Hey everybody, It's Tuesday, October thirty first, twenty twenty three. Happy
Halloween and happy last day of Filipino American History Month. I'm your host,
Jiana Schoa, the Internet's favorite Kuja. Welcome to the Giant BombCast, Episode
eight, one hundred and thirteen. I'm joined by a bunch of Muggalo babies.
Jeff Grubb can't believe you. Couya zwing zoned us. Yeah, that's
right, I kua zoned these three gentlemen, my favorite Kuyas, honorary Kuyas.
That's right, Honorary Kuya. And Uh a dealer of all things Halloween.
Jeff Beckler, that's right. Happy holidays everybody. It's the spooky day.
Get your Halloween plates ready to go, because I need to escape my
house. Uh, it's bad. This is a call for help. This
is a call for help. I've I've broken cafe. I'm being serious right
now, get me out of my house. It's a Halloween nightmare. Thanks.
Yeah, Halloween, you have you have four hundred children who are gonna
be in your house for an hour and a half this evening. Yep,
you're gonna break allween. Yeah, they're gonna break all my pinball machines.
It's gonna be great. But at least we've got the beetlejuice on loop out
of the old CRT TV. That's That's honestly the only thing I needed to
do, and I got it done, and we're gonna have a happy,
hollow week. Speaking about beetle juice, we have our own beetle juice here,
our dear friend and yours. Oh so like naughty Dan Jan Jan trick
or treat? Is this like a riddle? Are you like sphinxing me round?
That's a question. That's a one to pick one or the other.
You know, we all hear tricking in the streets, So I'll take a
treat today, Mike Man, naughty Mike, Mike, Mike, you can't
feel yourself like that, Mike. No, if it was a trick,
I would have tore off my mask and would have been Bailey under here or
something like I hate good candy. Uh, I've got some good news in
my household. My kids are into Ghostbusters suddenly. I didn't even try.
I don't try to force these things on the kids, but uh, Steph
was watching yesterday. It's one of her favorite movies and the kids were like,
who's this Slimer guy? We are way into him. And we have
like this little play backpack Ghostbusters backpack that we've had for forever, and we
have a Slimmer standee that holds the candy bowl. Cute Halloween. Yeah,
and they got both out and they were just running around. One was being
Slimmer, the other one was being a Ghostbuster and they were playing all night
last night. I'm like, oh man, that that just happened. Suddenly
they're into Ghostbusters. So yet another thing from my childhood I could share with
my kids until they get bored of it and destroy my heart. Now it's
not going to happen because the generations are holding Ghostbusters up. They are passing
the baton generationally. Because I just got back from a elementary school Halloween parade
and by far, by far, the most popular costume is a ghostbusting.
Now, is that by choice of the child or the parents of the world
making your kids stress up? Yeah? I didn't interview four hundred little fucking
kids, Okay, seven to eight year old. Like, if you met
a seven eight year old, you know they're not going to do the ship
their parents ask them they have an idea of what they want to be and
they're going to be it. Okay, you're like seven eight year olds,
they wouldn't respect you, but maybe other kids maybe it's very free. Yo.
So this is my TikTok check of the week. Apparently Spirit Halloween Stories
wherever else they sell costumes are selling out of the scream mask because people be
getting mad soussio, because adults be having a built time. Yeah. People
like the idea of like a horny guy in that mask. Right, They're
like that, do you think that's That's what I've seen some stuff on TikTok
I have. They're like, oh, this person's here to murder me.
Just kidding, it's time for sex. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's like,
oh no, they're here. Let me just show you a little bit
of my butt, you know what. I've turned around on the matter.
I'm in y'all gotta y'all got a favorite Halloween costume from days past. My
friends and I did a Jurassic Park group cost once and I was the old
Michael Crichton. Michael Crichton, John Hammond. That's it. Yeah, So
you're Peter Jackson and Lord of the Rings and doctor Hammond. He's got a
thing that he does. Yeah. The best part was, like, you
know, there's like there's you know, a girl in the friend group.
We're like, okay, so you could be the girl from Jurassic Park and
she rightfully got bad and I just sewn together a t Rex like costume.
Hell yeah, hey, that t Rex is a girl too though, so
she as far as we know, Yeah, yeah, I guess you could
have spontaneously changed sex. And they did. They do that in the movie
DNA. I was Raccoon Mario or tok Mario. Oh that's cool. Third
or fourth grade or something like that. My mom helped me build the costume,
and that one was a big winner. A lot of the kids are
a big fan of that, and I loved it because I like Raccoon Mario
a whole bunch. Was a period of time where I made cardboard costumes,
Like one year I made a giant not giant, but like a pretty big
like cardboard Kirby. My favorite cardboard costume is I made the Magic school Bus
one year. It's great, Oh that's fun. My kid's doing a cardboard
She's she's going as Nyon Cat. And we had to build that out of
Carl. That's really smart, except for no one knows who nion Cat is
explain that. Sorry, I had to do it. I had to do
it. Yeah, of a lot of her day is going to be explaining
it. That's okay, though. I have a lot of good memories of
my mom making like a custom Ninja Turtles, uh costume, the Ghostbusters Ninja
Turtles. I feel like we we alternated for a couple of years there.
And not to say like, you know, there's just all there's there's just
it's so easy to just get like a twenty dollars Amazon costume now and they're
good, Like they're good costumes. It's not like I'm uh, I'm saying
back of my day, costumes used to mean something. They didn't They look
like shit compared to what they do now. So good for you. Uh
yeah that, But I there's nothing like getting on that belt, you know,
with the m on it, and you're like, I'm I'm fuck today,
I'm fucking Michelangelo. Well, I am Michael Ninja. I'm not whoa
whoa whoa you were assuming the person? Hey am I right? Cowabunga.
