Castle Super Beast - CSB316: Sparda Woke Up To Snowbunnies

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

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["Sailor Moon Theme"] Oh, that's so good. That's so good that we got one second from going live before any of us noticed that we weren't recording the podcast at all and we're just sitting around just hitting buttons Hey, that's called an audio shimmy right there Oh yeah, is that yeah? Just take the audio throw? Exactly I think this analogy is already falling to pieces No, the audience tried to tech and there was no throw

so we walked back two steps and then we hit a button Hello, that's good stuff. Hey, Willie. What's going on with you? How was your week today? How was your week today? How was your week this week? Oh good doing good. Had a week did some stuff, you know had some fun Yeah, let's uh, you know, feeling nice and energetic. I also feel pretty good. Yeah, it's not Monday, so that's nice. No, it certainly is. And yeah, I don't know. I guess I've been up to some things. I'm sure you were.

So there's one thing that I would like to know if you were up to, and I don't necessarily mean to talk about it right now. I just want to hedge my expectations for the remainder of this conversation as to whether or not you watched that TV show we talked about briefly last week. Did you watch that TV show we talked about briefly last week. Mm-hmm Did you watch that TV show we talked about last week? I'm gonna click a button visually over here Uh-huh. Ah I'm so glad you had that ready What a what a good way to just don't jump right in it and that button says DMC spoiler cast So we will jump in when the time so we're gonna just start with this

Are you do hey can I would like to put a ground rule on this I? Would like to personally limit Discussion of how Addie Shankar may or may not suck ass Because I think there's plenty to the show to talk about without that. Well, I don't know anything about that. Well, that's perfect then. That has nothing to do with any of what we're talking about with the show. I think there's plenty in the text.

So I take it by your energy that you want to have your pudding before you eat your meat? You want to go? Oh no, I actually, I just wanted to know if there was pudding. Ah, okay. All right, so we'll get back to that. Because like, hey, you know when you have a dinner

and it's a family dinner and you look over and there's like a big ass gigantic fucking chocolate cake sitting on the counter. Yes You're like I know where I know where to portion my fucking guts on this one I have watched the entirety of this show So did you do it in in one go in one sitting in one sitting all right? So something like four hours, right? No less. It's basically a four hour movie of sorts.

Add extra time for pausing and rewinding to check that you read the correct thing or heard the correct thing. Mm-hmm. But yeah, we'll get to that in a bit. First. you read the correct thing or heard the correct thing. But yeah, we'll get to that in a bit. First, I'd like to- Yeah, let's get to the steak. Yeah. Before the pudding.

100%, and you know, let these fuckers wait a minute, all right, we know what you're here for. You're here for the premium, the premier Devil May Cry fandom experience. You need an aperitif and an amuse bouche Yes. before you get to dessert. And you tune into this podcast to hear the forefront

of Devil May Cry opinions. So like, you're saying that? Is that true? I think it might be true. Yes, the premier opinions such as what does it do in Gunslinger? And Dwarb. I think about that shit all the time, Woolie. I legitimately, I love that moment so much. Okay, you know what? We're starting now because I have to ask you something.

We're starting, nevermind, cancel. DMC's one of the cats is starting now. We're starting now because I have to ask you something Because I have to ask you something yeah, I Did not want to Because with that like okay, we talk about these games a lot. We've been talking we do for a long time and You know whatever we can are you we can say that we've been talking about them before they really caught on In a larger. I have been talking about devil may cry and to the point of including it in high school media projects back when I was in fucking high school and so I know and

You know, despite appearances, you know, you're actually quite humble in many ways in life, in some ways. So I ask you, when you saw, just follow my thought. Wasn't ready for that, okay thank you. Follow, follow, yeah sit down be humble, but follow my thought process. When you saw that character with the skull bandana, did you have any thoughts? No, not really.

Okay, because I didn't have too many thoughts either, and then a big character standing next to him that looked like the rest of that design appeared, and then right after that, there was a character on the team that they went, hey, Pat, something, something, something, and it was the black guy whose name was Pat, and I was like, oh, hmm, OK, whatever. I didn't catch that at all.

That's a stretch. That's super random. Yeah, I'm just like, whatever. And then a Punisher Skull type thing. It's off brand, whatever. It's a stretch, right? I feel that might be a fair stretch. And I put that in the recesses of my brain going, wooly,

fucking relax. What are you feeling? Big for your britches over here? Get out of here. in the recesses of my brain going, Wooly, fucking relax. You know, what are you feeling? Big for your britches over here? Get out of here. And then apparently Asmongold was the guy on the mic that was looking- Now that's obvious.

Right? Because it's been literally stated aloud. And confirmed online. So when I was done, I'm like, oh, there are YouTube people Here and that other blondish guy that with the goatee that hangs out with ninja That is a little bit Maximilian ish is a little bit Maximilian ish No, I was like maybe maybe I don't know I don't wanna you know, I don't know it's a stretch. I agree you have I agree thing like

More than like no tummy vibe. No. No, it's it's that it's I hate Connecting fucking string dots so trust me I'm the first person to just toss this whole thing in the garbage But I am just saying like it entered my brain a little bit And then I went nah, and then I saw the asman gold thing and I went oh And then I went, nah. And then I saw the Asmongold thing and I went, oh, and then I went, ah, let me ask you what you think. I didn't I didn't pick up on that. All right. So then never mind.

It's a reach. It's a reach. Now, let me tell you, if Dante walked up and said, wow, check out these blorbs, then I would have been like, hmm, okay. And then I noticed a follow from somebody that was also somewhat tangential to this thing. So then I was like, oh yeah it was possible yeah maybe they just were really excited to hear your thoughts about the television program today maybe this thing so that I was like but whatever I when it's a reach it's a reach and I'm the first person to throw out.

But you should just ask them. I'm, but I'm the first person. You should just look like a big boy and just ask them. I'm just the first person to throw out anything that I think is a reach and be like, nah, probably not. I don't imagine so, because why would anyone give a fuck about this stupid shit? So fine, ignore that um I

Know my tiny baby skeleton is an ultra kill that I do know that is confirmed Baby skeleton is confirmed to be in my coffin no well no one else would have such a tiny tiny skeleton shared coffin at that very uncomfortable Shared coffin at that very uncomfortable Bubba bubba bubba Alright, so so so I

Mean quite frankly. I was kind of waiting to hear a character like be like hey dongery. What you doing over there? Yeah, yeah, yeah hey is maybe next season yeah, hey is maybe next season yeah Hey, is that mr.. Sun high? He's a fuck off Anyway, um okay, okay, okay, so so yeah, let's just let's just roll right into it um Let's that so first. I wanted to ask that okay, and then second hmm Let me let's start with what I enjoyed

Yes, I think I think I'd like to do that That's where I started with when I start talking last week where I'm like it is definitely better written and better acted and better looking Than the 2007 anime that is without a doubt Like the case I'll take your word oh you haven't seen it oh it's it's bad oh yeah it's really I never did I straight-up never did it's quite poor But, so what was it? The first off, what did I, what did I, okay, the intro is still cool. Yeah, I'll agree with that. That intro, that intro's rad.

That's a lot of fun. And you know, I don't think I ever internalized as well that the, it's called Roland Air Raid, Air Raid bomb or Air Raid bomber or something like that. That's why it's extra crazy that it was performed on top of the World Trade Center. So Air Raid, like I mean, I don't assume that that as well in addition to the timeframe is accidental because it's's air raid siren, there we go.

Right, you have the America and then you have the move where you DT and you go pew pew pew. So, the intro is cool. When it comes to the music, I do not hate all the remixes. I think that the slow version of the old songs that plays during the credits are pretty good. Yes, that's what I saw. I was just kind of annoyed

that they only really happened during the credits. So that's that. When I hear Devil's Never Cry in the slow version, the cinematic version, I kind of feel like, oh, that's a cool vibe to something that's like, you know, there's a little bit of that nostalgia where you go like, oh yeah, if I'm watching a Devil May Cry movie, you might expect to hear that, you know,

or see it in a trailer or something. But the main reason why you enjoy that is because I'm like hoping that there's a motif that comes back when a fucking slap-in version comes around. It doesn't have to be- I'm a big fan of a good leitmotif, man. Yeah. I'm crazy about them. And it doesn't have to around. It doesn't have to be. I'm a big fan of a good leitmotif, man. Yeah. I'm crazy about him.

And it doesn't have to be like the just lifted original one, but like, I want, but a sick ass version that would come back and hit alongside the original Devil's, alongside the softer Devil's Never Cry would have been fun. But I enjoyed that, right? There's a song that sounds- It was a really nice end to that first episode. Definitely.

There was a song that sounds like V's theme, but it wasn't. It just kinda had the cadence of it in the chorus. Da da, da da, da da. There's a song that pops off somewhere that has that thing going on. So yeah, there's that element to it. Seeing character designs change drastically, like ladies for example is when you're like, oh, I like what lady wears and okay, we're doing something different.

But Captain Commando outfits for everybody is rad as shit. And I like their Captain Commando. Because I actually completely agree with you that putting them in Captain Commando outfits is really cool. I think the whole team standing there, like clashes. I think if it was just Lady, that would be one thing.

But like the whole Dark Comm Captain Commando gang look like they're from the future. I think though the idea was probably that like, well one, when you have a bunch of them standing there in the armor and you have that one that's got the same shades and hair, you're like, oh, for sure that's what we're doing. But also, well, if the idea was to not make Captain Commando

disgrace his legacy, you know, as a hero of the future. Yeah, but you got a bunch of folks here that, there's the sympathetic ones that get off to, you know, midway through, and then there's the ones who straight up commit the war crimes, you know? So, overall, it's not great when you're like, it's almost like evoking the Captain America kind of imagery and then doing the most heinous fucking black-off shit, you know? Which I guess Bucky is to a degree.

But anyway- I would like to make a point that is never mentioned out loud in the TV show, but considering the rules and metaphors they're going under, those demons are not combatants. They're terrorists. So you can't do war crimes to them. Ah. Right. They're also probably not human under the Geneva Convention, right? Yeah, they are. So that doesn't apply. Hell didn't sign no Geneva Convention.

Which Dante literally brings up. Okay, what else did I, what did I, was I fight with? You know what? Johnny Young Bosch on Dante, I just settled into it. I just settled into it. I just settled into it. It was, it still is weird, but I was able to just relax and let it go. When he got more upset, it certainly started to sound way more Nero.

Yeah, it does. And you can't have- He's chilling? When he's getting mad. When he's relaxing? Yeah, when he's chilling and talking shit, you're like, okay, it's Dante. And as soon as he starts to get agitated and scream you're like I started here It's DMC for Nero specific. Yeah, absolutely And you just can't you can't get rid of that, right? So so

Yeah, just being real about like, you know, how much I expected that to bother me versus how much it actually did I was expected to be ripped out way more than I actually was. So there's that, there's the outfits. I assume you're going to talk up the actor behind White Rabbit just killing it. Well, actually, I was going to talk up Kevin Conroy, because I think- Yes. I think Bane is a very, he did a great job as a shitty fucking evil human. And, you know, as many of these games go to show you, humanity is the real demons, and he's a proper contemptible son of a bitch.

So, amazing job to Kevin Conroy, rest in peace. You did it. You did a good job. And that's a very hateable vice president. Of course, the, you know, extreme. I would like to stop you for a second because I think Left 4 Dead actually solved this discussion like 20 years ago in one of the first safe rooms

in Left 4 Dead there's an in spray-painted text we are the real monsters with Sharpies underneath it by different people going no that's the zombies idiot I think you're stupid I hope you are dead now stupid I hope you are dead now subtext that's great you know what people in dark com would say that mm-hmm you know maybe we are the real monsters what about that thing that's that's a that's an actual yeah what about Cavalier Angelo? Yeah. And then you get your, well, you're making your modern colonial parallels and you got your modern American government up on blast. But at the same time, it's more

of a W figure in the seat and a Pence in the- Oh, it's outrageously Bush and Cheney. Like it's so- So Cheney running the show, definitely, but I guess the religious aspect of it struck me as Pencey. If he was all business, I would have read that more Cheney. I think painting Dick Cheney as actually the devil is really funny. It is, it is. When we were just doing that, I was like, okay, this is pretty funny. But like as much as the, like the,

I'm running the real show Pence bit, or rather Cheney bit is very clear, but you have to admit that like the religious tilt on it is strikes us as very Pence, right? I feel like that's, you know, that's a thing. Bane seems like the kind of guy to shoot somebody hunting and have them apologize to him. And then say it was God's will.

Yeah, it was God's will you survived. So yeah, there was that. Kevin Conroy killing it there. White Rabbit, fantastic. I thought he did a good job, but I thought he was like weirdly used. I had this weird, strange feeling that the only reason, like that he, I feels like they sought him out so that when he says Mary's name, it sounds like Batman.

I mean, when he literally says Arkham, you go, oh. Yeah. Every time he says Arkham as the name, you just, I'm like, yeah, right, true. Her name is Arkham. That is, that is in fact her name, but, oh, anyway, you know, you can argue the presidential reference shit, but regardless, big religion. Then there's, yeah, White Rabbit who again, yucked it up and definitely I feel like you know, Addy went

to do the thing where it's like if you're adding an original character, it has to be a good one. It can't be an annoying, shitty OC that feels Mary sued into the situation and to be fair, he is not an original character do tell why why rabbit is from the DMC 3 prequel manga however he is a relatively minor character whoopsie daisy long guy well there you go news to me interesting okay yeah I'll get you I'll get you I'll get you some some photos fake fan exposed so

They did a really cool job with him his his his pop-offs and Yeah, there you go right on his pop-offs and You know his motivations and then kind of like underlining the parts where you're like, oh well he has a point until he doesn't you know and it's I want to say it's that that speech where he like digs in on Mundus right in particular where he's where you're

like, oh and he digs then he digs in on Sparta, you know where like you're like, oh, and he digs, then he digs in on Sparta, you know, where like, you're like, okay, got it. See where you're coming from. You know, you you and this is where a lot of those tweets about like, oh, yeah, everyone seems to be villains are the hero of their own story type of thing. A lot of that comes to mind there. So White Rabbit was cool. And to that end, as well, when you find out about his backstory alongside ladies, episode 6, the silent episode, is fantastic. It's a great episode.

It's so good in so many ways that it made me super pissed off that when we cut back to the demon realm, it didn't use the different art style. Yeah, yeah. And when... Because having them have two different art styles consistently through the whole show, that would have been really cool. Well, I was... because I was actually... I was wondering if it was like taking... I was wondering if it was also giving them an out for like not having to show too much of the Demon Realm if they didn't want to explore it yet. But that wasn't the case, because like later on you do, you know? But at first I was like, oh, is this a way of kind of like

being like, we'll get there later when we design all of that. But for now, let's simplify for storybook purposes, you know? But no, narratively it worked out. Also showing the kind of like the hatching and shading on their hair in particular is a really cool filter when you see Lady and and White Rabbit as kids Great that was those super those those yeah, that was well done and of course, you know And then when the dialogue does come in it's like for some awful shit to happen

Where you're like, god damn it lady just Yeah to happen where you're like, god damn it, lady. He just, yeah. And you can see too as well where it's like, there is what, as much as she's being so stubborn and like, hateable, like, you can see that it's like, she has a turn and she has these moments where she's supposed to become like, more sympathetic,

but like, they happen so much later than like a functioning sympathetic human being would. They happen like an hour after anybody else would have caught up to like, oh shit, wait. So you know. I knew this was gonna happen because I think talking about Lady is like by far like the most interesting

thing in the show. The bit that you're referring to is like she gets shown sympathy by the horrible dastardly demons, but even in the moment, even in the explicit moment where she has been saved by a normal family, she is like shaking and ready to like shoot the baby and the little kid on the ground. It's crazy. Like right away. She's like trying to, oh, what a sort of- And like, you know, if you're going off of the idea of like, well, she's traumatized

and upset and she hates them and she's enacting that and whatnot. There's that idea of like, you can have that flash in your brain of like, oh, I want, and then wait, no, what am I doing, right? That like subconscious, all demons, no, wait, what? But the fact that she's like, no, actually, let's talk about it for a minute, how I'm about to wipe you out. And then the refugees themselves have to be like,

we just risked our lives to save you. And like, that's the point, right? You're supposed to feel as credulous about her doing that. Like the intended emotion that we have in that moment is correct, but the reason why this is jarring and this becomes the theme for the rest of it is just because of like, knowing and having any attachment

to what that character was Wrecks your brain right? I had a lot of this a lot of the incredulity Incredulity of all of this is based on having an attachment to the Material it's based on if this is all brand new and you're like, I don't know anything about this lady You just be like, all right. Yeah. Well, wow, she's a fucking asshole, all right, well, that's that. She's insane. But knowing that she's not that callous and not that mean and would have this level of hatred,

the first thing she says is she hates fucking demons and she's full of that, but to not have that little switch that would go off in most other people's heads, I suppose, is strange, you know? I need, you know? Especially for a protagonist, I guess. I need to go back. The sequence of events is a little backwards because the episode 6 flashback predates the beginning of the show. But I went back and watched it to check. Okay, so we have demons jump through a portal and Dark Kong's there and her gang is there.

And we're like, no, the demons are coming through. And then a big monster shows up, which confirms to them that it was all a trick, right? The part that gets me, like by far, and you can go back and watch the scene. Like when that big monster comes out and starts eating the demons, ladies team opens up on like the women and kids first. First! That's exactly, exactly. No, that's where I was going.

Is that first, I was going to make sure they take out almost all of them before she even realizes the big demons about to come. 100%. This is where I was going. If you have no context for what you're looking at, and you're like, demons are evil and whatever, and then you see someone come through and go, Hey, just talk. Talk no jutsu.

Please don't shoot me and my kids. Hold on a minute. And they're all like this? And then something else comes and goes, AHHHH! And you're like, I don't know what's going on. Kill them all, starting with the young. And you just like- Get the smallest targets first. Like, I mean, get the ads, right?

You have to focus on the ads before you focus on the boss. And then she blows, like, you have the shot of, like, the grenades going over, like, a crying six-year-old before it's completely incinerated and then dark calm clears out and I know it's not there but I like the tone of the scene feels like lady and the gang in the bus going back to base go. Whoa. That shit. Wow. Barely got out.

It sucked, man! It sucked! Hoorah! It sucked! Fucked! Get some! Get some! You know?

And yeah, no. Like, you... And the thing is, again, let's say we have no attachment to the past, right? If you are painting your characters with these flaws, it's very difficult to walk the audience over to their side when they late come to a reluctant agreement on, okay, I guess we'll be sympathetic.

Spoon fed. Her realization. And so, and then connect it to this point, I guess we jumped forward a bit, but because we're just all over the place now Like you mentioned last time the idea of like oh demons are kind of like people. They're not these big old They're not just these big old freaks or whatever, but there's the sub that I can't get right yeah So I'm a big demon monsters like that idea is not like inherently incompatible

but like That idea is not inherently incompatible, but it is... I would say it is. It's weird because what you get is just... Well, here's the thing, right? But there's a difference between... Let me back up. In the games, there are demons that you're cool with and or sympathize with.

And there are demons in the extended materials that, at the very least, are capable of intelligence and speech. And, you know, like, Phantom can talk to you. He's a giant lava spider. Exactly. He's like a person in his head. Beowulf is meant to be like, you're like, oh, that's a cool dude, right? You fought with Sparta and so on. Griffith's shadow and nightmare are all meant to be like,

you know, tragic parts of V and you're like, oh, it's them, right? I mean, literally, you can name Trish if you want to. It's a special exception, but like, there's that element where you're like, okay, demons tend to be these big old freak beasts, but you have these like ones where you're like, yeah, there's something to them. And I feel like what you kind of end up having on a broad categorization sense is like, you have the demons that are like down for the fight that are like, let's go.

Son of Sparta, we're both going to enjoy this, right? They will belial the, you know, the Agni and Rujra all leaning at that. That are just, you know, they're just like, let's lean into it. And, um, and to that end, when you beat them, there's this thing of like, well, they're not dead. They're in, they submitted and you're using them as weapons now, right? Yeah, so there's a little bit of like you've you've you've conquered them into submission and now you can use them, right? It's like a mega man power. So this is doing his job at the bottom of the the Taman agro, right?

Silence right you're there. They're living on in that kind of like oh, it's that cool thing, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right,

right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, of every single game. And in most cases it's a human being getting all demon'd up that you're like, yeah, human beings... So of note is that we are talking about higher order demons, you know, your archangel or whatever equivalent in the demon realm, right, that can talk and can reason and all these things. Some of it, like, I mean, people are pointing out that Agni and Ruger are, like, nice to you. Like, they're friendly, like genuinely, until they're like, well, we gotta guard this door, right? But at the top, when you have like guys like Mundus,

which are just like the incarnation of misery and evil, right? Okay, sure. But what's important is that from the medium level down we have Freak beasts from a doom level we have slobbering monsters that represent 99.9 percent of all demons and so where this gets complicated is because now we go no wait There's just human beings with horns Right and barely man. It's like right like a fucking eyebrow implant Cardassians from fucking Star Trek

Right Carly they just look like our dad the card is yeah the dirty spoon heads got it and then like gene Roddenberry makeup basically Yeah, and then there's I'm actually an animal with a large terrorizing body, and I'm a predator like yeah Just literally just a fucking hell elephant exactly like I'm not there's no thought just eat like monster type of thing And also we don't talk about we want like the the show never goes into it, but there is a massive subdivision of demons That are just ghosts Hmm of some specters and and such um so then you go alright well Dante is a devil hunter and Like I guess you know is not an expert in them.

