Castle Super Beast - CSB313: Embrace The Whoament

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

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["Sailor Moon Theme"] Alright, there we are. Yo yo. Hey, what's up? How you doing wolves not too much? Are you I? Can't stop coughing. It's bullshit Some kid at the fucking play place Infected me with some kind of fucking bullshit I'm fine though. I just can't stop coughing So I got these lozenges that I I'm supposed to only have 12 a day But there's no medicinal ingredients so they can go fuck themselves. I'm gonna eat however many I want do they taste like candy they're candy. Yeah, that's the problem with those lozenges Is you kind of taste like cherry candy? Yeah, they're good

Well, at least I'm better than I used to be where I would just crunch them and that man You get a lot of them and you crunch them I've a lot of them and you crunch them I've a lot. Mm-hmm I've definitely done the thing where I'm like having them and even go to bed I'm like, okay, let me pop one in and let me like I don't I want to suck it to like, you know Let it help the medicinal and do its magic do its thing But you're going to sleep and you don't want to die like an idiot Yeah, it's like the most choking hazard shit ever so what you got to do. Oh my volume is down again

Okay, hold up. Let me try to fix it. It's doing the thing again. Oh it is it's not just Pat I I also put my body back down to where it was for you, and I'm gonna do the I'm gonna crank the gain up Yeah, do it okay Fucking yeah volume that's fun I'm gonna put you back down to 50. Yeah Live live is fun. All right. They got a good snooze in there.

Good. Good. I'm glad you got a snooze. That's good. So we're talking about lozenges. And so what I did was pre-bite it to crack it into smaller pieces to be a non-choking hazard and then kind of... Aren't smaller pieces a way larger choking hazard? No, one big thing is going to block your windpipe and kill you.

Smaller pieces will not block. Oh, I guess. I guess a small piece couldn't block my mouth hole. I mean, that was my attack, was to pre-chew, but then don't swallow it. Anyway, yeah, I guess. Pardon me. I didn't have too busy of a week personally. Yeah, me either.

Like, I was sitting here and I'm like, I don't know much. Actually. What did we do? Did some more cyberpunk wrapped up? I think. I'm not sure. It's hard to tell what a quest is really done done, because people you meet tend to call you back, you know, from time to time.

But I did the river date, and that was fun to be like, you know, they're there, cop man, you're a nice guy, but not like this. And then to play the VR game with the kids. The way kids play cops and robbers in the future is they put on VR headsets and then you all play this alternate reality. Sort of like running around the neighborhood shooting pop-up enemies type of thing. I mean that's not even that different from now. The kids just play the call of duty. Yeah. But like you could run by the neighbor and in the meantime, they're doing it, but they're also basically, they're both, they're being lucky and wild or Dick Mullen style cops talking about their worst days on the job as they're gunning down the bad guys.

Yeah, if I could Tango and cash my way through recess, I would have done so. You know, this is a horrible aside and I'm sorry to bring it up. But you're describing they're in VR headsets and they're running around so it's AR Yeah, okay. Okay, cuz like I know you saw ready player one. I think we saw it together And I know I read already player one. I did not watch the movie. Oh, okay Oh, my memory is fucked up. Well at the end of ready player one all the nerds Come together for a big fight and then it cuts to them in the real world and there's a shot of like a group of people running down a sidewalk pretending

to be in the game with their fully enclosed VR headsets on and I'm just like, they're going to run straight into traffic and fucking die in like two seconds off camera. Yeah. Terrible. fucking die in like two seconds off camera yeah yeah no the first thing you do you'd obviously probably do is put up a boundary for where you are on the map and stuff but then again and look at Pokemon go you know people try to catch a snorlax run it all up into those dangerous abandoned warehouses. I've seen the argument recently that Pokemon Go was just the world's most ambitious pedestrian

traffic data collection tool. Yeah, so apparently Niantic was using, well, I mean their previous game, I forgot what it was called, but a lot of this was all like data collection and they got you Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm for sure. That's you for sure but you know like they got you but You got that right you so I didn't get shit I didn't get anything good on Pokemon go the exchange is fair. I suppose

the I remember the the EVO when that was popping was just like people running back and forth You know while while the event was happening like running from your bracket to go catch some shit because someone would be like Oh, there's a fucking hitmonchan over there and then everyone was like Justin Wong in particular fucking running up and down the convention. Yeah, no, it was a thing. It was a thing. And it was interesting, at the very least, for the place I used to live that had a like,

the block had like four stops on it. So it became it was a corner that had multiple stops and it became like a hotspot. People set up a tent, people were pulling out lawn chairs. I remember it like temporarily displaced the creepy homeless people that were there because there were so many like teenagers and young adults crowding it. So they already were like they already kind of moved out because they'd like put lights in and like kind of brightened up the place and cleaned it up a bit. But like overall like that and then the church on the corner there as well kind of set up they set up shop and they made a whole um you know like um you know you're here to catch Pikachu but why not catch the good word.

Here's here's some water here's a granola bar and if you're why not catch the good word here's here's some water here's a granola bar and if you're looking to catch some salvation maybe talk to one of our Anna I love that shit so much man it's so good I'm like hey you do what you gotta do you know I can't hate on it if you know your audience and who you're trying to reach and that's your bit then fucking go for it my Favorite version of this is every single sentence. This is like You know who else had a really hard time in their 30s, uh-huh? Jesus yeah, how do we know there's a whole blank era where we don't know what happened the dark years

That's why I started with 30s. End of the Dark Era, the end of Jesus's Emo, Gothcore phase. Pokemon Go to the polls, yeah. Anyway, so yeah, cyberpunk was cool. Did a bit more of that. How come our cyberpunk sucks? How come fictional cyber punks are cool, but our actual cyberpunk lame? Wasn't there some, wasn't there a quote that was like cyberpunk is a warning?

Didn't, didn't that, wasn't that the whole point of cyberpunk? So then the creator say that this is actually like a straight up a warning. Yeah, no, it was always going to suck It was never going to not suck but we have decades of cyberpunk film and literature and like the people who are cribbing those ideas for our dank dystopian future are Leaving behind the only thing about it that we like which is the aesthetic. Mm-hmm. Oh only thing about it that we like, which is the aesthetic. Oh, I mean, I've been having conversations with Punch Mom about this, but there's a

bit of a weird moment that we're having where you grow up just rolling your eyes almost at how cliche the classic adventure story good versus evil tropes are. Because it's like, yeah, obviously we don't treat people like that. Yeah, we know this is bad. You don't like yada yada, evil, hatred. And you just kind of get so, it's so cliche that you roll your eyes at that. And then you're kind of like able to look around and go, hmm, there might be a point in time where actually stories that tell you to not be a piece of shit might become rare. And this range of time where we've rolled

our eyes at how many things are all about this might actually be something important to teach people in the future if they don't get access to media that doesn't mention, hey, being a piece of shit kind of sucks. I think sincerity is horribly underrated. Yeah. I'd say so and I think I think the only time you can see sincerity not being underrated is When you're playing an ace combat game Which is the most super super sure ever ever encounter Yeah

No, it's it's like, it's just weird because you know, I mean, whatever, there's, there's, there's just this, like, obviously, talking about metaphor last week, you know, there's a whole giant fucking a well to dive into with all of that like a metaphor. Every single time. There you go. But yeah, you know, it's just it's just baffling to kind of to kind of wonder like Is that gonna be is there good?

Are we gonna actually see within you know a short period of time a change in the way stories are told or the way? or the types of Messages that that are... Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's all cyclical, right? Fashion comes around and goes around, and it's like you had edge-lording as a response to Puritanism, and then apathy slash irony as a response to edge-lording, and now we're going to roll right back around to good vibes. And then good vibes are already leading back into Puritanism, which will lead back into edgelording.

I think what'll likely happen personally is, I think the massive AAA corporate budget storytelling is going to completely give up and then cave to pressure. While- I think it already has. Of course, while know, and then cave to pressure while- I think it already has. Of course. While indie storytelling and stuff will continue to be what it is because, you know, small groups of people will put out the messages they want to.

But like, I think you're going to see a larger gulf between, you know, like Milk Toast's triple A releases and real shit coming out for $4.99. I think the I don't know if you're talking about games or film or art in general, but I feel like I feel like we're at the point. We're right there where the milk toast thing isn't saying anything at all Like like it's not even that the message is like bland. Like I think we're getting to the point where you're getting there, it's like, wow, there

was no message. There was nothing. Did you enjoy the adventure? I did not. You didn't even butter this toast, dude you did you have a couple of moments and call it a day? Yeah, yeah, I go to heard that term and I'm so mad. Oh cuz I invented it That's really good. It's the thing that happens in the trailer for the kids where they go WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH SHHHHH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH SH games is full of them, but every trailer for every kids movie must feature at least two or three moments. 100%. Oh my God. And that is, that is, yeah, that's the way it's going.

But it's, it's just, because like, I think I like it, you know, for, for as we're talking about these nothing releases, there's always going to be a mouthwashing style thing that drops. But I think there's almost a good, thank god mouthwashing is what it is and is at the scale that it's at. Because if it were a larger quadruple A style release, then there would be a much more detailed Faction of people going but I don't get the problem with Jimmy though

Right, there would be a larger discussion around no, but Jimmy did actually did nothing wrong. Like I don't see what yeah It's right at the perfect level where it's not edging on Griffith just like, haha I'm gonna be Griffith-dun-dun-dun. Right? But it's large enough that there can be a discussion about the Jimmy. And you know, and then active, like you know what? I'm gonna go make my own pro Jimmy game actually. And then the just fucking-

I'm gonna call it Yick! That's hey, that's a lot. That's like there. That's unfair Jimmy is a fucking murdering piece of shit rapists come the fuck on man so you know you know my favorite part about yick is and it's it's what made me go from like I rolling and dismissal to like like genuine like aggressive stance. Two things. One is the game prominently features an unsolved death, possible murder of a young woman in California, which happened right at E3 2012.

The family was like, please stop including this. Yeah, the mystery water tower death, right? And the dev was like, no, it's my vision, even. But the second one is that the creator of that game gets super mad when you call it Yick, because it's spelled that way It's supposed to be y2k. It's y2k. Yeah Yeah, and I'm just like no and spell it better

Spell it better Okay. Well anyway, so but Yeah, that's that's that's kind of what I think We avoided with with mouthwashing being the scale it's at That would have been terrible Beyond cyberpunk however the the following opinions are Hashtag sponsored. Oh are they I have I have played

Iron Saga versus this week, which is the Mecha fighting game that just released by Game Dutchie. I have a strong suspicion that these sponsored opinions would be extremely similar if they were not sponsored considering you just said the word Mecha fighting game. I mean, they came to the right guy. You pick Gator Robo and then you get to choose between one two and three and then as you're fighting You can switch between all three formations and you can open get to avoid getting hit and use the switching as a Regular it's fucking awesome. That's really cool

It's got Yeah, so in particular it has not like Sunrise robots, so there's not like a lot in there in terms of like Gundam type stuff or anything. Oh, you're not kidding. That is actually Great Mazinger. That like- Yes, yes. Mazinger Z-

You're not talking like legally distinct. No, no, no, no, no. It has, it features, it features a bunch of original robots, but also Mazinger Z, Great get a robo and God bless the machine Dan Kuga. So that's fun because yeah for years you know super robot war is obviously a cool way to get all your your robots together but it has always been that part of me that's like but I want to I want it in my genre though and looks like we're finally getting something like that. So you can pick your boss Borat and toss a bunch of junk shit out and win.

So yeah, go check out Iron Saiga versus, and yeah, the quick look we took online as well. Had some fun with it. Of course, it's one of these games where it's been out for like a day and people were already beasting doing crazy shit online. Yeah, yeah, that's how it is. But I enjoy it.

And I think I like that they kind of made it. It's got a lot of systems to it. But like the pacing is it reminds me of it plays like what I wanted Battle Assault to play like. Oh my God. So if you remember Gundam, Battle Assault. I do. Right? You play as Big Zam in that game.

Yeah, and I always was like, I like the idea of this, but like, gameplay wise, it's kind of all over the place. Once you're, it's cool that, hey look, you're, gameplay wise, it's kind of all over the place. Once you're, it's cool that, hey, look, you're the big Zam, but then you're like, wait, we have to actually play this thing. You know? No. And Endless Duel is a better example of like, here's a bunch of Gundams doing some cool shit and it actually feels fun to play.

You know? And so like, in this case, it has, yeah, a bit of those two going on. But definitely, it takes its cues from being a legit fighter. You could air dash around. You could move. Combos are fairly short. There's a lot of resets to them. Overall, it plays like a non-hyper game.

