Hey, it's Tuesday, March tenth, twenty fifteen. You're listening to the
Giant Bomb Cast. Guys, we did it. We did it. We
made it back to March. We didn't freeze to death in Boston. Oh
yeah, that too, I almost did. We're all still alive. I
lost I lost my sweatshirt. I actially left it behind after our panel.
Really, yeah, you braved the wilds of Boston. We walked a mile
after dinner that night, after we had dinner on Saturday night. I think
it was. Yes, I understand why everyone on Twitter and Boston has been
complaining so much, because the snow situation and the traffic and the roads and
the way it's all set up like it was a pain in the ass to
get anywhere. That's forty five minutes to take a two mile of the city
is under siege by snow. Yeah, it's it's crazy. It's really messed
up. Yeah. Also, oh my god, some of that snow is
disgusting. Yeah. Yeah, wow, that's what happens when it doesn't melt.
It han't every year in many aposts, but it doesn't melt, and
road crap and slushy and shitty, and someone sure, you expect a lot
of that, but like we were standing outside of a bar where smokers might
congregate. Oh yeah, yeah, I was just counting the hundreds of cigarette
butts stuck in the snowball there. I heard they had to like bulldoze the
snow just a certain area, Yes, because there's just so much of it.
They just couldn't get rid of it. Yeah. Eventually ended up pushing
it into the sea. Yeah. Yeah, they said, I got to
like five stories tall, and then they're like, fucking we can't stack it
any higher than this. I really thought about that, like, where are
we gonna put all this snow? I wish I could have seen that five
story tall pile of snow flame throwers you want to solve with the snow problem.
Supposedly somebody did that really and got arrested. That's what I was told.
That a crime. That was Yeah, me, that sounds like a
civic duty to me, exactly WT forty and a lighter. Uh huh.
I thought the pushing it into the bay the Harvard whatever solution sounded pretty good,
but then I was reminded that there's a lot of chemicals and stuff that
snow is filthy and disgusting with road crap and also whatever they're putting down to
try to keep the snow from Yea, all that weird salt stuff stuff like
that that's already salt water. Salt has chemicals in it. Yeah, sodium.
Everything is you have chemicals in you? Yeah? Probably rugg Oh no,
just like processed foods and stuff. Oh yeah, I wore two coats,
did you. Yeah it was cold. Yeah, I was trying to
wear it. I was trying to wear a track jacket and then that sweatshirt
over it. And then once I lost the sweatshirt, the hood the hooded
sweatshirt. It was a problem. I would think you'd go hoodie, and
then the hoodie was hoodie was very thick. Okay, track jacket was very
not not you know. I mean the video game industry is long legacy of
coats over hoodies, I know. But the alard is not necessarily a warm
configuration because it requires you have a pretty thin hoodie to wear the blazer over
its fair blazers themselves, they're not warm. Sure, he was doing it
more for fashion up there in the Pacific Northwest. I picked the wrong city
in time of year to get rid of all of my hair because the first
time I went outside, it is just like, oh wow, that was
keeping my head warm. It turns out, yeah, I was. I
was wondering how that was going to go. It was just got real cold.
Okay, Yeah the bold move. Yeah, walking back from the restaurant
to the hotel, which was about a mile walk without proper clothing for it
was maybe not the smartest move. Yeah, I'd say it was about what
like twenty at that point. Yeah, that was That was the coldest day
of our trip there. Normally it was like thirty you know, and basically
anything about thirty two, Like I could stand outside like nobody's business long as
I wasn't windy, who cares, You're not gonna freeze. But that one
day when we woke up, it was like nine degrees and I was like,
well this, Like Vinnie and I got up early to head over to
shoot some stuff with Max from Cards Against Humanity, and like standing outside,
I was like, yeah, I was like nine degrees. Fuck this,
what the fuck this is? It was like it was like I don't want
to have my hands out using my phone kind of weather exactly. The fingers
starting and I just you know, like I'm from here. I don't know
gloves, I don't know fucking warm hat any of that ship. So I
had some thermals that I wore most of the time, and that worked okay,
But jeez. I was reading a book about the Lewis and Clark expedition
called Undaunted Courage by Stephen Nambrose, one of my favorite books. One of
the chapters starts which with the phrase, uh, it was so cold a
man's penis would freeze if he wasn't quick about it. Quick about what urinating?
Oh you know, okay, got it in any number of things.
Yeah. Really, it's a great book. That's that sounds like an unpleasant
condition to be it. Yep, just like Boston was over the weekend,
but now we're back, we are back Packs was a fairly pleasant. Pacax
was fun. Yeah, pa was packs. Yeah, we did some stuff
that's fun. Maybe, you know, Okay, I didn't want to be
mean, but you know a lot of people are going around saying, like
the show floor is maybe a little lackluster, which was not a knock against
any particular exhibitor, Like it just felt maybe a little sparse. Yeah,
then and then like it as the weekend went on, like I was reminded
that the g DC packs overlap was not just something that we kept joking about
being a pain in the ass exactly. Yeah. Like I started realizing like,
oh, you know, like companies that you expect to always be at
packs like say, cappy, we're not there this time. And it started
sinking in like yeah, like people actually did. Like it sounded like from
what I was hearing, in some cases, people actually even paid for the
booth space. Yeah. I heard that there were Yeah that there was make
it was booth space that was assigned and paid for and or I assume paid
for and all that stuff that then just they know, showed the show,
whether you know, the weather, whether the weather was keeping them away or
GDC or something like. I don't know, but yeah, yeah, I
mean it was like Overwatch seemed like the biggest like big game there or a
big publisher game there. I guess I played that. Yeah, I made
interesting You cadn't play that. Yeah, it's a first person shooter. Yeah.
I spent some time looking at it and said, wow, this looks
like a TF. This looks like two. You've got a variety of skills
that seemed to shoot in various fashions when I you know, they put out
that footage before, and I think that kind of like revealed it a little
bit too, Like, oh, this is gonna be a class based shooter.
Yeah, clearly. But then when you see like, oh, the
medic has a heel beam and then here's someone banging on a fucking turret,
you're like, yeah, they're just making like t F two with more classes.
Yes, it is very t F two esk. But yeah, like
you when you it is almost a little overwhelming because there's like fifteen characters to
pick from in the build that they had, and one would assume that like,
well, I guess I don't know. Actually I'm sitting here thinking like,
oh, they'll eventually have tons of like a Doda like size roster or
something like that. I would assume. Yeah, but I guess maybe that's
not a safe assumption. Oh yeah, especially depending on how they monetize it.
Yeah, if it's free to play and they're selling characters, then sure.
Anyway that here's the Storm isn't out yet, right, it's in some
kind of clothes beta at the moment. All right, So they got two
games in the hopper, Yeah, I think if you count the StarCraft third
expand sure that will come out someday. Here's the storm. I haven't really
followed that, just not being in the moobas, But are they positioning this
as being like a competitor to League and Doda like on that level? Is
that what they're shooting? Not really, it's a lot more kind I use
the word casual. It's friendlier. Does that plays? It seems like it's
designed to be a little friendlier. If I was maybe curious about actually playing
a Mooba correctly, this might be one to get. I mean, you're
gonna get the same basic flow of a match, you know, like they're
you know, they're still towers and lanes. But do you still buy stuff?
No, there are no items to all right, okay, that is
a huge pot. There's no big store with confusing stuff. There are no
items to buy all the characters. You just that's meaning like mid match,
not like yea yeah, like like you don't have to go like I need
my boots like that, like all that shit. None of that just overwhelming
to me. Also, the team all shares a common experience pool, so
everybody just levels together. Okay, Yeah, it's a lot friendlier, easier
to survive and not get caught out and just murdered and stuff. So you
probably have a good time with it. I might try that give it a
shot. I'd be you know, i'd be curious to hear what you said
about it, because I'd want to give it a genuine shot because the people
love that stuff so much, but it just seems so impenetrable. You have
an iPad, I do Fates Forever, Like I've watched you play that on
a upf Yeah. Yeah, that's a that's a very accessible moba that I
quite like. And there's that what's that other one Vain Glory? Yeah,
I think so. It was on stage at that one Apple thing. That's
right. Yeah, that's the only like the statement anyone has ever said about
that game is like it was on the stage of that thing. I haven't
heard anyone say yes, it's good or I haven't either you know or not.
So anyway, we're back. How was everybody strip back? This is
good. We're all kind of piling into the office. Yeah, my my
flap was knocked today outstanding. My flight out was really good. I get
up at three in the morning to go to my flight delayed, and so
I had to sit around the airport for a while. It sucks even more.
That was that was rough. I was tired. The worst thing about
delayed flights is you can never count on them being delayed. You still have
to show up when it might leave because they might fix it. It's good
time. What constitute is a good flight for you? There was no one
next to me. There was quite a bit of leg I got into one
of the like I was on Jet Blue. I decided to pay them their
blood money for a better seat, their leg money. Yeah, their their
leg money, and so there was power at the seat. They have free
Wi Fi right now because we're beta testing it, no kidding, And actually
it's weird. They have two levels of service, like the beta one is
free right now, and then there's nine dollars an hour that they say,
like if you want to transfer large files or play a game or something.
Who so much for net neutrality? And yeah, well yeah right, and
that flies just wondering what it's a six hour flight? Okay, So it
made me wonder, like, you know, are they actually can they actually
guarantee the ping time is required to play a game? Oh man, I'd
love to know how fast that thing actually is. I thought I've ever heard
of that. I thought about paying for the upgraded service and I'm just trying
something. But I only laptop my Mac. I don't have a lot of
games on there to test it with. So whatever, that's pretty high,
isn't it. Like isn't most Wi Fi like nine or ten for the flight?
Well, so they're like they're standard grade, like actually just fine compared
to every other Wi Fi. Was totally free, no, I mean,
but just on in general flights like most most most of the time, they
don't charge per hour, right right exactly. It's like, you know,
hey, it's twelve dollars for the flight, right or you know, eighteen
dollars for the full day in case you got multiple flights or what do you
st where it's like ninety minutes or whatever it's like, or by sixty minutes
get thirty free. But I always just to the full flight thing. Yeah
that seems oh okay, Yeah, I guess I've never actually looked at that
that much, but yeah, I don't know, so, I you know,
I ended up I was able to actually get some stuff done on the
flight, which was nice. On the flight out flight back was like the
people behind me. I was in the second to last row. The people
in the last row. They got there and then they pulled out a bunch
of wet wipes to wipe down the fucking seats and they were like, don't
sit down. Yeah. They had a kid with him. You know,
it was very precocious, not like crying young, but like you know,
like he was like, okay, I won't sit down, you know,
like that kind of like like doesn't have the voice control stuff yet, fasting
around, yes, sir. And then that kid sat right behind me and
kick the chair the whole time. Whatever. I mean, you know that's
fine. That's should bring a pencil with you so you can turn around and
then snap it with your thumb. Yeah, yeah that actually, Oh I
hadn't thought about that. That's a good way to get somebody's attention. But
as they were wiping down the seats, like I just like I just I
was disgusted. I'm disgusted by parents that act that way that whole like,
we're gonna keep these this kid away from as many germs as possible, and
then it's gonna somehow mutate into some super disease later on. Sure, or
something like that, like it is patient zero, Yeah exactly, like I
just I believe in kids rolling around in the dirt, Yeah that's fair and
being all fucking fucked up and bleeding all the time. Exactly. Ever you
ever read vote for me? These kids will have skinned up elbows in no
time. Get under goddamn bike, bike. I don't let your kid roam
around in where's it Maryland? Right? Where? Where's that going down?
Right now? What I'm talking about? No, there's like parents that that
are now being hit with CPS allegations of neglect because they let their kids like
walk a mile away from the house or something and whatever. Get I forget
the details. Yeah, I don't know. Whatever. The world's a lot
crazier than it was when I was a kid back in our day. But
sure, seeing kids on airplanes and airports is really good at making you not
want to ever have kids. There were a ton of kids at the airport
when I showed up to fly back. I don't know, like just like
spring break or it's not because they were they were like they seem to be
high school aged at best. Okay, I'm talking about like, you know,
just old enough to be running around and be a huge painting ass like
you know, people with like multiple kids like one in the Star two running
around and it's like kids just don't seem to under stand, like, hey,
just walk with me and don't run off randomly and run into people.
You know, we have to go get on a plane. Why don't you
understand this? And you run shit together? Children are not really capable of.
I don't know why you can't just calmly explain to a kid like,
hey, quit being an asshole for a second. You know, when we
get home, you can do it ever you want. Human brain is a
funny thing though. Way, yeah, I don't want to have kids.
Yeah, well, well now we're here. We are airplanes? Was the
deal? Food is? Like? What is that? Let me tell you
about the shopping cart I got the other day, Brad. We had the
guy on our flight right next to us that was playing a iPad game with
the sound blaring, but he had noise canceling headphones on. Oh cool,
But it was like a super hexicon type thing to where like this like super
loud techno music would go and he would die and it would restart over and
over again, and everyone around him hated him. But nobody he was.
He was across the aisle from us, right, Yeah, so, I
mean I kept hearing it coming from somewhere else, like is the PA on
on this plane? Like what's going on? Oh so he thought he thought
he was plugged in, but he wasn't. Is that what was? Yeah,
he could not tell that the He was probably the only one who couldn't
hear the sound and everyone else was getting so fucking annoying. Why I don't
know why the person next to him didn't just sit their fault. Yeah yeah,
yeah, anyway, Yeah, we did our panel. Yeah, yeah,
panel happen. Speaking of audio boy, Yeah, yes, more sound
checks next time we we That's probably partially on us because they'd spent so much
time loading in the thing. Yeah, loading in that thing that we didn't
necessarily get up on the microphones and talk ahead of time. But I don't.
Yeah, you're right, we should should have checked, Like you know.
It wasn't until after the fact that we kind of compared notes and realized
like, oh, none of us could fucking shit up there. Yeah.
I thought you guys couldn't even hear I couldn't hear each other. Yeah,
all I could hear was my own voice bouncing off the back of the room.
I could hear I could hear you and Vinny because you're right next to
me, so the sound's actually coming out of your mouth. We're making it
to my ears. Yeah, but Dan and Alex on the other end of
the table like just checkers, especially like Q and A stuff like yeah hear.
Yeah. I apologize if there was anything halting about the panel, but
yeah, pretty hard. Hard to have a conversation and you can't understand half
the people on there. Yeah, yeah, but you know whatever, we
had a good time. It was good. People seem to enjoy it,
so yes, that's cool. Dan learned some valuable lessons. Indeed, I
did. I hope. I got so many people coming up to me afterwards
saying like, did you really not know they're gonna do that? I was
like no, if you watch it again, when they come up to do
their thing, you can oddibly hear me say to Alex like, oh good,
I can go pee, and then like Alex like oh great, thanks
for telling me that, And then Pope says like Dan, you can stay
Like I was totally ready to run off and go pee, and it's like,
oh, I gotta do this whole game show thing I had no idea
about. Yeah, that was fun though. That's uh, that's at least
the second time they have sprung a bit on us without our knowledge. Yeah,
that's by design. Well, I know, I mean a lot of
time and everything. Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm I'm always asked like,
you know, hey, I mean, we could walk you through this
if you want. I'm like, no, just surprised me. Yeah,
I asked Drake to tell me, yeah, you got twenty minutes before because
I'm like, I need to know where I need to be. And yeah.
Yeah, those guys always come up with some really fun ideas that would
not work to build an entire panel around exactly. So we're glad to provide
them a venue exactly. Yeah. Good stuff. Uh, well, now
we're back. Yeah, what the hell's going on? I mean, I
don't know there's stuff out this week now, you know, we're kind of
back and and I'm I got you know, I got back to an email
about E three lodging. Damn it. Oh wow, so fuck that's what's
up. Huh. Yeah, I was doing the mental inventory this morning.
E three is like, good, what three months away or something like that.
That's far enough. Is that that's the next convention, right, three
months, that's a good window the next main thing. Yeah, I primes
in August, Yes, okay, I think so all right, TGS is
in August, games comes and our games comes in August, t GS September,
sure, yeeber like EVOS in July. So I don't know the way,
we haven't. I don't know what we'll go to what we want,
but we have a we have a big live live show between now and E
three, which is prison of our own making. That's right. Fill that
prison up, YEPU other inmates in there, that's right, block them all
in lock down. Why don't we really wrap up whatever there is to wrap
up? Coming out of packs? Getting back town? What's been going on?
Yeah? Yeah, let's just kind of like, you know, because
our panel was day one of packs, we'd only had the first day to
make the rounds. Yeah, I was kind of running around and you know,
there was the stuff on Sunday, the wrestling stuff that you know,
we kind of were getting ready for. And you know, I don't play
a ton of games of packs. I always kind of walk around packs and
think, like, okay, you know, these are the things that I
want to make sure we look at when we get back. Yeah, it's
a good place to like recon stuff where you want to follow up with the
developer. Yeah something. It also is the place I feel the least comfortable
cutting in line. Yeah. But the one thing that I actually regret really
not uh like getting time to see is down well played. Yes, I
watched that. That looks awesome. I've seen seen video of a while ago.
Like I think it was originally supposed to be for phones and now it's
coming. I believe it is coming to PC. I played it on a
phone, okay, a PC there, but the monitor was turned in ninety
degrees. Yeah. I think sometimes it could be deceptive when they're in portrait
mode and look taller than they are. But it looked like a super wide
screen monitor. Huh. Yeah, Like I don't know if it was one
of those twenty one by nine ones or whatever, but it looked but it
looked like it was super taller monitor you see a lot at one time.
