Castle Super Beast - CSB320: Getting Queerbaited by Danganronpa is Like Losing Chess to a Dog But the Dog Has Been Training His Entire Life For This and You Never Played Chess

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps To quote a Small Victorian Child Expedition 33: Subtle References Are For Cowards 100 Line Academy: Lovably Hateable Danganronpa Gremlins Overwatch x Street Fighter x CWA Which AAA Game IP Should Become AA? Watch live: twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Go to http://heroforge.com/ and use code CASTLE to get 5% off all orders of physical Miniatures. - Go to http://shopify.com/superbeast to sign up for your $1-per-month trial period. - Go to http://shadyrays.com/ and use code SUPERBEAST to get 35% off polarized sunglasses. - Go to http://expressvpn.com/SUPERBEAST to get up to 4 extra months free. The funniest Soul Calibur 2 shit I’ve seen in years Diablo 4's Berserk Crossover DLC Costs an Insane $150 Blizzard's Overwatch Team Just Unionized: 'What I Want To Protect Most Here Is The People' Microsoft laying off 3% of workforce in biggest round of cuts since 2023 - report Overwatch 2’s Street Fighter Collaboration Giant Bomb lives! Fandom has sold the site to us and it is now fully independent and employee-owned. We'll see you all on Tuesday for the Giant Bombcast. Virtua Fighter - Wolf Hawkfield Teaser Trailer Tekken 8 balance team overhaul amid Season 2 backlash Tekken 8 community livid Fahkumram included in Season 2 DLC Young Ladies Don't Play Fighting Games - Official Teaser Trailer SPIDER-NOIR - Official Teaser Trailer

["Sailor Moon Theme"] Howdy do. Hey man, what's up? Not much, not much. I got a sleeping dog in my lap. He's dead ass asleep. Yeah? So did you celebrate? Last week?

Yeah. Wait, last week? May 5th to May 9th is Short King Week. It's a whole week? Five five to five nine. I'm five two man. I don't even qualify for that shit. It was actually from Monday to Friday.

It perfectly lined up right in the week I don't even I don't even qualify for that damn. I'm too small for short Hold you can hold none of that oh for at least one week Rubbing your hands for seven days approximately. Well, thank you. Well actually no regardless five days because shorter than the Yes, I understand All right, well, thank you what's's going on? Thank you for thinking of me. So I played a little bit more of that expedition 33. Yeah, so have I and lots of thoughts. I ran into. So I remember there was like a little interview a little while ago where the the Director was like these are my favorite games

and he listed out a bunch of games and I did not know How literally we should have taken that list of games? Mm-hmm because that was a fucking blueprint. Yes. Straightforward like there is the FF8 and the Dark Soul and the Devil May Cry. We are not good game. We are not mincing words.

We are wearing our hearts on our sleeves with what we love. It's very, very obvious. So quick. Let me touch my tongue to the wind. Yeah, my finger. Hold it up here. Where are you? I beat the first act. Okay. And then after the first act, I ran around for 10 minutes. Okay. Pushing buttons. Okay. Going, is this really what I fucking think it is Are you fucking serious right now on this are you are you fucking my ass on this? Yeah?

Okay, all right there. We go so You are ridiculous, so you just you tested the waters on act two I tested the waters and I remember going into the menu and I'm like surely this does not like because I go to the menu first Before I go and try it out, and I'm reading menu and I'm like surely this does not like because I go to the menu first Before I go and try it out and I'm reading descriptions. I'm like this Mm-hmm reads familiar. It's it can't actually mean what I'm reading here Yeah, so so the the fun stuff that this game is doing and we're gonna still it's a still really new and we're gonna still Talk around things for people. Yeah, well unlike someone in my Doom fucking stream last night, I had to edit the VOD around that.

Uh huh. Yeah. Big, big spoils? Totally unrelated game stream. Someone came in at like midnight and was like, hey man. Stuff. Sorry I was being annoying during the Expedition 33 stream. I just didn't want you to have all the silly costumes on during incredible queer description of blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Okay, so complete.

And I read it out without thinking because it's like 11pm and I'm tired and then I was like, ah fuck, ah shit. Complete asshole. Then I had to go cut all the videos and delete VODs and shit. Yeah. Shitbag move, there you go. People have been like insane about this game in terms of like spoiler content.

It has been like one of the worst I've seen ever. So I'm being particularly careful and stuff because like it's one of these like one of these, from the moment you start it, it's an Attack on Titan style setup where you're like, we know there's a problem, we don't know why or what's going on. So everything you're doing is discovering more about the problem and the world and whatever it is. Everything is new. But to that end, that's fine. I can say this, there's a whole lot we can talk about that's just mechanics based, right?

And systems based. This game, you think it's about French ennui and getting older, and what it's actually about is turning that teenager into a super weapon that can destroy all. Yeah, maker and nuke. So yeah, I'm not an Act 3 yet, so I'm still working my way through, but I've made some good progress and I'm chipping away at some really hard challenges.

The absolute straightforward, okay, we're not going gonna mess around. This is what we're referencing Continues right like they they're very very blatant about that believe how? overt it has been like every character is Like I know what games really cool. Yeah, I just won so when I for me the one like there's the you know that you say you Often oftentimes the way tutorials work in this is like, you get into a fight and then like, it goes like, hey, are you pick someone up or something?

And it's like, hey, do you wanna do a tutorial or so? But in this case, it works in a way where you have a good chance to like go through the menus and like examine a whole bunch of stuff about a new character before you get into a fight to actually use them. So I see a mechanic called perfection. And I'm just like. And then I read.

One of the descriptions on the skill tree references you cannot drop lower than this. Yes. And I was staring at it and going, that can't mean what I fucking think it means. That would be Nonsense, how would that even integrate into this or and then I turn into fucking? Wasn't captain Knuckles with a dog doing a backflip

I sure hope you've been getting good at the game's mechanics and what it's been trying to do because... I have a problem with that. I have a real problem with that. I have one I want to get to too as well, actually. Interesting. Let's hear yours. So the game has... So many games have a difficulty curve, which starts off easy and gets hard. Other games have... Like The Witcher series and Cyberpunk have reverse difficulty curves in which the very beginning is like the Magnitude harder and then you get your kit. Yes. You're just like oh, there's nothing that can touch me this game has both This game has a sine wave difficulty curve. Yeah, oh man. This is a joke. This is a joke. This is a joke Oh hands that is the real jokes back to This is a joke. Oh, oh, yes. That is the real estate jokes Back to humor back to humor. Oh that has hands. Yes. So there are

people and things standing around on the map during act 2 where you're like I don't know if you're real or not Like sometimes it is sometimes it's not but what and then like sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. But what, and then like there's times where like upon first glance, you'll be like, Oh, that's real as fuck. And then it'll be like, actually, if you think about it and strategize a little bit, it's manageable. And then there's other times where I'm like, okay, I've spent another however, like I've put

another however many hours and levels past the last time I took this challenge on. Right. Let me go back now that I'm so much buffer and see what, oh God, I'm wiped. Still got nothing. And like, you know, you're just, you can't, you're trying to gauge early challenges for when to come back to them later. And like you go back way later and still get rocked is such a wild feeling. It's really interesting because it has one of

those things that Elden Ring has and the Soul Series has where it's like there's multiple different kinds of player expression through character power so one of the things that Expedition does really well is like, okay, old-fashioned style. Listen, I don't know how to do this. This seems really tough. I'm just going to hit the gym, and my characters are going to fucking get huge. And I'm going to dump points into them, and I'm going to just bump their stats and upgrade their weapons. And we're going to see how much of a difference that makes. And it can make a significant difference. There's also hey I'm gonna really actually dive into the Picto system. Yes, and I'm going to

Like take my L and I'm gonna like what I did as I build her around burn And just like throw 40 burn stacks a turn Down see what's going on? I'm just gonna and me figuring that out and just putting the dots together. Okay now this encounter trivialized. And then there's the third one which is one that I found myself relying on for two of the roaming you know chromatics or whatever in act one which is if I just never make a mistake once in the entire fight, it can't kill me and I will eventually win.

Yes, there is a that is really satisfying. There is a very clear land. And the thing is, as far as mistakes go, it gets dirtier and dirtier and dirtier. And now I'm seeing scum leveled, sucking shit that is so like, ooh, that's evil, because you know that players can try again, and eventually, whatever you're looking at, you will be able to memorize.

So let's be as dirt as possible on it. Right. There's I'm I'm going through like there's an area that's a like fuck you area. Right. Fuck you. Optional. Each is each its own. Right. And everything in it is basically like a boss. Every every encounter is like, oh, you're in it for a minute. And you start seeing things where like, yes, defensively, you can parry and avoid and dodge and jump and do all the things, right? But if you don't do the right thing in the right way and approach the fight still tactically while being defensive, you're going to sit here forever and not

get anywhere done. It'll basically be a stalemate. Yeah, the enemy numbers can be extraordinary. So it's not even, so there's things like that. I mean like just HP, like the amount of damage that they can take is extraordinary. But there's other things we're getting into. So we're getting into things where the team,

the enemies you're fighting will start healing each other at a rate that your DPS is not output is not out racing. Right. Okay. Right. We're talking about mechanics where the affinity of the enemy you're fighting will switch to something that Oh, you your my L loves fire. Cool. Heal me with your fire then switch it up. What else you got? And like, you have to basically be like, Oh, fuck, if I do a parry right now with my L. I'll heal them.

I'll heal them a lot, cause I'm doing a ton of damage, and that's bad, right? So you can't just be autopiloting it, you actually have to approach it in the right way and strategically. And this is where messing around with your builds and experimenting pays plays off heavy dividends, right?

What's cool too is the encouragement to experiment because you get so many re, what you might call it? Re-coats. Respec, respec points. Re-coats. Yeah, re-coats, you know? And I've been sparing on them and I'm glad I did. I was like, let me just stave

these up. I don't know, but I don't need them for now. And I've been going through it and getting this really, really cool feeling of like, okay, every once in a while when I choose to dive in deep into the Picto system, I'll do it with a character to create a build because I see a particular advantage that's really worth building around, right? So, for example, like Luna, I'll see a weapon where it's like, hey, every time you cast a free shot with her, you build up. Build a stain. You make a random stain, right?

Okay, cool, how can we build around this idea? Well, she's now somebody who's gonna use her AP to fire four bullets every turn, right? And then cash them out. So knowing that she's going to be firing every turn, let's gear all her pictos towards the shooting. Yeah, the marking one, the burning one. Right?

And then suddenly you're like, I've got a character that's more concerned about taking shots and building that up and doing, you know, and then supporting the team while taking those shots. And like the AP reward on everything you're shooting is then trickling into like, ah, you're setting up a mark for the next person and that's so that's really fun, you know? Um, and the feeling has, I've gotten a couple of times now has been like, oh shit, I just picked up a new weapon. That's worth swerving my entire get play style around.

Yeah, I got, uh, Mael's fucking purple katana. Yep, yep. And I'm like, oh my god, this changes her whole character. It was an even more busted character. Time to switch it up, right? And then so you start working heavily through, like yes, rearranging your pictos to become all about like,

oh, I'm starting in Virtuos, let's go hard, right? And then you get that. So I did that. I picked up a sword that was really good on base attack damage, right? And I was like, oh, that's sick. Let's work around the idea of making base attacks as good as possible.

And then I started seeing some busted numbers popping out with that. There's a picto that is like, your base attack swings twice, for example, which is like, ooh, OK, what can we do there? Getting the ability to play again and just forcing your character to get more turns in before anyone else can act, starting first and so on. And then I picked up, like after crushing it really hard with that, like not even barely a couple steps later,

I picked up a weapon that was like your, like when you do crits, amazing things happen using this sword. Right. And then it also scales A with luck. So I'm like, time to throw all of my build out, like not just go back and redo the pictos, redo your entire character's points,

have the Inti-crit, right? And then redo your skills and consider going in a completely different direction built around critting. And so now I have a character swinging for 92% chance at crit per swing. Right? I was able to figure out a way to get CL.

So CL has an ability that doesn't cash out her resources if it crits and it's a multi-hit. And I was able to push some numbers around to get her to 100% crit. So I could just cash the thing out infinitely over and over and over. So that's it, right? I look at it and I go, let's put on the pick toes

that'll push my crit even further and then shove a bunch of points into it. Now I'm swinging it. Yeah, you're basically, every single swing is a crit. All the good things that you get, all the good bonuses happen, double damage, et cetera, et cetera. And then on top of that, what was the other thing?

You, god damn it. I just, I got lost in the, anyway, the, that just becomes like the main way to play. Oh yeah, that's what it is. I see an ability on the skill tree that is like, if you land a crit, you're going to add to your perfection points, right? So let's hit a, let's grab a multi-hitting,

multi-critting move that you do one swing and you go perfection, perfection, perfection, and you watch your style shoot through the roof and you're like, this is the fucking build. And it feels so good to just immediately be like, I can't choose which way to go all these builds look and feel amazing I think it's probably the only JRPG style game I can ever think of in which there is like a legitimate case to

be made for not even using your full party. Like genuinely like what if I just fed all of my resources to myself forever? So you can certainly decide to put as many pictos on one person as you want. I played like that for like maybe 90 minutes with like just one character. Because I wanted it, so I got a character and they were underleveled compared to the rest of the cast. And I'm. Because I wanted it, so I got a character and they were underleveled compared to the rest of the cast. And I all swapped them in just by themselves to see, you know, to catch them up a little bit.

And, you know, was immediately rewarded with just the requirements and the resources I needed to make that work, which then worked really, really, really, really, really, really fucking well. Mm-hmm. It's pretty fun putting on all that solo stuff and seeing it just numbers go vrrrrr right? I got so I will say the Picto system is totally overwhelming. It is the the menus for it are terrible. The the the you can sort it. Setting favorites is saving my life. Okay, once I discovered setting favorites, I had a big sigh of relief. I'm like, okay,

this is something you need to be able to make sets. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. That is maybe the singular big flaw of the game is that like I would like to be able to have This version of my L and this version of my L and this locked in as a group Yes, also the ability to be like I want everyone on my party at minimum to have these these are where we're starting Yeah, I would like an equip all on Parry damage up right or start with plus AP. It's gonna be on everyone it costs three points yeah it's gonna be on every single character ever. Everyone is

starting with plus one AP everyone is starting with 50% damage extra on the first swing like every gap just right across the board yeah so that's all pretty huge there's the and then yeah sorting sorting into the smaller categories as well but then but thenly, you're switching to as well from a list of pick-dots to equip to a second version where it's like now you have the skill. So that with the points managing. The menu's kind of a mess.