But then there's really cool moments of unique mecha-based things you can do. If you can pull out your arsenal for each character, switch between... Let's say you're playing Dankuga. You can use the sword or you can switch to all the different types of firepower and you have grooves that change up the way each character plays and stuff like that. It's pretty cool. So yeah, I know if you have any Mecha love in you, take a peek over at Iron Saga Versus or at the very

least check out the video and consider picking it up. There's a real charm. I'm watching some of the footage you did of some of the Like super old style Mecha versus your new style like sleek cool Gundam. Yeah Yeah, the new ones are all just like j-huty sexy fucking angles and then slim waist Then you got this dude with the stretchy arms and the pink head, Boss Borat. Oh yeah, Boss is doing it. Absolutely.

And he's a goofy little man. And then the pilots too look like that same art style as well. Some of those original mecha pilots look like visual novel antagonists talking to you. But no, but the original robots too have some pretty fun designs and gameplay elements to them. There's a military kind of police one that has a shield and you can switch between having a gun with limited bullets or just Captain America shield-based fighting where you can use like, kind of like your shield barrier to like, you know, create a, an offense you can like run behind and stuff. There's, there's, there's some fun stuff to it. So yeah, it's a game I've wanted for a long time to exist. And,

you know, my hope is that if, if, if it, you know, kind of gets any, of gets any momentum going, some other guest star mecha could show up. Some of the old classics and favorites might find their way over there. So it would be cool. I know that even when it comes to Super Robot Wars, there's always these guests that don't stick around the whole time. There's people you expect to show up every single time. All the aforementioned classic Super Robots and your Gundams and your Avas and stuff. But there's that one where you can be like, oh shit, Virtual On is in there. Big O is in just specifically that one. Or Gurren Lagann is in specifically that SRW. So there's a willingness to lend their license

to at least one single game, if not for a whole franchise. Anyway, fingers crossed. And yeah, so that's much like what we did. And then coming up this week, besides, yeah, taking a look at Cyberpunk for tomorrow, we've got an announcement. I'm gonna be heading down to the Red Bull

Canadian Qualifier Cumite in Vancouver. Oh, hey. Cool. And I'll be doing some commentary for Street Fighter 6 as the battle for BC takes place. And then the four top placing folks will be entered into the Red Bull Coutmute, Canadian qualifier.

The winner of that gets to a trip to Paris to join the LCQ. So yeah, gonna be coming through. Reggie's in tow, Punch Bomb's in tow. And- You're not allowed to compete if you're commentating, right? No, I don't imagine.

I don't imagine you can Hey, what are you up to this weekend? Cleared my plans so not a whole lot. Okay I'm gonna I'm gonna go in person and see what's going on over you want to kiss this dog I'm gonna go I'm gonna go get you want to kiss this dog around to on the boost So we'll see what's up, but yeah, you know that that should be a lot of fun and I yeah shout outs to Red Bull for you know, maybe making making the facilitating the the ability. Yes That is really cool. That's. Side trip to the white spot. We can go man.

We can go to the white spot. Is it a good idea? It's pretty good. It's pretty good. The last white spot I went to is staffed exclusively by non-whites. Well there you go. And I sat there and I looked around. I was also, me being the wife and the baby, also the only whites in the white spot. And I was like, this is pretty funny. I said it to myself. I mean, is there a big sign outside that I can stand next to and just yuck it up? No, the signs at like the top. Because that's the whole point.

And they don't have like a commemor like history of the white spot thing inside Do you could stand next to because the whole point is to just yeah get right next to that side and and do the bit Okay, it's pretty good man. It's pretty good. They got a good chicken broccoli Hmm is there any seasoning on it or yeah, no no, tons. Bread crumbs and Indian spices. Absolutely. All right. All right. Not bad. Yeah, yeah. We'll see what's going down. Swing by. Yeah, so that's pretty much it. That's the plan. You know, I've never actually touched foot down in I've never actually touched foot down in BC proper outside of once on the layover to Japan. Oh, no. That doesn't count if you didn't put... The airports aren't real places. Yeah.

We can all agree that an airport's a fake place. No, I've never actually... I've seen Vancouver or any of that. Yeah. I've been to Chicago 10 times. No, I haven't. I've been O'Hare 10 times. That's different. So, yeah, we'll see. We'll see what's going on out there. And then, well, the week after schedule will be effective, of course.

But all this to say, And then, well, the week after schedule will be affected, of course. But all this to say, at least one more Cyberpunk session tomorrow, and that's going to be it. So yeah, check us out over Woolly Versus on Twitch and on YouTube. And unfortunately, all of this is happening right during the City of the Wolves beta 2 so Of course, of course City of the Wolves beta 2 will happen now. Yeah What are the exact dates from it's from Wednesday at 11 PSD, I think.

So you could get that day in, right? Well, that's the travel day. So it's like, it's fucked. It's fucked for the whole thing for me. But at the very least, it's going from Thursday to Monday, I believe. They should change it. They should change it for you.

Yeah, it's fine, it's you. They should too. It's fine. It's fine. You'll probably be able to get some time in at the Kuma Tei, right? Possibly, at the very least. Or is it going to be like a super focused event? Or is it going to be like, you know, whatever? I think the actual Battle for BC has other stuff there, but you know, I'll walk with

my, what should I call it, my Steam Deck and see what's possible. Anyway, not much to add to it though. That's about it. How about you? Mad Fientist 2 All right. Well, a couple things of note. I'm continuing plugging away at all these different Monster Hunter games to figure out my feelings on Wilds. I recently went through the entirety of GU and Rise is low rank and I have discovered

the exact criteria for whether or not I like a Monster Hunter game. and It's if it's done Okay, it's it's so interesting to be like relitigating Well, cuz I'm trying to understand trying to figure out what's going on. Why am I so annoyed by this? Okay, right when then there's like an incredibly negative reaction to me like being posh blase about wilds And the answer is is that when I played Monster Hunter way back in the day, I played 3 Ultimate, which was the final finished release of 3. And then the 3DS version that came out later was 4 Ultimate, which was the final expansion included version of 4. And then Generations came out, which I didn't really care for all that much.

And then Gen U came out and I ignored it, but I went back like, no, Gen U is great. And then World came out and I was like, wow, this is great, but I didn't love it as much until its expansion came out. So the first version of the previous games you played was always the final version of it? Was always the final version, because we never got the base version outside of Japan. That says a lot, actually, because yeah, Version of it was always the final version because we never got the base version outside of Japan that Says a lot actually because yeah If they improve the game and add features and do the whole bit then you're getting the best version each time yeah, cuz like you go from try which is 18 monsters to 3 ultimate which has like 51 and

like 10 more weapons, okay, and you're like that's a big difference Yeah like 10 more weapons. Okay. And you're like, that's a big difference. Yeah. So if you only played, you know, the golden and Royale and you know what I mean? Then yeah, that's a very different experience. I think back to Rise, which I'm playing now and I'm having a blast with Rise. And it's like, it's weird. I really didn't feel all that strongly about Rise when it came out, which disappointed me.

It's like, oh, right. Cause it came out during COVID and it was fucking not finished at all. It didn't even have a final boss. They had to patch it in later. Oh, okay. And so I look at Wilds and I go, oh, why am I not? Oh right, because it doesn't have a final boss and they're patching it in in two weeks and they're back to doing timed event quests with special monsters that you can only fight for three weeks oh right I'll get to it when it's done yes so even in the past you didn't get into them on launch yeah that's an important thing to note yeah okay and

that's it I figured it out I. I spent a hundred hours going through old Monster Hunter games to be like, huh, that's why is it? Oh, right. They're not finished. They're literally not finished. And with World and Wilds, it's extra bad because what they do is they're like, hey man, title updates coming up, but you know what? You want to fight arch-tempered Ray Dao to get new armor, like brand new armor edge of the game? Cool. want to fight arch-tempered Ray Dao? Get new armor? Like brand new armor edge of the game? Cool. You can fight arch-tempered Ray Dao from the dates of April 29th to May 30th. Fuck off. How about I wait until the final patch where you turn all those timed event quests into permanent mainstays?

So the other thing is, I know that with like Rise and Wilds and stuff, there's been, you know, like Iceborne and these big DLC releases. Did the previous games have like big side chapters like that as well? So the way that it used to work is fairly different and each one has changed. So the basic deal is you have your main games and you have your portable games as a division, right? And for a while there were only portable games and it's not a clean break, but whatever. So it used to be a way that, you know, in English you would only get the final version

that had every event quest that ever came out for it in Japan. And so like you're playing for you and you're like, like what the fuck there's Universal Studios Japan quests in this fucking game Because they used to be like street pass unlocked Usj quest okay way back she's but But now that it's being kicked over to fucking English right you're like well I'm not gonna do that so they just have it all unlocked, right? And then World came out and World comes out and it's Monster Hunter World. And then they have an update a couple months in with Devil Joe and also Arch Temple or Teostor or whoever it was. But Arch Temple or Teostor is time limited.

And then they'll wait a little bit and they add a new monster and Arch Tempered Kushala. Oh, but Kushala is time limited and so on and so forth and world really popularized for them that there would be permanent additions but also they would constantly be running timed events, events that would run for a week or a weekend or a month or what have you right and I personally find limited timed events in a game like that to be infuriating like I was busy a bunch when cool Vitar off came out and I was like oh cool I have like two weekends to grind out like 400 gold weapons that doesn doesn't sound exciting at all. Can't you just leave it all in there forever like you did with all the prior Monster Hunter

games so I don't have a fear of missing out? No? Okay. And then Iceborn comes out which adds like double the amount of monsters. But then Iceborn gave me the worst version of this, where Iceborne added timed and additional content that also required you to grind the shit out of it. So you'd get to the end of Master Rank in Iceborne. And I hit, what happened was, is I hit Master Rank like 21 when I completely beat the game's final boss. And they're like, did you know you could fight Ruinr and Nergigante if you get to Master Rank like 21 when I completely beat the game's final boss and they're like, did you know you could fight Ruin or Nergigante if you get to Master Rank 100? Like cool. How long will that take? Oh, I don't know.

45 more hours of grinding on things that you don't have any things to get. And so then, oh well, Safa Jeeva came out and all these things that were timed and eventually in the final patch for world the final final final final final patch went okay everything is available forever there's just no and I looked at that I was like I wish I had just not interacted with the game even once also before that happened but but now here is now here we are, right? Because everything you're saying and everything about this

is just reinforcing in me that there's no benefit to early adoption outside of scraping your own curiosity. Right? Absolutely. It feels like, you know, you're just like, I need to know, I wanna know now when it's happening now, so let's zeitgeist it and hit it. But it just fucking punishes you for doing so. And just chilling and when waiting

is so much better every time. Years work gets slightly more complicated. Yeah, yeah, okay. Rise comes out and it's just straight up unfinished. And they do the title update. Hey, here's the ending of the game one month later. Here's a new monster, new monster, new monster every couple of months, right?

But Rise, because it's on the Nintendo Switch and it's a portable system that can't always be guaranteed to have access to the internet, all of its event quests come out and you just download them and they're forever. Mm-hmm. So they walked it back. They went, nah, event quests come out and you just download them and they're forever. So they walked it back. They went, nah, event quests are forever. Don't worry about it. Right? Which is nice. If I want to do the event quest to turn my Palico into Sonic the Hedgehog or my Palamute

into Fox Tails, right? Great. Super, right? And that worked out great and everybody was happy. And then Wilds comes out and it's back to the way World was. The thing that I talked about when I deleted my file and I started over on all that, the kicker was that they said, hey, by the way, for people who have beaten the game, there's an event quest to get a new helmet. It's available for one week starting today. And I was like, Oh my God, they're doing it again. Oh my God. They want me to have this game completed, installed and ready. And for me to jump on every time they say so. And I don't want to. So when I say there's no benefit to early adoption, FOMO based content is the artificial benefit that you can add. Is like, oh, well, if you get it early and if you're playing often, you can get one of these things that's not going to be available for

a while. Same thing for anything locked content in like a free to play game or so. Now, of course, if you care a lot about the thing and you have friends that are playing it at the same time, then obviously it makes sense to go play it as is. I'm just in general describing, if it's something that you're like, eh, if you're still waiting on or deciding and are not completely swayed by, in a lot of cases it seems as if just like getting into it

in a better state down the road doesn't seem to have many downsides unless you're again waiting with friends and so on. So I was a couple were oh sorry after you. I know that the genre is a huge factor too as well because games that are massively about the community are like well that community's not going to be permanent, right? There is a time for how this is, there's a moment here that you need to keep up with. If the moment versus the quality release version of the game are not in sync, then that fucking sucks.

So, if it's a game that doesn't involve community as much, then you can definitely be a bit more patient with that. And then there's also that bit where it's like, sometimes you're like, well, this game also, you want to show your support by knowing that, like, you're like, hey, I bought this to show that I want this type of content, even though it might be something that you're like, I'll get around to it later or so.

