Castle Super Beast - CSB 283: Babylon's Razor

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps Go to http://shopify.com/superbeast to sign up for a $1-per-month trial period. Attention Cordnutters Deadlock Of The Ancients Alien Romulus: The Goop Troop Crash Bandicoot X Spyro The Dragon Bundles Are Not Games Watch live: twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Crash Bandicoot 5 was reportedly in development as a Spyro crossover, but was cancelled PlayStation’s ‘Concord’ Did Not Break 700 Players On Steam On Launch Day Ok so I saw people laughing at concords character designs and holy shit I didn’t know it was this bad Mouse: P.I. For Hire Releases New Name, Trailer & Info Here's Terry Bogard's Level 3 and Critical Art in SF6! Monster Hunter Wilds won't gender lock armor sets Two new features coming to Street Fighter 6 in the next patch featuring Terry Bogard: V(irtual) Rival Match and Replay Takeover  

["Sailor Moon Theme"] There we are. Hello. How to do? Oh, oh, oh man. Sorry, I'm so tired. I've been in such a rush. I've been spending so much of my time playing the new Fucking hit Concord. You've been just you've been crushing it on Concord so much dude. I've been I've been I'm I remember

Concord I remember every day. Yeah those days of when it's like man. Hey, we're podcasting stop getting distracted because you've got your Concord of when it's like, man, hey, we're podcasting. Stop getting distracted, because you've got your Concord game running right now. Yeah, I'm Concord maxing on my other monitor right now. You've got it minimized on the other screen. I can tell. I can tell when you're Concorded. Yeah, dude, shut, don't, dude, dude!

When you're cord nuttin'? I can tell when you're cord nuttin', bro. You need, we got a podcast I I want to say that Steam charts on the Steam database is Like a godsend a blessing it is legitimately like important because when you want to talk about any game and you're like

Did did that like cuz you remember having to like pull up an EGM and then you'd get the NDP sales statistics For a game and then they'd be like by the way, this doesn't include Walmart. Sure. Yes, exactly You'd be like, oh cool. So this is a complete stuff completely useless number. These numbers don't exist. Yeah, okay, got it Yeah, it's pretty impressive man in a world where you can log in and be like, hey, how's it going? Or if someone's arguing with you about about Concord for example And then you can check and verify and see that they are one of six hundred people That is playing the the the new hit 700 excuse me I miss

oh I'm sorry do you actually mean 254 okay we are talking about currently or we're talking about like at it's at the the launch I mean I'm talking about right this second right now okay okay because oh hey let me pull out, there we go, I whooped out the calc. Because, yeah, I overestimated or underestimated that by one seventh, but if we're going by, it's 250 right now? Yeah, 254. Okay. And it costs? Eight years.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, how much did Concord... How much did Concord cost? Uh, uh, uh, let's see here. Oh, it's trying to tell me about the plane. Okay. So, we can go by...

Yeah, that's $365. You can go over there. Okay, so Somebody already did the math. It's two hundred fourteen thousand dollars per player. I thought I saw okay YouTuber named smash JT Thank you. Thank you. Yes. I carry the two. Yeah, okay, that's pretty impressive And that's from the peak right now. It's probably up to your five nearly half a million dollars per player I mean, so this is a game that started development when overwatch dropped right eight years ago and

it's kind of wild because like it's dropping but also like Hell Divers continues to exist and there's been recent and so like that's the current Sony thing that has way more attention of course but like in terms of recent flops I was looking at the like an article that was kind of describing that like kill the Justice League was like one of the biggest losses. Oh yeah, man. You know, it cost like 220 million or something crazy and then, you know, the overall the metrics on that were looking like that would be like the biggest loss leader, but that

still had some 14 or 15k players What it launched, you know Um, so this game Had a had a beta had a free beta Uh, which had it like it said like 2 000 or so Mm-hmm, but the full Uh, I guess not even full price because it's 40 But still the priced version of the game

Yeah has launched with a lower number than anything in recent memory. There's so much going on here right, so the first thing the the the the iceberg ahead warning was they had an open beta Sorry, no, they had a closed beta that you need a PlayStation Plus to play Right and that topped out around two three thousand, right? then they had an open beta the following week and That topped out around a thousand Mmm, and that was the fucking warning sign because it means the people who didn't eat the people who played the first one didn't even come back to

Play the open one and also like this is this is freely accessible And nobody's interested. I think as well that we always forget about the secret hidden metric, which is We can call this the the Babylon's fall number right? Yeah, which is the Babylon's Fall number, right? Which is whatever that insanely low steam number is, concurrent player number is, how many of those are reviewers, let's players, and people gawking at the state of the game as opposed to actually having to try a genuine match. How many of that is people that have Let's Play channels that are jumping in to record all their footage

and see what's happening with the low population? Judging by the player numbers right now compared to a couple days ago, I'm gonna say about 50%. Okay, so let's, you know what? Like we were at 600-h and now we're to 100 so maybe like 400 people I coined this Babylon's razor oh yeah yeah Babylon's razor Slices that low number even lower because half the people are just there to record and film the spectacle So there's a there's like a whole

I want to say who who was it it was um oh I fucking forget his name he did a great racing game video just a few things ago Ray something um god someone in the channel help me okay um but uh he did a fantastic video about old race fic fantastic video about old race fic. Oh, okay. Okay. Um, R A C E V I C K. So a while ago he did a video based on like, what is a dead game? What is actually like, what does that mean? People are like, ha ha, populations down is dead game. And so he took out a bunch of games that had like 10,000 active players and it's like, is it a dead game? And the answer is like, absolutely not. Like 10,000 people is like it's like is it a dead game and the answer is like absolutely not like 10,000 people is like more than enough you sit there for a minute you get no match

Right like is it the best match is the best like latency no, but you don't need 800,000 people playing the game simultaneously like League or fortnight you're gonna be queuing up with the same names over and over again Yeah, but you can play it. Yeah, right Concord and this I do feel bad because I was trying to find gameplay and I found a gentleman who was Like alright who's it was a VOD of his stream and he was like, alright let's play some matches in Concord and he ran into what I'm of the opinion is the final kiss of death like the final nail in which Concord has three or four different modes and He's like oh, I want to play this mode and that mode would not fill with players period ah

Yes, the Titanfall had this problem and so then he eventually went to the team deathmatch equivalent and After about a minute and a half was able to get into a match and it's like oh you can't even get to the point where you can play anything other than the primary mode and we're dealing with a couple hundred people oh this thing's gonna this thing's gonna like bleed out to the point where matches aren't gonna be joinable. Yeah the broken playlists right that's That's a huge thing. That sucks. Man.

So I feel like there's a lot of where and what could be the cause of this, but I think it's just the most glaringly obvious thing, which is I have not seen a game just visually, character design-wise, look so unappealing. Did you see the tweet that I made yesterday? No, I didn't. Oh, oh, oh, it's exactly what we're talking about.

I can't believe how absolutely nothing I feel looking at the roster. So I made a tweet yesterday in which I mentioned that I had not actually seen most of Concord's characters. So I went and found an article that just had pictures of every single character on the roster and then I cut them together in a grid and put them up on Twitter and I am like astonished. Wow. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. Nothing these designs are. I mean we've been talking about like, oh, who do you want to see in 2XKO? And you know, all these like safe and not safe picks, et cetera. I'm looking at this entire roster and it's just, it's washing right over me.

It's crazy how unappealing this design is. I don't know, man. And I guess everyone else felt that way. I don't feel drawn at all. So and that's a problem because they're in the genre called hero shooter. And OK, Overwatch said, Hey, what did Overwatch do? It put out a big fancy series of cinematics and goes, Oh, wouldn't it be cool to play as Tracer? Wouldn't it be cool to play as this gorilla?

Wouldn't it be cool to play as this cowboy? And you went, Yeah, actually, it seems like it would be really cool to play as those characters because they're really interesting Marvel rivals says hey It's fucking spider-man. You know shut up You won't play as fucking spider-man. Yeah, I want to play a spider-man Can I do this thing can I can I swing yeah you can okay? And that's the weird part is like looking here to, I'm having this and like, this is, this whole story,

this whole Concord event is crashing into me at the same time as Sheck's notes. Remember, remember the word name. Try and pull it deadlock towards yourself Dead lock deadlock is happening at the same time Well, not only is it happening at the same time because there were the inner there were the articles of Wow Concord's bombing super fucking hard by the way, you're allowed to you're allowed to stream deadlock right now and me and like

allowed to you're allowed to stream deadlock right now and me and like. 40 thousand people on Twitch were like hey by the way we were in deadlock the whole time. Do you want to look at deadlock instead and then you hit the deadlock character roster and like every single one of those is a banger. So I have to go like I have to go over and take a look at everything going on in deadlock because I was kind of just looking at the footage in general. But deadlocks UI though has way too much happening on it. Oh yeah. So I'm I'm it that shit is my kryptonite.

We are in a new world, and that world is... We are actually showing you the alpha. Okay. Like, dialogue is a closed alpha to the point where I think that game is over 18 months away. Uh-huh. I just... Like, I'm not even joking.

I think that is like two years away. Okay, so it is a MOBA, but the camera is in a different place then. Okay, so it is a MOBA but the camera is in a different place then. Okay, so because I just looking at that HUD I feel like I play a lot of deadlock over this week so I'm very happy to talk about it before we get to deadlock. I have to say what so in games business me and you have always made fun of like trends chasing because they can never get there fast enough. Everything after like 1995, you could never catch them. Right? So like, hey, fighting games are hot. OK, let's bang out a fighting game.

It will hit the market nine months from now. Right? Hey, real time strategy games are hot. Let's make a bunch of knockoff StarCrafts. How long it will take? A year. And then we saw the MMO thing happen, right? How long does that take? Five years? Oh, fuck.

And by the time you released your MMO, wow, it's had five extra years to get super good. And it's that much more expensive because it's live service and has to stay constantly updated and maintained. Right? And so now I think about what you said when like, Concord got greenlit when overwatch came out

Yeah, and like it is so far Beyond like behind that trend that all of the shooters in that trend are how free to play Right the fact that they're releasing it 40 bucks is now like what you want money for this but over all these are free and rivals and paladins they're all free and like and when I looked at the good the the gameplay of it I'm like oh there's a cool look ability someone's shot a fan that lands on a surface and blows people away and like yeah there's a wall you know hero shooting is happening that all seems Gameplay seems pretty normal and competent.

You know, I see nothing about that at a glance. Yeah, I saw nothing about that. That that struck me as like, oh, this is subpar or whatever. It seems quite fine for a hero shooter. But just the people that are doing the actions and everything about what you're looking at was just like, this is not going to grab me. Even if it was free, much less to pay up for it. Hey, Willie, there's a new restaurant in town and I heard that the food there is not really subpar.

Do you want to go there? Okay. It costs like three times as much as the restaurant we usually go to. And everything is served in a toilet. Yeah. do you want to go down there? Oh? Man, dude, you know my favorite part about talking about Concord is hmm Okay, I will put out a tweet about Concord and I will receive the following three reactions And they're all happening in chat right now. One is what the fuck is Concord? Number two is wait Concord came out. Okay. And number three, which I just saw, which is wait, it's not free, they're charging money for Concord. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Do do do. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Oh Yeah, no yeah, and it's not when and like having just touched rivals and Walking away from that going the only negative I have is what will happen with micro if they decide to do it But everything else they've said hey listen. We're gonna make a billion dollars off of Captain America costumes. Everything was stellar. I just Yeah. Um, man, and so like, and you know, and like, and it's not like one of those things where, I mean, has you can't be your your your financial plan for how you're going to make money by selling a game at price and comparing it to what you would do if it was free to play.

I'm sure they had meetings and discussed what that would look like and stuff. You can't ever switch and swerve over to that, especially once people have paid money. You know, like that's insane. So it's just, that's a, there's no salvage there. That's pretty much a dead-end arrival. They spent a lot of time, they spent a lot of money.

