ain't affected, but apparently it does oh, okay, okay? You get to find out

I think the most interesting thing inner personally is that you get to find out what different people think one two three go means on three or on go? What it actually, actually means. And you discover that some people think that jumping on go means jumping in the space in between the words three and go. That's why you gotta count down, right? That's why you gotta go.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. That's why you gotta count down, right? That's why you gotta go, like no one's gonna go on three. Well, okay, if you go one, two, three, and then go, some people might go on three, some people might go on go, and someone might go on the space between three and go. But if you go the other way around,

I think the go is much more... You would think, you would think, you would think. Because only a crazy person would go on one. Like no one goes three, two, one! Like that's crazy, that's insane. No one does that. Yeah, you're right. You're completely right. No, that game's a lot of fun. I wonder how far I could get in the same length of time by myself

Because there is a solo version. I believe okay. You don't have to play co-op looks like basic third-person platforming otherwise Yeah, yeah Ironically enough ff14s like platforming challenges have like helped me out dramatically, but Also, probably some fall guys experience. Probably, yeah. But yeah, no, it's fun. It's cheap. It's fun. Every group will hit a point where the sharp intake of breath means, okay, that's enough for today. Just, oh, I'm so frustrated, mmm. This fucking logo. This will then be followed by, uh, it was you that fucked it. No, it was you that fucked it.

No, it was you. And then it will be followed by... Yeah. That's a good one. Put that one on the shelf. Put that one on the shelf. Well, immediately that makes me think this game should have a horse race-esque replay system where to the frame you can see exactly whose fault it was. Yeah. Anyway.

Yeah, it should, but that probably requires more development resources than they're willing to apply to it. It looks pretty jank too. Yeah. If you and Reggie want to join me and Paige for a four-person version of that, just let me know. Because that will get really frustrating very quickly. What a sell. Yeah. If you want to get really mad and have a bad time, let me know. Last but not least

for me, Paige and I are staying up late. We're staying up till like 11 o'clock sometimes. Crazy. So when the baby falls asleep, we've been putting in some time. We got to watch A Few Dollars More, and we got through the first half of Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Watching a three hour movie is just now completely impossible in a single setting.

It's just, it's literally impossible, it can't be done. So Fistful and A Few Dollars More are both shorter, right? They are an hour and a half and two hours respectively. Yeah, okay, so it's just good to bad. Yeah. So, it's really fucking weird that the same actors play completely different characters that look exactly the same throughout the three movies

Like it's fucking super weird that Lee Van Cleef plays two Identical characters who are completely different characters It's weird, it's really weird. Yeah, it's just the universal spiritual cast vibe. Like Clint Eastwood wears the same clothes in Fistful of Dollars and a few dollars more, but he's a different guy. I think. Maybe. Well, it's kind of like Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 right or just like it's like redoing the first one but like a different thing but not really well this one's not ripping off yo Jimbo Sure, right

Man those movies are great They're just incredible. I don't really have much to add other than the fact that they're proper fucking cinema and the fact that they were like ripoff weird ass bootleg shits out of fucking Italy to the point where they were called spaghetti westerns is hilarious. Is hilarious man the term spaghetti Western is fucking hilarious Like it's oh Man because it's Italian Western. Yeah, that's it You know what get to watch all these Italians pretend that they're fucking Mexican and and be bad at that yeah you know I mean if we if you know if you were to call high-fiber rush a hamburger character action game yeah right sure sure like his power Rangers like a cheeseburger tokusatsu?

Cheeseburger toku. Yeah. Yeah. It's fucking weird. It's pretty wild. It is. It is kind of nuts. But so like sitting here being like, yeah, no, they're incredible.

They're amazing. There's something that stood out to me when I was watching them and it was that the rock is a massive pussy. So, you know that fucking movie that was part of the fuck it. What's it called with Idris Elba and Jason Statham. I forget what the hell it was called, but it was part of the Fast and Furious series. Oh, oh yeah, Hobbs and Shaw. Yeah, so they both have contracts in which they're not allowed to lose fights.

Right, and that was created to also let The Rock not have to share screen time with Vin Diesel as far as I'm aware. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So they had to build a whole action movie also let The Rock not have to share screen time with Vin Diesel as far as I'm aware. Yeah. So they had to build a whole action movie around two of the leads that fight constantly and are not allowed to lose or look like they're losing. I think Vin Diesel also has that and Stallone might also have it. Terrible. Embarrassing. That sounds like mid-90s to aught arts level like filmmaking shit if that's still in place

Like oh still in place definitely fucking insane and so Well, I'm watching we're watching Good the bad and the ugly and and fistful dollars and a few dollars more what and I'm like what the fuck was was was the Superman versus bat versus black Adam shit gonna be The whole movie was Superman hitting him through a building and rock being like I didn't even feel that Yeah, I didn't lose shut up. I was in the tooth fairy. I paid my dues like what yeah But so watching these three classics these these these Primavera

Westerns There is there are like 10 to 15 minute long Extended sequences in which the hero is caught or otherwise caught unawares, you know and just like Fucking beat down into a puddle for like full scenes. Where's the gold? Okay, well, 10 guys are just going to beat you until you're dead for an extended sequence. And then you're, we're going to have a long, long sequence in which we zoom in on your fucking swollen over eye and your busted lips and you're just

crawling in the dirt as you try and escape the town to plot your revenge. Beat the fucking shit out of Clint Eastwood in these movies and like him having to escape with a bunch of broken bones and a messed up face is an exciting scene and part of the story. He's not an invincible Superman. He's just some loser with a nice hat and a gun. What the fuck was? God, there was a movie with an insanely

long, brutal fight scene. I think was in black and white. I remember my friend Eddie showed it to us. God damn it. It was just like it was an insanely long... You're talking about They Live? Not They Live, no. Talking about Tom Young Gun? No, it was much older than that. Anyway, it's but it was just it was an insanely long like ridiculous Beat-down on film where you're just like why would this go for this long and it was very one-sided Anyway, yeah, sorry