So obviously, this is not a complete, 100% consistent thing. Obviously, this is not a complete 100% consistent thing. So I want to go through a couple of the obvious responses to my feelings on this. The first of which is, well, you wouldn't feel that way if you hadn't deleted your save and you had to restart. No, I felt that way even more strongly during World because when I was playing World I felt, oh my god I have to do the fucking Teostrup quest. I fucking hate Teostrup. Oh, but the only time to get the gear is this time or I'd have to wait until the end of the year for the festival. And like that feeling of being actively manipulated is horrible. I hate it. I hate it. It makes me not want to play it at all.

I hate it. Following up to that, I mean, you don't have to do those kinds of quests. It's like, well, no, but the series history is that they're always available. And also, Monster Hunter exists in a sort of meta genre that you've probably heard me describe Warframe as in which I've called it an arsenal game. I also called Destiny 2 that in which checking off all the boxes and getting all the toys to many is a big part of that experience. Right. Right. Like when I'm playing Warframe, the goal of me playing Warframe is to get one of each Warframe. That's the long-term goal. It's the checklist. Is to fill up my doll collection. When I play Monster Hunter, at

the end of the day, it's really personally satisfying to go into the chest or the quest list and see everything with nice check marks next to it and nice and neat and proper and like, oh, I have completed it and when they're running these constant time things that are floating around, it's extremely frustrating. It's really frustrating. I think, yeah, okay. I get what you're saying there. There's clearly other reasons, you know, save deletion aside, although when you were describing

that the end of the onboarding tutorial, like new game, then led to stuff that you were enjoying, I guess the thought was like, okay, well, at the very least, you can sit in that New Game Plus world for a bit and poke at it every now and then until a proper full update drops and then you get everything you're looking for. Yeah, but also waiting for the timing on the updates is too long. Like it's not, it's never like, oh, you new update dropped. Oh man, let's, let's work on this for a while. It's a new update dropped. Um, and you have

to do it within a month, but also when you do sit down and hit it, it's going to take you like two days and then you're going to be done and put it right back on the fucking shelf until the next update drops. I hate playing games like that. Mmm. I hate that You know what I'm realizing dropping it for 60 days only to pick it up for one and bang it all out and then drop It for another 60 days. I fucking hate it. I wish monster hunters just went back to Release nothing Expansion mm-hmm just went back to release nothing expansion. I get it because look at how I've fucked myself over with the early access games, you know,

with Darkest Dungeon and Hades and shit that I'm like, I'm enjoying this so much that I go too far into something that's going to get reset or re, you know, or changed drastically when a big content drop occurs. So I definitely feel that. I'm realizing, too, that if I think of an RPG, like, let's take SMT, where in most cases, I'm looking at these games, as we've discussed in the past,

where I'm like, I'm going to experience this in the past where I'm like I'm gonna experience this once So yeah, if I choose to experience it again, yeah, but I'm probably not going to so If I'm somebody who's knowing that I'm not going to right? Then I'm like well why for me it makes more sense to like Play the different finished like final version. And in cases like like P5 Royale, for example, I'm kind of like, I don't know that I'll ever write. And that sucks because I'm like, I really enjoyed that game, but I don't know that I'll go back and do that.

I just I, you know, and I don't know that I'll go through all of SMT five vengeance either, having done the original. Even though I know there's a I know there's a lot of new cool and shit that I would thoroughly love. But I'm also like, well, if I'm going to start five and just do from scratch all over again and get through Vengeance, just pop in fucking Nocturne and do that because I haven't done Nocturne. Right? Like I'm that person.

If I'm going to go back through Royale, just pop in fucking Kuzunoha Raido 1 and do that instead. Right? So, for me, the fact that I'm also not looking to replay anything that really is another reason why I'm precise about my picks. So one of the things that people point out as I'm talking about this that I think is really genuinely funny and dead on observation that I'm talking about this that I think is really genuinely funny and dead on observation that I'm talking about. I really hate this this slow update cycle and where I burn through

the game entirely and then I'm completely done for X amount of days is but don't you play FF 14? And the answer is not anymore. Because I caught up when I was following the bleeding edge of the ff14 patch cycle there was always tons of other stuff I could catch up on or do in the background but then when I finally got to the point where I'm like I have done everything I could do and I'm just sitting around waiting for more, I'm so fucking bored with this. Which by the way, it's really strange following a game as intensely as I have as FF14 and finding out that there is a patch live today

by me looking over and seeing people say that there is a patch live today now That's funny Because that that what that would be like I would move my schedule around and wake up early to do it versus Oh, there's a patch today weird I I Just have these I just look at anyway I Just have these I just look up anyway, I was like I look around I know I just I just look around it sometimes I'm like, I don't know how or why I ended up here like

In terms of just the way I the way I I consume this this medium is just so diametrically opposed to Everyone I'm talking to right now that it's I mean, I'm the way it's designed the norm on it but um Yeah, but it but it's it's Yeah, anyway, I'm actually sliding closer to where you are as a result like I've been playing a bunch of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and I'm actually sliding closer to where you are as a result. Like I've been playing a bunch of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and I'm like, yeah, I'm going to wait like at least a year because I'm going to wait until all the DLC comes

out because they said that every DLC that comes out is going to come along with a bunch of bug fixes and balance changes. I'm like, oh, okay. I'll just wait for that because game's not done. And I think part of that reason is like Even for the best even for good games Release date is not done like not done at all anymore. Yeah Yeah, it used to be bad. Yeah came out unfinished

But now good games come out good and get better For sure significantly better not just multiplayer single-player everything everything. It's like, get it out the door, ship it. We can fix it later. We will fix it later. There will be these patches, but if you're getting in there, it's going to be early access even when it's not early access. 1.0 is still not so secretly early access. I think God's largest joke that ever played on anyone was every single person that is listening to this podcast and me going, you know what? I think now's the time to start my BG3 playthrough.

Well, look, I just started cyberpunk, right? And I can't, they literally said it's done. But here's the thing. Let's imagine Cyberpunk launched and it worked and there were no bugs, okay? I know, but like- I didn't even make a face so you knew it was- Just imagine, right?

That part aside, if it was still functioning, the amount of shit that has been added in posts that's just new quality of life content is still enough that it's like, damn, you probably should have waited to get into this after Phantom Liberty and all these other quality of life things, not in terms of just getting it working, but in terms of new shit, you know? There's a huge gulf between it. Strange, strange. Break, repairing what's broken and then like what was added afterwards. It's crazy. Yeah, it is really quite baffling how pervasive it's gotten and how I have gotten, I don't know. So I don't want to say it's like more willpower, because that's not what it is.

The pull of the new is like less. Like I am treating full releases like they're early access games now. Right? Like I am treating Monster Hunter Wilds like it's got an early access tag on it and it has a fucking version point six next to it, okay

Good good good same thing with KCD to where I'm like, I've still got a couple bugs in it And it's got three expanses I'll just wait and like this comes right off the heels of me playing through Kingdom come deliverance one six years after it comes out And you know think about Hades and I think about our experiences with Hades. Yes, yes. But how I, why Day Early Access came out for Hades? Blah blah blah. Burned as hard as I could. Beat Kronos once. And went, okay, on the shelf till version 1.0. Like, it's done. But I, like I also am just thinking of how, while I feel this, like this is a feeling that I've had in the past as well, but it gets amplified now because there's so much good shit that gets ignored.

And that wasn't the feeling back in the Xbox 360 days. No. No. It was like, oh my god, thank god. When something dropped, when a big XBLA release came out and we're all talking about it, it was like, oh fuck, yo, go check it out. It was crazy. And like that was- It was dominating the conversation for the last three weeks. Yo, Braid, have you seen seen this game braid? What the hell? Oh, you got the potion. It's nuts like you're high and shit

This game stupid But no, but like literally it just yeah the the conversation was dominated by whatever that particular Release was now there's too much, you know And like there might be another thing in a given month. And if you had to choose between three things in a month, it was like, oh, my God, it was crazy. You know, embarrassment of riches. Yeah. So, yeah, it's it's just this complicated thing. Like it's like it's better.

And that makes it worse, if that makes any sense. Like games that would have like PC, like let's say Kingdom Come. That's a kind of PC game that used to come out back in like 99 to fucking 2008. And it would come out, it would be like massively fucked up and like two patches would come out and people would recommend it. But you'd be like, isn't that game massively, massively fucked up? And they'd be like, yeah, but it's weird, it's the only game that's doing that kind of thing, right? And the first game that I can remember that stopped being like that

was The Witcher 1, where The Witcher 1 was massively fucked up at launch. And then they released a bunch of patches, and then they released a bunch of patches and then they released the enhanced edition and then they released a bunch of patches for the enhanced edition and they built it up to being not so fucked up. Okay. But that took like two years. So that CD project. I had a funny moment yesterday where I kind of was in the mood for just like a quick little dinner game. You know, nothing, nothing too intense or so, but it's where my ballatro- A little bit of an amuse-bouche.

A little amuse-bouche, oui oui, c'est ça. This is where my ballatro kind of like quick thing would go, you know? And it's like not too committed for jumping on like arrivals or anything right now. I just wanted a little bit. But for the last little while, I had been picking away at metaphor like aggressively. Yeah. And now that's done. And I was like, huh, right. Okay, that is done. I can, you know, like there's stuff that I do when I'm more committed to like figuring out research for upcoming LPs or whatever. But I was like, let me let me let me see. I'm like, well, I'm kind of pretty

much done with Balloture. Like I've unlocked just about everything. I've gotten just about almost everything. I think there's like, like two or three things I haven't done me see I'm like well, and I'm kind of pretty much done with Ballacher like I've unlocked just about everything I've gotten just about almost everything. I think there's like like two or three things. I haven't done So I'm like, okay, that's not really coming to front of mind right now, you know, and I kind of was like, huh Is there anything like what am I I was like I kind of had a little nothing to to look at moment That was like wait, what the fuck am I talking about? And then I just went back to UFO 50 and popped open a game I'd never played in UFO 50 and went, oh shit, I never played this one. UFO 50 is like uniquely incredible for this example.

Yeah, and I'm like, hey, let me just jump back in there and I picked one of those great games I never played and was like, fuck yeah, this is a great one. It was awesome. That was exactly what I needed for that short period of time and that solved the problem And I'm like I will continue to be able to pick it this one indie game UFO 50 for this exact need for a while You know, um, there's an incredible comment that just rolled by me in the chat from dead eye marks Ma you guys unlocked a memory from high school

I was hearing from friends that the Mass Effect 3 ending was terrible, so I waited until Extended Cut was released until I even took Plastic off of the case. So there is a, long ago, back when I used to listen to the giant bomb cast religiously, they did Game of the Year at the end of the year that year and they had the argument between a guy who played and reviewed Mass Effect 3 at release and the guy who had played Mass Effect 3 after all the DLCs and the extended cut came out as to whether or not it deserved a spot on Game of the Year. And that argument was fucking fascinating because it kept going back and

forth. The game I played had the shittiest ending I've ever seen. Yeah, but it's not like that now. But it did. And I bought it when it did. And just back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. I mean, that's why that that's why that that list is so insane because people's unique experiences have to be fought and get pitted against each other. Yeah, no, usually those unique experiences were basically down to your own personal tastes and timing, but Mass Effect 3, before its DLC and extended cut, is a dramatically worse game. And it's weird to talk about people with when they played this or when they played

that and shit like that. Like, man man if you waited to get into Mass Effect until after all of that shit you would have had a really smooth great experience Wooly, yes For sure like but now with that now, but now hey I got to keep that same energy When someone comes up and goes guys, I don't know what you're talking about I the first version of Street Fighter 5 I played was the championship edition and it was excellent There was so much stuff. There's all these characters and content. I had a great time with Gil Our excellent and somebody points out the Baldur's Gate 3 one game of the year before it got its real ending

and somebody points out that Baldur's Gate 3 won Game of the Year before it got its real ending. The epilogue for BG3 was added after it already won Game of the Year from every publication. The game's real ending was a patch. So what is it, Game of the Year Plus now? And then you think about something like Elden Ring, which isn't usually the type of game you would talk about, about releasing Unfinished, but it did. It released a full patch version before Final because there is no way in hell you're telling me that the base version of that game was not supposed to have the little icons on the map for NPCs. Or how about Bloodborne,

which launched with an anti-loading screen that was just the game's logo, which was clearly the fucking demo build shit. We can't talk about this without, while neglecting to bring up, Azura's Wrath, which had the final two missions sold as DLC after launch. And you know what? The actual idea. I have heard the realistic and reasonable explanation for that was supposed to be a large scale DLC,

but then they didn't get approval for that. So they took the cut scenes and they sold them so that you could get the ending, to which I say, fuck that, that's still terrible. Garbage, absolute garbage. And I want to say pop zero right Yeah, oh prince of Persia a

sequel hook to nowhere It fucking sucks when you release your fucking game, and it has no ending and People who buy it and play it right away just get punished hardest for that Hey, I've got a name for you. You want to get targeted? Listen to the you want to talk about endings that didn't happen. Let's talk about Deus Ex I mean the game series that has one game with an ending four games and there's one that has an ending and the ending suck.