So I do miss that those days. And then when you're I was a
gangster inexplicably and I just had the guy what kind of gangs? Yeah,
I was like a mafia. Wow, how dare you? That is Italian
discrimination, the Italian discrimination, thanks Sylvia. Yeah, you know, like
I was. I was doing that for a while, and like the I
just remember the gun being like it would he would rat tat tat in a
way that yeah, yeah, it's a Tommy gun of practical gun. How
come we don't like I'm not sure that the gun people use anymore. But
the clip drums, I think they didn't. They jam like constantly, I
would imagine jam constantly. They were really unreliable. Yeah, they're only good
for video games, they do. Look, really, that's some warn that's
some like Dick Tracy bullshit right there. It's Dick Tracy or Angels with dirty
soulstional movie from Home I don't know why leave. Yeah, oh yeah until
fairly, Jeff, Yeah really yeah, not like okay recently, it's in
like probably like ten years ago when I started watching Home alone again and I'm
like, okay, I get that this is not real, but for a
very long portion of my life that that's a real movie in my brain.
It's still still a real movie to me, Dick Tracey is still fucking amazing,
by the way, Like, go watch that movie. That movie's fucking
wild, log wild. It's really so of course it's good, is it?
Oh that's Disney straight up. I thought I thought Warren Baty's holding onto
that license. Literally he the rights. He does actually have that, but
produced the movie. But Disney made the movie. Yeah, all right,
Well it was a good fucking movie, man, Yeah, hell yeah,
hell yeah, all right. Well, I mean here, here's the thing,
Halloween being on a Tuesday. It's stupid, right, oh, very
stupid. You do the adult celebration on the weekend. When is the trunk
or treat or little stuff treat was on the weekend? That was the weekend.
I had a wedding on Saturday, and on our way to the wedding,
we're like navigating through a sea of pirates, ands and goblins. And
well that's classic New Jersey tonight here. Yeah, yeah, and yeah.
I also there's there's trunker treating thing where like people go out to like parking.
Yes, uh, but trigger treating is is tonight here? What that
reminds me? I want to say, hey, Uh, watch out when
you're driving tonight. If you're driving, those kids aren't gonna be looking out
for you, You look out for them. If just like five of you
listen to that, we can probably save some lives tonight. So the down
just slow down and look out for them, please. And then yesterday it
was my wedding anniversary because if I couldn't convince you that my wife was upsetsed
with Halloween, I got married and motherfucking mischief night. Okay, that's what
happened. That's what happened in it's called Devil's Night. Please, right,
it's only mischief night, I think in in Jersey and New York as far
as I'm aware, the regional thing. But yeah, uh it's great.
Things are really over the top here. I'm not you know, like there's
there's a couple of houses in down you guys that are just like, I
don't know what they're gonna do with all this stuff tomorrow. What are they
gonna do? Are they gonna burn it all? Where's it gonna go?
The house isn't that big. I don't under the storage. Do you think
they have like storage, like dedicated storage things that they rent for that stuff?
So help me figure this out, guys. Okay, I'm here to
help you. There's two houses on a street, okay, near my home.
Beginning of October. They started off pretty sparingly, pretty sparse, right,
A couple of like mummies in the yard whatever, as it got told
to Like this week, things were slowly but surely ramped up. And I
passed by on Sunday and you can't even see the lawn. Okay, they've
done, they've like and it looks like they look like stores. I don't
understand what happened. Were they like keeping up with the the the what is
it? The Benjamin's? Is that the all right? Keep it on?
And like they just went tit for tag back and forth, and I feel
like it just got crazy. One of them got a like a you know,
the thing from Stranger Things, and then the other people got the Stranger
Things, and then one person got these cool which is now David, and
then like the witches now that look like they're floating. Have you seen those?
Those are sick? Those are those are like the new skeleton things.
It's just crazy and you I don't know what they're gonna do with their stuff
now. And they've ramped it all the way up to like now it's just
psycho Bill. Do you think they're gonna sell this stuff? Or I think
you just if you have that much stuff, you have to just get a
rent a rent a center thing or whatever, rent a center, better,
rent a shelf. You're renting a storage locker for ten months? Like,
what the what the fuck's going on? I mean I think they probably just
keep it and then like you just probably all year around, Yeah, and
you keep your Christmas stuff in there and your Halloween stuff and you get it
out of it. I guess it is so much. I gotta take a
photo of this. It is. It's psychotic. You can have too much
of a good thing, you can you honestly, again, I mean that's
us every Tuesday. You know, too much of a good thing. And
that's why I'm happy to announce. If you didn't hear this earlier, and
if you only listen to the Giant BombCast, I'm happy to tell you,
folks at home, that's starting Friday. This Friday, we'll be starting another
episode of the Giant BombCast. Yeah, titled Giant BombCast Revengeance. We're gonna
splice you off some more. BombCast machines. That's right, Yeah, nano
machines. Forget AI. We're jumping all the way into nano machines. The
technology is not there. But we're going to record a podcast anyway, on
framing for it to be like an hour ninety minutes more condensed podcast talk about
the games that we missed earlier in the week on Tuesdays, because sometimes embargoes
are a little bit odd. But also sometimes there's a you know, we
want to chat about some stuff more, maybe we dive deeper into stuff,
yes, grub like. Also, we're planning on having like a topic specific
topic like a magazine. Magazine to this show is kind of like, oh
we're catching up on the news that kind of stuff. Yeah, it'll be
same for you. So it'll just pop up. If you're already subscribed,
you're gonna get it and you'll see the different name on it, Revengeance,
and we're gonna keep the numbering system, so the main podcast will be the
number and then this will be the Number plus Revengeance. But yes, we're
gonna try to bring some interesting topics each week to talk about and that'll fill
up most of the time. After we talk about in any games we might
have missed. This can be where like spoiler discussions live and that sort of
thing in the future, so this will afford us a lot more opportunity to
talk even more about games. This also affords us the opportunity, since it's
gonna be on Friday afternoons, to extend the invite to Tam and Lucy,
who are always super busy during the week, but also Emma and Bailey as
well. And you know, Mike's always here. Hey, Mikey maybe and
maybe he's not. I don't know, not this Friday anyways. But yeah,
I'm very much looking forward to BombCast Revengeance. I'm just thinking BCR in
my head and just sounds. It just feels really good. Yea, all
right, let's talk about some games. I'm just out there. I'm just
planning to see for this. Maybe we get some new new seg music.