Since he like, doesn't really know enough about himself or so, which we'll get to in a second. But like there's, but there's the clear like, okay, well I'm going after these things and we can take them out. They're bad, but they're not blanket bad, right? And you, and then you have, where ladies at where it's like, he's like, wait, And then you have where Lady's at, where he's like, wait, well, he's like half and half, and Lady's just full on Gestapo, as you mentioned,

just all in, exterminate, wipe him out. And then you have Virgil, who is the person who I was like, oh, he's a piece of shit. He doesn't care about the human casualties of seeking power and That is a problem and you need to keep that in mind no matter how cool he is and now you're like He's freeing the innocent people He's a good guy than anyone else

Hey you remember when I said I don't believe those old tweets Virgil is Heroic Like in the in the show and he's going to be the antagonist and he is going to be the antagonist with better reasons and Right and so you're like the whole thing where it's like oh no wonder he's talking about him being misunderstood Because in this version, he's a completely different person completely different person the most sympathetic, you know person here and then like I mean not to get into not even just like

okay, so we're ignoring the The Nello Angelo mind control because you can just become yes. So. So, all right, there's no bit there. So whatever the consequence being, you know, him losing or who knows what happened, but he serves Mundus. But the first thing you see of him is like you make him like the hero of the show in one scene in a way that is like it shits on whatever ladies growth was. And even Dante's just like I don't really know I guess I'm doing this Dante goes through that entire narrative with literally no personal growth whatsoever at all

I mean that's like like well the growth is discovery of the who he is and then I can not grow He doesn't integrate it into his personality or change what he's doing like That's not growth, he doesn't integrate it into his personality or change what he's doing. Nothing about him changes. It's a super saiyan. He gets a super saiyan. That's there. That's what it is. He can go, Arrrgh, you know, and then do it. No, it really is so fucking baffling to basically set up the demons in that way, because it just makes your bad guys right, and also more justified from everything we know about them.

And so- But you get to the end and you're like, White Rabbit actually was thinking about what he was doing at least. These two aren't paying attention at all. And you also speed run the colonization of hell, which you can do that in- In a music video.

You can do that in Doom, because that's what that's about. It's weird to see that in Devil May Cry. Don't wanna be an American idiot. It's wild. It is weird to see that in Devil May Cry. You know, but you speed run that bit and you're like, okay, so basically, right, American colonialism, the true evil, and so no matter what Mundus does or says, it doesn't matter because the ebane is

Like Mundus is automatically off the hook Like if you want to go like the war on terror like analogy like Mundus didn't even do a 9-eleven to any like He's Taliban he's oppressing his own people you You know what I mean? Like you're like, okay And now you're turning the oppressor into the freedom fighters Is that that's what we're doing here into this, you know, like yeah So yeah, I want to backtrack a little bit because I want to talk about Dante lady and and Virgil and Because this is adaptation criticism. This is not like show criticism.

This is adaptation criticism, right? This is why I said that like your enjoyment of this is inversely proportional to how well you know these characters. Yeah. So I'll take Virgil. Virgil is like the simplest. Virgil has like a single defining personality trait over like fucking seven games. And that is he couldn't stop the bad thing happening to him in his life because he was a child. This traumatized him to get power. He then later did not have the power to stop bad things from happening to him when Mundus took him over,

which re-traumatizes him to seek out more power. Like he is a one-note character, and the games explore that, but like that is his deal. And his idol is his father is the most powerful thing ever. Right, the baddest do that. In the entire universe. So he's setting a goal for himself that is impossibly stratospheric.

Right? Virgil saving anyone doesn't make any sense at all unless he's going to eat them off screen later or Get more power or Dante goes you started this shit You're gonna fucking fix it, and I'm dragging you by your ears, and he's like ah fine Let's go like fucking fix hell shows up in the show and the first thing he does is give someone else more power.

He's- he's- What the fuck? Right. You know, so I mean, again, we don't know what his relationship with Mundus is. In the- beyond the idea that like, well, he's- He's working on the inside, man. Maybe, maybe, yeah, but if he's not brain-slaved,lave then like yeah, well, we'll have to discover but whatever the case is It's yeah, it's not at all

What we knew and instead it's this inverted thing where you're like, you're just the most justified person here And like like like you're the real, you know The humans don't know about the storm that's coming. Virgil doesn't care Why would he ever care? The Virgil we know, right? And this is- The amount of work it took in DMC5 to have him go, hey son, look after my book, okay bye, whew, fly away.

What's required, like millions of lives. God, shout God shout out to my son means nothing to me That boy is my son That's probably a mistake It was actually it was a mistranslation right because he's going the word son means nothing to me. Yeah, what yeah And you can transfer that over to like Lady and Dante. Like Dante is brash and crass and non-serious because he doesn't realize how important things are because he's a functionally invincible person.

And he's sad about his mom and he's sad about these things. And then he, oh, he learns that things are important, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then that just doesn't happen. And like, I can see You could argue that they're setting that up to happen later But it's kind of strange that just didn't happen at all in the first one and lady does Have a form of character development

But it's really small and it is essentially like forced on her by fate like it's if he sees the family right and she see And it is essentially like forced on her by fate. Like she sees the family, right? And she sees the family and she's like, oh, maybe not all demons. And then goes upstairs and starts shooting people in their hospital bed. Also, every time she has a moment of hesitation

and then she gets forced by like Bane to do the evil thing She's about to do it until Another giant threat pops up like White Rabbit or whatever else. There's always that in the ending She she paralyzes Dante cuz she's about to multiple times She she's like I see your point point but I still go to fucking follow orders I love this boot and then it goes even learn batter and she's mid tongue in the boot going oh fuck you know like she still chooses the wrong path right after she's shown to be like it's other should have shown to distract but you you see that decision right um

So they've done something with ladies character in her childhood flashbacks that cause That like I don't know if you picked up on it And I'm kind of realizing it now because I'm thinking about her childhood flashbacks pre episode 6 right they consistently portray her as a little girl who is like fantasizing about being a violent cop. Yeah, she wants to be a big gun demon hunter. Like she's, yeah. Like this is her literal childhood dream.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even before they- Is to like shoot monsters. Even before they got attacked, right? Yeah, like, yeah, even before. She points the gun at the thing as it's a tag like she has that in her right now It's a bitch fuck this um sir and I will say I know that shit It's like kind of like kind of like almost a moot point like she was gonna end up a dark

Right, but like but like in terms of speed running the tragedy with the with the with the father and stuff, it's like, yeah, that's a fine again for the silent episode. I'm like, that's a fine way to speed run her her past. It feels like the whole like fate took him in the fire when he attacked you as opposed to you pulled the trigger. Feels like you're taking away a big part of...

Well, don't worry, Woolly, because I didn't see Arkham's horribly violently charred corpse. True, true, true. So the trigger can still be pulled on that. The devil trigger. Okay, okay, Woolly. Wo willy last week yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah people should say game mechanic words out loud and the story it no and but here and the thing is right is like especially when you have ways of talking around it like I see a devil has awoken in you too you know that's such a cool line I just scrolled past that post on the subreddit

But because it's the episode plot point that said that's like no we need to owe you to awaken to this thing Then there's like just calling it by the mechanic and you're like here and like here's the bit right? Every time you look at that move list. I don't know about you Every time you look at that move list, I don't know about you, but to me, that's what Dante's calling it in his head as he's going, real impact! And he's doing fucking, he's like, you know, uh... Yes, the moves are what they are calling it in their mind. Right? Stinger! And now that's macabre! And he's like, doing it in his head, being a cool guy, he's like, I'm so fucking cool! But you're not calling the devil trigger. You know, it's the fucking move list in his brain, man.

As a word, has never been uttered by a character in Devil May Cry history ever. So, like they talk a lot of shit during their moves and you know, like whatever, like there's times where they're yelling things out and such. But yeah, with moves, you can still make that more acceptable in the sense that if they're trying to style real hard and be cool, they can yell the name out and get away with it. Oh, someone's right. In DMC Devil May Cry's Virgil manga.

Virgil does yell out devil trigger. I have seen that panel. Okay, well, he also yells out fuck you, you know? And hey, you gotta homage all the Dino fuck yous by getting the, cussing up a storm in this. I don't look the idea of Lady being a big old big old swearing fuck fuck. Whatever thing is like, yeah, if you want to do that, I guess that's fine. But it's too much. But what fucks up her scenes?

But it's like when she refuses to tell you the story of of what's of Sparta and all that stuff because she's too angry to deliver it and like you can't Like yeah, you're just yours so character can't handle their own exposition You're so angry. You're so hateful and angry that you can't even get it out You know and and in this world right in the hatred She's showing would make more sense in the world of big freak beasts and nothing else Yes But instead like when she's calling Dante like slurs and being like he's a devil

I trust him this is the this she blew up like all those women and kids the this she blew up like all those women and kids like years ago like that. Does she even remember that happening? That vitriol would be so much more justified for the game world, you know, but instead here in the sympathetic, what it's out of control. Yeah. And no, she bears. She like it takes a second and then she's like, oh, hey, that's the guy. Right. And then again, yeah. And then so so you have,

and again, to just go back on the whole like just cause bit, right? Power obsessed Virgil is actively giving away his amulet for what he believes is the right cause, right? What? No, the right cause is me getting fucking off his shit. And Dante is like, not in a million years, never. No one's getting this amulet.

They're like, Dante, it'll help save the world. Just give us- But it's my mommy. No, I'm not gonna give it to you. I'll never give it to you. And you're like, but Dante, you're gonna, but the planet needs it. And he's like, I don't give a fuck. And Virgil like but Dante you're gonna put the planet needs it and he's like I don't give a fuck And Virgil's like if it's for the better good if it's really

It's so weird and it's like why what like why like adaptation problem like these characters I like these characters a lot these characters and are at their core like fairly simple and And it's just the exploration of like fairly simple themes through like sincerity. But like all of the characters have been like inverted or like sidestepped. Like he is essentially, somebody in the chat just pointed out by giving his amulet and his blood away, he's giving away his father's sword to some guy he lets him rock with the sword like it's the most selfless it's crazy selfless it's so insane yeah um

right essentially and again it's like setting White Rabbit up to be um because it's it's setting White Rabbit up to be like a Virgil in the season because Virgil's not there. So he's like, here, you go take my stuff and you be Virgil for me. And then he literally cuts the thing in the drop-off scene in the same way, right? But anyway, so yeah, attachment to any of the existing shit

just, yeah, makes that shit hurt more. The whole, okay, so there's, as you mentioned it, existing shit just just makes that shit hurt more. The the whole Okay, so there's as you mentioned it, and I was gonna come on say, there's a level of internal consistency with the world that exists that like Castlevania is like, okay, the like this system is what it is. And like you also shout outs to the the rest of the fucking, whatever, the space marines, you know what I mean? Like the crew, I'm like, yeah, right, the crew's fine.

I got no problems with them. I have one problem with them. Okay. We follow them for like five episodes and as they stand around and look badass and then they all get punked out in like fucking 90 seconds. They do. They do. That is true. And related to that, ladies going through the raid is like, she gets more kills than Dante. She gets more play. Way more.

She's more efficient, she beats Dante and more demons to a standstill as you said and then again on the free matches and is actively like styling on crowd. She takes out so many of the bosses. It's crazy and you're like, okay, I'm guessing he really likes her and thinks that she should get some play.

But like to the point where Dante's like shoved in the back of a truck and, or just completely out of commission or stuck in a plane, you know? But Lady takes out Plasma and Echidna while Dante is falling from the sky. Like he's kidnapped in the truck and then kidnapped in a plane doing the thing while she's styling hard and doing,

and actually playing the game, so to speak, you know? And I mean, I don't know, like there is, there's a potential like thing there where it's like, oh, let's give the side character more play, let's, you know what I mean? Let's kind of subvert it a little bit by going, oh, the super strong guy, let's actually make him be weaker or whatever,

if that's what you're going for. Well, it's that he's dumb. But you can't do that for the whole season, and you already did it on the freeway, and then now it's in the second major sequence where all the demons are around again, and then she kills them She kills the kidna and she kills fucking like like literally she takes everybody out out plasma who later dies

Yeah, the explosion, but like she beats two of them Is is just way better and way more like yeah wait like anyway like we're roll We're rolling into these last episode Where Dante's like I have to take this more seriously and lady manages to trap him for like nearly the entire Climax yeah, yeah Also, I thought the whole bit with like I don't get touched Just a drop of blood was going to be a like, now you must style, right? I thought that was gonna be a way of kind of implying like,

don't never get hit, must style, you know? But that's not exactly what it was, but it kinda, it could have been that, and that was an opportunity that was not taken. Let me ask you something. So, don't want to throw anyone under the bus because I don't know if this was like a producer, you know, decision or a decision or whatever. But, um, how do you like when you look at an adaptation of a property and you're like, there's plasma, there's a kidna there's Cavalier Angelo and

Recreations and they're really cool rabbit looks cool Ladies new outfit is alright, etc. And then they're like, you know what? It's time for it's time to have our own design For a big major villain here comes Arkham Asylum rabbit the shittiest looking monster in the fucking show by an order of magnitude. Just god awful. Yeah, I'm going to have a big giant monster arm with the force edge, so it looks like there's a tiny needle at the end of my dick. Pat, from before we even started being on the internet, what is the rule of cool that we have learned from this franchise? They have to be your size and they have to walk towards you. What are we doing?

It's so simple. It's so simple and every game understood this Every other game that came afterwards that references understands this point Miyazaki understands this point. Miyazaki understands this point. The soul scratch eyes understands this point. Bayonetta understands this point. Everyone understands it's a very simple rule of cool. They must be your size and they must walk slowly towards you. That's it and we're popping off. We're popping off as soon as we see it! But no. We gotta go big ol' mutant freaks. Totally.

I'm the ultimate bio weapon, guys. Um. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh wait, hold on. We got a comment in the chat that goes to your point. Didn't the Force Edge corrupt Arkham or something and turn him into a big blob? Yes, that's the point. Arkham big blob and then you fight Virgil! Ah... Um... Yeah, yeah.

Uh, uh, what the fuck? I was... Uh... I don't think showing the devil trigger under Hero Academia Blue Sk skies was the correct decision Yeah Though they did do the wings turn into the coat yeah good great Oh, I look I don't we talked about the like DT designs. I don't I don't hate the version in this I hate it during broad daylight

Specifically it looks way better at the end on the bridge I hate it during broad daylight, specifically. It looks way better at the end on the bridge. I like the bits of Kaneko that it takes in there and it mixes in a couple other things with it. You know? I guess the implication is that Nelo Angelo is Virgil's DT? It is the implication, isn't it?

Hey. Which? I have a question for you. In a costume on the game, I guess, but. I would like to go down a thought experiment with you. Can we do that? Okay, I had other points and I'm losing them as we go. Don't worry, you'll remember them.

I wanna go down a thought experiment for you. Okay, so in DMC devil may cry We are establishing That the average demon is like a normal person who happens to be from a different dimension, right? They're essentially a neighboring nation that has had its borders closed Star Trek aliens Right down to down to the sci-fi has had its borders closed. Star Trek aliens. Right. Down to the sci-fi. Okay, so Dante is half devil, half demon, and that gives him powers, etc. But as we established, devils and demons that can like talk and reason and be like people are like people, right? Like

the average devil that you run into is just like, I'm just hiding out in this fucking place to feed my family, yada yada. Right? So when Dante turns into a devil and is overwhelmed with hatred and rage and violence from his devil side. What is the thematic parallel we're supposed to pull onto normal demons? Are they actually all secretly bursting with murder under the surface? Is it the story like doing everything it can to like reverse that expectation? So wait, was Sparta like super evil and had to fight it? So or was it is it all deep? What the fuck? Hatred is hatred and evil is power.

Except don't look at the Undertale village right over there. There's there's a little Undertale village and little fucking Alphys and crew are running around in it. Deltarune is happening right over there and just don't look because yes, hatred and evil is power. Yeah, no. Talking about the rage and giving into it and all that, right?

If you want to make it about emotional control. It's genetic. Oh, so they're all the kids too? They're all just, oh. And so then why is it lady? Why is it lady popping her fucking TT? Did you notice? That there was, did you notice that there was a, okay, in the episode three, Did you notice that there was a...

In the episode three Star Wars review that Red Letter Media put up, they invented the term backtracking in which they describe how... What's that? That's a term. Yeah. Okay. I think they invented it, but regardless, they use the term backtracking to describe about how Anakin has been like a violent murderer for like multiple movies at this point

So they have him backtrack and be like, oh I got to save those droids or whatever Right and because it was written later, right? so in episode one of this show plasma steals a fucking baby Like a human child. Yes. Yes, and then the human child is never seen again never seen again presumed dead Yeah, and it presumed. Oh my god. Is that baby? Oh, that's fucking terrible and then a couple episodes later Plasma's like by the way, I can only turn into things if they're still alive. So, oh, you know what? Plasma didn't kill that baby. That's how, because otherwise he wouldn't have been able to pretend to be, because Plasma's not that evil.

And then the mom is with the stroller when the big thing is about to bite them. Yeah, right, so you see her again later So yeah, no, there's there's there is that bit I do also like the idea of taking a generic enemy and turning it into like that is the plasma I'm like that's kind of cool. I don't mind that Multiple of those guys in it's a really weird power set Yeah, exactly and then that's why obviously the whole Virgil bit is Played now. Let's get our reaction shot of Him flashing his red eyes at the camera. It's like that that guy's plasma don't forget

Okay, okay, I just realized something really stupid You know when he turns into Virgil and Dante's like oh my brother that's impossible and then later says oh yeah he turned into my brother that's not anything what he would look like anyway yeah that line is weird right yeah okay but like he looks exactly like what he would look like in the final scene yeah and the reason I'm realizing he's doing that is because he has met Virgil yes correct he literally knows Virgil the reason I'm realizing he's doing that it's because he has met virtual. Yes, correct He yes, he literally knows no because I'm assuming that Virgil met everybody that was in on the plan

you know the smorgasbord of demons from all the different, you know games coming together and They're like he's playing off of the person. He's met already Because white rabbit introduced him. So but with with that whole bit, the more you think about this fundamental change that you talked about last time, which is Dante just grew up not knowing he was a demon. Absolutely clueless until he's what, 20?

And it's like, I don't know, I guess I just thought I was like a superhero or something, and it's like, haha, throw away line. And you're like, was like a superhero or something. And it's like, ha ha, throw away line. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, pause, pause, pause, wait, go back in time. You just showed those two kids fighting and throwing couches at each other and smashing a room up as babies. Right? And Ava's like, oh, you kids, you know?

And they're go, they're fucking Dragon Ball fighting. And you're like, how Did that work in this world? with even like the healing factor and like how did he enter with a he was just Exploded out to the point where I think your spine was showing and you healed from it in one second and you're like ha ha That's crazy. I Just he's the whole bit is just I'm just too dumb to figure out or to think about anything about that. But also like I'm good at hunting demons

and I know I'm one of the special people that does the job because hunting demons is my specialty. Yeah, I don't know. There's also a Goldstein reference in there like making Kalina and Hey, I got a question for you. Mm-hmm. So Sparta seals off the demon world Right, and he's used the amulets to seal it off. Sorry the quantum the quantum locators or whatever the fuck they're called So he uses the amulets to seal it off, right? Okay. And so then he empowers the magic. No, sorry, it's not magic. He sciences up the quantum entanglement of the amulet

to open up the demon portal that it has to use the two separate sets of blood from his kids that don't exist at the time that he did it. Because his genes are split into two, because purple is made up of red and blue. Yeah. It is really, really jarring and weird to just have Dante's life explained to him by other people. Because it removes every agency about his own character.

And this is all just connection to the to the source material bits But you're like the whole thing with him is actually that he knows too much And he plays up being a different person Tony Redgrave rolls into town. You know, who am I? I don't know whatever Hey Enzo who's great by the way, and so is great. I like that thing and so is a massive highlight and um a Enzo's great. I like Enzo. I think Enzo is a massive highlight. And a quick little jab at the Raccoon City job implies a lot of fun things that I'm happy to just keep as a little Easter egg. Okay, okay. that, he's that 90s anime protagonist, your Vash the Stampede or your Spikes Beagle, he's your, I'm gonna blow into town, I'm gonna, I know, I have a whole lot of

backstory going on that you don't know about, I'm gonna solve this small problem, Edward Elric, and then don't worry about it, my true power comes out for a second to fucking do some cool shit But then we're gonna go back to it and now who was that guy? How could he do that? I don't worry about it He's that's crazy. Nobody knows anything about his past, right? And then it turns out when you get to episode six or seven and then someone from his past shows up You know, for example his fucking brother then you start to learn about what's going on or whatever like the it feels like just weird that other regular human beings are telling Dante about who he is and what's going on and what his dad is and all of that.

Everybody knows about Sparta and everybody knows Dante is his kid and everybody knows that he can devil trigger except for Dante. Every time we cut back to his childhood, so far that's pretty much lifted straight up, right? Like everything about Ava and Virgil. Outfit, background. Hiding in the closet, right? All of it, right? Except Virgil was in the house

except outside of the house, right? Sure, whatever. That's the one difference, right? But so then we don't have the same versions of these characters where, you know, Dante's biggest weakness is everything about like his mom and Virgil is obsessed with his father and the power of the devil side versus the human side.

We're taking that out of the equation with these characters. But if Sparta was not enough, if they were not aware of Sparta's existence at all, and Ava never really told them and they never really were a thing, that like the family photo that was on the wall where they kind of at least knew who he was and he gave them their swords and whatever, that's not a thing here, right? Because they don't know anything about him. So if you take that part away, what makes Virgil care about demons and power and his

dad or any of that shit. Well, I guess we don't know. We can learn about it into the next season, perhaps. But him and Dante would have the same level of attachment to their mom when the trauma happens without their dad being present. And then we go off and we create whatever Virgil's timeline is now. But Dante gets the one that we get. But it just makes way less sense if you don't have both parental figures there creating

that fork with them in the moment of trauma. Do you know what I mean? Ava doesn't even tell them their father's name. Like, like, she, they're like six or seven years old and she has told them Literally not a single detail about their father what he looks like If he's a devil what his job is what his name is how they met like so So it just Dante goes up to just not have any information and he's just the one, he's bumbling around and being told, right, after the fact.