I like what like what was with the the well like what was the original with that? The original you went through the whole game and you got to the end and the endings were unsatisfying, but it was the natural end conclusion of the story that had been built up in Deus X1. And then Deus X2, Invisible War is a massive mess that goes nowhere. And then with Human Revolution, they cut like 40% of the game and then sprint to the end and then had an ending cobbled together at the last second that doesn't make any sense. And then for Mankind Divided, they again cut like 40% of

the game and then just end on like what used to be the middle point of the story. And they're like, I will pick it up in the sequel and then the sequel got cancelled. Always a fan of series like Half-Life where it's like hey Wooly get into these games. They're really good You should catch up so that you can suffer like we are right now Catch up to us and join us as we sit here plates empty Starving you know I know you didn't like you were enjoying yourself outside the room

But no no get in here and suffer with us Bro, there's a somebody in the chat said mankind divided the first game. I've ever said like wait. It's over out loud I got one. That's like crazy. I know you haven't played it. But Legacy of Cain Soul Reaver builds you up to this massal massive final confrontation. And then you walk into a room and a guy comes and talks to you and then credits roll. And you're like, what? are you serious it's crazy it's so nuts yeah anyway annual reminder that you should read vagabond it's a very good manga series I encourage everyone to read it it's very good so yeah it's a

very strange place with new releases. Like now when I look at a new release, there's like how like it's I'm playing like this fucking devil's future telling bargain with myself like how much do I expect this came to change in the future from its 1.0 version? Well, so here's the thing is it obviously changes from series to series, but Monster Hunter is clearly something where there's some games where you can get the incomplete plate and still enjoy it and go, all right, I've enjoyed that ride and then when it comes back around, that'll be fine, right?

So I just talked about SMT5. SMT5 was glorious, really enjoyed the journey through that and then everything we're getting afterwards is even better. So sure, but even though I'm not going to get there. But Monster Hunter is clearly a case of like, oh, actually this initial thing is not what I'm looking for and is unsatisfying and is actually a negative. So if the thing you're getting incomplete is a negative and it's not enough to enjoy that. It's not a negative. I just miss, in the plate metaphor, I'm just like, oh, this usually comes with potatoes. I just kind of want to wait until it comes with potatoes.

And the thing is too, I'm sure there's folks out there that are like jumping in heavily multiplayer driven with it and just kind of like mainly enjoying it for that aspect, right? Even though it's incomplete. Absolutely. It's just a thing we're doing with the friends. So that'll be what it is for now, you know? And then it becomes like what you said earlier, which is like, well, the is the community gonna move on? Am I am I gonna miss the zeitgeist? And the answer is, I think this example, it's fucking Monster Hunter. So no, you're not going to miss anything.

People will continue to play their personal favorite Monster Hunter forever. I mean, at the very least, if the community does move on when a big announcement of some kind happens, there's still that moment as opposed to at random, you know, like when you're jumping on, you're playing GU. Did you do any online? So when I'm saying I've been playing these games, I mean, I've been streaming them, and I've been streaming them exclusively in multiplayer.

OK. And people have been just been no problem filling up every single room. Because people are watching you play at the same time and jumping on. Yes. But even if we can put it to the live chat right now because those people are also playing multiplayer without me

Nobody's having trouble getting into a match in GU or world or rise People in the chat are playing Monster Hunter freedom unite online. Okay easily enough Fair enough I feel not a problem Because there's always that little bump when a new game comes out and people do go back to the older ones, you know, like, Strive drops and a bunch of people start playing Exert again, you know, either because they don't have it yet or because they missed the difference or for one reason or another. But the world has been reminded of this franchise.

So you're like, let me go boot that thing up. People are going so far as to mention that not only are they having no problem getting matches they're not having any problem getting matches on their 3DS and Switch emulators which can only play with other 3DS and Switch emulators. Wow! Yeah no people are never gonna stop playing literally every single Monster Hunter game so the the free the worry, oh, will the community move on? It's like, actually, no. They will never move on.

But at the very least, if you are deciding to be like, all right, I know where I'm at on this game. Let me chill and wait for it to be finished. You know that what you're going to get will be an update and further expansions and not a like go buy the new release says Atlas a year ago. You know, oh, you like fuck you too bad. You spent your money idiot.

Buy it again. Right. So like, like metaphor is a really good example. If I had not been so aggressively and wonderfully sponsored to cover metaphor, I probably would have tried to put that game from my mind entirely for like multiple years on the threat that they would release metaphor Royal edition or whatever the fuck. Well, you know, knowing that they're probably not going to based on what they said, you know, it certainly adds a lot of confidence to getting it now. But I know people, I have, again, like I said,

you're the only one I know that's beaten it because some of the friends we have that are RPG players and stuff, there's some, I know people that are like, yeah, I want to, but I just know that I can't right now. But I'm like, yeah, I'm putting it out of my mind. I know I'll get back at some point. I think there will be some sort of something that they do release metaphor related for sure, but I'm going to trust that they weren't full of shit when they said, we're not doing Royale style releases anymore. They said they weren't going to do, if they were, it was going to be DLC. DLC, yes.

So they could still do metaphor Royale, it would just be a DLC instead. There's two distinct areas that they could expand upon if they wanted to, certainly. Yeah, okay. But yeah, no very very interesting Feelings coming away off of monster and especially when it coincided with me going back to an old game like KCD one right before the new game KCD 2 and me hitting the same conclusion on both of Something that I usually wouldn't be able to do which is like I'll just wait wouldn't be able to do which is like I'll just wait like this new new territory for Pat quitting the MMO and

Just like oh wait. I'll wait. You're being a good influence on me. I think probably There's there's so much good shit On that note a game that is definitely Completely finished and I'm gonna be going back, not this week but next week, is a game that is extremely charming indie that I believe is two and a half, three hours old, long, called Home Safety Hotline. Have you heard of Home Safety Hotline? No, but I like that name. So Home Safety Hotline takes place on a fake computer. So 1996, you know, Windows 3.1 fake ass computer where you check your email and

you check your videos and they all have terrible mic quality and employee orientation, etc. Your job is that you are going to be a hotline for people who call you with possible issues with their home for safety reasons as to whether or not you should advise them to call the police or minor things they can do in their home. So things like, hey, I got these weird noises coming out of my bathroom and it smells in there sometimes. You might have frozen pipes. If you have frozen pipes, you should contact a plumber, etc. So what you do is you sit at your fake computer and you read through all the articles of, is that frozen pipes or is it black mold or carpet or ants or something, these kinds of

things. And you'll get a call in and it'll be complete dog shit 1996, like sounding phone call about some Jagov going, ah, your wall, you know, I don't see any ants, but right. And then you will go down your list of possible causes, figure out the one that you think is the case and then submit that as the thing that they're dealing with. And then you'll get graded at the end of the day, kind of little papers, please. But it's very calm. It's very relaxed. There's no time limit. There's just just going down like, oh could this be carpenter ants or maybe mice or bats, right? And

at the end of the day, you'll get graded and if you get graded, you get a nice little score. Not a big deal. It doesn't really matter and then the next day, they will open up more of your home safety hotline encyclopedia, which will... So the first day I didn't have access to the bat answer or frozen pipes, right? And so it's like, okay. So every day there'll be a little bit more because there's a lot to handle. And then on day two and three, they start adding things like Hobbs. So Hobbs wear a false

face and they can live in the cracks of your foundation or your pipes. And if you do believe you have a Hobb in your living room rearranging your things, you're going to need to put out a pot of cream in the evening, but don't antagonize the Hobb because they can metamorphose into a Boggart. And then you get a call and you start going down the things like, Oh, that sounds really weird and the dogs afraid of it. Sounds like you might have stair slugs or bed teeth. Okay, just more and more of these to unlock. And you're starting to like essentially do paranormal home safety repair, low stakes, SCP, extremely low stakes. But at the same time, and this

is the kicker, the only mistake I made was that I took two calls in one night about, about Hobbs. And I was like, Oh man, I think this guy might have some pipe growths. Didn't have pipe growths, just had regular old frozen pipes. The mundane don't leave. Yeah, okay. You could still have frozen pipes. Doesn't mean it's a pipe hob or a pipe growth or a stair slug. Okay, okay. Identify your phasmophobia ghost, but also sometimes it's really just a creaking wooden floor.

Sometimes you just got mice. Yeah. Cool. That's cool. Sometimes there's bats. It's very charming. Oh yeah. It's really, really cool.

Big old Windows 3.1S filter on everything. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Super cool game. I don't have time to get to it this week, but I will definitely go back and get to it next week and bang it out. I think it's super neat I think it's super neat Seems like it was part of the future games last year sure so yeah, okay interesting

So that's pretty much what I did for games and media and whatnot. The only other thing that happened to me this week is that I was going through my phone and I don't use, you know, I use Discord, right? But in our D&D group, we don't use Discord, we use Facebook Messenger, which I hate. This is of note because I was like, oh, I have to talk to the gang and reschedule a certain D&D thing because I have something I need to do. And so I go in and I'm like, hey, blah, blah, blah, guys, can we move this like an hour? And everyone's like, great, great, great.

Totally normal. Except, so I don't use Facebook Messenger and what I've discovered is that there was actually for multiple weeks a message sitting in my Facebook Messenger that I had not clicked on. I'm like, that's strange. It's from somebody I'm not friends with on Facebook. Who could it be? And I click on it and it is from the day after Jimmy left the D&D group from Jimmy.

And I'm like, oh, this is unexpected. Epilogue. Okay. Oh, I wonder what it could be. I wonder if it will totally justify every emotion I felt during this whole saga. So for context, the day that Jimmy left the group, we all hit level three and we're talking about the level ups and new abilities we were going to have as part of our level three characters, which is a big level in D&D 5.0.

Jimmy writes, By the way, if you wanted to hide that you took sea invisibility from me, you probably shouldn't have shown the fighter so excitedly. I never wanted to fight you guys. Inner party conflicts only lead to hurt feelings. Just from a vet to a newbie, don't build your character to fight the others. Work with the remaining players." So, I spoke to Paige and I reached out to the fighter because I'm like what the fuck is he talking about?

So here's what happened You remember when I said that Jimmy had been shape-changing and going invisible Constantly in the background to constantly take attention for themselves right everybody else was playing right at level three else was playing right at level three. Clit light clerics, the class I had to switch to because of all that stuff with the war lack that Jimmy took my my class because he lied about it. They get seen visibility as a base level ability. And I believe that when Jimmy heard that thought that. To fuck with him. And then admonished me as a vet to a newbie not to pick

abilities to enter party conflict. This is after leaving. This is just after leaving. Just a little parting message just so you know. Yeah a little parting message. Just so you know yeah You shouldn't pick abilities that fuck with other people's characters Oh Take taking responsibility on the way a couple of things here. Oh, yeah one as here. Oh, yeah. One, as a vet, he should know by looking at the cleric, like cleric, see invisibility is a mandatory

prepared spell. It's it's right. That's part of the kit. Two, I didn't hide **** from anybody. I was talking about my brand new automatic prepared spells. Three, and we checked with the magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic,

magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic,

magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, magic, What's going on moving around here and there and we're working as a group. So like one Knowledge check error two ruling check error three Social error as to my intentions. Hey, man, you're new. So let me just I'm just being kind, you know I I'll tell you what man. I

Was losing my fucking mind. I was going to fall. I was showing this to Paige and just yelling, the fucking audacity! The guy who's fucking lied about his class, his character, and all his skills specifically to fuck me over is lecturing me on inter-party dynamics. And he's wrong. This is like the epitome of everything where it's like being corrected by an asshole who's wrong. Who's incorrect? There's a better way to be social and get along with everybody in these types of games. You wouldn't know it, but I'm sure you'll get there eventually as you get experienced with this. I've turned a corner on this. I've 180'd and I've changed my mind. This is actually

the best D&D first experience you could have. This is awesome. This is on brand and this is perfect for you. This is great. I were like for this whole saga. We're like, you know what? You know, we don't want to make waves and we don't want to be seen as unreasonable and we don't want to be the problem. And I'm like, I'm now ready to be the problem. I am now ready to be like, not, uh-uh, not dealing with this, fuck this, I'm out. This is inserting passion where there might not have been any, you know?