Surements, I can do it. How does that happen? I don't know.
Okay, Mike says it, and it happens. Mike, You're gonna
make some tunes. You to make some segues can whistle? No, it's
just saying my name is tough some more. Oh yeah, that's what we're
looking for. That's Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike,
Mike, Mike, Mitch, Mitch, Mike. People listen. Sometimes
I wonder why, why why we bring Mike around? This is Bailey,
This is Bailey's free week. We could have just grabbed Wow that Bailey play
Avatar Frontiers of Pandora. You're right, You're right. I know, I
know on our list, on the list. That's why I'm here. That's
right. Well, now I no longer wonder, but I still super Mario
Brothers. Wonder we've been playing this across the board. Did we talk about
this last week? I don't even remember we did? We did? I
think we did? I can't remember Dan Dan talked about it. Yes,
Dan had played it right, but by then, yes, Well where are
we landing on the wonder? Now? It's a fantastic game. It shot
up to the to near the top of my game of your list, if
not the top. A big, big part of it is it is amazing
to play. But every single little element of regarding the game is really well
done. I think it has the best multiplayer for the way I play games.
Uh these days where it's like, hey, play this together, separate
and you can hang out online and whether that's with strangers kind of journey style,
we're just gonna perry up with these random strangers. You guys, can
play through a level and you're gonna end up helping each other because the way
that the game is rigged up, it is impossible to do anything but either
help each other or ignore each other. There's no detrimental thing you could do
to someone else. It is just positive experiences you can have. And so
you're looking for something you can't find it, and then someone's like, oh,
I think this person's looking for the thing I just found. I'm gonna
go hop over there and jump in that place and kind of maybe put a
standy down. And then I'm realizing, Oh, this person's trying to communicate
to me. I'm gonna go, oh, look, it's right here.
I just jump up this little corner I missed. I'm gonna hit the thing
and thank you so much. I found the thing. And it doesn't feel
like cheating or spoilers because it feels like part of the experience and it's magical.
And that's just the random people I'm playing with. You guys. When
we played online, that was amazing too, the fact that we could just
kind of be exploring this stuff together, the first experience of like getting into
the game and learning how to play and be like, Okay, you know,
let's share some ideas. Look at this. There's this little hitting thing
on the overworld map. Now I know to look for hidden things on the
overworld map. And then obviously the racing is just so my stuff. I'm
so into that. I think for me, the package itself is so refined,
so well done that I'm just I'm in love. There are a couple
of things I wish that there was a batch of even more difficult levels,
yes, but I'm not really holding that against the game so much because I'm
now kind of getting to a point with it where I'm like, I can
make these levels more difficult by trying to run them even faster or using something
like one of the badges that makes it so you kind of are always running
this one of the League game badge. I won't spoil too much about like
what it actually does, but it can make things more difficult, but it
can also speed things up, and then you can do these really awesome like
speed runs of these levels. And so I'm like Oh, okay, I
can kind of force my way into making this game more difficult by actually treating
it like a speed Runner, and then it's just a blast all over again.
But still it's like maybe a batch of more slightly more difficult levels would
wouldn't be I wouldn't hate that, I would really welcome that. But just
overall, I just am in love with this game. Yeah, it's amazing.
Yeah, I would also like I am at the very last level,
I think the final final level, So that's all I'd love to do.
And you know, I'm excited for that because I do want uh to do
like some challenge levels, and I do like those ones in the Special world.
But yeah, it's like there's a whole other world even of more of
those, I would be all about that. I would gobble that up.
If that was d OC even, I'd be pretty happy. How how does
Nintendo carry this like positive online interaction momentum to like it should be in everything?
This online mode should be kind of a standard thing going forward for so
many other games. Uh, you know, it doesn't have to be implemented
in this exact way going forward, but but any game where you can be
doing stuff online to sort of have the you know, it's a journey,
but also from software right where you see ghosts walking around. Yeah, it's
very much like that. There's a way to definitely have it, which what
should definitely do as Lucy's mansion four YEA fantastic yes. And then I think
it encourages them to be even more devious with their design, sort of be
like it's okay if we make these things a little bit more challenging or a
little bit more hidden, because people will be crowdsourcing the solutions and that again,
that's just that feels magical. So and it's optional, right, Mike,
you played the game offline, right, did you have? I did
for a while, and I played through it offline, but then when I
was going back one hundred percent, then I did have that mode turned on.
Honestly, I turned it on just when I was playing with you guys
for the racing here, and then like never turned off. Agains like,
yeah, this is actually kind of fun. I do like this. I
think at first I was like I don't want to see these assholes running around
whatever, blah blah blah. No, now, especially going back and sometimes
I am just like looking for one of those purple coins and I don't know
where it is. It is nice just to have a little help. Or
if I do fall down and die, instead of having to reset the level,
I can just be a ghost and run to another player get a little
help that way. Yeah, there are these really fun moments where you are
going through a stage with somebody, You're popping each other's a ghost of bubbles,
you're spamming your emos. It's very uh charming, you know what it
reminds me of, Like this very positive interactions with playing with people online.
Is the first time I booted up Apex Legends and how clever the pinging system
was, and like, you know, you're not really chatting with anyone.