Also remember, Secret Level spend a lot of time. They spent a lot of money also remember secret level has a concord episode oh Shit, so Sony really Secret level is gonna release an episode of that. Oh man, but it's not even gonna last until the show is out It's not You're gonna watch that people are gonna watch that secret level episode go buy the game and they're gonna be like not be able to Play it. Oh fuck

That's brutal That's really bad, man It didn't last long enough to get the promo that was on the way So like one of the big bombs for Concord is that like, you know, they're doing weekly cutscenes and weekly story stuff and it's all mocap super. Okay, they're doing weekly story events, which like have full mocap cutscenes with like super high end motion capture and performance capture and shit like that. That was shown in the original trailer and no one gives a shit because it's a multiplayer

shooter. And that cost like a billion dollars or some shit. So this is where I cut to tweet by friend of the show, Gene Park, love you Gene, who said, both Xbox and PlayStation released games this year that have trouble finding an audience. Both used expensive motion capture as a distinct factor.

Meanwhile, Helldivers 2 doesn't have faces, and Wukong didn't even bother lip syncing their English voiceover. Helldivers has three faces in it. Oh yeah, the people on your ship. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Man. Yeah, no. Man. We're watching trend chasers come out like multiple console generations later and it's really funny. But the, it's always, but the, it's been a minute since there's been the pre-spend, like investing in the expensive short, you know,

cause yeah, getting Kratos in there, it's like, duh, and anything else that you get, but like that level of Advent rising, you know, like we're putting it all in we're betting on black. We're going in heavy from the jump Hey, wooly. Listen. Hey, listen, I have an idea. I'm gonna start a new band I think I think this trends really hop hot right now. I'm gonna combine Rock guitar I'm gonna combine rock guitar with rap lyrics. I'm gonna call it rap rock.

And I think it might be the next big thing. Okay, time to start selling out Madison Square Garden tickets right now. All right, so I'm gonna put my deposit down for MSG. Did you put your house up? Okay, cool. Yeah, I put my house up for the deposit for MSG. Awesome. Yeah your house up? OK, cool. I put my house up for the deposit for MSG.

And yeah, we're going to see how that, yeah. Man, OK. Well, yeah, that is just brutal. And I don't know. You would think for all the money that's spent, that there would be like a massive team of artists that would see these characters and stop this from happening.

I have it's a possible answer to what's going on with the character designs because I put that tweet up and a lot of people are talking about it. and somebody came up with a really good explanation, which is the characters all look like 6070 sci-fi characters That would look probably pretty good in a very stylized comic book aesthetic. Yes, but Part of the game's main push is it its super high-end performance capture cutscenes. So at some point, what might have happened is that it was stylized and it was very colorful,

and the on high, either the director or the board or Sony said said nah, it's got to look realistic Okay, because and then it just didn't survive the translation at all because purple afro lady robots and then like, you know pink haired like fish girl like that's all Very like if Gendi was takendy was giving a take on these, I could see a lot of that being exaggerated and working out, you know? These features could be exaggerated to work out. Like yeah, not when you put it that way.

But realistically, they all just look like bad box art Mega Man interpretations of what might have been cool characters. Absolutely, like, 100%. It's crazy. It's genuinely nuts. So, Valve, Gabe Newell, they're sitting around and they're telling people every day, Deadlock a kill counts, please can you not put up like like Call of Duty style montage videos of your Deadlock plays? And then they see Concord come out And they're like that well, that's enough of that shit and so concord It was in response Was no I'm saying it's in response. I'm saying they saw Concord and they decided to put their thumb on the ant Deadlock is out. No, it's not actually deadlock is not out

Deadlock is not even not not out. It's inside. It's closed alpha, but embargo is pulled Is that what happened embargo is pulled so if you were in it? You can watch it or stream it Okay but also So if you were in it, you can watch it or stream it. Okay. But also, do you know how the Deadlock invite process works? No. I did get one and I said I'll just try to check it out later. I'm only interested in checking it out when I can stream it, I think.

Yeah. Well, you can stream it now. Here's how the deadlock process works. Deadlock is a secret. So you go and be like, does anyone have secret game? And then Guy DMs you and gives you an invite to secret game. And then you get into Secret Game and there's a button on the main menu that says invite your friends. And you can invite literally any single person on your friends list infinite amount of times and they all get in right

away. And all of those people can invite as many people as they want right away. So I got in and then invited every single person on my steam friends list. And so that's how you get the worst kept secret in in games today. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you have an invite. I sent Reggie an invite.

Page has an invite sitting in her thing, etc, etc. Cool. Well, yeah. So I mean, scrolling through these characters, I'm like, oh, there's some fun looking folks here and some gimmicks and stuff on display that seem pretty rad. But this, yeah, so I guess I thought this was also a third person team shooter. It is, question mark? But then what is

happening? So, this is Pat's generalized synopsis of the Valve game Deadlock as by a guy who played it maybe 20 matches, but more importantly is friends with Dota fiends who have been playing it non-stop so deadlock looks like a hero shooter it is not it is barely even a shooter it is Dota 2 with the camera put behind your character. Okay, everyone's been saying smite. Calling it, saying that it's very smite-like. Yeah, it is Dota 2.

So you choose your shooty man character and then you will jump into your match and it will tell you, oh man, this is the best part. It will say, hey, listen. Okay, I'm going to back up. Sorry, there's so much to talk about this, I'm getting all kerfuttle. Okay, do you remember me telling you about League of Legends and how League has this really fun system where you go, hey, I would like to play top or mid or jungle or carry or ADC.

So what do you do? You select your role, your preferred role, and you go, I would like to play top. And I don't, you know, that's my preferred lane. So then they go, pick a second one. And I go, oh, I would like to play jungle if I can't play top. And the matchmaking goes, you're playing mid.

And I'm like, I don't know how to fucking play mid. I don't know how to play even a single mid character. And I start the game and now I'm, I'm leaning in mid and I suck at it and I'm feeding. And now everyone on my team is mad at me, but I didn't even want to play mid. I wanted to play top, but now everyone is mad at me. They're yelling at me and, oh, I hate this.

top but now everyone is mad at me they're yelling at me and I hate this mm-hmm and you start up deadlock and you go hey here's the whole roster and it goes you have to pick at least three that you're willing to play and you can set their general priority so you pick three characters and you go this is the one I want the most this is the one I want the most, this is the one I want the second most, and this one is fine. Okay. Are they for different lanes? No, because when you go into a match, the game will assign you a lane. Okay. You will start in a lane. You can move to anywhere you want, but it will literally put

you in a lane to start. So there are lanes and the main way you win is not just by like deathmatch scoring kills against the opponent team or things like that. Oh no, deathmatch scoring is totally pointless. It's about pushing that lane. So you get onto your lane and the very first thing that happens is your base will spawn a bunch of little dudes called Troopers and then they will meet the other bunch of little dudes coming from your opponent's lane And then it is up to you to last hit and deny

The troopers as you are also going back and forth with the opponent in your lane Okay, it's it's and then when you do that, you get money, and then you go to the shop to get a bunch of items to get stronger and then go back down your lane. It is a MOBA. It is a MOBA, MOBA, MOBA, MOBA. The difference is is that instead of having little RTS fights over your lane,

you are having third person shooter fights over your lane. Because I definitely, yeah, like there I the third seeing it in third person as I like with rivals on the Brain, I got a little baited like I go and like oh, we're like third person is becoming the thing. We're doing this That's nice and seeing your character flying around and zipping on lines and stuff. Mm-hmm. You know, it looks pretty cool But Yeah, immediately apparent is just like I mentioned it before like on your screen you've got like all the characters in the match up top I guess like the 6v6 and then What seemed to be okay, I guess there's your map your abilities and just a number of other things all popped up that

I'm like, oh, this is quite a bit more than There are many things. Yeah Then if it were just go go rack up points or push the payload, you know Mm-hmm, and then at some point when you start team fighting it does for Periods become a hero shooter because you have like, you know a four on six or five on five You know actual team fights The most interesting thing about the game by far is The the way they have decided to deal with last hitting

So are you familiar with the not at all last hit not at all Okay So you have seen league or Dota at some point where you have the lanes, the little tiny creep dudes or the little generic soldiers are butting heads against each other? I have played three games of Heroes of the Storm to get my Zarya master costume. Great, so Hots doesn't have last hitting. That was its big contribution. Well I'm out.

Follow me here. The only thing you need to know is that the two little the the creeps, you know, in the lane, they push against each other, right? And then there's the players. And so you're trying to kill those little dudes for experience to push your lane, right? In League and Dota, last hitting is a big deal. And the basic thing is, is that you only get the gold or experience or whatever the fuck you want to call it For being the person to actually kill the enemy creep. Okay Right. So you basically you're watching all your little dudes fight amongst each other and then you go that one's about to dead

Okay, I got the goal. I got the experience. Oh that one's about to die Got it, right. This also moves to denying in which you can see your own guys about to die and the opponent is about to get last hit on them and so you kill your own dude first to stop them from getting to stop them from getting anything but you don't get XP for killing your own. No, but you're denying them. Okay. As as Car denying them. Yes, okay. As Carhacks points out, it's like fighting game,

it's like footsies. Yeah, okay, you're right, that makes sense. So in Deadlock, the thing that they've done here is, it's a cute little thing to take advantage of the fact that it's a shooter, is that you're at really long distances because you're shooting enemies instead of. Pause, the denial aspect is denying them XP, but are you also denying them points? Do points of the amount of things you kill matter?

If you're attacking their creep, for example, does that add up in any way? In which game are you talking about it like League of Legends? For example in League of Legends No, it's the only thing that matters the the last one The last hit Only the resources. Okay, so like HOTS has experience league has gold. I'm not 100% sure on Dota Okay, there's only one resource you're getting from the little creep guys. And it's experience. So each game has a different name for it. Okay. Oh

Dota has both, of course Dota has both. But so in Deadlock you're killing the creeps for cash essentially. Mm-hmm. And because you're at the creeps for cash essentially. And because you're at super long ranges and because you're all shooting guns, what happens is that when you kill a creep, you get some resources. But then its little soul will float away. It's very, very slowly, has like a little bubble. And that will disappear on its own after three

four seconds and then you'll get that but both you and the enemy team can shoot that okay so when you're having your gun battle and the creeps are fighting amongst each other and you see the soul rising off like one of your own guys, shoot the soul of your own guy so that it doesn't automatically go to the enemy team. Okay, so it's just like any other like Sonic or Mario, the enemy or not, well not actually those games, but enemies will drop a bunch of shit and either person can get it no matter who gets the kill right there. Yeah.

Game doesn't actually end until you kill an enemy base. Yeah, that's right. You have to push the lane all the way up and destroy the base. All that actually matters is base destruction. Yeah. So, the number one reason why you would kill another player is because you are knocking them out of the game from getting any resources for an increasingly long length of time. So respawn timers start at like 10 seconds, and by the end of a match, respawn timers

are up to like a minute and a half. So like a full team wipe at the very end of a match, it's not like, hey, we wiped the whole team, we're done. It's like, no, they can't stop us from blowing up their base. Right. Which is like, you know, again, in Overwatch or so you do a team wipe and then you can push the payload uncontested for a really long time therefore, yeah the time it's all it's all about time to Payload stop or whatever and it creates these these these little situations that you see in in your mobers in which you're like I

Can't beat this guy in my lane. I lose every single time. I have to leave and give the lane up to them and go find somewhere else to get resources because fighting them is just going to end up in a situation where I'm staring at the respawn timer over and over and over. Okay. Yeah, I think I had a touch of this in Mecha Break where it was like the push your payload, but the enemy has their own payload and you can go make theirs stop or go backwards. And so it's like, is it worth it to defend your own or stand on your own and accelerate it or attack theirs or Stand on theirs and decelerate it you know yeah

It's like it's you get into fun situations every now and then where you it's 6v6 And you have three guys defending your base while you three are attacking their base And it just becomes like well Whoever wipes this fight First is gonna lose because there's there'll be no one to stop them right right right okay I feel bad for people hopping on deadlock and going oh man valves making an overwatch fucking no absolutely not they are not that is not

what that game is that is a like that is essentially dota 3 and that makes a bit more sense because valve also made team fortress Yeah, right, so it would make and and Icefrog who made dota and then went to valve to work on dota 2 is the main person behind Lock yeah, so just why would they eat their own lunch directly like this even though it's been a really long time I mean, it's still I Yeah, that makes sense. So I don't know if you know this but you can sell a lot of hats in a MOBA so How does I guess then?