But yeah, no it really it really like stood out to me of like yeah I don't I don't see a lot of action films in which the main character just gets their ass Wrecked and has to pull themselves out of the garbage It actually made me think so now that I'm seeing Lee Van Cleef the character who? revolver Ocelot was obviously based off of and Then who old snake was then later based off of again It makes me think about the microwave hallway a lot. Mm-hmm Watching like our watching your main character suffer like literally drag themselves. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah

I think I'm thinking of midnight Express, but I might be wrong anyway But yeah, I know those those movies are fucking great Though it is it is funny to watch good the bad and the ugly and like that very super famous like Yeah, it's like wah wah wah, wah wah wah. That tune? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, if this wasn't a serious movie from the old times, it would sound like parody.

Like, it is all the time. It is the stinger to all events. But like, I just remember in, well okay, so you didn't finish Good, the Bad, and the Ugly yet, right? No, we are halfway through. They just left the monastery. OK, because so it's like there's the moment when that goes down for real.

There's the one. And when it hits, it's unbelievably amazing. Like at the end of this really long journey, when they finally get to that moment and it's like this is like the real usage of the original fucking song it's Incredible and and I feel like anyway, you haven't I guess seen its

Context for reals yet, you know, it's fucking great man. It goes so I was I was just I was just reminded of Danny Trejo as a contract stipulation of him in his movies in terms of how his character can get beat up. If Danny Trejo plays a criminal or otherwise bad guy, he mandates that his character be beat up, humiliated, and killed. I have to get beaten. Yeah, I was gonna make a joke. I'm like, is it that he has to get stomped out and murdered? He's actually super serious.

Yeah. He's playing a criminal villain. He has to be beat up, embarrassed, and killed. Can't get away with it. So like in Breaking Bad with the shit with the turtle. Tortuga. Or like in fucking Yakuza after his boss fight, like he pisses his pants and you all take photos of him.

Oh my god. Is it like, is it just cause like fuck it for yucks or is it like because evil needs to be punished? No, because crime isn't cool. Yeah, okay, evil needs to be punished? Crime isn't cool. Yeah, okay. Evil needs to be punished. It's because he's like, I've turned my life around and like, I don't want people to see, I don't want kids to see my performance and go, I want to be that guy.

Be like, I want to be Tony Montana. Totally, totally. Yep. Can't scarface it. For sure. For sure. It's great. That's incredible.

It's great. Zoom's incredible. It's great Zoom in on the piss my contract stipulates that you see the stains running down the leg Yeah, and like everything about his story is great because he was in jail he was in prison for doing like bad man things I don't know the specifics, but he was a criminal for looking like a criminal No, no, you know no no no I know I know I know but But the casting is incredible right yeah, and he got out, and he's like I should not do crimes in mm-hmm Mm-hmm I need to do something other than crimes and so he used his obvious crime Aura I don't know he's just radiating crime Like good you get yes, and you get typecast that way, but that's what it is.

Him and Luis Guzman. Yeah, oh man. Just, like, that's, you're gonna be typecast forever, and that's why you're being hired, and it is what it is. His favorite game on the Nintendo 3DS is Animal Crossing. Well, that's great. Sorry, no, the Switch. Yeah.

I recently saw a thing about how The Rock keeps going on people's podcasts and saying that it's the first time he's ever had a meal that he's being sponsored to chill. He just keeps saying that it's his first time over and over and over. Dude, Rock sucks. I was going to say like you got something in your craw about the rock. Rock fucking sucks, dude. Did something come up that this is like... He's a fucking phony. What trigger event has created this song? Oh, it was literally finding out about his deal to never get beat up in a movie. Gotcha. It's it's like it's so fucking cringe

Like you'll you'll never be an action star like a real Like action star beyond like your own lifetime if you can't let yourself get beat up in a movie. It's pathetic Remember how fucking fucked up rocky gets to the end of rocky one with the eye and all that shit and he fucking loses more this for Rocky one. I'm just like, why? What's the point of buying the XFL if you're going to turn it into not the XFL and get rid of he hate me? You know, that's where I'm at. I keep I keep getting messages from people going it's happening and linking me to the same like year or now two-year-old Article yeah about the the drug testing free Olympic. Yes, and I'm like, yeah get back to me when someone's head

explodes on the podium Don't believe you I believe in nothing but slam ball That's that's that that's all I'm looking that's all I'm looking at that's all the future is the future is slam ball I feel like if I look at it, I'll recognize it slam ball basketball Trampolines I have seen this this is stupid fucking slam ball, baby How do you dribble on thebble on the fucking trampolines? You bounce the fuck up into the air

and then all that shit that you could do in hang time where you pass to the guy above you while someone's trying to block while you're super high above the rim. Incredible, full contact, slam ball. Now, this is all fun in games until someone comes down way too hard on to the onto the net at which point it becomes a problem but until that happens slam ball forever slam ball for life you know I thought trampolines

were cool and then I saw a video of a guy's legs inverting over his head off of like a weird goofy fall And now I'm never gonna be on one ever again Never again, okay, okay. I think you're no no I think your fuck trampolines are awesome. No. They're great I like anything that allows you to defy gravity you did totally Just don't do it with all your friends in a circle, timing their jumps to create extra height. Just don't do that thing. You know, like that one guy that goes up and does like 13 somersaults and lands back down. And you're like.