It's kind of a mess. It does, yeah. It does get confusing. Especially considering how deep you have to go into it and how much time you spend in it, it could have been a little clearer. So when you're talking about the solo stuff with your characters and how good you can do though,

so you have, I get, yeah, so you have the party that you're playing with. Have you messed around with what happens when you wipe out and you've got people in reserve? Yeah, hey, you wanna send them in? Yeah, okay. The last stand system, right? And now we can start talking about,

you wanna build up someone to be solo? Okay, but you don't have to send them out first. In fact, send out the people you wanna use, and if you've got somebody in the back who's gonna come in on the last stand stand and it literally says the Expedition 33 last in their final stand you know and all of their solo shit just goes ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Yeah I had you know I had the girls out and I put all that solo shit on Gustav and I'm like Gustav I love you but if you're

coming out it's dire so here's So here's every solo buff you could possibly have. And then it worked out a little bit. It worked out quite well. You fight a boss or a challenger and then you're like, damn, I took it down most of the way and I learned the defense, but I slipped up on something. And then you come back in. And just clutch it out. Right. And it feels really good to have one person come back in. And you get the XP reward for it as well. And obviously dead characters make less XP,

back benched characters make less XP, but it's not a all or nothing situation where you feel like, god damn it, I almost wanna restart and not beat it with that person. The reward you get for benched and dead is still worth it. What's interesting is that like you know I tend to obsess over everybody equalizing you know I think that the XP gradient they have in this game is the second best XP gradients I have ever seen in that characters catch up quite reasonably. Each level is like more than twice as much as the one before it.

So you just, they really just equalize to some degree fairly naturally. I think the only game I can think of that has a better experience curve is Lost Odyssey because Lost Odyssey has a overtly fake experience curve in which each major dungeon area gives like 10 times as much XP as the last one. I remember every dungeon in Lost Odyssey, I would hit like the magic level that they wanted me to fight the boss at,

and I would go from getting half a level of fight to one 100th level per fight. And I would be like, oh, okay, I see here what you actually want. You're hitting XP tax brackets where, yeah, it's exponential, yeah. And you know, shout outs to the point system in Metaphor as well, where you can, you know, max out a character and then use their points to go spend on whatever you want on other people, other characters, archetypes. Something that's really fun here too as well is the,

yeah, I'm going through, so what you're talking about, I'm really feeling it, because I'm going through this area where all the enemies are giving tons of XP, and I'm leveling up super fast, and I'm seeing how quickly the ones on the back are getting left behind and it really is like they're not trailing too badly. Swap them in. Yeah. I had a point where I had a good stretch of fights that kept almost like a five level gap between my highest and lowest character. And then

the boss fight worked out so that the benched character stepped in instead and took the kill and evened it out. So that feels really good. This is one of those things that only affects a very specific personality type, and it's a personality type like mine, but this game handles it extremely well. Where it's like, okay, you get colors of Lumina, which are like, give your characters an extra skill point to use, which is really powerful. And then I'm like, well, what if I don't end up liking this character? What if I don't like Lunae, and I put like 40 points into her and now that those points are gone because I can't pull them out right does that mean I'll be behind well I got a fourth

party member and had enough fucking spare color of Lumina to bring them right up to alongside the rest of the cast in like 10 minutes oh yeah like they were like two Lumina behind it was like 39 40 40 and like 35. Oh, yeah, okay And I was like, oh, that's great. But then like what if this, you know system compounds? What if I get you know for there's probably like six or seven party members blah blah blah, you know and So I asked somebody I asked friend of the show Jean So I okay, so, you know, what's what's the cap on these right and his hit sir was like I don't know Mike my highest capped character was like

fucking 370 oh geez oh Stop at 99. It doesn't stop huh? Fuck it. So well. Here's one thing. I saw right so Well, here's one thing I saw, right? So got a party member moving through and new party member of course comes in a little bit shy compared to the others. And I'm looking at their like number of pick toe points or so. And it was like, everyone is in their like 40s or 50s or so. And this person was at like 25. And I was like, yeah, that's their way behind. Right? Go back, Yeah, that's their way behind. Right. Go back, do some cleanup, and finish off a side quest.

The reward for that side quest is 40 points. Got it. Great. Done. Excellent. So the game has ways that are intended for you to make your team catch up and hit parity for sure. Excellent progression curve. Old, you know, with weapon upgrades, like old resources become trivially free, new resources become more and more common.

And there's a good reason to like go back and do those things with new parody members that you didn't have anyway. You see shops around the map that are like, hey, unlock an expedition or to come back here and get the cosmetic I'm going to sell you. New stuff. Having so many of the items be like cosmetics is super exciting I love it I love it I love it I love it like like you I do a really hard challenge and then the reward is not like a big sword or piece of armor it's a fucking

shirt and I was like yes this is a minor spoiler for a type of side content in the game that in Act 1 I got to a beach and I Saw that the beach was not a combat challenge It was a platforming challenge. That's the that's I was telling you about the water. It is a platforming challenge That is fairly extreme. It is like way past what you would expect the game to want from you, especially considering the game is kind of slippery and doesn't have a very good jump. For the engine it's built in. This is what I was talking about when I said it's asking you to platform.

And you're like, guys, this is not what the game is made to do. And the music sounds like Fall Guys. Mm-hmm. And I'm sure those are going to get harder. That first one did not take me long. And I was overwhelmed by the obvious inspiration that it took from both Fall Guys and FF14. That is a Final Fantasy XIV style jumping puzzle. The summer event every year has a beach platforming puzzle that looks like that fucking thing.

Okay. I just said Fall down when I saw it. Yeah, the types of like The jumping isn't super good. So you have to learn this dumb shit to deal with it is more or less the same So I was I was so fucking ready To fucking do it and the reward is like an ugly swimsuit The reward is like an ugly swimsuit That was so worth it early that was so worth it early 1900s, you know Bathers Beach suit Mm-hmm And I have like fucking massive package bulging out Like good for you, buddy. Oh, I got I got one for Lunae

Yeah, so Like, good for you, buddy. Oh, I got one for Lunay. Yeah. So, I mean, to be perfectly... It might just be the way it's modeled or so, but like, the same almost applies. There is a very distinct Mons Pubis that is visible. But anyway, one of the challenges in one of the fuck you hard areas is coming at you with like become a parry god right now. Right now, right?

And like sit here and just like fucking do it. I'm going to do it, Don't worry. I got it and You do it, and then it's like you fucking crushed it. Here's a dress I love it. You know I'm so excited by that so a little bits of Little bits of I guess a future advice from the future, from the year 2000. If you, there's some characters, or rather,

there's some challenges that are around the world that you're, yeah, you walk into and you're like, oh, okay, all right, I'll be back, you know? Goodbye. Sometimes it'll be like, um, it's within grasp, but like, maybe there's stuff that you can miss because something that you, uh, someone that you will meet later effectively is a blue mage. And if you want to get blue ma Mage abilities, you have to fight the things that give you those things. If you kill those things before someone is available, then you're going to

miss out on that opportunity. Consider that. At the same time, if you were able to kill those things, that means you're cruising. You are. You are. I don't know about the completionists' sake, you know, feeling. I don't know if there's necessarily perhaps a way. We're getting nays in chat here. So I'm going to, maybe, you know, maybe there's a way in the future to deal with that, I guess, perhaps people might know. Okay, I'm seeing a bunch of nays, so maybe there's a way that you can collect things

that you've missed or so. So all right. I hear braying and whining from the animals in the pen. But the initial thing I kind of was like, oh shit, I got something here that I saw. And I was like, ooh, I'm glad I waited for that challenge to get that thing. I'm sure there's no way to lock that up.

Wait a second, are you saying there's a character that's like a blue mage in this not Final Fantasy game? Yeah, there you go. So I'm gonna be blunt I have it has been a long time since I played a game that I was so consistently impressed by its universal excellence in every single aspect of its presentation design visuals sound Etc and I and I ran into Ben Star. Yep. And I don't believe the interview that I saw where they're like, Clive was written after this character. I don't believe you.

Yeah. I mean, it's a lie. At the same time, like I kind of, you have to wonder, like, is this just Ben Star now? Is this just Ben Star being Ben Star? Could it be- Well, the Ben Star voice is like ten different characters in this game? But Clive is Clive and and then then like are we going to just be? We cloying it up forever now because I'm down for more time with Clive And I'm taken away by like a controversial opinion and like you could have just put the name Final Fantasy on this game Don't sully Clare obscure. No, no That's like that that is like the goal

These people wanted to make a goddamn Final Fantasy game and they made one of the best ones That's crazy. It's amazing. It's their first game. They're amateurs What's interesting is as well, the fact that it's so RPG turn-based, but the part that I guess is asking you to react defensively, you know? I'm like up to a certain point in the Final Fantasy timeline, I'd be like,

hmm, I wonder how much you'd wanna lean into that, but now that we've had a fucking Devil May Cry Final Fantasy game, it's like, oh yeah, no, you can do that. That's not a problem. But also I say Lost Odyssey because Lost Odyssey is also JRPG as fuck. Lost Odyssey is not quite Final Fantasy, not really, but it is kind of maybe. But in that it's very straightforward with its JRPG-ness and then it's putting some cool QTEs on top of that and the art style is carrying

it and doing amazing things. With that though, two things about this game that one, there is one unique issue that I'm experiencing here. Are you playing on a PC? Yes, sir. Okay, so I am having a very peculiar thing where Every once in a while and it might just be a setting it might be a video thing or so fucking keyboard shit No, not the keyboard shit because the mouse is popping up and that's kind of annoying. That's not it I'm getting everyone talk about that little frame skips

Yeah, and I don't think they would ever matter except for when you're frame skipping me in the middle of a parry sequence. And so I have I have turned that shit down so that I'm crushing 100 frames in all scenarios when like it is a gorgeous game. It is an absolutely immaculate beautiful game and I would love to play it at the highest, most picturesque, painted settings possible. But I was running around at 80 frames, and then I was fighting a boss, and it dropped to 45, and that caused me to have a judder. I'm like, no, no, no, you cannot have this. Can't do that. Can't do it. You may not have this.

And I'm playing, my way of playing this game, as you can imagine, is on the razor's edge, where I'm like, I will defend, or I will... I'm feast or famineing through the game, in a lot of ways. And so... You're playing Heaven or Hell. Yes. And with that in mind, I'm like, if I fucking parry all five hits of this sequence, and then like the sixth one goes, ehh! And then I take the hit and die, that sucks, because that fight took a while, you know, so I don't think the game I think you're still probably better off. I don't think the game runs at 60 on anything else. I'm not certain

I'd have to check. Hold on. Let's just find out. Let's just type it into I need to go play with my settings because I haven't really done so and You know now that the parry challenging is getting really, really fucking scummy, like there are characters who are doing, um, startup to their animation that looks identical, but like one of multiple things might happen, you know? So like if you start getting into the rhythm of like, Oh, I know what your move list is, or you start getting into the rhythm of, I'm just doing this musically

no you can't because sometimes it's gonna force you yes on the console okay it will force you to make sure you're reacting to what's coming at you and like yeah I've had a couple hiccups that like stole hits and perform it okay 30 FPS on the weaker consoles and then performance mode on the good ones is 60. Okay Yeah, I'll take the hit for for consistency because timing matters. This is a game, you know, like it matters If you have to do parries if you have to do fucking Qte's that are like really really some Qte's are really like last-minute placed, you know The timing on them is very sharp.

So yeah, same thing. You got to make sure that that performance is rock solid. And with that now brings me to a strange conumdrum I've been having. This game is excellent by all accounts. And it's one of those things where when I hit a game that's like that's super solid, I always kind of go over to punch mom and I'm like, hey, here's one you might want to hit. You might want to hit. I've been doing the same with Punch.

I'm just like, oh, it's so universally excellent. It's unbelievable. So there's so much good stuff here for you. Now, the problem is that for her, her preferences are such that if she can put it on easy or put it on something where the execution isn't as necessary If it's mainly about decision-making she can enjoy herself, right? But anytime the reactions and stuff get too demanding

it becomes like a becomes an issue, you know and So now I'm kind of trying to figure out like I don't know what the game looks like on easy See if that works. I don't know pumping fit So I was gonna say I don't know what the game looks like on easy, but I'm curious I'm like if you have enough defense. Can you play this like a traditional RPG? You totally can I bet you totally can Where you just take hits and deal hits I know you totally can Because that would be a that would be one answer Battles would take longer. I assume yeah for sure, but I bet you totally can

Okay, people in the chat are saying yeah, yes, okay Because that's awesome if you can play if you can play it or it's just like all right We've removed this timing element from it necessarily unless every once in a while you want to try it, but for the most part You know Then that's great. There are, there are fuck you avoid this or die like scenarios. But I do find the optional challenges to be like much more demanding than like the the mandatory ones, you know? Okay. So yeah, I need to look up to see what a version of this game looks like or so where yeah,

she could go through it and not necessarily worry about that stuff because there's so much good other otherwise. And I'm just like, like at one point, like she walked in while I was like hitting one of these like insane tactical, like, you know, making the affinity changing enemies and parrying like a sequence of five things and she was like, oh Jesus is this what you were recommending? And I'm like, yeah, but I'm doing that to myself though. My reach may be exceeding my grasp right here. So, like one of the things that really stood out to me is that, know I'm streaming it and I was fighting a chromatic and

I was fighting the chromatic for a while because they could take a lot. They have a lot of the level I'll and The the woof noise For parry timing is quite excellent. It's really quite useful But also once you learn the parry timing, I ran into the situation where like a chromatic would start an attack and I would just turn my head to this other monitor. Yeah, because you're reacting to the noise.

I'm like reading chat and I'm talking to people. It's like, once you have it, you have it. For those enemies. For that guy, for that guy and that move. I promise you there are other enemies who are like, this is the startup, but what's coming? You have to react to the, you know? Come on, Elden Ring Margie.