Like do so though the do the character abilities if we're talking about like overwatch and rivals Everyone's abilities are very PvPoriented because that's the main thing here. But because you have this goal of like fighting opponents, fighting creep, and then destroying the base, it's not always gonna be... They're slightly more generalized. Yeah, yeah, okay, okay. Also, the way the abilities work is different in that because it's a MOBA, instead of having your primary power like in Overwatch, it's like, no, you have your 1, 2, 3, and 4. You have your 1, 2, 3, and then your ult.

And some are for, some are laning tools, some are pure PvP tools, etc. I think because I'm an old one-trick pony that's predictable and I'm setting my ways I feel as if I Always want a duel and then a game modes that like add things to that Like there's always a layer of like up like obfuscation to around the idea of the duel We're pushing a payload or or defending a hard point is cool. But I definitely have the most fun when that is still part of what we're doing

and the main experience. So have you had matches of this where you're kind of ignoring the opponents and mainly focusing on the lane and the base kind of thing? Yeah, that's every single match. That's how it really works, okay. You're kind of ignoring the opponents and mainly focusing on the lane and the base kind of thing. Yeah, that's every single match. That's how it really works. Okay.

So the chat and people at home can correct me if I'm wrong, but my internalization of the MOBA structure is that an enemy is a guy who is stopping me from playing the game. Like the enemy in my lane, their main contribution is stopping me from playing my game. And I'm trying to stop them from playing their game. Yeah, okay, okay. I wanna fight. Fighting the enemy is a natural consequence of me actually trying to play the game.

But if you're trying to win, you're stupid if you go out of your way for kills or if you well depends like there's four lanes and there's six people like if you're a character made for picks, then sure, right? I'm sure there's people designed around that idea. Go jungling and you want to go lane hopping and you just want to help everybody win their lane by turning every encounter from one on one to two on one and then, you know, ping pong around. Is that actually what jungling means? That's what jungling is.

It means you don't push a lane, you move around and you pick off people? Two, well there's two parts. So, oh's two parts. So, oh, this is fun. So usually when you hear top, mid, and bottom, your people are just literally talking about the lane. Like, are you going to be on the top? Are you going to be on the middle? Right? Jungling is two things.

Jungling is roaming around the map and killing non-lane NPCs so that you can get buffs for your team, experience for yourself, items, whatever. So in Deadlock, there's a cursed urn that shows up from time to time that you have to transport from one end of the map to the other directly across all four lanes, and that will give you buffs. So jungling characters are wandering around the whole time. So there's NPCs that belong to no one that are also just hanging out.

Yeah. Okay. And since you are wandering around all the time as you are jungling, the likelihood of you being around when, oh, this guy's doing a one-on-one, why don't I make this a two-on-one? Is super high. Okay. You could call Jungler a flex spot. Okay. So, so you could call jungler a flex spot.

Right. And, but it's not necessarily PvE-ing. It's just you're versatile and you can do what's needed as you move around. So usually junglers in League or Dota have to do PvE because otherwise they will fall way behind on the money. Killing enemies gets you like shit for resources. Killing enemies gets you way less resources than just doing your lane shit. So I had a really good experience with Reinhardt because I love obviously PvP and dueling

and that's where I get my fun from, the objective stuff and kind of like, I guess to some degree support, I kind of wasn't as into, but then I was like, oh wait, shielding the front line is a really fun way to support the team because it's a clearer, I enjoyed that process because it was mixed in with moments of dueling,

and having those eventual, like, okay, Reinhardt charge, how do you not charge like an idiot, right? There's times and places, and learning how to use that and then isolate them and then fight and duel and then get back to the payload was a pretty fun thing. So I feel like I can enjoy a support role or a game that has, again, other things for me to do, but I really would like the ability to like have that, that pick be part of it. So how did your, your overall experience go

with the, with the roster? So I, I'm really surprised at just how much of a MOBA it is because it still is dictated by the phases. So the games are 20 to 40 minutes long and the first 10 minutes are like explicitly the laning phase. Like, it is, it is footsies for 10 minutes. Like, stay in your fucking lane and get your fucking points. Level up your character. Take out the guy that the game put in your lane, but just push it. Is it like- and then 10 minutes onwards becomes, alright, let's roam around. Let's, let's figure out what we're doing here.

Is it like in HOTS where you don't get to use all your abilities until you level up a certain amount? Oh yeah, absolutely. Okay. Like you start and they're like, pick one ability of four and pick the shittiest version of that ability. And then as you continue to get your resources,

you'll be leveling up to get all four abilities, then all four abilities upgraded in addition to the shit you're buying at the shop. Now one of the things that really stood out to me, I prefer playing League. I think Dota is too complicated. Dota is really complicated. MOBAs are definitely not simple, but like Dota is Fucking lot going on like you can't even just buy stuff. You have to send a fucking magic Unicorn flying back to fucking base to buy your upgrades for you, and then people can kill that thing on the way back

Okay, okay But Sorry, I didn't mean to do that, but the thing that I was always jealous of was that Dota has a way better client. Spectating is better, picking, like reading your in-game resources is a lot better, but more than that is so like, I don't know if you've ever seen the shop in these games. The shops are filled with like a hundred items. Just the Hots one.

Okay. Yeah, the Hots one is not the freak that the other ones are. I remember it being like three or four grayed out things. Yeah, no, no. Let me see if I can get you a screenshot Dota 2 shop I'd literally need like a single screenshot yeah here we go yeah yeah this is the screenshot I am I am I am keeping an open mind I tell you this is the fucking screenshot of the And every single one of those is either, wait hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, is either a percentile increase to some statistic or an active item that changes your kit or a percentile increase item or active item that is used as an ingredient to build a better item later.

Bitch, if I wanted to play the Binding of Isaac, I would boot up the Binding of Isaac. So what are we doing? up the binding of Isaac. So. What are we doing? So, what you have discovered is a big problem with MOBAs because I go, I would like to play the character and people go, well what items are you gonna use? And like, dude, I don't even have time in the match

to read like two items, let alone the 200 on the fucking screen. Yeah. So they say, well, you should read those and learn those before your match. I am not going to sit down and read the descriptions of hundreds of different items before I start playing. That's ridiculous.

Yes. So in comes the middle of the road, which is for League of Legends, it was a program called Blitz, and it was an overlay program, and what it would do is you would go, I am going to play Jungler Vi, and it would go, okay, here are three or four builds

that you can play for Jungler Vi, do you wanna play this one or this one or this one? And you would click it, and then it would go, okay, Vi, do you want to play this one or this one or this one?" And you would click it and then it would go, okay, and then it would overlay, choose this item, choose this item, choose this item, choose this item, choose this item, and it would give you a basic path. And often it would give you explanations for why you were choosing those items in that respect.

Right? Now this was really annoying as fuck because it was a third party overlay program that sucked and was annoying to use. And you said Vi, so you're talking about League, which is the simpler of these two. So I'm talking about League. So then Dota eventually included something called builds, and what that is, is that if you want to make a build for your character, you can go into a build maker, you can write out all the descriptions on every item,

and you can organize where it shows up in the thing, and any new player can go to the build tab on the left of the item screen for any given character and go, I would like to play the most popular build for this character, which is a melee build, and you click it, and it changes your item shop to be like, okay, here's why you want to buy this, here's why you want to buy this, here's why you want to buy this.

Pick them in this order. And over on the here, there's a little box that says if you're up against this, this guy, this guy, or this guy, pick this to counter pick him. And it became user controllable and it was like, it's just a system of little guides that everybody's making for each other Okay, but overall this micromanaging element is a massive part of the diversity of builds and how you You're essentially net decking the items. Yeah It's a deck of cards. It's a deck of cards. Yeah. Yeah, okay, right. Yeah, and so

It's a deck of cards. Yeah, yeah, okay. Right? And so, Deadlock also has this already, even in its closed alpha. Okay. So me, who is playing a character, go, I don't know what fucking items to pick! And somebody goes, go to the build guide

and pick the highest rated build. And I go, okay, and guess what? I did that, and I won a couple of my games, and the more important thing is, is that when I would die And I'm staring at my respawn timer. I can open up the shop and go okay So what what does the item that I bought do right? Okay? Oh it? reloads my gun

when I do a Sprint dash like a jumping dash Okay, so now I'll keep that in mind That this item allows me to do that. Oh, what's this item do? Oh, my gun shoots faster if I'm really close to the enemy. Okay, so now I'll keep that, and so I can now actually learn the fucking things

without being a complete piece of shit dead weight. Yeah, and I can see how folks are likening this to frame data as like, it's a lot of extra descriptions you can go and learn outside of the game or beforehand. Oh no, frame data is, you can feel frame data with your fucking gut. You can just feel frame data to know like, oh, I blocked a Shoryuken, okay,

I should be able to hit him on the way down, or when he lands, whatever. You can, but overall, this is, but the point of the comparison they're making is hey look Willie It's a bunch of shit that a lot of people don't care about learning That's too much detail, and if you feel like it you can ignore this I guess or choose to go into it to improve or whatever um so yeah It's super good comment down here really good who says to be fair all the top rated builds suck

They don't include the actives, such as unstoppable or a debuff remover, which are often situational, but are game winners. And they're completely right. However, having a bad build that has been built for you is way better than having a completely random pile of shit that you have made out of nothing. Yeah.

There was an era when nobody knew or cared about frame data a long time ago. So honestly, it really, I mean this when I say it, it doesn't matter. You can just play and have fun and just feel your way through things. It's all extra. I just talk-

Yeah, you need to buy items in a moment because that's like most of your character's power is actually coming from their items, right? I just I talk about it with Reggie because it's like hey The when we're playing against people that we can't beat learning that makes the difference so that now we can beat them So yeah, it's you know when you're at a point where you're like Oh knowing that number is the difference between winning and losing in this type of match in this level like situation I get it, but otherwise I fuck that shit, don't bother, who cares, right? Now with this though, for it to,

for me to wanna get in there and like get into the nitty gritty, I have to love what's happening outside of this a lot. You've gotta have me hooked in for me to be like, all right, what the fuck is this shop with 80 things on it? so So for me, I really like the laning phase. Yeah, this is what I'm gonna say like I I love Like okay, who's your main? What's their goal? What's their main?

Angle and like what were you doing as them? In an example match for example, if you can give me that so okay so right now right now I would probably say would my main be I forget his name to be honest what did he look like he's the easy looks like fucking a hellboy he's got a book and he's got a handheld shotgun and he's just blue hellboy oh the big the big thick guy. Abrams. Yeah Abrams. Sure I saw him.

So his basic deal is that he's the tankiest guy on the roster and he is really, if you build him up for long enough and he gets strong enough he is genuinely like the hardest character to kill. Like just character to kill. Like just, just refuses to die. And he also has, uh, he has an AOE, like he has a field that he can put out that just saps health from everyone. He has a charge that if you knock people into the wall, it'll stun them. He has a passive that he will just regenerate health that he has just lost

Like something like 20% of his health that he loses He just immediately regenerates and his alt is a giant Hulk style ground smash that stuns people Thor Yeah, more or less. Let's just say let's just say more or less and Most of my game plan was their laning phase getting to lane a little longer than other people because it's hard to kill me. So I have a lot of longer to run away to safety. Yeah.

Venom. And then once once team fights start to happen he has the charge that knocks people around and knocks them into walls to stun them. But because he's so resilient, he off, like he dives in and doesn't just instantly melt from five people shooting him. So I had a really good run in which I was able to like dive into a pack of enemies and slam once against the wall and kill them, run away, and now they're on a minute long respawn timer while it's a big team fight. And they go, okay, all I need to do is dive and kill one more person. And this has now slid way in our favor.