I'm gonna say something crazy right now. My baby is not allowed to ride a motorcycle. This has been decided. Okay, well. Those death traps, get out of here. Okay, mom. Yeah. Fuck you. Sure. I'll take the hit. Yeah. Well, let me ride a motorcycle. Yeah, that's right. Because I like your head on your body. So my mom just got an all caps fucking DM. That was he will never ride a motorcycle, mom says.

Okay. Never. I remember this discussion with my mom when her entire thing was essentially someone that she grew up with in Grenada, rode a motorcycle and died because the motorcycle came over the hill and hit a horse. And that's not. That's not. But no, no.

That has nothing to do with the motorcycle. this is the argument I had to have I'm like I want to get my motorcycle license and I'm looking into it and she's like no you're not riding one and I'm like why the why the fuck not and she's like because and then she tells the story of the dude she grew up with that died in a motorcycle accident because in Grenada his bike hit a horse. And so because of that, no motorcycle for you. That's not a realistic scenario! The fuck man!

That's what I had to fight with, okay? Oh my god. Anyways. Mom, you see any horses around here? That's what I had to fight with. Okay. Oh my God. Anyways. Mom, you see any horses around here? I'm not interested in getting on a billion cc ninja bike and cutting through traffic on the expressway. I'm interested in getting a touring cycle

and just kind of chilling. But anyways, obviously it's one of those things where it's not about you, it's about the amount of protection you have when someone stupid does a stupid thing. So that's clear. But yes, I'm just, I had to have a real actual argument based on the probability of coming into contact with a horse.

Which in Montreal is not impossible. No, it's, I mean, it's not- There's one place in town- There are a couple in the airport. Yes, but they kind of got rid of them now. Why are you going so fast on those cobblestone streets? Anyways, exactly. It's not a zero percent chance, but it's it's it's you have a better chance of getting your SS your S rank pulls on the standard banner. He's right. He's right, you know. Well, you're guaranteed for those

under your first 50 deer Or horses whatever the fuck we're talking about Yeah, all right All right, we got a fucking I gotta I gotta take a quick break and feed the dog And then we got to get back and hurry this news up. Yeah, it's a long podcast It is it is we're gonna get moving BRB All right, okay coming back Okay in the news.

Uh, right off the bat, Riot was working on and has now canceled a platform fighter that was supposed to compete with Smash Melee. Uh, Pool Party, an unannounced Smash-style fighting game, had a team of 70-80 employees that were staffing the project. Executives at Riot were spooked when they perceived the failure of multiverses. Multiverses out there failing so hard it's canceling other projects. And probably saving them for the best because I don't know that like... You're not Smash Bros.

Yeah, but and like the multiverses in terms of like of all the other IPs that went for it, like that's the next biggest one. Yeah. And... And they fucking botched it. You know? I think when you're looking at platform fighters and smash clones, you're kind of in the territory of if you're okay being a small indie game that has a limited appeal and is ultimately going to have a small life cycle, then you can release to that, but that's not what Riot does. And if you want to land in the brawlhalla level of popularity, then that's a place where you can be successful as a small company, but that's not what Riot does.

So probably a good call at the end of the day. So they really need to have a Smash clone and a proper fighting game? That's the thought, right? There's no connection between the two whatsoever. 2XKO and this game Pool Party were separate from each other. I don't know if Pool Party was the project name or the actual title, but if it was the title it sounds like it was not a particularly serious take at the whole character representation thing. take at the whole character representation thing, but ultimately it's like, yeah, I think

platform fighters, there's a limit, you know, because as good as they can get and do, Smash is Smash because it's Smash and who's in Smash and what Smash is. It's the video game Oscars. Everyone is here. It's the video game Oscars first and foremost. It's the accessible four player fighter second, you know, I Love you know, I talked about a rivals of a third how fun that was to play and you know though the ones that kind of there's so many that

come and go and drop like I Was laughing at Nick Nick all-stars, right watching it at combo breaker and not recognizing what I was laughing at Nick All-Stars, right? Watching it at Combo Breaker and not recognizing what I was seeing. But like, the graveyard has, was it Brawl Out, I think it was called? Or Brawlhalla? Not Brawlhalla. I think it was something, I think it was called Brawl Out was one of them. There's icons. There's a bunch that just came and ultimately went nowhere.

PlayStation All-Stars. You know? Like Brawl Out. Yeah, Brawl Out. That's what it was called. You just... It's not... Wow. Five years ago? Oh my god. I played it on Switch. I remember... Actively deleted from my mind. It was an early thing I got on Switch. There's... Yeah, it's just not a...

It had Dead Cells guy in it? It did. And I think it had Hyper Light Drifter as well, which might have been why I checked it out But yeah, no, I don't think this needed to exist especially like well multiverses is like That's a game to the like multiverses was it was when it was doing all right on the launch What it was trying to do was like it was okay You know, but for what riot wants to do with their releases you have to XKO there. I this is probably a smart cancel

Yeah, to agree, actually. They should also cancel multiverses and give everybody the money back. That's what I think. Like I'm imagining the best possible Smash-style game with a bunch of League of Legends characters triple jumping and combing each other. Okay. You know what that's called? It's called Smash Brothers.