And he's got the connection to his mom where he's like, it's her amulet, I'm gonna hold onto it, that's it. But Virgil can't possibly have anything resembling the connection we know to Sparta because he's a mystery, at least until after they get attacked and that trauma thing moment occurs, right? It can be written so that in the Tammundus time, he learns and studies and goes that way or whatever,

but up until the point where they get separated and he thinks that he's dead, he has no connection to his father whatsoever. And the formative years of that being what causes the trauma will make way more sense for you to become lifelong obsessed than it does for it to become something later on. So his whole character has to be different as a result. Dante's biggest moments of self discovery

should be from his fucking twin, Not, not, anyway, alright. All his moments of self-discovery are so like fundamental to moving the plot along. Like, okay, well we need to set up that you can devil trigger so that you can do it in the last episode. So, I'm gonna just tell you that you can do it in the last episode. So I'm gonna just tell you that you can do it. Yeah, yeah, look, maybe maybe he just took his memory or that they'll just make it like, oh, yeah, we just be what we wiped his brain or something, you know. The strangest part about a lot of this is I remember a tweet when Addy was describing the two types of projects he works on, right? So the Addy Shankar bootleg universe.

Which is stuff like Punisher Dirty Laundry and stuff. Right. So there's the company name, the production company, but then like, yeah, you've got Captain Laser Hawk and Guardians of Justice. The description is, the brand known for reimagining and remixing pop culture, projects that will blend genres and styles, creating a unique alternative take on familiar characters, formats, and settings. Then the second category is Adi Shankar Animation. This brand focuses on high-quality adaptations of beloved franchises

and established franchises featuring mature themes and complex narratives. It adopts a sophisticated style that seeks to elevate the source material while paying deep respect to the original work. Devil May Cry for some reason is categorized as the latter and not the former, right? You have a broad category for remixes and faithful adaptation slash retelling. remixes and faithful adaptation slash retelling. And well, it's not those words exactly, but when you have the level of change that this thing goes through, why categorize it? These might as well be completely new characters.

As the first one and not the second. I don't, you know, like it, because this really does read like a bootleg universe when you break down all these things that we just talked about. Castlevania, and this is again, I feel like, you know, it's something when you're filling in a lot of the gaps. Trevor Belmont is from a NES game from the mid 90s that has no dialogue. So that fitting into this category, I'm like, sure, I can, I can definitely get that. And I can understand as well, the base thing where somebody that like wants to tell stories

is not going to want to just do a retelling of a video game, right? Like there's always going to be that like, where can we find places to put more meaning into aspects of this lore or this setting that, you know, you can derive something interesting from, right? Something you want to say about the world or about the characters and such. Like, there's certainly enough of a discussion point about, you know, trauma, family, and, you know, loss that you can focus on with these characters. But beyond that, you can, you know, there's these, I can expect that there would be parts

where you inject more into the lore of the city, the place, right? Everything about the government or all that stuff, you know? But when you're doing so at expense of like the entire identity of everyone recognizable from the original thing, It just strikes so weird that if it were, it's, I hate the sentence, but it's like, if it were not called Devil May Cry,

you'd probably be like, oh yeah, there's that new animated show. It's pretty interesting. It's got some cool stuff. That's what I came away from it. Yeah, there's that cool show. I'm like, the use of the existing characters is the problem. It's like the biggest problem with the show

is that they have like put stickers of these characters' heads on these new characters. And the reality of like, well, would we be talking about it? Would other people be talking about it as much as an original thing? Possibly, possibly not, I don't know, you know? But it is so weird going in with any foreknowledge on it. It's really strange To like yeah like violently make these these these cuts to the to their backstories

Anyway can't wait to see what happens with blaze blue Can't wait to see what's blaze blue can't wait to see with arias I mean blaze blue already has its its animation but like wow Netflix blaze blue I am I'm ready I'm ready to hear about the black beast and the grimoire and you know yeah hey I want to ask you something because one of my complaints that you never you never addressed yourself was that I was like I was like fairly unimpressed with the action in this show like it was fine to good I should hold on a second I need to

elaborate there was a tweet oh yeah and Andy Adi Shankar just tweeted out the blaze blue logo nothing was announced announced. That was it here it comes Yeah You were saying about this good, but like I wasn't impressed like I was when I watched Castlevania Yeah, uh Yeah, it was it was fine. It was cool. It was cool. I didn't have any real complaints about it, but it definitely didn't have Humongous pops. I mean lady did some cool shit But then there's the stuff where you're like, ah man like this is a good studio studio wit is talented

Three I think they just didn't get direction for cool things to put in the fights. 3D is just... and this is a problem I have with like other shows as well. Like we're not getting 3D there yet, man. Mirror, sorry, Studio Mirror, not Wit. I know that anime is just going to look like this for a lot of the future going forward and is a little bit of a like deal with it. The medium has changed. But just kind of like sprites into 3D models had that problem. I'm just kind of like, yeah, 3D animation in anime, especially when you're doing it for like an affordable episodic release, there's always going to be that strange kind of like frame rate issue to it. There's always going

to be that little like, just there's a little bit of stiffness where you don't want it to be. You can tell when a jacket blowing in the wind on the back of a motorcycle is a stiff 3D model. There's a couple really rough shots on that highway chase. Yeah, and it can be good, but the average level is not, right? That's the thing. I talked about Trigun Stampede and about how cool a lot of that looked, and I feel it's just not the average level for anime 3D is just not there yet. And it sucks because it's just not the average level for anime 3d is just not there yet

And it sucks because it's also the only solution for some things 3d horses incoming But I just every time I see that little like me a good 3d horse Every time I see that like that stuttery frame rate, but it's not the spider verse implementation of it where it feels like they're using the key frames to the maximum effect, right? Then it sucks, man, because Spider-Verse has that frame rate thing going, but you're creating the feeling of looking at panels

or action in a comic book, you're having moments of characters sliding and squashing and stretching for maximum impact. And in a lot of this kind of stuff on the highway, you're like, oh, we're jumping on the back of that truck and Agni and Ruger are kind of doing the thing where they're standing stiff and turning their heads, but their whole bodies aren't turning, it's just a little bit of a, and, ugh.

I genuinely don't understand why Agni and Ruger have heads because I think the reason is so that they're easier to frame so that they don't always have to have the swords in shot to speak because you'd have to do angles where they just happen to be handing the sword, right? But it's- Yeah, I don't know why they, yeah. Well with everyone else, you know,

with the kidna and the rest being like more or less the same model rips and so it's, it's very strange for them to be changed to be that way. Yeah, I don't know. Um, especially when you could have the sword talking and being the head, if you wanted to do that whole bit, like you could have done it. Yeah, totally. Um, why wouldn't they have heads? Go play devil. Because they don't have heads. Go play Devil May Cry 3. Look up Agni and Rujo.

They're headless beasts. Go look at the game that they come from. One thing I noticed is that every time I have this feeling about 3D stuff, more and more people disagree with me though. That tells me that it's getting better. I feel like more people are comfortable with the level of that it's at slash have been watching it for enough years now that it feels fairly normal.

But it's just, you can always tell when something that's a mixed medium show switches over from one to the other, you know? Absolutely. I have a question, and I want you, and I guess our live audience, to let me know if if this is an unreasonable Request because I genuinely don't know like it feels like it might be but okay

so I'm gonna use Castlevania as an example, right? Castlevania is a storied video game franchise It has been around for decades and it has a lot of extraordinarily classic elements that show up in a bunch of different games. So when you are watching Castlevania you would expect the Belmont to have a whip, right? You might expect him to have a whip upgrade, which you then later see is the Morningstar whip. You expect him to throw a holy water at guys. You would expect

him to have a cross weapon that he throws that returns to him like a boomerang. You know, things like this. You would expect Alucard to do like a back step that kind of looks like a teleport. I think I know where you're going. You know, these things that are all over the place. Yeah. Right? That are super, super, super iconic. Devil May Cry as a franchise is a series

that is absolutely defined by an extremely large, and I don't think I'm hyperbolizing, a super iconic moveset. Absolutely 100%. Like a moveset that people take the name of and apply to other things in the way that Shoryuken DP has been used to describe for everything it has done the same Across its so like a hundred percent stinger is is what you and I call Everything that moves all Nero's like I forget what it is shuffle caliber. Whatever. I call that fucking stinger

Oh streak streak streak. I call streak stinger. Yeah, because my brain goes stinger sure Every every launcher is a high time every especially if you can juggle afterwards with a ranged weapon Every helm splitter is a helm splitter even a hell breaker I literally don't know what any other helm splitter in the history of anything is called other than Helm Splitter Helm Breaker is a Helm Splitter Okay, I Think it is really strange that a video game adaptation about a video game that is obsessed with its move list to the point where

the Trailer that changed the series trajectory in history winning game trailers best trailer of 2003 being the devil may cry 3 trailer just has move names show up on the fucking screen Rainstorm! Fucking teenagers lose their minds. Does not have. Transition, transition, transition. Stinger, Helmbreaker, Roundtrip. It doesn't have Rainstorm.

Pat. It doesn't have. It has drives being done by the bad guy. Yeah. It has Agni and Rudra doing some of their moves. It doesn't even have the single most recorded on video Devil May Cry move of all time. A move that shows up in almost every trailer, a move that shows up in almost all of its commercials. It does not have to some time in which Dante crosses his arm over his shooting arm to shoot

to his left or right or behind. It doesn't have any of it. Bitch. In any of its action scenes. Bitch. And it's weird. I will do you one better. The whole time I was watching,

I was waiting for a semblance of a moment of a devil arm. And outside of grabbing Agni and Rudras combined sword for a second, there is nothing, and then he beats a grunt in the last episode and grabs the big fists and uses those as he can't access his sword, and that's it. Like, there's a moment of, I can't reach my sword, oh shit, you're like, okay cool,

he's gonna have to do the thing, you know? And there's none of it. There's no acquiring a new weapon and going, oh yeah, fuck yeah, this shit's rules. Okay, let's go. You know? Nothing, he didn't keep anything. There was nothing, the one or two demons he did kill,

he did not get the weapons out of them. Right? He could have kept Agni he could have kept it I Was really expecting him to pick up and take Agni and Rudra the swords We got a round trip in the against the humans, it's a people are saying there's a round trip against the humans. Yeah, people are saying there's a round trip. People are also saying that he may have killed a rabbit with a stinger, but it didn't look like that, probably because it was the clash, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba back and forth thing. I didn't read it that way, but there was a round trip against the grunts.

Someone in the chat mentions it, and I don't know how to feel about this because maybe that's me being nitpicky. I don't think that Dante should have beaten Nalo Calivier with his mind. I don't think he should have tricked the rival swordsman to death. Out thinking the knight. I swordsman to death. Oh you out out thinking the night Think that's fucking weird. I Mean I don't but the problem is also like I don't even know what personality to apply here cuz I'm like this was a

container for Trish and lady, you know, so it's a weird Not demon demon thing on its own But yeah, no he outsmarted it he sure did Also, I don't know what the point of making Hell being unbreathable is but it feels like that It's gonna be super annoying in that second season well every single character is gonna have to wear a fucking suit well Cuz I'm like if Dante like Dante can't breathe in hell what do demons can't breathe in hell like

Yeah, I just I'm like you know who can it's Virgil. Yeah, it's it's a strange play You know coming off of he rode his motorcycle into hell To fucking deal with it, you know I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what the point of that is But it feels like the whole holding your breath thing is gonna probably be annoying. Yeah Man yeah, and then and then we're just doing doom, right? We're just doing doom. Like they have the-

It's just doom, yeah. Like humanity was able to get in, plant the flag, and set up shop. Like they didn't- they- they tra- time, like Mundus and whatever was going on over there didn't track them down. They were able to create- In wilds that they- Construction! Show no resistance at all. The scavenging Undertaleians are...

It really is, isn't it? Dude, like I just saw fucking Undyne, when little kid White Rabbit is hanging out with them, I'm like, hey, look, it's Undyne and Alphys. You know, like, I just, I can't unsee it. The Elendertalians are scrawling, are crawling around and hiding behind every wall, you know, because like burial and the army of hell is marching.

Look at them march, look at them march. They're everywhere, oh fuck. And then the Americans roll in and like, they're like, no, we had time to like contract out like a giant structure and build it and we had people coming in and checking like, is this up to code? You know? Like, you know that gigantic circular superstructure they built? That's months, easy. That's what I'm saying! Possibly a year.

There were construction workers snapping chalk lines and Measuring up the engineering walls to put up the eye get that lift that over there. All right lunchtime You know like while the while and Mundus is just like yeah, it's fine I don't even care while the king of fire Hell is marching around with the batters in the background and we're just like I guess we're letting it rock I don't I and then imprisoning everybody. We got to the point where they actually built it, completed it, then imprisoned everybody and, and.

Can I ask like the dumbest question possible? Wait, hold on. I just thought of something and, and imprisoned the Undertalians who the Mundus was pretty much stomping out underfoot anyways, and Virgil frees them, who's serving Mundus and goes, you better thank your god, Mundus. Right? But like, and that that's again, that's all happening in the okay, I guess the the opportunity to be like propaganda or whatever to be like, ah, I was going to stop on you and fucking

oppress you. But now look at these humans are here. Like I guess whatever, they'll play into that in season two. Yeah, anyway, you had an OSHA approved structure that was able to be built before, you know, a single Virgil showed up much less the entire armies of hell. I have a stupid question.

I have a I have a stupid question The VP is like we have to kill every demon everywhere immediately There they show them dropping a fucking atom bomb at like on a random patch of dirt Yeah, like there's nothing there like the shot may drop the atom. It's a fucking empty field Yeah, I assume the thought is like we just have to nuke whatever is right through this portal and set up shop and build the fallout. But okay, so like every demon must go, kill them all, now build a big giant prison and take prisoners to hold. Why?

Well maybe we can exploit them and experiment on them and create slaves or create. I don't know, it's just, it doesn't even feel consistent with the fucking. Yeah, maybe we can create some evil way to use them instead of just killing them. It feels like that prison is there so that Virgil has people to rescue.

Yes, but it's also so that it can be called Abu Grabe. Yeah. Like Macaigrape. Like that's what it is. It's so that we can have Virgil rescue them and you're gonna have Nevin standing next to a Macaian on a box like this and she's going, ah, and you're gonna have one of those moments where you just see that photo and you're like, oh yeah, right, okay, that's what we're doing.

That was already there. Did I miss it? Yes. Oh. Like not the specific thing that you're describing, but yeah, no, there are shots of soldiers taking selfies with corpses. Oh, yeah Yeah, right on Taj. Yeah. Yeah, yeah for sure

I can't wait for Dante to switch out his red coat for a red white and blue coat Well, he's been captured and frozen right like and his weapons have been stored away So he is now a Dante is a project of the US government. Yes. American Devil May Cry. I can't wait for like anyone to start arguing with Virgil and for him to have the most correct, righteous, absolutely based and real takes. I think, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm getting ready to like, so like, sometimes you

need to learn how to like flex your arm, like your biceps and your triceps in such a way to lock your arm into place so that you don't take your phone and just whip it through your television Because I'm expecting Like virtual to give a speech about how bad Sparta sucks class solidarity Dante class solidarity Like how Sparta was actually the devil, the evil and all this shit. And just like, why would they have virtual fucking, oh my God. Might controls everything and only the will of the people together is truly

powerful. And these American dogs must suffer. You know? Like, yeah, it's, I mean, I don't know. I don't know, man. But it's just, it is 180 and any love for what you kind of thought the characters were outside of the way they look and the weapons they're holding. Yeah, not the way they use them.

Appears to be out the window. You know what? Virgil did use an extremely recognizable move from the game. He did. He did. He judgment cut it. He judgment not ended. Um. And you know what? I don't think that should have been the first thing we ever see Virgil do. It's. I think you kind of blew your load on that. It's a

bit overkill for opening up the prison gates. It's a bit overkill. You know? Um. Yeah. I. So I saw people saying this before and I would like to put this out into the ether as a not a prediction, but a fear. I did not come up with this, but I saw someone say a couple of weeks ago that they are genuinely expecting Virgil to activate the Tumeneh Gru underneath the World Trade Center. And like I thought that was ridiculous. I'm like sitting here and I'm like, man.

But we already had a, the building already blew up. We already did it, right? There is a skyscraper that blows up. But the WTC is still there. It is. It is. But I thought the analogy with the actual building was the heavy-handed one they were going for with the apartment block. They could do it again. They could do it again. But I read that whole scene of the exploding building as, yeah, close enough. You got your point across. I was just going to say, imagine if the roles

were reversed and the first time you see Dante, he shows up and then he sin devil triggers and then goes into judgment to open up a bunch of doors Emulating when Sparta woke up to justice it which Sparta did not do Sparta did not wake up to justice Sparta said man Man, I hate demons. I'm gonna keep him on this side and go find myself a blonde well excuse me So so in this world right when fucking rabbit is like he locked us in a prison and then kept himself safe on the other side fuck that guy is like fuck so bad white rabbit is completely correct right you

can absolutely chastise and bitch out that motherfucker if you reinvent his entire actions If you write crazy how Sparta like erected the Berlin wall Married like if you change everything about what he did then you can absolutely go. Yeah, that was crazy, right? It's insane to think that he we thought that was heroic because it's not the same guy You know if you're doing the thing you see usually that angle works If you take what we look at as a hero the whole time or you have an expectation of it And then you go. Oh, well think about this perspective. What about someone who you know had it from this side, right? There's um Metal Gear Solid does a fantastic job of this

from game to game and particularly three and then, like I said, I said why I actually still love the ending of Phantom Pain, you know, for what it does and what it represents and where it wraps that story up. I think as much as that game is remembered poorly in the franchise, what it does to the story is necessary to close it off there. And I love it. Fuck Big Boss. What a piece of shit. No legend. Only garbage. Only asshole. Only liar. This thing here is like, you can make a hypocrite out of an old hero if you write them to be a hypocrite. Like the phrasing of woke up to like we get in almost no detail about Sparta in the games, but like the phrasing implies to me

that there was like an active invasion of hell on earth and he literally beat everybody back through the door and then shut the door and then sealed the door and then gave up almost all his powers to seal the door and then went to try and have a normal life. And then found the hottest blonde with tig old biddies and just went to town. Hey listen, there's like part of Sparta's backstory that is so interesting, but it's never spelled out loud. Sparta sealed the Demon Realm away 2000 years ago. And then after like 1970 years was like, all right, it's time to have some kids. Yep, yep. Couldn't resist a snow bunny, you know? Just all that bug demon life. You see that word a lot lately.

All that bug demon life. You see that word a lot lately. Oh, it's been around. That ain't new. I'm gonna blame Marvel Rivals for this specific instance of me seeing it a lot. Oh? Is that a new word to you? Cause it ain't new to me buddy. It's... That word has been a part of my lexicon for a very long time. Like I had seen it way back, but I had not seen it a lot.

Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. No. That's language over here, buddy. That's nomenclature. But Sparta Bugman went, yeah, all right. I think it's time. It's time to settle down.

And then he had kids, and then he's like, I can't, I'm out. And then either died on the spot or left. Okay. Here's a line though, when he's like, you truly are a child of aristocracy. I'm like, oh yeah, right. Because it's not about the floofy old style clothing from when you were children on a big manner it's about the fact that you're young and carefree and just live doing whatever you want and You don't have to struggle and fucking actually grind for a living

You know and also because like even even on unlike the the show's internal demon logic even as a half demon Dante is a fucking freak. Like Sparta was a cut above. Like these guys aren't healing from their heads exploding off their fucking necks. Dante's regeneration is so, so, so over the top compared to everybody else he ever deals with. It's quite extreme, yeah, yeah. Which, you know, I don't think we ever see, we never see Dante get beheaded in the game

or fucking face sploded, you know, but the implication that I guess, if you stab him enough times, he'll stay down pretty weak and he'll eventually come back, sure. But we don't know the rules, though. We don't know the rules on... I do know something.

I can tell you one thing. Beowulf, as a demon, was able to lose an eye. His eye did not grow back. Yes, true. True. an eye. His eye did not grow back. Yes, true, true. That means the demons don't necessarily heal from grievous like limb loss. Yeah. And again, like when fighting them, when fighting as younger versions of themselves, stabbing Dante enough times, eventually he's like, ah, and he'll fall asleep. Yeah.

Sparta woke up to snow bunnies. Thank you very much. Appreciate you. There you go. Man, yeah, yeah. It also, this is, you know what, you wanna talk about blowing your wad a little bit too early?

I think the instinct to blow your wad also goes into, okay, so Echidna's from DMC4, and Agni and Ruja from DMC3. Oh yeah, they're talking about the greatest hits from five games. And Cavalier is from the last one, Plasma's from this one, but fuck it fucking let's just grab them all, you know, like like you're blowing that wad by picking a who's who of the bosses from all the series

because you just couldn't wait, you know. You know, you seeing seeing Lucia and fucking Uraboros at this point in the background. Yeah, sure. That's coming up. It's right around the corner. But everyone besides Plasma, it's like that could have been that could have been the DMC one, you know, crew. We didn't need to.