Okay. When you're saying enemies, you mean players? I mean the team. Players. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because the troopers are like brain dead on purpose like the enemy AI for like Generic enemy if Jim Jim generic creeps. Yeah, I mean their targets. I exist to die Titanfall NPCs, right? Yeah, they're trying to corner us. Okay, and I really like that. I played. Oh, what's his name? God? I can't remember their fucking names. Hold on deadlock describe him He's a robot with a hook Hey because your

Your characters Your your MOBA game Oh be Bob be right Your MOBA game needs to have a hook character. Like literally a Roadhog. Must exist. Get over here. Yeah. So Stitch is the abomination in Warcraft 3 was like the first one.

And that just continues onwards. And so bebop's kit is, he has a laser which is completely accurate and ranges super far. But his main gimmick is that he can hook you and then he can plant a bomb on you and then he can uppercut you away from him. So he drags you out of position and then causes a bunch of damage and then kicks you back Somewhere away from him, so he's safe He's great. Okay. I love him. There's a lot of characters on that roster that I haven't played There's one lady in particular called Lady Geist who I don't understand her kit at all But I do understand her alt which is she trades health statuses with somebody else on the enemy team Well, you get you get to peak like everybody's

It's like she'll you'll nearly kill her and then she'll hit you with her alt and now you are at 1 HP And she's completely full And I don't know how to deal with it at all Okay, huh Yeah And I don't know how to deal with it at all. Okay. Huh. Yeah. Um, Infernus looks cool. A lot of them look cool.

Like, there's some winners and some losers. Jacob Lash, his, uh, the, the, the old-timey British boxer just having a biography. Everybody else has like a paragraph and his is just Jacob Lash is an asshole. Okay. And then you load into his character and he starts talking. And the first thing out of his fucking mouth

is that dive kicks are the new hotness. I used to do uppercuts like a loser, like this other guy on the roster who does a dive. Like he names him, he says the character's name. Like uppercuts, oh, like this other guy on the roster who does a dive get like he names him he says the character's name like uppercuts are so so lame it's all about dive kicks nowadays that's where the real money's at it's like okay character fucking rules okay but yeah it's a MOBA it's a MOBA it's also super early like it says that there's no controller support But then you plug in a controller and controller button prompts show up like PlayStation button prompts show up

And you're like wow I can play this with a controller, and then you realize there's absolutely no aim assist at all And that some buttons aren't mapped Oh, so like there are buttons that are just straight-up not mapped to the pseudo support though They'll there's like the steam message. That's like a half faded controller. Yeah, so like it'll get there, right? But because I think they want this to be playable on the steam deck. Okay Well, that's another mark against it for me in terms of like I also love playing things on a controller Yeah, it'll it'll be there there, but it might be a bit. Okay.

What was the other thing? It doesn't run particularly well, and a lot of the graphical options aren't there. Probably the strangest detail about the whole game compared to every other game that you would play with a shooter is that reload times in deadlock are outrageous. Oh really? Reloading your gun so so like holding down like your machine gun and emptying it will take like five seconds. Reloading it will take four seconds. Oh it almost takes as long to reload your gun as to use up all your ammo. I just realized I actually don't know

this, but you have your abilities which have the little cooldown when you use them, of course. That's right. In all MOBAs. But you're talking about reloading here. So most characters have guns that you're shooting, but in League or Dota, you're clicking and you're just doing a melee. And you're doing RTS attacks. Yeah. So there's no gunplay.

There's no reloading. Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So ammo is... So in a lot of... In Dota or League, you have your auto attacks, but oftentimes you're using your one or your two to

Like as your primary attack all the time, but that uses mana and You can eventually run out of mana and then you have to you know Go back to base and regenerate and this is kind of simulating that it's also a simulating Attack speed delay in that like say you have an archer in league. Like you can only fire that auto attack so many times so fast. Okay. So if this is a 6v6, then is it like two people per lane and then like one person support one person DPS or something or like little duos of that? It's there's four lanes and two lanes get one person and two lanes each get two people. Okay, okay

So you're either in a single lane or a double lane But everybody can move wherever the fuck they want at any time. Oh, so there are no rolls are not yeah, okay Okay, I say the fact that there are no dedicated roles I like there's still matchups right like some some characters have really good matchups and and Are really bad matchups, but the fact that there's no dedicated roles Feels very freeing Because It's miserable in league when you don't get to actually play the role that you

want. It's awful. It's fucking terrible. Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking of again, if like, even in Rivals where it's like, hey, is anyone going to support? We need a healer. No, no one? Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, fine.

And then I'll learn how to play rocket raccoon You know for for if we if need be And then just same same thing making sure it's like hey, can we do a tank? No one's gonna. All right fine right learn how to learn how to do at least one And you can still do the whole like priority thing and all that I you know There's systems in ways that the games can let you like say like hey I'd like to play as this and if not not, then this is going to be rough for all of us. But OK, this seems like one of those cases where, yeah,

this game is not at all what I thought it was. And it's not at all what a lot of people thought it was. Yeah. And it's not really like, it's not super duper my alley. But I am curious to see, like, just does it feel fun to play and to do stuff in it? Because you know, I'm always open for a new experience there. But like, off the jump, I mean, I'm still thinking about Rivals, you know?

And Rivals is a lot more straightforward. Yeah. But I mean, even like, but again, like the hero shooter bit, like jumping into into Gundam evolution was like instantly I clicked and had a lot of fun with that too. Gundam branding aside, you know, so in a more pure MOBA sense, I guess it would come down to things like movement and, you know, like, yeah, the abilities and just how it feels as a character to like navigate around the map and do stuff And whether that felt rewarding moment to moment and if so like

Then when the occasional PvP happens those moments better be fucking Highlights in my brain of the match, you know when you go back to lane pushing and stuff Yeah, because I lane pushing and stuff. Yeah, because I can't imagine the coolest moments of the match being like, man, I took out all those grunts standing there, you know? Okay, so. Or like, I blew up that base.

So those are not the sickest plays. In your MOBA, all the sickest plays are in the third phase of the game, which is the team fighting phase so your play of the game would be you play as dynamo and you jumped into the middle of the enemy pack of six and Just like dynamo has an alt that Freezes everybody in place and then sucks them towards him for three or four seconds. So get in there and then everyone just dumps on that spot and takes that team.

That's the play of the game. Taking out the other players, absolutely. That has to be it. It can't be the other mechanics for sure. Like the last third of every MOBA game is team fighting. And if it's not, it's because it's a horrible one-sided massacre and everyone's just yeah Okay, when it goes back horribly when it goes horribly wrong. How long are you committed? and so The name of the game is deadlock by the way

If the other team is like, Literally nobody. Hell yeah, we're doing it. And they're stomping you, they can get through you in like 12 minutes. Oh, okay, okay. If they're stomping you super hard, but they don't feel like ending the game, they can run the clock out as long as they want so that

we're not escaping the 45 minute loss no because that stuck with me when you were talking about how rough that gets so I played about 20 matches games are 20 to 40 minutes and the worst matches ever are holy shit. Just kill us already. Jesus Christ We have lost every team fight for five in a row Just fucking push and kill us now I mean, can you just let them walk by you and just blow your base up and call it a day? You could but they'd have to push. Yeah. Okay.

The the the games set up to stop that is that eventually you will stop gaining power on your character. Right? Everyone will have bought every item they could buy. When you say push, like, do you have to fight the lane creep on the way or can you just walk past it? Yes. No, it'll kill you. Okay, okay, okay, okay.

So like, yes, no, it has to be actively pushed. Gotcha. Okay, as for the game's quality, it seems really well put together, particularly how early it is. It feels really good The shooting is solid. I really like the style of the cursed apple, which is what they're calling the the setting Like ghost noir, I guess Like the big apple but yeah, the curse with ghosts. Okay

It is also true to its its genre in a lot of ways so I'm playing and I'm playing the character dynamo that I mentioned earlier and I'm like listen okay the whole team is here and their whole team is there we're all gonna dive and we're gonna figure it out. Alright, I dove, I got every member of the team with the ult, they are all locked in place, they can't move, they can't shoot. I'm now going to turn the camera to see my team running away back down the lane. They are gone, they are literally out of sight. I am now dead. I have a minute and 20 respawn timer I am now sitting here wondering what the fuck they were I am so mad. I am madder than I have been in months

Months I am Anxious because I'm having trouble in my lane. I'm so anxious. Oh no I died Oh, I must have lost the game for us this whole crap This is where to the end I get to the end of that match and you know what I find out I had the best stats of any person on the team and That actually the guy in one lane over for me went 5 and 19 in his lane. Ah. And was feeding that guy super hard.

Sick. And I discovered that no, I was not shit. In fact, it was my whole team that was shit. And now I'm so fucking mad. And my chest hurts. Any, this is where voice comms would matter. And or. You turn that off. You turn that or off you turn of course of course you're not playing No, you're not playing with friends

So never but it would make a difference if you were play if you are doing that and if not You cannot put it in a place of your in your brain that matters. It just it just can't Yeah, putting you I think you can't let your chest care there's something about The you wouldn't normally talk about this because it's a closed alpha But also like you saw that report that like hundreds of people got banned from Marvel rivals for cheating for cheating Mm-hmm. It's like bro. That was a closed alpha. Yeah, fuck are you like? Oh people are scrubs. It's crazy. So Incredible. Yeah, so the day that deadlock went public lots of people joined up and

Quitting was Was insanely bad like you load into a match and hey somebody didn't get the character they want quit Games now unwinnable or unlosable We started to push and they they you know, they lost a little bit up quit Quit. Game's now unwinnable or unlosable. We started to push and they lost a little bit. Quit. Just like rage quitting like insane, like crazy. And then that kind of stopped because if you do that like three or four times in a night

and it's a close alpha, they just ban you. There's just, you're done, you're gone. Your access has been revoked, get out. Sick. Sick, sweet, fuck yeah. Great. You can argue about it in the game's official Discord, but then Yoshi, who runs that Discord, will mock you and tell everyone how many voice reports were made on your account and how

you're trash. I mean, I do appreciate it, because in Rivals when I was kicked out of a match, there's the whole like rejoin thing where it's like, okay, gives you a couple minutes to rejoin the match and continue. Otherwise, there is a penalty that's like, oh, you can't play for like 30 seconds or something, you know? And the idea of that timer going up and up and stuff is like that that that makes sense because if someone just has A really shitty connection, and they're getting disconnected. You know it's still a problem, but obviously it's like hey solve this or this is gonna Keep happening, but if you're literally just like yeah walking out of a game like that where it matters

And you can't really replace people midway through and be fair? No. No. Right? No replacement. Yeah. Okay.

So. So somebody disconnected, you lost or won. Whichever. Um, so this game has, yeah, play testing started last year, but like, how long have they been working on it? I'm curious. Probably a little bit before that. There was a, Yoshi posted a-

Neon Prime. A working in progress version of the game and it is like the most basic shit I've ever seen. I can't believe they actually put it out there. It is like Half-Life 2 with like Roblox trees and like Textures yeah, it's first person. This is proof of concept only yeah, yeah also the it used to be

futuristic neon Technology techno shooter. Hmm and at some point they just said Nah We're going with supernatural noir. Okay. All right. Well, we got to get a move on, but that is, yeah, I have an eyebrow raised just to see what's going on here. But like, I mean, some of these details have, you know, I lean a little bit further back,

but I scoot the chair up closer as I lean further back, you know? I'm not sure. I'll have to see if any of these clout push play. Hey, listen, if you wanna be sitting there yelling, fucking push, just fucking push it, where's my team? Then you can play Deadlock, I sent you an invite. Okay, okay.