Yeah, it's not about the windup. It's about the beginning of the active frames and you have to do one or two different timings depending on what's active, you know? The timing parry for 33 is so interesting. They want you to parry while the move is inside your character. It's not the window, 100%.

It's not the slider for dodge timing and then parry in the middle. I'm gonna hold up my arm and then the attack will hit my arm in the parry animation, that counts as a parry. Yes, if you were looking at a video timeline, you would take the active window and put it right in front of your character and then everything before that is like,

you know, loose fail state, right? And here, it's like the parry window goes after you on the timeline. So yeah, if the sword is inside of you and you're a little bit late, like you can still make it work because it wants it Yeah, that's it. That's the best way to describe it. I owe the time but for Perry's um Coyote time are you not familiar so Celeste is the first game I play that has coyote time in which you're gonna go to a jump and then the jump, you will not fall until your character is like

one full character off the platform. Oh, Donkey Kong Country. And you will jump off of nothing. It's like Wile E. Coyote suspended in air. Oh, okay, okay, Donkey Kong Country jumping. It's a way to give you just a little bit of extra leeway on tricky jumps. Yeah, so it's so weird to see an action where I'm like, I know I was late on that parry,

but you still gave it to me. And it's, there's like, I don't, I'm trying to think of like, I think sometimes in souls, right? There's like, there's attacks that come at you at such a speed where you're aiming to press the button on the impact, not before it type of thing. What you get here is this weird mixture because there's stuff where there's things, enemies coming at you and you're doing that timing we're describing. And then there's also stuff where it's like, this is only ocular.

There is no visual cue for you. You just have to hear it type of thing. Or that's not true. The accessibility means that you can visually react to it. But it's not as obvious as a big arm going up or so, you know? This game is so fucking awesome. And I got to some bits, like I finished act one, I got to some bits that were like, God, if you couldn't figure out it was French before, get ready for this fucking film grained four by three black and white audio distorted. Oh yeah.

Flashback. Sad, operatic French lady in the background cut scene that I know won't make any sense until I have to watch the movie again. Mm-hmm. I'm- Like, just so fucking French. Oh my god!

I am choosing to wear the baguette on my back, and I am choosing to play the vinyl of, you know, Lumière. And I'm listening to my be-bo-bo-do-bo-bo-do-bo-do. And I'm like, yes, I'm enjoying the Frenchness of everything happening right now. A good- It's so fucking, it's hilarious.

And like they know that French stuff is hilarious. Leaning in? Like, you run into Esquire, and Esquire is French, and that's the joke, is that he's French. That's it. Yeah. No, you're looking around at these big gargantuan creatures that are completely inhuman,

and one of them has a beret on, and you're like, yeah, okay, let's go talk to you. I bet you I know what you're about. And like, just like fucking cave of beasts, and of the beast, one of them is just like, why hello? of beasts and of the beast one of them is just like why hello you know I'm a big fan of the strongest ice attack ever I don't know if you remember that there's an enemy that attacks you with the strongest ice attack ever okay that is that is the name of the attack okay I, I don't remember. And I was like, how strong? Oh, man.

Like just, all right. The text on these attack names are not lying. Mm-hmm. And something I've been waiting on too that I wanna see a bit more of is, there's been a couple, but they're definitely, the one thing that needs to be dialed up heavily

is more characters need to be exclaiming how much they could use some wine right now. Right? Just like, ah, you know, in Bouteille, just how much they would want of that. You know what I mean? Like it would be so fantastic because there's once or twice where they're just like, oh man, I could use a bottle. But that is truly the mark. But yeah, Expedition 33 is like an easy standout for a Game of the Year contender. And more importantly for this new studio, it is apparently on track to sell like millions and millions and millions. Beautiful.

Wonderful. Congratulations. Also, we're going, you know, with our impressions, you know, far. And like last week, I was talking about how the linear nature of the progression and stuff in that kind of hallway and then it opens up and stuff. That motherfucker opens up proper big, big. I believe I am at the point of the game where it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Proper big, big. Big opens. Never mind. You know. Still like zones where you go in and it's just like, it's still kind of like, I'll just go pick up a record over there. It's like a big area of just music to pick up or so. So there's still some big empties, but shit still

opens up quite a bit. So yes, I'm happy to continue pushing and shilling for this game because it is fantastic and deserves all the accolades. Claire Obscure, Expedition 33. It's so good. It's so good game. Okay. So, on my end, only other thing, the EVO Japan watch party went down.

I've seen it. I think that you really made the right decision by not being in that venue in person. Well, it's in Japan, so that would have been very difficult to do. Apparently it was pretty hot. Oh, Japanese summers are brutal. Yeah, apparently it was pretty hot. I heard the the the Strive finals had like equipment failure. Overheating PS fives is I've been hearing I've been hearing as well. Yeah, that's that sucks because what are your solutions? Do it somewhere else? The whole point is to do it here. Yeah, the that's a that's a problem that needs to be

addressed and that that that can't that can't be going down like that, for sure. That's crazy. But the brutality of a Japanese summer cannot be avoided. It's kind of like you know going in. I remember like, shit, I mean, back in the day, we're watching Genshiken and just like the lineup of the, from like real life of comic cat people just on the, a bunch of dudes just lined up on the ball corner

with their towels. And it's just like, this is the fucking towel zone. We're gonna just sit here for a while and, you know, before you can go back in. So we did the, but yeah So we did the watch party. That was a lot of fun. It was very cool going through it with everybody just kind of like watching highlights of the best moments and everything from the day before. Essentially, you know, because it's Japanese hours, we would

start in Eastern time zone. We did 12 to 5 and just like went through each game through like all the best moments in pools and everything up to top eights and stuff. A lot of fun too as well because yeah, the main games are Street Fighter 6 Tekken and Guilty Gear Strive, Grand Blue Fantasy versus KOF 15. But there was a Virtua Fighter V, a Revo 5v5 teams bracket and a third strike teams bracket. And those were a lot of fun to watch. Like, still doing it, you know. We talk about the old salary men that just post up and play these games.

They are, it's like, okay, you are someone that's been playing forever and you're a beast, but you're a family man. And you're not going to take a trip to Vegas. But this is in your backyard. Taro, get the fuck up. Head down to Evo Japan and whoops some ass, please. Thank you. And yes, there was some there was some good shit. It's always fun to see that. And a lot of names as well from like way back in the day

competing and doing doing well So fun fun stuff shoutouts to the to evo we had a good time with them There's some news that came out of evo Japan, but we're gonna talk about that There certainly were some announcements But yeah, no thankful for the the opportunity. That was very cool. Everybody that got to tune in, you know, that, on the main channel proper,

it was just a nice opportunity to kinda put that fucking, get into fighting games intro out there, blast it out for everybody, and then to have me crawling back into the garbage for the outro as well. Oh, that's nice. Yep. That's nice to put on a big stage like that. Yeah, I'm not going to run the Bible Black outro, but at the very minimum,

I'm going to crawl into the garbage so we can get that going and, you know, keep it keep it professional to some degree. Indeed. You know, if I if I if I ever would like the ability to return here, I suggest maybe not having edited hentai show up on the EvoMain channel. I mean, maybe, maybe not. You never know. They're cool. Are they cool?

Who knows? They're very cool, but I just, you know, in a world where once upon a time, certainly our Mika costumes might be an issue. Oh yeah, that, yeah, hmm. You know, it just might not be the time, you know. Also, the, you know that the, I talked about this with Sacred and Terrible Air, but the sad hilarity of irony being misconstrued for artists, right? Mm-hmm.

When the get ready for your daily red pill sigma male clip goes up, you know? How many, like, a non-zero number of EVO viewers will be like, really? Or worse. You know? Or worse, you know what? Yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So there's that, right? But anyways, fun stuff. Yeah, if you wanna catch any of that, that's up on the Evo Events YouTube channel as well. Me and Reg had a good time. And then yeah, we'll get into some of the announcements from that a little bit later. But that's pretty much the deal.

It was a full ass weekend, you know, so the this week we're going to do. I was going to do two sessions of cyberpunk. I think I might do one because I still I have some work to catch up on that. I was not able to do because of the weekend being so busy. Right. But yeah, pushing through to through cyberpunk. And I think. through cyberpunk and I think I'm anticipating hitting act three fairly shortly. So oh, yeah, we will we will see

Where that where that goes, but I've been I've been enjoying what that story is doing so far for sure. Very very cool So tune in this week About a story that I've been enjoying in a very different way than that. Mm hmm. I've been playing more of 100 line. Ah, late at night. That's 100 line last Defense Academy. I am not familiar with Kodaka's works. I didn't play them Danganronpa's

Right or the ultra to skip the ultra despair kids or whatever So for context I am at day 11 of 100 There's a calendar system Yeah, it's 100 days. Okay 100 line defense means 100 days. Gotcha. Okay. Also 100 endings but that's for later. I... so maybe, maybe this is how it's supposed to go. I feel like the Kodakasan, the writer, is like in my face telling me I'm stupid and telling me to just, just, just, yeah, yeah, you think this is what the story is? No

stupid, no, it's this actually. You dumbass. Like every single time I seem to start to get a handle on the game structure And what I think the game is going to be the game goes no, it's not about that right, right? It's actually a totally different game idiot and You know why I think that's probably the case because He's been writing games about switching it up and swerving on you for an entire franchise now, right? When you're M. Night Shyamalan and everyone's like, yes, what's the twist?

I get it. You are kind of like known for doing this thing. How do you approach a novel idea with that being your signature and find ways to, I guess, keep it, keep people who already know your tricks from still guessing your tricks Yeah I think he goes to a lot of trouble

by Adding the tank and rompa mockery character darmy in there who is just the fucking dang and romper Junkler mm-hmm who is just constantly going off about wouldn't it be cool if we all just killed each other and had a death game trial for it and they're being treated as like outrageously unreasonable and everyone is ignoring them. So like just the most like some of the most unlikable characters I have ever seen in anything. Oh yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just actively repugnant, horrible characters.

I kind of am starting to love them though. Do you get their awfulness? Yes, yes. Do you get to spend time with them? Yes. Okay. Not much, but some. Okay, yes.

This is correct. You are expressing the correct feelings for Adan Genrapa. Horrible, horrible characters. Let's go hang out with them next Tuesday. This character is being forced to play like hardcore classic out of print eroge. Like, with this character. And then I got linguistics for it, so that's cool. Awful. Awful people. Just the stupidestest the stupidest nonsense But it's it's just like I don't know what the fuck is going on

They don't know what I don't know what the fucking writer Wants me to think might be going on either Yeah, I have nothing I have been given nothing. So I think, again, on the basis of Dagon Rampa and the fact that keeping your expectations blown out of the water, you have to let go of guessing and just sit on for the ride. Just let it take you where it's going. Stop trying to figure it out. It is, I would say it's like actively hostile to any form of media enjoyment other than

I guess I'm along for the ride. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. It is totally fascinating. Because there's also like, there's stuff that is like, oh, here's a hint at something that you won't know until you have future context, which is- But I don't know if that's true or if it's just nonsense.

I've encountered a couple of things that could just be nonsense. But that's what I was about to say, right? That thing that is an indicator of whatever is also right next to a complete red herring. And you're going to be equally invested in both. Right. And thinking about both as to the explanation of what's coming. And then suddenly hours later, you will walk up to the second one and you're like taking it seriously. And then Monokuma, the bear, will have a big dumb fart gag in front of it and be like,

BWAAA! BWAPWAA! And then like, it was never anything serious to begin with, and you were staring at it getting completely distracted. Here's an example, like the starting point for the game's story is like fairly normal. You live in a somewhat normal Tokyo, and somewhat normal students, somewhat normal people. But then the mascot character that you see on all the art who is like the head of the school is like a three foot tall, completely transparent, like jelly bean person with a

floating brain. Sick. And the fact that he's an outrageous monster freak is never brought up once. Yep ever Would he look cool on a t-shirt? on a mug Probably. Nah, you're not thinking hard enough You're not thinking stylish enough. Absolutely. It is so it is so hostile to understanding And I have been totally charmed by it. Absolutely. It's so consistently

interesting. Every day my character goes to bed and I go, I have no idea what the next day in this game is going to bring. And the characters' interactions are all strange and kind of tropey, but also anti themselves. there's a character that is like very obviously Like gay for you. Mm-hmm and is being it my I feel like I'm reading like a fucking BL fanfiction here But like I'm also convinced that the story will never go that way and then I finally understand Like a tweet I saw earlier from a small Victorian child, which was getting queer baited by Danganronpa is like losing chess to a dog. But the dog has been training his entire life for this and you've never played chess. That is fantastic. And I was like, what an absurd thing to say. And now I'm here and I'm like, oh yeah, actually.

Because this is like a fucking sloppy mess. And I couldn't be so stupid as to fall for it. And I'm totally falling for it. I mean, and the thing is too as well, like the fact that the charm is working is like, it must be also like when the fact that you're playing the most recent and this is probably the best version of the roster, you know, from all the ones going forward, because again, you you did mention like you're like, I don't gel with any of the things going on in the previous ones.

And I'm so the dang dagnabbit grandpa gang. And I'm thinking about, you know when we go through, we talk about the metaphor cast and how fucking sick they are, and then you're like, you think about how annoying some of the P3 characters were, like Junpei and Yukari and whatever, and then you go to four and you're like, oh, that's a much better cast, that's cool. And then five, you're like, oh, yo,

everyone's really great here. There's that feeling of like, oh, yeah, okay, the the the charm and the appeal and the cast getting more fun to hang out with over the course of these games is also applying here where you're getting probably the best version of them, you know, so version of them, you know? So I am definitely curious, because now that you see what you just described is 100% what all those other characters were about in the previous games as well. With the exception that there's the ones that are not horrible people in a particularly obvious way. There's people that are horrible and very subtle, you'll find out later ways. And then the ones that are normal are just like, yeah, they're

going to be a corpse in like seconds. You know, there are two characters on that roster that are objectively, like clearly designed to make you hate them. And they might be like two of the... there's the pathetic Kamiya Twitter shithead. And then there is the guy who is obsessed with his sister. And these two might be like the actual worst characters I have ever seen in anything in my life. Like every time they talk, I am actually just taking it like, ugh, ugh, ugh, shut up. I think I love them. I think I love that they are like,

they are swinging for the moon on awfulness. So I think there's a part of this, of the approach here as well, that is possibly explained by the fact that everyone is also really dumb. Even the smart characters are like, smart relative to everyone, but are super stupid in a lot of ways. And there's just

people are like, that idiot is a golden retriever of a character, right? People behave like single brain celled idiots while also being called- There's a hundred linecasts that have two people that are kind of normal. And they are a stark contrast to this cavalcade of fucking freaks. Freaks. You know, the idea of like, at least in Dangan's case, it's like you are the best in the world at a thing, whatever that thing is, and that means you're a super crazy weirdo in so many other ways in order to be the best in the world at this one thing. You know?