This character from League of Legends. And free with a giant roster, you know, and everyone's in there doing their thing and you tie in with all the other Riot stuff and so on. But yeah, it's probably not the genre to go into especially with with 2x KO right there, you know, so. Though clearly, I think there must have been a particular year where they decided, let's make League a multi format multi game IP that like, branches these characters out into, you know Netflix

shows and fighting games and whatever else they can and I mean I bet you anything it was the year that they didn't like grow like some number year over year in League hmm it was like you know year was explosively growing for a while and then one year it was probably like, less than that, and they're like, think we might have gotten everything we're gonna get out of this one, boys. I mean, it's the natural conclusion when you make a game that becomes a breakout hit and you have a strong IP, you then go, well, what's next? Let's make the Among Us 3D game.

Let's make the Among Us animated. Oh, it's the year they stopped showing their public numbers. Apparently that was 2019. Wait, are they not publicly traded? I don't know. Is it private? Maybe. Alright, publicly traded it is not now only you know traded okay interest owned by tencent okay there you go

Yeah, anyway, at the same time as that with 2XKO hanging out, Dota, not to be forgotten, rolls out the mini-game Sleet Fighter 2 Immortal Combat, which like... That's fun. Just the particular verbiage of Immortal Combat is like, oh, oh, we're making jokes from Game Pro Magazine 1996. And if you... Yeah. We're going back to like electronic gaming monthly, like levels of like, it's Street Fighter we can't count to three you know I'm like okay right yep it's the joke arcade

fighter but it's a it's a Dota 2 little fighting game and not unlike the frame fighter in Warframe you pick a couple characters, they move around and swing at each other. It's janky and goofy, but it is a fighting game. And apparently, they went in depth enough so that there's frame data you can pause and look at, as well as, yeah, you queue up with multiplayer and fight against people.

Everyone walks around very slow and has like two or three attacks, but you know, it's a goofy little mini game. It's a fun little thing. Yeah, it feels like one person kind of made it and then threw it in there type of bit. But yeah, everything hits for like a third of your life, you know. Of course. Yeah. hits for like a third of your life, you know. Of course. Yeah. So that's what the latest Dota updates.

They... Along with that, so what's this happening with 343? They've downsized considerably. Upcoming Halo titles have to be largely outsourced. Yeah, so 343 has had its staff cut and the job of 343 Studios is gonna be to like do pre-production and then like lore checks and then they're gonna farm out Halo to other developers which is like the opposite of what they should be doing. So like, I don't know if you remember me talking about it,

but like one of the things that everyone that worked on Halo has complained about for like years and years was that Microsoft loves outsourcing. They love it because they hate hiring on permanent new employees. So like there was this long term rotating cast of outsourcers who would have to spend like months learning how to build something in Halo before getting like let go like eight months later.

I'm just curious as to what upcoming Halo projects means. Oh, I mean there's gonna be something. More Infinite. Though the whole point of Infinite was to be a live service ongoing. Yeah, but that doesn't mean there's not gonna be another proper Halo game. I mean when looking at the whole, well one with Call of Duty and two the whole discussion the other day about what types of games can rip a player base away from their ongoing Fortnite style gas game. The answer is almost nothing.

That problem is actually getting worse and worse. So if Halo decides to permanently convert itself into a gas game to be profitable I would not be surprised as somebody who played the halo gas game Oh, man, it was very bad on the gas and I you know I could see there being a like if you want your story the story will be a mode within a gas game You know I could see that being a way to to fight the the trends. Mm-hmm and try to be profitable Yeah Halo 7 in pre-production

Earliest expected release 2026 Mm-hmm. Okay You know I remember hearing like rumors about a fallout thing or like a possible like fallout 1 or 2 remake because Microsoft Was very upset that there's no fallout game to come out alongside the fallout TV show And there will also not be a fallout game to come out alongside the fallout to the the second season TV show There's nothing to capitalize. There's nothing the fallout 76 and fallout 4 did really well on like steam sales But like there's no game to go along with it, and it's a fucking huge missed opportunity. That's so brutal

No, oh man um Side note on the last story as well if there ever needs to be shit talked about something not having rollback, the joke Dota fighting game has rollback. Fuck! So, Sleet Fighter 2 Immortal Combat has rollback support.

That's great. That's great! Virtua Fighter, what the fuck leg do you get to stand on? Oh no, come on, come on! Why? Sorry, I had to invoke Satan. I literally forgot that virtual fighter existed for a second I had to and I lived a happy life It's the it's the most outstanding example of fighting against rollback that we still have

Even Dragon Ball gave it poorly, but they did All right Dragon Ball gave it. Poorly, but they did. Um, alright. What else is going on? We got a... So Hideki Kamiya sat down with Ikumi Nakamura and they had a little discussion talking about the old days of Capcom and Clover and her working at Tango and Unseen now. And in the discussion, Kimiya said, Okami was supposed to be Clover Studio's signature

title, but some of the staff were weak. What does that mean? We wanted to create a dream team. It was supposed to be a dream team with all the best staff in each section. That was the plan in the end, but not everyone. But as a whole team, I frankly think it was weak. It wasn't a dream team. There was very drastic contrast within some people.