Cool, so yeah, anything else of note for you this week today is the rescheduled day of truth so now that we're not sick for from kovat anymore Paige and I are gonna go have a nice dinner and cut the babysitter to watch the the boy crap and whatnot Okay So but that'll be fun, but I'll talk about that next week. All right, so then yeah, nothing further ado Well, I mean you can do the plugs. Oh Yeah, I'm gonna be streaming this week go down to twitch.tv slash Pat stares at And you can see my streams. I'll stream it. Oh, I forgot to talk about dishonor beat dishonor, too Guess what I saw flock myself out of the ending nice

old games rule Isn't it awesome to play old games? Isn't it funny dude? This is great like six seven years ago. She's What was yak is a zero Around the same time I think. Fuck. Yeah, so here's what happened, right? I'm playing Dishonored and I activate the non-lethal way to take out the final boss

and then I cross the threshold into the final loading zone of the final area and because I have the non-lethal one active, it never pops the lethal objective. So I kill the boss lethally, then go to sit on the throne to play the ending. But the game says, well, you didn't finish your objective. So it never prompts the prompt to sit on the chair, and it just soft locks me into a black screen.

Oh, that's super reproducible. Oh, I did it like ten times in a row! Yeah, the logic behind that is super clearly, yeah, oh god, that's a bad one. So I had to kill the final boss non-lethally, which I actually didn't want to do, I just wanted the option. And then I got the all-time proof that the chaos system is stupid Because the darker ending that you get from playing like a psychopath Is literally one slide in an ending slide of like five slides And then Emily was evil Oh

At least Mass Effect had like six Slides that were photoshopped to be the right color. Yeah. Oh boy. Okay. Alright, over here I got a couple things, but I will make it quick. I went to go see Alien Romulus. Yeah? Yeah. I heard, I saw somebody tell me, oh oh so trash and then I had two other people come to me go That was alright. Okay, so I did not watch covenant

You're good. Don't worry about that. Yeah, and Prometheus really dispirited me sure did and a lot of the franchise has always been just You know like it's saddens because I'm one of those people that's like I fucking love alien I fucking love aliens. I think alien singular is Probably greatest of all time like I mean I'll put that on a list against it. It's cinema Aliens, I like a bit less, but it's still fucking great. That's a good ass movie and That's where we're at you know and hey the black dude punching an alien in alien 3. That's fun Gave it a shot man

But anyway, so This Romulus here's what's up in my opinion, and I will not spoil, but I will certainly talk about the stuff happening in the movie, and it's, you know, leave it up for you to still go enjoy if you'd like. The alien movie that is within this movie is great. There is a really great- Oh, I know exactly what you mean by saying- when you say that.

I'm qualifying, aren't I? Right? So what you have is an awesome introduction to, like you can go in. I was watching it with like, you know, so Punch Mom, like hadn't seen any previous of the franchise as well. And you get a really good look at like the Waylands, Utahni fucking dystopia.

You get the horrible future underneath them. And you get a look at like what it's like in the colonies and Some of that stuff introduced as well with the characters and Then you know after they're setting and established kind of like, you know, this is this is your little your ragtag group of teens They go on their their quest, you know, and once you get to the ship where the movie is going to happen, there is a nice self-contained, isolated, awesome alien story that just takes place. A great space horror movie in and out that does a lot of really cool shit.

You have to be aware of, it's like, okay, what are we gonna get alongside this? We're gonna get lots of references to things in the other franchise, sometimes heavily heavy-handed, because you're gonna get your, the synthetics are always the coolest parts of these movies, right?

Yeah, they're pretty nice. Even, yeah, exactly, right? Michael Fassbender is going to be fucking incredible and, you know, Ash and Bishop and etc. They're always fucking great, right? So yes, lo and behold, the synthetics are also just the fucking awesome, the best part here. But you have to be prepared for like literal quotes from the previous movies being dropped in

as a little, ah, ah, right? You have to be okay with that. And in some cases, it's a wink to the camera, but in some cases, it's like, well, if it's a synthetic that happens to be the same model type as a synthetic that we know, then it would make sense that they would kind of behave in the same kind of ways. You know, I can, yeah, all right. You can also... Okay, so we know how we feel about Dead Actor CG face.

I don't like it. It's not very good. It's usually very discomforting. And it's not there yet, but we're still doing it because it's close enough for most people and that's, they're like, Hey, did we cross the uncanny valley with a fingernail? All right, let's go. Right. And so that's what's happening however however if the thing if the uncanny valley problem you're having is with a character that is not human then it can work a little better you can a little bit you can accept it a little more in your heart because you're like well the

things that I'm creeped out by are the fact that it's not actually a person you know right so yes dead actor CG face with I don't like that with asterisk next to it right you put that on put that on your your card as well some real cool stuff happening in this contained space horror movie are alien isolation actually relevant, canon, and referenced in such a way where walking around the ship, stuff on the walls, little interactables on the walls from alien isolation are part of this world. It's really interesting and cool that they get that stuff in there. And you can just be like, ah, you can point and be like, hey, there, I clapped. I clapped when I saw it.

But it actually is like, no, you're uniting the universe in a way that makes it like, hey, this is consistent. You have these moments where I always like to where it's like can we learn more about the xenomorph biology without like ruining it and or? Just just expanding on it in a way that that's like interesting and also like gives Giger style Dicks and vaginas more style dicks and vaginas more concept art to horrify us with. Yeah, because like the crux of the narrative in any good alien movie is like, all right, let's find out some new biological detail that's actually really awful and I hate it.

Yeah. So we get some of that going on here where you're like, oh, cool. Right. That's a nice little extra thing to figure out how this works. And you know, Face Sucker, Chess Buster, et cetera. You get to see a little bit more about like, what that process is like. And while you're doing that,

you're not ruining it by having aliens running around in broad daylight, fucking killing the actual space horror movie. They're still in the dark in the shadows being properly terrifying because they're off screen out of camera and just a little hair on the back of your neck kind of thing. So it's cool to have those little bits

and when the time comes, practical effects actually. Very appreciated. You saw the trailer, right? So you saw that moment where like, you see the little X-ray thing on the person and you can see like, oh shit, something's inside of them. And like, it's a nice cool moment there. And then you get like, yeah, actual use of practical effects.

That's like, nice, I appreciate that shit. practical effects that's like, nice, I appreciate that shit. Ah. Ha ha ha ha ha. All right, I'm gonna stop you right now. I'm gonna stop you right now. Okay. To make a slight detour about my hatred of anti-spoiler culture.

This is gonna be strange coming from me. Okay. I want to fight Ryan Reynolds. Because Ryan Reynolds, the day after Deadpool and Wolverine came out, tweeted, it was so great to work with these actors. And had a group shot of everybody that was like- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that got retweeted by somebody

and showed up on my timeline. And I'm like, oh, you fucking... It was yesterday, Ryan? Yeah. Jesus Christ! Sorry, it was a week. He waited one week. He's been sitting on that photo for months and it's been burning

to get it out there, and yeah, that sucks. Especially when that's the crux of what you're doing. As I watch you fumble for your attempt to figure out how to describe the next part of Alien Romulus, I also scrolled past a news article going, meet the guy who helped bring the thing to life in Alien Romulus? Hmm. Well, that doesn't even,

I know what you're talking about, and basically, yeah, that sucks, but it also doesn't matter, because everything about that sucks. Because you have a great- I fucking figured, man! You have a great space horror movie that's echoing the franchise as you do. Sometimes it's a bit heavy handed, but that's okay.

For the most part, it's working and it's doing a really good job. And what you have to do is in your homage, you always have Ripley's last stand, you know? And there's always one more bit. And the one more bit in this instance is basically we've been homaging all the old shit, and now the one more bit and everything to do with it is all the new shit, the current shit, right? And I'm gonna, I'll elaborate a little bit more, but if you're super, if you super wanna be cold, then tune out here.

I'm not gonna spoil, spoil super duper outright, but I'll just get a little bit more detail. The goop, and everything to do with the fucking Goop. I don't wanna deal with the Goop. The Goop is like the worst thing to ever happen to the Aliens franchise. The Goop is the thing that represents the new direction of the franchise

and the fucking Goop and everything about the Goop sucks and it fucking adds an end here that didn't need to be there. You know what? I gotta say, I'm gonna say it. I'm gonna say something really brave. Was Ridley Scott behind Prometheus, right? Yes.

Like he really made it? Yes. So Ridley Scott was so in love with the shot of David dropping the single drop of goop into that liquor glass that It showed up in every trailer and every piece of promotional material Because it's a really cool shot and it's really threatening that he allowed that detail to go on and just Fuck up every single fucking thing in Aliens really bad. So I have again I haven't watched Covenant but I but just knowing that um goop is a part of that too for from what I hear. That's the goop show. Okay. Alien Covenant is is okay

you loved the goop. Well here's a whole goop. Prometheus is you loved the goop? Well, here's a whole goop. Prometheus's introduction to the goop. And then Covenant is the goop show. Got it. Okay. So, yeah. You want to read the prequel comic about Deacon, the first gooper? I did not make that up. I did not make that up. That's real. So, you had a very... it's like a very clean opportunity for this isolated space horror story to actually

not involve any of that. And even the timeline of when this movie occurs fits into the old, you know, and and doesn't at all have to touch that stuff But it feels as if the franchise wants it to may demands there be some element of that continue and so we must goop and So I want to actually Some someone in the chat fine. It was totally fine up until the goop response. The goop is fine. The goop's that there's still a mystery to the goop, etc. And I violently disagree because like the alien is supposed to be the unknowable horror of space, right?

But you need to know something about it. And like I just described earlier, finding out parts of the alien's biology is like the core plot of almost every movie. What does it do? Oh, lays eggs in your throat. What does it do? Oh, it's got acid blood, et cetera. And that's the criteria, right?

In every movie, you discover what? Oh, it's a fucking alien and How how do they do it now? You never find out why? Until Prometheus and the why makes it so fucking lame Well, so the why that you do know from previous entries always pretty much needs to be because the corp is the Is the bigger evil not just nature? Well, it turns out the engineers were also the corp and they were also an even bigger alien corp evil That like that as long as you can go like like nature is cruel, but the corp is crueler

You know is then you've you've you've nailed it, right? um now but the corpus cruller, you know, is then you've you've you've nailed it, right? Now yet does the goop facilitate some interesting artistic choices? I kinda you can you can you can design some some some you can make some concept art come to life because of the goop What I tell you that that's worth finding out that the engineers were gonna goopify the earth because of Jesus The goop on the cross yeah the goop of Christ with this goop I Share yeah. All right This goop. I share. Yeah. All right. This goop is my body.

Really? Scott was smart to pull the Jesus stuff out of Prometheus. This goop is also my blood because it makes it makes the title of the movie being Prometheus like so overtly literal and ridiculous. Mm hmm. So if if someone literally said if someone literally referred to The goop as Prometheus is fire would you think that was cool? Shut up. You shut your fucking mouth. You're you please please tell me you're making a joke You're making a goof goop a goop goop

Dude fucking this movie sucks. No! That's the problem! That's the problem! That is the problem. Um... You can tumor cut out the goop and have a fucking great alien movie. And the thing is, given what's been happening with the franchise too,

they need a win. Right? This is what's weird. They need a win. And they have one. They made one. When I was talking about the trailer, who was the director that they got here? Let me just double check real quick. Fede Alvarez, director of Don't Breathe. Yes, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he knows all about Goop. Yeah. Quite familiar. quite familiar with a turkey baster full of goop the most familiar absolutely and don't breathe is fucking excellent great movie so yeah um with this I it's 100% it's like a great move a win the win that the franchise needs is here, you know? And I just feel like, I'm like, I wish I could talk about it like the way Predators felt, where it's like, oh, awesome, just a great,

finally, no bullshit, it was just a great movie, and it's got its references and fun bits and stuff, no fuck all that it's just a fun watch and here there has to be the butt and the butt is like the when you're when you're seeing the goop work its way in I'm like okay yes I know I remember Prometheus stuff that's okay it's fine yeah back to the movie you know and then starts being like, and then it's eventually you have to confront it. And it's the part that bums me out. It's really strange because I think back to Alien and I think back to the titular Alien and the eggs and all that. And it's like, you find the engineer, like the first engineer as the

actual alien, and then you find an alien that was so alien to the alien that it annihilated it. And that's the one that you're doing. It's so unknowable that the other unknowable alien that at least looks like a person also got horribly taken out by it Yeah, man. I remember when space jockey lore was just like what the fuck is that? And then it's like I don't know but we're dealing with the bullshit around it over here and that is a huge problem Okay, that thing. Yeah, don't even fucking worry about it, bro You know and that was a nice little just yeah the unknown the recesses of our minds the like it's the song sovereign right it takes

like we're out in space and there are other spacefaring races that are a million times more advanced than us and They're picking up weird shit. That's that shit that's tearing them to pieces. What chance do we have? And it turns it into, oh yeah, the guy who had the thing, the eggs in his basement that he made for his own purposes, they turned on him. But here's the thing, man. Ten times out of ten you tell me Ridley Scott himself wants to make a space jockey movie and Michael Fassbender will be the synthetic.