Yeah, I'm glad that that's working on you because that's what it is. It's also a pretty good strategy RPG. Like the defense missions are, they're not super tough. I assume they won't get super tough for a long, good long while, but they're fun and they have good presentation And it's nice to have like this will eventually turn into a visual novel with branching paths It's nice to actually have like an additional like actual game part to it, which is increasing your stats fighting battles There's there's other types of of gameplay in there

that I had no idea would be there and had this real feeling of, oh, I'm doing this now? Oh, okay. Sure. Fuck it. Fine. Whatever. Fine. Fine. Very weird. Very weird game. Aggressively strange. Hmm. You know, you know how potato girl Sasha in Attack on Titan is like a wild ass goofy potato girl in the middle of this horrifying violent nightmare. That's correct. And she's hilarious and kind of dumb, but also endearing. And it's just a nightmare. What if the whole cast? What if literally every single person? What if an entire game of potato girls in the middle of a massacre, right? Like there's a guy- What's his fucking name? Is it Gaku? I forget his name, but like he's obsessed with being an asshole and then when you're like, can you not be an asshole?

He's like, you just hate me because I'm poor. You fucking, you piece of shit. This dude's hating on me because I'm poor. And like, I've never seen this type of character in a game before and it's wild. Cause he won't stop and he's awful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, when they go for the,

the nerdy, crazy Yandere type character, it's like, oh yeah, okay, she's doing the, it's your fault, I'm not powerful, I'm not powerful, I'm not popular style, you know, bit, and then you're like, yeah, okay, I know the deal. And then it quickly just gets like, Oh God, what is wrong with you? Ew fucking, ah, it's so horrible. And then you just start with, then you just kind of like come all the way back around to be like, Oh, you, you and your gross shit. Get out of here. Yeah. Give a

little noogie. Get out of here. Yeah, give a little yeah, no, this this hundred line game is super cool. Nice Only really have a single Complaint and that is That I'm at day 11 of a hundred and it feels really really really clear to me That this visual novel has no branching paths at all until you beat it once. Okay.

It is a fucking story for a while. I don't know that I've played like I've there hasn't been any branches in The Danganronpa games like you just go through them. There's no see this Those are visual novels with solutions to the problems and variability You know then that's it The only things the only things that change are how much you commit to a relationship with a character by hanging out with them based on your free time with a character by hanging out with them based on your free time. The main thing is that it's also written by Uchikoshi. 999. He's the zeroes. Tons of us, tons of

endings. Yes, yeah. And his gimmick is that you take pieces of information from one route into another route. Love that. But I don't think that is going to be happening here. Okay. But yeah, cool game. Very cool. Apparently it's got like six million fucking characters of text, which is why it's not going to be localized into a bunch of different languages.

Jesus. It's like, It's ridiculous. And... Apparently it's doing well. Which is good because apparently they're on the verge of bankruptcy. Oh no. Apparently they are always on the verge of bankruptcy. It's

voice acted though, right? No. You know it's voice acted. Maybe one out of every 100 lines. OK, OK, OK. And and big, big money moments. Important scenes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. Then the visual novel text you go you go through with the barks and the oh, no. Yeah, the barks. But that don't like the barks. That that she that little she laughed. Yeah, the barks. I don't like the barks. That little chie laugh. Eeehehehe. Okay. And then yeah, big scenes. Alright. Shall we?

Oh, I got more. I got more, brother. Excuse me? I got that new doom game came out Well, actually it's technically it comes out tomorrow Whatever the the the streamer tax dumb idiot tax version of the game came out yesterday you got 128 99 Canadian plus tax okay well or I'll got sent to me in the emails. Yeah, okay I'll grab it on tomorrow then when it's not the stupid fucking $120 well, maybe wait a second

It tried to kill my computer ooh Okay Ooh. Okay. It crashed on me multiple times so hard I had to yank the cable out of my PC. Oh my god. Uh, yeah. Maybe on console then? Maybe. Jesus. The other thing, the other thing is that, did you play 2016 in eternal?

Yep, not the DLC of eternal, but the main game. So I love those games. I think those games are great. They are. And I feel like that there was a really strong cohesive like identity behind 2016 in eternal. They're different from each other, though. Oh, very different. But I mean, each one of them was like,

we're gonna make fucking Doom Eternal, right? And I feel, I feel in my emotions that the core concept behind this game was let's go make another doom game. Okay. Like that, their goal was to ship another game that said doom on it.

I like doom games. So I know exactly what, obviously, but it doesn't have the fucking spark It's it's it doesn't have the fucking Spark that I felt when I was played 2016 and And eternal and part of that reason is that it is very different from those two games which I think is cool I think it's really awesome that it's actually extremely Extremely different so doom 2016 was fairly classic and then Eternal had you double jumping and dashing and sidestepping and dodging and fucking trickstoring all over the place.

Doing the rounds. Yeah, yeah. And this game has no double jump and has no dash. And instead of being a acrobatic doom man, you are basically a tank with a shield. Okay. And you have a perfect parry system. And you have what is essentially stinger.

And you have essentially, you throw the shield to somebody and gets lodged in them. And it's essentially round trip. Okay. As G was describing. Yeah. That description was apt. But you are trading that for no alternate fire on any weapon and much slower movement. Okay. Is moment to moment flow like Eternal where you're having that arcade mode style like no combo going very different, okay? I don't know how to describe it other than just to play it. It's like it's really good, and it's quite excellent

But it's just I don't it's it's quite excellent, but it's just, I don't know, it's just missing something. It's really subjective, like more than usual when I would talk about this. Like one of the things that I noticed right away is the music isn't mixed loud enough, which is fucking weird. It's weird that the music isn't mixed loud enough. So I had to go into the options and max out the music. And then the music is not Mick Gordon. I was going to say Doom game don't have a music controversy issue challenge impossibly. And it's also even maxed out is still not loud enough. And it's fine. It's fine. even maxed out, it's still not loud enough. And it's fine, it's fine.

Is it genting? I don't know what that means. Gent and, well, what the BFG division fucking is doing. Duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh. Yeah, it's doing that. But there's also not enough music. Okay. There are levels that are more wide open and took me nearly two hours to beat one of these

wide open levels. And when you're not fighting, the music just fades away into like, I'm Beyonce and it just doesn't have the same spark. I was talking to Gene about it when I was streaming it last night. Remember in Doom 2016 in Eternal you had like you know in Doom 2016 you had lab then you had Martian surface then you had a different type of lab then you had a factory then you had Martian surface then you went to hell then you went back to the lab then you went to a different type of lab, then you had a factory, then you had Martian surface, then you went to hell, then you went back to the lab, then you went to a different type of hell, you know that kind of thing? Yeah.

And in Eternal, you would be like, hell on earth, ice magic night zone, coliseum, weird hell, you know, and Mario Brothers level in hell, you know all sorts of zany shit. I just played seven missions in a row of Mostly brown Sentinel Knights architecture. Oh, okay stages Thematically, okay. Okay. Yeah, I guess well because it's it so this is taking place during the wars, right? Yeah is it kind of limited in in where it can go and what it can do with that as a, as you know, the backdrop? Yeah.

Supposedly, according to Gene, I have two levels before it starts to vary it up. Okay. But like that first eight level pack being what is essentially the same tile set is fucking awful like I'm so bored of that style of architecture and that style of thing. I also like some of the new weapons are good, a bunch of them are like, okay. I don't think the weapon roster is nearly as strong as Doom 2016 or Eternal. Is there any part of it that's like going for the previous Dooms before 2016 that's like affecting kind of like what they're doing? I mean, 2016 was a lot like Doom and Eternal was, I guess, closer to Doom 2.

I don't know how to describe it. It feels like an extreme, remember how much faster Eternal was compared to Doom 2016? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. This is slower in the other direction. Like this is This is slower in the other direction. This is the slow Eternal in the other direction. It's just not hitting for me the way that those two did. The fact that it tried to kill my computer, doesn't help. That's not, you know, especially since the game is very annoying about telling you to make sure

to upgrade to the latest drivers. So that's like kind of hilarious that it would then try and kill itself. So like the shield, mm. The shield mechanic is excellent. Like excellent. Like, excellent. Nice. But it's your secondary weapon for everything.

Like you know, in Eternal in 2016, every single gun had a secondary weapon, a secondary fire that was really interesting. Is there no synergy between the gun that like, with the shield to kind of make up for that? Yes, there is. There is a huge amount of synergy. So there's like some, like you get to the impaler, which is basically like a rail gun. And it's like kills with the shield drop rail gun ammo, or a rail gun is impaled and you throw the shield

at somebody who does extra damage, stuff like that. But it just, yeah, I don't know, I wish I had something more concrete than, I don't know. I don't know. Okay. But. Because I know that like the big difference, so the difference between Doom 2016 and Eternal is huge, but I still enjoyed both for what they were doing. And even though Icon of Sin or whatever, God awful, but the idea of the, once I understood that you're like, you locked me in a room and you want me to combo the shit out of this room

and flow state, right? Once I understood that that's what the game was asking, I was like, cool, I'm down, I understand what you want me to do, which is different, but it was fun when it was going. And in this case, I'm open to the idea of being asked to do something else, you know? Like, let's throw Ultra Kill into the mix, right?

Ultra Kill, shorter levels of just fucking intensity and bosses and crazy shit that goes down. But yeah, tons of alternate fire, tons of ways to remix the way you're using the same weapons and create original synergies and things like that. And then mechanics that are reward, like the coin flipping mechanic is a simple thing that is rewarding to experiment with the entire time you're running through so like Like whatever they're asking me to do if it's different from the others. That's not inherently a problem to me It's just is it going to be fun when you're executing it at its peak

Oh, it definitely is. I just it's one of those things. It kind of reminds me of with our talk about DMC for last week It's like the levels, the wrapper around that stuff just isn't there compared to the other two. Maybe it'll get there, I'm gonna continue playing it. Okay. One of the things that really does stand out dramatically is that the game has almost no story, but it has just enough story to make you go,

wow, this story is stupid and bad. There's maybe a single cut scene at the beginning and ending of every mission and nothing is happening in them, but it's just enough for you to go, this is stupid as fuck. Like this doesn't even need to be here at all. Okay. Act, actively dumb. So, I mean, like, are we going, like, cause I mean, cause the story in the original too, is like, I love how straightforward and evil,

and just like corporate hellscape, here comes the maker, she's terrible. Oh, absolutely. And him on his ship just hearing everybody freaking out and picking up the science the clips of the scientist fucking goop in her panties talking about the Slayer I'm like yeah that's great sure well you know people in the chat are talking about eternal and how like eternal was that times a million because it turned on tons of

story and tons of logs and tons of details about the Doom Slayers Actually this and they're actually Jesus and they're from heaven and oh my god, right all that nonsense in the beginning Yeah, Hayden and you know, so it's that but because it's a prequel Like nothing is actually happening, but it's still doing that thing So like there's an entire level an entire level that the only thing that is happening is we have to defend the level from the bad guys That's it. That's that's that's all of it and They'll have like a couple cutscenes of like demons scheming

But it's like what's what are they scheming? They're scheming to blow it up And it's like it could just not be there at all. Okay. Cause the way, whenever I like looking at the premise and sort of set up for these types of things, it's like you hear, you heard about, you know, the war through lore and tapes and as a reference in the past. And like, is it like going back to the clone wars?

And I mean, never, nevermind the show tapes and as a reference in the past. Is it like going back to the Clone Wars? Never mind the show and the good stuff that happens many seasons in or whatever, but it's like, what was the Clone Wars? It's this arena in a dusty coliseum where you can't see and those lightsabers are turning on in this one circle moment. Yeah, no. Now you're in it and you're doing the war that everybody's scared to piss about the Slayer 4. And it's like, yeah, no, it's an absolutely excellent game if it's not trying to kill your computer.

But I'm kind of unimpressed compared to 2016 and eternal and I'm extra unimpressed considering the game is more expensive than normal like 89.99 Canadian normal circumstances right like you know I'm gonna keep banging away at it for a little bit but I would like to I mean maybe part of the problem is that I love eternal like I think eternal is the fucking peak like people some people didn't like like I remember when I played the eternal and I got to that hell level that was like fucking Mario Brothers spinning fucking flame Balls and double jumping and it was a goddamn Mario thing and some folks were like, oh, I don't I don't care for this This is stupid as fuck to which I say. Yeah doom is a stupid as fuck video game

You might double jump so I can get my extra life so Based on what you're saying, I mean, as somebody who thoroughly enjoyed big daddy drilling my way through Bioshock 2. This might be more to your taste by default. Yes. If the shield is good and fun and it's rewarding enough,

I'm super down to just enjoy that shield all the way through. And that'll do it for me, you know? Well, by the first, by the third level, you can completely upgrade the shield to maximum, which is what I did. Oh wow, okay. And I know it's gonna be what you do.

Yeah. And you should do that. I'm a fan of meleeing, obviously, in general, but like in a first-person game where, obviously in general, but like in a first-person game where, you know, it works in sync with your, your, your gun variety and stuff to like play off the two together, where you can do things from far and then get in close and then do things from far, get in close and kind of combo and stuff. Like, yeah, that sounds, that sounds rad as hell. So, interesting. I wish the music was better and more of it. Yeah. And, and I also think that I wish the music was better and more of it yeah, and and

I also think that I wish Mick could be on all things at all times forever But that's just the reality. I also think that maybe they've gone too far with the map so, you know how doom games would like the eternal and 2016 would show you like where a secret was on the map, but it was up to you how to get there Mmm, it's been a minute but right it would it would show like a question mark. Okay. Well, how the fuck do I get there, right? They have they have gone too far so like

One of the pickups in this game is gold and you'll sometimes get gold on the ground like health potions are. You know how they're all in a line? You know, like, and when you look at the map and you're within a certain distance, you will just see like literal lines of question marks leading to secret areas. And like one of them was like turn down this corridor and walk down the line of gold and there's a big gold at the end and I punched it and it said, you got a secret. And I'm like, I didn't even jump to get in here, man. So it's not like finding the little Nendo's little doom guys around the map. Yeah, you still do. But like a lot of them are like, come on, man, this isn't a fucking secret. You gotta give me a fucking break.