Certainly there are some people without whom there'd be no Okami. Some members, Sean Brightley, and he lists them by name, including Ikumi, who, you know, was on the art team in Concept Art and such. But, and I'm really grateful, but when viewed as a whole, it wasn't a dream team. What? What? Dude.

What a fucking asshole. This is crazy. Like, you got to pick whoever you wanted to make projects that bombed and you're 20 years out talking shit about people? I mean, I'm assuming that it's like in this era of Clover was when he was not in the picking your own staff point. Well, no, Mikami would be. And Okami was also like, it was an excellent game that's like, problem is its length. You know, the biggest problem with Okami is that there's just too much of it.

And it's horrible marketing and the fact that Western audiences didn't care at all and that they sold four copies. Yes, and I think too as well considering how badly it's sold, that's a lot of looking back on it and finding what... Do you think he asked Ikumi what it feels like to sell a game that moves more than 25 copies? Now, if he's talking about the Dream Team not being a Dream Team because of the marketing department, for example, there's legs to that. Sure. Perhaps whoever, you know, and like whatever reasons there were for looking at it now and going back and saying like, why did this sell less than, I think it was, I think it was 80,000 copies in the launch window or so.

Yeah, it was bad. It was really bad. It was horrendous. It was like completely... It might as well have made literally nothing. But then got ported twice after the fact and has become this... No, more than twice. To Wii and then to PS3? And then to PC. And then to PC.

Oh, okay. And then to other more modern platforms. And then also got a 3DS pseudo-sequel, like, you know? Like, for a franchise that failed completely out of the gates, it certainly had a lot of legs to it. Dude, he comes off like such an asshole! Oh my god! I mean, look, I think- I Mean we made it all we we could have pulled the dream team together And then we released five bombs in a row I think I think the that bomb being so rough in particular is probably what

He's looking for there, and why he's bringing oh yeah Oh, yeah, that's in that level because the other things that that flopped I don't think anything flopped as hard as being sub a hundred thousand units shipped, you know Like that was probably the the worst one But yeah, no, you know who knows what the deal is there There's thank God all the team was strong on wonderful 101. That's why it's sold like crazy Maybe he maybe someone on the okami team was adamantly against there being a space harrier section

This is this is like the most this is the most glasshouse shit I think I've ever seen in the games business Glass house shit, I think I've ever seen in the games business It's probably crazier no, there's some Mala new David Cage level shit that we know glass house specifically like Guy who makes games that have problems Complains about guys underneath him not being good enough Complains about guys underneath him not being good enough Like for fuck's sake you had to remake the whole of re2 because it wasn't any good and

That game is one of my favorite games of all time, but fuck that's embarrassing There's some there's some eugenic a story to tell here for sure and probably an itagaki or two you know, okay? Yeah, hold on man Who the president of the company in interviews Described as having to go to his desk every day and say get off your phone Talk shit about guys from 20 years ago Okami though will forever be one of the the ones that were I'm like here is literally an example of like will forever be one of the ones that where I'm like, here is literally an example of like, it's sales and the quality of the game just being the most mismatched of any other title in history. Like, it's, it's, and I, nothing's coming to mind. And I'm, I'm also knowing, and I know that I'm the

person who's like, I'm quick to say I think a thing is too long where others are like fine by it see Hollow Knight, so Yeah, it was not treated like the failure It was certainly given again all the legs and reports and stuff that it had the characters showing up in fucking Marvel You know what I mean as a cameo was given more respect than it deserved for its economic situation. Yes, like it felt like it was a beloved classic franchise that everyone had positive memories of despite the fact that... You think he's just like super mad that Capcom put out another game that looks just like Okami this week that also will not sell? I mean, it's probably out of the system, maybe, but clearly not. If he's talking like, if he's doing this kind of interview.

Probably not. But no, but I think there was the moment of having beautiful Joe riding on Ami in Marvel was like a little like ah there they are Alright tie a bow on it Anyway, yeah, that was crazy. Oh man. What a fucking asshole And it's an Akumi's just hanging around doing poses being cute going like yeah, oh He's never gonna work in the games business again. I'm sure he's gonna do some stuff. He's up to, I'm sure he's gonna come back.

Oh, I can't wait for the guy who's gonna slag me in 20 years because his shit didn't sell. Ooh, exciting. Yeah, I- Remember when Shigeru Miyamoto came out and said, said you know what the team on Mario Sunshine really fucked it I did a good job though. I Think it would be interesting to find out the specifics of exactly what he's getting at so that you could be like, okay Like are you are you unhappy?

With the product that was put out or are you unhappy with the failure of sales due to all the mechanisms that didn't properly advertise and get the game out to people? I would love... To be precise about that would be interesting because the game that was actually put out, again, is much less of an issue in the history books. I would love to hear his definition of weak, because this was the time period in which like Japanese game dev crunch was like mythic. Like sleep under your desk for six months shit.

It also could have been like there was someone or two on the team that he just fought with every day and no matter what the game ended up being he just is like a space harrier section in the fucking game exactly like you fucking stop me it's of note that the game actually does not have a space harrier section it does not It's the only one. I think it is, well, that and RE2. And they very well could have with the way Issun can do it.