We didn't have to. Well, unless it doesn't come back for another season, I suppose. There's that idea. But oh, it's already it is confirmed. But maybe there's that thought about like, we got to hedge our bets and put in the cool stuff upfront Because what if we save our time getting to it and then it never comes, you know For I think I think one of the reasons that they picked these specific Gang is that they have to be vaguely human-sized because they have to fit in hallways and rooms

Whereas if we do a second season where we're gonna have the demon world you can do you can do you can do Griffin because they're big big big gigantic monsters. I guess so I guess so but like all of them Like we have to have lady fighting five devil may cry bosses simultaneously. Are you what? I categorize Echidna as giant though. Like when you're when the giant snake is flying through the forest coming at you. She's humongous, you know, that's that's the size of Bale and and the others. You notice her size changes in the show. Depending on whether she's taking the elevator or attacking you on a freeway. Yes, absolutely. She moves between like 10 and 25 feet tall,

depending on the scene. A million percent, right? Meanwhile, you're in the air in four, like floating up as she's dragging you around. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Like, Echidna can stand in the elevator, like she's standing in front of a regular elevator,

and she's like eight feet tall. So I guess it's is just like you know Do you just go do you bring in the is lucia and and or a boros like two episodes of an arc and then? Yeah, sure, and then you go right into you know like Dante's awakening shit You end on a stinger for four with a Nero also voiced by Johnny Young Bosch I think I think as you get Ruben like Dan Southworth actually I'm not like before we leave off I really want to take like to task, like adaptation is my

primary issue here and it's so deep and we talked about like why are these characters not like the characters if you're going to use these characters. But like the change to the general setting, the change to Dante knowing about his history, the change to ladies personality, like they're really corny about it in the games. They're super, super, super corny. But like they go to the absurd lengths to fit a phrase into the story, which is some variation of even a devil may cry when they lose a loved one, which now doesn't make any fucking sense because all of these fucks is crying about their loved ones because devils aren't monsters, they're just people. Even the big monster ones are

just people. Even a human may cry. Yeah. Because they're humans, ones are just people. Even a human may cry. Because they're humans. They're just people. Like are we gonna get a flashback in episode 3 of the season 2 of like phantom reading bedtime stories to their phantom babies before Virgil kills them? Every one of the bats Nevin sends at you is actually someone she has a connection with, you know?

It's the name of the fucking thing. People may cry, man. Yeah. I know that this is not 100% this, but there's at least a little bit of this present, which is, you know, especially, let's say more than 10 years ago when a licensed thing got adapted to be a movie. And then a writer's room walks in, looks at the video game script and goes, this is dog shit. We're starting from scratch.

We have a name and a main character, fuck everything else about this, right? Everything from the Leguizamo Mario brothers all the way through to where we are today, where the source material is barely a part of what gets adapted to the theater. It feels like a part of that, like, oh, this is dumb, throw this out. No, we're not doing this, right? It feels like a bunch of that like, oh, this is dumb, throw this out. No, we're not doing this, right?

It feels like a bunch of that kind of happened, which is like not the same feeling as, quote, elevating the source material while paying deep respect to the original works. You know? I think we kind of get the worst of all worlds on this I think Castlevania was an extremely like good adaptation may not have been the most accurate in some ways, but I really liked it I feel like DMC Devil May Cry the TV show

It feels like if the Bob Hoskins John like was Zamo movie was Exactly the same, but looked like the new CG Mario. Like the plot and dialogue was exactly the same, but it just happened to look exactly like Mario. And you'd be like, this is fucking weird. I think we're both on the same page or like it's like yeah If this was not called DMC, you know it we could have been it could have been fine and we could have been on board or if it was a Recognizable version of the characters that doesn't feel like it betrays what they are

While adding a bunch of other shit to that that you're you could be like, alright I don't like that, you know, I'm a fan of the old things and we care a lot about those things. So you want the things that matter from the old thing to be a part of it. But if you see someone come along, change stuff, but you end up still getting something pretty good

and ultimately faithful out of it, then you can quell that feeling a bit, you know? That's not what we got here.? That's not what we got here. That's just not what we got here. And yeah, that's a bummer. Because you're ready to accept some change, but it's got to fucking hit, you know? Aye, aye.

Well, hey, shout outs to,, you know Papa Roach and and Evanescence getting paid You know good for you guys You dropped it you dropped a fuck crazy fucking crazy train crane not crazy train Whatever come my lady come come my lady Butterfly they got paid, you know Crazy town good for everyone who made money enjoy your money you probably worked really hard all right let's take a break all right let's take a quick word from our sponsors. I love sponsor.

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New content is added every week. And don't forget to use code CASEL to get 5% off all orders of physical miniatures. Thank you, Hero Forge. Thanks Hero Forge. This week the podcast is sponsored by Shopify. Cha-ching is the sale of a sale that you made on Shopify, even though you don't have the cool little cat registers anymore, you can still do it on a website. And in particular these days, if you're looking to get your own shop off the ground, if you want to figure out how to take a thing that is in front of you or somewhere else and get

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I just tried to listen to the Mad World soundtrack on Spotify, and Spotify told me that I was stupid. Well, that's a shame. That sucks. Were you trying to listen from an illegal territory? I don't think Canada is an illegal territory. Ask them. You will never

get to be ruthless. God, wrong soundtrack. You should have said you'll never be able to get it up. Get it up, get it up, yeah. That's the joke. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Going online without Express VPN is like driving without okay you know what Mad World yeah Mad World and

and I know KeyRaid's kinda bleeped together a little bit. They really do if I had not listened to the soundtrack literally yesterday I would have made the same mistake. But the problem is I went through my playlist and I just curated all the best parts of the... Oh, you just did a combination thing? I just... So I just had a lineup of all the Anarchy Reigns bits, so I had those on the brain. Going online without ExpressVPN is like driving without car insurance.

You might be... Don't do that! Really, really don't do that! You will get in trouble. You might be a great driver, but with all the crazy people on the road these days, why would you take that risk? That's not the main reason, I would say.

That is a good reason, right? Taking the risk is probably a bad idea, but also, it's insanely super duper stupid illegal. It's illegal in that way that it'll cost you money and you don't like that. Also points on your license and a suspension, you know. It's a whole thing. It's bad and it's dumb, don't do it.

So you wanna be protected and you wanna be safe. And yeah, that's where ExpressVPN comes in. Every time you connect to an unencrypted network online, cafes, hotels, airports, et cetera, your online data is not secure. Any hacker on the same network can gain access and steal your personal data. You know what, I'd even say the word hacker

is a misnomer at this point, because you're barely hacking. You can kind of just like find connections on the same hub, you know, a kid with a 12 year old with some cheap hardware is all it takes, you know, and the word hacking implies like a difficult thing. It's become so streamlined and easy to just grab data and you can now sell that data up to a thousand dollars per person on the dark web in particular so stop hackers from stealing your data create a secure

encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet and yeah ExpressVPN in particular as we just mentioned particularly useful when you are also like I want to listen to this and you're like told that you can't and I'm like well I disagree I want to listen all you gotta do is click the button that was a good jump yeah that was pretty impressive holy crap I've seen boost struggle quite a few times in the few days you know like yeah no no if he feels like it he can he can actually get it. I have something to talk about that in a second actually Okay. Well listen, um you know

You need you need you need to get yourself protected. So yeah, be sure to Check out Express VPN and make the leap like boost just did over to express VPN. Secure your online data today by visiting express VPN.com slash super beast. That's E X P R E S S V P N dot com slash super beast to find out how you can get up to four extra months for free. One more time. Express VPN dot com slash superbeast.

Just used them a week ago when I wanted to watch YouTube and it said nah. So I'm like, all right, I disagree. Boop, problem solved. Thanks ExpressVPN. Thanks ExpressVPN. And last but not least, certainly this week, the podcast is sponsored by HelloFresh, your solution to skipping trips.

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So I think this dog is faking it. I think the dog is faking it. The whole thing, it's a ruse. Yeah, the whole thing I think he's just pretending to be a little baby. So I carry him around So well, did you remember when you were at my house to be fair next next to my breakfast nook that you fixed Thank you. Uh-huh. We had the back door that had like a screen door that would go across, you know for like the nice summer weather, right? yesterday this fucked up dog across, you know, for like the nice summer weather, right? Yesterday, this fucked up dog busted that thing off of its hinges and just dove right through. So I was taking a shit and I just heard Paige go, no, no, no, no, ah, and I fucking run

out, like, you know know you do the fucking like oh And I look out and the door is off its hinges like off the sliding track on the top and bottom and the screens is hanging out then boosts just sitting in the sunshine going ah Just so you know anytime I want to anytime I want to. Anytime I want to. You ain't stopping this. Ridiculous. Yeah. And he also, Paige was like on her phone, she was like, you know, doing, she's doing a text message, and the dog leapt over her outstretched arms to plop, like in her, on top of her elbows. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I feel like considering the amount of u ease you give boosts is absolutely him some of you give you give so many up ease the boost is like yeah

fucking carry me I ain't saying shit the ruse is absolutely on and and you know faking it he spoiled for it why wouldn't you why would maybe I spoiled him a little a little bit little. Little, a little bit, little bit. Maybe just a little bit. Anyway. All right. So. So aside from watching the Devil May Cry anime. Yeah.

Sorry, cartoon. Couple of, animation. Animation, Adi Shankar animation. Couple other things. You can definitely tell it's his style Couple other things For me this week one Yeah, Reggie told me about there's a screening of an old movie that I've always been told to go watch and thanks to him he got some tickets me and

some another friend and Foxcade Went to go check out L'haine which is French for The hate 1995 France film starring Vincent Cassel. Vincent Cassel, which is Mr. Chevalier Victor from Tekken 8. So, cool sword knife gun guy from Tekken 8,

back when he was a young actor. Back before the disastrous patch. Back before the patch, he was a crooked-nosed street punk. And it was all about, yeah, basically this life in the projects, police brutality inutality in France, mid 90s. And it's filmed all in black and white, very, very taxi driver, very, very train spotting, just rough life on the streets and the boot marching down on people trying to survive in the hood in France in the 90s.

And very, very good, excellently shot movie with some beautiful cinematography, especially again, anytime something's done in black and white and it's done well, you have to just consider like the extra attention to detail put towards contrast and use of gray tones and such. As we described Akira Kurosawa with a masterful use of blacks, whites, highs and lows and mids. Same thing here. Some really impressive just panning shots and camera work

and overall a gritty, pretty awesome movie, really old classic, La Hayne. I definitely recommend it if you are somebody who, you know, likes the vibes of, again, taxi driver, train spotting, you know, things like that with an old grit to it. It's just especially kind of this one bit that's it holds up well. But there's one bit that's so funny and interesting, which is just, you know, there's that skit about how Guy Ritchie movies are just like extremely low stakes

for a very, very small amount of money. Yes. And the feeling here of like a bunch of kids getting mistreated and abused by cops and just getting roughed up and stuff. I've also heard people kind of say, oh, if you enjoyed The Wire and you wanna see what that kind of parallel is in a European context,

you can watch this too. And I'd say there's a little bit of that there. Wire's obviously much more fucking camera on the street reel with it. But here, it's just so funny because one of the major conflicts of this great movie is like the location of one gun is missing.

Yeah, okay. And it's like, oh my God, did you hear that a gun is missing? You know, and it's so much higher like urgency and I can't believe it It is ace it is a firearm Wow out here in these European streets And boy It's just not the same thing in North America is it you know America in particular it is just not the same level.

You know, anytime I see videos where it's like, you know, you see those videos of like someone going nuts and then the cops show up and then they have like the little like bet, but extended mancatcher that pins you to the ground and you're like, oh shit Japan. What is that? You have some some tech for like, you know, safely stopping somebody from a distance that doesn't involve just blowing them away. That's pretty impressive. You know, it's the yeah, you're getting there's a little bit of just like, who you know, if only I like I wish the stakes could be this low. Nowadays, yeah, when watching

this old movie, you know, like It's great, but man, those stakes are low by comparison to today. So pretty good. And shout outs to seeing this. What is essentially, imagine Like imagine like Kuno plus like a couple years. Mm. And right, is what Vincent Cassel plays. And then that aged into this distinguished beard and just the ultimate like silver fox that hits you with heat engagers. Jututu. Jai!

And replaces Noctis in Tekken 8. It's wild to see such a dignified person in a role where you're just fucking street urchin, you know, scumming it up. So yeah, go check out La Haine. Very very cool. And yes, hate is féminé en français. That's what, yeah, Fox was asking about that. He's just like, wait, so is everything gender?

It's like, yeah, everything's gendered. That table has a gender. That's correct. And hatred has a gender, and it is female. I also was playing some cyberpunk. I got a little bit further into Phantom Liberty. And so now I feel like I've met a lot of the major players, maybe all of them. Maybe not. But at the very least, I've been introduced to a solid cast of characters.

And it is awesome. It's really cool. It's definitely like I can feel how it's DLC. So you can feel the quality improvements. You can feel the, you know, the bits and pieces where yeah, things are kind of happening a lot tighter narratively. And everyone that's been introduced so far in this DLC has been awesome, super fantastic. And it's a little bit like now that I've also played, you know, I've played a good bunch of the of the the game on its own and then off camera, I've played a good bit as well.

I have a feeling for like the skeletons and the bones of you know what it is running around this open world. And yeah, I guess what you're getting out of Phantom Liberty, since it was made as again a quality later on thing, feels I guess a bit more of maybe a Cyberpunk 2 would be like this, you know? That is how I remember people talking about Project Liberty.

Yeah, it feels like a cyber Phantom liberty it feels like yeah, it feels like a slice of what cyberpunk 2 would be you know um And I mean hopefully right? um There's a whole long intro on rails that is Fantastic and then you get out and then you're it opens up and it opens up in a really cool way and then it recloses off again and then it reopens up even bigger and it's even better when it opens up again and it feels great, feels great. into the main game is going to be extra jarring. And I'm ready for that. I understand, you know, but I just want to 100 percent underline

the quality difference and how much I'm enjoying it. Ran into fucking Susie. God, I don't know what the expectation was with Susie's implementation. But between Susie and like Jesse Cox and some of these other people popping up Man, everyone is just the dumbest absolute stupidest cameos ever Suzy's in particular is I don't know if you've have you seen like what it is I've seen about a hundred videos of her running people over with her car, but not much else Okay, so it has not happened to me. I managed to avoid it Because everyone talks about how Suzy runs you over with her car, but not much else. Okay, so it has not happened to me. I managed to avoid it.

Well, yes, because everyone talks about how Susie runs you over with her car. But no, but I didn't know, it wasn't even something, like the way it happens is an unexpected thing. If you happen to like, do the wrong thing in this scenario, if you just, if you're a little too hasty, it can get you. Yeah, all you have to do is walk forward into the left in front of the car and then she's going there you go whatever that might be but um but how how you meet up with her and start talking is it's hilarious and uh i just remember seeing that shot from like it was like i think it was an art of the render of her face in the trailer or so or in one of the, I think once he was maybe tweeted about it. And I was like, Oh, cool. Look at that. That's awesome. But it does not convey the level of

goof that the actual mission brings, you know, you kind of see her like standing there being like, Oh, yeah, that's a character. Okay. And then in context, it's some dumb shit. So it's very funny. And yeah, gonna continue chipping away at that this week. And I believe as well the 2x KO alpha lab is opening up this weekend. So how was that? Yeah, that should be coming. Do we should I have a fucking mail about that check your email? I buy a man. I believe so You're not in the last one

Well, I know I got mine So if it's like last time and they give the extra then yeah, just you know, you can just I'd appreciate that. Yeah, sure thing And and they give the extra, then yeah, just, you know, you can just. Oh, I'd appreciate that. Yeah, sure thing. And. I think it's because all that shit I talked, maybe. Oh, I mean, I didn't piss anyone off just yet. Not yet, you haven't. We are in the clear, oh boy. No, but anyway, so yeah, probably gonna take a look at that later this week as well. So

yeah, wooly versus on YouTube, and on Twitch and check my socials for the schedule as well. Got a couple other updates to and there's some stuff that's not confirmed yet so I think that's it yeah yeah anything else for you let's see well have you heard so I played a ton of games this past week, little quick looks at them. There's one in particular I would like to talk to you about. Have you heard of Blueprints? I have now.

I did appreciate the code by the way, I did install that. Haven't taken a look at it yet though. Blueprints is a super, super cool game that I had like a last second change of heart on. Oh yeah? And it's weird. So Blueprints, you get it, it's like Blueprints huh? Yeah, well that's immediately upon saying it out loud. That's I was like oh, yeah Yeah, but I don't like a like a house of leaves

style video game which basically means that It is about a house and exploring that house and a house that has an impossible internal layout Basically it is missed but a rogue-like. Okay, and impossible architecture. So, basically, you walk into the front door and you have three doors in the foyer and door number one goes to the left, door number two goes ahead of you, and door number one goes to the left door number two goes ahead of you and door number three goes to your right and the goal is ostensibly to make it to the final room of the mansion which is all the way at the back right and when you walk up

to door number one and open it it gives you three rooms that it could be when you open the door and so you'll pick like the lavatory and you'll open it up and oh it's the bathroom or you'll open it up and it's the billiard room. Random every time. What have you? Different every single time. Okay. Like pulling, it is the room equivalent of loading into a room in Hades and walking up to a power up. Okay. Like, don't know what it's going to be, right? So the billiard room has a puzzle in it, and that puzzle in it will give you maybe some items or maybe some information, and then you use those items or that information to continue and solve various puzzles throughout the rooms and make your way through it. In the first

14 hours of me playing that game I was absolutely completely enthralled. I have a massive list of notes that using the Steam notepad function of what is in every single room. There's a notepad function on Steam? If you hit, if you go, if you bring up the, oh fucking Jesus. Oh my God. If you bring up the Steam overlay, there's a, one of the options is notes, and it is a per game notepad.

Dude, I have fucking pages of Lorelei and the laser's eye notes still... Dude, that is... Four, five, six... six pages. What the fuck? Oh my god, what button? You go to the Steam overlay and it's one of your default options there. Son of a bitch. And you can also use the Steam overlay to look at all the screenshots you've taken for this particular game.

So I have taken copious screenshots of every document in the game, every out of place item, puzzle solution I couldn't figure out, etc. And so the basic idea is that you are working your way through these rooms and all these rooms have, you know, a lot of them have puzzles or they have characteristics. So like there's a room called the gym and what the gym does is nothing but when you walk into it it takes more of your characters steps which is essentially your health. Because you only have 50 steps to go. Walking into the gym takes

more steps away from you. But the gym is a T-intersection, so it's really good to use to navigate around because you guarantee yourself to get two doors. So you're moving around, you're drafting rooms, you're trying to figure out a way to go to the end, but you can never be sure what's going to load in. So you're trying not to dead end yourself, but if you do dead end yourself, there's probably something in one of these dead ends that will give you more context or a clue to a puzzle or a hint as to some kind of meta progression that you can do. So exploration is rewarded. Possible permanent upgrade.

Okay, okay. Right? And so. And you're, are you mapping your path? Or is there a map that you get for your path, like as you move through? Yeah, so you hit R2 and you see the map and it's like a, it's a five by nine grid.

Okay. But every single day when you run out of steps or hit all dead ends, you restart the day over, start completely over, and then the layout is different completely. Okay. Right. Oh, I see. So you'll get into situations where you're like, well, listen, I did dead end myself completely. Right. Like, you know, the the path forward in this room leads to the the wall of a different room. So I'm now now dead-ended. I can't continue but I did find a breaker box that taught me how to manipulate the power level in different rooms, you know, and now, I know that, oh, I could turn the power back on in a different room if I run into that out of power room and the breaker box. And that means that I could go turn that on and then go back to the earlier room and do the puzzle there, right? So it's all like little meta-progressions and figuring out what rooms

have puzzle solutions to connect to each other and which ones have meta-progressions that connect to each other. And there's also bonus lore that require puzzles to solve, but require significantly more, not external knowledge, but pieces from different places. And it's super, super interesting. This sounds a lot like Lorelai and the Laser Eyes, actually, that I was describing before. So it is, I think it's called Betrayal on the House on the Hill, the board game.

Okay. I believe you played that. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That game was great. That is how you put rooms down. Oh, that game rules. Okay. Like that exact situation. Sick.

Right? Combined with Myst. Mm-hmm. So it's kind of like Obra Dinn or like Outer Wilds in which like knowledge is the most important thing. Like you get items and the items are stuff like, you know, you can, you don't need a key to open up a chest. You can just smash the lock or you get a magnifying glass that lets you examine, um, you know, pieces of parts of text more accurately, right? Stuff like that.

But it's primarily about like gaining knowledge and recording knowledge and figuring out puzzle solutions. And what they do do something really interesting is say there's like a, there's a, I'm going to obfuscate this, there is a puzzle in the billiard room that you can solve every single time. Right? That once you understand the logic behind the puzzle in the billiard room, you can just solve it every single time. And to fight that, every single time you do that puzzle, the next time you encounter it, it upgrades to a harder version of that puzzle. Okay. So that that room used to be a gimme for me. Oh and now that I've done it like 15 times That puzzle is now fairly difficult and there is a though. I understand all the rules and there's a death state

The death state is running out of steps every time you cross into a new room you you use one step, okay? Okay, yeah, yeah. Because in a lot of cases, the- So backtracking costs a lot of steps. In a lot of cases, there's no death state. There's just solve the puzzle or you're stuck. But in this case, you have a limit. And you can find bananas or apples

and those give you extra steps. Or you can find a kitchen and you can spend money to buy extra food. And there's all these little tiny things that are really, really interesting. You're finding out details from photos that help you examine areas outside the house to get meta-progression.

There's permanent upgrades, they're all really powerful, but they're very hard to get. There's mechanics to upgrade a room into a better version of that room that either has a stronger bonus or like more doors or you know stuff like that. And I was like absolutely completely enraptured. I ran into the game's singular flaw, which is the same flaw every single negative review on Steam talks about. And that is, I have a number of puzzle solutions that I have 100% completely solved, but I cannot get the rooms to manifest.