Gotcha. Okay. Okay. There is one other thing and it is really, really, really funny because it exists in direct... It exists in this moment in time. So you're playing a lot of Expedition 33. Yes. And Expedition 33, it has a fairly tight, but not unreasonable parry timing.

The parry timing on ultraviolence and ultra nightmare and all the all the harder difficulties in doom the Dark Ages is like 90 frames Fear maybe Oh no. And exists in a sphere maybe 10 feet in diameter around your character. Okay, okay, okay. It's counter.

It's not parry. It is. Yeah, yeah. They say it's parry. Yeah. Okay. Man. All right.

It is wild. And through these types of discussions, we find words to iron down feelings that don't have words until this moment What you just described is so interesting because when a parry window is so generous that it extends too far ahead of The rhythm of the moment it stops feeling good If you if you hit way too early on something and then it happens like a half second after. It's like, oh, you didn't feel like it was impacting on the moment. I'm able to parry slow moving attacks after I have dodged them and they are behind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's not good.

That's not good. That's not good. Right? And the funny thing about that is like, if you just change your perspective on it, a character doing a counter, like a catch, I'm anticipating something and then it comes in, is like, oh, that's fine, right? But for it to be a like, I am deflecting

what you're doing off, it needs to be within a heartbeat feeling, you know? Like, it needs to be within a heartbeat feeling. You know? Like, it's got to be, you can't get that too loose or the feeling's gone. Especially if there's like a slow down associated or something like that. Interesting. One of the things that's interesting is that this game's option menu allows for an extremely wide variety of changes to the gameplay.

So you can turn up the game speed, you can turn up the movement speed, you can turn up enemy speed, enemy damage, turn it down. You can fuck with parry timing. You can make the parry timing more strict if you wanted. I'm playing on ultraviolence, which is the Doom's classic hard mode, which is the way I've played through every Doom game since I was literally a child. And all the difficulties is hardest parry timing is around, I don't know, 60% of the way up on the thing.

So when I'm talking about, I think the game is kind of slow and I think the parry timing is incredibly generous. I will see people either in my chat or comments or blue sky or here right now saying well just just change just dial in the knobs to make the game feel how you want it to feel and I don't know how to explain that. I don't want to have to fine tune past what the dev intended for me. I'm already picking a difficulty to try and figure it out, and I'm already QAing what settings crash my computer, and now I am being asked to season it for myself

because the default spices aren't aren't as to my liking as the prior games they put out. Well I can certainly see like increasing us something's forgiveness to be like you know an accessibility option or like the Hi-Fi rush. I have no rhythm, you know, version of things. But I get, yeah, making it stricter on yourself while I see what you mean. I'm not the kind of guy who brings my own hot sauce to the restaurant. Mm hmm. I got it. And. I don't know, it's it just doesn't it's it feels

unconfident. And it feels like the kind of thing that I would be messing with after I beat the game. Right. I so I'm also reminded of how I super praise the way of the passive fist for four or five difficulty sliders that change up the challenge according to what you want it to be. And in a lot of cases, or even in Kid Icarus,

you slide up that difficulty and then the rewards go up or whatever the case is. If there's an incentive to pushing something up or down, that becomes part of the game, then I think that's fine too. So I'm reminded of going into the options and tweaking that stuff is perhaps less fun than in Hades, where you're doing heat. And you know? And you're putting on heat challenges where you're like, oh, it's part of the game to tweak these little

things actually. Well, with a game like Doom, I feel like tweaking on these kinds of settings is like kind of self-defeating because like, okay, so I want to dial in how fast I want the game to be, right? And I want to dial in the parry timing and I want to dial into my taste So what is my option here play through an entire mission with my new settings decide? Oh, you know what I really overdid it Should I continue on with different settings that have different enemy? Layouts and different challenges and realize actually I under did it this time or should I replay the mission? I just played with the new set it

Yeah, long should I be spending to dial it in? I mean if they drop you into Sounds like a reason to like drop you into the void with one demon to just like see what the feeling is when you tweet When you tweak a setting, you know also and I'm sure someone in the check and can Clarify this because I'm at like 60% on the very thing whatever ultraviolence does I don't think that the I think that the minimum parry timing is probably still extremely generous by like my standards yeah well so I guess very little difference now are you completely breezing through expedition right or are you finding some challenge in the air I am ping ponging between breezing and challenging.

Okay. Because if you were to if you strange curve, because if you say if you sat here and said like, oh, I find no challenge in those Paris, and I'm like, well, then you're just a parry god compared to all the us mere mortals. Because like, I know, I turned expedition up to expert because I wanted to fight more to fight more. Yeah. expert because I wanted to fight more. To fight more, yeah. I would say, too, that the fuck, god damn it, I just had the point.

Brain soup. Anyway, sliders in the case with Doom or so, like, yeah, I, fuck, oh, that's what it is. So the idea of having to play through the level and everything like that, this is where now a armored core just going like, hey, you're slightly tweaking the percentages on a slight little gun on your slight little loadout change.

Jump into a little lab thing, see what that looks like. Okay, you like that feel? Okay, now go into the mission, right? A game like Front Mission, not Front Mission, armored core is saying tweak as gameplay. Test here, now sortie. You know? But yeah, if what you're describing is kind of just like an extensive list of things that

are not necessarily a part of the game design but are more just kind of like, I want to make this a bit harder. Yeah, so there's a really good example of what I'm talking about. There's someone in the chat right now who points out that there are options to fix the issues that I'm having, to which I'm saying, no, I don't want to mess with those options. I don't want to fix it. I just want to complain. I don't enjoy tweaking it with sliders.

That's actively miserable. And at what point do I feel that I'm like, like how much of how much time do I want to spend dialing it in before I can make it feel as good as the two games they put out before? Right? Like I, I never for a second thought, Oh, I wish this was faster or I wish the jump timing or I wish this was different on Eternal or 2016 or Doom 1 or 2. The only game I could ever think of in the entire Doom franchise that I ever sat around going, man, I would really like to change this, was Doom 3 because I think the flashlight shit they had there was fucking stupid. No, so look, I love custom difficulty settings and I think that's great and I think more

games need to have that and lean into that, but I understand the feeling of I don't want to make it myself, that's a reasonable way to feel. Well, because it takes time to actually dial it in. I get it. Somebody in here actually mentioned how do I feel about Wrath of the Righteous? Because Wrath of the Righteous, the Pathfinder RPGs, they have super, super in-depth sliding scales for difficulties. And the way that it works is you pick like I want normal, easy, casual or whatever, and then it shows you what sliders it's changing. But if you're like, ah, I don't want critical hits anymore, you can turn that off. And if

you had to ask me how I feel about like the sliding scale difficulty options in Wrath of the Righteous, my actual response would be, it would be really nice if Pathfinder Kingmaker and Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous had a single well-balanced difficulty setting in their entire fucking series of settings. Every single fucking difficulty option in those games is too much or too little. And you have to tweak things. You kind of have to go into the sliders to turn it up or turn it down because easy is a cakewalk and normal is brutal. And it's like, can you not just make a good difficulty? Please? So there's definitely a confidence you want the developer to go into the way they're making

a game with this stuff and release it feeling good. The difference that I think is important here is when we talked about Hi-Fi Rush when it came out and about Expedition 33 right now, it feels good. But even like the thing of like, I want more fights where you're like, okay, let me crank that up a bit. Or the rhythm and the musical element of Hi-Fi Rush kind of coming into play. Those are things where unlike Doom, they were released as their own original first entries into their franchise and doom you're comparing to the last two games we played Right. Yeah, so if do if this were the brand new thing on its own without any other comparison points directly It would probably be a little different for like yeah

Go and change the setting tweak that way or tweak this particular thing for the feeling but because you're Straight up going like, I hope this is more fun than Doom Eternal, then you're attached to that part as well. I think that makes a difference. I mean, at the end of the day, I think in terms of levels, enemies, weapons, et cetera, I think it's just slightly worse than Eternal.

But I think most of my lack of excitement is like I prefer dashing and double jumping and glory killing more than I appreciate parrying or throwing that shield. Okay. And I think I think at the end of the day... Yeah I might not. We'll see. We'll see. Sounds interesting. Also, the game's too expensive. If the game shut my PC off when I turned it on, 89.99 is too expensive. It's an id software game. It should be the most immaculate presentation possible. 120 Canadian dollars to play it a day early does not sound like Oh no no no not 120 128 99 plus tax

Excuse me excuse me my mistake to play it a day early is not reasonable Right now in the early access part I assume there's gonna be a day one patch tomorrow It is I was beta testing it last night like overtly And I got in touch with somebody who informed me that this game is coming in super hot and they threw as many bodies As they possibly could to get it out by the date it was and maybe maybe they didn't Round off enough of the technical edges that they should have Doom as a franchise 2016 and eternal have teased the big mech as a cool thing. Have you piloted the mech?

Yeah, it's cool. Okay. It's a fairly simple section. The mech doesn't have a lot going on, but I mean, it's fucking cool. Okay. There's also a dragon sequence in which you ride a dragon and it's kind of like Panzer Dragoon. Sure. Yeah. And there's not a lot going on. Mm-hmm, but it's cool. Yeah jump like ito impact, you know, let's go just punch

chain Giant step do cool thing. Yeah. All right But that's more or less for me You can catch more of my bullshit, continuing on with Doom and Expedition 33 over at twitch.tv slash Pat Stairsat. Also this weekend, Paige and I are going to be going back to Deltarune chapters one and two,

because that Deltarune is on the horizon. And we played that shit a long time ago. A long time ago. Sorry, I just had a thought on Doom that like, no, just throughout that conversation for everything, like, one of the biggest clouds above it is just the fact that like, the music thing, man, because cuz like not only is it just it sucks with the with Mick Gordon but it's also like man that was like some of my favorite shit that he put out like it was so instrumentally a part of like how cool the first games felt and you know it is it is really strange

that I had to go into the option. Extreme bummer. Ugh. It is, it is weird. Yeah. It is strange. There are a lot of little pieces here that feel like maybe they could have gone for another pass. Hmm. Anytime, anytime, like, like some games, the music is tied to the identity much stronger than others. And like, this is fucking one of them of them and you know. Anyway, anyway. All right. Yeah, go down to twitch.tv slash Pat Stairs.

Do more content. Enjoy more content. Yeah, I'm going to post the schedule up on wooly wolves on my socials and wooly versus on YouTube and Twitch. Quick break? Yeah, let's do a quick break. Fair be. All right, quick word from our sponsors. Hey, I love you sponsor. My eyeball, my's twitching.

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No, no, because it's got like, it's got like, cushions in there to absorb it. Oh, yeah. But then it's not, no, that's not your funko's in there. That's stealth. That smell is not going to be very stealth. No, that's not stealth at all. No, no, no. You need to, you need to, like, compensate, check your angle,

and then compensate for the stream line by having it hit the curve to be as silent as possible. Yeah, it's the whole thing. It requires visual calculus. All right, what's going on? As far as I'm concerned our top story today is Have you seen this fucking soul caliber 2 shit? I have I'm so glad This is our top story. You need so glad that this has come back

from high school Lunchtime okay now is this do you recognize is this a video from the past? No, no, no. Okay. Okay. But I've seen tons of many new videos also. Okay. This thing. There is a soul caliber to parody of intro video. I've retweeted it on my, you know, it's out there. It reminds me of the old internet. Oh yeah, absolutely. It reminds me, it's so funny. It's just two minutes of someone doing a Soul Calibur 2 narrator intro, doing funny jokes over the narrator talking and timed and just executed in a way where it feels like I'm watching something from

2003. Like, this is what the internet used to actually be. It was great. Absolutely. You know? I don't know what to like, it's noteworthy because I didn't know how much I missed just clicking on things like this back in the day. Hey, you kids, you kids now, you actually don't know this, the internet used to actually be funnier. It's just all concentrated, timed, it's that same era of gags that worked with the way I edited Fighterpedia together.

Absolutely, 100%. Fate places his hands on the rim of the bowl and releases his fate into the toilet of time. You know, horror, horror spreads like a raging tempest, like a thousand first suits stirring the halls of a Marriott hotel. I'm just like, yes, take me back. Two souls stand like towers as fate crashes into the tip. Just moving on. You know, oh, it's great. It's great. Your your your homework today everybody is to go watch this

video and just enjoy, you know Yeah Trapped in a small cage with six children and nothing to eat he emerged three days later victorious as the lone survivor battle one Think the one that gets me and really like sent me over the edge was just I'm not reading that one. Yeah Intro just cuts And it's the it's the press start noise also abruptly cutting them all off it's perfection It's so well done soul caliber to still the best soul caliber game. Oh god

Never be like that again. I mean, the one that went viral was not properly credited, but the stuff four and five is the creator of the video. So kudos to just reaching right back into the internet we remember and giving us a reminder of a better time, you know? Um, alright. What else is going on? Well, back to the modern day.

Hey, you like- How are other fighting games doing in the world? Oh, we can go there too. Sure. That's all right Uh, japan happened, but also like there's snk news There's a couple things so for one, um Well, how about that fucking wolf hawk field Wooly back I saw a comment. I think it was all I don't know where it was but it gave me

it gave me like a dear like spark of joy in my heart when I saw someone go are they making this game exclusive for Pat I mean Akira had to be the first. Akira was always going to be the first. Yes. But then Wolf, my boy Wolf, the first thing, top billing and he gets this sick ass WWE style intro where he's basically like undertaker biker mode now. Yeah. Like he's part of the pack and you know, he's like his, the pack broke up. Yeah. Yeah.'s part of the pack, you know? He's like, the pack broke up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the time that has passed, you see him coming out with the beard and he's been through a whole wrestling arc.