Totally could, yeah. They could have done it. Anyway, in the meantime, speaking of game receptions, Baldur's Gate III won so many awards that it started affecting development and forcing Larian to rotate teams to send to ceremonies because they're still they were Still an active development during their patch cycle and their patch cycle included a lot of extra features and Like this article describes Sven talking about how like it was fucking it up

They had to rotate the whole staff in and out to go get awards Because it would slow down dev that's that's a wild good problem to have I guess the the next level is you just phone it in from a fucking discord call to be like hey yep thanks for the award we're out here we're working but you know stay true y'all are cool bless up sorry to hear about your investors I can't think of like a year since like 2004 when re4 came up to come out but I can't think of like a game since re4 that it was like so unanimously like oh it's this one it's that one this year

whoo remember Balder not balls I remember re4 came out in January like Like oh, it's this one. It's that one this year. Hmm Remember Balder not balls. I remember re4 came out in January like the second week of January and it was like well Nothing's beating this fucking thing. I Mean the move is actually to just get the voice acting Talent to go up and accept awards on behalf of the team while they while they don't make it out Yeah, but they're busy also doing other voice acting stuff for sure But you know just fucking whatever if I outsource your your your award reception hours

Yeah, oh my god, I was just informed somebody pointed. Somebody pointed out that we're making fun of Wonderful 101. I completely forgot that Soul Cresta even happened. I was, I did think of Soul Cresta. You thought it? I did think of it. When it comes to, I was like, did anything they make sell less than that 80,000 or whatever copies? I'm like, possibly Soul Cresta.

Oh, yeah. But, hard to say with the digital nature of that. And I don't know. I mean, it was half a joke release. So if it's a joke release, does it really count? I don't fucking know. You know? Like remember when when fighting layer ex was like, haha, it's an April Fool's joke, unless. That was so weird. That was so fucking strange. So if you don't really like the game, then don't worry, it doesn't matter.

It's just an April Fool's joke, but we're going to keep developing it for the next couple of years and it's a very serious project at Eureka. It's a very serious, real developed April Fool's joke. Go-gee though. Anyways, alright. And, yeah, speaking of development foibles, there was a video from the week before or last, but it was the Out of Nowhere Zendla Zone Zero Across Street Fighter 6 Creators Roundtable where... Super weird.

Yeah, Matsumoto Nakayama just sat down with the Zendla Zone Zero people and were like, hey, hey, yo, fighting games, action games, cool stuff, right? Totally. Get Nicole in the fucking Street Fighter 6. That'd be the get, wouldn't it? It was just a super out of nowhere little thing for promoting both titles and that's all good.

But in the middle of the conversation about like, yeah, so check out the new Zenla Zone Zero and stuff, Matsumoto Nak news that was on zero and stuff. Like Masumoto Nakayama just started getting super real and they were like, okay, so for real Capcom asked me to come up with a way to save Street Fighter V. And he basically like, yeah, the back half of the interview just talked about how he came in and how much of a shit show the thing was under

and they publicly hadn't really addressed any of this. I mean, we all kind of knew and could see it. But yeah, he said Capcom asked me to come in with a way to save Street Fighter V. It had been going for three years when I joined, and it was in dire straits. I was given one and a half years when I joined, and I discovered there was a huge gap

between what the creators wanted to do and player expectations. Players weren't buying into what had been made, so I really finessed things. Taking something that's already pretty much done and tweaking it to make it more Street Fighter-y. I hoped that people would enjoy the experience, would experience the joy of Street Fighter and that's why I was always thinking of ways to achieve this goal through game design. When we started planning Street

Fighter 6 I discovered my ideas happened to be pretty much in line with producer Matsumoto I think the production of Street Fighter 6 is kind of a revenge Then we completed SF 6 that is fucking weird That is a weird way to say that Straight up like we came in shit was on fire Straight up like we came in shit was on fire Dire straights and we saved it and was and was oh no on five. Yeah, he was right. Absolutely Well, I wonder who they're taking revenge against. Those are non sequiturs. Don't link those

They know the the revenge system was the name for the focus attack in Japanese. That's true. You know, or the saving strike. But yeah, no, you fucking, you just like candidly, they're like, yup, we walked in and it was the community GIF. And it's exactly what it looked like. And then we took that, fixed it, and then brought the momentum into six, which is a confirmation. I would really love to see like more in-depth breakdowns on people who get put in that situation like with

DMC to and it's in a song or already to like I mentioned early quarter to or this just like okay you walk in you look at like if you've ever seen the no clip documentary on ff14 there's like a good 20 minutes of interviewing Yoshi P of like alright so you walked in the game was like a complete piece of shit Oh, man fucking where do you start? Yeah, Metal Gear Rising lightning bolt action

Yeah, and he it's the only one I've ever seen but he like describes like the steps and the planning of like what can we fix? today What can we fix next week? What can we fix in a year? Etc. I would love to see that for Street Fighter 5 like we kind of know what they did but like there's they did Not do they did not film the process of that fucking dumpster fire, man We got a little bit for revengeance and we saw and you know what you actually got to see like you're like Oh, what did we lose we lost the? the wall the watermelon slicing accuracy

and we lost the wall run. But everything else was just like, this is not a game. I feel like someone said that phrase at some point and I can imagine that because I'm like, oh yeah, I remember projects you would play where you're like, this is almost like in the way a Keita Takahashi project is like a toy. Like you're like, I have a stage. I have a character who can do things.