Maybe we should just shouldn't talk to people. Yeah, absolutely not. Nonverbal
communication is like huge with humans and games have like forgotten that or like didn't
believe that they could capture that. And it's like, actually, video games
would be really good at this, and so now we're getting to a point
where that's actually manifesting, which is really nice. I'll just say the big
thing for me with this game is it just feels so expressive when you're playing,
and you can play in so many different ways, and it's like the
game itself is so well animated that it feels alive. But then you can
attach whatever bade you want and play your own style, and it just I
think it really speaks to playing can be performance, and this game nails that,
or at least you feel like you're part of a performance. Right.
You got all these expert players putting together this game, like this awesome jazz
band of like we're gonna we're gonna do all this wild stuff. And you
now, you hop in and you try to play along with us, and
they make it so easy to feel like you are jumping in and an expert
player alongside of these amazing developers. That it's that's where I really just feel
like, oh, I'm slotting into this one of a kind of one of
a kind of experience and I just love it. It's great. You know,
I'm not gonna go through everything you guys just said. I agree pretty
much on everything though. The only problem I have is is local. But
I just don't. I just don't think that's what it really I don't know
could be. At the end of the day, I don't really have an
answer to how you fix that unless you like literally split the screens. Yeah,
you're talking about the camera following one character or another, right, Yeah,
and just and having it like switch mid level too, which is sort
of Sonic Superstars has the same problem, and anytime a Mario game has the
same problem with Sonic Superstars. Yeah, you know, I think outside of
which you know, Look, you're talking about how the game plays really well
for what you're looking for. Like I've said to myself, not out loud
because I don't want to break my kids hard, but like I'm going to
play this without you too. I'm gonna play this without you because you you're
you suck at this and I'm better right now. You guys have for no,
we have one. Okay. I was good because if you if there
was a way for you to, like, if you have the game digitally
and all that stuff, you could do that the system sharing and maybe play
online together. And that's probably the right way to do it, which is
also not a it's not locals should be better. I agree local should be
better, but I also you know, I I say, when you complain
about something, you should offer a better way to do it. And I
don't have that second part of that. I think, well, they can't.
You're right, they can't. I guess split screen is really the only
answer, and that's not it, and that's stuff fun that kind of blows
or maybe, like I don't know, I had this idea of like someone
playing handheld and someone playing on the screen system like that here today, Yeah,
more screens, more screens please, I'll take more screens. But anyway,
Yeah, like the game. It's so amazingly creative and designed with perfection,
Like, it is so great to experience this right here now, where
Like I had a lot of high hopes, maybe overly lofty expectations for this
game, and to see them all met and more is really super satisfying.
So this is easily top top four for me for sure. Oh damn,
this is clean specific Most people say top to your top five. Yeah,
I like specificity. We're at a point where we're putting together some lists and
stuff, right yeah, exactly adults four. Then the adults do the work
here, Mike, Mikey, baby Bunky. Maybe Mikey ad happy, So
give them a list to fill out, baby Mike. I do like list.
We all love list. The Internet loves lists. How I really want
to eventually find out about how much of the younger members of the team,
how much their input weighed in, because I'm curious of like the ghost implementation
in this, is that like an idea from a younger member of the team
or something that was like a sor we didn't like we learned from what Tam
and Lucy talking to Nintendo that younger people and the staff were why we don't
have the timer anymore, right, Yeah, So I'm wondering if if their
input also informed some of like the online stuff, because it's got to be
frustrating working at Nintendo, maybe like a younger dev and just hearing the concert
Braje from the Internet about how poorly Nintendo implements the Internet when it's like,
guys, we could just do this this way, do it, just flip
the internet switch on, we could do it, really make it well.
It feels super informed by a lot of recent games and mostly from software games,
and that feels like it's coming from a younger audience and or a younger
development pool and Nintendo that you know, there's no I guess I wouldn't be
surprised if Tesaka's like, yeah, I played those games. Yeah, this
was my idea. Sure, Yeah, that wouldn't shock me, but I
just think it's more unlikely than it was. Actually some younger people on the
staff speaking about new fresh games, someone put on the list here Super Mario
World. Yeah. As soon as I beat Wonder, I was in the
Mario mood and I went and played through world. And by play through world,
I mean I went through Yoshi Island, which is the first world,
and then I did the shortcut through the ghost house in the second world,
went to the Special or star Road. I did the star Road levels all
the way around, went up to the top, went straight to the last
level, and beat the game, which I have never actually done before.
I Oh, in this game, this is the game I was always know
I'm just gonna play all these levels or play most of them. When I
first played out, I'll play most of them. I wasn't getting the ninety
six or ninety seven whatever the number is of clears, but it was like,
oh, yeah, I could just go ahead and beat this game in
like probably an hour, and it wasn't even that long really, so but
that's a great game. Still, boy, it feels really good. I'll
say that I think the switch emulation feels there's like a little bit of latency,
I think, which made me really want to get it up and running
on the CRT over here. So that's a project I'm working on right now
because I want to play some Mario games on a CRT. I think that
would make me very happy. Okay, okay, going from jumping a bunch
of people jumping to a bunch of I have nothing for this. The blue
people are here, Mike Minati, you played Avatar Frontiers of Pandora, and
I'm very jealous. Yeah, I can help right here because there's actually quite
a bit of jumping in this because do the Navy get high, they get
very high. So yes, I actually did a remote hands on preview played
a couple hours of Avatar Frontiers of Pandora. The demo kind of jumped me
around a little bit, but I had a good feel for a good amount
of the game, including doing some story missions, doing some open world stuff.