This is a flame ignited in your first game here. I am now pro-Yimpy, good stuff. I also think, and this is like a really rare, like for life, like for life situation, there's lots of personal dilemmas and interpersonal issues and butting of heads that happen throughout your life. And oftentimes it doesn't resolve very cleanly or kind of fades away. And you wonder, like as time goes on you you want like and you you you wonder like as time goes on you're like was I being a dick or could I have said was there a thing

I could have said that would have smoothed things out or you know and you you doubt and I have been given like a mandate from heaven to be like, nah, nah, nah, you're good. Well, here's what you got is you got confirmation that after the cutting of ties, that it lived right free enough for him to look you up and send a filtered message to your unfriended account to just get that off the chest and communicate one last thing that he couldn't let go of. Right? It's like I just want to send this

out so that I can I can know that even though I'm leaving I wasn't the problem. I mean it was really it was really everybody else. That's kind of incredible. That is. It also makes me wonder if the stated reason for leaving being didn't like the paladin's behavior is only part of the reason for leaving. And the fact that they were sitting there going, oh, they're going to have to see invisibility now. I can't do all my stupid invisibility shit for attention. Might have actually been a factor. And despite, and instead of-

Based on what he thought, based on what he thought you were doing. Yeah? Yeah. I mean, look, I just, I wish it'd be great to see the stats on like, how, you're a, as a veteran, how many campaigns have you participated in and how many have you left? And, and how have they gone left and and how have they gone have they have have there been You know other instances that have gone this way or do you tend to complete them? No problem top to bottom how many groups have disintegrated around you Unexpectedly and without reason it would be interesting to know those numbers. You know if there was a little disconnect rating for your you know for your IRL D&D

sessions as a veteran. So I feel really bad because this message is weeks old. And Baller Swagbro put up a supercut of the Jimmy narrative, like the entire Jimmy story where they cut the podcast and page a stream and my stream and I feel bad because this is like the denouement of that whole thing and it came out right after he cut out that big video. Sorry baller swag bro. I mean it's always nice to kind of like just get a little like, ah, that's where you were mentally at this. But also- You also you never get that from anybody. Like this is like this is more closure than people get in their divorces.

Like, like for real. But at the same time, it's like I'm hearing those words you just said. And I'm thinking of the person who's screaming at the top of their lungs in character and and you know getting into like actual fights and yeah, like That's that's all it. That's a good bit. I'm now glad that this has gone this way. It's I yeah It's it's pretty funny. It's Palta. It's pretty fucking funny It made me very mad, but it also made me feel really good It's pretty funny. It's, I'll tell you, it's pretty fucking funny.

It made me very mad, but it also made me feel really good. Like, really good. All doubts are gone! You know, you could have had a straight, normal, boring ass marriage, but now you got someone like pouring shit on the floor and being like, yeah, I'm dropping this on the floor, now what? What are you going to do about it? It's getting spicy. Keeping things exciting. This is this is the best possible first campaign for you. So I'm super excited to go back to D&D next week. I'm super, I'm super, super, super fucking excited to go back to D&D next. I'm so fucking excited. It's gonna be great. I mean, it's

gonna be great. You know, there's that part where it's like, where does everybody else, you know, weigh in on this from outside of you guys? So I can tell you, I can tell you right now. Page is like, oh my god, Page is of like mind, of like, oh my god, that motherfucker, the audacity. He spoke to the fighter and the fighter knows him pretty well. And the fighter's like like I don't know what the fuck he's talking about And then we spoke to the DM and the DMs like that's not how that works That's that that's not how that would work mmm Did so everyone is like like me and page over here outrage and then the others are like what?

Huh, did you send a read receipt? I don't know maybe No, I think I have that turned off But okay, cuz that's that's an important decision is whether or not you mark it as red or you leave it in the of it That's a great question. Who knows? Yeah. Yeah Cuz that that's you know, so here's the fun thing, right that matters the idea in the abyss. That's a great question. Who knows? Yeah. Yeah. Because that's, you know. So here's the fun thing, right? That matters.

The idea, let's say I have red receipts on, right? It took me weeks to see it. And so then the question becomes, who the fuck is checking to see that somebody has read that message weeks later? That's the worst. I mean, because like, some this Jimmy, Jimmy is Jimmy and and again, the decision is yours to decide whether to let it rock or even just little alright. Hey, thumbs up champ. Whatever you say. Sure thing. Good stuff. Good stuff. Alright.

So that's it for me this week. For the remainder of the week, I'm going to be streaming Split Fiction with Peach to Live tomorrow. So go check that out. That game's great. And then taking the day off on Thursday, Saturday, Sunday. And Friday, I'll just go back to, we'll do some more, we'll do high rank and rise with the chat So go go hang out at twitch.tv slash Pat stairs at All right quick word for my sponsors Boop-a-doop-boop. Oh, I'll tell of those afterwards Oh, I'll tell all of those afterwards. I'll tell, I have another story for you. Oh, okay. Oh, we'll talk about that afterwards.

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Don't blend in, stand out with Chubbies. Yeah. Thanks Chubbies. Thanks Chubbies. I know, I know. There might be some folks that are right on that line going am I uncle yeah Yeah, you're in there if you have to ask embrace it. You're in there. There's cool stuff It's a thing now. Don't worry about it. You're fine. It's okay. It's okay accepting it This week the podcast is sponsored by Express VPN Express VPN My favorite source for all my VPN related needs

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That's not a thing. That's a hypothetical. I'm just I'm just wondering if anyone's ever done that No, no not quite Instead I'm gonna recommend you go with the With the chicken and salmon with cauliflower grains and beans For the for the good tasting fact, that's probably a much better idea. That's probably much better. You should do that instead And last but not least this week the podcast is sponsored by Mando And that is The solution to getting just, you know, that hygiene up to where it needs

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Yeah, no, straight up, I'm seeing here, they're like, hey, question, do your balls stink? Tell us about a time you needed mando the most I mean Like a little human doll, what's the stinky parts? I think parts out I could tell you okay, but if you're having a rough go there, and you can't tell like We've got a major problem. We've got side tell like we've got a major problem. We've got sinus issues. Everyone has a major problem. You should be able to, yeah. So anyway, listen, I got some folds that need coverage and the

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Boost your confidence. Head to toe with Mando. Thank you. Thanks, Mando. Thank you. All right. What? So, I'm going to go ahead and start with the first one. Thank you. Thanks, Mando. Thank you. All right. What was the other story? It's not my story.

It's my wife's story, but I think it's interesting enough to bring up. So Paige took the baby for a walk, put him in the stroller, went to the bakery, got some croissant, got some miscellaneous groceries, takes the baby to the park, playing with the baby in the park, having a good day. Wait, what's that noise? Call! Looks over. Raven. Crow or raven, we're not sure. We don't do taxonomy in this house. Stealing her, Quesson. Pecking through the bags. And then when she was like, what? What do I do? The raven or crow took the entire bag and just flew away. Stole them. Stole all the breads. Right out of hand? No, right out of the stroller just mugged her

Flew away with an entire bag of bread okay, if it was big enough to grab a whole bag That was probably a raven Probably we've been told this but yeah, we don't know the different crows are smaller Ravens are the page was clear the craze tag and eyes because they remember. Oh yes. And be friendly to the bird. But also, the bird just like... Yeah. Stole or destroyed her entire run of groceries. On the way up just passes by her ear like, never more bitch. It's bitch ridiculous like I'm sitting here streaming and I get my message I have been robbed by crows that's like it's it's real shit real shit ah and what literally unbelievable oh you want to

come get it back then Then come take it then. No, you can have it. I don't want no food. The pro has touched. Oh man. Yeah. They got bird flu going around or whatever. Nuh-uh.

Okay, well, important to, I'd say important to identify the size too as well and know if you're dealing with the larger more like I'm a swoop down and grab anything small and moving. Well, the real thing is that we have to make sure that like the birds don't steal this dog. No, that's exactly it. This dog is small Mm-hmm, and you know there has been actually okay. I want to say there was a I think it was made here

but there was like a fake video of someone of like a I Think like a Falcon comes down and grabs a kid and then like let's go after like a couple feet or whatever So Falcon won't grab your kid But I have seen people walking there like Yorkies and Chihuahuas with the anti-hawk suit. What does that look like? It's a lot of spikes and bright colors. You can look up anti-hawk Chihuahua costume.

Oh, sick. That's punk as hell um yeah because if you have a Yorkie or chihuahua or like a small poodle or something we're talking like two pounds that's indistinguishable from like a gopher or something now will that also stop a coyote no nothing's gonna stop coyote hmm do we have probably not like as at least it sounds like oh yeah cuz it sounds like America has them in wait West Coast yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah cuz they're out in California and stuff so that would make a lot more sense Yes, they would there's coyotes out in the Eastern Townships That where you are

Not downtown no, no, but but but like you know, there's coyotes everywhere Well, okay. The question is is not are there coyotes is this is there a coyote problem? No, right cuz some areas you're in them some places have coyotes and some places have a coyote problem? No. Right. Unless you're in the mountains. Some places have coyotes, and some places have a coyote problem. All right. So what's new in the world this week? Fucking Evanescence is new. Yeah, man.

This is someone who's been trapped in the year 2005 is just completely losing their fucking mind. Hey, look, it's like if you're waiting for like which one of these Evanescence tracks is going to be associated with Devil May Cry, it's like- The answer is this new one! The brand new one! They worked together.

Great, perfect, awesome, nailing it. Early Aughts New Metal should be the sound, you know? I have to say, like, this musical choice is not something I would have predicted or called, right? But Eddie is correct that it feels right for Devil May Cry to be associated with early aughts new metal. It's doing it.

I totally agree, 100%. Biscuit, Papa Roach. I had a moment when they saw the announcement too, where I like I was like, huh, and I went oh fuck and I was like wait, no New evanescence song not limb biscuit. Uh, no, sorry not lincoln park Because I was like, yeah, okay. Okay, right, right, right. Cool. Cool. Cool They should use old lincoln Park songs is what they should do I mean that would be that would be right in the right up the alley certainly

He should fight Virgil to the to fucking faint I'm not gonna complain about that. That's what I would have put together. I'm not gonna complain about that. Yeah, you know Drew maybe drop some high voltage in there while you're at it. Who knows? In the end is certainly on the table, but... No, in the end is... When Cell fights Gohan, stop it. That's what that song was made for.

Anyway, I think we're on a good track with this. And you know what? Afterlife? Pretty good song. I like it. It's alright. Amy's doing it. Why wait for fan AMVs of your animation when you can just make them official. This just puts like the Devil May Cry anime,

like as if it, it's like, hey man, after we go out and see Daredevil with Ben Affleck, do you wanna get back and like watch the new Devil May Cry anime? Like it is firmly placing it in that time extremely strongly. This is when it would have happened and this is when it would have come out. Yeah. Like it almost feels like the show is pretending that it came out in 2005.

Now I'm like upset that Dragon Ball never officially reached out to get Adam's song going for any part of Super. To officially get it. So when Vegeta pops off, he goes, ah, I never conquered, rarely came. I swear to God. Yeah. I swear to God. It's yeah, if they keep this up and if the idea is that this is going to move forward in time, they are going to probably run out of high profile new metal bands. Oh, absolutely.

But so far so good. I think back and I realize now that someone who thought like this did have a shot to do it way back because that's what's going on with fucking warrior within Prince of Persia that was like had that God smack song associated with it God And of course, Hayes featuring Korn. It's just, it's extra upsetting because I really, really liked the Sands of Time soundtrack and like everything about that was so fucking solid and sick and awesome. And I never bothered going into the- Those three games are so funny.

I never went into the grim dark. I've never seen anything be like, okay, it's normal. It's edgy. No, no, no, go back, go back. Go back, go back, go back. Yeah. And you know, maybe that one Penny Arcade comic is single-handedly responsible.

It might be. For making that happen. I think there was one Penny Arc comic about the the metal thong Chaffing up the the the girls ass in the second game and it just changed the entire trajectory of that franchise Did you see the Release a trailer and announcement for venomom in Guilty Gear Strive. Yes, I did. Okay.

And I'm gonna be honest, it took me a second because my brain actually responded incorrectly and I was like, Venom isn't... Oh right, he's tagging along with fucking Robo Kai. Yes. Yes, because I'm actually my brain My brain has auto completed it to Robo Kai is coming back to guilty gear Well, Robo Kai is now just a floating head as the story ended and they went and they left together They had a nice little epilogue moment. They had a really, you know and they left together. They had a nice little epilogue moment. They had a really, you know, touching scene of him getting out of the, the assassin's guild. He, he sacrificed everything,

but he didn't die and, you know, somehow survived and got his happy ending with him and Robokai in their gay little bakery together. And for some reason, I guess they've had to give the life of the gay little bakery up to return to the fight But now he's calling himself the phantom. Can I just say having a character say I don't know who venom is My name is phantom and then having the word venom Because they're like you the player Needs to know we're not even to pretend here. Like if they go bed man and you're like, oh wait, what? Ooh, what's happening there? I'm a bed man fan.