He can slice, but there's no game here. Is that like the single most embarrassing like thing to ever happen in video games? Because there's been a lot of games that have like restarted development. But I can't think of anything where they came out and did a little mini documentary and that they're like yeah my team couldn't do it so we gave it to a different team who knows what they're doing I mean that embarrassing no again there's probably wild or crazier bits I

mean I again I talked about your mall a new possibility, fucking what's in the queue type shit, you know, the original No Man's Sky, like late night interviews, you know what I mean? Like, there's some really bad shit out there. But yeah, in the end, I think that was, if anything, that was just Kojima just being Realistic about the project and going like yo this thing sucks This is a right inside the side story that is not going good and this should be awesome, you know, so yeah, no I See that as the opposite actually anyway

Some cool things got announced as well out of nowhere. Terminator Zero, a Netflix Terminator series animated by IG. What? Just dropped and I'm like where the fuck did this come from? It looks pretty cool. Don't really know what's happening in it. Probably Terminator shit. Terminator shit is happening in it. It just got announced earlier today. And yeah, it looks fucking... This looks great! It looks really cool.

And production IG is real shit. Not much else to it. Like they are... Ever since like, like, like a... fucking innocence, I'm like, yeah, you guys are gonna just... You're in that place where you're like, we'll drop in to do some animation fucking miracle work whenever we feel like it, and then you'll never hear from us for like ten years. Yeah, Terminator Zero. Not much else to say.

Trailer looks cool, is what it is. Yeah, Terminator Zero. Not much else to say. That looks great. Trailer looks cool, is what it is. What have they been up to? They've been up to some stuff. Yeah, okay, never mind. I want to say... Oh, are they also working on the new Kinnikuman series? That might be why this popped out now.

Yeah, there's a new Ultimate Muscle Kinnikuman arc thing that just got announced as well. There was a pretty interesting... There's an interesting game called Folder Dungeon. Pretty interesting, there's an interesting game called Folder Dungeon. It is an adventure game where you're using a desktop interface to browse through a folder. And in the folder there will be files that are enemies that you click on. Oh, those look goofy as fuck. And another folder will be like a little door and you go into. And then... Oh, this looks goofy as fuck. And another folder will be like a little door and you go into the door and then there'll

be a key in the door and you run the key, you click on the key. It's now in your inventory. And it's the whole game where the interface is going through a desktop. I bet there's going to be some dank fucking fourth wall shit. Oh yeah, for sure. But that's really fun. Yeah, just a file management game, which is the kind of concept someone sitting at their office, dying inside, comes up with, that type of GDD. Looks cool. There was, if you felt the need for Metal Gear at home,

Istanbul. The Metal Gear is at home. But there's a new Metal Gear, we have MGS at home. Istanbul is making a game, Motion Blur is the name of the studio from Istanbul, making a game called Black State. And I mean, if you want to talk about just like, Oh, bro. The vibes.

Bro. If you want to talk about Phantom Pain vibes based development. Hire this man. You know, they took the unreal environment that your fake snake would be running around in, and they made it a little bit more mother basey and they've got some like American soldier Colonel style As they talk to you at set it I have to agree this looks fake as shit. Oh Man, this is huge fake ass energy all it has it has higher this mad energy more than anything. Oh, yeah

but it but like the the the the space is also what's the word again for non non Euclid anyway non Euclidean non you'll keep perhaps it's like you open doors and you go into nonsense environments, and I love that But makes it feel more fake though Hey, man, I believe I believe in Istanbul game development. Let's see, AAA. There was a 10 minute- This looks like Stellar Blade's cousin. To me, again, I'm just like it's unreal engine Phantom Pain. You know

You know I played stellar blade for like hours and the whole time it felt fake does that make any sense? Okay, I know exactly what you mean. It's out, and you're playing it But it still doesn't feel like it's a real feels like a complete fucking fake game. I know what you mean. I know what you mean Another thing that got announced as well looks pretty interesting. Nobody wants to die. That's true. That's the name of the game and it is a first-person detective

sci-fi story taking place in New York where bodies are temporary and you can you can body switch in this type of setting. But ultimately it seems like it's a kind of like... Oh, this looks cool. It looks pretty dope and it's very, very narrative driven. Yeah, first person walk around the crime scene, use tech to look for clues. Yeah, that looks cool.

Put shit together. Yeah, pretty rad. I haven't seen anything, like I didn't go through all of the footage, but I didn't see anything that was like combat oriented really. So it seems to mainly be about the detective work, which is an interesting thing. Like there, I mean, there always might be, but like they certainly didn't focus on it in this introduction. But yeah, nobody wants to die.

Very, very interesting looking game. And I mean, yeah, that besides that, like, there is a Disney hack that resulted in a terabyte of data being stolen. That's happened. yes. And with this story, which hasn't had anything else come out about it, I didn't even realize, but like they said, it might be the same people that were behind an AT&T and Ticketmaster ransomware hack that impacts over 100 million Americans, which is like, hey, look to your left, look to your right. What are you three is being hit by that. Y'all are hacked. That's fucking crazy. But yeah, there's probably

going to be some leaked projects from all Disney emails and subsidiaries and shit that comes through at some point. But it seems like everyone's getting hit with that type of ransomware shit these days. Anyway, all right, let's take some emails. Hey, if you want to send an email, send it to castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com. That's castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com. All right, Umber says, hello Patton Wolves. Super Beast Mail at gmail.com All right Umber says hello Patton wolves recently got a new job at the hospital. I was cleaning surgical equipment one day I got stabbed by a dirty instrument that pierced my glove and

one of... yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Holy shit, okay. Repost. Instantaneous poised. Oh my god, so for those of you listening to the audio version of Home, that noise was me throwing off my headphones and pulling my chair back and trying not to vomit on the floor. Yep, yep, that is an instant crit. Alright, I'm good. I got this.