I think a lot of people looked at this and thought it looked like
Far Cry with an Avatar skin, and that is definitely true in a lot
of ways. But I think that Avatar skin makes the far Cry formula a
lot better in a lot of ways. First, and foremost just you know,
looking gorgeous. I love the way Pandora looks. I love all the
floating mountains of the glowing vegetation, like the So the best part of the
demo was the mission to get my ekron. You know, the flying dragon
thing. So you have to like ascend a flying space horse. That's right.
You weren't, Yeah you went to animal Kingdom, but like you,
so you have to like kind of ascend this mountain on foot, and there
you kind of have jumping puzzles. The first person platforming I think is gonna
be divisive because it usually is. I like that stuff because I am so
metro based in culture. Jumping pilled, yeah, I like it, and
it's a good jump, Like you can hold down that jump button, you
get some real height. You're like ascending this mountain. You're solving some little
puzzles here and there, but just the views as they're going up there some
mountain up Pandora is awesome. But then eventually you do get the ekron and
then it becomes just your mouth and it's kind of skyward. Sword is escororre.
Yeah, you can push a button to some in it, but you
can also push the button when you're falling, and then it is just gonna
grab you and then you can start just flying around freely with it. Right.
So there's been flying in Far Cry before. You can get one of
those gyro copters, but here it really is just push this button and you
can fly wherever you want. You can shoot things while you're flying. You
can jump off of the Kron onto like some battleship and take that out and
jump off it, jump back on the Ekron, that kind of stuff.
I'm like, yeah, it's all this all works for me. This all
feels pretty pretty good when you're doing like the base stuff and that's here two
like that Far Cry for me, like go to the enemy base and take
that out, and it's like you actually are shooting people with machine gun.
That's when it feels very like the most Far Cry and also maybe the least
interesting. It's fine, but that stuff is, you know, that stuff
that you have done before in these games a million times whatever. The super
Avatar flavorite stuff though, is working for me a lot. Oh that what
a surprise. That's crazy. Are the whales in it? I've not seen
a whale yet, but I did get you know, because again the farker
thing. You get a skill tree, and one of them was because you
have to feed your ekron. There's the whole hunting and crafting stuff like in
far Cry. Sure you have to you do have to eat to keep your
stamming up. You also have to feed your ekron. But I got this
skill where if I just sort of skim water, then I eat kron automatically
like fish for itself as hard. Oh my god, I like that a
lot. I hate that Avatar. I became Avatar pilled. This way of
water is amazing. It's such literally perfect. So there's nothing wrong with no
notes, zero notes. Yeah, you know. I don't want to get
like I did enjoy them. I don't want to get people's expectations too high
or anything. But what are we laughing about? What that car is?
Just like I have? It is like, but this has no appeal to
me whatsoever? What's happening on? I don't understand why these guys are so
high on Avatar. That's it. I just simply cannot understand you. You
are so fucking weird them. Did you get it yet? Of course I
want to get it. Yes, they're not gonna go to animal Kingdom.
Of course and going to Animal Kingdom. No, I just don't understand.
I don't understand how you three grown ass adults are just like so into Avatar.
It's obviously very big and very important is adjacent, but like nobody I
know talks about it. Nobody I know talks about it. You're the only
three people saying it's important. Like the way you talk about Avatar is the
way I talk about like the Fifth Element, And I just don't get it.
I just don't get it occupy a similar space the fifth wishes. To
be honest, I'll tell dude, I'll take that movie over anything coming out
of Pandora seven days a week on the third one, dude, when they
got to meet a different drive, the fire People. I mean, it's
like, how is it so hard to believe that James Camera movie is really
good? It's not hard to believe. I've in every way. Let me
be honest, I completely belie believe that this movie is good. That doesn't
change the fact that I don't understand Way of Water. No, I haven't
seen it all right, that movie Scraps Goes. It's literally perfect, is
what he said? Yes, perfect, He's not guy five times and it
started again the other night. It's perfect. It's like, there's just something
inherently hilarious about this to me, that you are all such Avatar folks.
See, here's the thing. I hated, avidly hated the first one.
I thought it was so boring, and then I was really hesitant to go
watch the second one, Way of Water with my partner, she loves Avatar.
I sat in there and then I instantly bought in. I consider myself
like a movie buff ish. Right. I missed Affenheimer completely when it was
an IMAX, But I've seen Way of Water in theaters at least three times.
That's so much time, the variable frame rate. Man. And this
is just to be clear. This is not just to be clear because there's
been a little bit of controversy about me yucking yums lately. Okay, this
is because I'm totally happy with you. This is not yes, I get
this, you're not. You're just lost. It's like I went to a
museum, stood at a wall and so almost like that's a painting. I'm
like, oh, okay, right like and and I don't and I'm I
can't. I just can't really uh get on board that you think you could
watch Way of Water with an open heart back Yeah, I unclouded by hate.
I will look again. That fucking flight of passage ride is phenomenal.
The river Nave terrible, But like that's the thing. I can easily watch
this thing. I know it's like a four hour movie, so I really
got to carve out some time for that. Maybe it's to night or uh,
but maybe we should do water. I just think, to me,
it is just hilarious that this thing exists that is so uh sort of special
to you, and I just look at it like I just I just don't
understand how. But that's okay, And that's okay, and that's okay.
That movie makes me want to have a son so that I can be disappointed
in him and then have him like teach me how to hold my breath or
something, because like I think about that scene all the time, like like
I don't know's I can see you, I can see you in the blue.
Make very easy. Oh no, all right, all right, we
gotta we gotta move this on before Okay. Sometimes hey chat, sometimes you
gotta keep that ship to yourself, Okay, keep that ship to yourself.
Oh my, I never noticed that, how have you never noticed that I
don't understand. So yeah, I think this game is actually looking pretty prophisy.