I don't get it. But no, it's fucking venom. And if you want venom, you're getting your venom. And it's like basically the same design except now he's got a stylish brown jacket over that exposed chest and at a flash, it kind of looks like his chest is exposed anyway. So you can't really- He looks cool. Yeah. Impossible hair continues to be a thing. And I guess just at a glance, like, yeah, it's exactly what I expected, you know, but

I'm surprised in the simplification of his move set that they've they've again the placement of the balls and you're still playing pool and everything's knocking into each other. But they got rid of his spinning doublehead morbid the DP input like one of his what I thought was like a signature move, you know, like my favorite. Yeah, and he doesn't do it. It's like, wait, but that's, that's such a signature move of his. That's so weird to take that away. But yes, if you are interested in the complex visual calculus play style of a pool player in a fighting game,

then this is all that. And then some because you place the balls, you hit them. And then as usual, you know, you can you stack them up for damage, but you can charge to delay or have them bounce off the wall behind and you're just Venom's fucking nonsense, man. Do the mental math on the balls, you know? Yeah. Cool. Good stuff. He's he's he's back. And then Robokai's there as a floating head to... And he helps out in the supers. To land the last hit, to talk shit, and to have his little stick body and cape out.

There will be no full Robokai, but... For now. I guess he could get a full body if they wanted to, you know, but I like the two of them there as is. This is how Cliff is going to come back. I'm just curious as to like, why'd you have to give up the gay bakery? It was very nice and he was having a good time. Something's probably going to happen to the gay bakery and he's like, he has to, he's just going to have jam storyline.

And like his biggest moment is like he had he changes and then gets into his, his, you know, baker's outfit. And then like he tucks his hair back and you can see his face clearly. And it's like, Oh, my God, look at him. I'm just trying to think like, I would actually really like it is like, Hey, what happened What? Look at him. I'm just trying to think like I would actually really like it. It's like hey what happened to the bakery? He's like I don't know how to make any money. I'm an assassin. I Didn't learn any skills that would help me run a bakery. Yeah Probably hottest hottest guilty-gear dude, I'd say I think a lot of people agree with you. Yeah, I think that is uncontroversial

Good stuff he's out and I saw a quick clip of him doing the big the big ball super and Like rushing past it throwing the opponent to the ground and then they get back up and the ball still hits them because there's time for it to travel while you get knocked out and get back up so it's gonna be it's gonna be some bullshit please look forward and then another fighting game announcement Tekken 8 changes were revealed for the new upcoming season and there's just kind of a big one that's going nuts right now. But Tekken throws now hurts you a little bit in Tekken 8. That's weird. Very strange. I don't know. I don't know what they're cooking. I don't know why. There must

be a reason. There must be something to some of the other changes I'm guessing but Harada's basically been like hey You know wait till you try it and people are and Tekken fans long time players are like all basically like this is insane This is why would you do this? This has never happened. And yeah, that's a really drastic change to make it seems like Because for a lot of people like myself included throw, throw teching is super difficult, even in a game where it's like press an attack button to escape. I'm just going to say, teching throws in Tekken is extremely difficult compared to other games. It's the game I have the hardest teching throws in. It's interesting because you don't have to input like a throw button combination to escape

a throw. You have to just hit like left or right punch, you know, one or two, but it's just like the timing of it, you're often busy doing something else, your inputs are not gonna be clean. And you know, in this case, it's like, yeah, so I guess the idea is if you're really, really good at Tekken, you can recognize the throw that's coming at you

based on the hand position. So you can, when you get good enough, you can recognize a throw that has one hand up over the other between left or right arm being up is one or two types of throws. But if you can constantly break those, then there's no threat. Like I know something with King, for example,

like really good players were unable to make effective use of like throw mix ups with him for a while. So he has stuff that you have to break with like three even at certain points. I think the idea here is you can't just escape throws forever and eventually you can die if you're on your last little. Yeah, but no one in tech can escape throws forever. It's super hard. It's very, very. Yeah, it is. So I don't know. I'm the idea is probably that is probably just at high level. You can't do it forever, but I don't know. We'll see. You know, um, Oh, it doesn't. You don't die from chip in this case. Okay. So it just, it just reduces a little bit of life, but it doesn't actually. Okay. Dunno. But it's a very, very big change to a game that's never been like that. It

reminds me of, I guess, it's almost like a deliberate moment going back to Street Fighter 2, where when Super Street Fighter 2 came out, you could never escape throws until they added, you couldn't like completely get out of it, but they added throw softening, right? You could, someone would like, Ryo or Ken would grab you and flip you, and then you would flip out if you pressed your own throw and put quick enough.

And so you'd still, you would take half damage instead of full damage. But the idea was, you know, there was no completely getting out of the throw if you got hit with one. And it's kind of like that here, I guess it's like no It's your fault for even getting grabbed but we can reduce, you know the amount of damage it would do Strange still baffling change to me. I'm totally who is this for I Am I would imagine high level players that are able to recognize the type of throw coming at them almost every time.

But yeah, anyway, that's it there. Another big piece of news that has dropped is at GDC 2025, the formation of a brand new industry-wide union for Game Workers has been revealed, the UVWCWA. This is great. United Video Game Workers Union formed with the tenured communication workers of America. So the idea here is this is a Canadian and US covering union. And typically, I guess the difference between this and a lot of the other game union news we've been hearing about is most of the time, a number of employees at a particular

company would create one and then invariably get shut down or punished or whatever the case is because it only covers the employees at that particular place. You know, so I'm going to use an example. This is not a company that this is happening at, but it's just like, you know, if you try to start a union at Capcom USA, well, Capcom USA can go, oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, and shut those offices down fast enough to kibosh the union. Again, I'm not talking about Capcom USA specifically, that's just an example. But this allows people to just join a general, I work in video games union. And so by being larger and by being not specific to a company, it's much more difficult for a particular company to punish any employees for joining it.

Because how are you going to know they join the union until they come to you with collective bargaining which will be in a couple of years once tons of people have joined this union? So that's the idea is if there's enough numbers behind it then it you know you might like the what might certainly happen and what will happen is you know when there's a number of people in a given company that like are members and then those who aren't and then the treatment might, you know, be different between those as things ramp up. But certainly if this covers enough ground

and enough people join in time, then yeah, there's nothing that when the company is not above the organization at this point, but they're directly bargaining with an outside force, then yes, they get better bargaining power. So very cool. Even at its most base level, even at the most base level, not even describing collective bargaining, right? Just, hey, there is a large video games based union that a certain multitude of people are paying their dues, which means, hey, as part of the union, I think, example, not the company, this is a hypothetical, I think EA fired me or fired my team or laid

us off illegally and I think I'm owed severance. Well, now I can go get my union lawyer or I can go to my meeting with HR and the boss and go, unlike most situations in which I would have to do this out of pocket, I have a union lawyer who will come and fight you and fuck your day up for as long as this takes. That's it. So just pay me my fucking severance. And you're also talking about people that are not necessarily, again, it's not the people working under the company at the company that are beholden to them, but that lawyer or any

of those people that are potentially doing this full time from outside. You know, again, yeah, they can get more done. I think a big cool detail too as well is the fact that it's partnered with the communication workers Of America means that like existing large-scale and existing backbone for this exactly Which means it already had they all those guys already have union lawyers. They already have bookkeepers They have guys who know how to manage a meeting. They've been doing it since 1947. So the framework for everything to have a number of employees in a union outside of the company that they're working at is right there. So they get to

just one-to-one take that template, apply it to video game employees. Great. Just good news all the way around and it covers Canada and America in one fell swoop as well. Even like even like okay even the existence of the union at all is a force for positive good because it may create in at least one situation Man, I really want to fuck this team over but I don't want to be the first company to fight this Sure. Sure. I don't want to be the very first testing ground For battling the new video game union, so you know what?

I'm just gonna now chill a little make no mistake like they're going to fight against it and find ways to do so Right, but the difference is it's gonna be a lot harder when you can't just shut down an entire studio branch or team By you know simply going hey whatever, we can find a reason and just go, yeah, we're shutting that down, we're canceling that game, we're getting rid of this project, whatever the case is, and then nip it in the butt. This is much more difficult for them to do that with, but they'll find a way. They'll find a way, but yeah. Also, if we're talking about unions and we're talking about an industry, like oftentimes on an economic scale, you end up

in this kind of situation where, okay, well, the guys are making unions here. Can we outsource that? It's like if it's a manufacturing thing, like yeah, you might be able to outsource to a country that doesn't have good unions or doesn't have a good civil liberties protection. But we're talking about video games here. We're talking about essentially what is an artistic medium. You're not making crackers. We're talking about essentially what is an artistic medium. You're not making crackers. You're not making car parts or large-scale mass-produced goods. You need the certain people that you have hired to do it.

So what you can do is go, we're starting a new studio that just happens to be placed in a country that doesn't allow unions. But then you have to convince your whole team to fucking move out there, which is hard. Yeah. No, I think a part of this too as well is like North America. I know people that work from Montreal here with companies in the States. I know people that move down to the States to work and go back and forth as well. The fact that this covers both is pretty dope.

Mm-hmm. That's great. Because, yeah, when it comes to stuff like SAG and ACTRA, which is the Canadian equivalent there, you got to go figure out specifically what your country does. There's differences between the two and such, but this doesn't get in the way of anybody that is actively working across border for better job opportunities. So, good stuff. I mean, we're going to talk about it, about Ubisoft in a little bit, but like Ubisoft

should be like uniquely threatened by this type of unionization because like, you know, get like 500 Ubi employees in a room and ask them, hey, how many of you have had crimes committed against you by your boss? And have them raise their hands and have other people in the room see how many people are raising their hands? Yeah. It's probably a couple. Perhaps more than a few. It's more than two!

I can say that with confidence. Yeah. Did you just want to talk about Ass Creed Shadows doing well? Not really, but good for them. I know for a fact that their sighs of relief being heaved, I heard a lot of doom and gloom about what would happen if Assassin's Creed Shadows didn't do well. But it is doing well. What other newbie news was there?

Not to my knowledge. Okay. I just wanted to kind of make fun of them because they're creeps. Okay. Yeah, I honestly wasn't going to go into it, but I know buying the game's map is a microtransaction in that game. Like the in-game map. I saw Coe talking about it and she's been like, ugh.

And I have to agree. Did I see a single player battle pass? Yes, you did. Okay. All right. Yes, you did. Did I see a single player battle pass? Yes you did. Okay. All right. Yes you did. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Hey, there's another game, speaking of Yasuke. There's a game called Yasuke, The Lost Descendant. Why so much noise about Yasuke now? Well, I think there was noise about Yasuke a couple years ago and then a couple projects got announced around the same time. So there was an anime, there was Ask Creed, there was a film project involving Chadwick

Boseman, which I think never ended up happening. And then now there was this other indie game here. And yeah, action game. Definitely wooly-coated, jet set radio style, character design aesthetics with the running up the wall, glowing skates as you slash and grapple hook around the city and swing a sword around. It's full of all kinds of wonderful little wooly-isms. Looks like something interesting to take a look at. Definitely early as hell though, and there is good old framerate jank going down. **JAMIE** Oh man, this is a gray box room. **JAMIE** Yep, and you're also looking at one of those games where this feels like this is where you'd be seeing Twitter or blue sky tweets of like, here's what I figured out today.

Wall running into this move or just like games that are developed in front of you live on social media, essentially. I got to say, I saw some folks on my timeline describing how you know it's a lot harder to find indie games and like the games are like underperforming and There has been some blame put on like the singular decision to disallow direct linking to Twitter as like damaged the games business hmm damaged the game's business. Like every controller that you own has a button that might as well have been put a screenshot that you just saw onto Twitter.

And that is not available anymore. And I think about like games like Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 7, which just exploded as a direct result of that. And a bunch of indie games That you would see just tons of little clips of yeah Yeah, no, that sucks. That's that's that's a real shitty thing. I feel like Stuff that comes like, you know when City of the Wolves is about war is about to drop and like a big part of that Fighting games releases these days is like hashtags for a given character, you know, and the tech being inside of it

and stuff. And that's going to be all divided up as well. I yeah, this it's it sucks. It fucking sucks. I hope that there's some sort of solution. But I feel like I also hope that blue sky adds some DM images soon because I feel like you can't do that. I don't know. Because there's good for DMing images and there's also evil for DMing images. Sure, but I've tried to DM images and I felt that I noticed I couldn't and I was like, oh, that sucks. I wanted to do that and was stopped.

So I was like, well, let me go fucking figure something else out then You can DM text, but you can't DM images yet on B sky. Yeah So Also, well anyway Then beyond this, there was the Future Games Show Spring Showcase. I watched that. It was very interesting. A whole lot of stuff got announced and or shown off.