So like, there is a puzzle in a room that I have definitively solved, but it requires a specific room to spawn next to it to turn the puzzle on. And the RNG is not working out. Just won't allow them to happen. Gotcha. And it is making me crazy.

Okay, okay. It's the RNG. Like it is, it is absolutely, and because like I've been talking about this and I've been trying to figure out why it's making me so nuts. And it's because when so nuts and it's because when I'm playing Hades and I get the most dogshit powers ever I still get

to play Hades and fight and give my my shot against it but the gameplay of blueprints is correlating information and solving puzzles. And I am like 9 gameplay days in a row of no new information and no new puzzle solutions because I can't get any of the new rooms to spawn or any of the right rooms to spawn next to each other. And it sucks. It is so violently infuriating because I am being actively blocked

from playing the game by the game. Does it, do you have to just like, is there a certain number of like steps or days before before you know? No, it's an infinite series of days. Okay, just keep playing for you know a year It doesn't matter so you don't have to kill yourself and go up try again. Try again type of thing, right? but it's like There I you know and There, I, you know, and I had two of these ones before.

Like how many room variations are there that you would? There are over 100 rooms. Okay. And you can only spawn in 45 because of the way the grid is built. And some rooms are rarer than others. And part of the problem is that some of the rare rooms have puzzles in them. And then the solutions to those puzzles

are found in more common rooms. But I can't get back to the rare rooms to solve their puzzles. And like, there is an internal logic about where to place rooms as you go through to like manipulate the RNG. So for example, I found a document in a room that said, hey, this color of room tends to spawn exclusively along the edges of the house. Right? So I'm like, oh, okay, if I want to find a specific type of room, I have better luck

going along the edges and hopefully running into it. Right? But finding that piece of information But finding that piece of information was also RNG. Okay. And I have spoken to somebody who has worked with the game and they have informed me that there is a document that has the information I need to manipulate the RNG to get the rooms I want. Someone said... But I can't find it because it's RNG to get the rooms I want. Someone said- But I can't find it because it's RNG! Someone said this is a problem that solves itself

if you keep going, but I guess you have to RNG that solution to then get rid of the RNG. I played it for like four hours a night ago and achieved no progress! Mm-hmm. It was so frustrating! a night ago and achieved no progress. It was so frustrating. Yeah, okay. I had that happen to me a bit in terms of long session, no progress, I had that happen to me in More Tall.

No wait, not More Tall. Barbuta, the first one, where it just takes a while to even figure out what the puzzles are and you can just walk in circles forever. That sucks if it's fun otherwise. The problem is, is like, okay, I have played Gungeon a lot. I have played Hades a lot. Yeah, I have played Hades a lot and I have had a full day of playing Gungeon and made no progress, right? I didn't do any of the quests that I set out to do. I made very little

currency to unlock guns. I didn't beat any. I didn't kill any of the past. I didn't get any of the unique items. I didn't unlock anything, right? But when I was doing that in Gungeon, I was still playing Gungeon and getting better at playing the action portion of Gungeon. When I'm playing Blueprints and I'm doing like nine days in a row of drafting the house and trying to go, come on lab, come on lab, as I go through, and it's like, it's super frustrating.

And I can even understand that there is an argument to be made that what I am not doing is trying to understand the underlying logic of the drafting and where things go and how to blow dead ends here, here, here and here to hopefully get more hallways later and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that type of meta knowledge is not a puzzle, like a dartboard puzzle or a lie puzzle or a math puzzle.

That is something I am really really fucking bad at when I play like slay the spire or something like that figuring out the logistics of the war of the secrets that you have to uncover by thinking it and like the game seems to like know this because there are Like a lot of puzzle solutions. There's the hint. Then there's the bigger hint. And then if you play long enough, here's the document that just tells you how to do it. Okay. Like eventually, like there are like there's a pump room puzzle that has like a diagram

on the wall to figure out. But later there is also like a fucking manual that you can just read and it just tells you how to run the fucking pump room. It's really interesting. Right? This reminds me a bit of when I was talking about a thousand times resist and how moment to moment gameplay in a different genre can cover over slumps. But like in this case, that's not the genre,

therefore you just. But I don't have moment to moment gameplay in Blueprints. You just feel the slump, yeah, yeah. And I'm thinking of two of like, in Barbuta's case, it's like, it is a test of patience to like, how willing are you to just- Because you move slow. Yeah, so how willing are you to just slowly push yourself up against every surface until

you get something or notice something or you know something catches your eye. It's really really subtle. I'm curious to know if like finding the solution to this RNG problem will like switch it back around to being fun again, you know? So, I came to, um, like a very strange conclusion. And this is my gut feeling. Um, I feel like there are people that are just like, this is like one of the greatest games of all time. And I can feel it in there.

You know, you know what I mean? I can feel like when I played Obra Dinn. Okay. Like I was like, oh, this is, oh, This is really, I'm dumb. Oh shit. I'm dumb. I'm too dumb to get to the greatest game of all time playing Obra Dinn. Okay. I didn't, and I felt that with Outer Wildss Outer Wilds is one of the greatest games of all time easy And I was smart enough to do everything in Outer Wilds Can you can you open up notes on the Steam Deck too? Yeah, part of the steam. Okay. That's like um seems like it's an update from last year

Yeah, I think around for a bit. Okay, so also I'm realizing that The moment I opened up some games that Doxed me by showing my address when I clicked on Steam overlay I turned steam overlay off and try to keep that off as much as possible So does that fuck up controller support for some for some games it does and for some games it doesn't so I do it On a case-by-case basis, but there's situations where if I leave steam overlay on playing and hitting the wrong button Will fucking docks me so that's a reason why I don't see a lot of steam features. Yeah With blueprints I feel like

With blueprints, I feel like there is a variation between this is maybe the greatest game ever or this game is brilliant but extremely flawed from people that I've seen beat it or given up on it. And I feel like, remember everyone, this is me talking about my feelings. This is not objective. I feel like the determining factor is whether or not the RNG went easy on you. Is there a... Did you get the rooms you needed when you had the information you had? Or did you just run into like conclusive cock blocks

over and over and over and over? Well, you implied that there's almost like a pity system, right, where if you can't figure things out, eventually the hints get bigger and bigger and give away. Yeah, but the hints, so here's the thing, the better hints are in rarer rooms. Okay. So like, there's a room called the office.

The office I have seen once. in the office there are documents that just tell you how to solve some of the puzzles. Right. Now I had already solved all those puzzles. So that wasn't the biggest deal. Right. But if I had been struggling struggling struggling and then had a good run and got to the office, hey, I would have, you know, managed to, you know, get solutions, then I'd be able to go back, blah, blah, blah, right? And I know today, without a shadow of a doubt, that the developers acknowledged that this is a problem because they patched the rates of rarer rooms appearing today. Oh. Oh. A patch went out this morning that increased the likelihood of rarer rooms appearing. Now it's not any of the rooms that I need but still

Yeah, I guess I Guess you just have to roll the fucking dice that like that. That's that's the song Yeah, that sucks is that it's like I you know games can incentivize you with a carrot or with a stick. I have finished my carrots and I I just keep going back into the house for more carrots And you're getting and I am hungry for carrots Um and it is a very serious problem because the, the, the, the,

the gameplay of the game is thinking, right? There's no action component of any kind. There is only brain, but like I need, I need more information to, or, or I need more information to, or I need more levers to pull. I need something to actually interact with. And what you are seeing is compelling when you discover it. Super compelling. Super compelling. I'm at like 10 hours or no, I'm at like 12, 13 hours and I found the freezer.

There's a room that's the freezer. It's like a fucking walk-in freezer. I saw it for the first time two nights ago and there is like a series of puzzles in there that I have no idea how to solve. And my first thought entering was not, oh cool, what a cool puzzle. My first thought was, I better figure this shit out as good as I can now, because I don't know when the next time I'm ever gonna see this fucking room is,

because I've seen it once. Like the room that I need to solve other rooms puzzles, I have seen once ever. And I solved it on stream and I solved the internal puzzle there, but it needs to connect to other rooms to solve their puzzles? And I have never seen it again. When you're playing a game like this, right? Or like Baba, for example, do you have a like, the pace is all on your brain. So do you have a method of like thinking for stream? Cause I've noticed for it with myself, I have, there's a moment of like, I go through it at a regular pace and then I have a repeat

and then I'll have a silent stop and go. And then there's a point where I'm like panicking cause I'm like, oh, nothing is happening. And this is not going to move forward until you figure it out. And like you just have to like navigate or narrate your thought process to exhaustion and that starts burning me out way quicker. So the game actually does really well on this respect. So I played this game for about, I don't know, I would say like six, seven hours on stream, like a lot of it. And the core thing that I ended up doing, it was the same thing that I've been playing at home, was okay, brand new room?

Alright, let's take screenshots of every single piece of text. Let's take a screenshot of everything goofy in the room that could be possibly a puzzle solution. Let's attempt to solve all the puzzles that exist within. Let's remember its layout. And there's a list. Once you encounter a room, it goes to a list so you can look at it later. Okay, let's see. Let's go over my notes and see if that this any information here reintegrates with other things that I know. Right. Let's type those

notes out and we're done whether or not we solved the thing in here or not. Like can I figure it out? No. Do I have what I need to figure it out? No. Do I have the item that I need to figure it out? No. Et cetera, right? Okay, well I'm going to move on and hopefully I'll encounter a new room that has a new piece of information and as long as in a single run, you get one new piece of information. It feels like it's worth it even if it's a single detail like you know, hey, red rooms are act all like this or green rooms are all act like this, that kind of thing, right?

And the version, the thing that I'm dealing with has been like hours and hours. But on my VOD, there is a version of this problem that was not hours and hours. It was maybe, maybe been an hour and it was I have solved a puzzle conclusively but in order to get the number I need I need to be able to turn power on to a different room and I need to acquire a magnifying glass and chat got to sit with me as I went through like eight runs of oh I got the room with the power and the room no magnifying glass Oh, I got the room in the magnifying glass no power Oh, I got the magnifying glass and the ability to turn the power on no room

Just like over and over and over and over and I'm well aware that like there might have been other things I could have picked up and I was kind of tunneling because I wanted the solution. Yeah. But I have the solution in my hand and in my head. So I'm just not allowed to attempt it. So this is where sometimes RNG gets balanced and tweaked for like game progression purposes and games. Like is this a game where if you know how to use those three things together, and they're

in your mind, but you're not able to get them in this run, is there perhaps a different combination of things that has been made? No, this thing has one solution. No, no, no, but what I mean is, is there a completely different thing that's like, actually, you should be grabbing a different item for a different room that is much more available. And it's basically saying forget about power and magnifying glasses for now. There's another thing here that's easier that you should be focusing on. Well, not necessarily focusing on, but then if you can't get the thing that you know how to solve,

your next goal should be just find a room you haven't seen. So like if you're building a balotro run with a certain deck and you just can't get the joker that you need for the perfect synergy, you gotta go, alright, we're three rounds in and I'm not finding that joker, what else can I do here? Maybe I can turn this run into something else, you know? And the problem is, fairly simply, that the further you get into the game The more likely it is that you have seen and solved all the rooms you encounter on a run Right when I started out and I got stuck on like this puzzle or that puzzle

Well, most of the new rooms I encountered were either new or I couldn't solve them. So like whatever, I have tons to correlate, I have tons to write down, I have tons to take screenshots of. But like now, like I can do the the parlor and parlor and billiard puzzles, no problem. I know how all the hallways fit together. I know how the way I should use the astronomy office or not. I know how to deal with the security room, etc., etc., etc. So these don't become thinking puzzles, these become like placement, like tasks. And I could get in a situa- like I had like multiple runs the other night where like I could I did not encounter a single new room at all. So I had no new information to take.

But I also didn't encounter enough of the rooms that would allow me to solve any of the puzzles I already had solved. What's to stop you from just like doing a no solve just exploration step run where you just move and recount your and regain steps and doing a no-solve, just exploration step, run where you just move and regain steps and keep it going? Nothing, it's really hard to regain steps. Okay. Like it's quite difficult to regain steps, but every single run is kind of that,

is try and get as far as you can and try and see as much as you can. And it's just like... And there's like multiple like very large things that are outside the core progression that I can see and I'm working my way towards, but I haven't quite gotten there yet. Okay. And I just I feel like Stuck stuck and it's and

It's not stuck Because I don't have the information and I'm not stuck because I was too dumb to solve the puzzle I'm stuck because I can't will show a puzzle to show up in front of me and that is Insanely frustrated and so that and this is where I go back to saying, in most cases, a game will say, if you have the solution, but you can't, if you have the solution or you have to wait for the RNG to work out in your favor

and neither's working out, there is a different thing that you could do, but you just have to not tunnel vision and kind of walk towards that other thing, right? Even like Fear and Hunger, weird place to compare it to. But I feel like- No, I kind of already understand what you're going for. Fear and Hunger, you'll load up and be like,

okay, I'm either going to fight to win something or I'm going to just get information. And the information runs are based on like, you're expecting to die, but you want to uncover as much fog of war as possible to be like, okay, now I kind of know what's going around after I exit this hallway and turn the corner. So I'll be aware of that. Or at the very least, you're seeking out, in this RNG example, knowledge versus conquering the puzzle. And if the game does take pity on you in a way where it's like,

you're not getting what you've learned already, I'm hoping that it's just like gonna reward you for pivoting and Going towards what it is showing you, you know I'm I'm gonna go back to it in like a couple of days when I'm not so frustrated Mm-hmm, but like it is a it is a level of frustration that I have like kind of never encountered in a Game of this type. Usually the frustration is, fuck, I feel stupid. Damn, I can't figure this shit out at all.

And I felt that a lot in Outer Wilds, because there were a lot of things, I was like, man, I can't fucking, I'm so dumb. Right, right, yeah. And here, I get to have that, but then I also get to have, hey, I am smart, fuck, but I also get to have hey I am smart fuck but I can't oh I can't Can't get a hold of it Yeah strange, but I mean if you're saying that other people have also like

negatively reviewed it is like the You go to the store page It's at very positive or it was mostly positive every single negative review is saying I got stuck because I couldn't get the things I was I already knew how to solve okay and it's like I like the game is immaculate and cool and the vibes are great and it looks incredible and it's super slick and the puzzles are great and the taking notes and trying to figure out the mystery and figure out how to run the house, oh, it's so awesome.

Like I'm reminded. Right up until the game's RNG kinda fucks on you. I'm kinda reminded of how like, you know, when I finally got the, that I learned about the combo of like Hades where you grab the spear and then you got the lightning re-zap on it, you know, when I finally got the, that I learned about the combo of like Hades, where you grab the spear and then you got the lightning re-zap on it, you know, or so. And, or like the archer, the arrow, and then you can fire double with the Daedalus hammer

and stuff, and I'm like, okay, let's go, let's get, let's get the, let's look for Zeus once we get the spear. And then games like, okay, you got Athena Okay, you got Hermes and no Zeus and no Zeus and no Zeus and then you're just like well And then here's fucking Aphrodite and I'm like, ah, I guess I'll do the heart boon whatever, you know, but um You and then eventually you kind of go like oh well Okay, I can't use the heart with the spear but I can use the charm for my dash or whatever,

and then you start working into builds around using that or so, you know? So I'm just, I'm like, I'm thinking that, you know, the game might have some where that it pities you while not giving you what you're looking for. Yeah, so like, Hades is such a good example. So even in that run Even if everything is like, uh, yeah, because I tried to do those challenges, right? It's like get all of the Zeus

You know, yeah, yes, it's like you can get really frustrating But then at the end of the day I can still go fight Hades and see if I can beat him You can still do it. Yeah. Yeah and and like get the rewards off of that. Whereas whereas here it's like no you didn't get to play this run and it's like fuck are there any solutions that you just stab in the dark and just fucking pull off through winging it um no okay no okay no it also has something that's like really like Okay. No. Okay. No. It also has something that's like really, like wildly frustrating, which is being able to go through a room and manage to get like what's a permanent upgrade, but then not being able

to find the room that lets you cash in the permanent upgrade and you just lose it Hmm and it's like fucking frustrating it's Cuz they're rare, okay Yeah, carry interesting though interesting self it It's a super cool game curiosity and and like I It feels like that fucking

Psyop meme of gamblers about to hit the diamond Right like the the 90% of Gamblers quit right before they're hitting big yeah Yeah, and you know they're digging through and they don't hit the diamonds yet because they're turning away. It feels like that every run But I've done like nine days in a row and I'm just like fuck Like it's it's it's it's as it's as frustrating as I've been with a game in like a year Like I can't remember the last time I've been with a game in like a year.

Like I can't remember the last time I've been this frustrated at something. But the highs were so high and I want those highs back. I want to go back to examining and figuring out shit in the house. Please just spawn the fucking boiler room, oh my God. Yeah, my hope truly is that like, we know we don't get games with true random, but actually just

give me fake game random, which is mostly random, but then skewed for fun. Especially after a certain number of failed things or things not showing up after a while increase the likelihood of something else popping. Chaos gates showing up after a while if you fucking, you know, if you don't get take any or so. Yeah. Interesting. I think I think like the most like upsetting thing about me getting stuck like this is I've seen like two or three people in the chat right now going that happened to me. Don't give up the games. Great. Just cheat engine 99 of

the room reroll item so that you could just reroll it over and over and over to get what you want yeah and I'm like this should not even be a solution that someone conceives right this shouldn't be like that's change it till you get it that sucks that it's a suggestion that I went. Oh, I guess that would fix it That's not intended game design. No Okay, like like I feel like it literally needs like a singular extra way to influence the RNG Like anything.

Whatever this RNG solution is. And apparently there is. I just haven't found it yet because finding it is RNG. Okay. I am curious though. Duly noted on this and everyone and some people saying potential game of the year. It might be game of the year.

It might be. Potential gaudy is always an eyebrow raise. I was like 100% on the game of the year like bandwagon absolutely up until a couple of nights ago. What like oh the game of the year is inside blueprints whether or not it wants to let you play. You just got a role for it. Yeah. All right. Did you do anything else? Yeah but I got to take a piss really bad right now, so I'm gonna go for a second. All right beer be All right Hey, did I talk Did I talk about Hollow Knight at all last week?

Yeah, you mentioned that you were restarting We talked about oh, yeah, we talked about the safe save data stuff which I do have to say that that there were two points on that that I didn't think of at the time that came up afterwards. Oh yeah? The one thing was when sometimes if you're playing a game like a Souls game or something

and DLC comes out, and it's useful to be able to pop it in and go load that DLC up if you have to go find it. Oh absolutely. That is a completely different scenario though. With Souls games we have learned our lesson many times. And I'm remembering one time that I went to hang out with Shmup god pat at his place and he loaded up and he was showing me The SMT series and he loaded up saves from like DDS from particular moments to like Sell stuff he was talking about and like he showed me cool shit

Absolutely that I was like I am interested Seeing that you know at a time when year was? That was a long time ago, admittedly. Now you can just YouTube, admittedly. Now you can just YouTube. Yeah. So I had a... I saw a comment somewhere that had responded to that. It was like, well, I mean, sometimes I want to keep those save files so that I can, like,

you know, go into a game that I've completed and, you know, wander around and, like, you know, have my memories, to which my response would be that my memories are have my memories, to which my response would be that my memories are for my memories. And that if I don't remember anything, then I might as well play it again because I don't remember anything. I think I'll pick part of the fundamental disagreement here

is just that the default state of affairs is doing nothing means the save exists and you have to actively take a step to remove it from existence that's true so that's the part where I'm like why take the step just leave reality where it is but anyway go on my only thoughts on Hollow Knight is like hey you know what yeah still still the best to ever do it holy shit oh wow just holds the fuck up fuck oh my god I also played like a huge amount of embargoed games last week like a weirdly gigantic amount of embargoed games That I'm gonna do a really quick dash through

Into the Dead Darkest Days that zombie game that's in 2d It's this war of mine, but zombies. It's pretty cool. Okay. That's a good way to just, yeah, okay. Monaco 2 is Monaco 2. And it's cool, like Monaco was. Okay, I don't, I've heard a lot about Monaco, but I don't actually know what Monaco is. Monaco's a sneaking slash a heist game that was represented by little pixel dudes and it was really charming and Monaco 2 is similarly charming and looks nicer and has a little bit more depth and it's really cool. Okay. Monaco 2 remains also cool. I

hopped into the, I was, Amplitude sent me and put me into the Endless Legend 2 preview program, so I got a good early look at Endless Legend 2, which is Amplitude's 4X Civilization style games. They've done Endless Legend, they've done also Endless Space, which is their Space 4X. Endless Legend 2 is super cool. It has a lot of really interesting things that change it from the Civ formula, particularly a focus on questing and a more in-depth combat system that actually is good this time. But both of the runs that I did on stream ended because a bunch of fucking angry unicorns killed my ass and just completely killed all of my armies. So maybe I should focus on military next time.

I took a look at a game called Peppered, which is a platformer in which you usually get like one, basically a huge amount of branching paths, very irreverent writing, really charming. I'd recommend it. It's really cool. And I also took a look at the early access game called Stygian Outer Gods, which is very early Cthulhu game. Much like all Cthulhu games, is perpetually blue-green and really really mean difficulty wise and kind of jank, but pretty cool. It's like a first person, almost like a Deus Ex style game, but Cthulhu.