Rufalmonger has a fantastic, there's two videos he put out going over the trailer but Rufal correctly points out that this singular teaser trailer for Wolf is more story than this character has gotten in the entire history oh my god there's a voiceover with an announcer telling you his story and everything you've missed at 106 lines of dialogue. That's it? More than Wolf has ever had since 1993. Like, Jeffrey was out to catch that fish. I cannot tell you if he ever caught it.

He did, but I believe he discovered the one he caught was actually a smaller devil shark and not the one he was after And then the the correct devil shark killed his boat again I think that's how that amazing amazing and and yes, it's it's it's not just more than he's ever had but it's rad It's awesome because i'm like that's a real wrestler, right? This oh, yeah, he's got a knee brace on Oh, I didn't notice. Okay. Yeah, he's got a Stone Cold style knee brace on. Because he's old.

He's old, yeah. I'm looking at him, I'm seeing Taker. You know what I mean? I'm seeing that thing of, imagine being from the young wolf with the ponytail. And then you go through a couple of failed, you go through a failed faction, you go through all of that. And now your gimmick is just like,. This is who I am off-camera I'm just the same guy You know there's so much detail in his character like we didn't get the best look at Akira

Because he's fairly muted, but like you can even tell that wolf Like isn't doing the best job dying his hair. Oh The tips are still black. Just all Ganondorfed out with that beard. I really hope that when he does his moves you see him struggle a bit. Just a little. Right?

Just like favoring one of his legs. Kind of like. Yeah, favoring his right leg. Yeah, absolutely. Botching a little bit, you know, the damage is the damage, but just put it in the animation. Oh, that'd be so good. Very little news about Virtua Fighter other than that.

They're re-releasing off just Wolf. Makes me feel, boy, is this going to be far away. Oh, man, that is not coming out this year. They did confirm the cross-platform release of Revo. Which thank God it needs it, holy fucking hell. Holy hell does it need it. You need every player base on every console playing together to buff those numbers up.

One regular video game's worth of player population. Hey, do what you gotta do. Do what you gotta do. So that's awesome. And then we got to take a look as well. So what happened? Okay. So one before all of this weekend,

Harada came out to talk about online, he tweeted out that the balance team basically has been completely replaced. So everyone that was doing the balance for season two has been just, you know, I think rotate, like some people say, oh, they all got fired. I'm like, no, no, I don't think that's what he said, but I think he's-

No, no, they got rotated out. Rotated out, rotated out, right? So they didn't just fucking cast them to the winds or so, but it's like, we're gonna bring in the old team back for this and yeah. The people who knew what the fuck they were doing. There you go. Knot out the airlock.

And has been, yeah, that hopefully things are looking up in the future and they announced everything. They showed off some stuff and then they announced- Listen, I'm well aware that you're unhappy with the second season, but I know what's going to turn it around for you guys. This crushed tub bag of walnuts in a giant condom coming right at you. It's fuck your mom. Fakum Ram returns. And I want to say that someone really early saw the country code somewhere and looking at the data. So they were able to see, they saw Poland and they

saw Thailand. So they were able to be. They saw Poland and they saw Thailand, so they were able to be like, oh yeah, that pretty much confirms. But Facum runs back and yeah, just the like, drops from space or whatever in the giant like containment machine and then he's in there. It's presented like a jump scare. And it's so funny because the way, like, I think watching everyone's response to that has just been like,

Oh dear God, no, please know why. Because it's like, okay, there's, there's, there's different camps on it. Some people are kind of like, I just don't like the character. Because you know, he's over designed and there's too much going on. And it's really, really like, Timu Sagat. Sure. Oh, man. The the the overcompensating response to Lucky Chloe, right? In just the biggest, brawliest, like insane over buff, dude And then some folks are just saying like gameplay wise he represents one like stuff started going off the rails in t7 You know, so good. Oh excellent. So there's there's that part of it and

Then there's those who are just like man. I just want Bruce You know, and I just don't think we're ever gonna get Bruce again. No, you're not. Bruce was kind of just a martial arts guy. He was just a... He was a normal guy. He was a Kazia's bodyguard. And that was it.

That's his story. Bruce Irvin. He's a Muay Thai champion. And he's just a dude. And everyone was like, not everyone, but like a lot of people for years have been like, damn, where's Bruce? That was cool. And, you know, they're pretty much it's like, nah, like this is kind of the replacement, I guess. So yeah, not, not a not a not a not

the best reception to him returning of all the returning characters you'd expect to see here. Something that I did see that like, don't I think I might have missed this early on, but with the way he's designed, I saw some concept art of like an alt version of him. That was much more like human proportioned. And it looked awesome. And it was like, oh, that would have worked. So I'm gonna see if I can find it here. Yeah, if you Google Fakumram concept art and you look at the orange prison jumpsuit variants of him, you'll see like a Muay Thai fighter

in like a prisoner outfit and like kinda, just looks like a pretty cool tattooed up jail Muay Thai fighter. You know? It's cool. Looks like a human being. Yeah. And I definitely would have dug that alt version if that's what we got.

Oh wow. But these concepts are terrible. Oh my god. I like the human proportioned prisoner garb one. I think that one's cool. With the chains and stuff. Wow, most of these are god awful, holy shit. But I'm mainly to say that I think we have better

than the final pick on that in my opinion. I think there's stronger contenders than the final pick on that in my opinion I think I think there's a lot I think the stronger contenders than though within the final, you know, I don't know This like this is not something I think I've ever said about any character in my life, but fucking runs skin Looks like visual noise. Yeah, it's so that's the thing is tattoos Yeah, texture and the scars and the vascularity just yeah look like a bag of crushed up It's so fucking weird. It's it's really hard to make out details because of yeah, it's all scarred up It's all it's all of those things combined exactly yeah and

It creates a visual noise difficult to parse detail especially when the lighting is low but in any case that's what's going on there we got a trailer for young ladies don't play fighting games fucking cool sick been been waiting on that Her good things and this one is now tied in with Street Fighter 6 Which you see the footage directly in and stuff so like yeah, look there's like the most detailed hands-on a stick animations of them pressing buttons and like tapping drastically imagine light Eating the potato chip on the arcade stick style

animation, you know. And now you can use gameplay footage for like a lot of the action. You can just spend all your animation footage on like, she looks over at me. You can. She tap at a button. But and that being said, the animation that they did for the show does look good. But yeah, very excited to see that. I wanna see the dubs and edits too, to like, let's fucking go! Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, memes waiting to happen.

Yeah, we got those. What else was going on? So like, I think the SNK CEO is going to step down. That's that's like this morning. I missed that story. What's going on? Okay, so May 12 2025 SNK Corporation announces leadership transition advisory role for mr. Kenji Matsubara Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Apparently city of the wolves has done really really badly economically Especially in the face of its incredibly huge marketing budget

Two hours ago, okay, I see it. And as a result, the CEO is going to fall on his sword instead of the guy who was directly above him who actually made all the decisions that led to that. Yeah. So, you know, it's weird because CEOs are usually the where the buck stops But in this highly specific case, there are people directly above the SNK CEO But we're way more likely at fault for everything negative to do with this game. That's but that's not SNK anymore Now you're going to EGDC, right? So The yeah, that's the highest that it gets as far as the name SNK is concerned.

And everything above that, you switch over to those who own the shares. Yeah, okay. So I didn't see this, but I'm looking at it now. What I did see was the numbers for sales in Japan, like it came in 10th last week because it was like 6,000 in Japan or so, which is like pretty low. It's steam peak is like lower than Unist. It's like 4,000.

Like we don't have exact numbers, but like it's doing extraordinarily poorly and it had a crazy amount of money marketing. They were advertising it all over WWE. Yeah, yeah. The marketing shit is nuts and favors were certainly called in, as we can see across the board there. I'm curious to see what the non-Japanese sales numbers look like. I don't know if the reports are in on that yet. This was like a, this was basically like a Liam gig back in the day, like going looking at all the

sales numbers here. Yeah, he was just digging through that shit. It was super useful. The best you're gonna get in English is the Steam charts. Mm-hmm. Right? And they're bad. Like that's not the steam charts, right? And they're bad. Like that's not the total sales because there's consoles and all that.

It gives you a general barometer for sales in the West and it's like, hmm. Yeah, okay, I have to read all of this and see what's going on and get the full story right now? I'm being informed by chat that there are multiple tournaments totaling up millions of dollars in prize money? Oh yeah, no, they did announce a huge $1.5 million grand prize for an upcoming tournament. This game isn't going to make $1.5 million?

In in in sales? No. I after marketing, I think but I think what you call it. So I think it said 1.5 for the first place and then another one. So two total for the pooth for the prize pool, because there's more not gonna make $1 after marketing. one. So two total for the pooth for the prize pool, because there's more not going to make one dollar after marketing. Yeah, although so here's the weird part is like, it gets it's like, okay, marketing costs, but like, what is a marketing cost when it's like, hey, you work for me, you go do this, right? I don't know, man. Like, it's like-

Usually you still have to have the interim companies buy from each other. Oh, no, no. I, obviously, like some billable hours for going and promoting something is 100% there. But the amount of stuff that's like, you know, favors and friends and names called it. Like I see like a Steve Aoki track on the, the, the, you know,

the music and stuff. And you're like, right. Was that at cost? Was that, you know, calling in a favor? I assume it's calling in a favor. You know, I assume that if you go to perform, like you, you, you reach out and you go like, Hey, you want to, you know, like, help me here and then we'll whatever, you know. But anyway, the the the, I'm gonna Yeah, I'm gonna need to kind of go look and see what the details of the story are with like, who's involved in what stepping up here, because I do remember when new SNK. Anyway, there's a history of

names and people in charge of different teams and stuff that I'm curious to see what's going to happen now afterwards. I also know that there were plans for a samurai showdown RPG and talks of doing something with art of fighting that they announced. You know, I don't think it was necessarily I don't think they announced a fighting game per se, but they did it. I don't think I don't know fighting. I don't think that's gonna happen. I don't think I don't know fighting. I don't think that's gonna happen. I you know, I'm curious to see what What what they they make of all this but it's also something weird because like okay when we're normally describing any time a game comes out and like it's just

like When it's put when its performance is poor and or it doesn't sell or doesn't get get the momentum behind it, you go, damn, you're gonna see things start shifting immediately. And obviously an SNK CEO stepping down. No, everything takes forever. But an SNK CEO stepping down this quickly after release is definitely is indicative, right? But I also have the feeling of like, it doesn't feel the same because when it's kind of like

someone's personal bank account, there's a bit of that like, yeah, this can be lost. This can lose money for longer than other things can if I personally am down to just let that sit and happen. Do you know what I mean? Like, it feels like it's when it's personally tied in, it's just not the same thing as any other indie company or any other, not indie, but mid-sized studio making a bigger

release for their efforts and things not working out immediately. What do you mean exactly? I mean when a mid-sized studio releases a game, there's oftentimes an all or nothing. If this doesn't work out, it's going to shut down. Type of gambit. You think of somebody who loses it entirely out of their personal bank account would be less upset than the shareholders? No. I just mean that the idea of the company evaporating is different when someone personally can just be like, no, we're not doing that.

I'm over here just actually being like, well, we're not doing that. I'm over here just like actually being like, well, I'm glad that the solution to this problem was the CEO stepping down instead of stepping into a grave. There is certainly, okay. Yeah. That's what we're talking about sometimes over on this. Yeah. Fair enough.

I think that the ability for anything relating to whatever the Saudi Arabian investments are, to just sit there and exist regardless of numbers in a way. There's a whole lot of spiked money that can take results is all I'm trying to say. to say. Yeah. So. Yeah. It would be nice to get some good SNK news for the first time in like. When a kid with 13 come out. I mean the closest well the closest thing to that is that the game is good. It's a, they made a good fighting game. It's marred with all that.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Yeah. I would say that, it takes more, like, unfortunately, it takes more than that to be the perfect sequel to a classic. One of those things needs to be, obviously, not fucking marred with horrible forced decisions and rapists in the game, etc. This is incidental.

This is anecdotal. But I spoke to somebody who has friends that friends that watch wrestling, but don't play fighting games. And they asked them why are they shilling this Gacha game on WWE? They thought it was a Gacha game. Yeah, because there wasn't enough actual like detail there for them to not know it wasn't like a Hoyo verse thing or whatever. There for them to not know it wasn't like a hoyo verse thing or whatever That That is money in the toilet you should have used that advertising money for literally any other purpose

It's interesting to yeah, it's interesting to compare this to Something that was much more modest like samurai show, where I really enjoyed that game as well. And it came out, and it certainly did not set the world on fire sales-wise, but it also was not targeting such a high number. And it wasn't marketed through the roof. It kind of was like, hey, this is a odd other choice and it'll be available on Epic Games Store if you want. It's on fucking Netflix. It'll just be everywhere. It's on Switch and it's this kind of like off to the side,

off the beaten path fighting game that's pretty cool. But it's not the same as like making a really good game, but then like setting the the the the offset through the to the stratosphere because of how hard you're pushing, right? Yeah, I think we like I feel like every two months, we discuss how everybody in the video games industry is like, so if we put like $10 into the game, we'll all get $20 back, right? And so if we put in a million dollars, we'll get $2 million

back. So why don't we put a billion dollars into it? Look, like I will say that like Sam's show certainly did well enough for them that they continued into its third season and then added guest characters from For Honor and Biken and all these other people that showed up. Why did For Honor Man was there? Yeah, that game had a long tail and it continued getting ported elsewhere and it was around for a while. While the circuit happened and stuff, there was an initial push, but then even afterwards, I was surprised to see seasons and seasons of content come

out. So that's kind of just like letting SNK do their thing as opposed to getting your fingers in the mix and forcefully doing all that bullshit. So yeah, it's a similar approach to the product they put out, but the amount of meddling that you see is night and day. Whereas and like the core thing that they the core game itself from the people making the fighting game, they did the same good job, but you know, here you get to see the impact and the results. Flub immediately. In any case, yeah, I kind of wonder that when it when it comes to like, you know, obviously announcing seasons for these things or whatever you commit to

at least however much time of that games you know content and tour and all that stuff I kind of wonder if that comes to an immediate abrupt end as soon as they currently announced stuff yeah that would be how you would know we'll see um okay so that's drive shit Leaks Yeah, so I don't think so no Yeah, somehow the strive source code got leaked which is pretty bad and They have the feeling of someone stole a lot

That's what it sounds like because what came out of it is the early, early, early 2019 build of the game and then the version of the game that is not yet out yet, including DLC that has not yet come out. On the one hand, it's like there's the people that are able to go play what the original version was and show off stuff there. Then there's people that are looking at the current character from the show and there's like spoilers in the in game version of the character and stuff. So there's like weird like story plot fuck up shit happening. plot fuck up shit happening. And then above all of that, as soon as source code exists for a game,

that's really bad because that gives people who wanna do malicious things the ability to do so if they are so inclined. It's a problem. Yep. Oh, I forgot to mention last week, damn it. This is a weird place for this. I watched the movie Sinners. Breaking news, Wooly did watch a movie.