Yeah. Anyway, like, yeah, there's there's footage of that out there.
There has been for a while, and if you haven't seen it,
like it's it's they're kind of going for like a game Boy. Look,
I guess with the color it's I guess it's try color black, white,
and red. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really cool.
You your your character is basically just falling down a well, like there are
there are platforms that you land on and then you can jump past, uh
and you can shoot out of your feet, so you really only have two
controls. It's left and right and shoot. And they're also like bricks that
are in the way they have to shoot to get by, and their enemies
flying around and you shoot them in gems pop out of them, and there
are uh like Spelunky style shops as you fall down the well. It's not
an endless thing. I thought it was for a while, but I got
to the bottom of one and then there was a next level. So yeah,
you upgrade your health and your There's a bunch of other little tiny systems
I didn't really good handle on, but it's super fun. Okay. I
knew I kind of grasped the action component of it. I didn't realize there
was all the stuff with the shops and stuff. Yeah, it's kind of
a Japanese indie game. Yep. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, kind of
had my eye on it for a little while. I guess it sounds like
Devolver maybe picking up coming out of GDC that was getting a lot of buzz.
Yeah, I would I would love for Japan to re emerge as this
like haven of innovation. Yeah, that's that's what the that Bits Summit thing
that Milky put together, uh that they do, I guess in Osaka it's
like a it's an indie meet up in Japan and they get a bunch of
you know, single developers together because there's like a ton of that stuff that's
been happening all along. It just doesn't make it over to the US very
often. Lava Lana and stuff like that. It's kind of you know that
like that made it over the story story on Spikes, but there's not much
Yeah, so that stuff can can kind of fall through the cracks over there.
And you know, now with their just being this this big boom around
those games of that size, uh, you know, it's it's like making
sure that those developers are getting connected with the right people to help them bring
their games to more platforms and more territories and stuff like that. So yeah,
I hope that continues to happen. Yeah. Yeah, so was that
mainly being positioned as a as a mobile games, a phone game. I
assume they they had phones there, uh that you played them on Okay,
I think it would be great. It's a great I played it on the
phone. It was. It was fun. Also, I played a board
game. They had a indie board game section separate from like the other half
of the XPOHA, which is just board games, but they had right next
to the indie mini booth, the indie board game section. I played a
game called Mech Deck, A great game. It's a great name. Yeah,
built a deck for your mix. So it's not like a collectible card
game, which I assumed it was. But you go there and it looks
really intimidating at first because there's like uh mech figurines and hexes and cards and
like a little wooden cubes that you assigned to your cards and whatever. But
it's not actually that complicated. It's like a very streamlined, uh like turn
based mech game. Uh. It starts with a draft where you all pick
parts for your mech uh in the in the form of cards, but each
card, which is different, has an assigned physical plastic piece, so Once
you get all your cards, you assemble your mech and then build the full
mech. Yes, yeah, that's cool. And they're you know, like
three inches high. And if you if you take a hit, if like
you lose in a dice roll, you assign which part gets uh damaged on
your mech, and if that part gets hit twice, you have to take
it off your Wow, that's awesome, that's cool. And so you've got
like, uh, your your engine card has a certain amount of like energy
and that's the form of like three physical green cubes that you then divert to
your legs to move yourself. And then you've got uh, your weapon cubes
that you then divert to other systems to power those per move. Sounds like
a lot of stuff to keep it track of, it's not. You don't
have a screen there. Well, it's all on the cards and it's all
like visually. You just move them, you know, assign if you want
to assign two to your missiles, you just put the two little cubes on
your card and it's it's really easy to follow and and really cool. D
Yeah, those are the two games I played at packs. Oh I'm trying
to think what else I saw Dan you see anything else around the show?
Oh, you know the stuff I talked about on the panel Action Verge.
I'm just kind of head over heels with from what I've played. It's it's
pretty fantastic. It's it's just such an awesome love letter too. I'd say
Super Metroid. It feels like I see well to Super Metroid specifically. Uh
yeah, I mean why I think that the items aren't necessarily directly analogous,
like you know, the concepts and definitely the look of it right and that
sort of stuff, Like they're definitely trying to he he is definitely trying to
evoke Metroid, but at the same time, but at the same time,
like the weapons don't line up, you know, the weapons are different,
like and then the way you switch between them, you know, using the
right stick and stuff like that, it's different. Like there are little differences
and stuff. But yeah, the presentation is clearly like this is like a
new Metroid based I don't I don't know how deep we should get into it
this week since it's Oh yeah, I wanted, but I was going to
say, like some of the stuff I've seen in there seems like it's kind
of intentionally subverting what you expect sure out of a game like that. Yeah,
uh yeah, we'll talk more about that once I'm done in the whole
game. Jeff, you're playing it too, and I think we're both yep
like that a lot. Yeah that does look super cool. Yeah. Yeah.
The Occulus stuff I talked about on the panel, which I just continue
to be blown away by that thing every time I do anything with it.
I didn't even play anything. It was just a hey, wow, look
at this dinosaur walk over you. Hey, let's understanding top of building and
it blows me away. Where did you? Was that in the Oculus booth?
Yeah? So they had in the middle they had the like Samsung Gear
ones, which is supposed to be for phones, and that actually had like
a little control or people were playing games. But they just took me into
a side room and they had this platform that you stand on and they hook
it into your head, and uh, I had my glasses on and they
it works pretty well like over the glasses and uh yeah, man, It's
just I didn't play anything, didn't hold the controller. But still I'm just
maybe I'm just a huge sucker for that stuff. But I absolutely love it.
I want to say they have what was that crystal cove I think is
the headset they had there, which is newer than the K two that they're
selling right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had to look look
great, looked incredible, Like it was just basically this rapid fire like,
oh, hey, what if you were on an alien planet? Hey what
if you were in a dinosaur museum? Did you? Yeah? God,
it was so cool. Yeah, the one like stuff. Can you still
see the pixels a little bit? Yeah? And the person that put the
thing on me said that the Samsung Gear VR had better resolution. Oh really
yeah yeah, but still, man, even with it, it has a
little bit of that screen door effect. But like the Unreal four demo was
so cool, and it's the frame rate that all seemed perfectly fine. Yeah.
Yeah, the Unreal fourth thing was really cool, just like super slow
mo, you know, gratuitous you know, cars flipping over you and a
can flying by your face, and it was just fun to turn and look
at all this crap and debris and I don't know, I just I think
it's the coolest guy, damn thing in the world. Like, I think
I'm more excited for Oculus than God. I can't think of any other piece
of technology that's come out of video games, like almost ever that I've been
just excited for it. I think it's great. Yeah, I just I
just hope they make Yeah. Well yeah, I tell the sensor now.
I just hope they make good on it with you know, games that you
can't do any other way, or things you can't do any other way.
Well, you know, like falling up on last week's discussion with the valve
stuff getting announced, right, you know that thing is coming out this year,
so like we're gonna we're going to have to see more than tech demos,
very surely because if they launch with no I think the detect emos than
the things d away. So wait, wait, dealway is coming to the
Oculus. Yes, o, God, it's so wet, it's just dripping.
Everything has just been sprayed down. I just think it really does,
Like you know, I mentioned on the panel, like, you know,
first person shooters obviously have been done for a really long time, but I
think Oculus adds so much to it. So like in the hours that I
played Half Live two on like the first version of the dev kit thing,
I brought home and played a ton of Half Life two, which yeah,
I half Live two is an awesome game in its own right, But like
there's that part near the beginning where the big helicopters are there when you're in
the city and you have to kind of like shim me along the second story
balcony to get inside a window or whatever. And when you're playing that normally,
it's like, okay, whatever, I gotta shim me across this thing.
And then I get in a window with the oculus. Like you get
up there and like you're looking up and you see the helicopter shooting down night
you and you look down and you feel like, you know, it's scary,
like, oh, I don't want to fall. I'm high up,
Like your body just kind of has that physical response, and I think that
adds so much to the experience. I mean, here I am playing a
ten year old game, and it was blowing me away more than any first
first shooter. It's come out and ears sure, So yeah, I don't
know, I think it really substantially adds to the first first shooter experience.
So I've got some tentative plans. We'll see how these things go with scheduling
and stuff, but some plans to convene a VR council who after last week,
I know some people that you know, managed to get in and try
everything that's been announced since GDC, and I want to hear about it.
Yeah, I want to hear some first hand accounts because that's suck about.
It's about to get real complicated, right, you know. Competing standards,
competing headsets, Yeah, competing like like features. Yeah, yeah, competing
standards to a certain extent, but like the concepts are similar that you'd imagine
like a lot of the work would apply from one to the other. Yeah,
you you hope that. I mean, god, the nightmare scenario is
that like games are coming out that only worked with one or two of the
headsets, right, Yeah, Like it reminds me of like like when graphics
cards first started coming out in the nineties, you know, and it's like
you had a version of Quake for this, and then for a version of
Quake for that. Yeah, God forbid we run into that again. But
it doesn't seem like it's going that way. My Reva t NT, yes,
the v Quake for the verite. Yeah, like anyone have one of
those, right, fucking tile based rendering whatever? Uh, let's see so
I did for packs wrap up. There was one game that I played more
than anything else, Oh boy, specifically the Airplane. I don't think the
world is ready yet. I think we need Jason for that. I would
love to hear Dan's opinion. I really think we need Jason here well as
the learned sage, well, he's not, he's not. It's a bad
game. I've got, You've got thirty, you don't. I got thirties.
Okay. I wrote down some notes on the Plane as I was playing
it, things that made me hate it. Uh, you can't pause the
game. That sucks and these things are on like timed fifty minute things.
But you can totally pause the game. How you can bring up that mini
or whatever. But okay, let me erase that note. Okay, so
how about closing your three DS? Should I guess I would word? Okay?
Okay, Well knock that one off to start with other things. It's
great game ever made, as it turns out. Yeah, so yeah,
you kill things and you just gotta stand over him, and you gotta hit
a a million times and you just get a bunch of bullshit and it gets
a lot faster as you duck First, Why would you okay this type of
bullshit too? Like why do you have to sheath your weapon before you hit?
Like why can't I just hit a? And this game be user friendly?
And I get this fucking jaggy hide or something that I don't know what
it does because the game doesn't explain anything. It doesn't explain like catching bugs
and potions and honey and stuff like you get the one thing that's like,
oh, put honey with this and you'll get like a megapotion or whatever,
but the rest is all these fucking bugs and stuff that it doesn't tell you
anything. And I wanted to catch bugs and I bought a bugnet or whatever,
and I put it in my inventory. It's got a red axe over
it. No idea why I can't use it put it on my inventory,
had the whole thing. Can't use it for some damn reason. My may
complaint with it is if this game came out over ten years ago on the
PS two, people would say it sucked because the controls are fucking got awful.
And I always kind of did come out on the PS two and people
did say it sucked. The controls were got awful, and they're still got
awful and I want to go now. They're a deliberate choice to make you.
That's bulls force you into making choices. There's small games like, Okay,
the reason I wanted to give this another chance is because people compared it
to Dark Souls and it's like, don't play the second action game. Play
this like a Dark Souls game. And I was like, okay, I
tried Dark Souls out and I actually really liked it a lot. I like
the kind of slow, deliberate combat and stuff like that, and it's like,
Okay, I'll approach this in a different way and maybe I'll like it
this time. And no, it's not that it's slow and deliberate, it's
that it's not responsive at all. I fucking controls are, dude, I
don't know. I find it to be exactly the same thing as Dark Souls.
It's a Dark Souls pretty much. Choose your movements and your attacks carefully,
like you know, there's no good way to lock on he'll at the
time that it's judicious to do so well. And then there's bullshit too,
where like healing, so yeah, you can do the thing where you bring
out the spit and you gotta roast the meat or whatever until on the right
thing. No, that's for stamina, okay, well whatever, like I
needed. I got meat and I wanted to cook it, and then I
ran away and then I don't have my spit anymore or whatever. The thing
was to roast uff, and there's just nowhere. Like I went through the
tutorials, I talked to fucking everyone in the town, and the game does
not. It's the same reason I said I didn't like Binding of Isaac.
I don't like this fucking thing where it's like, hey, here's a bunch
of bullshit. Better find a FAQ or talk to someone that knows what's going
on. Like, No, the game should fucking explain what you're doing,
and it shouldn't take fifteen hours to get interesting. It is highly impenetrable.
I'll give you that. Why Why is that fun? Why do people like
intentionally game? It's full of obscure bullshit? Why? I have some misgivings
about games like that on fundamental grounds, but somehow find myself drawn to them
anyway, So I can't just start get the appeal. Why would you prefer
that other than like, hey, here's how you play this video game.
This is why we I think it's not ready to have this conversation this week.
It all comes together when you start mastering those systems and string not in
the sense of like I'm an expert on this, but in the sense of
like I don't have to think about it anymore, Like you don't have to
think about the movement or the weapon or the monster. Don't want to have
to get used to like just shitty controls. I don't feel that's a concession
I should have to make. I should expect the game to control well.
Well, the reason it doesn't have lock on is because you might want to
target different parts, right, the head and knox mad like their tails.
Yeah, I mean I'm just now finding that apparently where you had hit the
monster effects what kind of loot you get out of it? Yeah, I've
heard that, like to get the time. I didn't know that. Yeah.
Interesting, But it just it doesn't even explain things as simple ass Like
if it explained everything in a tutorial, that would be the most boring game.
It already is boring because it explains a ton of stuff about how to
buy armor for my fucking cats or whatever. Oh, but it would take
twenty hours to get to the game, if you why doesn't it take that
time to explain important stuff, like hey, this question is because he'll be
reading the entire time. No, no, no, I'm saying it'd be
as simple as this, So like the quest will be like kill eight Kelby
and then I'll, you know, just show me a little picture what the
fuck a Kelby is instead of putting me out in this world, and I
like, I'll run around and I us all just hit stuff until I hope
it was a Kelby and I have to go back into questinfo and see if
that was it. Instead, it's spending all this time with people in the
town explaining to me how to fucking send my cats out on missions, like
show me what I'm supposed to be doing in the game. If you're going
to be doing tutorial stuff, don't do this bullshit side stuff that I don't
even really need to know. I think it's just it's fucking garbage the way
it explains everything. I don't understand how people have the patience to put up
with this stuff. Com People should expect more from video games than that bullshit.
And twenty fifteen it's it's I hate it, hate it all right.
The man has spoken, I'm still gonna give it more of a shot because
people say, like, oh, what's you understand it's ten fifteen hours in
or whatever, which I agree, Shit, I agree that expecting someone to
play for ten to fifteen hours in order to get it is obnoxious. That's
why I don't like Assassin's Creed fucking take five hours to like, get me
my Assassin's called. That's a completely different things. That's just the general thing
that's of storytelling and pacing, not noting in general, regardless of genre,
I should be able to enjoy something about a game with the first fucking three
hours much as five or fifteen. I think's asking a lot. I think
though, that because each of those systems is so deep that to get the
reward of knowing how to use all of them in tandem, you need to
understand each of them separately. I mean, do you need to understand the
fucking Palaco armour system? No? Then why in at the very beginning of
the game if they don't want to waste time with stupid tutorials? Am I
talking to some asshole cat for fucking ten minutes? That wasn't ten minutes?
Well, I don't know it was like thirty seconds, but you talk about
it would be text heavy or whatever if you had to explain everything. Why
is it taking that precious time to explain to me cat armor if it's not
important, or how to get a new sweater for my fucking pig or whatever?
Would you make the Mario armor for your Palico? No. I talked
to it for like two seconds, and I was like, this doesn't seem
like an important thing. I need to learn how to play the ac It
is not the most important. I would say that once you master movement,
the weapons and reading a monster to the point that you no longer have to
think about them, then like you reach this like zen with the game,
and suddenly you are thinking about something and then executing it and it's awesome.
Like you climb up, you climb up some vines, you look down at
the monster, you jump off, you slash it, you start writing it,
You stab it a whole bunch, it throws you off, You rush
in, hit it with a bunch of combos, and then dash away before
you get hit. Like, if you can nail all of that stuff,
that feels amazing. I feel like getting there, which requires you to feel
good about all these things takes a long time because the systems are so deep.
I think all of those concepts applied to Dark Souls. But Dark Souls
does it well and it gets you into the experience quick, it controls better.
It's just an always a better game than Monster Hun. Sure, I'm
not saying that like their onboarding process is flawless. It is. Yes,
all, we're gonna table this conversation topic. I feel like there are two
things like are that stick out to me? Is like reasons why I don't
want to play Monster Hunter, and it's for me. It was the first
time the monster ran away and I had to run to some fucking other area
and track it down. I was like, fuck this. And it was
the first time that I realized I had to fucking stop and sharpen my fucking
weapon in the middle of the battle. Yeah, I was like, Okay,
I don't want to do this. Yep, Like regardless of everything else,
Like that's not the type of game I want to play, Like no,
thanks, I can seems right into like maintenance in games, it's fucking
boring. Yeah, and like there's a time and a place for it,
Like mid fight, you going like, oh, I gotta sharpen my thing.
I gotta get away just far enough to do this, and hopefully if
I was playing multiplayer that other people could maybe step in and do this.