We can't cover all of it, but we can talk about some stuff that was noteworthy or caught your attention. Seeing the trailer for Expedition 33, Claire Obscur, I am overwhelmed with Lost Odyssey vibes. Oh yeah. Overwhelmed between- So I played hours of it and guess what? Yes. Very strongly. Yeah, at first I was kind of like, oh, it's a traditional RPG with the kind of realistic visuals that seems like it's up the alley.

But now looking at combat, especially seeing the camera angle and the way you like timing mini-games slash some stuff, it's way, way, way way up that alley and that's great because I fucking love Lost Odyssey very very excited for that game that game fucking rules we saw they mentioned a new hell mode for Onimusha 2 so the games re-release is all you need it's the best on a musha game so adding a new difficulty that's nice, but like Dude, I like you don't need to sell me on it. It's on a musha too that games great better than genre no oh Yeah, much better. Oh absolutely okay. Yeah Yeah, no question

What what did we see Did you see Kingmakers? Yeah, Kingmakers. This is club space argument the game, right? This is the best. What if one tactical soldier with modern day weapons and knowledge... And a pickup truck. ...with guns had to fight all of the knights and medieval armies. What could they do? So like they've shown Kingmakers before, but like the trailer just having you go through

a time portal and use your fucking Dodge Ram to just take out like a score of British soldiers is just so fucking incredible. Well, so that's the thing is like, okay, on the one hand, it's just like, okay, this is the, this is the argument. What about what if's the thing is like, OK, on the one hand, it's just like, OK, this is the this is the argument. What about what if one soldier versus old knights? But then on the other hand, you're like, what if America versus ye old British? It's amazing. Yeah. Fun stuff on that.

And it's always like dynasty warriors, numbers of soldiers coming. Oh, absolutely. They showed off something else that is, again, I feel wooly coded, Nitrogen Omega, a TTRPG that is taking a Mecha team, getting the kids in the robot, customizing the robot, doing your moves, and stylish, fun, Saturday morning robot action going on. I want you to know that when I was watching this stream,

I looked over my chat and it was just like 25 lines of text in a row that just said wooly. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm mm-hmm correct the game yep, wooly and And it's turn-based Let's go. Yeah, I know right Let's fucking go Yeah, I appreciated the The the character designs looking trigger esque as well. I

A lot of that a lot of that was very much my speed. I'm hoping for good things. I've seen other projects that like, there's other stuff that has promised robot RPGing that has not scratched my itch completely. I kind of didn't fully click with Wolf's Stride, but I'm hoping for some good things out of this one. I think it's super messed up that the best two games you could play as a turn-based Mecha game are Into the Breach and PlayStation 1 version of Front Mission 3 Like that's such a slam dunk as a genre and it's like, that's what you got.

Yeah, there's, you know, Phantom Brigade, but that's not for everybody. There was the game I saw, like I saw a trailer for this before and then like they had more footage here. The remake of the end of the greatest RPG of all time. I hope that game is as interesting as its title's premise. Well, it seems like you take a look at that protagonist and you go, it's fucking Chrono. It's Chrono walking around. No, you don't know that.

Yeah. And I think the title premise and the bit there is like, okay, how well is the game behind the game going to be? Because clearly it's a bit of an inscription situation, right? There's going to be the fact that you're playing the RPG remake. It's basically like, what if we did like Chrono Resurrection, you know, in a way that- Don't mention that name to me. Chrono Resurrection, where we're just going to have limited existence, limited scenes of these moments, but it's going to be in a Octopath Traveler style visual design, but there's a metagame behind it where I guess the studio making it or something. There's some sort of plot behind the remake of the

game plot or so that adds a puzzle element to it. So let's see. Let's see what's going on. I know that it's not just, hey, look, it's an RPG slice. No, it's a puzzle game. It's actually very similar to tunic. Did you play tunic? No, but I remember that's the game where you find instructions from the manual to learn what's going on in the game and stuff. They mentioned that here too as well. Yeah. Finding the instruction manual in game because it's like, oh, you remember that game, right?

If you don't, we've included the manual. So yeah. Well, like interesting premise. that game right? If you don't, we've included the manual. So yeah, like interesting premise, you know, I think what you're seeing in the visual style is not meant to be like, necessarily like, Oh, look, that'll attract you. Don't you want to play this RPG? Like, that's not the point. You know? Yeah. So let's see what they're up to. They might be cooking. You know? Yeah. So, let's see what they're up to.

They might be cooking. Or that, it'll be terrible. That feels like it's either going to hit or just, yes. The name of the game is the remake of the end of the greatest RPG of all time. That is the name of the game. Better be a really good game. I'm just saying, it's got to be the greatest RPG of all time or else this is stupid. The logo for it is definitely Xbox Live Indies font.

What else was there? I Hate This Place, which was kind of like a cell shaded derby girl looking thing. Seems alright, seems like you're like little little Derby Girl Harley Quinn style character doing stuff. In Naya, was like a cool looking little dead cells. So I did a sponsored look at that game when I played it was super early. A cool little Metroidvania, very fluid animation. Yeah, combat looked pretty swag. There was the other

of Vania was Madrigora, I think. It looked much more traditional RPG mechanics while Metroidvaniaing or justvaniaing I should say. There was the system talk system shock to remaster. was the System Shock 2 remaster. You know, fucking thank God. That game, like GOG is doing its own thing, which I don't know if we talked about, but it's really nice to be like, oh, could there just be a normal, easy way to play System Shock 2, please? Now I'm not sure if they were just doing a side by side or if it's actually a feature,

but it seemed like you could just switch back to the old game if you didn't. I'm not sure. I think, well, it looks like it's just the old game cleaned up and... It looks, yeah, it looks quite close, but I don't know if you could play the old game within the remake or not. So it's not... the remake is a totally separate thing. So this is this is a real like, this is like their remaking System Shock 2. But if you don't want to remade System

Shock 2, well, here's regular System Shock 2 just cleaned up. Okay, because in the trailer when they started doing the the side by side swiping, I was, yeah, I wasn't sure if it was like... Oh, because System Shock 1 got the same thing, where they re-released it, cleaned up, and then they made a full-scale remake in modern context. I mean, I'm always a fan of when you allow that to be possible, and even better is where... That's hard, though.

But even better is when you can switch it off immediately, you know, and like have the real have like yeah the new thing and the old thing interchangeable right away is nuts. I don't think any game is ever going to be as impressive as Halo anniversary in terms of that specific gimmick. The only other one that pulled it off, but unfortunately the game itself fucking you know, we don't talk about is the turtles in time bit where they had the turtles in time You're like a real thing running behind the remake, but then they was so bad. It got delisted You know But yeah, that's a feature. I appreciate What was there there was Rufy and the riverside Did you see that thing? It's-

I did- so I saw everything there. Yeah, I thought that looked- Okay, so I have a soft spot- a place in my heart for Sonic Roboblast 2 and that style of 3D. I love that style of 3D a lot. Um, and this is a game that looks a whole lot like that, which is basically 3D crisp textures, old retro style, but high res textures on a 3D environment, mode seven. What is the name of the game again? Ruffy and the Riverside. Okay, that would explain the results I'm getting.

Are you FFY? I was typing. OK. Yeah, it's like, wow, the search engine optimization for this Rufy game is terrible. Oh, my God. It's like ruffy. Roughly, roughly. Got it. Yeah. And then it seems like the deal here with, you know, kind of having this sprite-based character running around in a 3D world is you can target something and grab its texture and apply that texture to another part of the world.

That's cool, man. And then change the world. So yeah, you pull ice and then drop it on the ocean and then the whole ocean freezes or, you know, I guess you others demo available right now Just I'm always a sucker for this visual style, so I'm gonna lean into it whenever I see it Then we saw it before a little bit but I guess a little bit more of south of midnight So the midnight looks really good. I'm probably gonna to cover that when it comes out in the books. Yeah, looks cool.

And also just huge shout outs because Compulsion, which is a Montreal based studio, had some friends that were working there actually. The last thing they made was We Happy Few. Oh, that game's not good. But this is a massive departure, it looks like. Yeah, it sure is. Right, this looks completely different. So, yeah, interested in seeing what's going on with this,

but awesome art style, cool stuff going on with the visuals and- The framerate in particular. And combat, we'll see what's going on but looks dope and then we Got to see a little bit more of baby steps What the fuck is bed at Foddy cooking? The what if I woke up hung over So I that's that's the good, but I couldn't figure out why what made it hard like what was the control scheme terrible control?

But they won't tell it they weren't telling you what the control was show you right they didn't data You don't know what it was, but you're like clearly we're struggling to walk, but I don't know why yet You know and now they explained it in that so Every step has to be manually input with the stick. Yeah, it's QWOP. It's QWOP again. But I guess you have to perhaps, you can't fully swipe it forward. You have to kind of like, because QWOP is, they're asking different skills of you.

QWOP is asking you to hold complex keys in a particular pattern to emulate running. Bend the knees and then bend the feet. Getting over it is asking you for mouse precision on your aiming and then the game about climbing, same thing. You have to hold multiple keys on the keyboard. Like this, it seems as if it's asking for accuracy of your thumb control on both sticks. So not exactly quop, right? Quop is keyboard confusion. I think this is asking you for precise stick placement. And, you know, getting from just standing to onto a thin little, thin little tree, thin little thing, and then jumping

off of stuff, it's gonna be insanely difficult. But it seems as if at the very, like what he's doing now is, it's a big, full open world game that you have to walk around one step at a time. But falling off of ledges and into bullshit just leads you to new areas. So, like, you don't have to do the hard path

to get to things. I can't wait. You could explore on your own pace. I can't wait for the VTubers super cuts of them getting super mad. But you know, that's obviously the whole point. It is. Is to see Korone losing her shit and start barking. Yeah, pretty much.

It's pretty much the only things I noted to bring up. I don't know if there's anything else that you saw. I have a minor piece of game development news that actually fits into our earlier discussion about waiting for games to come out. Mm-hmm. So The new Civ has come out the new civilization Civ 7 right to mixed reviews Right primarily that's got a weird new interface interface that has some bugs in it

Turns out There is a direct causal link that caused that game's interface to maybe not be so good because the number one developer in response to fixing Civilization 6's interface bugs was a gentleman who is not currently working at Fir axis I Luigi man Joanie I've heard I've heard about this yes contributed some mods no no he fixed hundreds of Civ six bugs hmm like 25% of the total bug count on 6-6. That's crazy Yeah, okay, but he is um Currently in disposed currently in disposed

Hmm Well, you know, um, I mean you always hear about like those those Like like power wiki editors and stuff where you know, there's like a whole lot of people on the job But like there's always the one or two that just there's always the power use the power user, you know And like there that like that one person that gets shit done more than the other people are getting shit I got a buddy of mine Like who works in the in the tech field that is like that Mm-hmm who will finish all of his work and then be

like, where's more work? And he's like, you have finished two weeks of work in an afternoon. I have nothing to give you. You have to wait until your coworkers are done. That's nuts. That's nuts. Wow. Very good at regression. And bug fixes this this Luigi Mangione. How about that? Yeah. Okay. Oh, what was that other game with the animal use protocol? It's like a first person shooter with some animals going on animal use protocol I want I want ever so you have a you have a rat the talk mm-hmm play a monkey mm-hmm it is it is it's by the it's by the stasis bone

totem people oh that's who's making it okay which is why it's by the stasis bone totem people. Oh, that's who's making it, okay. Which is why it's so fucking weird. Very bizarre trailer, yeah. I'm gonna say that Animal Use Protocol may be the most upsetting game title I've ever heard in my entire life. It just sounds so fucking nefarious. And that's probably true.

That's probably pretty fucking nefarious. Well, yeah, I mean, between the rat and the monkey, I'm assuming you're breaking out of a fucking testing session. No, I think you're sent in. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, not great. There's also that furry game with trains for an incredibly specific set of audiences that will love it a lot. Oh, yes I remember the name of it. Whatever cozy cozy cozy

fuck Express or Locomoto Yeah, yeah animal crossing on a train why not that's fine, you know, why not I'm surprised it hasn't been done already I'm sure it has been Mm-hmm I Mean it might be fucking refantasio outside, but it can it can be cozy animal crossing inside this train Did you know by the way why it's called refantasio, I the way, why it's called Re-Fantazio? I don't know why.

So Re-Fantazio is obviously, it's the Esperanto version of Re-Fantasy. Of course. Right? Of course. And Re-Fantasy, as in regarding fantasy or return fantasy, is because they're like, we want to return to the traditional fantasy genre. But they lied.