This comes out this year, Mike, December seventh, right on the
Game Awards. Game that's not getting delayed, like basically right now, this
is gonna be the holiday break game for me. Yeah, this and and
RoboCop Rogue City because there's just no time. A game. Another game that
some of us have been playing, keeping in time with spooky seasons real quick
on on upf we played Ghostbusters Spirits Unleashed the ECDO edition ECTO. Yes we
did. Yeah. This was another one of those asynchronous games where it's like
a party of four have the ability to go against like another player that plays
as a ghost. The ghost is mucking stuff up. The player ghost has
like three it's actually three lives, and the Ghostbusters have to just like shoot
their beams at them, trap them in a the trapper, and then get
on with their day. But the ghosts GB you you had the chance to
play as the ghost one time? What is that like? Because none of
us got right. So I didn't do the tutorial for the go I didn't
really do the tutorial at all, So I was like going in there.
I read up on what to do in this game, and it seemed basic
enough as a ghostbuster, so that I felt pretty comfortable going in there and
knowing what to do, and that turned out to be the case. We
kind of figured it out pretty quickly. The ghost I my what I got
from playing it, and I did end up winning, but I was like
mostly just trying to survive you guys encounters with you guys for the most part,
while moving around and jumping into a bunch of objects, which I think
was increasing the haunted level of a room in the game. And eventually I
got to the point where like, this room is completely haunted, and my
haunting level of the building jumped up dramatically, and that seems to be my
goal. So and then whenever we I would get an encounter with into an
encounter with you all, I would have all my abilities of like, okay,
here's like dropping some minions or whatever for you guys to fight, or
I can do this big ultimate that turns me into a tornado, which gives
me a chance. It slows you all down and gives me a chance to
get out of the room and go hide. That hiding aspect seems to be
the biggest thing, though most of the time you just want to avoid the
ghostbusters see if you can hide. At least that's how I played it and
ended up winning. I think there's probably some incentive to go in an encounter
and like to confront you all, because I think that probably also helps if
I were to slim one of you or something like that, but I was
still figuring that out. I will say that you guys got pretty good at
destroying my portals, which are the lives you mentioned, and that was like
I had a chance to go in there and maybe try to throw you guys
off or or slow you down, but that was like a really risky thing
of you are all are there. So if I go there and encounter you
and then I run out of my abilities and I don't have an ability to
have the option to escape, you guys are going to is at me,
trap me, and I'll lose a life as well, and then you'll then
you'll be able to destroy the portal, so I basically I'll be losing two
lives. So I made the decision after you guys were like really going in
all in on destroying that portal. I'm just gonna dip. I'm gonna get
out here. I'm gonna do some haunting and see if I can accomplish something.
And I think doing that really helped. Overall it was it was fun.
I had a good time charming. It very charming. I love all
the Ghostbusters accoutrement throughout, Like the experience of like, yeah, yeah,
there is Ray and there is Winston and they're hanging out in the ghost house
has all these like fun references and stuff. But it's more like, you
know, this is a cool party game if you guys are gonna have a
game night with your friends, and the discords like, hey, what should
we play now? If this is in the rotation, I think that's the
perfect place for it. Keep it in the rotation. I don't know if
it's a game I'm gonna go back to every weekend, but every couple of
weekends when we're looking for something to play, I would totally keep it right
there. The leveling system is interesting because you level up your equipment the more
you use it. So if you wind up using your trapper lot and successfully
trapping the ghosts, your trapper is gonna level up more so than someone else's
because y'all were trapping the most, Dan Bailey, you and I would barely
throw mine out, so mine was still level one by the time we ended
our a little session. Maybe this should be a game of the year category
where it's like the best game to play with my friends online that I will
never touch otherwise. Yeah, I love that, Yeah, totally, because
I think we can throw you some older games in there that are like popping
back off again, because I would put it like Halo Infinite in that list
and stuff like that right now. But yeah, that's definitely a good category
because I think that's a reasonable thing for a game to be. A game
doesn't have to be everything to everyone. It doesn't have to be the one
game you play, although a lot of these asymmetrical multiplayer games turn into that
for certain audiences. Obviously Dead by Daylight is that game for a huge audience.
But there's a lot of these now, and I think if some of
them are like, no, yeah, hey, if every once in a
while you want to get the friends together to play something like and you're good
at that, not like great, not the best thing in the world,
but you're good and serviceable, which is I think this game is like just
a step above that. That's great, that's fantastic. You don't have to
be more than that. Speaking about Game of the Year, we have one
game listed here that may be near the top of some folks's lists, like
manatta, you've beat Balderskate three. Wow? Right, Yeah, isn't it
stupid that I feel like accomplished, like I did something important here? I
beat All this stuff we do is meaningless, but we can't acknowledge it,
Mike, So just keep going, just keep going. That's great, thank
you very much. Yeah, you know, I've been kind of whittling away
at this, putting a lot of time in it, especially the last month
really, after like a lot of like the giant wave of releases that was
happening basically NonStop throughout this year. I always wanted to make sure I went
back and played more balder Skate three and made an effort of beating it because
I do think it's going to be important for Game of the Year discussion.
And yeah, it is going to be important for that, because it's great.
It It is fantastic. I think that it keeps a really nice pace.
I know I used to read that some people thought like Act three dropped
off I don't know if I just different opinion from them, or if it's
been patched up bit better than I got. What Like, isn't it possible
for you to have a very different experience in Actree than other people? Maybe,
but like such a pro gamer, you can kind of do almost everything,
like and I have a feeling I did most of the big quest chains
in Act three. I know there is one involving Rafael that I didn't do,
which is apparently a lot of people's favorite actually, But just in general,
though, what I like about the game is how dense it is.
You know, it has that three act structure, and each act is basically
another area that you're exploring, but each of them are again just so dense,
Like almost every place you go there's going to be something like a question
chain, an interesting encounter, somebody to talk to, some secret to find.