Was just like Nope, I think that's totally valid. I think the rebuttal
would be that that breaks up the the intensity of the fight, because if
it was just if you were just doing the same thing for like forty minutes
on a monster, it would just be too much. And it makes it
a little more frenetic when you do have to like, oh no, my
weapon's bad, I gotta retreat for a bit and like send you know,
hope my cat uh you know, gets the attention of the monster while I
have. You know, it's exciting when you try to run away and then
sharpen it. So I feel like last time I played it, maybe you
didn't have a cat. I don't remember, Okay, but I do believe
the cats are a late addition. Okay. I do like the idea of
Monster Hunter. I like the idea of like, hey, we're gonna go
like people told me to approach it like a hunting game, which I thought
was cool to think of it that way. It's like, all I'm gonna
hunt these rare creatures. It's gonna be big, long boss fights and stuff
and you're gonna get this. Yeah. But when they say a hunting game,
that's a genre that Monster Hunter created. Okay, well again, again
and again. I like the Idabella. Yeah, yeah, these huge boss
fights. I guess the things when people say treated like a hunting game,
I think, like, Wow, hunting games are fucking terrible. Dear Hunter.
The game controlled well and was approachable and had a good UI and good
inventory management and stuff like that. I think it'd be fucking cool. Things.
Things you're saying are so subjective, though, because I guarantee there are
a lot of people out there who would say it does control well. It
controls well for itself, right, I mean controls like it needs to.
If the boss fights felt like Devil may Cry boss fights, I'd be like,
yeah, we're playing the wrong game to expect better controls, because that's
not what this game is. If it had fucking Devil may Cry controls,
it would be way better. We will read different. You will revisit Monster
Hunter in the coming weeks. I didn't want to talk about it today because
I wanted Jason to be here. Yeah, I wish Jason could have joined
us this morning. We do need that, We do need that experienced voice
of reason here. I talked to him at PAX. He says, it's
a garbage series two. Okay, I think it is important, thought me
to tell you. Yeah, I think it is important to get like our
beginners perspective on things. Because I've played it for ten and a half hours.
I'm about eight, but I'm just now coming to terms with the basic
loop of the game. You know, there's still plenty of other stuff to
understand there. It's a bad game. You don't like it. It's a
bad game. You think it's bad because you don't like it. Yes,
that is Howpenny. You can't have it both ways. I think it's a
bad You can't. There you go, all right, there you go.
Steps it's inherent that that's his opinion. You don't need to make him explain.
It's the thing that people on the internet don't seem to understand that.
But you can't. You can't have it both ways. You can't. You
can't. You can't fall back on live and let live when people kids super
upset about the declamatory statements that you're making. Well, if somebody said you're
gonna if you're gonna troll, con troll. It's not like somebody said on
Twitter. It's like if I said, like, oh, pickles suck.
It doesn't mean that I'm saying like, pickles are objectively shitty and no one
should ever like pickles. I am saying pickles are objectively shitty and no one
should see That's what I'm talking about. Go all the way. It should
be inferred that when I say Monster Hunter sucks and it's a bad game,
that I'm saying I don't fucking like Monster Hunter, it's not saying that,
hey, you're an idiot for liking it, or no one could ever like
it, Like hey, people love, you're an idiot for liking wants.
Fuck, I'll go there. I'm like, I don't like it, and
I think it's a shop like Monster Hunter all they want. They're just wrong.
It's fine. Yeah, that's what I've been doing wrong. Yeah.
I haven't actually played it since pretty much the flight out there. I spent
the flight back sleeping. I tried getting into three in some form. Yeah,
yeah, me too. It did not grab me, Yeah, not
at all. I don't know. Somebody was telling me some things about like
things that have changed from three to four, like apparently the fact that there's
more than one town is new and four, I mean three. That doesn't
solve any of but but but it does give you an indication. Hey,
it does give an indication of how to rudimentary that series has been until very
recently. But again, we all need to play more of it or not.
You know what I played on the plane after I stopped playing that with
Sam. Can you tell me in five minutes? All right? Hit me?
It's been five minutes. No, I mean like within within five minutes.
Oh yeah, it's it's short. Yeah. So I played several chapters
of Codename Steam on three DS and I like it a lot. It's it's
very much it's x calm. I think we talked about a little bit after
that new three DS event, right, But it's totally like an x com
with more direct control, Like you definitely used that that C stick on the
new although you can still use the face buttons to kind of move your view
and stuff. And since it's not an action game, I think it would
be pretty okay on the old three DS. Yeah, I don't think it
would make a huge difference. I intended to play it, and then I
didn't bring the charger to my three DS on this trip, and so there
was no code names team for me. I thought I thought there was an
action component to it. I mean you're moving around light action, though it's
turn based stuff, like you are aiming at like there will be glowy bits
on enemies and stuff, and you do more damage if you hit that.
But they're not like actively moving around while you're trying to shoot at that.
Well, No, I didn't mean that, but I thought there was some
direct control on the I may have inferred that from videos incorrectly, but I
mean, yeah, you are moving around and directly controlling your dude. It's
not like ex commerts, like you're going to the square and I'm gonna watch
you moving. You're not moving. You're not moving squares. There are squares,
but you are moving the character around directly with the circle. Pe Okay,
I think that's what I saw the Yeah, it feels different than next
comp for sure, but yeah, you're not like actively like ducking and cover
based stuff or anything like that. Yeah, I think it's a ton of
fun. I think I was kind of concerned that the whole presentation was gonna
be a little much for me, Like it was trying way too hard to
be weird steampunk Abe Lincoln, Aliens, and like it kind of is all
that stuff, but it doesn't in a way. That's just it's not really
just in your face all the time. How does it look in motion?
I feel like screenshots it looks kind of hard to look at. No,
I think I think it looks good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
haven't had any problem with it visually. Will Wheaton, Oh yeah, he's
what Abe Lincoln? That's what I heard. I haven't heard much from Lincoln.
Like all the cut scenes have been very short. It's like, oh,
you gotta go save this lady in England. He was a task turn
kind of guy. Yeah. Yeah, like that means it's done. Does
that mean he doesn't talk much? Yes, brief brief words, more about
action. Okay, it's actually not true at all, but yeah. Yeah,
he just says something to you and then you jump out of his zepplin
or whatever and go down and kill. Is there any more that weird alternate
history stuff like is there a whole league of presidents or anything like that or
is it just your sting? No? He insinuates that like Lincolns, he
basically like stage the assassination or whatever so he could deal with the real threat
of these aliens. Like that's kind of implied, I guess, which is
a guy Yeah, yeah, yeah, very selfless staring out for the real
enemy. Yeah. The one big complaint I have is one that I have
to imagine every single review of this game is gonna bring up. And that's
when you're done with your turn, you hit end turn, and then a
little bar at the bottom says alien activity or alien movement or something, and
the whole alien team has to go through their movements and it takes a long
long time and cannot speed it up definitely know a fast forward or anything.
Nope. And everyone I've talked to several people at packs and in the industry
that have played it, and everyone's like, how the fuck is this getting
shipped like this because it is a huge problem to the point where it will
negatively impact your enjoyment. Do you ever see and the enemy movement like pop
out of the fog of war or anything like that in those cases like kind
of mid turn, because I was always like, you know, x com
would do stuff like that It's like, you know, during the the opposing
team turn, you would occasionally see some of that movement. You can cycle
through the viewpoints of like the four people in your team or whatever, so
it gonna be like, oh, you know, what's the lion guy see?
And if if the alien happens to be in his kind of where he
would be able to see it. An normally you'll see it scurrying around or
whatever. But most of the time, you know you're not close to them,
or they're just reshuffling inside the fog of war, and you're just looking
at this bar and you're like, oh, man, all right, can
you do anything? Can you like you can watch watch swap between perspectives of
your guys. That's it. You can't go into the inventory manage anything or
no inventory managing. Nope, you just wait for this fucking bar to fill
up and sharpen your weapon. I wonder if it's just like a straight up
a CPU thing like in order to simulate that stuff like it takes a little
bit of time. It sucks because I mean, yeah, I would just
like set down the three DS for like a minute, minute and a half
and just have a drink or sew eng You know, I wasn't like didn't
have a stopwatch for anything there, but like I bet some of them were
close to if not more than a minute. And there's that's gonna happen time
and time and time again every single fight. It's it's it's kind of baffling.
Is there anything between the fights they got a meta game layer or you
moved around a map doing anything at all? You know, I just got
to the point again, I'm only like three or four chapters in where you're
starting to like get new people on your team, and yeah, you do
earn currency and things like that. I have not seen any of that.
I want to say, there's some stuff you can do with currency, but
I'm like very early on and that stuff you start getting like subweapons and stuff
for your characters. Yeah, and there's like three like medals in each stage
you can go for and then you can buy like better Steam pistons or I
forget what they call them. But I'm very early on and that stuff.
It's just kind of teaching me the basic game mechanics and everything I've played.
I really really like outside of that waiting. Yeah, I'm glad to hear
this sounds good. I can't help feeling a little disheartened that they made this
and not a new Advanced Wars. I do advance. Why didn't they make
a new Advanced Wars because they made a bunch of those already. But it's
been a while though, so so let them do something different otherwise for the
entirety of their careers and whatever, mean they make something impressive about a new
Advanced Wars they're making any They made a new Advance Wars, but they're making
a next Fire emblem on the three US and they haven't even made aid a
single Advanced Wars. Yeah, well, fire arlbms dumb on. This Bodil
is great. Two fire emblems and this Marth Marth. I should point out
that my only experience with Fire emblem is from Smash Brothers. Do you like
kind of strategy like Final Fantasy Tactics or Advanced Wars or not especially It's all
right, it's fine. I'm totally okay with it, but okay, it's
I'm not like wild for it. A special place in my heart for Advance
Wars. It's great, Yeah, I'll say it was not Days of Ruin.
Not not so great. Definitely not totally. Yes, the top was
trying to get all serious and like rim with it, so he had Advanced
Wars in the Gameway advance. You had Dual Strike on the DS back when
everything, I had to have a DS act about three Dead Dance three Dance
Wars. Three that's sold will have to be the Three Deadly Snakes Dance Wars.
I just want a game called Dance Wars. Okay, anybody got any
other packs wrap up or no? I just I don't know. When you
were earlier, when you were talking about your Dance Wars and we're talking about
handheld games. I started thinking about DDR on the Game Boy. Wait,
there was a DR on the game. There was like a finger stage you
can dance on. I guess it. Leadat Agents is kind of a DDR.
Not really, I mean for your style. It's a rhythm game.
Yes, similar kind of stuff. But they literally canomy made DDR games on
the Game Boy. Wow, they made a little not economy but you know,
a little guitar rock. I think it's super weird and I completely forgot
that that existed. It's so holy shit. Yeah, plastic add ons I.
After we talked about Zelda recently, I started playing Twilight Princess on Dolphin
last night. I spent all this time trying to set it up because there's
like specific things you have to do. It's the GameCube version. It's like
the map will be glitchy unless you turn off this thing or whatever. And
I got it all set up and started playing it, and I was like,
oh God, this game takes forever to get started. I forgot so
I just I spent more time setting it up than I did play why the
GameCube version in particularly because I've only played the WE one and I liked the
idea of just playing with this normal ass controls don't they don't. I pretty
much map all that stuff to buttons. Though, if you want with the
with the Dolphin stuff the WE think, yeah, I guess you could.
But because I know, like the Gamekeep version didn't have white screen support,
yeah that's kind of a pain and some other stuff like that. Yeah,
I kind of wanted to try the game peaple in anyway, with the flip
world and everything. I might still, but man, I was not in
the mood last night to just go through a long process of starting that game
and hurting goats and stuff. How did it look good? Looked real good.
Not as good as Galaxy. Oh, Galaxy is ridiculous. Yeah,
I played some video games I played. Well, I'll mentioned Overwatch. It
moves kind of slowly, kind of slowly, like the character movement is plotting.
I would say, Yeah, I was watching some video of it when
we were on the show floor, and it definitely seemed like, you know,
there were abilities that were dashes and stuff like that. So I only
tried two of the classes because they only were letting people play one match.
But yeah, every every character seems to have a mobility move of some kind.
Like I was playing a sharpshooter guy who has a kind of combat role,
and then the rocket character has like a jump chet thing or whatever,
and those going cool down as soon as you use them. So I assume
it's kind of the risk reward of like, well, I'm slow normally,
but I could use this move when the time is right, and that kind
of thing. But when I'm playing somebody with the rocket launcher, I want
to move, you know, you want to rocket jump. Yeah, well
you can't rocket jump all right, and then go back to walking at a
leisurely pace. Well great, I bet that game is not super far off
from some kind of public test. Yeah, so we should. It seems
really pretty, and it was so like, you know, I maybe it's
because I don't especially like TF two, but I just looked at it and
said, wow, this thing seems fucking empty, like creatively bankrupt. Like
you check out this really pretty thing they're making. It's just like, all
right, sure, congratulations you made it. You made one of these kind
of class based games. Yeah, I can see that nice going. Uh
you know, I mean they had all that work left over from there.
Oh yeah, totally huge budget tent pole immo. Right, and like I
mean, make no mistake, like TF two is wildly popular and all this
other stuff. So you know, it's like making a game that you know,
pulls some of those players. Probably good business, but they haven't necessarily
yeah, they haven't actually committed to that yet. Yeah. Yeah, I'm
saying T two. It's popular, it would certainly be sensible for Overwatch to
be free. I don't know what. I guess just you know, from
the thought of like, hey, here's a new game from Blizzard. I
just look at it and go like what, yeah, no, why I
made a big deal about how it's their first first person shooter yeah, and
stuff like that. But yeah, you know, visually super impressive. Yeah,
it looks really nice. It's hard to get a sense of something like
that in one match on a loud convention floor and be looking forward to actually
trying it for real. Yeah. Cool. I finally got to sit down
and spend some time with the Home World Remastered collection. Oh yeah, I've
only played the first Homeworld so far. In that collection, I put a
fair amount of time into that. Immediately remembered why that game was so impressive
fifteen years ago. Yeah. Close ups of spaceships. Ah, you can
select any ship and zoom all the way in on it and just watch it
do its thing. That's kind of I haven't really played any of the home
stuff, like even back in the day. Yeah, missed it because let's
you know, you're issuing like broad like formation orders and then just attack moving
and the ship's kind of like the algorithms determine how they engage, right,
and like they're all swarming around each other and stuff. That's when you zoom
in. Okay, just watch shit plow up. Yeah, it's it's it's
fun for that reason. But yeah, it feels, uh, it feels
like it's age really, well, we'll we'll do a video soon. Cool.
That's a little buggy, but uh yeah that's good. I hear.
Yes, it's not on the soundtrack. Wait was it before? Yes?
Was it really? Yes? Huh yes, yes, yes, yes,
I totally did not remember that they wrote a song involving the lore of the
game and way back when. Yeah, weird, we use music as a
weapon. This weekend we did. Yeah, it's true. We spent some
time at the Pinball Wizard Arcade in pelamw Hampshire. Oh yeah, how was
that great? Those are Sunday afternoon adventure. Yeah. Yeah, we went
out there and uh, you know, I ended up with one hundred tokens,
which is more than enough for an afternoon of video game time. But
yeah, we spent some time playing a busted up Revolution extra cabinet. Yeah.
We had a very competitive game of blitz. Yeah, very competitive.
Yeah, okay, it was close, came down to it was overtime and
yeah, you got a field goal right there, but yeah, I think
it was sixty two to seven that the final score. That might be it.
You might have tweeted out a stat screen. Yeah, you's a real
good at blitz. So here. I had heard that for a long time.
But part of my head is thinking, like, you know what,
I played a lot of blitz on sixty four and in the arcades I could
I could probably at least put up a decent score against this guy. Yeah,
and uh no, you can't make first down against that was what was
the final tally? It was like sixty two to seven, which is better
than Rich. Yeah, Rich didn't score at all. Well all right,
so yeah, watching you and Rich, I was like, I just want
to get on the board, and I got one touchdown. Yeah. It's
a place near fun Spot at all. No, it's the same state,
but not not specially Okay, yeah, yeah, sure it's right there.
Still that part of the country seems to have a monopoly on cool old I
guess. So, yeah, I don't know. The nice thing about the
Pinball Wizard, I'll say, is that, you know, like everything there
seems to work, and like when I went to the Fun Spot, everything
seemed kind of jankie. I played a working guns and Roses pinball machine.
Yeah yeah, really they had it, man, So I guess. Actually
there was some totally broken stuff at the Pinball Wizard as well, like the
couple the terminator to gun the lawn. The rocket button was stuck in wouldn't
work, and the revolution next things weren't really vibrant, and then we played,
uh we beat Smash TV yep, and the diagonals on the sticks were
kind of, yeah, how much how much did that take? That took?
That's a yeah, a lot of more. We were originally going to
try to be a Total Carnage, but then Jeff told me and Rich that,
like, no, this is like take a lot longer, and we
actually probably don't have enough tokens. It's that much hard. Yeah, totally
Like when you beat the first level in Total Carnage, it actually just comes
up and says Smash TV players should step away from the seat. Wow.
Yeah, they're they're kind of not fucking around wow, but like very much
into like by making it in your face like that, and they go like,
well, I'll show you. I'll put a ton of money into this
machine and beat at you assholes. Psychological warfare. Yeah, it's pretty smart.
It's totally devious. It's terrible. Everything about Total Carnage is totally deep,
amazing and terrible to totally devious. Was thirteen, Yeah, totally devious.
There's one they had a whacko cabinet and the original kind of slanted cabinet.