It's good. It's a lot of fun. Ryan Coogler did some cool shit. Check that out. I didn't know... Just all I remember is the trailer for it showing off like two Michael B. Jordans. And I was like, what's going on over here? Okay, I don't know. Sounds interesting.

I'm like, just, I saw, I saw two Michael B. Jordans and then like I'm standing in front of a fire. And I was like, okay, yeah, sure. And then upon closer inspection, it is a black musical from dusk till dawn. And it's awesome. It's a whole lot of fun. There's definitely a lot to dig into if you're looking at the references and the music and the history and what's going on and stuff. But just go watch it. It's cool. That's that's there's not much else to say. to dig into if you're looking at the references and the music and the history and what's going on and stuff,

but just go watch it, it's cool. That's, there's not much else to say. It's a great flick, fun characters, and the main character who played Sammy, I believe, is like a debut actor as well, who's got like a very distinct, awesome voice. So I love that as well. You got to make a movie with a big star for an original movie to get made, but also pushing

new talent as well is awesome, especially because when you have also the director, he did Creed and he did Black Panther. So he was also able to do a really cool, crazy deal where in 25 years the rights to the film returned to him. Good. So there's your retirement. That's very smart. That's a good thing that directors should be able to do. Director writers, people that are, you know, if you can work that out, especially now that films are, the film industry is not what it used to be, right? People are streaming, people are at home, they don't have to get up and go to a theater. So if you can make them do that, and this managed to do that in a way that's comparable to once upon a time in Hollywood, like it means more now to get ticket sales than it used to. So fucking awesome, awesome job on that.

Yeah, that's it. Go see centers. It's fun. Beyond that, do you like Berserk? I don't like Berserk as much as you're about to tell me. Do you like Berserk $150 for DLC costumes Berserk? No. Okay. Straight up no. So Diablo 4 is getting a Berserk

crossover and it costs more than the game. How much is the game? Diablo 4 is getting a Berserk crossover and it shows more than the game How much is the game? Diablo now, let me check This is 150 USD right 150 USD so the Diablo 4 is $67 Canadians let's say it's 50 bucks. Okay, well there you go. Um, yeah, so there's, there's, there's a little bit of like, like point math on this though to get to 150 admittedly. So basically they showed off a trailer with like, there's like a guts costume, you can get a mounted like horse

for like a Griffith and you know, you can, you can get the little like little demons and the schnoz. Pat is there. All these little cosmetics to put on your characters. Or you can get a skull knight armor for your necromancer and stuff. Great. Cool. Sure. Haven't seen a crossover since Dragon's Dogma 1, I think.

Then they're like, OK, so in order to get it, the class specific outfits, you have to spend the premium currency, platinum. You have to buy 2,800, which equals 25 bucks worth of platinum. And then to get the, you got Guts Armor, you've got the Struggler, you've got, you know, Griffith and you've got Skull Knight. So you put that together, you get a hundred bucks. Then you've got the War Horse, that's going to take a little bit more. But because of the way that you buy platinum,

the cheapest way to buy it all instead of in these lump sums, which will end up having you stuck with extra points, the way to have the least amount of stack points afterwards is to buy a full $150 pack of platinum for 18,500, leaving you with 2000 platinum left over once you're done. So that's how much Berserk costs in Diablo 4. Yeah, I think part of the thing here is that I don genuinely like unfortunate game because it's one of those games where you're like

Why would I play this one when I should instead actually just play the last one which is just better objectively? Well, there's that side of it. There's the Diablo side of it and then on the berserk side one hit attack on Miyazaki has been so kind as to side of it, there's the Diablo side of it. And then on the Berserk side, one Hitotaka Miyazaki has been so kind as to let you grab Guts sword, put on his outfit, get a crossbow, do his big jumping Berserker swing overhead slash fight 185 enemies inspired by the enemies the guts fights Look at a brand. That's basically just the brand You know as you go through this fantasy nightmare horror setting that is a love letter basically to the to berserk Just play just play Dark Souls. Just play Demon's Souls. Just play Elden Ring and if you want to be really fancy

pretend that Sekiro is taking place a couple countries over from the other world. Right right the the Kushan Empire is right over there. Literally you have your pick of the litter you can pick which souls game you want to just dark, to just berserk through. Uh, yeah. So, uh, rough times, but, uh, that's not the only crossover that was announced. Oh, so, uh, Reggie came in and I was like, yo, did you see Overwatch two cross street fighter? And he's like, wait, what? And he pulls it up and he starts looking and he's looking through the Street Fighter news. And I was like, no, no, no, no.

Street Fighter costumes in Overwatch. And he's like, bitch, shut the fuck up. Just closed that shit and went back to, it's like, oh, I don't give a shit. I had the same exact feeling. I had the same exact interaction. Like, oh. New costumes for a Street Fighter?

What are you, stupid? overwatch costumes in Street Fighter? Yo, let's go wait. No. It's the other way around goddamn it Yeah collaboration trailer announced and You get to see the outfits and stuff And it's like yeah, you know what? Okay, sure. Hanzo is Ryu running around.

Juno is Chun-Li. Widowmaker is Cami. I saw some folks going like, wait, that doesn't make sense. She's French and there's another British character that she, and it's like, no, but she's an assassin. Like, I get it. You know, they have the, yeah, Kiriko is Juri. Soldier 76 is Guile, Sigma Bison.

Winston Blanca, that's a no-brainer. That one's easy, yeah. Zenyatta as Dalsim, also a no-brainer. I saw from day one, I was like, look at this Dalsim energy right here, passing to the Iris, yoga. But I am disappointed at the lack of a very obvious slam dunk,

that is a Zarya Marissa is not a thing Yeah Don't do it Anyway thing What I would say though anything to keep more costumes out of Street Fighter 6 including pulling them away to To put them in other games But no the most important collaboration I would say is that including pulling them away to put them in other games.

But no, the most important collaboration, I would say, is that the Overwatch dev team just collaborated with Union, each other. Oh, good for them. Yes. That's good. Damn, these bitches Unionized. Good for them. Good for them. Good for them.

Hopefully this results in positive results for them and development for Overwatch. Yeah. After we told the story about the big super cross North American mega union, I kind of was like, you know, I hope that that thing continues to grow as a backdrop threat, you know, in the industry. But the, I, cause I like, there's a thing here where it's like anytime it's within the walls, then, you know, it is just as targetable. But overall still, yeah, over 200 developers, excuse me, nearly 200 developers across the Overwatch 2 team

at Blizzard are all part of the Overwatch Game Makers Guild CWA. So, cool. Oh, wait. Oh, no, no, no, no, hold on a second. Joining the Communication Workers of America. Oh, yeah, no, okay This is the CWA is also The same part of that mega the mega guild of them the larger North American Union we discussed in the past so great

Awesome good stuff More y'all should do that shit. It's good. It's good to do I Mean they try and then they they open up the trap door underneath them. Yeah, well. For example, speaking of opening up the trap door. Yeah. Over at Microsoft, 6840 people, aka 3% of their workforce, are being laid off. So what are you raising the prices of games to do?

Hmm. Mm-hmm. The times, you see. The economic hardships and the markets. chips and the markets. Yeah. So another round of cuts. We also told this story in 2023. So literally it's just, you know, it's the same shit. But hey, yeah, you know, 80 bucks though. That's great. Good stuff. You have your shot, you have your chaser, and you need your Triforce of the CEO's bonus

payout. And together then you can get to the realm of the gods and open up the Twilight realm. When we get that third news story, when we get that third news story about how much they got paid, we'll be able to see the future. A lot of pile of shit. Well, beyond know beyond that

The news last week was about Giant Bomb Disintegrating and it seems like the bomb has come back together because Dan Reichert bought Giant Bomb. Yeah, they just basically bought it back from fandom and went nah give it Now Giant Bomb was running Giant Bomb just back when Giant Bomb came out and Giant Bomb was run by giantbomb.com. Great. Cancel the explosion, put it back together, we own it now. That's actually a really good answer to the story. Hey, we don't like how you're running things.

Fuck you. No, fuck you. Fine, have it. Okay. Yeah, if you could find the number. Yeah, yeah, no, that's great, that's it. Anytime a studio was able to buy back the rights to a thing it owns anytime someone an artist buys back the masters You know anytime these types of things happen. We just talked about like Googler with the film, but that's sick. That's sick Like it's your ship. They're all gonna go just make a new giant bomb anyway

But it's cool. It's nice that they got to keep the wiki So you have to imagine fandom kind of saw the writing on the wall there, right? And just went like, god damn it, they've already put up the sign that says, now with black jacket hookers. Like let's just, you know. Keeping just the name with literally everyone leaving would have had no value. So they might as well sell it and get some value out of it. That's exactly it, right?

Not to mention that a double Exodus and everything, it's like, yeah, you don't. Anyway, yeah, there's just no point to the name after that. Or it getting folded back into GameSpot, I believe, was also part of the discussion. But yeah. Quick break for a second. Oh, okay.

I'm a piss. Bear with me. All right. Did I see you correctly? I guess there's a Spider Noir teaser that I guess is the internet. Yeah, Nick Cage is in it. Nick Cage. Like, I'm going be spider-noir

You know what sure Yeah, that's how I feel about it Like it feels like if you keep the lighting Appropriately dark you can do this pretty low budget You know have him jumping off the walls and the webbing and web gunning stuff doesn't have to be crazy Obviously, he can think they should force Nick Cage to do all the action stuff and not train him. And no wires. No, this needs to be low budget, black and white, just small sets. Like when he's going through the city on a rooftop or something, it should be clearly

like a projector, you know, I'm like, you know the like I Completely agree Adam West crawling up the side of a building style shit There you go and when he falls down trying to do his thing don't cut Just just keep rolling Have the have the other stunt guy just awkwardly stand there and wait for him to get back up. Perfection. I want Nick Cage to do a really bad job except when he's acting. Like I want both Nick Cage's in the movie. Does that make sense? You want him to do a really good job in the role? Like I want, I want, um, I want like, uh, Wicker Man, Nick Cage,

when it's time for Spider-Noir to fight. But I want Matchstick Man, Nick Cage, when it's time for him to act. Okay, okay. The Rock, Nick Cage? No, no, Matchstick Man. Matchstick Man, oh, that's a great fucking movie. I love that fucking movie.

Castor Troy? No. No, where he's acting good. Where he's doing a good acting. I don't have a whole lot of those in my brain, I'm sorry. The file is coming up empty. Daddy from Kick Ass. He's not listening to me. I'm sorry the file is coming up empty You know daddy from from kick-ass He's not listening to me. It's like talking to what it's like talking to a nick cage wall

I haven't seen those movies then I haven't seen the ones where he's acting in the good way I've only seen the movies where he's acting Nick cage, so I don't know what the fuck you're talking about So I don't know what the fuck you're talking about You know I heard he's good as the arms dealer the Lords of War or so Okay, like can we get like? No duck on in 60 seconds Nick cage. No shut up people you all shut up. Oh Yeah, ruthless Kalata says I want uncut gems Adam Sandler and Jack and Jill Adam Sandler Depending on the scene

Okay, let's take some letters Hey, if you want to send a letter make it good There was a fucking thread on subreddit recently that said is it time for Pat to yell at people writing emails in again. Because after I went on a little tantrum there was a genuine uptick in quality emails for like a couple of weeks. Please write a good email. Please, I beg of you. Please, send it to castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com. Most of what tends to get filtered out is basically like extensions of, how do I? If a guy killed another guy on the moon with a rock,

would that be fucked up or what? No, that's great. That's what I'm saying. It's not that. It's just, hey, what would you want platinum to do? Or hey, what would your stand be? Or hey, how cool is Devil May Cry? Quietly walking to the ocean and be free.

Somebody who last heard or saw us do or say something 10 years ago, then just thinking of something and putting it out there being like I like this thing and it's like yeah Yes, no, I know. Yeah Street Fighter man. Cool. Like, you know, yes 100% if a guy killed a guy on the moon that would be nuts. Dan be nuts. What he used to do it a rock the flag That'd be fucked up. All right. Um, here we go. Let's take one in from Fable White says, Dear the last true esteemed video game journalists.

Doing our best everybody. Expedition 33 has proven that you don't need an explosive budget to make a full experience that consumers will enjoy, which has come at the perfect time given the conversation of us already experiencing a very slow video game crash, which I agree is the case. It poses the question if MegaStudio should pivot to AA as a way of recouping costs and how they could execute this with some major IPs. For example, if you could make a Final Fantasy game that was completely stylized in Amano's concept art as originally intended, therefore you're not sacrificing the visual novelty

of the beautiful work and it doesn't require heavy graphics and processing of other expensive bits. So the question is, what quadruple or triple A game series would you love to see reworked as double A? And how could you see it work? I mean, the answer is truly all of them. If I had to, the first thing that comes to mind for some, like I can't, it's weird because I haven't touched any of the recent ones, but I feel like Assassin's Creed

could massively benefit from not being what it is and from just chilling, going back to the concept level and executing something a little more directed, a little more small and a little more pointed in the promise of what the franchise is, which is like you can go different places in history and experience cool things. You know? I would kill, I would kill for getting an old style, like classic style Resident Evil that cost like $12 and some buttons to make every 18 months. See, it's funny though, because like, like, I guess I'm thinking of triple and quadruple a kind of like slop served as opposed to like the RE games come out fairly infrequently, right?