And that's what kind of remind me of something like a koetor I never
played like the older Boulders Gates, but that's what it really is, bring
me back to that kind of thing where, yeah, like maybe this version
of Tattoo Na Kotor isn't some giant, sprawling open world thing, but every
location here matters, and there's something I'm going to find interesting everywhere I go.
And then I think just the cast of characters is really really likable,
really interesting here. I think you're seeing that right, Like these characters are
popping up I imagine a lot of people's social mediat Oh yeah, everywhere,
yestely. Yeah. I saw somebody say like, it's probably the most iconic
cast we've we've gotten like a game of any sort like this since maybe Fireing
in Three Houses right up, Yeah exactly. I think that, well,
this game is doing so much for those by aware freaks who a large part
of what they like is just that kind of This is my found family of
slash sci fi freaks, right exactly. And you know, maybe we're gonna
get intimate. Who knows, You're definitely gonna get intimate. You are definitely
going to change any of them. Mike. Oh yeah, shadow Heart totally
saw the light and I saw more of her. You saw the light,
you saw her dark areas? Yeah, yeah, so yeah, no,
yeah, I mean shadow Heart, we're good now, we're we're in love.
I think something like that. I mean, you're still having sex with
all the other people in the party, but your show I did have sex
with Karlac and then Shadowear didn't really like that, so I had a reload
to save. Excuse me, it's Mike monogamy. Please, Oh my god,
my name, man, I have a good name. I just you're
like into your thirties, and I don't understand how all of the names have
not yet been discovered. I don't. We're very creative people, that's true.
Yeah, there's some really dark names, but you know those are those
only exist within the Mike illuminatim. All right, all right, cool for
that. Yeah, it's gonna be uh in your top three for the top
four or top your top four for gaming. I mean it's my top five.
I could definitely probably going to be in my top five. And you
know what, I think the ending was very good. I think that could
be hard to do in these games, especially since an RPGs there's often that
kind of reverse difficulty curve. By the end, you just have so many
abilities and so many tools that's kind of hard to make things challenging. And
you almost do feel that a little bit in some normal Act three encounters.
But then the very end stuff they do some interesting things to ramp up the
difficulty to make it an interesting challenge and to still make it a spectacle.
So I was really happy with the last few encounters. They did, in
fact feel epic, which is what you want for the finale of a game
that you've been playing for seventy eighty hours and you have all this investment into
Is that your your game clock seventy eighty Yeah, mine was seventy. I
know that's probably essarily like that's a little lower than some people. I did
a lot of them. Yeah, well, you know, I'm very good.
Yeah or no, no, maybe that is normal. I don't know.
I guess I haven't looked, but I did most side missions, at
least some of the big ones. I know there were some things I missed.
There's something with the Katheki or whatever they're called that I didn't do much
of. And again I somehow didn't really do the whole Raphael chain. But
otherwise I did a lot. I did all this stuff I really wanted to
do. I definitely feel like I had a full experience. So yeah,
Mike, do you think I would still enjoy my time and walk away feeling
good if I just critical path through Balder's Gate three? Yeah, I think
you'd be fine, I'm or you know, like like I was mostly just
concerned with doing the size stuff that involved my party members. That's why I
didn't do a lot of the gith Yankee stuff, because it involved that Lazell
or whatever character who I wasn't entirely feeling. Shouldn't make you horny, right,
Okay it might. It's hard to say that because some of that,
like not critical pathing, like some of those big side quest chains do tie
into the main missions, and also I think make them easier. Oh so
right, it's almost a bit of like a breath of the lofting, like,
yeah, you can go straight to the castle, but it's going to
be harder because you have to fight those bosses there. Not literally that,
but a little bit like that. But you know, I wouldn't worry about
that, Jen, I just say, you know, just play it.
If you want to explore a round more, do that. If you like
don't quite beat it or whatever. That's it's the kind of game where if
like you spend twenty five to thirty five hours in doing anything, whether it's
critical bathing or doing a side quest, you're gonna have a pretty good idea
why people like it and what they what they do like about it. I
feel like I just gotta just lock myself in and just choose to stream it
for some period of time so I'm forced to play it. I'm feeling exactly
the same way. Yeah, streaming it definitely helped me, at least in
the beginning, especially since I'm not super familiar with some of this dungeons and
dragon stuff. I didn't really understand how spells where it's and like what a
long rest does versus a short rest kind of things like that. So you
been get and just having people tell me what this is, what I should
be doing, and the game is. You know, I talked about that
reverse difficulty curve. There is definitely a bit of that here. Oh yeah,
early on, especially depending on your party members. Like that's just uh
why it's a very good thing they locked to at level twelve because basically after
that, Oh my understanding is you become a god comes up the level twenty,
and it's like you can like manipulate time and stuff like that. So
yes, yeah, and like you know, I had Gale my party,
and I think most magic users at first are just very very weak, and
by the end of the game. Oh Gale is amazing, and uh he
could teleport around the battlefield and do these giant area of effects spells. But
in the beginning, it's like, here's my fireball can trip and it's going
to miss and then I'm going to get hit once and die. So yeah,
uh it's good. So I don't know if yeah, I don't know
if you all think you're gonna spend much more time with it, but like
I have to. I feel like I have to. Yeah, here's that.
It's funny because like, yeah, like that is part of why I
went to it. It's I did sort of feel pressure, and I'm glad
I did because I really enjoyed it, but I was kind of feeling guilty
a bit not playing more of it. No, I know that, like
you, You've been really high on it the last couple of weeks. Tam
Lucy have also been really high on it, so is Bailey. And I
feel like I've tried to restart it multiple times now, all with the same
character black lesno block. I just keep bouncing off of it. I don't
know. Maybe it's just because I whenever I revisit it. Other games are
also popping out. Speaking about games. I don't know who put this on
the list here steam Deck case. I got a new case with the steam
Deck. It's from Satisfy. It's called the stillf Grip. Yeah, st
y l thh stilf. I'm sure they want you to pronounce that stealth.