That was the first one I played. Yeah, it's a weird game.
It first, it took me a second to figure out what to do
because I thought it was just gonna be like basically robotronic. This used to
stick to shoot everything, and then it's like, oh, no, you
have to shoot that had and then shoot one of the same ones. Yeah,
but then it starts making no sense at all. Once it's like,
well, now it's got the top of a green, hairy guy in the
bottom of a birdman and like shoot him back. So you need to make
them like a hole ye one thing and then shot another one shot? Yeah,
good lord, Okay, Yeah, yeah, it's a process. It's
a weird game. It's a really weird game. Cosmic Cruiser was the sequel
to that game. I think Dan, yes, tell me about the G
and R pinball Machine. So I think it's got a really bad axel rose
impersonator. When you first put in your quarters, I'm trying to do an
axle screen, but it's super doesn't sound like axles screaming. I think it's
just like, yeah, okay, something like that. It's terrible. But
then some acone the plunger is it's got like a revolver down there where a
plunger would normally be, and he pulled the trigger and it shoots the ball
out and like there's another plunger on the other side that they had replaced with
a stock looking one. But I want to say, originally it was there
was a rose on the plunger. Yeah, that's I never had to actually
use that one, like the right one. The standard one is the pistol.
I think if it goes down one way, you do the rose one.
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, you have to go launch. What's
that I do? Like a pistol launcher? Is a T two that has
one can't remember, it's pretty common. I think that kind of eventually.
Yeah, but it plays a Welcome to the Jungle and it plays sweet Child
of Mine to a two deep cuts, oh yeah from the Deep in the
catalog. Yeah. Yeah. There's a little axle on the board and it
says mystery when lit on his crotch, which I thought was funny. I
got a picture of it. Okay. I think one of the main things
you have to do is get all the band members on stage, and I
think I just got Matt Sorum, So that's a really shitty congratulations. So
it was a late period. I mean it was mostly like appetite stuff,
like all the like the visuals and stuff are very appetite and again Jungle and
Sweet Child, and I think I remember you saying at one point that thing
did come out kind of ninety Yeah, probably it was. It was,
yeah, it was probably you know, towards the end of right, it
sounds like by the time he came out and they were practically done. Yeah,
by the time it came out, like Matt Sorum was certainly in the
band, yes, yeah, And it had images of acts of wearing the
stuff he would wear during like Civil War performances and things like that. So
I mean, I'm sure use your illusion was out, but like it's still
a lot of appetite was going into this. That makes sense. It's like
if I was making with that machine at that time, like that's good for
business, probably, But maybe we put Welcome to the Jungle in it.
Maybe, I don't know, what do you think. I guess we could
put you could be Mine in it, but that's already associated with another in
ball machine. I just want a pinball machine that plays all nine minutes of
Estranged, just the whole trilogy of was Trained, Don't Cry November Rained.
You should buy one of those machines and make that happen yourself. Okay,
some rom hacking, yep, I'm just glad I finally got to play it.
I just put a tape deck in there. Yeah, straight up Journey
Sun up Journey style. They didn't have the Royal Rumball pinball machine, though,
Which is the other one I want to try? Yeah, they did
have the Royal Rumball game. They had the Wrestle many of the Arcade and
that Superstars, right Superstars? Yeah, which would you play? The Royal
Rumbo? So I picked mister Perfect and won the rumble, which is how
that's every time I see that game. That's what I do, just like
a son. Yeah, you won the rumbol exactly. Yeah, sounds like
yeah. Yeah. They're pretty tight packed in pretty tightly. They that four
player pac Man tabletop thing there. We played that a little bit. Man.
I hadn't played much of a Mortal Kombat four just in my life,
Like, that's the only Mortal combat I haven't like played to death pretty much,
and I instantly was reminded of why, Like I saw it, they
look at I was like, you know what, I'm gonna try this.
I remember trying this a little bit in the arcade. I never really played
a gold or whatever on the Dreamcast. I'm gonna see. Yeah, maybe
I just didn't give this a fair shake. And I played it and it's
like, no, none of this feels good. Yeah, it's like it's
okay, it's it's not terrible, but I understand why. It's easily my
least favorite. Yeah, they had the Wizard of Oz pinball machine there,
which is the Jersey Jack Company. It's the Stern is making a lot of
machines, and now this other company has kind of got in as well.
Okay, that's a good machine. Crazy nuts. It's it feels like it
came from some like weird time warp where pinball was always popular and just advanced
in technology, because the backlash is a gigantic fucking screen and it's just full
color, it's full frame rate. It came out last year. Oh wow,
yeah geez. And it's just like, you know, it's Wizard of
Oz. It's like, here's the Wicked Witch flying match. You all the
sound is super crisp and high bit rate, and it's just it's weird.
It's fucking weird. It's crazy. And right next to that was like a
Walking Dead pinball machine, which I thought was funny because it says like the
Walking Dead AMC, like it has the AMC logo on the backlash, like
let you know, like, no, this is this is this is that
TV one? Yeah. I would say if you if you find a Wizard
of machine out in the wild, you should check it out. It's fucking
weird, it's it's cool. Is that thing currently? Like unique? And
hell, Laborati is like, are there other machines coming out with that kind
of stuff? Stern doesn't do the full you know, video backlass thing,
but their machines are very elaborate, like the Transformers machines. There's there's a
Mustang Afford Mustang machine that they did recently. They do a Tron one.
Yeah, they did Tron They had Tron there. I played. I played
Tron and played Transformers. Every time I think pinball should be dead and you're
going to hear about the death of pinball, something happens, I feel like,
yeah, well, it's you know it's there are only a couple of
companies out there doing it, you know. Uh, and and it's everything
is licensed now because you know the standard, you know, no one's I
don't think that stuff sells if it's not. Yeah, I think it's it's
cool that their company is still out there doing that stuff. I don't know
where pinball machines go other than places devoted to pinball machines. Collectors. Increasingly,
whenever Stern makes them sells these machines. Now they do two runs.
They'll do like the standard run and then they limited edition run and they'll have
like gold rails and you know whatever else, and then they'll sell those for
seven grand instead of five or whatever it is. And you know, like
people that want people that really care about the Family Guy would maybe would want
a Family Guy machine in there and there, maybe they would. The Family
Guy machine is really crazy. They had it there last year when I went,
but they didn't have it this time. Because it has a tiny pinball
machine inside the pinball machine, so you can kind of like you you know,
hit your your normal size ball into some area that activates the other machine
and then there's a tiny ball up there and you're playing tiny pinball with the
same flippers or no, okay, no, no, it's a it's a
whole separate same same controls is what I'm in. Same same buttons, the
same buttons control big and little. Yeah, weird. I've seen that den
word. It's like a digital thing where it's like fake one, but now
like an actual physical pinball machine in there. Yeah, it's the Family Guy.
I made a reference to pinball inside of it. Well, there you
go. It's the Family Guy. I guess. I don't know the brand,
it's exactly no, but that's I mean, it's a it's a cool
machine. Unfortunately it's the Family Guy, so it's sort of crap, but
but whatever, all right, Yeah, yeah, it was a it was
a good time. Sounds like a fun trip. Yeah. Uh well,
unless anybody has another games, I'll briefly say that the DMC Definitive Edition looks
real good, always real good. It's got some new Modes's new Turbo mode
is pretty cool. Cool. It seems like they may do they make like
gameplay changes, Like there's different modes, Like there's a hardcore one where they
tweak stuff where it's like they kind of change the window for evading and things
like that. They'll change up kind of like how much damage different enemies do.
So, Yeah, they've added some new modes, like a must style
mode where you have to be like at least an s rank of style to
do any damage. Yeah. So, like I don't know, for someone
like me that beat it on every single difficulty before because I liked it that
much, I'm probably the type of guy that will go through that. Yeah.
Do you know if they're adding any of that stuff back into the PC
version or did they just spin out of new like Skew on Steam for the
Definitive. You know, I'm not sure. Yeah, it's if you love
the first one, it's probably worth playing again. At sixty frame second,
it's real fun. Still, that was a good game. Yeah, it
still is, all right. Lastly, I was going to mention or end
of the Blind Forest, which there should be a quick look on the site
for now, which pretty much says everything I want to say about that game.
Plus you can look at it wow at the same time you should because
it's gorgeous, like a podcast and a video feed all in one. That
sounds suspect. I don't know. I think there might be something to it.
I think it's going places. And then when we're done here, I
want to play some Hotline Miami too. Yes, that's out this week.
There's a bunch of stuff out this week, the pack Scott and the GDC.
You got in the way of us checking out City Skylines sounds really good.
Yeah, but Ori just fucking blew my mind. I'd started playing it
yesterday and I had very I don't want to say low expectations, but I
was just like, you know, that's gonna be like a hand painted Metroidvania.
That'll be cool. Uh. And it's way better than just that cool.
Like it plays incredibly well. It's like, yeah, it's like one
of the most stunning two D games I have ever seen in my life.
Yeah. I was kind of expecting it to be maybe like on the level
of like dust and a lazy and tail or something, because I remember I
got excited for the idea that and that wasn't great. It's it's all right,
but like this seems like really it plays super tightly, like it's really
hard in like a good way, like just some meat boy. Yeah.
In fact, it specifically does the meat boy thing of like you've got an
unlimited wall jump, so you can just kind of keep arching on the same
wall over and over, and they make you do a bunch of crazy trick
extended like wall jump sequences through like spikes and weird stuff like that. It's
really weird mechanics around saving and stuff that I think are work really well,
which I thought that was super cool because before those super hard meat boy ass
platforming sections, you can just create a safe point right before, and the
load is so fast when you die that you can basically turn these little sections
into like bite size like meat Boy levels. Like they give you the tools
to make the game not super hard on yourself, but if you're not paying
attention and saving when you should right like, you can have a real bad
time with it. And it doesn't say anything like even collectibles that you picked
up and stuff you have to go back and get again. But yeah,
I'd really recommend people go watch The Quick Look because that game, like,
I think it makes it really strong argument for itself. Cool. I don't
necessarily need to sit here and champion it, but check it out. It's
coming out. And now how about we get in some news, because as
predicted coming out of GDC, there was more news breaking and I'm gonna read
some of it right now. They were showing Morpheus GDC. Yeah, they
had an event. Harry fishburn was there. What's that, Larry Fish?
Oh? Yes, indeed, I gotta shill for anything. I was not
clear. I saw a lot of people just referring to it as Morpheus coming
out of this event, and I'm not clear if that suddenly became the final
name for this thing or not. I don't think they've necessarily said yeah,
but I don't know for sure. Well, here's what they necessarily said.
Okay, it's coming out in the first half of twenty sixteen. Okay,
so that, you know, a few months after the Valve stuff. Yeah,
who knows where Oculus is going to be in that mix? Could we
land on a pronunciation for valves thing? I heard most people at packs just
saying vibe, but I don't know Valve vibe. So they're calling it the
HTC vibe. They're very much getting the HDC brand out there in front of
that thing. Well, I think it's you know, also, because the
Valve has said that other companies will make a headsets support, so this is
not an exclusive yeah, partnership or whatever. I believe that's the Valve is
also saying, like all their API like software level stuff is also going to
be free for everybody to use. Right. Well, I think it's all
integrated into source too. Right, maybe that's what it is. I actually
don't know, but obviously in everybody's best interest for all these things to play
nice together. Yeah, as we've said. But but yeah, Morpheus coming
out, you know, it's probably this is the first time they have fully
committed to this thing shipping as a retail product. Ye, I think it
is. Yeah. I think they were still towing that like it's an R
and D project line up until now. They showed a new unit. It's
got a it's got a ten adp old screen in it, a single screen
I think, as opposed to like the two screens of the Oculus, right
and the Valve thing. It can output at either sixty or one hundred and
twenty frames a second. Okay, that's about all I got for you.
They claim it is super low latency, which everybody is going after. Now.
Yeah, I'd like to see a big Excel spreadsheet of you know,
pixel density, yeah, field of view, latency, refresh rate of everything.
Yeah, this doesn't mention a field of view. For for me,
it's more about like, are there features that one headset or one collection this
one, This one will enable a thing that cannot be emulated by the others
or something like that. So it seemed like the positional tracking on the valve
thing, it's like they're kind of secret sauce or whatever. Right, But
then I guess I'm just barely starting to understand all this stuff. I guess
John Carmack has been out there a lot talking about inside out tracking, which
means that the headset itself can do all the tracking without a need for because
you know, the valve thing has got two like separate base stations to set
up and configure, which it sounds like they like project infrared yes light into
your room. They're basically doing what connect does like dot grid. Yeah,
and then there are sensors on your headset detect that. So it sounds like
the holy grail of that whole system is like, make that all that contained
in the headset, you know, so you can just take it anywhere and
do it without that stuff. In the middle of a field, maybe it
might be a good place for it. I don't know, nowhere, you
know, won't knock a bunch of shit over while you're there. It's true,
trip on a stick or something though, uh run away. I don't
know where that stick might end up, That's what could be problematic. Yeah,
you know, still still kind of pie in the sky with the stuff.
No no games announced, just more tech demos. The people I know
that use this thing set up was quite comfortable. Uh, and you can
wear glasses with it. So there's that. But you know, still not
a lot of hard info. A lot of people kind of worried about,
you know, how much can the PS four drive on one of these things
compared to like a beefy PC. Not as much? I mean no,
probably not as much. But you also wonder, like, you know,
what else is going to be in the box with this thing. There were
some references floating around a GDC too, like a separate external box this thing
plugs into in addition to the PS four. Yeah, so I wonder if
that's an external graphics cards Yeah, who knows, you know, I don't
wonder if that's like just a current like development thing, or if that's actually
gonna be part of the kit. You know, hard to say, but
virtual reality, it's happening. It's gonna come out. You know what else
it can come out? What rock band four? Yeah? Are you surprised?
No, I didn't think you would be. Yeah, they announced it.
It's coming out this year. Yeah. What else do we know?
Uh? They will bring music up from the past generation. Yes, it
will not cross Uh hardware manufacturers. You can go from three sixty two PS
four. Yes, you can go from three to sixty x Box one,
And it sounds like basically anything that was sold as d l s will be
there. It's correct eventually. It doesn't sound like it'll all necessarily be their
day one. But but yeah, they're you know, it sounds like they're
making it with a smaller team. They're out there saying like this isn't you
know rock band four is not a path to rock Band five. That they
actually are looking to update rock Band four kind of continually as a platforms,
which makes you wonder why they would call it rock band four yeah, instead
of just rock band rock band Yeah. But but whatever. So it sounds
like some of the stuff with the instruments is still up in the air as
far as like old instruments coming over. It sounds like they're hoping for that
compatibility to be there. It sounds like that maybe a lot easier on the
PS four than on the Xbox One. Maybe. Yeah, Well, because
the wireless standard on Xbox has changed from sixty Xbox one, you would need
some kind of dongle probably yep, as opposed to I think it's just what
bluetooth on. Maybe you have to go out and track I'm sure it wouldn't
be this, but you know, go to track down one of those wireless
three sixty dongles for PC and then it'll work. Fun sures go out and
buy a bunch of old controllers and raid the chips out or something weird.
Uh yeah, if you know, if if that rumor from last week about
Guitar Hero coming out this year proves to be true, yeah, Battle of
the Bands eating back up? Yeah why not? Uh yeah, yeah,
I'm excited for that. It's been a while. Yeah. Uh. I
really liked that line in that Harmonics video of just like we're making a new
rock band because we want to make a new rock band. You know,
it's like it's been five years. Uh you know, maybe the world's ready,
I am, uh yeah, yeah. A lot of people seem very
excited some real shitty news going down in the middle of GDC as e a
shut down Maxis right at a time when they assumed that nobody would notice.
I guess is that the video game industry equivalent of a Friday. Yeah,
well, the video game industry has It's Friday, So this is like worse
somehow. I think the Friday of everybody, like it literally every developer is
at this conference, and it's yeah, I guess. You know, they
were kind of quick to say, oh, it's the m Reville location,
but that was the one kind of the Yeah, like, that's vast majority
of Maxis. There's some pockets of Maxi's employees. I think it's some other
studios, but yeah, because you know, they spun out the SIMS at
certain point and made that its own group. Yeah right, yeah, yeah,
but you know, the Emeryville office is where they made Spore, That's
where Will Wright worked out of right all that time, you know, like
lame vague platitudes about like oh, we're consolidating ips and blah blah blah,
but you know, well like realistically, you know, like that last sim
City game was a fucking train run. Sure Sport did not do what you
know, anyone wanted as sport didn't do well, Like they tried some other
stuff with like dark Spot and stuff like that whatever, and then yes,
we yes, we all know how sim City went. Yeah, so like,
yeah, that's shitty. I guess they announced it in a shitty way
obviously, But are they they timed it really fucking poorly? Yeah, but
I guess it's not. But you know, like, is he supposed to
keep that team right? Like, I don't know, Yeah, I don't
know. We really need to take a look at City Skylines because everybody's talking
that thing up like it's the thing you wanted sim City to be. Yeah,
I hope really that thing sounds kind of incredible. Yeah. I kept
trying to look at like Cities XXL and stuff. So there's that thing was
a shit shits. So apparently they're made by different developers but put out by
the same publishers, so that's why they shared the brand. And I guess
at this point it was it's probably too late when they realized what a train
wreck that last is an XXL, the last one XXL, which is like
it's just kind of XL with slightly different, more broken stuff. Somehow I
guess by the time that proved to be a disaster, it was too late
to divert the branding of this other one man. But I've just been reading
all kinds of great stuff about Skylines. It's apparently got really great mod support,
Like you can make the giant cities that you want to make. I'll
give that shot. I saw somebody put out a pack of like P and
g's basically that you could import, each of which would give you the starting
terrain for like real cities around the world. WHOA so like it just reads
the file and then generates the terrain for like, oh, I want to
build on you know, on Manhattan Island or whatever, and it'll just make
that for you and give it to you. So all the stuff around that
thing sounds sounds great. We should definitely check that out. PlayStation four firmware
two point five is supposedly imminent, but I only know that because people who
are in the beta program broke in da Yeah, so official information has been
impossible to come by on this stuff. So there's been a handful of leak
screenshots. Yeah. Interesting, unless somebody went to the trouble of mocking up
a bunch of ps four right interface screenshots and then taking photos of them with
a phone. It's probably pretty safe to assume the stuff is actually gonna happen,
though, Yeah, I mean that that's going the extras a real commitment
to your to your chicanery. Uh, if you're into that, but suspend
resume supposedly coming in this new firmware. Yeah, I had pretty much written
off the idea of that ever happening at this point. How about you,
guys, Like, did it even seem reasonable to assume it was coming back?