All right. Um, so after that happened, one of my quote unquote veteran coworkers told me not to tell my supervisor because she's been working there for years and has never gotten sick with anything. Naturally, that's bullshit. I told my supervisor and we went through a whole process and had my blood tested and it turns out I actually wasn't vaccinated for a few bloodborne diseases, and I would have been shit out of luck if I had not known and had not gotten re-vaccinated, and I actually did get something.

So my question is, what is something that you've been told by someone who's an industry hobby or such veteran that's been there a long time, but the advice they give is detrimental or actually harmful to what you're trying to do. What's the worst piece of veteran advice you've ever received? That is fucking insane. I don't think I've ever heard anything as bad as that. That's outrageous. That's crazy. The first place my brain goes to is Toronto FGC people at the time pushing play hungry

for tournaments I Ran this bit a while ago and oh my god. That's wait like literally hungry. Yes that whole stupid as fuck No That whole stupid joke was based on the idea that there were people the players in Toronto were like nah You got to show up to the bracket without eating breakfast. That's so fucking stupid play your matches Actually hungry and that will affect your mentality and make you play better because you're playing hungry Whatever the fuck that means, it's insane.

That is so dumb. Play on the verge of passing out, distracted by your stomach and your weakness, and somehow that's gonna make you play better. Play hungry, that's what that is. It's bat shit, it's the dumbest advice ever, and giving that to people who are new is insane. Yeah, I'm never letting that one go.

That, man, that's really bad. I can't think of anything that's nearly as bad as that. I've watched some people come in from QA back in the day from other places and have habits that they thought were good QA habits that were terrible and you had to like essentially retrain the person you know I've had people make reference to I think they someone called something halo testing one time and it was like talking about not like about like testing one thing and then like whatever the result from that thing is that means everything else kind of around that thing should be okay and therefore you don't have to worry about it and it was

like that's literally the complete opposite of what this job is the whole point of this is that you have to check each of those things to make sure that the one that you think is fine is actually fine because if you go hey if I test one character and there's eight of them that means the one that works means all the other seven are fine. And it's like, no, literally that's- That is wild. That is fucking- You know.

But anyway, the, yeah. But Play Hungry is the standout. I don't think any of the ones we could possibly offer up is anywhere in the same ballpark as what's in this email. No, and that is admittedly again very critically critical to your Z-targeted spot. That could have led to their death. Okay. All right, one last one from Caleb who says dear Watanpooley

My father-in-law recently introduced me to corner gas a hilarious Canadian TV show all right having grown up on the red green show I wanted to know were there any other hidden gems of TV shows from Canada We had some good ones we had some good ones cyber six was was I don't really We had some good ones. Cyber 6 was fun. I don't really care for Canadian TV. Okay. I mean, we were forced to watch a bunch of it because it was mandated that, I think, 60% of the channel content had to be Canadian for like, Teletoon and YTV and a couple other channels. But hey, Are You Afraid of the Dark? That was a pretty good fucking Canadian show, man. You know?

You know what? You know what my Canadian TV, like, guilty pleasure always was? It was fucking Due South. Due South! I fucking love Due South. Yeah! Mountie shit. Damn. Until fucking Dean Cain went nuts or whatever. Oh, really? Was he even on that show? Wait, was it Dean Cain went nuts or whatever. Oh Really was he even on that show? Wait was it Dean Cain thinking of Paul Gross? Oh the Mountie wasn't Dean Cain Okay, my man Fucking adventures of Superman. Yeah, but lowest in Superman lowest in Clark. No, okay

Lois and Clark. No, okay. Um, obviously until tomorrow I just keep moving on the littlest hobo fucking classic incredible. I showed my, I did a react once and I showed chat like the fucking what the deal with littlest hobo was and like that shows crazy. Hobo just like gang stalks a dude for long enough until he just goes crazy and gives up to the police. It's awesome. Yeah, yeah. Slow fucking slow pursuits. Absolutely. It follows a dude. Was Wishbone Canadian? I don't think so. It feels like it was, but

maybe not. I think it was on PBS. Okay, obviously reboots is You know and I mean to that note breathe Beast Wars and all the mainframe shit Stargate SG ones a Canadian show Dude, I love Stargate SG one I what sucks about Stargate SG one is you try and get people to watch it But the first like four episodes are complete dog shit And so that's it's like a 45 minute long show and that's hard to that's hard to fucking get through It's a lot easier to get in when you catch it on season three and a half on space because dad's watching it There's stuff. I remember enjoying but I think it was just because I didn't have the access to the American equivalent like What the fuck was it called there There was the comic show, there was gamers on YTV, there was a video in Arcade Top 10,

which was actually awesome, admittedly, even though the challenges were impossible and no could could ever beat anything. Oh, I have a last second breaking news about the child. My human child. Human child loves spaghetti loves spaghetti oh shit that's brand new well I earlier get a photo that kid is that kid is wearing a significant amount of spaghetti but he likes it I mean it's it's it's tasty what's what's what's the hate what earlier when you were talking about spaghetti Westerns I did remember like at Fantasia one year They had a movie called Tsukiyaki Western Django. Oh, they totally did! That's what that fucking meant!

I didn't get it until just now! The name meant not spaghetti, but Tsukiyaki Which was produced by Tarantino, I want to say. Yeah. Oh, that makes perfect sense! Yep. Alright. Shhh. Sigh. That'll do. Alright, I'm gonna get out of here and go clean spaghetti off a baby.

Pasta rat. Thanks for watching!