Innsmouth type shit. What's that? Innsmouth type shit. Yes, very much. It's Kingsport. Okay. Not Innsmouth, but yeah, no, absolutely. Fish people. But I also played rematch the

Gang yes, FIFU A title so good. I never want to call it rematch ever again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah perfect So we have talked a lot about how I, you know, it'd be really nice. Soccer absolver. If sports games were good, that'd be cool. Well, sports games are good when you have a turbo button. Yeah, so, FIFU is really great. Is really, really great. Nice. So there's two things. No, three things. Number one is the focus is on playing soccer or footy depending on where you live as

a team. When you load into FIFU, you are not playing a cursor that takes mind control of different players as they gain the ball. You are entering into 4v4 or 5v5 multiplayer matches in which you are playing one guy on the team. Yes. Man, the dream back in the day was to play a game of Madden with everybody on controller playing the position and just going hard as your one job. You're blocking, you're blocking. I'm a lineman, that's what I do. The second part is, well before I move on, it's like the fact that you're playing multiplayer

means that sometimes you don't get the ball. Sometimes you're just running defense on like the east side of the field and blocking the other guy so that the goalie doesn't shoot it towards him. What this means is that you are just like second to second playing the game at like you are constantly juking in front of other people and jockeying for position ball or not. You have a nice little mini map in the bottom right to

tell you where the ball is where all the other players are the tricky part about this type of setup of course is that like what does playing without the ball feel like and how fun is it positioning and doing a lot of work because games like particularly games like football and basketball are like the difference between like like not knowing what you're doing and like great players is what you're doing when you don't have the ball you know and and how so how engaging is that in this case so here come the controls the second great thing is the controls it controls really well your character has just enough weight on them like turn radius

Like you have a you have a you have jogging you have sprinting and then you have really fucking sprinting Like sprinting for real turbo Yeah, yeah The the kind so when you do have the ball, you have pass, you have shoot. Shooting is fascinating. It gives you a cursor to the center of the screen wherever you happen to be when you hold the right trigger and then you the length of time you hold that right trigger. This is the

camera. It is and then you use the left stick to determine the spin on the ball when it hits. Oh. So like when you go to shoot your shot you're like locking your angle into place and then shooting your shot like a billiards game. Okay so you point the camera with the right stick then you lock in your angle and then hit the spin on it for a little bit and then you're using your spin and your power. Cool. So what you can do with that is that you can aim it up

and then spin it down to go over people's heads. You can go around people. It's a lot of control. You also have the X button will quickly pass to yourself in any direction you hit the pad so if somebody's coming at you to slide you can immediately pass yourself to the right and dodge around them there's a button to volley the ball up to yourself to essentially do like an NBA Street like style juke crossover but you're just

like kicking it up over yourself and over the defender. Ah, one of those moves that makes a bunch of like European kids go, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh uh a button that you'll have always active in the game is to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able genuinely like all of a sudden I was like oh shit this is uh-oh was that clicking in on the right stick a button that you'll have always active because you're always turning the camera is hey dude I'm open your character will yell yo I'm open or give me the ball and when you do, the person with the ball will see in a red line the angle to that person, even if they're out of sight or off your camera. So I have been blocked by defenders and I'll hear, and I'll hear, hey, I'm open. And a line will go to like my, my eight o'clock and I can pass along that line and it will go to the teammate who said hey I'm open but it will go to where they were when they called it out.

Okay. So if they keep running I will actually pass behind them. Do you have to aim the pass or is it automatic? Yeah you have to aim the pass. Okay. Oh wow. Ooh that is skilled. Okay.

Yeah. Interesting. Oh wow, ooh, that is skilled, okay. Yeah. And, like, as a result with all of these things, it just plays and controls really well. You're not like doing crazy styles and dunks, but like genuinely in terms of game feel, NBA Street is the closest I could compare it to. So that's interesting, cause it's rethinking a sports game

from the ground up, I guess, because a lot of sports games, admittedly, each genre has had a take at it at this point, and there's a solidified way that it goes, right? You passing to yourself, you take control of whoever actively has the ball, you don't have to aim the pass, it's just, it's like whoever's nearest and the most open

You know and then a couple of like essentially having the game mostly resemble What the players and AI would look like but having you control that a little bit so that it feels like it's the sport But this sounds like it's way more manual. So here's here's Here's where the controls like get even more interesting. So you have your Like no, it's called tackle. It's not a tackle. It's you putting your foot out to like knock the soccer soccer tackle Yeah, that's that's what that means. If you're running it's a slide. Yes, right that that is what tackle means in right soccer context Yeah and The defense against that as a defender,

sorry, the defense against that as the guy with the ball is to pass to yourself, right? So you see somebody coming in for the slide, pass it to the right and your character will like hop over the slide and you'll keep it, right? This is more interesting because the fastest way to run is to not have control of the ball. When you have control of the ball, your character is slower than everyone else because you have

to maintain control of the ball. So the fastest way to get down the field is to pass it ahead of yourself and lose control of the ball and then catch up to it. Which is what a breakaway actually looks like in real life. But it makes it easier for people to just grab it because they don't have to remove it from your control. So it's really cool and it feels really good. So you're saying that it's like street-like

but it's also taking very simulation-esque, you know, decisions with the controls there. Yeah. That's cool. And the last thing is that the game looks... That's realistic....looks impeccable. So it looks like you're playing in a real soccer field, but if you get close enough to the edges you discover that you're actually playing in a gigantic TV rectangle. But if you get close enough to the edges, you discover that you're actually playing in a gigantic TV rectangle because when you score a goal, the screens that are covering every single surface change into a completely new environment. So, goal, you know, start of the match, you're playing in a classic soccer stadium. Somebody gets a goal, now you're playing in like the Lion

King's version of Africa. You get another goal, now you're playing underwater. It's just, it's pure visual. Like it has no bearing. But it looks a lot fucking more interesting than playing on a fucking soccer field for 40 minutes. Well I don't know, I mean I was gonna ask like, are there while you're playing, are there ultras in the stands performing blood sacrifices as they as they hold up their their burning fucking flares? It just looks pretty. And then do the the country chant.

It just looks pretty. It just looks really good. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I played a couple of matches and I got a couple of goals and I was super excited and it was really great so I For one match, okay, which I encountered your friend in mine bad rollback

in which the balls location did not match the balls actual location and not match the ball's actual location. And the match just completely fucking fell apart and made no sense at all. Okay. Yeah. All right, net code.

I mean, look, Sifu didn't have to deal with it. Obsolver did. So they do have experience. Slow Cop does have experience with that. But yeah, I'm always, it is interesting because I don't find, I don't think it happens too often that like, well, I get not really fully paying attention to a lot of sports games, obviously neither of us,

but that you go back to the ground level and like reinvent how the video game version of a sport is played. Because when you play a soccer game, the same soccer game you played on the NES, we're playing evolved versions of that all the way through to today in a lot of cases, you know? Tennis games are just evolved versions of the same thing from way back in the day, but just, you know, more realistic, more better, better features and quality of life things and all that. A lot of boxing games were the same thing.

And then Fight Night 3 was like, yo, let's try some crazy shit. Let's put the gestures on the stick, you know, and lean and move and dodge and put the swings of with the arc of your arms. And I was like, ooh, okay, you said let's throw out the video game version of this and like, say what if we had to dodge and swing from the ground up, you know, and, and yeah, this is a respectable thing for sure. Is overall the, I guess the pacing of this while it's being more realistic and simulator about soccer, because what you're describing is just fucking that that's real soccer, is there an arcade-y element

to like the size of the field or how fast the games go? There's no fouls and the field size is small. Okay, and it's teams of four, right? Four or five. Yeah, okay. So, it is a more arcade-y... It looks like indoor soccer. Faster paced version, awesome. Which is a more arcadey. It looks like indoor soccer. Faster paced version, awesome.

Which is way more exciting. Yeah, yeah, that's a better paced for more engagement. There's no referee, there's no cards. Solid, good call, yep. I'm sure, and I remember having this discussion with, who was I talking to? I think, anyway, but, Leon Massey actually, we're talking about, you know, soccer and everything and like there is a like the pacing kind of like

baseball today has become the tradition has become part of it the low the large field the low scoring game a lot of that is now just baked into tradition. Even though I'm super an advocate for like, fucking indoor soccer, smaller field, more fun, more engagement, more game, at this point, people are fans of more than just those things. They're attached to the history of it. So if they did have like a simulator mode of this game,

I'm sure that would do really well with people that were like looking for that experience as well. Sounds like something they could do. But if the main experience is about like, you know, just yeah, jump online and fucking, you know, get some games in and have fun in a short period of time, then they pick the right the right idea for that. Yeah, it's I was incredibly impressed. Yeah, I was incredibly impressed. I was super impressed. I had a great time and I am eagerly awaiting its full release. Because I think part of the reason the netcode was bad, it's like it's a very limited like alpha test. Okay.

That is like only for content creators. So like the distances I'm probably dealing with in an eight-man game is probably like fairly extreme. Okay. Yeah. It would be really nice if after all these decades someone made one good soccer game. Well, I mean Rocket League's fine. That's a car game, that's for cars. I hope that Rocket League inspires a lot of game makers to go back to sports and think about them in a completely different way. That would be interesting if they did that. I would think it would be actually even better if people who play and watch soccer understand what fun is like

Sorry, I can't It's it's I'm pushing it too far. I will always love the Mario strikers one art style and I played some Mega Man soccer back in the day and ISS International Superstar Soccer Yeah Anyway, but yeah, I know that game's fucking great ISS international superstar soccer Yeah Anyway, but yeah, no that game's fucking great That game super great. I I worry though because it's like it requires like 4v4 at minimum I

Worry that if the game doesn't like do really well that it will immediately die Yeah, well, that's that's their last online attempt, right? Like the whole bit with Obsolver was like, this is this game lives and dies based on the online community and people making their own dojos and being engaged enough with the idea of the game to play it actively often. And then Sifu was like, how about we just make a really good action game and we don't- How about we make a fucking killer action game, man. And don't let the population of its online fan base

have to determine whether it lives or dies, you know? But the gamble is, with an online game, is again, Rocket League. You fucking succeed with that and you have a massive platform for your company to move forward and becoming much bigger Like it's everything right if you blow up with this kind of game Like you can go this game is soccer the wide appeal on it is everyone but the u.s. Literally everyone everywhere It's it's you know so yeah

It's a smart it is a smart play to go for this as opposed to the third person fighting game where you can do focus attacks parries and dodges, which I think is rad, but the rest of planet Earth is not exactly locked in on, you know, so good for them. I hope I'm glad this is fun. I also watched the marathon gameplay reveal event. That's a are that's on the news? Yeah, that's a news good So we'll talk so yeah, I I'll talk about that when we get there as for me this week I'm gonna stream slightly less, but Paige is gonna be streaming slightly more a page is gonna be streaming tonight that's a April 15 But mainly I'm doing like I'm dicking around in Monster Hunter.

I'm dicking around in Hollow Knight. I've been doing like late night Hollow Knight streams like like it's 10 p.m. and the baby and Paige are in bed and I've taken the dog out to pee. And I'm like, I'm just going to play games until 2 a.m. anyway. So fuck it. Let's go back to Hallownest right I'm just sticking around with some of these old classics because next week

Expedition 33 comes out and that is gonna be what's going on on my show from that week onwards for a while because that is a French RPG with with the daredevil and the and the Ben star and the jen English in it yeah that thing looks really cool ah fuck the schedule also baby update the baby can now give props nice hell yeah we also encountered a completely developmentally appropriate series of situations which are heartwarming and good, but also hurt your heart a little bit. My little man was at the park and he saw a car he liked drive by and then the car drove by and drove away and he lost his fucking mind.

Because he liked that car. No. And then the car left. And I suppose you caught the make of it. No. Okay. Um, the other thing I can he'll high five the dog now which is awesome. Hold the dog up and he'll I'll be like give give the give boost a high five and he goes yeah. On the dog up and he'll I'll be like give give the give boost a high five and he goes yeah on the dog's fucked up little paw nice which is awesome all right props are in play but but the other day he did something that was really important and I'm proud of him even though it made me want to cry you know I got up in the morning and I you know I changed his diaper and I got him dressed

I got him his breakfast and I got him his early milk right he wants his milk in the morning he goes meh meh meh right and then I'm like alright buddy good you know alright and you know all that I'm like can you give dad a hug and he went no and I went anyway and I like are you sure you don't want to give dad a hug? He went no. And then he took his milk and he went to the living room. And I'm like, that is super important. He's not even two. He knows if he doesn't want to hug, he doesn't have to hug people.

Okay. And he's gaining bodily autonomy. Okay. But I almost fucking cry. But fuck you. Each shit old man. And then I told that to Paige when Paige came downstairs and she's like, oh, oh wow, that's really good. That's okay. That's good. That's appropriate. And that's good. And then she's like, hey, can mama get a hug? And he went, no. And then ran away. and then she went oh Like Violence it's so like violence

Damn damn okay. All right. All right. Yeah, I need to that for one day and now that's over Like like that did that was like two three days ago and now like it's right back to normal Yeah, like give that a hug important lessons. Okay important lesson, but That's why when you have your toddler You get yourself a fucked up little dog, yes, so that when you take it out, baby is like I don't want hugs You snuggle the dog. Do you want hugs? I mean you don't get a say in the matter. No, you don't you know you don't Hey, oh hugs on doggy. Oh, there you go and and I believe I saw a study recently that said something to the effect of Dogs will choose humans over other dogs. Oh

Absolutely in most situations when it comes down to it like Like it is it is locked in dog got like fucking eye boogers on my foot. Yeah fucking beard. That's disgusting You're disgusting. I love you. They're cooked there that that is it Fuck another dog that I now look back. Mm-hmm on me being like mom Why are you like hugging the dog so tight? It's just when I was like 10. It's like cuz you all hug me. Yes, you're a big child You're too cool to hug your mom and I was like, whatever That that's weirdo. That's what that's for yeah

He's the best he's so smart oh Sidebar I didn't mention it, but yo venom is very cool in guilty gear strife Hey, you know I don't mean to be dismissive like genuinely and I mean this with all the positive love in my heart Yeah, no shit Venom's cool. Yeah, guess what Venom's cool as fuck cool character playing pool. It is what it is But Leon call you on the phone to like scream about Venom's jump arcs No But the simplification of the character it it's interesting because they took some tools away and they simplified his formations and stuff. But at the same time, it's like, yeah, you better get ready for ball physics.

You just get such a freak. You can take half of his shit away and he'd still be fucked up. Get ready for set play, get ready for just... What's always what I love about Guilty Gear is when you've got a character that is fighting you, but they're paying attention to their own game. And you are like, you're in the way while Venom is trying to play pool. Just like how Asuka, it's like you're in the way while he's playing his own game of Yu-Gi-Oh!

He's playing cards and you just need to fucking, just stay over there while I fucking go through my deck And like yeah, he's like I'm setting up my formations, and you need to leave me alone. All right now break They yeah, they're just the shit I'm gonna set up my bullshit, and you're gonna have to guess right and I'm just gonna keep doing my bullshit until you break out of this nonsense. It's like when Tupac got stuck inside that glass dodecahedron, that whack-ass crystal prison. Mm-hmm. Yes and. Mm-hmm. No, that, I did not make that up. Okay. Well, I mean is that like when Busta Rhymes got stuck in the cheese grater? I don't know.

I'm not familiar with that one. Because like if you zoom in on the inside of a cheese grater and you light it from the outside it looks like the background of various hip hop videos. Fuck, like it looks exactly like, like I mean it's shiny. It's got the silver coming through the light. It's incredible. You should see zoomed in cheese graters. They look like fucking hip hop sets. They're amazing. Oh my god. You know what's super fucked up?

Like, insanely fucked up and uroboros shit? I typed in the phrase, whack ass crystal prison into Google so I could send you a link that's the video of Tupac in the whack-ass crystal prison. And what do I find? A thread from the Best Friends Play subreddit going, hey, here's that whack-ass crystal prison Pat mentioned on stream from over a year ago. Okay.

Oh, okay, I see here. We have a screenshot of what game is this? Uh, not a real game. Not a real game. That is obviously not a real game at all. Oh, well, the gun is not from something? Okay, alright. Thanks, uh, that's probably from Counter-Strike. Thanks, Gilliam Yeager, for allowing me to show people this bullshit. Gotcha. Okay. It's a fourteen- 14 year old post? That's really funny. See, I was gonna hail Mary that there was a chance you were talking about just like hologram Tupac, you know? No, no, no.

He could never be trapped. He has no physical dimensions. But this is, I'm like, okay, this is actually just, yeah, alright, got it. Anyway, what's going on? Well, speaking of balls and setting them up. Nice. Huh? I saw I saw a fucking Reddit post the other day with a video of Halo Infinite and somebody

asking, why do people keep twerking on me after they've killed me in Halo? And I wanted to kill myself. Because they're- The children think that that's twerking instead of dipping your balls into their mouth. They don't know that it's a tea bag. They don't know that it's the balls in the mouth. They think that they're shaking the ass. No, Venom shakes his ass.

Everybody else is tea- He literally- he really does! Yo, he throws it the fuck back, by the way. But not the right Venom. It should be Guilty Gear Venom. We can... Every time he passes by a shadowy doorway, he goes, Zato? Oh my God. And then just starts going for it.

2025 can only handle so much. He's got some hot buns for you because he works at a bakery. There you go. Yeah, he makes it. He makes a clap. You know that, you know that, you know that drop it low kind of edit of that every character gets like Vegeta and Luigi and stuff. The one with Broly? Broly, Broly drops it low too. Yeah, exactly. You know, I definitely could see that for venom 100% and Zato's not trying to trying not to look For I you know you ever be like so internet brain-rotted that you say something out loud and someone hears you and then you have To try and work back the sequence of events and they just look at you like you're insane person I saw an edit of that drop it low like sprite

But it was a character I didn't recognize. And I went, why is Broly's ass on the screen? And Paige looked at me and went, what the fuck are you, what, what are you, what, Broly? It's Omni-Man. And I, I, I couldn't figure out how to get the dots back cause I don't even remember.

Well, anyway, speaking of setting up balls, we got some steel ones and this is not like they've been confirmed and they've been announced but finally we got confirmed it like three times. Exactly so this is a bit of a reboot reboot type situation where it's like we have announced this is for the fourth time that steel ball run is happening but this was on Jojo day They showed us a key visual. So it's not a key visual not exactly a confirmation. We already had that not exactly as trailer there's no footage, but there's a visual and We get to see what the characters are gonna look like and they have been simplified for sanity

Because who the fuck is gonna animate a bunch of stars and details on those pants? So I super duper get it and that's okay. 100%. I feel no ire in my heart. But those motherfuckers have yet to show us a moving horse and until they do, I'm... Wooo! Wooly. So this does show me, because I remember I brought it up to you and like could they just replace all of them with the

Motorcycles and you had to think about it for like a second Maybe penny farthings to keep the error So what I would like I would like is that every time they're riding a horse the camera just pans up and there's just like The horses well, that's what I said. That's what I that's what we were saying last time It's like they had just keep the legs off screen and have it be like that, you know That's what we were saying last time is like, yeah, just keep the legs off screen and have it be like that, you know Honestly like okay make sure that the 3d horses are good and not bad because As we as we've noted there is bad 3d and there's good 3d and I and I hope it's the good kind

And folks are telling me that if I watch more anime i'd see a lot more of the good stuff So i'm like cool. I'm glad that there's more good. That is like the insane cope ramblings of people to bought in. Like, yes, if I eat more food, I'm more likely to have good food. I'm also more likely to have really bad food. I know that it, like if it's 2D, we are probably never gonna see the end of the show.

Like the commitment to 2D drawing of them every week is batshit. I don't want that for them. I don't want David Production to have to go through that. I want an elegant solution that is sane for them and I hope that we just have the good 3D. I mean you could just like replace all the horses with the with the chicks from Pretty Derby and just not Okay, acknowledge it even once. Okay, okay, and they don't talk at all or anything

They just they make horse noises and just they just hit the neigh just nah We could even use some my little Ponies, if you'd like. Dude, whatever. Yeah, okay. Just animate them like South Park. I don't give a shit. You know what? Yeah, animate them like South Park.

Animate the horses like South Park. Everybody else is JoJo animation, and the fucking horses are just going like, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot. Like fucking. It's like invert, left, right, left, right, left, right. Like Terrence and Phillip shit mm-hmm But more important than the horses

most important They need to go back to weekly releases. Yes, absolutely Part six because of that it's great and it's yeah I just I hope they really Netflix is now not fully committed to drops the way they used to. There's more and more stuff that comes out episodically. Obviously, like Crunchyroll is more used to going through it

on a simultaneous, simulcast thing. But Netflix has been more willing to go like one by one. And I fucking wish they do that here because this is peak JoJo, my favorite part incoming. You know, I'll leave it there. I mean, best part, but you know, we can have that debate. But I, God, do I not want all of that to be just spoiled by having the binge drop.

This is just, the journey that everybody goes on, on a week to week basis with JoJo needs to be episodically dropped, man. God. Totally agree, 100%. Yeah, and I hope everybody, well, I mean, there's still some time before it fucking drops, but like, there's still some time before it fucking drops, but like...

There's so many... there's so much here that I want to pop off about moment by moment and not in, you know, in summary. So, shout outs to that. And Jojo Day, which is a thing. Other exciting announcements too. New Ghost in the Shell anime by Science Saru, who did Devilman Cryberry and Cryberry God, Crybaby, and Dan Da Dan. Crybaby still fucks me up every once in a while. So I just think about that show and I go, ooh, yep, okay. And the most important detail is when you look at the major, it's

the fucking manga, dude. It is the original manga style. Not that the adaptations have not been awesome. And I feel like the movie as well, like the original animated movie, was a super badass version of that character that lives on in most people's heads. Because when you saw that key visual go up, people were going like, God damn it, this sucks more anime looking more childish bullshit. What are we going to get a mature looking ghost in the shell again?