I mean eventually come. I don't know. I didn't necessarily give up
hope on it, but I don't necessarily use it. Yeah, on the
on the Xbox One that much, considering it was like one of the very
first features they ever announced for the PS four. Yeah, so are you
supposed to be able to just completely well rest mode not turn it all the
way off. Let's say I rest mode in the middle of gameplay. I
should be able to turn it on and it goes right. Yes, It's
basically they're saying it will suspend the state of the running application, which is
what the Xbox One can do right right, basically that same thing. Yeah,
Yeah, that if it works as advertised. That's uh, it's great
on the Xbox One. When it works. It doesn't always work, or
sometimes you'll get back in the game and it'll be like, ah, the
login situation has changed, where bobbing you back to the menu and you're like,
wait, no thanks. I tried it with Orry yesterday and the game
was just like like flickering to black every three seconds. So it's pretty unreliable,
but when it does the job, it's pretty good. A bunch of
other stuff going around. Do you see that there's there's button remapping. There
is system level button remapping in this firmware x and yes, well no more
than that. It's literally like the screen just shows a list of every button
on the Duel Shock and you can set it to any other button. So
if you if you know, because they went from the PS three standard of
your shoot buttons are your L one R one to the Xbox standard of L
two R two because the triggers and the PS three were fucking shit, so
they had to swap everything. When they brought shooters from you know, with
three sixty p S three, the triggers would always be swapped. So if
people got used to that, they can now swap it back on the system
level, which means no matter where you are. I guess if I'm reading
this right, if you push R one on your controller, it could read
as R two or triangle or select. Yeah. Does it say anything about
whether that could be game specific? That's the question. The screenshot that got
out didn't indicate. But yeah, like you would hope there are game specific
profiles for that stuff, or otherwise it's just gonna be a nightmare. I
mentioned they put it in the same menu as like digital or analogy. I
bet. I. My guess is that it's a system level thing that does
not have the nuance to be per game, and it'll be like a thing
that people will look at and go that's neat, and use it and then
funk up their controller and go, wait, how come I kni't how do
I I don't ah, And and it'll be a mess. And I have
to assume that the games. Games are not going to be aware of this
stuff. You know, like if say, if you were to play The
Order and had to do quick time events and buttons were remapped, Jesus,
that would be real fun. Yeah, But yeah, like you, it
could theoretically do the X and O. Yes, no thing, but it
would do it in every game in every way. It's like, you know,
it'd be weird. I you know, it's nice to circle. It's
nice to see them folding these big changes in. Finally, you know,
the march up they just came out on the Xbox One. Like they have
screenshots now, But generally Microsoft has been doing a real good job of the
Yeah, they've got they their preview program is very wide and well it's not
just that because you know, the system stability joke about PS four firmware US
for a reason, because and there's all the stuff that like you know,
they exactly stuff that they promised that hadn't made it in yet. It's still
you know, does it play audio CDs yet? I mean, honestly,
who cares? But like I mean, yes, I'm with you, fucking
weird. Yeah, like a lot of people still are waiting for d L
and a streaming and that's not in yet. Yeah, even though that was
promised ages ago. Right, how do you do screenshots on Xbox One?
I pull down the controller, double tap and the same thing as the snap
or whatever. It's like double tap and then hit Why so it's kind of
not an immediate thing. Or you say, Xbox, take a screenshot.
I'll probably just do that. Yes, that works. There's some other minor
stuff floating around, like they're saying the trophies might sink automatically in the background.
Now, that'd be nice. It should be so nice. I mean
most people don't care, but I care. Yeah, someone who unlocks trophies
on multiple PS fours and then often forgets to sink them, and it's always
fun. Like you know, someone turns on a PS four around here that
hasn't been used in a while, and then everything sinks all of a sudden,
and then I go home and go like, oh what wait, Like
oh right, all right, I got those trophies. I got those hell
Diver trophies at some point, even though I don't own hell Diver. Yeah.
Some other stuff like a possibly a sixty frames a second setting for share
play and remote play, which I guess could be nice. Search the internet
for a trophy guide directly from the PS four. It's weird. Sure,
I don't know. Again, you know, this is all leaked India stuff.
None of this is official, but it doesn't sound like Sony has come
out and really denied any of it either, so probably safe to assume the
stuff's happening. But yeah, like, thank thank god they got that suspend
stuff in there. That's been a long time coming. And we'll see if
it works. I hope it works. I mean they're bet attesting it,
you know, Yes, that's true. We shall see, but it's promising.
Who likes that wall I last Wolfenstein game? I bet? Yeah?
I bet? Dan? Did I know Drew did? Yeah, it's cool.
That was a good game. They're making more of it. Great.
They're putting out a downloadable standalone prequel in May called Wolf and Stein The Old
Blood, which says we'll see bj Blastwitz infiltrating Castle Wolf and Stein. Huh.
All right, so it's the prequel you've truly been waiting for. And
what if it's just like story wise, like what if you're just finding Robot
Hitler at the end of this thing? That's very possible, Like, like
I mean, in fact, wasn't Wasn't it part of the story in the
New Blood that that crazy scientist wasn't was at that point the leader of the
Third Reich. I think like Hitler was out of the picture at that point,
right, Well, they very well could tell the story of Blastwitz Hitler.
That makes I didn't even think about that. That makes me way more
excited for this. I wonder if this will be tongue in cheek or have
a slightly different like, you know, the first one was pretty pretty grim
and serious in tone. Uh, Jimmy Hendricks is at your camp? I
hope. So that's pretty good. That's that really happens. Oh it doesn't
the first time, right, I thought you men in this one. Yeah,
this says it's set before the fall of the Allies, so it'll still
be during World War Two. But yeah, I look forward to see finally
some World War two games. Yes, it's about time. It's been so
underserved. Elite Dangerous was announced for the Xbox One. Drew, how does
that strike you really? I didn't know that. Yeah, as the person
who spent a bunch of time with the Elite Dangerous here, Yeah that could
work, I think so, Yeah, that'd be cool. Like I always
thought that game was like, you know, super keyboard heavy simulation type game.
It's it's not. No, No, there are a lot of systems,
but they they're done really intelligently on in game menus. Okay, like
in in World. Maybe it's like menus that exist in your ship stuff like
that. All Right, that sounds promising. That's just a that's just a
time to exclusive. It'll also, if they are already saying, it'll also
come to PS four later. Oh yeah, I'm curious to see how that
how that maps. I've been interested in that game, but it's a little
intimidating, yeah for sure. Like you know, it's one of those things
where it's like, if I was going to play it, I would probably
play it with a standard game pad, right and keyboard. Yeah, I
think that's a valid way to play it. I haven't personally put much time
into playing it with the game pad, but uh, I hear people do
that totally fine. Yeah, that's good to hear. Uh. And then
finally the Benefits recording. On a Tuesday, we get all the late breaking
news there's a new Descent game possibly in the works. Yeah, like,
where did that come from? Yeah, it's a launch Kickstarter. It's a
multiplayer focused Oh really Yeah, okay, so I mean, don't get me
wrong. I enjoyed the multiplayer in Descent, and I guess forsaken now that
I think about it, it's Forsaken just a Descent game, yeah, pretty
basically. Yeah, I just want to make sure it might well be.
Yeah, that's when I think about, like, hey, I want to
play Descent, like a multiplayer focused game is not not what I'm after.
Yeah, I kind of like I think multiplayers should be an aspect of it,
But there it seems like they're definitely putting that first. I kind of
like being alone deep in a month, I thought that was like part of
the kind of the core premise of Descent. To me, it is that's
just like flying around blind and all these like the rewards make it look like
that they're you know, they're monetizing it in a lot of different ways because
like the there will be a bunch of different ships, and depending on what
level you back at will get different or more ships, and then like the
final tier of it is you will be a subscriber in perpetuity. So like
some of these people worked on Star Citizen and I look at that and go,
yeah, you did did. Yeah. I was just gonna say like
fine, like whatever, Star Citizens is doing fine, So yeah, I
don't know, Like I looked at at that thing and it's like people from
the original Descent, you know games, yes, involved, but I looked
at that thing and said that this is not at all what I am looking
for as a fan of Descent. I don't know how to feel about that,
Like no, no part of that, like no, thank you,
Like say whatever you want about Star Citizen, Like it is one thing,
you know, No, it's like nine things. Well, yes, but
under one umbrella. Yeah, but I mean business wise, like it's a
single entity selling things this way. Sure, but for the if that like
pricing, if that business model and that philosophy is going to start extending out
to a bunch of other games, like that seems like it's a scary precedent.
Yeah, I don't know. It's it's hard to get a sense for
like what they would do in the final product because they also say, like
you know, hey, you'll get a copy of the game, which will
be a fifty dollars retail value. So it's not like a free to play
game where you get you'd go buy the ships. It's like a buy the
game, then buy more ships. Then you still have to subscribe to something
like how much are the tears here that we're talking about at the top one,
it's like five grand or something like, well, yeah, it's like
fucking something insane. I don't know, like I didn't necessarily break it down,
but it's just they've got three different it looked like they had three different
potential ways to get money out of players of that game, like, you
know, aside from the Kickstarter like wants it's out just listed in their rewards.
So it's the sort of thing where it's like, Okay, that's nope,
no thanks, that's a little unnerving. If they have any they any
kind of sample like test footage at all, or is it yeah, a
CEB four Like it looks nice, Okay, like there's some shots of minds
and stuff, and you go like that looks like a good fucking inside of
a crazy space station. All right, that sounds good. Uh boss key
Cliff Pazinski's game or a new studio. Oh right, U four they coming
under the coming out of packs. Yeah, they start showing off their thing
there. I wasn't gonna bring it up, but since we're talking about UV
four games like that, it is also a nice looking UB four game.
It's hard to say. I mean, I put the video up on the
site because it's just it's kind of a fucking ridiculous video. I think like
they put it out on their own, on its own, and it's kind
of ridiculous. It's just a bunch of context of like they did a PAX
panel at the end at the end said hey, let's take a look at
some very early teaser footage, and then it's you know, it's it's like
panning around in an environment and you're like, that tree looks good. It
is literally just a bunch of slow pans in front of like here's a space
station, it's a Japanese like a Buddhist temple. Yeah, and like like
okay, these are places where a shooter might take place. It's definitely a
first person shooter, like from the the nineties school of multiplayer first person shooters.
And yeah, so it's like you look at it looks nice, but
it tells you nothing about you know, the game itself. Yeah, they
said, is it like an arena? It's it's yeah, it's it's meant
to be like a you know, it's a old school style first person shooter
and it's it's pretty which everyone is making now. It's free to play next
on that is involved. Please please streak project Blue Street working title. Yeah,
yeah, I don't know. I mean, why not why not make
another one of those at the same time, Like you could be playing the
new Unreal Tournament right now. Oh, that's right, you played some of
that. Yeah, how is that right now? It's good? Yeah,
you know, there are only a few maps, and but they've got there.
So there's like an Epic Games launcher now and you launch that up and
that's got an integrated store, integrated Unreal engine. Also, if you want
to do all your modding and stuff like that there, you can do it
out of that launcher. So they're selling hats really yeah. One of them
is a skull and then so the kind of cool feature about some of their
hats is they change when you're in the lead, Like the skull grows horns
the lead. That's ridiculous, hat turns around and turns Gold's great. That's
really stupid. Yeah. Wow. So they're already selling stuff for this game
that was barely playable. There were like three hats in one map in the
store. The map of the map was free, the hats where the hats
cost money. Do you know if that store also functioned as a way to
get like plugins for GB four seems like it. So wow, they really
have just unified everything. Yeah, I mean like Fortnite is in there really
like the well, there's a tab Fortnite. Yeah, that's apparently a video
game Fortnight. I forgot about that game. Yeah, did you play that?
I played it? Yeah, I played a lot of it. What
do you do? Build forts and you shoot shoot monsters and stuff. Yeah,
it's all right, that's fun. I think it's much sense. Now.
I feel like they took too long with that thing, and now,
like I think it's gonna be weird as a free to play thing. But
is it like a rust or Daisy? I haven't really played those. It's
not like a survival. It's an action game, and they try to make
it very easy to like you know these big three by three squares and you
can like knock out the middle if you want that to be the thing with
the window, or knock out the middle and the one below that. It's
like a defense game that might where you build the tower. Yeah yeah,
I mean it's like a base defense first person shooter. Yeah, like there
will be like uh tronold oh is that that? No? I don't know,
not like that. So there will be like a portal or something you
have to protect, and so you have all this time to like build this
huge thing around it with all these like crazy traps and stuff and things that'll
fling people into spikes or whatever. And some of these levels you can actually
trigger when the storm comes in and is this out? No? No,
no no. They they've done some like parties and stuff for like big epic
fans. But yeah, they've been talking about Fortnite for god like what three
years at least. I don't even know. Anything feels so long. They've
been running an alpha for a while since they know that. They have a
checkbox on the sign up form that says, are you a member of the
press. I would really like to try it at less a game that I
would like quite a bit, But it's been a long time coming. It's
like the first UE four announced game, right that sounds right? I don't
know anyway, Yeah, UT School. It plays like UT with some different
some slightly different mechanics, like it uh doesn't have the energy stuff like the
you know double tap you know, tap backwards a bunch to activate healthy gen
right and all that sort of Yeah that was around like speed boost. It's
got a wall jump, so you kind of uh, does it just have
the real basic like dash left and right stuff? Yeah, but so you
use that when you're up against a wall, so like you'll jump into a
wall and then double tap the direction away from the wall to go kick off
of it and get a bit of a boost. That's it's it's that's its
movement thing. But yeah, I don't know. You can do shot combos
and fucking all right. You know it has a flat can in it.
It's pretty awesome. It looks great, and they're putting out like Nightly builds
that thing, right. I don't know that the when you install it through
the game's launcher and all that other stuff. I don't know that you're getting
Nightlies at that point, but I'm not sure. But they they've added maps
to it and stuff like it. It's yeah, it's it's cool. Video
games have gotten weird. Yeah, the ways you get them, yes,
the times at which you play them, like, yeah, everything the games
themselves pretty familiar, but yeah, everything's everything's crazy and you know, yeah
it's kind of cool. Yeah, every dull moment lately. All right,
well, uh, I think that's gonna do it for news. It's everything
I could find coming out in GDC. Yeah, emails, emails, emails,
what BombCast a giant bomb dot com? That's what okay asked. I
told you, well, you do't gonna be a jerk about it. I'm
just i'mcasta champom dot com. Okay, here are some emails. Here's one
from David and Melbourne, Australia, who has an interesting question for Drew's up
about the DPRK. Okay, this question is more directed towards Drew, but
if the others have any suggestions, feel free. Last year about getting around
to old subscriber content, I decided to watch Drew's North Korean tour recap.
I'm heavily invested in international relations, and the video revealed to me just how
possibly tripped to the DPRK is. I'm nineteen years old and this April I
will be attending the kim Il sum Birthday tour, so I want to thank
you for opening my eyes to this possibility. My question is, aside from
when I'm actually touring the sites, I'm not sure what entertainment I will have
available to me. I'm traveling alone, although in a tour group, and
obviously I won't have access to things many of us take for granted. I
have a three DS, but I'm not sure if that is permitted. Do
you have any suggestions of what to bring or to do to avoid reaching boredom
in the five nights I'll be staying. I'll be staying in China for a
week. But my parents lived there currently and I've visited twice, that stage
of the trip is a non issue. They were a little perplexed by my
I brought a d S light, but they allowed it. Really, Yeah,
the phone is a definite no go. Phone is a definite no anything
with a GPS. They'll even check your cameras because some digital cameras have GPS.
Cameras. Okay, cameras are okay, Okay. Certain people have said
that cameras with like a lens one hundred and five millimeters or larger is not
acceptable than seeing too much. But I saw a guy with a telephoto or
something. So yeah, So I think I think your DS should be fine.
I think a kindle is fine. I think I'm pretty sure I brought
my kindle. Yeah, I definitely no cell phone. Mmm uh yeah,
I mean probably be alright with three DS. They I see you recall them.