Yeah, that's a great idea. Let's go with it. Every time I'm believing in that. I think Prometheus would have been such a good movie if they cut out the part where the fucking alien shows up at the end I would like if they just cut it I would have been I would have settled for and have been chuffed proper chuffed with the rolling thing Having them just run sideways no no when they're running from the giant donut that that the fucking that the Springfield donut when they just run from

it if they just ran sideways instead of in the path of fucking rolling death but anyway I would have been chuffed. But so all this all this to be said the the the space horror proper these the alien movie in alien Romulus is the best shit I've seen in a while and it is really really good. And then when you get to the... Yeah. No, there's one or two moments where you go, okay, why'd that happen? Ah, movie stuff, whatever, don't overthink it.

Characters in horror movies are notoriously stupid. Right. It's not even characters. It's just like there's one or two moments where you kind of are like, why did that, why did the Zeno behave that way? Or what's with that little, okay, whatever. Right? Yeah, I know.

We'll be watching something and we'll be watching something that I've already seen and Paige will be like, Pat, why the fuck did that happen? I'm like, so that the movie can happen. Yeah. So that the events of the television program can continue. Yeah, there's some tropes, but I really do think it's good. And I really did enjoy it quite a bit. And to that end, I recommend it. I say go check out Alien Romance. You're not hitting that early point of the other Alien movies where you're like 30 minutes in

and you're like, okay. Oh, Alien 3's gotta be the fastest anyone's ever tapped out. Is it just like, and they all died off screen. Oh, wow. Well, because then you lose respect for whatever the ending of the movie you're watching is ten minutes into the film. Like, well, why should I care what happens here?

You just evaporated the end of the last movie. What are consequences, if not just contractual problems we have when we have to start filming the next movie, you know? I don't know. But just... Exactly. Yeah. This is really annoying that I have to write for this child character. Wait a second. I have an idea. But yeah, no, no, no. It's still, it's worth it. Go check it out. But that's

it. Just realize that we're in the goop line, the goop time now, and goop time is a part of this thing. It just jumped into my head, and I need to ask you about Alien Romulus, this is my question. In Prometheus, there was one moment that pretty early, that just shattered my belief that these characters are scientists, and fucked me up for the whole movie. It's when they get into the inside of the alien ship in Prometheus, and they go, oh, of the alien ship in Prometheus and they go

Oh, yeah, there's air in here and they all take off Is there anything like that in Romulus that you're just like holy fuck No, because they're not scientists. They're dumb kids. Amazing, amazing, right? They're dumb kids. And that goes a long way. You're like, oh, you dumb kids, the fuck do you know? You know?

Yeah, you totally, you're absolutely, you're good to go on all that. And yeah, it's just, there's a clear, I've never seen a more clear, like, the dotted line for the Phantom edit. It begins right here, and you can just sniff this scene in the middle, and then this scene at the end and just grab that credits and the final log and there we go, we got a winner.

You can see the fucking scissors snip lines along the film reel, man. I think if I had to put a point on it, I think Aliens is kind of screwed up as a franchise because it was never intended to be a franchise and both movies were intended as being the final authority of their own setting. I mean, yeah. So you have, if you want to mirror this this you can go look at the Terminator franchise Where it's like hey, can we move past to no? We tried and every time we did we failed so we keep going. Yeah, never mind

We're gonna go back to to fuck that never mind. We're going back to to okay this time guys interesting because we're gonna go back to is is there for both. And like James Cameron understands threat escalation in like a cinematic sense. So it's like, okay, first movie's about alien. What could be aliens? And like, oh, well, what do we do? Oh, we'll have people there to fight aliens.

So that's not just the same movie where you're just hiding from a bunch of great. Done. Okay. Terminator, scary robot. What? Okay. Scary robot that can look like your dad. Yeah.

Right. Ooh. And turn into knives. And then after that, it's like, well, nothing's going to be more interesting than then IE can look like people and Like what the third one? Oh, it's it's stronger It has a gun like oh Scary. Oh and tight leather cuz she's a bitch Okay

Alright, oh or you know, you know, it's better than a t1000 It has a heart for love that rules Yeah for love. Yeah directed by Mick G the three words that just get me more hyped It did to be in a theater than anything amazing how long tertiary non-important details can live in your mind Because like you said Terminator 3 a movie that I'm sorry salvation. I think it is I Cannot remember anything out of Terminator salvation other than the ending and like what you would see in the trailer like that movie has evaporated

But what I can remember with like pinpoint precision is you asking who's turning the valve in the factory that the final sequence turn takes place. I honestly, I think I think I feel like I walked out of the theater and yelled at the top of my voice for 40 minutes all the way down St. Catherine Street to Atwater. Like, why is there fighting in this decrepit factory but that's totally automated and there's all these valves and levers everywhere. Like there's no one like what the fuck? Why does that T100 have a red headband on?

Why is there a pen on the desk? It's a robot who's writing All right um No, so anyways This is a yeah, there's a million horrendous ways these franchises can can can play out Once they hit their peak are the aliens searching for autism is the Romulus look at her autism juice that's the secret right autism superpowers is actually the secret behind everything. This is, yeah, true. Okay. Um, yeah. I mean, God. Yeah, anyway, so this is off the rails, but this is all to say that

like Romulus is got a very cool alien movie in there that's worth seeing. And you know what? If you are a Goop fan, if you're one of the people that's been like, nah, fuck you, dude, Prometheus ruled, then hey. If you're like Goop 2024, if you're one of the people that's been like, nah, fuck you, dude, Prometheus ruled, then hey. Yeah, if you're like Goop 2024, let's bring it back. Then you're gonna love it. You're in for a great time because you got good shit into the shit you like, so you're good to go.

Yep, absolutely. Goop-nutters, goop-nutters all excite. Get excited, get hype, it's going down. Okay. I like the Goop better when every in like everything that the goop did was a new weird thing Yeah, no, no the unknown right the there is but I like there is a power to also like there's a franchise staying power To the mystery that is anything is possible with goop, you know, yeah do anything even Recreate the monster from the last movie

Gwyneth Paltrow makes anything possible Prometheus makes me Re-examine whether or not I think alien resurrection is bad I come to the same conclusion and that it's terrible, but it makes me ask the question in the first place Sigourney weaver actually landed that blind basketball shot and that makes it a good movie Yeah, and Ron Perlman almost fucked it up by going. Oh That's all it cut. That's why it cuts so soon. That's all that matters Okay, so that is alien Romulus

Beyond that I Just a quick little little update if you're a shmup lover out there I got a recommend from shmup god pat and I went and I played it and it's very very fucking good It's called Devil Blade. Um, quick, quick push on this. It is a new, it is a remake from an indie shmup that was made by one developer. And hey, if you like the flow, rhythm, and overall dramatic pacing of like Ikaruga or Radiant Silver Gun, you know, you're getting that in spades over here. If you like some of the rad escalation and shit that was going on in Zero Ranger as well, this is right up on that list. So you just, you want to

pick a plane, top view, scrolling, shooting, dropping bombs, rotate your monitor, go tate. Really super wide shots. Yeah. Simple too as well. You can, you have your shoot, you have your switch to wide shot or concentrated. You have a bomb, you drop a bomb and when you drop a bomb, you get a shield on yourself or you can hold the bomb to detonate into like a burst mode that is like a high scoring, you know, mode that lasts for a couple seconds.

It's just cool shit, man. It's just cool. Good shmup. And it's got some great like boss voice acting. I'll see you in hell. I love that. You know? And yeah, it was made with a shmup maker program.

But I was not aware it was a thing. But yeah. I also didn't know that was a thing. Is it a thing? Yeah, it certainly is. And you can do really cool shit with it, because this game looks really stylish and pretty. And it looks like it came out in the Saturn era.

But it's also doing some shit that's way more advanced than that. So it's like Saturn era, but it's also doing some shit that's way more advanced than that. So it's like Saturn era, but cheating, you know, in a way. Yeah, just want to throw that out there. And it's a shmup. So you know, they're not going to take too long to get through. But if you enjoy them, give that a shot. Devil Blade is what it's called.

I played, of course, and I don't, I'm, you must have caught as I walked up to the door and a snaky boy had some words for me in Elden Ring. I got Mesmer. That's a great boss fight. That's a great boss fight. I was not expecting it because they were establishing like the they're talking about like we go and Was it Duke or or something? I forgot the name but like anyway, they're talking about the fire knights that you're you know, as you're walking up to that at that that's part and I was like okay let's get prepared for this and I'm thinking that poster boy is gonna be a problem to be dealt with you know some ways in and like nah bitch it's going down now you know for me the way that I played that DLC he was like way in from the back okay okay okay fair I scraped around with some cone to some corners but then I kind of looped back over and just went straight

to the Shadowkeep. And yeah, man. That's one of those moments where... So we talked about how approaching boss fights in this... We were talking about how just like, yo, they know this is a late FromSoft game and they are aware of what your experience has been up to this point. So call in all the homies and just unleash, right? Don't feel any ways about it.

And that much is true. But I do have these moments where I feel an energy from a boss that makes me go, nah, I want to fight you. I want to duel. Yeah, no, Mesmer's got that. Big duel energy, right and I talk about how locking in with moag and having that like Fucking boxing skate battle, you know off stream for a long time was like it was ridiculous

To do but it was the most fun. I was having just Moving and swaying and getting around and taking them out. It felt like fucking art, you know? I really enjoyed that. And I had that with the really tricky boss that was in the dungeon that you,

like right when you spawn, the first guy that's really tricky, that's really hard, like the knight that spawns. Right at the first area and then I did it again for the dude that like stingers up to you and fucking Shoots all the electricity out right mm-hmm so for mesmer. It was like yeah Okay, horn sent has to be part of this because plot reasons but fuck this I want to go in I want a dual fist dry leaf and

I put on the The the Sekiro tear the deflecting hard tear Yeah, there's like being hard tear aka the single best upgraded item in the entire game by far I'm like, let's just fucking go in with the fists and do what we can. And sure enough, right, you can't just use it. You can't just go for that counter on every hit that you take. No, no, there's a lot of multi-hits.

You gotta still absolutely memorize the string coming at you and get that perfect ding, ding, ding, ding, you know, on like the multi-spin and know when the time is. And if he's doing a slash that has him go up into the air, then you just whiff to nothing, and then he comes down on your ass and splatters you. You know? But it was so much fun to just like, yeah,

just go 10 toes down and punch the fuck out of Mesmer. You know? And then phase two where it's like, okay, snake mode. I'm a snake! I'm a snake! I'm a snake! I mean, just, OK, guess what? If you're standing anywhere in this immediate vicinity, fuck you.

And now that the targeting snakes that come afterwards, it's like, oh, yeah, OK, it's the area kind of targeting thing. That's tricky. It's fast. You've got to learn how to roll and weave. And oh, my god, it's a cover for the next attack. He's going to do because the bomb arena exploding thing continues while he

While he gets active again, and he can psycho crusher up to you or do one of his one of his sequences But you're still dodging the last attack that's on screen. That's some bullshit That's I really that's a new shit I feel like mesmer was them like looking at shadow of Yharnam and be like we can do that better We can do snake freak bitch again Yeah, I Mean my whole thing is that I'm just like, yeah, ads are more difficult to you without more fun.