And it's like, you motherfuckers, this is the source, you know? So not knowing what Masamune Shiro's art style looks like is a fucking tragedy, but what are you gonna do? But either way, it's so sick that they're going back to that. Prior to that, the PS1 games cutscenes were like the closest thing that kind of pseudo-scratched on that a little bit. What's weird, I guess, though, is the, like, going to that art style? Fucking hype. Super sick. That's dope. Is it going to also be faithful to the books as well?

That's a huge question. And if so, holy shit, those books are weird and totally dissonant and crazy, even by Ghost in the Shell standards, you know, and that's what I'm, that's what I'm wondering, like, do you go faithful on the material and the look or just the look, you know? But it also is like, there's something that kind of like, I guess, kind of makes sense to a little bit because, you know, this is the first series that's happening after the voice actor passed away, right? So the major's voice for years, you know,

like died recently. And so there's a bit of a like, yeah, if we're gonna go back and move on without her, then going back to the roots kind of like feels appropriate. You know? I think it was on the friend cast when I think I read the sequel and like talked about it it's been so long that I don't fully remember but I just remember I remember the details of how or why but I remember being extremely confused and coming back and talking about Ghost in the Shell 2, the manga, and how just fucking crazy that thing goes.

It loses... Anyway, like the thing that you kind of think of which is like Togusa and Bato and you know the whole, the section and Saru and everybody doing these cool missions and you know there's gonna be a philosophical villain that makes everybody think about the lines between... What if I was a robot robot but not really a robot? Transhumanism though. Yeah, whether it's your puppet master or your laughing man, you know, or whatever the case is, there's gonna be some fun asthma, food for thought, and then Batto's gonna like pet his dog and everything's gonna be like, fuck all that shit, I'm gonna

pet my dog. And you're like, no, but the fact that you pet your dog is why that shit's so important. What if your mom ran on batteries? Your mum. Black Mirror is back too. Yeah. Love me. Love Ghost in the Shell.

Love Sound of the Load Complex and all that shit. But yeah, let's go back to the source material and see how this goes, you know? And maybe they'll even animate the big old lesbian Bort orgy to keep it true and real. I don't know if they'll do that. To Masamune Shirou. I think if you see, like if we get the major that is making goofy faces and like sticking her tongue out behind Sadu's back and shit, like going, BLEEEE, BEEE, you know like being like you're under arrest or Dominion Tank Police type of thing, Pat Labar, like if you're being that type of goofball ass like, you know, protag then I assume all the rest is going to come with it.

That cyber lesbian boat orgy is crucial to the plot. It might be, I don't know, I haven't read it. Is it? Mm-hmm. I don't believe you, I don't believe you. All right, what else is going on? Um, all right, what else is going on? Um, well, oblivion leak.

This is the stupidest fucking thing. Is a thing. Oblivion? Hey, I can lit- Okay, so oblivion's coming back and it's coming back soon and it kind of looks like shit and that's funny. Um, they've probably just, uh, they've updated the graphics to more look like Skyrim and apparently they've updated the systems in it to look like and play like Skyrim, which is that makes sense. It's. So do you remember what you remember when fallout came out the TV show mm-hmm? I Don't know if I mentioned it, but I was saying that like that reason that that fallout 4 patch Came out and fucked up everybody's mods

Was because Microsoft was really really mad That Bethesda did not have a game to release at the same time. To go alongside the Fallout TV show, which is insane, because those games take like six years to make. And Oblivion Remake, that is not made by Bethesda at all says to me that Elder Scrolls 6 is way over there man holy shit is that thing not coming out forever. We gotta have one of Elder Scrolls games out guy can you guys do it? No? Alright get somebody else to do one of the old ones again, I guess. Is there a reason why you think they chose this and not Morrowind? Yes. Why is that?

Because Morrowind would require way more work and be way more interesting and cool. Oh. I see. Gotcha. Morrowind is dramatically larger and more ambitious than Oblivion is. It just plays like shit. Oblivion is just way worse Skyrim in scope and technology. So you could just like transmit all of Skyrim's gameplay improvements and general look to Oblivion and it'd be easy. You would have

to do a lot more to do this to Morrowind. Morrowind is bigger than those two? Morrowind is bigger in scope. Ah, I always thought that like that was like a like almost like a trilogy of development. That just what we built on it and then we built on it and then we built on it. Oh, yeah. OK, interesting. So like when I say Morrowind is larger in scope, people are yelling at me that the game map isn't quite as large. That's not what I mean. What I mean is in Morrowind, you can make a bunch of potions to let yourself jump infinitely.

Okay, the things you can do. Like, you can do more weirder stuff in Morrowind. Oblivion is very streamlined. Oblivion is very streamlined. Did it or any of them feel like basically taking old Elder Scrolls into the third dimension and keeping the rest more or less the way it was? No, because even Daggerfall, which is in 2D, is actually in the third dimension, and it's like the size of England The country Wow okay Daggerfall is like the largest game world ever right? I believe it is literally the size of the country of England Jesus okay, but

It also sucks How much of that is like empty forest? I guess is always my question. A bunch. But like they have like these enormous like multiple square kilometer towns made of identical houses. Okay. Because I remember when we were like testing like just cause to back in the day and it's like, yo, look, it's Cuba. And you're like, is it? Like no. But it's big.

Yeah, does it feel big yes, okay? That's what she said anyway so And and so to that that also it's easy to remaster oblivion You'll look nicer because oblivion might be the shittiest most poorly aged game in terms of visuals of all time Don't well aged game in terms of visuals of all time? Don't, well, you know what, I don't know. But I feel like- Yeah, no, ask away.

They all look ugly to me. Oh, but yeah, when's the last time you said that? I don't know, I don't know. Because Oblivion looks special ugly. I feel like they all kind of look pretty ugly. Oblivion, you know, this might not hit for you, but it'll hit for at least one person in the audience. Oblivion looks like the game that Abby is trying

to figure out where the secret to the Marines murderer is on NCIS, the fake video game. The game in the game, yeah, the game on the TV show, the game in the movies. And I mean NCIS specifically, low budget, but your mom and dad still watch it for some reason because they really like Jethro Gibbs, and Abby's cool, and Ducky had that song from the 70s.

Anyway, yeah, Oblivion looks like super shit, like super, super garbage. Man. Okay. Here, here's a fucking screenshot for you, Woolly. This is a perfect example. Here you go. Well, I guess I always think, though, I'm like did did modders then modded into being less ugly like No, no, there's nothing to be done. Okay, okay No, it's it's fucked. I mean they tried but It's only so much you can shine a turd

Wow, yeah, okay, dude. It looks like a fake fucking video game. Like legit. It is unique in its awfulness. And one of the things about Oblivion that makes it look super, super god awful shit is that they went for the single most generic possible setting possible, like they've ever done. So, Seridil in lore is supposed to be like this incredibly dense forest that is like temperate and tropical. But instead

they made it like off brand Rome with just rolling hills and like boreal forests and it looks like nothing. There's like nothing unique about the entire setting until you get to the expansion. When you talk about games that they play on TV or in the movies, that's definitely one of them. And then the others that immediately come to mind are like EverQuest is a game that is played by TV characters. Absolutely. Yeah.

And like, I don't know, maybe like Kingsfield, you know, a little bit. Well, here's the thing. I'm of the belief, specifically with you, that Oblivion looks like what you think EverQuest looked like. EverQuest did a lot of damage to my early game psyche. It sure did. You always go to EverQuest specifically. Because I hated it so much. Oh dude, you're right. It made me so angry.

I think EverQuest 2 looks way worse. Oh man. I just grew up. I think EverQuest 2 is maybe like the ugliest MMO ever. Yeah, I just grew up despising things that looked like that. And I just like.... I think Request 2 is maybe like the ugliest MMO ever. Yeah, I just I just grew up despising things that looked like that and I just like- Just no sauce. And it was and it's the it was the peak prime Western ass they like I just big weeaboo fucking energy coming off of just like- Oh, yeah. Japanese games don't look like that! You know everyone looks cooler and does cooler shit. Come on! Where's the sauce? Yeah, they don't. You know, everyone looks cooler and does cooler shit.

Come on. Where's the sauce? Yeah, I, you know, anyway. And I mean, look, we got there, but to some degree, it's still more or less real. The ramifications, the damage is, the shadow remains cast. Anyways, so speaking of buggy shit, we talked about that

Tekken 8 situation. There has been some updates. Apparently there's going to be emergency patch. Well, they still yeah, so they announced an emergency patch beforehand and they elaborated a little bit more on what it'll include. So at first they just mentioned fixing Paul and Jack with these particular things they were doing. In this case they're saying overall there was an announcement that was basically just going, hey guys look we know, yeah we completely agree, this is not what we said we were going to do, we fucked up and we're going to adjust the game and continue looking at different things and

they're not undoing and rolling back and taking away the changes. They're going to adjust them and it's going to take some time to do so. In the meantime, they've increased life so that you can take more mix-ups instead of two, you'll take three now, I guess, you know? And people are like, guys, what the fuck? Some people read, oh, like, so people read that and went, oh, I guess we're out, out, like we're cooked, cooked. It's done, you know? I don't know what the tipping point for everybody was, and I know we talked about it for like 40 minutes to an hour,

but like when I was scrolling down my YouTube subscriptions and I saw that SayJam has a fucking hour and 12 minute interview Disgusting with the disastrous tech an eight season two patch with five DX. Yeah, I'm like, holy fucking shit I have never seen him talk about a patch for more than to like 25 fucking minutes and holy fuck and fee goes into detail Like he really breaks it down like for anyone just like if you're coming at this from an outsider or like from a Street Fighter player perspective and stuff You know, yeah, he does it and so Fediac's like he's been he's been it like talking the most about this, honestly I feel like he's in the spotlight for it But it's so interesting because it goes on it goes be it goes further because one Harada also

Spoke he broke radio silence where somebody kind kinda said like, hey, this unwarranted shit is, you know, like a backlash or whatever, you know, these people are being loud, but don't worry, thank you for the game and thank you for speaking up and da da da. And Harada co tweeted the person and he went, no, no, no, this is warranted, the backlash is justified. Oh yeah, stop dick riding me, get off it. up. And I love that. And you know what? Like this is and it's true. Like he has when people have gotten upset enough at the game, like with the stages beforehand and the season pass and stuff, like I said,

he has been like, OK, yeah, no, we're going to try it. We're going to we're going to fix that. We're going to be fucked up. He's he's admitted that before. And I when you think about it, it's like, Tekken is his life's work, right? It is literally his life's work, it's his legacy. So I get him being like, yeah, let me actually come out and say, don't even try to be like, no, I'm gonna position myself against that and stuff.

It's unfortunate that it sounds like there's some shit going on with other devs and there's been some blocks and I'm not too sure exactly what's happening like people have been talking about like Michael Murray blocking them and you know, then Aris is stream there's all kinds of shenanigans going up and around and so on but overall It sounds like you know, he's like, yeah. No, this is a warranted backlash and we're gonna we're gonna fix it But I'm doing it completely. I guess, is just not in the cards. So it's going to have to be a slow adjustment of taking the move. They specifically acknowledge the moves that are selfish.

The tracking 50-50 really high risk, really low risk, really high reward moves are going to get adjusted. And I guess they're kind of committing to this decision instead of like fully pulling back out of it. But what's happened since then, the game has people have started finding other shit. And so it's like now it's not just about like the new aggressive moves. There's these bugs, one of which is when Anna slaps you and you try to, and then you input a, like a counter slap,

her move list becomes yours. And now we're seeing people doing Anna combos in swapping move sets. And it's this confusing, like, why the fuck is this happening? People without rocket launchers are doing rocket launcher moves. And it just became like the most busted looking insane shit. Right.

Like literally your character starts taking on the wrong move set entirely. The the the the insane tweets and the videos of that make it look like a complete mess. And someone recently, like in the last couple of days, went into the code and found the exact problem. And it's and it's the actual reason why this happens is super fascinating in my opinion I love it that we're in the era of people can dive in and go yeah I found it I found the problem somebody fucked this up and they point at it but

it's fucked up in a way because of the because of the creativity of what they were going for. So when Anna does a back two, I think, like, slap, right? What happens, or what's supposed to happen, is the game checks to see if the person getting slapped is female, and then if you input a back to counter You tech the slap and slap them back So you're so there's a system of essentially there being you like if she smacks you a girl on the cast will slap you back And you have a slapping match

As a return thing that's really funny, right? And so it does it does a gender check on the character That's getting slapped, but that breaks and Then what it does is as well is there are characters that have the way that they respond to getting hit Is not baked into the the it's baked into the character. That's doing the move right so If you look if Paul does like know, his godfist to you and like you get hit a certain way, the way you respond to that is a part of Paul,

not a part of the character getting hit. The, you know, and so getting slapped and then slapping back is a part of Anna's move set, not the specific character who's getting slapped. So when it transfers her moveset onto the slapping, onto the character that's slapping back, it bugs out and checks the wrong thing. And it basically like,

instead of checking to see who's getting slapped, it checks Anna to see if she's there and she's always there and then drops her move list for the slap back But then you don't get your own moveset back So that's what the game is doing because there's supposed to be a slap you and then no slap you system to that move Right, and that's what the coder figured out. It's crazy Yeah, you know who would never do this Virtua Fighter would never do this?

Virtua Fighter would never put out a patch like this. Well no, because Virtua Fighter wouldn't put out any. No, no. Virtua Fighter. No, you shut up. Would put out nothing actually. No. Or it might put out a patch that has racist netcode. I mean it's.

Hard to improve on perfection. Yeah. Yes. The location that you live in chooses how good Or it might put out a patch that has racist netcode. I mean, it's like... Hard to improve on perfection. Yeah. Yes. The location that you live in chooses how good your net you're online it will be. Yeah, they'll release a game and then pretend it wasn't released and then try again. So you know. Ha!

Listen, listen. I find the why behind this bug so interesting. I love that shit. That bug so interesting. I love that shit. That's so interesting, right? And then I guess simultaneous to this, some folks have been returning to Tekken 7, returning to Tekken 6. Some motherfuckers booted up Tekken Tag Tournament 2

and put it to 1v1 mode and started going in on that. Some modders have removed heat from Tekken 8 and just put the footage out. And people are like crying. Like you know that, you ever see that picture from a manga with the bear that's just got tears in its eyes? Or like, you know, it's always sunny with Frank just being like, I understand.

I get it now. I get it now. Like it is like, oh, oh, it's beautiful. This is what I wanted, you know? And- No, instead what we have is the manga panel of that dude in the theater going, this shit is so ass. I mean, it's funny because like you,

like there are moments without Heat where they still have Heat and Gaiger moves. And so the reaction to those is like, like there are moments without heat where they still have heat and gauger moves and so the reaction to those is like, like not set properly. But overall people are like, I will fucking I will suck your dick. Please give me this mod. Like, please just we want to play this, you know. And and then also what's been happened what's happened with season two's patch is there's a change that has involved in order to avoid certain situations when you're getting comboed off the wall, when you get dropped to the ground, sometimes you automatically tech backwards, right? Before you just have the control to pick your direction and stuff.

But to avoid, yeah's a way to avoid certain really aggressive situations, they put this thing to be like, no, you'll always tech backwards and such. Forcing that means there are ways to do a combo to somebody where you hit them into the wall and then they bounce onto the ground and always tech backwards towards you with their back towards you so they can't escape your setup so you can actually

Do a touch of death now and like this someone using law does there's real touch of deaths Because so I know it's not the case in like fighting games But in a lot of competitive games if they had to release a patch that was this hated they would roll it all Completely back until they had a better solution. It is weird that they have not rolled it all the way back until they have a better solution. Well, there's a saving face element to this that I think is a present. I don't know that they've ever said cancel, undo, nevermind, right? Undo the update live.

I don't think that's ever happened. I think there's a bit of a, we made a decision, we're gonna stand by it and continue tweaking to fix things that were unintended, but we're moving in this direction as opposed to, we fucked up the course, we're not going that way at all. I think it would be better in this situation, and I think it would probably be way, you know,

for this level of vitriol and anger, it would be a much better call. But there's something about just like, not wanting to look like. Some people in chat have said that they can't do it without removing Anna and people paid for Anna. Well, so. Because Anna exists on a new system No, but but but I mean it would have to basically be like we're rolling back everything but the character, right?

Yeah, so you would be like every other change were undoing and it would just be this wild like hybrid live, you know, but um But in any case, yeah, there's a there's that, which is like, I bet you there's a bit of a face thing and a bit of a bad leadership looking thing and just kind of like, we stay the course and we fix as we go. We don't control Z. That is a really bad attitude for a live game that people have to play for it to exist. Yeah, competitively at that, you know. I agree.

But it would, in this case, it would also be the simplest way, right? Because there are more things people hate about what's new than about what's old. You know, they're lamenting for that old version where they're like, oh man, lately back when it was like, oh, fucking Dragunov, what an annoying character to fight.

It's like yearning for those days, you know? So, I don't know. And obviously, the idea of rolling back the changes, realistically what that looks like is not actually rolling back the game, but making a new version where those changes don't exist in the balance. Right. It's still a new version thing with Anna present,

but the move changes and details and stuff that they did, like those things you then start adjusting from scratch on, right? Okay, so that's what's going on with Tekken 8. Just before we went live as well, just a little bit, we did some tweets that have gone up, but Capcom Fighting Collection 2, the version, the game that has CVS 2 and Rival Schools Project Justice. All the games you would ever want to play.

Star Gradiator, all the good shit. Yeah, so that's going to be coming soon. There's some footage where, who was it, Tyrant was playing a CVS2 and noticed that the standard version is easy operation, CVS2 EO version, which means that's the version of the game that has no role canceling. And if you're an old fighting game player that remembers Capcom vs. SNK 2, you know how insane those words are. Because the game exists and is a competitive thing and did not die sooner because of role cancelling. It's a bug that competitively saved the game and they are officially not allowing putting out that

version that has it. And this is like, we've done this before and it's so baffling that they're doing this again. This happened with Third Strike when they fixed quote unquote the bugs and things like Aegis Reflector, and everyone hated that. They're like, no, no, no, we've been used to this competitive version of the game. That's what we wanna play. Don't take those bugs out because they're part of the meta now, right?

No, we're fixing the bugs. We fixed the bugs. It's better now. And then they did that to Marvel 2, and Marvel 2 as well has a bunch of stuff that they're like, these are part of the meta. There's bugs that are actually game-breaking, like freeze stupid shit that are a problem, but there's stuff that is part of the meta as well's bugs that are actually game breaking, like freeze stupid shit that are a problem,

but there's stuff that is part of the meta as well. And then they change that stuff. And the competitive players are like, well, fuck this. I don't wanna play this version of the game. This is not the game I love. And so same thing here in CVS2's case. And it's like, this is really crazy because when you go look up anything,

let's say you're someone who was like, I wanna learn how to play this old game and I wanna get get into it, you know, you start with the basics and what's there and then you start getting into like, you know, like super combo is like a wiki online, for example, where they get into tech for characters and these old old classics. And like, this bug role canceling is so intrinsically part of the identity of the game that it factors into every character's discussion. It factors into the tier list of who's strong and who's weak. It's like, it's just been the whole game. It's crazy to think that there'd be like, yeah, throw all that out here. No, just not this, you know?

And be like, yeah, you're gonna play a different version of it now. And it's not at all the thing that people love. hair, no, just not this, and be like, yeah, you're going to play a different version of it now. And it's not at all the thing that people love. And what everyone, especially those who you're selling this to, love is the version that has this as part of the meta. It's so crazy. I'm baffled because you would think that when you're releasing games like this on this collection, especially because I'm like

It's a nice to have a way to play them That you'd have somebody that's like on the team that is like super duper right version. Yes They know what people want they know what people care about and they're like Yeah, the audience that you're trying to win over you want to show new people You know these old games and you want to introduce some new audience But you want to basically win over people that are playing Fightcade, right? You want to win over people that are fans that never stopped from back in the day that love these old games.

It's crazy that they do this. Hey man, it's all just a ploy to make people crave CVS3. Yeah. I mean, like I said, I feel like this is a harder time to release a new game in. It's probable, like, seasons of guest characters feel like the way to not fuck up your bag instead of telling people to go buy a new thing. But the one Copium gas huff I'll take here is, they also just announced a massive update

to the Marvel versus Capcom collection, which included some big changes to multiple games in that, and they put a trailer out, because it's like a whole bunch of stuff is changing. Yeah, it includes version select. Exactly. And that might mean, for this game, that the same thing. They might release the original versions of this included,

because if it's just easy operation for ranked, that's the problem. And if they let you pick the previous versions of CVS2, then all's well, you know? Problem solved. Put the older versions of the game in there, not the GameCube one, please. So we'll see, but like it's always possible

that they can just release that bigger update that lets you do version select as well. Woo, you're getting blessed by, praise the sun. Okay. Hey, I gotta take a break and take this dog out and feed him. BRB? Uh, cause I'm half hour over his food time. Okay. Uh, but we still have plenty to talk about so I guess we'll go long today.

I'll be right back. Okay. Uh... So yeah, let's- God has retreated from my camera. Ahem. Okay, uh, so yeah, let's- God has retreated from my camera. Only other things to touch on were, uh... Yeah, so the marathon gameplay reveal happened.

I'm sure I know- Yeah, so you took a look. I know there's the extended gameplay reveal, and then there's the short trailer, right? Yeah. So I watched the short trailer. I didn't watch the full thing. And as an outsider, just watching that trailer, I was like, that seems like a cool thing.

Yeah. I don't know the source material. I don't know Durandal, you know, and stuff like that. But I'm like, the art style looks cool. I don't know the source material, I don't know Durandal and stuff like that, but I'm like the art style looks cool, I like the use of color. I do like the art style. I think it looks kind of like a futuristic mirror's edge kind of thing. Yeah, I enjoy what they're doing with the use of color and the design on the various characters and the world and the buildings and stuff. And I guess a team extraction shooter type game is what the deal is.