Like they're they wait. Yeah, no Resident Evil games used to come out every year every year and now it's and they used to be great to progen, you know, and now we get one every five year maybe fucking whatever like and they're doing it. Yeah, it's a well that's it's it's you know, it's got it's become a different style of franchise, so I'm thinking of stuff that like you know hits that that the again like ask create is like a Great thing that comes to mind of like there's anything where you're like this is expensive

And there's probably too many of these things you know I think I Think the like the number one easy Would be Final Fantasy. I mean this like we're talking about expedition 33 like I Would kill for Final Fantasy games to just be? simpler and cheaper and focus more about the things I actually care about. I think they're willing to do that and I bet you at some point in the future you will see exactly what you described, which is like a Mega Man 9 style Final Fantasy game.

It just won't be numbered as the big, huge release. It'll just be like a side thing, you know Like I feel like there's a willingness to do that but not to treat it as like a proper big number You know, can I can I reverse the question a little bit? I Have a series and franchise That is single or double a that I would think would be cool if they actually tried to make a triple A one once ever in the history of decades.

It would be cool to see like a Pokemon game that looked like a video game in current year. I saw a lot of people saying Pokemon on the side there and I was like, I don't think Pokemon fits into the triple or quadruple A feeling category because like Nintendo, Nintendo triple A is. Is different. It's a different bar you're lowering. Yeah, like you're like Breath of the Wild,

you're going, wow, Nintendo really tried. You know, they pulled out all the stops on that one, but you're not. That's not compared to the rest of the industry. Obviously. Pokemon there for a second. Okay. You know, you know what? Actually, man, you know what? You know what? I think we're going to see. I think we're seeing it right now. I think I think we saw a company have ridiculous, massive success with a triple A in a game I would describe as quadruple A, now going back and going,

hey, we're gonna make double A games for a while, and it's from software. Elden Ring was in development for so fucking long and was so so so big that we're now recouping. The firm software is now going hey maybe we're gonna fucking dial it back a little bit for a while huh? Yeah yeah yeah we're in the cocooning phase and they're allowed they're allowed you know Elden Ring is an obnoxiously insane unsustainable way to go you did too much we loved it but holy shit take a break. You're fine

Absolutely scale it back shit. When did when did Elton ring? Start when did they start on that man? They started right after Sekiro, which is 2019 And well they probably started earlier actually, right? 2017, they started in 2017, and Shadows of the Urchree came out in fucking 2024. So they spent seven years on Elden Ring in some fashion. I would want to work on something different. That's a lot of Elden Ring. That's longer than the suggested career time at a studio

if you're trying to move up and work on different projects. What was it? Oh yeah, no, just when you mentioned Pokemon earlier, I was gonna say that I remember feeling that way a bunch around X and Y time, we talked about it because that was the last one I actually picked up and went in on. But the Legends series exists now,

and I don't know how much those are doing the game that we kinda hoped to get a long time ago. But they seem to be a full step up from what the original Pokemon top-down limitations were. I think we're kind of in a weird situation for this because like You and I for literally the entire time We've been talking about shit on the internet have been caught in the trap of wow that new thing looks really incredible Wow, that looks so cool while simultaneously Going but I'd actually be cool for ps2 games forever Just you know

Fix that you, put a higher resolution and make it run at a decent framerate. But yeah, I'm good with PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 games forever. Indies are a really interesting case study because they started out emulating retro games as a nostalgia thing. And now it's just a practical budget. It's practical. It just has to look unique enough and visually appealing enough that you can see you know what's happening. Shit coming out in 8 or 16 or 32 bit style sprites is like yeah, no that's an affordable way to make a game and you can still tell great stories and do great things. It's totally on, you know. There's a first person dungeon crawler that came out today that looks like a PS2 game. It just happens to run at a high frame rate

and a good resolution called Labyrinth of the Demon King. Where it's like a from software first person dungeon crawler in like feudal Japan. I never would have predicted this future, you know. I thought that. And it looks like the grime-iest fucking thing. I thought that. It's great. That we would always be homaging, you know, I thought that the grimey is fucking thing. I thought that right, that we would always be omaging, you know, earlier generations and stuff, but I never thought it would just be like, actually

like, nah, this is an affordable way to develop games. Let's just stick here, you know? Um, or you can go hard if you want to with it and, and, you know, build on, on, on what those sprites are doing. We don't need bump mapping. No one's ever needed it. And when I see an 8-bit sprite that gets magically lit in an Octopath kind of way, I go, whoa! The sprite got lit! Ray tracing is totally pointless.

You know why I like ray tracing? Like genuinely as like the new push behind graphics? Because it's an easy thing to turn off and get an extra 30 frames. I turned it on for a second in DMC 5 and then I was like okay cool we're good yeah. Bump mapping, can be used effectively in some cases. There's no reason to have anything but pre-baked lighting and blob shadows. As somebody, as somebody who actively was like working on game environment maps and, you know, like back when I was using and making textures in 3d studio

backs and stuff, like we would use it to make some shit look a little bit better you know but I know what you mean and then in the modern context yes yes yes it's not the same thing. The Devil May Cry 3 Crimson mod is coming out today in like an hour or two that is a lot of stuff I'm gonna cover it on the channel but one of the things it does it goes hey what if theLMA Cry 3 just ran at a slightly higher frame rate and had the interface redone to look like good at high resolutions? I'm like, oh yeah, okay. That's all, yeah, fine.

DMC 3 at a higher resolution and better frame rate and better UI? Okay, great. Good. One of the funniest things in Expedition 33 is how you go through the map in some areas and it's so made for you to walk from outdoors into this cave and you see the lighting change. It's like Dark Souls 1, man. And you see it and when you run backwards, it's like, no, no, no, don't do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and the bloom,

and you're blind, you're completely blind. It's like, you're not supposed to be here. Don't run backwards. It's like when you walk through the door from the depths into Blighttown, and the game's entire lighting model just goes... It's crazy, right? And one time, I was able to peek at the sky and I saw you saw the skylights

Shift out of position. That's great and the shadows slide around it was so funny. I'm like God Shit this fucking yeah, oh check ass Who gives a shit God from like you know Kingdom Come Deliverance I was playing that a bunch in the second game one of the reasons the second game works like runs really really well Considering it's showing like hundreds of fucking characters and all these super depth and force is it's all pre-baked lighting They just made a lot of pre-baked lighting for like every significant time of day So the game doesn't have to calculate lighting Done you save so much for performance to just not do that.

100%. Remember Ico? Not Ico. Shadow of the Glosses? Just had fake lighting. Just had a different light box if you were inside or outside. That's it. Cook those fucking...

Fuck you. Cook those textures, man. Cook that shit right onto the model oh yeah I approve I mean look guilty of strive is doing amazing things when every every single individual character has their own rig for all situations but we, it's crazy. But we can't set that as a bar that people are gonna strive, womp womp, towards. Anyway. Womp womp.

Here's one coming in. Matt from Ottawa says, hey guys, was the rose-colored tinted browser window, was the internet actually better 10 years ago or am I just 34? Yeah, it was better, It was better. It was objectively better in every way. Literally, go watch what I just described earlier today. Go watch the Soul Calibur 2 video that I retweeted. And that's old internet. That's what it was. In and out, funny. that's it. No AI generated. AI nonsense didn't exist. Google search was aggressively better.

No SEO generated fake content. No click here to the next page for the slideshow. Engagement was not the primary focus of all social media, which means fighting with people didn't get you the most amount of information, or attention. No guessing whether or not a bot or a human is the person behind what you're reading. No, it was objectively better.

The algorithm was based on certainly what you clicked on and what was going on, but the idea of it- It was like, did you click on it? Did you watch the whole video? As opposed to what makes you mad so that you'll click on it more. Actually aiming to upset you. Auto-scrolling based media where you sit back and watch and it feeds you whatever,

and then your attention span gets destroyed as a result. Fuck that shit. It actually was. It actually was. People who made memes really had to work at it. It took work to make your memes. Sure. And if you made a shitpost video, you just uploaded it and then that was that.

It was like you make your, you have your Dumb Soul Calibur 2 gag, you upload that shit to game trailers and fucking bang. That's doing numbers, man. Gangbusters, start a career on that shit. You know? Indeed. All right. And let's take one more over here from Kai who says, what's up TK Yozansen and 2H into

Heavenly. That's pretty good. I like that. What is the worst thing we lost in games due to them just not hitting? For me, for example, customizable combos and the roulette wheel of Godhand. I think if that game sold better, it would be the next judgment cut as a thing that action combat games must have. Hmm. If God Hand were a bigger hit, the roulette wheel? I think yes.

I've talked about it many a times and so have you. The attache case, the rotating, fitting your inventory into a fun little space and using the grid effectively is so much fun. Love that shit. Wish more games did that. It's super, super enjoyable as a secondary thing to fit shit neatly into place. I had an entire game design thought around that idea, and I'm not the only one. There's at least two or three other games that are just rotating your objects in your briefcase on a grid.

It's gotta be cheat codes. Yeah? It's gotta be cheat codes. You miss cheat codes? Absolutely, 100%. What about when there was an in-between era when it wasn't a cheat code, it was just a QA menu? Yeah, that was good too.

Yeah, okay, okay. Because it was literally just, this was not meant to be for the player. This was just like, if you hold these buttons on power and then you get a fucking dev menu, you know? Shit you're not supposed to see. So one of the things that people talk, like people complain about like game boxes and physical media and all that shit.

And it's like, by the time I switched over to digital media, all the charm of buying physical media had already evaporated. Like I remember being able to buy a game, had a nice box that was made out of like decent quality plastic or paper Cardboard and I would have time to read the manual the whole way home And it felt like a fucking premium product instead of like a fucking the absolute cheapest piece of shit

Like fake plastic piece of paper in the front end and the shittiest box ever Reading my yeah, what am I missing out reading the book little the shittiest box ever. Reading the booklet. Yeah, what am I missing out on? Reading the booklet. My digital, the shittiest box ever. Reading the color manual on the way home while you cracked open that plastic was a whole lot of fun. I mean, but now we're just sat talking about the way people that used to buy like vinyls would like buy the vinyl and look at the art and whatever. It's basically just that. 100%.

You know what, I actually, I have a controversial one. Very controversial. I think, oh man, that's controversial. I think overall, a lot of game music has gotten way more forgettable since the Super Nintendo PlayStation 1 era. Because now it's just a cinematic score. Though the increased fidelity and ability to do a cinematic score has lent a lot of

games away from having pure melody pieces. And melody is what catches in your head. Like a lot of bombastic ornamental scores kinda blends together. And so like you see how people like are crazy about the Halo theme, right? The Halo has a really strong, clear melody. I know what you mean.

I think what has happened is that the really talented composers have risen above and have created absolute legendary tracks that we'll remember forever. I think when a soundtrack hits, in the same way that you'll be humming Mega Man 2 and Chrono Trigger for the rest of your life. I will, yes, that's true. Stink Man. Thank you. I know that's three, but still. There was a particular era where you're like, I can't believe Sephiroth's theme has lyrics. That's crazy. That's crazy, right?

There was that little in-between era of like, oh my god, it sounds real. But now that we're well over that stuff It's like no there's there's incredible songs and we were just talking today about Mick Gordon, you know well, when we hear a Casey Edwards or a talking today about mid-chord and you know what we hear a Casey Edwards or a too mellow you know I think I think I've like a doom eternal I think of all they fear is you and I that riff lives in my fucking head the start of that and I also think about how we're playing through e33 right now and like oh my god I can't stop that fucking do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do don't, you will create a score that kind of just blends in, you know, like you'll hear something that's like, like a violin is a powerful instrument that can be so

memorable and strong in a scene and in a lot of cases, yeah, when you hear it just kind of being played as a tone and not really necessarily like... Yeah, the violin in my video game soundtrack has to be en-po poor or better than the violins in the background of faint and if they're not as good as that then they failed. Sure, sure. We can't get toxic everywhere, you know. But no, but that's it. Like a lot of times you'll hear, but this is what I think you're also describing too. It's an interesting discussion because there's a lot of video game music back then that was

terrible and forgettable and bad and I think those people got access to the same tools and the same ability to compose and put together much more sophisticated soundtracks. But the end result is still, I don't fucking know. What was that? Right? I'm remembering, like, you pick a random fucking, like, the Nintendo, the GameCube Naruto fighting games had some music on them that was, like, pretty completely forgettable, that had that Naruto kind of sound effect to it.

And there were one or two that I remember, and then it was like they grabbed samples from some existing famous sample tracks that you then hear in a bunch of other games, you know, used a lot. So you can tell when the, it's like the composer had a gig and they were just like hitting deadlines on it and you throw that on there. And then you have like the Okami soundtrack, which is fucking five discs. And it has a very distinct, awesome sound and style to it.

Admittedly, there's almost, there's too much music in that game, to be perfectly honest. But it stands out. Yeah, I just think that there's always going to be people that know how to use the medium. And if you're a good composer with chip tunes and 8-bit, you can be a good composer, whatever they give you. And if you don't know what you're doing,

then it's gonna be fairly forgettable no matter what. I think we can tie both of these emails together by the internet was better and music was better because 18 years ago shoes by Kelly aka Liam Kyle Sullivan came out. That fucking song rules. You've seen it. You've seen it. You've seen shoes. Okay, just based on photo, I don't know what the fuck is going on here. So, no, I don't know what this is. Shame.

I was hoping this was like going to be a deep cut off of like Anarchy Reigns or something Deep cut off of 2003, okay Alrighty Let's see tune in next week when we will once again continue to Boomer out and and talk about how the old times used to be better Yeah, it did where they were better. There was so much better. You guys don't even know No, they do know and they mostly agree. In fact, there's a whole sir. That's the fun part There's a whole there's a whole bit about

Like with hip-hop in particular how there's like a whole bunch of listeners that besides those who came in just for Drake were actively like Mainly listening to older generations of rap and were not really I was just new shit Just yeah the whole fucking like that's great There were like my walls of quality that like people were like, oh no, no, no I don't fuck with the shit that came out while I was growing up. No, no, no that wasn't there wasn't much going on There understand there's always standouts and there's always people like you for there's always you always have a Friend who's out there listening on SoundCloud that's out there grabbing stuff and can recommend out there So but there's a whole bunch of people that were just like now fuck this entire thing like not really funny

Alrighty have a good week everybody Thanks for watching!