You know, that's pretty consistently the case. Raw exceptions, of course, Ornstein and Smoag and duos that are meant to be, you know, hype. But in this instance, just the self-assist, know is a is a nice little trick that they throw on him there as well and it is hilarious that it's like okay you can all you could tell not every boss is like this but the ones that are the big cinematic poster bosses are all gonna have roll catch into roll catch into roll catch combo. Oh, yeah that morgot fucking Nothing but roll catch it's wild how they fuck the stagger timing up you have time to do one and a half rolls Before you get fucked up on every single one of those man

And it's like where they know that they've conditioned you over the last 15 years, and now it's time to just rip all that conditioning apart. I feel like that's one of the reasons why the Deflecting Heart tier is so strong is because you ignore the roll catch design of a lot of the bosses. Yes, but- The things they're doing to roll catch you are instead a miniature breather to get ready for the next parry. But if you fuck up the parry timing,

then it just becomes a guard break that hurts anyway. Well, that's why you get the biggest shield in the whole world. Well, that's not how I'm playing. I'm playing with fists, so it's parry or die. Okay, yeah, if you're talking about hard tear on a big hefty shield I get what you mean now. So for me it was hard tear on a big hefty sword that acted like a shield. Okay okay yeah no this is just

two-handing the dry leaf you know you get that awesome damage reduction when you parry but when you don't you are you might as well take the full brunt of the damage That's cool. I am happy to discover that What's the word for it, but the thing the throwables? Yeah, throwables. Yeah, like it's quite not just the daggers, it's a class of weapon now. Yeah, no, they went bananas with it. Right, love that. Great smart new concept for what you can do.

Love that, like, yeah, that and perfuming and all these little creative things you can do allow you to have not just like a full throwable weapon set, but also like here's his spear, which is throwable as a default You know like attack one. That's it's really cool. It's a really fun thing to add to the game While yeah, there's a talisman that goes along with it that to make those of like do more damage Mm-hmm And I mean like people have like forever magic is and zoning have been a thing and it's like you pick magic so that You can if you don't want to play footsies with things and

You just want to like hang back and whatever I want to play footsies with this rock and use for my strength build right like that's exactly like Fully just embrace the fact that hey, it doesn't have to come down to arrows or magic It doesn't have to be decks or or int it can be strength to you you know? So that's a- I'm interested in seeing your progression because there's a lot of whole zones that are just completely hidden in that DLC. Well, the way things are going, I don't want to be playing this

for as long as I played the base game. So I am more than willing to streamline some of this to get to the faster. Okay, well, you're not gonna be playing it for as long as you play the base game. So I have, I am more than willing to streamline some of this to get to the top. Okay. Well, you're not going to be playing it for as long as you play the base game because it's like one fifth the size. But ultimately, like from not being planned to being back on the schedule and being like a full committed thing, I want this to, I want to go through this at a time that, in a reasonable timeframe. And the benefit of wandering into that stuff for how obtuse it can be is not worth it in my opinion Do you does that mean you're gonna have somebody maybe nudge you or you're gonna skip some of it?

Some nudges some nudges are fine You know, I'm not gonna get a nudge I can nudge you towards the ones that are really cool to see Yeah, that's that's that's that's currently the types of nudges that are happening. So yes, I'm down for that. Because I really did just like, spent a lot of that base game, like taking it at an exploration pace. And the reality is that like, it's fun in theory, but in execution, I think everybody, especially for viewers as well, it's like yeah The wandering discovery is nice on paper But this can still be enjoyable without having to add an extra five hours to that moment

You know yeah, so like the when I was streaming and I was streaming it like every single day for long periods the the the scraping To find all those areas made sense because I was going super fast and super long. But like on a regular schedule, it's like, yeah, no. You remember how obtuse it was to get to Bale's fucking house, like follow a ghost into a cave and then throw yourself down the pit and then the pit opens up into a zone and that's the only way to get there. I mean, they're all that level of obtuse. And we've established as well at this point that there is a clear, you know, FromSoft has made its design choices and they're living by them. They're sticking by them, right?

I had a moment last time where, yeah, so it was like, okay, I got to the top of the Shadowkeep and I saw Freya, right? And Freya was hanging out, you know, in that area where you have to go back down and see Anspach and then, you know, talk to the two of them. Oh, the specimen. Yeah. Yeah, well, you have to bring her the letter right so when You go back and talk to her then I remember like as I was running into that room

I was being chased by like a fire knight Yeah, and I was like I'm not gonna sit down because what if she disappears when I do right? Right and I and it was like yeah true these games might rob you of an interaction if you try to just hit that... They're getting better about it, but you still never know. You never fucking know, right? And so what ends up happening is I go, I talk to her, we have the interaction, give her the letter, everything's fine. And then I have a moment where I go, oh, let me go back and teleport to Ansbach to see if he's still there. And then he was gone.

And then I was like, oh, okay, cool, looks like he left for his quest and then Freya was around again, and I'm like Oh, she's still there. Let me go see what else she has to say and I teleport one more time back to her And she's gone. Yeah, I had to talk to them a bunch of fucking times So it turns out that they make a decision that is after you you give her the the the the quest thing or whatever they make a decision that is after you give her the quest thing or whatever, she's going to stick around for one more sit and then teleport, but she's going to be gone if you don't go talk to her right at that point. And I'm like, ah, we're still doing this? That sucks.

There's no reason for it, but they've committed to it. This is how they're making their games. And we don't need to still live in a world where the NPCs have to be teleporting around based on sits, you know, we can just, you can have them literally fucking smoke bob in front of you and teleported to nothing to just be like, and now they're gone. Like you can do that to more clearly indicate what's happening and stuff. But it's like, this has been a tradition that's been happening in these games for a long time. So we're sticking with it.

It's how plot quests move forward. But I just feel that we can be past this if we want it to be at this. Every game has gotten less mean about it. Yeah, they have. I feel like maybe the next one will be like normal. Maybe. Maybe. But, but you know, like it's like this is a made this is made in current year and But, you know, it's like this is made in current year and they're still like, no, we want characters to be teleporting around the map like Watson

in that Sherlock Holmes game based on your sits. And we don't want anyone to ever, you know, move and indicate that they're, you know, that it's like, OK, you're done talking to me for now or whatever the case is, you know. And then, yeah, little things like I don't know whether that person will be there when I sit down or not, like, is just, it's just it's just annoying, you know? Anyway, so. But yeah, Mesmer was fucking rad. And yeah, that's going to continue. So he fulfills the role of I'm on the box art, but that doesn't mean that it's me at the end

Okay, so yeah with that go so this week we're going to be Starting out Dino crisis classic rebirth on super Tuesday thoughts on that yeah, I don't have a whole lot of Tank control experience. I played the Silent Hill. Mm-hmm And that was it, you know, so We also did a slop stream so After waiting all this time. I finally got to watch Dracula flow five. I waited. Oh, yeah, I saved it

It was glorious. So look forward to a new Woolly vs. Whatever coming your way shortly. Just a high, just peak, peak use of the English language. It was great. It was fucking great. But yeah, Dino crisis this week, Tuesday, gonna be busy in the middle of the week, but we'll come back on Friday with another Shadow of the Earth tree session. So stay tuned for that. All right, let's take a quick word from our sponsors. Do you mind if I take a quick bathroom break? Let's do a break instead.

BRB. Quick word from our sponsors. I love you sponsors. Just want you to know that. This week the podcast is sponsored by Shopify. A cha-ching. A cha-ching. That's the sound of a sail when you make one on Shopify. Yeah, so shout outs to them. For a minute we've been talking about the process of how we barely know how to get these microphones up and running and get a camera going. Bro, I needed my wife to help me go buy pants. I'm basically an idiot.

There you go. I mean, there's a light on your face now. A minute ago when we started up, it wasn't even there. Yeah, I paid to fix my lights. It's crazy. So what do you mean? I got to figure out how to sell a t-shirt. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. It's wild. That's not at all where the expertise is spent. All my points are spent into fumbling, into barely getting a product out. So if we can work on the podcast and or let's play part of this thing, then Shopify can help with something like an online store. If I'm trying to figure out how to sell a t-shirt or whatever else your business is doing, it is the global commerce platform

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And they are 10% of all e-commerce in the US. The force behind brands like Rothy's, Allbirds, Brooklyn, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across 175 countries. So yeah, if you're getting started, no matter where you're at, Shopify can help you on the back end. I have talked about how they are what helped us with getting some of those t-shirts across and hooking that stuff up to the sites and channels and all that convenient stuff because I don't know how to do that they do and it's much appreciated so yeah if you want to sign

up for a $1 per month trial period you can head on down to Shopify.com slash super beast all lowercase that's Shopify.com slash super beast now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in Shopify.com slash super beast thanks Shopify thanks Shopify alright um here's what's going on in the news Call you know that there's a lot of Chinese people who play video games So I black myth Wukong fucking knows it Yeah, that that's that's been going on. What are their numbers? Yeah, it's like over 10 million. Oh wow. Okay. It's like in three days it's over 10 million. That's crazy. I mean to be fair that thing is marketed everywhere.

Oh yeah there's a Wukong ad underneath every single tweet I make. Yeah, I have seen nothing but Wukong everywhere for a while so yes they're pushing it. People like it. I'll be playing it this week because I got a return to monkey and find out what's what? Yeah, well, so I remember like I think yeah, we'll fight like what I've heard I was uh, yeah talking a friend and he was telling me that like the Like there's moments where you're like is this soul thing and then it's like nah, it's action Yeah, but like you fight your fucking ass off. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

You you're it feels like it's about the souls, but then it just goes full action on you. If Son Goku shows you and helps you find the way, then mission accomplished, I suppose. I feel like this is the biggest marketing I've seen for a Chinese game in recent. Oh definitely ever Yeah, more than anything somebody describe who cut black myth Wukong as if what if America invented Call of Duty yesterday? Like national like pride based Supergame now oh man yeah it's here it is here here yeah okay yeah sorry I'm getting a billion notifications that I need to don't

worry about those right now hey stop it stop it stop it about my cube so that's Stop it. Stop it. Thank you. So that's happening so black myth Wukong then had more than 700 consecutive players more than 700 people. Yeah confirmed. Okay good Good good There's reports so did you know gaming shout out to Shane over there, put out a video that revealed that apparently Crash Bandicoot 5 was supposed to be a Spyro crossover game, but that got cancelled. Oh, you know why? Because God isn't real and he hates you. Because Toys for Bob has subsined in some way.

Yes. What a fucking cool idea. That, as someone who is not even into either franchise particularly, that sounded like a brilliant, awesome play. It has the same energy of like, hey guys, the next Ratchet and Clank game will feature Jack and Daxter. Right, right, right.

And it really, like, so yeah, it was, it was gonna be like, you know, crash, there's a whole breakdown of like, how the two worlds intersect and some of the stuff from twin sanity and then Spyro's Dragon elders and stuff would intersect with like portals and whatever But it was gonna be this play at this game with playable crash and Spyro and all their supporting characters as well And it was going to be a proper like not just crossover game, but the actual Crash 5 entry, you know?

And it just kind of got me thinking that besides versus Capcom and Smash... Oh, it's really rare. Do crossovers even happen anymore? The last one I can think of that you did not mention was in Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light there was DLC to play Okay, Raziel and Kane. Okay, so So Paul I'm gonna put a caveat on this not Promotional crossover material that puts Shinji in player unknown battle zones. Yes, not not promote Not fortnight cameo fortnight not a guest character, but a cross over main game

Mario kissing at the Olympics. Yeah. Yeah, it feels like that doesn't really happen. You know, it's just hearts Kingdom or yeah, that's the that's the entire premise of the franchise, right? Yeah Though they're all under and it's still it's yeah It's and I would say that if they're coming from the same family company, you know, you don't feel it as much, but either way in this case, like a good crossover game like that, like Spyro and Crash would have been fucking awesome. And yeah, Mario and Rabbids, you know.