Yeah, yeah, three d should be fine. But I seem to
recall them keeping us pretty busy with like the touring stuff, and then when
we got back to the hotel, it was either like grab some food and
some drink and go to sleep or just crash. Uh So yeah, from
what I recall that the schedule was was pretty tightly packed. Did you have
any choice on where you ate? No? Really, Like here's the restaurant,
You're ready, You're eating out tonight. That's intense. What happens if
you just leave your hotel and you can't want to go down? Oh damn,
you can't just leave your tell no oh boys like dude like that round
McDonald's. McDonald's. Yes, they're everywhere, not in North Korea. They're
actually not in North Korea. I didn't know that. Look, I know,
North Korea's crazy. I didn't know they didn't have like giant chainstors and
stuff. You remember, remember, Like I mean, you've seen like I
think the National geographic like inside North Korea. But you've seen like eighties movies
where they depict Russia and it's just like this communist like utopia. Right,
there's no like communist McDonald's No, that's capitalism. Man. I thought every
country I had like a Billy McDonald kimy don't play like that, Okay,
I had no idea. Honestly, North three is not a nice place to
live. Oh, I know, I'll think enough to know that. Let's
put it that way. Yeah. But yeah, man, have have fun.
I mean you could try to sneak out of your hotel. Yeah,
I mean what you might find. I'd find a quarter pounder In North Korea.
You can bring a book, I don't bring the book. Don't bring
a bible? Really, do not bring a Oh shit, isn't there like
no religion at all? There? Yes? What do they what do they
do? The opiate of the people? Like, what do they do if
you have one on your person? Though? There was a guy who an
evangelical type of man, who hid a Bible in a bathroom hoping that someone
would find it and it would enlighten them in jail North Korean prison, don't
bring a Bible, okay, so they view it as like propaganda basics,
it's on here, kendall, dude, probably be all right, a person
will use only man that sucks a lot. I'm not going to move there
ever, No, No, I don't think you are. Someday, I
believe you when you say that someday North Korea will change. I think by
forcive necessary. Yeah, I should ask the chef, the US Ambassador South
Korea about that. Ask him house faces right. Uh. Spinny someone who
identifies as Spinny from Toronto. I just got from back from GDC and says,
in my week in San Francisco, I saw at least a dozen different
grown adult men riding razor scooters around the streets of San Francisco. It has
become what's wrong with San Francisco more prolific recently. I don't know why.
You know what. Also I'm seeing a lot of is the the powered skateboard.
Is that the thing where it's like one little wheel and you stand on
either side of it and it just you zip around like something from the future.
Oh, I keep saying skates floor with a motor on it. Literally,
it's not a it's not a weird unicycle thing, see, I see
the weird It's just like a little like thing you stand on with one wheel
and it takes her. You mean, like a skateboard with two wheels,
one big one. Yeah, it's like a unicycle, but instead of sitting
on it, what it's a it's you just put your feet on two little
platforms. That possible. Nothing comes up off the wheel. It's just the
wheel and the two platforms and you just zimp up hills. You started talking
like a really broad wheel. Yeah, it's a yeah, you don't have
to balance it. No, I don't think so. But it's crazy looking.
That's like something from the Jetsons. Yeah, but the Razor scooter things
stupid as it's like, dude, a thirty five year old dudes and suits
with Razor scooter. I don't know. They go a lot faster than me
when I'm walking. Yeah, but come on, time is money record.
It isn't the financial distric usually that I see exactly. Then you just gotta
walk them up hills, though, I just want to close line fourteen people
every time they walk from the mcgoverer station to hear. Yeah, they're really
light, like Razor scooters are really black, so you know, walking them
up a hill wouldn't be a problem. I always thought of the Razor scooter
is like an indoor like down the hall type thing. Yeah, not necessarily,
you've got like a big server warehouse to deal with. Sure, sure,
been like this office. No, man, no, don't get a
segue. Seguys are cooler and scooters, aren't they. I don't hate segways
as much as I hate. If I see a grown man on a segue,
I hate them less than a grown man on a Razor scooter. I
thought Razor when I was a kid, I thought Razor scooters were super fun.
Oh yeah on them and stuff like that. It was it was cool.
So bunny, how I see those people, I go like, man,
yeah, razors, I mean at that point, but also they're not
yes, yeah, a nice tail like yeah, proper tail lips. At
that point, it is practically like just a BMX that you stand on,
right, Yeah, yeah, I mean the end times are coming, like,
you know, what do you want? That's what's wrong. It's the
worst. No, it's not what's wrong. It's just it's a you can
look at it and see that that's a sign that all this is a fair
go away. Yeah, you know, I think I again, what you're
saying, nothing's worse than the unicycle, though it's probably a unicycle. What
you ever tried to ride one? No? Really hard? Yeah, I'm
sure with a unicycle. I've no wrong with the unicycle except if someone's trying
to ride one as transportation. Like if someone's like, fucking I got a
unicycle, let's goof around, I'm like, yeah, dude, awesome.
Yeah, if you're in the circus or if you just run a dork around
in a park, that's fine. But they're like unicycle of the street.
It's like, well, fuck you asshole, show off piece of shit,
which because I'm stilts while you're at it, somebody who has to walk in
the city a lot, that's just like a bicyclist who's taking up less space.
Sure, I've had a penny farthing. What the fuck is that?
It's the giant bicycle with a black wheel. Wow, I've never actually seen
one of those in the wild. I've seen. Yeah, I've seen people
in San Francisco riding my entire life, even when you're kid. I've gotten
mad when you see the people like riding their bikes and they got their arms
folding, they're not holding handlebars, and we're not as you fucking missile,
drop kick that guy. That man. It's a contentious issue. How about
the field laid down bicycle the recumbent bikes. Yeah, I don't get mad
about those because it's usually like dudes in their mid fifties, and I think,
like maybe they have like leg problems. Yeah, maybe, like maybe
there's a health reason for this show up, asshole? Wait really? Oh
yeah, certain bike seats. If you don't get the one with the groove
down the middle, they can mess up your man parts. Yeah did what
M didn't want to know that. I didn't realize you guys had such strict
standards for acceptable biking practices. Just ride a bike like a normal person.
Shut up a bunch of bikers a fix. Oh that's the hipster thing,
right, and it's probably stupid. It's probably stupid. I just want to
fucking sick ass BMX bike with pegs and dice for valve caps or pegs the
Yeah, okay, so someone can ride on it right there? You know,
I can do awesome tricks. Oh, okay, ride on my bike
while I'm riding my bike. It's my bike, So you can stand out
of there like, yeah, I can stand on it and do sticker wheelies.
Or I can stand on the front pegs and hop around some flatland shit.
All right, Conrad and pro BMX in stores now, there you go
be mixed Replex not in stores now. Conrad from Saint Louis has a request
for Jeff. Okay, are you ready for this? Yeah? Okay,
hit me better be. Jeff used to use this weird snooty voice sometimes when
mocking things on the hot Spot, but I don't think he's used it in
a long time. It was very aristocratic and used phrases such as perhaps it
is you who is stupid and listen here friend. He used a similar yet
inferior snooty voice a few weeks ago, and it made me think of this.
Also, where the hell did the hot Spot archives go on game Spot?
And why the hell am I having to download them through a torrant?
Also also one eight seven seven five zero six eight three two four. I
think that still rings the phone next to you, doesn't really? Yeah,
should find out sometime or that's there's still a voicemail box. Yeah, that
probably a setup for whatever the hot spot thing was, whatever it turned into.
Sure, I have no idea what he's talking about voice bice. Really,
I don't know, all right, whatever didn't it was a long time
ago. I sure there's a lot of voices that come and go over the
years. Yeah, I don't know. I uh so we I recently got
access to like an FTP full of like two thousand and six era game spot
ship some of that, and there is just a podcast directory on there that's
full of stuff. It's very scatter shot though. Yeah, that archive is
nowhere near complete. Unfortunately, it has Brian Eckberg is a sports podcast on
it. Yes, I wasn't there some other stuff and random selection of games
of the year two thousand and six. Yeah, videos and stuff. Yeah,
yeah, I don't know. I mean, at some point they redesigned
the side so many times that they lost a bunch of old videos and that's
crazy, but that's how it went. I don't know. Oh yeah,
I didn't realize that the hotspot was no longer just available for downloading. But
then the video game podcasts are kind of ephemeral, right, It's like they
talk about the issues the day and then they're sort of outdated. Yeah,
I guess, I don't know. They're fun to go back to the only
gaming magazine. Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't mean they don't
have any value, but you know, yeah, it's one of those things
like they don't currently have a podcast, so they don't currently have a podcast
section they could use to host old episodes of stuff, which you know is
a bummer, But that's I don't know. I just just like with emulators
and stuff, the Internet will take it upon itself to archive things when when
nobody else does so, it's not ideal that at least it exists. I
suppose Mike P from New Jersey, I want to know about one versus one
hundred? Mm, I'm here reminiscing about two two thousands of nine's hottest gaming
experience that was one versus one hundred? Why was Microsoft so compelled to do
something so unique on its platforms, scrap it and then not iterated on it
or try something again in the same vein? Was there not enough advertising revenue
coming in? Were they giving away too many Microsoft points? Was Chris Cashman's
salary too high? All on all, one versus one hundred was a great
online experience that gave me a reason to log into Xbox Live, and I
wish something similar was still offered. Do you guys think we'll ever see any
game show like games on our gaming platforms again? Or is the Chris Cashman
American Dream truly did I liked one versus was dumb? Did you ever get
on? No? Well, like I never got to be the one.
If I was the one one, damn it? How did? There was
no way to like finagle your way into that, right, it just happened.
So I just think I just randomly got it, and I think I
blew it pretty bad. Man. That was a neat idea, it was.
But yeah, I mean that thing was supposed to be AD supported,
and if you remember, all the ads on it were ship and repetitive and
mostly different Microsoft. Yah. Right, I think that they probably just didn't
ever sell ads and it never made businesses. I still think it's an interesting
idea that could work, though, Yeah, if I got behind it the
right. Yeah, that type of like live Yeah, that feeling of something
being live and happening right now, I think, like totally like knowing he
was in the booth somewhere doing the announcing, yeah, right then. I
always thought it was cool, you know, it was a cool idea the
e a UFC game when they were going to do live commentary or like they
were going to build up their online battles into just like Okay, this Sunday
is the thing. So we're gonna do live commentary over it while you fight.
You'll be able to record a little pre fight video. And you know,
like it was a really neat idea for a game that wasn't good enough
to It wasn't. It wasn't. It was a thea Sports MMA game,
not the UFC game. Did any of that ever happened? Yeah, Like
briefly they did one before the game was out for reviewers, and I don't
know what they did with it after launch, but I don't think it lasted
very long. Yeah, it sounds like the kind of thing that's pretty hard
to sustain if it's not generating money of some kind. Yeah, like the
resources that go into like hey, we're gonna do a live show for this,
it's like, no, you guys need to work on the sequel or
you guys are all getting laid off, right, you know, Like that's
yeah Madden stuff. It's a ship, you fucker's Yeah, Madden got a
ship. Uh. Bobby has a question for the Ages. What's the best
pizza topping, real or imagined Pepperoni? I want to call your attention to
the word imagined cheese macaroni and cheese. Peze is pretty good. They just
put a bunch of Any of these toppings are imaginary. I don't think you're
thinking big enough. We have to imagine like any kind of food has been
put on a pie. Unicorn, Yeah that tastes good. Now we're talking.
That's probably pretty gamy. Yeah, Unicorn's like a horse. Hope you
really wow? Yes, okay, that's a good one. No, the
last thing I want when I eat a finish eating a pizza is hope if
you're putting weird things on your pizza, because there is no hope. Yes,
you're all you're fresh out. Well, once you've consumed it all,
there is no more left. All right, Okay, that's fair. That's
a fair point. You really think it spits pepperoni Like people said, like,
hey, get a pepperoni pizza for a reason, Like there's a reason
that that's the thing people say when they talk about a pizza. Pepperoni's like
number five. That's like, plain cheese is way better than pepperoni. I
don't think she's counts as a topping. Extra cheese. I get like cheese,
I know you can, but it's assumed. It is assumed when you
get a pizza that it's gonna have cheese on it. Yeah, I think
that's a fair statement. I've never even seen it. I totally agree with
you. But yes, so I don't think she's get a cheeseless pizza.
She's Italy, right, But cheese does not rank in the toppings list extra
cheese does? It costs extra just as much as sausage or pepperoni? Would
that the top it's a box you check on pizza Hud. But if no
one's like, hey, let's get a sausage pizza, Like, no one
says that let's get a sausage pizza. No one said no people said that.
That will say like people will say like, let's get a pizza,
and then they'll be like, what kind of pizza do you want? And
you'll be like, sausage, oh, because it's not assumed that sausage is
on it. But when you say let's get a let's get a pepperoni pizza,
Like, that's that's the thing. People say, like how you're like
verging on an Italian accent when you start to see that's how it comes out,
man, that's how it comes out. You're not quite getting there though,
sausage on When we went to that fucking pizza place next to the arcade,
they had cheese pizza slices and they had pepperoni pizza slices because they know
what sells. They didn't have any fucking sausage pizza slices. That's the you
know, the trinity of pizza is. It's just their sausage. They're pepperoni.
There's cheese sausage. Yeah, oh yeah, I mean that's you know,
I'm not like, I'm not saying look like that that's that I only
want pepperoni. But I'm saying, like, if you're talking about like what
topping is the fucking Hall of Fame number one with a bullet, fucking first
time voting sausage, it's pepperoni every time. You know it's underrated. Substitute
marinara sauce for barbecue and get chicken on it. That's a good move.
That's that's a that's a power move. Maybe you get bacon or sausage on
that too, Yes, yes, bacon can be a very good green onion.
What what those things go with? Those things? You're ruining, you
know, you're detracting from the pizza, meat and cheese. List them out
Dan one through five. Oh wow. Number one sausage. Number close to
is extra cheese. Number three is a bacon, Number four is macaroni and
cheese, and number five is pepperoni. That's you're just making shit up.
Just five number five. I've eaten so many of those, so much.
No problems with bacon on a pizza. But you can't just get bacon on
the most Dan reichered ass list I've ever heard of anything in You gotta support
that you get. If you want to support a pepperoni pizza with some bacon
on it, you're in business. I get bacon and extra cheese, a
lot fucking bacon and pepperoni. Jesus for it's probably pretty good. It's like
bacon and sausage, Bacon and sausage. So much grease. I am not
anti pepperoni by any mean so much grease. It's yeah, I like a
lot of vegetables on the pizza because Round Table would make a they make a
pepperoni pizza that has three different types of pepperoni on it. Wait if you
want the so so it's just some regular ass pepperoni. I didn't know there
were other than there's some like bigger than normal pepperoni big, and then there's
those tiny ass pepperonis that curl up the little bowls when they cook, and
which is like they filled with Yeah, they fill with That's the actual like
downside to it is like you've got these little bowls of grease all over your
pizza. Here's what psychopaths do. Don't do the thing where there's pepperoni and
then the cheese is on top of that. I hate that. I don't.
I mean, yeah, like I don't see any one of that,
but like I don't care. Check it out. Check it out. What
if you put down the pepperoni and then the cheese and then more pepperoni,
No, wait, more pepper does I count? No? Because if getting
more peers up the invisible pepperoni fucks it up because you're biting and you don't
know where the pepperoni starts. So if you just nibble like the very end
of a pepperoni and you pull it away, it just slides like half the
fucking cheese off under your chin. Like an idiot. I didn't realize I
need to know where the pepperoni is. Didn't realize eating tea and pizza was
so technical. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I use a forking knife
most of the time. Do you really? Yeah? Really, even in
your home it's greasy, it is. You're right, you're not wrong.
But you can always wash your hands. Yeah, but if I if I
use a fork and knife, I don't have to. Okay, I probably
he's sometimes I'm typing while I meant so, you know, okay, do
another stuff that's fair. I've probably said this before. This is one of
the best moves is you get the Totinos party pizzas. I did this almost
every day for breakfast in college. You put two Totino's party pizzas. Which
time the day did you order breakfast? Did you eat? I mean I
usually woke up it like one or two allege so, but you take two,
preferably combination tacos really good too. Of the Totino's party pizzas. Put
him in there. Combination. What is combination? It's like the little cube
pepperoni and you can actually you can bake it like this, or you can
do it afterwards. You fold the one on top of the other, so
it's like a big sandwich and all the toppings around the middle. You can
just hold it like a dam burger and you eat two party pizzas at once
for breakfast. That sounds okay, it's real good. Did you say there
was a taco pizza. I don't know if they still make you say the
lord taco. Yeah, they have taco pizza party pizzas. It's for parties
or breakfast or all the breakfast party. Yeah. Yeah. People that would
eat a taco pizza probably not a party. I have no trouble believing that.
Yeah. Uh. Darren from Brunswick, Ohio has a hypothetical for you
can win twenty million dollars by sinking one shot from half court with a basketball.
You get ten attempts. If you miss, you have to spend two
years in prison. You can't train. You have to do it today.
Ten shots from half court, yes, no, ten chances from half court
no, no, not even yet. No, no, I wouldn't sink
one of those. I wouldn't do it for a month in prison being the
possibilding. That's a that is a shockingly well thought out answer from you.
Solitary. Yeah, solitary is like arguably worse. But can I bring in
like a three D s Yes, but no chargers. Okay, Uh,
as many fucked up things as there are wrong with the prison system, like
solitary is it's real bad. I mean from Yeah, it's super terrible psychologically,
but I would rather put my mind at risk in solitary, yes,
than everything everything else at risk or whatever general population. I'm saying it's not
as someone who's never been to prison. Yeah, that seems like the way
to go. I'm just saying it's I could be wrong. I'm saying it's
equally undesirable. You can at least just do like push ups forever and solitary.