Well no they didn't they actually did return to fantasy. They're liars. So after doing a bunch of games about like kids in high school and we're like when's adults and they're like fuck off here's dragons and knights and we're like yeah okay that's fine. Yeah like I remember when it was like the title project refanasy I was like what does that mean and it's like oh I saw some of the we want to get we want to get back to our roots I saw some of the prototype stuff they showed off at GDC and I have to say it's always a it's always a fucking trap

when you see that unworkable promo shit because like you always have this oh that looks so much cooler oh shit Hulkenberg's old design was so cool oh no why can't we get that it's like, because it didn't have a cohesive thing and they didn't find it workable. But still, ah, that old menu looks cool. I like what we got. Let's take some letters. If you want to send in a letter, send it to castlesuperbeastmail.com. That's castlesuperbeastmail.com. You can, in fact, send a story of when you were robbed

by animals i'm sure it happens often uh okay dear clearly visible castle and barely visible beast levi here why does the adjust brightness slider until the image is barely visible setting in every game suck literally i can't think of a single game where it works well and since it does suck so much, why do you games still use it so much? I legitimately don't understand why developers can't figure out a better way to do it. This depends heavily on your monitor and heavily on your video settings, I've noticed. I find it does lie a lot of the time. But obviously, I get a weird version

of this when switching from direct HDMI input into an Elgato, right? Because the fact that we play through a capture device means we're seeing shit differently. The colors get thrown off in a lot of cases. And in some cases, it brightens things but flattens them out But yeah, I feel as if in horror games where it's like you set set it just to be barely visible Fairly visible barely visible and then when the actual time in the game happens where you're at night

It's actually just there's nothing You can't see shit at all. So and I'm like that fucking sucks. That's that I have to go gamma to it up So I've done I went down a Multitude of deep dives on this subject because it drove me nuts So I want to give a shout out to Resident Evil 6, the game with the worst brightness indicator of all time. An indicator I have never seen a single human being ever correctly use. Are you familiar with the RE6 brightness indicator, Wooly? No.

I will find it for you, although I can probably see that you're looking for it right now. No, because I was actually thinking of when you switch your PS4 or PS5 to... not 4K. What setting is it? Where it has its own baked in OS level version of this that you configure. And that actually worked, but not the individual game settings. HDR. I've sent you the RE6 one. It's a black number six on a spotlight on the ground. It says, adjust brightness so that number six is barely visible it is

literally Impossible to use this to do your game because if you make the six barely visible your screen is completely black So dumb it's so completely black that if you try and do that you will not be able to find the options menu and do that, you will not be able to find the options menu to fix your brightness because the menus will be so dark. I have never been able to figure out what the fuck is going on with this. So RE6 started this because I was like, what the fuck is going on here? And what's going on here is I have determined what the actual failure state of the brightness indication on every calibration screen is. And it is the word barely.

The word barely in terms of barely visible is not clear and is wildly determined by personal taste. Okay? Super subjective. What a dev considers to be barely visible at a brightly lit PC in the middle of the day versus a darkly lit television in the middle of the night is a night and day difference. Also, it depends on whoever calibrated the test.

I know this because I got into a fucking thing a while ago, around this time, where I would go and find E3 footage and dev footage of the games running and me going I am under the assumption they're running it at the intended brightness for their own game and comparing it to the settings the game tells you to set. Always wrong. always wrong. Games being shown in trailer or dev footage or at shows almost always have the brightness at default or higher. Like I can count the number of games on one hand that I was like I need to turn

the brightness down because I can see into dark areas. So my assumption with the is that barely visible is if there's a monster in the darkness, what do you want that to look like? You should be able to see a silhouette. Exactly right. What you should be like, how visible do you want that thing in the darkness to look or so? But yeah, it doesn't end up turning out, it doesn't end up working out that way. I feel like with Elden Ring and with FF7, I had to constantly change it. Shit, hold on a second. Doorbell, BRB.

Oh, you know, I gotta, I gotta help. All right, there we are. Yeah, no, excuse me. I think it's election season, so some representatives just rolled up like, hey, how's it going? I'm like, ah, you know, going good. How do you feel about becoming a state? Yeah, no. Okay, cool. Oh, they really asked you that? No, but it was basically unsaid. It was just like, you know, it was like Ding Dong, hey, you know why we're here. Yeah. Yeah, I know why we're here. I gotta be blunt, man. If I was camp, if I was polling in Montreal and hit ding dong and an Anglophone black man showed

up to the door, I'd be like, I know. Okay, bye. You have a good day. How you doing? All right, cool. All right. Yeah. Okay. No, I'll mark you down. We good? We good? All right. Yeah. No, it's just the's just the the the the timing, the error, the moment, you know. Anyways, what do we got going on? Yeah, every brightness indicator should say a jet adjust brightness to taste and then give you a dark scene and a bright scene. Yes. So the ones that show you the actual game actually

are way better. So I think Cyberpunk shows you a screenshot of, or does it? No, something else I was playing recently shows you like two or three moments of the actual footage. And you're like, yeah, okay, now I know what this means here. Adjust to taste. Yes, yeah, okay now. I know what this means here Adjust to taste yes, no, please do What I would like if you were if you're making it if you're making like soup and this and the fucking instruction said add

Salt until you can barely Really taste that is very different depending on the individual really tastes the same. That is very different depending on the individual. No, it wasn't Cyberpunk. It was a different game, I forget which. I would love, you know what I want, how about this future? How about a future where benchmarking aside, you tweak your PC setting and watch it live change in front of you to taste

You know Live render switches that you can just like right in front of that Pretty rare though, but I don't even mean like unpause repause I mean have a rendered like scene in front of me where I'm tweaking the strato settings where I'm tweaking You know In front of me where I'm tweaking the strato settings where I'm tweaking, you know Every every pass to see what it looks like right away, you know anyway There you know what somebody in the chat mentioned something and I really got to give a shout out to Every character creator that places your character in a lighting environment. It does not exist in the game. Yes, yes, yes.

The backgrounds that are nonsense and mean nothing. Dragon's Dogma, right? You change your lighting to see how your lighting is gonna look in a cave, at day, at night, you know, in the city, all different environments. Huge difference. Lighting is the difference between the Street Fighter 6 character faces in World Tour and then in fighting ground

Yeah, you know every time someone went. Oh god. What's wrong with Terry or my face into? Oh my god They look incredible is like yeah, that's the lighting from the mode specifically All right Frosty says hey Chewie and fuckface, I'm going to Galloping Ghost for a day as part of my vacation. Would like suggestions on what unique cabinets I should look out for. Looking for games like Armadillo Racing

that have control schemes or mechanics that can only be enjoyed via cabinet. Keep being awesome. I don't even remember the last time I was in an arcade. I can definitely, I mean, unique mechanic-wise, if you get a chance to check out Punch-Out arcade, that's a lot of fun if you've never played it, because you have like a boxing control screen,

and it's a different version of Punch-Out from the NES or Super Punch-Out or any of those ones. The arcade one is very different. My favorite thing that I played, and I think my favorite arcade game from going to Galloping Ghost was Blue Dolphin. Go find Blue Dolphin, it's amazing. It plays like a Contra game,

but with Dreamcast era, Naomi visuals, sound and style. Go find that and play it. Black Knight, go play that pinball game. It's got the best soundtrack ever. The music is incredible. You'll know it from the incredible theme with the choir going as you approach the machine. Yeah, Punch Out, Black Knight, Blue Dolphin. And if you see Outfoxys, try that shit, because it's wacky. It's a crazy fucking arena fighting game, not fighting game, split screen. It's weird, but you should try it. It's very, very unique. Yeah, there you go.

That's what I would say. Kay says, Dear Western Patent Eastern Woolly. What's up, man? Quick one here. What are our stances on opening and eating or drinking something and the store before paying for it? Is this tech off of, is it off meta? Is it niche? Or should it be an automatic DQ if the TO finds out? I was raised with, so like I remember my dad got really upset one time when

I was eating pizza, walking back to the car. I was just eating a slice and he's like, don't eat on the street, whatever. So he's all uppity about that part. Um, I not a big deal at the incredible intensity of the response in chat. I am, I am blown away personally based on that. And based on that, like kind of overcorrection, I would say, nah, I'm not down with that. I think it's weird. I think you know He bought by it then eat it, you know opening it up and walking around is little Yeah I don't see the issue at all. Okay

Well, I I have I see the issue at all. Okay. Well. I have no issue whatsoever. If I may. I have done it like once, where I just opened up, I went to get like a pre-made sandwich, and then I grabbed, I took a bite of it, and then I walked up to the self checkout and then scanned it in, and then bought it, and walked out, and never dealt with a human,

and I'm just like, what? Well, Pat, your experience walking around the store in general might be quite different from mine. That's true. On a regular basis. But like, I mean, I worked at a grocery store, and no one gave a shit. No one ever gave a shit.

I will say that when people are already finding ways to float around the aisle and see what I'm up to. I don't want to give any extra ammunition by deciding to open up anything or whatever. I'm actually overcompensating in the other direction by grabbing a basket and holding up and being very clear about my... I am shopping. You don't need to follow me.

I'm shopping. don't need to follow me. I'm shopping look at me shop My personal on the other side of that situation experience is that there is one dramatic indicator of What causes you get followed around and expected to be a thief in a major grocery store and it's how you smell It's do you smell like booze from five feet away? If you reek of alcohol, the guy is going to glue to you. Well, certainly that would be a fast indicator, I'm sure. But I've definitely had things like that happen from people that are nowhere near close enough to get a whiff you know sometimes it's simply just on site and it's like okay right we know the deal um yeah just

anyway I feel weird about it and like I'm way just I feel weird about it and I'm on top of that trying to cause as little issues as possible as a shopper in general 24 seven for the rest of my life. So I'm going to very firmly wait until I have purchased the thing before I open it up and consume it. Yeah, on a, like on a social equity situation in the world that we live in, everyone is going to have

a different experience. But on the etiquette aspect of it, I don't find it to be rude. Some people would react to this kind of thing like it's a social ill. How could you do that? What if your card bounces? It's like, you're gonna pay for it. What if your card bounces and you have no cash? Oh, then you're fucked and you're a dumbass. So then don't do that. Then don't do it.

You don't know you can pay for something, maybe don't eat it. Or wear your good shoes. You know, I think just play it safe and just don't fucking do it. Wait like 30 seconds. Just be a human being and just clear the chart, clear the fucking checkout and then open it up. Go nuts. You know, and again, like I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm compensating off of being told, don't eat the slice of pizza walking from the store back to the car. You know?

That's extra insane. Yeah, but it's him. And pizza's been paid for. Yes, exactly. But it's him just being like, it's the, you know, people will see and you look like whatever, like a food eater on the street. You look like a guy who wants to eat a fucking slice

of pizza. You know, and that's not proper or whatever. So, you know. but yes, no. While I'm very aware of my body language, while I'm standing in the aisle of a store, I'm very aware of the angles I turn, I'm very aware of how I walk and I'm very aware of where I'm looking and how I'm looking at things. I am examining this product that I am interested in purchasing, and I'm going to purchase it. A lot of the times I like to, I often, if I know exactly what I want and I'm making a beeline for that area, I'm almost robotically. If I don't have a basket,

I'm robotically holding the items, you know, and it's sometimes I'll be like, ah, yep, be right back. Hold on a second. And just that's my, that's my MO, you know. I once had a interaction that is technically part of this discussion in which I brought in the stroller with the baby and then I'm like, oh, I'll put the items underneath the stroller and then I'll take them to the cash and then I'll take them out of the bottom of the stroller and run them on the thing and buy them. And someone's like, hey, you can't do that. You got to use our basket. I'm like, where am I going to put my stroller and my baby? And they're like, well, you're not. And they just kind of they just kind of stopped. And I'm like, are you telling me that like, moms with their six month olds coming to the grocery store

have to put the baby in a car like a fucking car? Are you serious? No, you want me to hold the store bag on my shoulder while I'm pushing the car What the fuck? What are you talking about? Yeah Someone write will he's the kind of person to whistle while walking behind someone That's tough because performative innocence Listen listen out That's tough. Because performative innocence is suspicious. That's tough. Listen, listen.

As somebody, as somebody who's watched enough people cross a street late at night as we're walking across paths and I'm like, it's the way it's what it is. Right. Um, I will, you know, if depending on the setting, depending on where we are, what's going on or what's happening, I might, yeah, I might absolutely preempt that I might have my, I'll pull my phone out. I got my headphones on. I'm not interested in you. In fact, I'll make the distance on the sidewalk. I might walk this way. I might even preemptively cross the street. Hey, lady. Don't worry about it. I'm on the other you were just I don't even just you know, you should just scream out. I'm gay. Yeah. Well, um, just do it Not always that'll that'll that'll that'll make him feel a lot better. Yeah

Well, you know, that's that's one of the many things they might be afraid of checked off the list. So You know, it's just the way it is man, it's just the way it is, man. It's just the way it is. I'm gay and you look broke. See? I fixed it. Problem solved. You know what, Pat? You're right. I don't know why I never thought of that. My whole life here I've been living this way. I should have just been doing that instead.