I don't have, so like we talked about with Devil May Cry before, I don't have attachment to the source material, so I kind of just saw something that I thought was like, oh, that looks cool, that looks interesting. And that's the end of thought head empty All right, so my exposure to marathon is exclusively watching the Mandalores retrospective on those game stories Like I have absolutely no no, I don't know shit about shit when it comes to marathon. Okay I know that it's the thing they made before Halo. Mm-hmm

It's got the cool logo with the circle and then the other smaller circle. Yeah, I like the logo. So I got contacted by Bungie like two months ago, asking me to please co stream that event. And then they sent me a package of do dads that I have not shown on stream because they're not that cool. And if I did, I would have to put hashtag ad in it. They're all just sitting in the box. The thing about- Why won't they send me more doodads, says Pat?

I don't care about you guys The the thing of value in there was the basically a metal plate with the website that I had to go to to join their discord Which was like? Way too many steps What to just join the creator. What's in the discord? And the reason for joining the discord was so that if you co-stream the event, you would get alpha codes to give away to your audience. So I co-stream the event and then I gave the alpha codes away to my audience.

And the alpha is going to be like the 23rd or 24th or something. It's gonna be a couple weeks and Then I watched the event and I have I have some experience with destiny 2 and I've also played them Halo games and Bungee makes any incredible shooters any Tarkov. Did you play any Tarkov? No, sir. Okay. The Bungie makes incredible games where you shoot guns.

Like, shooting is fantastic. And I would say that their particular skill set is way better suited to a full-scale multiplayer extraction shooter than it is to a live service MMO. It's more focused on getting into a map and shooting people than it is to long term content delivery plans and shit like that. I guess the thought is PVE stuff they've done for the Halo single-player stuff has also been pretty fun. Yeah, they've also for the raids and Destiny and stuff like that and All the problems with Destiny was always about how it was run as a live service game. Playing Destiny

fucking kicked ass it was just all the the the large large scale decisions were always god-awful And that's why people still play destiny now is because playing destiny rules playing destiny regularly sucks If that distinction like hits keeping up with it, right? So Hits keeping up with it, right? So That little short trail when you say the short trailer that you saw you're talking about like the the the filmic like tone trailer That's like CG and all the different robot not the first first reveal

The one that the gameplay overview where there's a narrator, okay breaking down the planet the the mode the character character the the stuff that's going on And how the game the game works as a as a team so Talking about marathon is kind of linked to talking about the event in which they showed marathon Because the marathon live event was super weird. It was really fucking weird. So it was on a stage inside, I believe, like Bungie's studio or like a place that Bungie rented, and the first half hour of the pre-show was them putting a camera on a robot that would then walk around

their offices. And like, look, you're like in the bungee office. And it was super strange. And then the robot, like near the end, like rolled up to the stage. And there was like, well, I can't kind of like they had their own E3 presentation just for themselves. And the first thing they showed off was the live studio audience made entirely of Bungie developers. They were all there to sit in and cheer when trailers went up and when the devs said funny jokes. And it was fucking super weird like right off the bat. Okay, just

fucking strange if you need a little perspective on That type of thing in development That's normal for studios to do internally if they have like a studio room or a presentation room Well, just in internally what will happen is there will be presentations where they'll show off stuff and then like the whole the studio will be the audience watching you know the compiled footage of what everybody has worked on together and seeing the final implementation you know. But typically that's not what gets filmed and put out as promotion certainly.

The strangest part was that like you have all these devs who are essentially watching their bosses put on a presentation To clap for them. Hmm like it felt it felt really really odd And then they showed the gameplay overview what it's not and stuff like that. Sorry what it just when it's not for When it's not for showing people who the audience... Yeah, I understand that. It's a more normal thing internally, but for that to go external is odd for people to learn about the game that way. Because it's in front of the audience so that when they show it off and everyone's like, woo! As opposed to the real audience, yes. That's not the real audience, that's the people working on the game.

That's them. And then they did the gameplay overview and then they did some interviews, you know, back and forth questions and answers with like a bunch of the leads and then they showed some more gameplay and there was an incredibly strange tone to them talking about the game that I will blame the setup. And maybe what you said earlier is like this is more normal for internal use only rather than showing it off to everybody. You had three devs talking and like one guy interviewing them.

And like they kept talking about the game and the characters in it and the experience they were having Like the game was out and the audience already knew and was familiar with like the classes and the characters Because the audience in the room. Yeah was familiar with the characters That is that's a flub. I've seen that before with like III stuff as well in the room was familiar with the characters. That is, that's a flub. I've seen that before with like E3 stuff as well. I can't think of specific examples, but I've seen that before in promotion where like the people talking about it

are two inside making cracks about like, oh, well there's this person, like almost like. Like there's a, there's like one point someone's like, oh, any glitch mains in here? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, I don't know who that character is. Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know what glitches exactly Yeah, that's yeah, that's a miss don't do that. That's bad Was honor I forget but I feel like there was a game that kind of had a bit of that the the like the treehouse style

Discussion where you're but it's just between treehouse members. You're super internal um Mm-hmm, and I was like people who are more familiar with Bungie's presentations, like actually Bungie presents a lot of the stuff in this way fairly often, I didn't know that. But it was like a lot of weird in-house, like inside baseball talking in between gameplay presentations. And Marathon is a Bungie shooter shooter first person shooter extraction game. Then they showed off a couple of the classes and playing the game looks pretty good.

Yeah, I have no doubt that it will play well and all that. But there were a couple of details that came out that were like, no. And there were a couple of details that came out that were like, no, and there were a couple of details that they like very intentionally did not put out that were also like, oh, so the first thing that happens is they go, we're going to bring you characters and progression and faction, you know, the the spiel right and one of the things That they mentioned was seasonal storytelling which for me just sucked every ounce of wind out of me and Just completely killed any desire. I will literally have to play this game ever

Well, isn't because isn't that just live service like some storytelling like Destiny and games like that? So Destiny has the worst seasonal thing of any game, which is they will build levels and encounters and gear out to last 90 days and then delete them after that 90 days is over. Delete them? So you know how Destiny vaults content? Yeah. So what absolutely killed my love of Destiny was not just the sunsetting of the guns. There was what we call the season of the worthy,

which was focused around saving a very famous character in Destiny called Saint-14. And what you had to do was dive into an area called the Infinite Forest. And you would, you know, you would do these, these, these randomized dungeons and you would go on quests and you would earn gear. And then you would eventually essentially travel back in time to save Saint-14. And then he would appear in the live game and he had quests for you. Right?

And it was really good. It was a really good quest line that was genuinely excellent. And after the season of the worthy, all of those quests disappeared and now Saint 14 is just in the hub. And the idea is like, hey, how'd Saint 14 come back to life isn't he dead and the answer was supposed to be You had to be there and then you would go Oh, I guess I should really really follow the seasons more closely

Okay, and it's the worst FOMO FOMO based FOMO based like plot progression Mm-hmm. Um, so uh progression. Mm-hmm. Um, so uh, uh, uh, shit, what was the thing? And so when I hear that Marathon will have seasonal storytelling, my stomach just went, like, just terrible. I guess the second of which. Well, the other thought I guess is just a game like Helldivers that can have like events occur, but there's not much story, right? Yeah, I mean the illuminator here. Yeah. You know, they're here, they're being evil.

I would imagine that like, well, okay, Marathon used to be a single player, full on adventure, you know, story, first person thing, there are two of them. So switching it up to a live service extraction shooter means that like story will be minimal, but I guess exist for like little... Who knows? But the...

I imagine the move here is like, you kind of sprinkle references to things that people might know or like from the previous games, but overall, the narrative is not the main reason you're jumping in because it's a live PVP shooter, you know? So somebody in the chat, thanks Monkeyweed, points out that Guild Wars 2 did this style of seasonal content and it was such a hated disaster that after five seasons of it, they actually retrofitted it as DLC and then made all story line shit onwards permanent. Like it's the only game I've ever seen like go nah, fuck it, go back.

And they went back to the old model of just we put it out and it's out. So that seasonal content thing, ooh, not very good. So is this kind of like with Rivals where there's just like, oh, now we're doing the New York City, the Baxter building and Dracula. Okay, well now we're moving on to the Hellfire. Yeah, like that.

But imagine it was like, for Destiny, imagine it was like Quests and levels and activities. Because missing out on a Rivals event is not a big deal. It's just a cool thing with some costumes and some lore bits and pages. But overall, I guess it's not like an ongoing, you fucking missed out and you don't understand what you're looking at type of thing. Right. So, they did that and then the next thing they said is like, hey guys, this is a three man game,

so you'll queue up as a team. And don't worry, for you tough guys out there, you can queue solo if you want. Into the mode where everyone else is teams of three yeah I saw that in the trailer which is like no that's not what what why the why the fuck is this such a fucking focus for you and apex but why is this so fucking important why can't I just fucking play a version of the game? That's free for all like what why? Why does it have to be fucking not?

3v3 like god damn it not looking into that feature I kind of was wondering I'm like if you go in solo do you get like better rewards or is there like a fuck no? I balance around that or no you get shit, okay. I know I don't get it I don't get it even fucking oh fortnight has fucking solo only why aren't you as good as fortnight oh we're everybody else is solo as a mode you mean yeah yeah no that's what I mean when I think of when I say solo queue I'm, why can I like why why are you? It's it's it's it's the it's the okay. Someone who's listening to this go back to a podcast where me and Willie complained about Apex

and just listen to that 30 minute rant and just transplant the word marathon onto it because it's the same exact discussion. It's the same discussion. It's the same discussion. And then something happened that did not give me a lot of really good faith in this game. So the way that they wanted to give out the Alpha codes was that they wanted to have one guy at Bungie check to see if you were co streaming the

game and then send you the codes on Discord. But they invited too many people to do it and the event ended before most of those codes had gone out. So that guy had to then bust his ass and like go through bots and shit. And then I got an email at a later date after asking for it that was the excel spreadsheet copy pasted into an email okay okay and I was like man is this not a good sign for this live

service game okay so the event itself was a fucking mess, right? It sounds like. And... And I guess the doodads and... Thingamabobs... You know, not much to them. But, I mean, yeah, I guess... Gameplay-wise, if you are somebody that is a fan of the franchise that's wanted

a sequel to that for a long time, I can imagine that- Then there's nothing here for you. I can imagine the immense disappointment and being like, fuck, you're using the name but we're not getting, you know, Marathon 3. I'm gonna send you a screenshot of that email and you're gonna see what I mean. This was- Yeah, I see. yeah, I see no I see just dropping Like a fucking XLS file That to get those fucking codes out that is that is raw

Yeah, I but just again as a as a As an you know an unaware like outsider just kind of looking at it I was like oh that looks like it could be a fun team thing. Yeah, totally. And in particular, I have to say that I'm somebody where you'll draw me in with your aesthetic. I'll stick my head around and just be like,

oh, what's going on with this? Because the style looks cool, and then it's like, are there other things that I find cool about that? Is there any other fun that I could have with it? And I did enjoy. Apex for a period of time. So there's a detail that they strongly neglected to mention and then also neglected to mention afterwards when people were asking them which is, hey so this game's free to play, right? No. Bungie's a premium title. And we feel that the price will reflect that, which then got reported as-

To be a full price game. Bungie will be, it'll be a full price game. Yeah, I saw that part. Yeah. Yeah. Which they then responded with, we didn't say it was full price. We just said it was premium. And it's $40. And I would like to point out, I'm not an English teacher. The word premium has come to me literally means the top of the expected price range.

That literally means full price or higher. Connotative Lee. Connotative Lee. We've come to use it as full price. That's what premium gas is. The expensive gas premium cheese is the expensive cheese. Premium means full price or more bad word. It feels like they wanted to say this is going to be so much value. It's like such a good game

Oh, you'd be begging to pass more when it's like $40 But instead everyone took the word to what it fucking means, which is full price. I think it is crazy This game is not free. I think it is nuts has bungee this game is not gonna be free has bungee ever done free to play Yeah, destiny 2 is free to play right now. And it's the shittiest version of the game you could ever imagine. Hmm. Was it on launch?

No. No. No. There was that, there was the, cause I remember there was the talk about the, the Taken King? Yeah, that was Destiny 1. DLC that was like a thing on release for when 2 came out. And I remember there were discussions about like paid stuff for it. So yeah, okay.

So let me just give you a short history of how fucked up the free to play thing for Destiny was. Destiny 1 comes out and they put out regular expansions. And then the game has a really good final expansion and that's that. Destiny 2 comes out and has the Red War campaign and then has two expansions and then has a bigger expansion and then I think there's another one after that. And then they start vaulting content and then at some point it goes free to play and they vault more content. And now that it's free to play and I've paid for a bunch of the game, I paid for like $120 worth of the game. Most of the stuff that I paid for in the non free to play version no longer exists.

It's gone. So now free to play Destiny exists, but you can still buy seasons and campaigns and DLCs. But some of them are gone and you can't play them anymore. And it's, and when you load into Destiny 2, the free to play version or any version, you load into the Destiny 1 starting mission instead of the Destiny 2 one. And then you get to the hub and it just goes, do whatever whatever because there's no main story anymore It's it's miserable. It's it's so bad. So bungee has chosen concord's gambit Yeah, a little bit is what's happening here. Yeah

um Yeah, uh, oh, uh tarcroft is free as well, right? I don't know Like if most of your competitors in this space are free to play it feels like you know I'm gonna say no is it not okay escape from Tarkov Purchase there's a purchase thing okay. No, okay How I'm so like because I'm like how many of its direct competitors are free to play? It's $35. Tarkov is 40 bucks, 35.

Yeah, okay, so around the same price as that. Apex is free. Not the same exact genre, but are there direct competitors in this first person shooter space that are? There's Tarkov and there's hunt showdown that are free and No, they're not free. They're all extraction shooters of that are the big big boys are you pay like 40 bucks? Okay So there's there's nothing that is like dominating the genre right now that is free to play No, so then in that case they're coming into That it makes more sense then they're coming into that it makes more

sense then they're coming in to compete at the same. Yeah. So then so then so then I think that that makes a bit more sense if that's what the the content people are saying that war zone six is free. Call of Duty war zone extraction. But war zones battle royale. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Also, Hunt Showdown also mandates three-person teams. And I'm like, why is this such a fixation of this genre now? Why is this so important that it is a mandatory thing? Can't you just always have a solo?

I don't get it. I don't fucking get it. You can balance for solo. How about just don't balance it for solo at all just fucking take two people away hmm okay I don't know why this is so complicated because chats doing it hunts doesn't mandate three-person teams start, but you can't queue in by yourself into a version of... Oh, you can solo against solos in Hunt? Oh, then it's extra stupid that you can't... Oh, I'm going to start playing Hunt Showdown. Fuck this.

Oh, okay. I'm going to start fucking playing Hunt Showdown. Thank you for informing me Wow, that's extra. I'm extra stupid pissed off about marathon. Hunt Showdown is doing it You should do it Yeah, that's it that's the end of the discussion I don't have this gripe, but I get it. You know I just you played more apex legends you would Well, so that's the thing is like doing it when I did it when I did it solo queuing with random So I was like yeah, this is abysmal, and I'm not You know I'm not down for this experience, so I just like I'm like okay I'm never do I'm never playing it that way again

You know and I just kind of was like all right gotta gotta talk to people and and get friends on the line I'm gonna fucking I'm gonna fucking play a Hunt Showdown. I'm fucking buying it right now. No, but options, you know, yeah, for sure. That's way better for it. Anyway. Recent reviews mixed. Cheaters. Also, just, and I guess as a side note,

I feel like it's nice when I can see a nice art design thing come through just on a game's visual presentation and kind of thing. I want to flip through an art book for this game. I'm imagining there's a lot of cool concept art for like how it plays with the colors and shit I'd love to see that reminds me very important detail about bungee putting out a shooter like this in destiny cheating in the Marquee PvP mode the trials of Osiris is rampant And in Tarkov as well, yeah well And in Tarkov as well. Yeah well

Fucking bully and apparently to according to the steam reviews in hunt Because You're going into these games losing everything if you fuck up and so the incentive to cheat is very loss aversion Extremely high. Yes, the high very loss aversion extremely high yes a high concentration of shitbags coming through it also means that if you get killed by a cheater and lose all your shit you're just like oh I'm done with this fucking game forever or like constant losses in a row where you're just constantly like losing all your resources and you know starting from scratch and having nothing to yeah that can a steamroll of bad

feelings makes you quit a game For sure so yeah, there's a alpha that I'm gonna play on on marathon I'm looking forward to that, but well we'll see we'll see well. Maybe this is where some friends would carry you right I Don't want to be carry Okay beyond this there's a quick thing They just announced that the PS 5 price is to rise in Europe Australia and New Zealand today So what a bunch of fucking bullshit guess what it's not just Nintendo Hey, so that's happening

Pointed out that the ps5 is now $200 more after like five years than it was when it came out It is it is happening industry wide. It'll be everything. What a bunch of fucking bullshit. Give it a minute for everybody to go back and come back and announce price increases across the board. And the fun thing about price increases is they always come back down when the economy changes, right?

They always move and you know like, oh yeah, we can lighten up now. And last thing, and this is just, you know, if this is an if you know, you know, type bit, but some folks might remember, but back in the day on the friend cast, I used to use some cool break music from some places. One of those break songs I used was from a fucking awesome game called The Speedrunners. I do know this, yes. It feels like it was kind of under the table, under the radar as a release, but Dark Horse

super fun multiplayer game. The Speedrunners 2 has been fucking announced and a trailer for it came out this week. it did the thing that I that's exactly what I want in specific which is showing off the new version of the game which is like a proper pretty new 3d version of it it was a sprite based racing around the track it was a it was okay remember versus mode for in sonic 2 or sonic and knuckles right where you're like split screening except you're doing that on one screen together and you're racing around the track with power-ups and Mario Kart style things and grappling hooks and shit on foot. It's super fun. Love it. They had the new trailer should play and

then right away, the theme, that song fucking kicks in and it's a remix of it and then it builds up to a choir vocal you know where there's like a whole like voice track kicking in and it's a more epic bombastic version of the song that I love in a game that I love and it's exactly what you want for a simple game sequel trailer like that fuck yeah speedrunners is back and it rules simple awesome and amazing music. Lots of fun. I wish that was more of a thing because there's only, the only games like it that I know,

and I kind of, one of the game design ideas I remember having was a thing like this where it was like an on foot racing through an environment, kind of split screen, competitive game. Never gonna happen, so whatever. But this game, and there was a game on the Xbox Live Arcade on the 360 called Rascals, which was also a whole lot of fun.

And these are the only two games of its type that I can think of besides Versus Mode in Sonic and Knuckles, you know? Oh man. Awesome shit. There's a blast from a past. Yeah, that's it, that's all I got, you know? PVP and Plus Plus, I mean that was more about,

I didn't do any racing versions of that, I did more, it was more like survival tracks, I've played PVP and that, but, or like getting to the thing and, but I'm thinking of like a momentum through a racetrack, you know, that I thought was a lot of fun. Anyway, Speedrunners 2, king of speed. All right, let's take some letters. Hold on, I have two pieces of very quick news. What's up?

Baldur's Gate 3 patch is finally here and the game is done. Baldur's Gate 3 is done. The final patch is out? Yes, they have literally titled it the final patch. Oh my god. I don't believe... 12 subclasses, photo mode, and cross play. But what if they decide there should be more? There might be some bug fixes, but no this is this is the final patch. Okay. I fucked around with it. It's cool also Square Enix completely retranslated front mission 2 and patched it How's about that

All is not lost Okay, yeah front mission 3 All is not lost. Okay. Yeah. Front mission three. You can believe a little bit. Now just add some camera shake on that shit. You can believe a little, you can, you can dream again. Dare to dream once more. It seems they're committed to having these games be good. instead of not I mean that Mecha Week episode just one of the best first impressions of a video game so long I ever had it was I couldn't believe how sick that was holy shit and then you're

like by the way this game like 170 yeah no it's an Elden ring I know I know but wow wow was that cool All right, if you've got a letter Send it to castle super beast mail at gmail.com. That's castle super beast mail at gmail.com Okay, let's take one over here We're gonna take one email. All right So I have to go okay

Hey, Willsworth and petan Buddy and I were planning to drive to Vegas for our first eve of those years super hype to see folks From all walks of life around the globe coming together, especially since our town doesn't have a local scene However to say the u.s. Is shifting its Shitting his pants right now would be an understatement of the century. Likely things only get worse as we go forward. Are you planning on attending any US events? Or will you be looking at attending stuff maybe in Canada or elsewhere, etc? Yes, so I was

planning to go to CEO, I was planning to go to combo breaker, I was planning to go to Evo, as I usually do. And I was planning to go to CEO. I was planning to go to combo breaker I was planning to go to evo as I usually do and I Have gone to CEO and or I've gone to combo breaker and I loved it and I haven't done proper CEO. I've only done Anime you know, but I Don't think that's gonna happen this year It sucks. I just, I wanted to go to- I seem really busy also. Yeah, I wanted to go to a bunch of tournaments this year and I don't think that's gonna

be happening. So, just, I'll say that from now. You know? Seems extremely unlikely. Just get real close to your screen when we're streaming and just take a good whiff, just imagine. Oh, oh, okay. I mean, but like of us or of the event?

Yeah, dude. Oh, okay, not okay, so like if I like, if I hold up my armpit and just like get it. Yeah, yeah, get a real, get that snoof on. Just get it all up in there. Yep. Yeah, yeah, not okay. So like if I like if I hold up my armpit and just like get it Yeah, yeah, get a real get to get that snooze on just get it all up in there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There you go Yeah, all right snooze breathe deep Have a good week everybody Thanks for watching!