All you do when you're in general population is just trying not to get
murdered or any number of it. If I was in solitary, I would
try to write a bunch of raps. Did you get pencil on paper in
there? No? But you know you memorize them because you got the time.
Okay, this question got really grim. I've watched probably should have seen
that going. I've watched a lot of prison documentaries and also OS and prison
seems terrible. Yeah, Solitary confinement seems like, you know, like a
place where you wouldn't automatically get hepatitis worse or worse. I don't know.
Maybe you know. Again, I've never been to prison, but oh,
but there's nights where you can't sleep and stuff, and there's you can't go
anywhere or do anything. Like holy, I can't imagine much worse than being
in the hole or whatever. Yeah, it depends on how long you're in
there. Yeah you know. Yeah, just get a baseball and bounce against
the wall like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. Yeah, you'd be fine,
pretty cool to six months with my eyes closed. I gotta escape prison.
I've thought about this thought. I bet you anything I could escape prison.
I would find a way, not through, not through like physical skill,
like I couldn't climb a thing, get over barbed wire fence. I'd
be bad at that. But I'd have some crafty way. You'd like some
sort of talking and some like fucking metal year stuff or something. Yeah,
but or somewhere fall in your stomach through event Yep. I think it'd be
craftier than that. I think it would involve more talking, maybe wheeling and
dealing, maybe getting some finding a way to get some suits or hiding and
laundry baskets or something you think you can like social engineer your way out of
prison somehow. If I got into life in prison tomorrow, I'd be out
by twenty sixteen. It's a bold claim. I could do it. We're
gonna have to put it to the test. Sounds like premium content that does
see you in a year, all right, I hope? Huh what a
weird question. How about Jeff and his color blindness? Hi? You up
for that? Sure? This comes from Jim Patadiso, who said we could
read his name all right, and since he is named Jim Patadiso, I
had to read it. Okay, It's from Maryatta Georgia. Uh, he
says, hold bomb crew. Jeff talks a lot about being color blind,
and it reminded me of an episode of w NYC's Radio Lab podcast called Colors
and at the host interview of scientist who has discovered a way to inject red
cones into a color blind ape's eyes and granted the ability of normal color vision.
YEA, The FDA hasn't signed off on the technique on humans just yet,
but it begs the question of whether Jeff would be inclined to have the
procedure. Does he feel that missing color palettes in some way present prevents him
from fully enjoying games, movies, life. In either case, I feel
he owes it to us as fans to undergo radical untested eye surgery. I
love the site and show, so apparently the problem with that is that it
is causing never ending eye pain. That problem, so wait, have they
have they moved on to human trials. I don't know why they may have,
but they called that off at some point because it was it had it
had problems. That sounds like some side effects, some undesired outcomes with that
stuff. So yeah, so they they've got it backed away from that.
There's some companies out there, different companies making different types of glasses and chromas,
one locally that's been getting a lot of attention. You get one of
those I did. Yeah, and the thing that I didn't necessarily like realize
their sunglasses and they say, hey, wear these outside, don't wear them
inside because they're not tuned for indoor lighting. Don't you kind of care less
outside what color things are absolute with, you know, outside of very specific
context like traffic lights and stuff. Yeah, and that's they look plenty of
red to me. Yes, but yeah, that's the thing that the but
I spent some time wearing them, and it was actually kind of interesting,
and it got me thinking about color in a way that I hadn't for years.
The thing that happens is, you know, you get to a point
where you have spent so much time like being told that like you are you
fucked up, like your color you this is not the color you say,
it is that eventually you just don't you stop trusting anything about color when it
comes to yourself. So sounds kind of debilitating, well it it. I
mean, it's just color like like yes and no, you know, but
by not trusting it, it prevents me from making mistakes elsewhere. And so
getting those glasses and it kind of forced me to think about color in a
way that I hadn't in a very long time. And and so now I
can kind of look at and go like, Okay, what what's happening to
me is that I don't see red particularly well, which is you know,
obviously that's that's the thing that you know, people say when they you know,
it's like there are multiple types of color blindness. That's the kind that
I knew I had, but it was still hard to kind of put into
words. But like red is really faint for me. So that's why cases
like blue and purple look really similar, because I just don't see the red
in the purple. So these glasses are tuned in such a way that they
are designed to kind of bring out the red in things or or enhance red
r So things like oh wait, this sweatshirt I have is totally purple.
That's fucking insane, and I could see that, and it's something that I
don't wear them anymore. But because of the time I did spend wearing them
and thinking about it, I can now I think about color a little bit
more, or can and kind of know what the deficiency is, so I
can kind of solve for that in some cases. Interesting, it doesn't necessarily
help in games and stuff like that, because you'd have been some situations where
I don't even know that it's red or not. I have to look at
a color wheel, I guess. But like the green and yellow in Puzzle
Fighter look very similar to me, which is nice because you can just line
up weird combos of green and yellow and eventually they'll line up in such a
way that creates a weird chain reaction and you win. It's a it's a
very kama kaze technique to have. Sure, but yeah, I don't know.
It's uh, yes, if if they had something that was like clinically
proven to be like at the very least safe and not damaging and not you
know, forever painful, I would I would probably let them shoot shit in
my eyes, even if it didn't have a one hundred percent success rate.
Yeah, yeah, as long as it wouldn't make things worse. Sure,
you know, sure, why not go for it. But at the same
time, not something you sit around stewing about every day from the sound of
it. Now, like I have those glasses, I'm not sure where they
are somewhere there, so they're working on like a next phase of those that
are more tuned for computer monitors and indoor use and stuff like that. So
then it's like, well maybe I don't know. So it's an interesting We're
very expensive, and I don't know if I would spend that much money all
the way all over again just to get indoor ones. Sure, but all
right then Jack as quite a question and some trivia. He's from Brooklyn.
I feel like games press, like hip hop or wrestling, seems to be
a young man's game. It kind of bothers me when I think about my
favorite rappers now in their forties and fifties still spitting the same stuff they were
in their twenties and thirties. So I was wondering if you guys, as
veterans in the industry ever want to worry about being out of touch? Have
any of you thought about retirement? And if so, what does it look
like? Do you even accept the premise? I could also read the trivia
now if you'd like, go for it. On an unrelated note, I
have trivia you guys might like. The guy who plays the Japanese voice of
Solid Snake Slash Big Boss does a lot of Nick Cage dubs for Nick Cage
movies. Awesome. That's a Akio Oska that I believe he's talking about the
Solid Snake voice actor. But yeah, I was kind of starting to think
about that stuff some more walking around packs, I feel like the bigger that,
like, the more evident it is that things like twitch streaming are huge
at things like packs more. Yeah, kind of I don't want to say
alienated, but maybe out of place. I feel, you know, to
a certain extent, people that are into those communities like don't really know or
care who we are. Yeah, I think that that's fine. Yeah,
it's yeah. I think it's you know, like you could eventually argue that,
like, you know, the people that would like we may get to
a point where we are not attracting new people because they're just into Twitch and
they're into YouTube or whatever, but just want to consume everything through channels different
uh different. Hell. I mean it seems like largely like an age bracket
thing to me. I think it's largely the games themselves too. Yeah,
I mean, like the you know, the notion of people just playing one
game. I was gonna say those communities tend to be pretty esports heavy,
yeah, or you know, people just play League or whatever Minecraft. Yeah.
Yeah, so you know, yeah, I mean we're kind of generalists
in a sense. So if games continue to become more and more specialized like
that, and you know, people want you know, like like we were
saying not that long ago, it's like, we don't really have anything to
add to the League of Legends conversation, yes online, unless it's like a
primer of like, hey, we're trying to get into this thing. Maybe
you could watch and maybe that would be funny. Maybe some people who are
also not into league would learn some thing along the way, but the people
that are already into league have a place to get that information. Absolutely to
be a waste of everyone's time from us too, you know, even for
my part as somebody who was weighed the data and plays it in some degree
of competence. Like even then, I there's nothing I can offer from like
a high level like analytical perspective. Yeah that isn't a hundred times better somewhere
else, you know, Like I've got nothing to offer the hardcore Dota player.
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, So, I mean, like those
changes are interesting to watch. I don't think it's necessarily the sort of thing
that will put us out of business or anything like that, at least not
anytime soon. But in terms of us and age and all that sort of
stuff, I don't know, Like I'll let you know when we get there.
Yeah, yeah, we'll see. I don't think there's anything about age,
yeah, prevents you from keeping up with exactly and accepting new kinds of
games and understanding. Yeah, that's that's fair. The big thing for me
is that I've always felt like we're not we're not too much younger than kind
of the oldest people that grew up playing video games, right, Yeah,
yeah, Jeff, you're practically right there starting in the late seventies. So
we just kind of haven't gotten the point yet where people who are lifelong video
game players become like elderly. You know, It's like it just looks that
way because no one is right, right, Like, none of the people
who are elderly at the moment came to video games at all or you know,
late in life at best. So it's just like it's kind of an
unanswered question right now. Yeah, like what like what placed video games have
in the average person's life as they you know, reach their twilight years.
I guess sure is where we're going with this. I think it's why you
see now you see more people talking about, you know, the notions of
just like how do I continue to play video games now that I have children?
Right because these are problems that you know, previous generations haven't necessarily had
to try to figure out. And then you get a lot of you know,
a lot of the features being introduced cater more to that specific kind of
lifestyle. You know, it's like steam streaming is good for people who need
flexibility and where and when they can play a game because there's other people in
the house, or they've got other responsibilities to deal with, you know,
just overall length of games, you know, I think that yeah, yeah,
that's a good one. Shorter games have become more acceptable as time has
gone on. The you know, even the suspended rezoom stuff is a is
a huge time saver. Yeah, I think it'll be really interesting to see
like that that group of people that are now on the older end of game
playing are number one a large portion and getting larger as time goes on,
and to have spending power because they all have very established jobs. So I
think you will only see more games being targeted toward that specific demographs and what
that looks like is is going to be interesting. I think, yeah,
that that being the trend. You know, at some point you have more
money than time, when the opposite was true growing up. Yeah, almost
with that question, because being old means you got to do stuff, you
know, unless your dance. Let's see what all this stuff is, all
these adult stuff about it, I'm still there the same shit I was doing
I was twelve. Yeah, Ever, now I also have money, so
it's great. Uh, here we go with J. C. From London,
who says he hoo bomba de rios. I guess that works. Sure
he's writing in about a death in the family. Cool. She's slowly leaving
me, a grand old dame that works tirelessly over the years. When I
first got her, she was backwards compatible, had Linux on a lovely finish.
Now she's dusty, no lenox and barely runs. She stutters into life
after multiple startup attempts me praying she'll awaken from her slumber, defying death just
one last time, like that common song about hip hop and you're like,
he's rapping about a woman. Oh wait, it's got a message. She
won't play the latest games. The Last of Us is a no go Saints
for a four as a joke, but she's still faithful for my final Fantasy
ten remake playthrough. Soon she will leave me forever, but I won't ever
forget my Fat Launch PS three. Why I want your Fat Launch pay PS
three play Last of Us? Yeah? That ones didn't That didn't make a
lot of sense to me. I'm just here to read the emails though.
Okay, so my question is this, what is the console or piece of
tech that you were the saddest about losing, losing as far as it like
stopped working. I guess. So, yeah, that's what he's referring to
here, Like I don't. I only felt annoyance when old consoles died because
then I just had to go buy another one. I went through nine three
sixties. Jesus, I still have one of those people. Yeah, I
still have my sixty gigabyte launched PS three. I have for like seven three
sixties and they all work. Really, I've had one go bad through Friendly
Night. As soon as I got the Slim. The Slim never wroke down
on me. But I went through nine the first one, the first black,
first full redesign. Yeah, the one that not the E not the
one that came put out along the black smaller with the new casing outside,
because because they went through multiple revisions where it was like, oh, we
think we fixed it, and they kept up. No, it was the
black Slim one, the one that of the one E three they told everyone
like, if you're at this press conference, you get a free one or
whatever. One uh that has ever failed me. Yeah, I've still got
one of those, and it's fine. Yeah, but nine originals, that's
a lot Yeah, that sounds like a real pain in the ass. Yep,
I thought I was doing bad being on my fourth PlayStation one. By
the end of that generation one through two of those, my launch ps one
still works really dude. Within like two to three months of buying that fucking
thing, I was having to like turn it upside down or prop the disc
lid open or whatever. Like rented Resident Evil and just sat there watching loading
screens as the doors failed to open. You know what our tanks are sixty
four and Super Nintendo those things. Oh yeah, you know cartridge based.
Yeah, you know, there's no fans even like any s. It's kind
of hard getting any stuff to work. Yeah, that's fair. You know.
You know that's usually mostly just cleaning contacts and stuff, right yeah,
or you know the springs or whatever that seat the cartridges get all fucking weird
because that thing was just built crazy. Yes, ran into ran into Chris
Cohle or like three times at packs. Yeah, as he was doing a
bunch of old game hunting, like every time I saw him later in the
afternoon, his bag supposed heavier yea with games. Talking to him about some
of that old stuff. But yeah, you know he's he was saying,
like, yeah, rom cartridges basically kind of go forever. Yeah, as
long as there's not a battery involved, trying to keep saved data going and
stuff. Yeah, I don't know how. Yeah, that's started started in
on my watch slash occasionally play of Final Fantasy ten two. Nice last night.
Finally, how did you feel about the ending? I was out of
town, so I didn't get to see the man. It was a long
time coming, wasn't it. Yeah, like it was a couple of months
or something. Yeah, you're playing stuff like, yeah, it's still getting
wrong. It was that game. Is Fantasy ten looks like a like a
jittery fucking mess. Yeah, Like just the combat, like their active time
battle stuff of just like watching those battles unfold compared to the standard kind of
ordered combat of ten. Like ten two just looks like a fucking rainbow addition,
Final Fantasy ten like some weird, hacked fucking thing, whereas like everyone's
fighting all the time. I don't know that's that game. Dress Fears Fears.
I think that was the one, right, yep that had those dress
fears garment grids, garment grid dress that's right, Fears dress spears Oh,
it's like a sphere with dress in there, like break it over your head
or something, and then you're wearing the new dress. I think that game
seems really dumb. That's probably how that works. Like I had a pretty
low opinion of it just from like absorbing little bits of it through watching people
play it when it was new. Yes, But now that I'm attempting to
pay attention to the systems and learn it for myself. Boy, yeah,
wow, like even by the standards set by Final Fantasy ten. H really
yeah, man, I was reminded of how when was it was it?
Maybe it was when we did the quick look of the original PS three remake
last year that the crazy pop star stuff doesn't actually go on that long?
Right, Yeah? How far in is she? Like past that? First?
We start from the start, so it's like we've played like the first
hour. I think that stuff actually does fall off pretty quick. It's not
the whole game, but yeah, it's the intro cut scene and then you're
like, we're treasure hunters, we're hunting for treasure spears, we're their goal
wings. We're out there doing stuff, and Lulu's pregnant now, and you're
just like fucking fuck all this shit starting to enjoy these weekly updates, it's
still dumb, Like, yeah, it's not like a weird pop star thing.
Still stupid. Yeah, Well, the tone was definitely lighthearted and it
gets a really fan surfacing yeah later on or right at the beginning, it
just seems out of the gate like a I mean, the pop star stuff.
Whether it holds through or not, it's just super creepy fan service.
And then from there it's just like, I don't know, here are these
two girls from this game, and then one new one because why not sure,
and they're going to run around and run through these locations that you may
be familiar with, but now everything is slightly different, down thrilled and unthrilled
for you. It seems like a bad fucking game. Uh, Joe and
Delaware sending something that I thought interesting. I don't know if anybody else will,
but here we go, he says, Hi Brad. A few weeks
back, you guys were talking about Jonathan blows the Witness and what its name
might mean. Well, I thought you might appreciate a little knowledge bomb from
a real life professor of computer science. Disclaimer, I have no idea if
this is what Jonathan Blow is actually thinking regarding the title. In computer science,
we have problems that we call MP complete, basically problems that we don't
really know how to solve efficiently with real world computers yet, but that humans
are sometimes able to solve efficiently by achieving some insight. Lots of games and
puzzles can be shown to be MP complete, which is probably why we find
them interesting. Sudoku, for instance, can be proven to be MP complete.
A characteristic of MP complete problems is that you can solve them by repeatedly
guessing an answer and then checking whether that answer is right or not. There
might be billions of possible guesses, but it's really easy to check whether any
particular guess is correct. If you're solving an MP complete problem by guess and
check, and you happen to guess the right answer the first time. I'm
that guess is called the witness or the certificate or the proof. Like I
said, I have no idea if that's what Blows referring to, but considering
it's a puzzle game, it makes a lot of sense to me. M
I thought that was cool, Yeah, because all those puzzles in that game
do take place on computers. That thing does seem kind of mysterious. Yeah,
and I'm curious about any insight into what it is at this point because
it's been a while. Yeah, it has, and I think it's coming
out soon. I hope anybody the witness Dan, I'm looking forward to it.