Would have been pretty cool, I think. But just yeah super robot wars certainly, but you just bro I don't even like Spyro, and I would have marked out for that Yeah, I would say I would say yeah dead by daylight as well You know that's that's kind of the point of the game is yes like all that those casts and same thing for Smash Brothers The point of the game is the cast you know But it's really funny the Dead by Daylight started out as hey, we don't have the rights to shit So here's some knockoffs to oh yeah, okay. Well fuck the stupid knockoffs. Here's the real Oh, you like it you have fun. It's popular all right. Yeah

Right. Um, yeah cadence of Hyrule was a pretty cool one too, right? So that was Necrodancer Cross Zelda. But that, yeah, crossover as opposed to a collaboration. That's a good distinguishing word there. So anyways, yeah, it's just fucking depressing the whole way down but they had a whole thing planned out here and you can go get more details on it on the Did You know gaming video? but uh There's a bunch of bullshit. It was um They had concept arts. They had early demo environments. They had the

pre-production but then activision cancelled crash five and That was that Toys for brawl more for a couple months on it That was that toys for a couple of months on it. I think Marvel vs Capcom being one of the first has blinded us to just how Insane Marvel vs. Capcom actually is Marvel vs Capcom is fucking bananas. It is but like the bones make sense. I guess when you go look at you know Children of the atom and it's like oh we became friends because you guys made a fighting game for our property and then we continued to be friendly so let's just keep this relationship going over seven games you know then yeah the super robot wars thing is also is kind of what what project cross zone is where you're

like we're making a game that's just like we're just gonna go send everybody an email and be like yo give us the rights to throw Dante and fucking cure you in this thing. And they're like, yeah, yeah, sure. That's cool. Everybody's there? Okay, cool. Mr. Driller? Yeah, alright. Fuck it. Hang out with Wonder Momo and Jin. I like concepts where you feel like somebody said, fuck it. Yes. But I do as well.

But I put special attention to this kind of crossover because like, yeah, especially looking at the little piece of artwork they have here, which is pretty cute. Let me, yeah. Like it's, it's, you know, there's some fun artwork of Crash and Spyro hanging out. You know what? I like the idea of two franchises, like, completely overlapping in a heavy way and not just cameo from the main characters. So I'm looking at this piece of art you sent me, and it is giving Battletoads Double Dragon

energy. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA huge bummer. Anyway, so yeah, there's that. But hey, on the plus side of crossover news, Terry Bogard's critical art is the coolest one in the entire Street Fighter 6 video game. cool that the animation doesn't make sense within the round. Like, like I, I was talking last week about how you'd saved the rising tackle and you made it a cool move. Now this critical art version, when you're about to die, it's not even a qualifier. It's the sickest move in the entire video game. Um, he he drives and tackles you up and then he powered dunks. No guys are he overshoot guys

He high-angle overshoot geysers, which is another reference move that they didn't have space for Which is the super version of the power dunk into the ground version of the power dunk into the ground, uses the geyser explosion to launch himself back up into the air, do a midair buster wolf, and he says, here's the big one, which is what he says during his final smash. And it's the sickest shit I've ever seen. So the thing that gets me is that in the animation,

he's launching like a hundred feet, like he's like a meteor Yeah, and then it cuts to the round and then the characters like in the corner like like one character length up and they're falling over He Buster Wilson midair to the rising fang and then When he lands in the regular version he lands straight down because you know he does the punch and then floats back But in this one because she shotguns his way up to you with the midair buster wolf diagonally He flies backwards and rolls on the ground when it returns to in-game like He overdid it and Terry's getting blasted back. Yeah, you end up being from his own attack corner to corner on that like you end up at the

Maximum distance it's so cool Right never mind. You know the fact that like also we've seen some of the other details with him on the on the character select screen He's playing on a neo Geo arcade machine playing a war of the monsters Yeah, and you can see him like playing and having fun on the cab and be like, ah, you know, whatever. And then when you do his walkout, if you're on player one side, Andy Bogard is like, yeah, let's go, bro. And then on player two side, Joe Higashi is like, yeah, you got this, man. He gets encouraged by the boys.

It's fucking amazing, dude. I really think that, do you remember a very old MS Paint comic that was like some massive edgelord wrestler with 10 different insane moves and then it's Joey Jeans or something and it's some regular looking guy with a back fist, a bigger back fist, and then the last one is spinning energy disk. Wait, what? How does this guy do that? He's just some dude in Wrangler jeans. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Terry is that. He's that guy.

Terry's one. Terry is some guy in jeans who wandered in and was like, hey guys, doing magic nonsense. You know, you take the wild wolf outfit and do the wind pose, and he just throws the jacket instead of the hat off, and we're all like, yeah!

He threw his jacket up Fucking great so cool. So yay to that hooray Anyway quick other real cool shit that's going on Everybody check out. There's a game called mouse PI for hire just released a trailer it was originally a game just called mouse and it's been renamed but it is Cuphead first-person view gangster detective story hand-drawn details ala studio MDHR

You are it's just rubber hose animation style and You are fucking walking around shooting at things that are all that classic Steamboat Willie style animation. Looks fucking incredible. The backgrounds are 3D and the whole game's in grayscale and I will say that the gray backgrounds make it a little bit hard to distinguish between one texture set and another sometimes. I think they should be more stronger black lines but it does certainly make the things you're shooting at pop but it's a really cool hand-drawn first-person shooter that doesn't look like anything else from that perspective at the very least. So yeah, mouse PI for hire, worth

checking out. Go take a look at the trailer to see what's going on there. After 20 years, you can now put on whatever armor you want in Monster Hunter Wilds. Yeah. Gender has been defeated. Gender defeated. You can put on the...anyone can put on any armor. And you can get your hot fucking abs out as a dude with Kieran armor It took like the past three games for them to understand people going. Please let my character look cool. God damn it Please I remember this being the big decision early on when I started worlds was like, okay So which kind of character you making because some cool some armor looks rad on guys and some looks rad on the girls But oh, yeah, no, it's a coin toss, but you just gotta yeah, you've you're you're stuck with what you got

So yes, finally, you know like everyone's like I will you can put all your you can put your your girls in cool Dude armor and I'm like, yeah Kiran armor get the ABS out though Yeah, so armor armor get the ABS out though yeah so armor armor armor armor abs yeah now can you mix and match pieces yeah absolutely okay well then now we have a whole new level of of oh yeah oh yeah monster fashion that's the real shit that's that's that's the actual buff That's the real upgrade is mixing and matching now. Yeah. They also showed off a bunch of shit at some preview event, which includes stuff like you don't have to go back to town to switch missions.

Monster damage persists the whole time. You're just hanging out. The way small monsters act as groups. So now you have like large Oh, they don't they don't eventually heal No now now you're just hanging out on the map for much longer periods doing mission after mission Oh, you're cooking in your camp. Okay, you're cooking your own food So worlds had that as you ran from environment to environment, but you still eventually did Have to run back in from from do the free play mode World's had that as you ran from environment to environment, but you still eventually did have to run back from the free play mode. Yeah, so they're showing off a lot of cool stuff.

It looks like it'll be super hot. But that's the big one. That's pretty sick. Oh, but and also with the Capcom announcement and stuff, with the Terry Bogard update is also going to be two new updates called the virtual rival match and Replay takeover now it's just an Institute fighter six. So virtual rival match is a way that you can play against a new type of CPU which is going to be emulating different skill levels So if you want to fight against someone in platinum diamond or master it can actually like

Apparently, it's a smarter AI that'll play like a player in those rankings listen I'm getting my ass blown up by a key and master Give me give me something to work with here what that feels like it's a yes a smart It's a smarter CPU right so that's cool. You can do that from the battle hub and Then replay takeover we've been praising it in Tekken and we've been praising it in guilty gear But now you can go back into your replay see a moment where something happened Tekken and we've been praising it in guilty gear, but now you can go back into your replay see a moment where something happened

Take control and see if you can find a way out of it You know and discover the fun situation that sometimes there is no way out of it. Just block block yeah Yeah, yeah, the best the best is you try it a couple times, and you go. Oh fuck. I could not have done anything Yeah, it's a really good setup sweet The answer is nothing just die it yeah, yeah Okay, so that's that's pretty much that let's take some letters You want to send in a letter send it to castle super beast mail at gmail.com. That's castle super beast mail at gmail.com Right gmail.com Right No clear name given mr. Stutter and mr. Shout

Out of all the Kirby copy abilities, which is your favorite which has your favorite look which would you wear for yourselves? for That's the default come on Okay, well you already are wearing the Kirby hat uh-huh ah Okay. Well you already are wearing the Kirby hat. Ah. Ah. Ah. I love Laser Sword. It's rad. It's really cool. It's Darth Maul Kirby. But it's all day, every day, forever, suplex Kirby, best Kirby, 100% every time. I like Rock Kirby. Rock is cool. I'm gonna turn into a fucking rock. Yeah, it's like it's like Mario 3 with the statue

You know transformations and stuff. That's always fun, but suplex just you fucking me a backbreaker is slams It's cool judo everything everything mm-hmm suplex forever And Quick one over here from Easy Easy Pete says, Hey there, Mashal Reader Feast. Easy Easy Pete here, having a very esoteric argument with my friend. He gets easily frustrated by the different editions of games updates and bundles, remasters and such, while I understandingly love poking through corporate bullshit to see what I'm actually buying. For instance, when he says Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous is a great game, I say, you mean enhanced deluxe edition

of Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, right? The argument starts and we make our own list of best games. He lines up every Final Fantasy Pixel remaster individually while I plonk the whole 1-6 collection in my top 10. Next to the Yakuza remastered bundle, and the Kingdom Hearts all in one package and the Master Chief collection. It actually annoys me when he lists Halo 2 and 3 separately, weirdly enough. So settle this argument for me. Should Bundle's collections and compilations work off sophistry. You're fucking so no hey when he says pathfinder after the righteous you don't have to first of all I'm playing that right now you have to specify what version because the enhanced edition is now the only version that exists you can't buy the old version because it was

a patch so you're making distinctions just to show off that you know all the distinctions. So you can, I will give you, okay you're crazy, but I will give you this, this way, this olive branch. There are times where I have played a collection as a bundle and it has made the individual ones stand out less to me because my overall experience was having them together. So Mario 2 was not a game that I had as a kid. I remember we had Mario 1 and then Mario 3. 2 was rare. I had it at a friend's place and then I played it a bit there. But I didn't get to actually

spend time playing it until I got a copy of Mario All-Stars, right? That's where I played Mario 2 the most. So in my brain, Mario 2 and Mario Lost Levels are all part of this All-Stars package experience and not these individual things if you're gonna talk about them and go which you like or whatever Then you talk about the thing that was released because that's how it was released But you can't blur together Games if you've experienced them together and so and I'll give you that right if you played Metroid trilogy or prime trilogy And I'll give you that, right? If you played Metroid Trilogy, or Prime Trilogy, with it all together or so,

then some of that might kind of blur into one experience for you. But regardless, no, no, that's kind of goofy and silly. And if there's a game that's an updated version that has the old one in it, you know, like is SMT-5 and SMT-5 Vengeance, like even though Venge that has the old one in it. You know, like it's SMT5 and SMT5 Vengeance. Like even though Vengeance has the original, we're gonna like just say that it's all together with that.

Like, no. Like I- Hey man, I'm playing a lot of Deadlock and it's, you know, it's a very different game, but it really reminds me of the fun that I had when I played Team Fortress 2. Oh, Team Fortress 2, you must mean the orange box featuring Half-Life 2 and Portal. Is that what you meant? Oh team fortress 2 you must mean the orange box featuring

No, it's not what I fucking meant I said team fortress 2 No, there are like there are times where you will have an experience of these games blending as you play through them But you you still need to go what was released. That's what you're talking about Don't be don't Don't be that guy. I have to say, it's actually really refreshing that the person writing in the email is the person who's super wrong. Because usually the person they're describing

is like insane. And the friend is right. But like this time, like bro, you are so nuts. I mean, he's lining up Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection or individual entries and it's like You can put those on a place that's separate from the original versions You played because we just talked last week about the Chrono Trigger and ff6 PlayStation bundle is worse Even if you count them together on the same disc because there's

loading between the fights that didn't exist in the original. Terrible ways. So what are we even talking about? Yeah, there you go. All right. All right, you guys have a good week. I will have no reason to shorten the podcast next week, so we'll figure out something to talk about for four hours.

Goodbye. Bye.