Okay, I love Braid. Braid was a good game. I want
to see what that thing is, Oh yeah, totally well, or what
else it is? Yes, that's that's the real question. When he's going
around saying like, yeah, it'll take you forty hours to do all the
puzzles and stuff, It's like, is that just forty hours of more of
what you've shown, like walking up two puzzles? Like like is that like
playing on endgame computer screens and like a little abstract like spatial puzzles or something
like what does that mean? It could mean a lot of things. Adam
Wrights in with a thought experiment of sorts in regard to Drew's secretly hoping for
Sonic to be good, to comment, I have a quick and simple exercise
that can be performed to set people straight on waiting for a good Sonic.
Step one, play ten minutes of Super Mario World, Super Metroid or Legend
of Zelda A link to the past. Step two. After the ten minutes,
ask yourself the following questions, how did I feel about the game?
How did the game control? Would I continue playing this right now? Step
three? Play ten minutes of Sonic the Hedgehog two, probably the most common
source of nostalgia. Step four, After the ten minutes, ask yourself the
following questions, how did I feel about the game? How did the game
control? Would I continue playing this right now? Since your answers to step
four are shitty, shit, and shit, no, you now understand why
there probably won't be a good future Sonic game because there was not a good
Sonic game to begin with. Try this on your favorite childhood titles and ruin
your afternoon m inaccurate. Yeah, Also, I don't like your tones,
sir. Yeah, all right, Well he's got I've got contact information at
his company and everything, so if you want to get in touch, I'll
let you do that. Email's confidential. Get ahold of this person's supervisor.
Yeah, I have the reason I included this was I was it suddenly made
me second guess myself like Sonic two not a good game? Yeah? Man,
I go back and play those games often, Like I remember not hating
Sonic two, Sonic two is very good. I have gone back to the
early Sonic games and find them to be immediately boring. Son Sonic One's kind
of rough. Yeah, three and Sonic Nickels are both good too. But
I think I see what this guy is saying, is that like they don't
hold up. Well, it's it's what's past that ten minutes like you get
all the levels are kind of the same, whereas with like Super Metroid or
Linked to the past, there's always thought, oh, I wonder where this
is gonna go, or wonder what this next dungeon or item is gonna be.
Like where Sonic it's like I'm gonna through this thing's my rings, I
have to I got to go fast. I think those are poor comparisons,
those those last two. I think Mario might be a good comparison, only
because it is a side scroll gen you are jumping and killing enemies and which
I can't imagine any psychopath that would say that Sonic two is better than Super
Mario World. No, but Mario World it's the same genre. But I
think it mixes things up enough. I think the items and Steph are more
interesting, the worlds and bosses are so much better, and I just just
different. The point isn't necessarily that you're like comparing him to these games.
It's more than just you know, I think you can look at those three
games. Is like games that hold up. Yeah, those games pass the
test that he laid out. Yeah, he's say does not. Yeah,
I bet it's still pretty good. Whenever I play a Sonic game these days,
if I'm going back to the old Sonic game, I usually will play
like the First World and then go like, yeah, okay, I think
I'm good. Hill out of the way. That's a good point. Mario
games have evolved. I would love to see Sonic evolve into something more substantial
than those old games. That problem is like, I just think that the
core concept, doesn't you know. And I think that's they've been trying to.
I think they put things from those early games. Yeah. I think
they put out something like just a more upraised version of those old Sonic games.
Today it would not be satisfied. Yeah, crap. It also just
felt like shit, anybody played Freedom Planet. Yes, it's weird. I
mean, it's it's totally a new Sonic game, but also I didn't want
to play much of it, so I'd like to go play that. I
saw a bunch of bit of packs. Oh or they still thought there showing
it. Yeah, surprised. I thought I thought it came out. It
did, but I think it was like in the middle of some giant release,
so it kind of got buried. Yeah, Packs is a weird one
because, Yeah, like lots of games that have been out for several months,
we'll have booth displays. Specifically, I think I'm thinking of like put
Sonic in something like a ri in the Blind Forest or Metroid style world at
that point, aren't you're just like shoehorning the character into another game? Though
it really I don't care that it's Sonic, Like I I like, there
really isn't anything that in that style of motion. Yeah, I just like
synetic energy stuff. I just wonder IFECT does that core conceit of if this
guy's got to run really fast and that's kind of all they've got, if
that really holds up in the day and age, like, because I mean
that just came out of like, well, Mario was huge. What can
we do to make us seem better than them? Right, blast process,
we can make it go faster. They didn't have a blast processor, and
then ten don't. It's true. All those things are true. I finally
started reading that big Genesis book, Oh, that big coffee table, Like,
yeah, is there is there a lot of texts in there? Is
there much of them? Yeah, there's there's a yeah I've heard the text
is not so great. Well, it's it's there's some interesting stuff in there
where it's like Scott Bayliss basically takes credit for coming up with the term blast
processing and apologizes just like, yeah, we're kind of blasting things it this
way and you know, and then marketing ran with it. Man, So
that is a heavy burden to bear. Yeah, for all history, be
the person who made bless processing happen. Uh, event, I think it
can be done. Yeah, man, I don't know. I hold I
hope. Like I almost saw a way that I could have not hated Sonic
four if the physics had been better. Yeah, it just felt like to
knuckles or three. Yeah, I would love that have been okay, but
it would have No, I'm not the first world have been like okay,
cool, they made they say they nailed it. Congratulations. The first world
Sonic problem. Yeah, you need some you need some hook You need some
and I hate this phrase RPG elements. You need some depth to it rather
than just run from one end of the levels, Have multiple exits, have
like some overworld that you're doing, have upgrades like something. Mario game has
never had any kind of RPG elements like three D World or Galaxy or any
Mario game really has got a lot more going for him though, a lot
more to do than just run really fast. Yeah, I mean, you're
right, different stuff Like I actually think like secret exits in Mario World is
probably the thing about that game that I look at and go like, that's
I wish that they did more stuff like that in that exact way. So
like if you brought that to a Sonic game, that would be kind of
cool. Yeah, because then you can have like you're, okay, you
got your easy path through the level. It's just fucking it's fast and whatever
you're doing whatever, but here's something you kind of have to strive for or
at least find this alternate path or something. M All right, then yeah,
there you have it. Uh, last email, I'm gonna maybe put
this to Jeff. Anybody can chime in if they want it comes from.
And if it comes in from Ian, who was a new Bomb Cast,
if you were slash listener, if he's viewing this thing, then that's scary.
He figured it out. He's sitting in this building across the streets.
All these cameras in here. You don't never know when one of them might
be on. Shit, All right, it's the red light just means a
charging. Yeah, it's all good. So I heard about the Bomb Cast
from the Super Best Friend Cast, since they occasionally talk about you. I
had never heard of Giant Bomb before, so I didn't know just how much
content you produce. Since I assume you get new listeners all the time,
and since you must assume every podcast is someone's first, I think you said
that. Sure, yeah, do you think you could introduce some of the
content you put out on the site to inform us new viewers? What's your
what's your thirty second pitch? There's some videos on this website you should really
watch it. Well, there you have it. Yeah, that's what you
got. Yeah, all right, yeah, Like it doesn't come up that
often, but it comes up just enough to be reminded of an unconsistent basis
that even though so, yeah, there are there are people on the message
boards that that you know, talk a lot about you know, what are
the what are the quintessential videos that that people must see? That sort of
stuff. Yeah, maybe that's the best good place for it. I feel
like I'm in a great position to judge that. Yeah, well, like
I was gonna, I was gonna say, you know, like me and
you have been doing this podcast for close to seven years at this point,
it's kind of hard to remember that some people are just now coming in right
first time. Yeah, yeah, but there you have it. Uh huh,
go to the forums. That's your official line. All right. Well,
on that note, I guess that's gonna do it for emails a little
a little thin this week, but you know, everybody's coming in from trade
shows, yep, getting back from travel. Not not a lot of things
happening on the ground here. Yeah, I really want to I'm really curious
to see if I will like Hotline in Miami too. Yeah. I Yeah,
it's getting good reviews. I saw people seem to be pretty happy with
Yeah, Like, what what makes you cautious? Like it's I feel like
I played enough Hotline in Miami one to feel like I had gotten enough out
of it conceptually, yes, that I can identify with, So like,
if it's more of that, I don't know that that's enough. I think
I'm with you on that. Yeah, like just more levels in that style.
Yeah, that's not that's not going to do it. Huh. Yeah.
And I haven't been following it closely enough to know what specifics have changed,
you know, like, oh we added this isn't this right? I
don't know what. Like you look at it and go like, all right,
yeah, it looks like you know, yeah, there's some like dual
gun stuff like kind of shooting two directions at once and that sort of thing.
But if they manage to tell like a really interesting story, but if
everything else was kind of more of the same. They're building this as the
explosive conclusion to the hotline Miami saga. Huh? Was it osaga? I
didn't finish the first Now, I don't know. I didn't know how the
first game ends really weird, and then when you go through all the steps
to see the real ending and all that stuff, it's even weirder. Is
it what you would call a coherent narrative? Because like I didn't play you
know, I played a few hours of It's again that kind of explains itself
in retrospect, Like when you get the ending, it's like they tell you
what's been really going on? The whole game feels like kind of a bad
trip, you know, like it feels like it's almost intentionally left sort of
obscure and hazy, right, like what's going Like maybe when they spell it
out, it's like, Okay, well I don't don't It's like maybe your
character is not a reliable narrator for these events, like it was. The
revelation at the end wasn't super impactful for me. So it was just,
you know, the story end of it didn't really do it. It was
more just like it's some cool action, Yeah, some some interesting puzzles based
around these concepts, and yeah, I don't know, I don't know.
I'm only for checking out. But yeah, there's that, there's cities,
there's god what else. Yeah, yeah, I worry up on the site
already. Yeah, so you can check out some of this other stuff.
I don't do Homeworld And then how are you guys like in Metal Gear Solid
three so far? I get yeah really good? Yeah, I mean it's
definitely metal gear. I get frustrated, But do you find yourself getting frustrated
more than with the first two I don't think so. I think I just
I knowed what to expect from metal gear now, so this didn't feel like
a huge sideways You're just like what the fuck? Like just because of the
way the environments are built and stuff. My memory time, I remember being
this is not metal here anymore. I don't want any part of it feeling
like like like it's all a bunch of outdoor like more naturalistic environments. There's
the crazy CAMO system. Yeah, but they're still like see there's like all
the fucking maintenance you gotta do on yourself, like still areas like healing your
wounds and mean, there's that. It's kind of obnoxious, But CQUC seems
like a natural progression as far as just a control see if you see,
Yeah, why because it sucked? What sucks about it? It was bad?
You're gonna have to elaborate. I didn't like it, the things you
can do or the way you do. I don't remember control. I don't
I remember the controls being like shitty. Yeah, I don't remember if it's
responsive like, you know, not explaining itself super well. Yeah, I
mean I had to read some tutorials. Yeah, in the game. To
be fair, I haven't played it since it came out, but I remember
it and I never played the reissue they did, whether they did camera stuff
or something better. Is that what you guys are on that? What is
that? Subsistence? Subsistence? Yeah, but that doesn't change like the cqu
SEE controls or whatever. That's just the camera. I just I feel like
I remember the CQUC stuff not obeying what I wanted it to do very well.
If you look at the Uh, there's like four basic things you can
do, and it's not like crazy button combinations. It's not like remembering a
combo. It's hold in circle hard and you'll slip their throat. Hold it
in softly around yeahstivity, hold it halfway and you can drag them around.
Uh. If you switch from circle to square, you will hold your gun
out and you can you know, hold one guy's a human shield and shoot.
To me, this is so much more complicated than Monster Hunter BAH and
and way less intuitive. That's just from a control perspective, though, I
mean the actual like systems for like taking the bullets out and shit, they're
not hard. Oh no, no, no, I'm just saying controlling my
character and attacking. Yeah, I wouldn't say that part is crazy about Monster
Hunter, but I don't here. I don't think it's that crazy. Also,
to elaborate on the being outside part, like there was a lot more
guesswork from what I remember in like how much how much visibility you have?
Well, there's you can do. There's like the camouflage, isn't there like
a percentage? Ye? And it's like, oh, is this tall grass
gonna mean I'm hidden or something? Can they still see and you're not moving
and you're down in the grass. The guy should be able to walk straight
past you and that shouldn't be a problem. I liked the hard right angles
of hallways and being able to get in a lot. I'm hiding behind this
corner and then I know he can't see me. Right, I'm gonna get
those locker I know he can't see you in there. Yeah. I love
all the weird shit that can happen. Like Drew was doing a thing where
he was down in the grass hiding from these like patrolling guys, and he
was actually being really stealthy and stuff, and there's a snake right next to
him. I was playing it right, yeah, and he's like, oh,
I don't want the snake to fuck with me here, and he stabs
the snake. So all of a sudden, there's a dead snake there,
and one of the guard dogs like could tell there was food nearby, and
so the dog just goes right over and starts like eating the snake. He's
like, wait, there's a dude here too, sets off the alarms and
everything goes down. It's obviously the dog couldn't smell the snake until it was
dead. Yeah, that's how food works. Yeah. I remember not loving
the way that game played. I remember that being the moment when I realized
I might have to, like just I don't know, suffer through a Metal
Gear game to see what I wanted to see in it. I mean I
have, I have done that with all of them. I get frustrated a
lot. Yes, yeah, I get frustrated a lot, But that doesn't
mean I disliked them like I am loving this one's that's fair, But I
mean like I inherently enjoyed playing two, Like I still thought it was fun
to sneak around and do the gameplay stuff into I feel like I remember in
three just kind of like dragging my ass from one story beat to the next.
I just I don't like fumbling, and I fumbled through metal gears where
you're dealing with it. And this one is super weird because you never used
grenades in one or two, but you've done this thing like six times in
the new one to where when you just don't know what to do, you
just start throwing grenades everywhere, which I've never seen anyone play any metal gear
like that. You killed an ass al lot with by throwing grenades at him
because I've ran out of all my other am okay, that was your backwards
against the wall there. But it was also cool when you blew up all
those guys in the docks. So all right, keep doing what you're doing.
I get I'm having fun on that. It's ridiculous and I love it.
It is that well, yeah, for sure, of all this stuff
about how it's like it's way more grounded than two, which this is like
a more just grounded story, where I should have said less convoluted, because
like in the first episode, it's like, oh, here's the b man
and the Spider Way and the old Man just is weird. If it's more,
I should convolution, you'd be Vulgan and whoever else. Yeah, yeah,
it's fucking weird. I remember quite liking the storytelling in that game,
but not a whole lot else. The story is really good to me.
It does not seem that much a departure. Yeah. Again, maybe the
stuff I added in subsistence helps with that stuff. I remember. That's just
the camera. Yeah, I don't know. Four's good. I like four.
Yeah, four, it's real good. I'm looking forward to getting for
all right, what does everybody else have on their agenda for the week and
any other stuff? Panel? Our panel, Yes, that will be coming
soon. Yes, also I believe our production panel. Yes, this is
did end up getting recorded. I think so so. I have not seen
the footage, but I have heard the audio that I recorded. I am
pretty sure a video will go up. That's great. I ended up having
missed that and I would like to see it. I went to it.
I liked it. I heard it was good. Any other major stuff out
of packs it's probably about it content wise, that's it. Yeah, Yeah,
there are people shooting the Packsomnia thing. I don't know what that's going
towards something stream Well I got live streams, Yeah it did. But yeah,
I think there's gonna be some like extra video stuff or something. I
don't know. There are a couple of people they are shooting like promos and
stuff, so we'll see what happens. Anybody know what the deal is with
archiving all the stream panels since Twitch doesn't let archives hang around very long anymore.
So if you want to see packsomania, maybe go to twitch and watch
it. Someone already ripped it and on YouTube, so it's out there.
I don't know, I wouldn't mind seeing some of that stuff. Swear you
huh sweary? Yeah? How did that go? Good? Yeah? The
whole thing went all right? I take it. Yeah right, it was
well. I mean for some people that want it was super stupid. Yes,
how much longer can that thing keep going? It's a great question continue
escalating. Yeah, it's the I think the thing that we kind of everyone
kind of said to each other as we were winded down this one, was
like, maybe we're done with glass now? So Hi? Yeah, is
that because the bit TI because yeah, it's just kind of like this was
this was the big blowoff for glass. There was so much of it,
Yes, constantly. Yeah, it's not like you can't continue escalating that.
Yeah, at a certain point, chair shots to that yeah, chair shots
unprotected. Chair shots to the head is where we're going. So yeah,
there as atain a certain point you graduate to real glass, right of course.
Yeah, some people are really getting it hard way, Yes exactly,
that's uh, yeah, well they're STI letting them happen. Brad just sees
the wrestling term you're smart. No, I didn't, You're a smart Shut
the fuck up? So was that? You don't use that language in here.
Keep a cafe, God damn it, it will work. Shoot.
Uh, keep an eye on the side for stuff, having plans in place
to shoot if things went wrong. It's going to go into business for ourselves.
If things got weird, I got fuck it. We'll just our way
out of here. This is uh, what's what's your organization? The run
GFB Team GF E, run GFV, run GFB Steam, Jeff vs a
podcast. Okay, that's something totally. I thought that was GJFP Radio.
It's Team GF it's hashtagged and don't look, oh god, don't listen to
Let's let's go do other things. All right, let's get out of here.
We got a lot of games to catch up on. We will catch
up on those games. They will end up on the site in some form
on content approaches. Just bear with us as we get back up speed this
week, and we'll be back next week with another edition of this year Giant
Bomb Cast. So see then.