I'm sure they do, and yet I'm gonna say stilf. Okay. So
this is like the case part of it, and it like it created uh
snaps on and listeners. I'm gonna try to describe it. It looks like
a batter rang you know what it looks like. It looks Yeah, it
looks like when the Batmobile has the armor on and like, was it Batman
returns or something like that. He like, oh's press the button and so
it goes on the kind it has the little the wells for the thumb sticks
to keep them safe and really what it is it looks really bulky. But
compare this to the actual steam Deck case and this is actually really slimmed down.
It makes it easier to like throw into a bag and not worry about
the analog sticks. Yeah it is, man, it's a goofy looking thing,
though, is it not? Like yep, very real? It is.
I do not find this to be aesthetically pleasing. Well you know what
it looks like, goofy in a fun way, I'll say it, sure,
sure, yeah, exactly. And then this snaps onto the front and
then you gotta have like a little grip thing that happens. And I don't
necessarily love this because the steam deck is already so bulky, but I'll say
this doesn't really get in the way too much. It adds a little bit
of extra rubberized grip stuff here on the back, and that's pleasant. It
doesn't make it worse use, for sure. I just don't know if I
already find the steam deck pretty comfortable to hold. My problem was never the
never the way to hold it. It was just like the weight. It
was a little bit heavy for me. Sure, but I'll having this and
then having the snap on front case. I think I actually will keep using
this because I'm getting to a point where I'm like, oh man, this
steam I'll be a real bummer. If my steam deck thumbsticks stopped working,
I would probably get it fixed, but mostly I probably just set it the
side to say I'm gonna get a fixed and never use it again. And
I like traveling with it, and I like throwing it in my bag,
and I'm pretty irresponsible, so I'll just like, Okay, we're packing up,
I got to get the kids ready. I'm just gonna throw this in
my bag and hope for the best and having this as a way to like
make sure, ohh no, I have to hope for the best. This
is going to protect it. This is straight up gonna keep it safe.
Yeah, that is really nice to have. So I'm I'm a pretty big
fan of the way that this works. Have you considered just starting to wear
cargo shorts grabbing? Yes? In there on the side, I want to
bring cargo I do. I still do wear cargo shorts. I'm gonna bring
it. I believe that in this sect. Yeah, of course that's great.
And if I had a bigger fanny pack, maybe would go in there.
I want, but it's not. It's the biggest fanny pack I can
get, like a three x fanny pack. That's I believe. That's just
a messenger bag. Yeah, that's not fitting my messenger bag either. So
I agree though, like that that big Honkin valve case that came with the
thing is just like yeah, complete, It's just it's luggage. It's luggage.
It's gonna take up most of that bag. And that's you also kind
of need it if you want to keep this thing like secure and safe in
terms of scratches and the thumbsticks. So having this is an alternative. I'm
a big fan of that. And that's yeah. And I think we're gonna
be with the steam deck for a while, so I'm like, yeah,
I'm gonna keep using this all right. That brings us, folks to the
game of the week. That game being Alan Wake two, Game of the
Week. Hold on, hold Game of the Week, Alana two. Yo,
Okay back. You seem very excited. Please Yeah, Beckard, Jane,
you guys I think have Mike as have played at all. I've played
a little bit. I'll talk about how I'm feeling about it because I want
your guys to help. But you guys seem I'm gonna say enamored. You're
a spooky boy. I'm sure I don't own spookiness, but I am a
spooky boy. Literally have a Jack O Lan T shirt. It's fucking Halloween,
Mike, spooky. Come on, I mean it for you. You're
young, listen, No no one will ever disagree with that list. Uh,
this game is I just cannot I really cannot understand how much I'm enjoying
this game. I just want you all to know I am freaking out over
every minute of this game. It is doing something for me that I didn't
know I could have done to me. I didn't know I would be able
to experience. I obviously was very excited about this game leading into the release,
because you know, the entire Remedy pedigree has treated me very well.
So for maybe quantum breaks here and there, but you know, real great
pedigree, real great track record. I got all caught up in the control
lore bullshit and the DLC and then you know, I loved the original Island
make and I really love the fact that I just didn't quite know what to
expect going into this, right, like you for my money, I'm like,
all right, I'm assuming we're gonna have some like flashlight combat, We're
gonna have some like you know, just spooky pages, and we're just gonna
we're gonna take this to the next level and see what really happens with thirteen
years in between two titles, right, And what they've done to me is
just such a wildly enjoyable and successful mixture of all these different ways of narrative
storytelling. And I think for me, this game has done what a lot
of other heavily narrative and expositionally driven software and interactive mediums have tried to do
right and incorporate a gripping and an engaging story without fucking just like making you
sit there and just let it play out, right, Yeah, a lot
of cutscenes or whatever it is. Yeah, So can we talk about the
specifics of how that works, because I'm like getting on board with that,
and I think I understand what you're saying, what you mean. So I
think this game takes a lot borrows a lot from like True Detective season one,
and certainly like American horror story in a lot of ways, and Twin
Peaks, and of of course Twin Peaks, you know with the original of
course that I can't speak to, will have to get some Disney experts away
in on that a little bit. I just think like they've really it's very
multi dimensional, and how they tell this story with video overlays like they did
in Control, with just really inventive like ghosting effects. I just think there's
so many creative ways that this game is able to like manipulate itself, right,
the illusion of it manipulating itself. Right, I am positive, like
I'm buckled into the roller coaster, right, Like I think it's still a
roller coaster. But sure it makes you feel like you're engaged and you are
you're the one pushing the stuff forward, right, even though you might not
be. That doesn't matter if you feel that way exactly. And like again,
you know, if you were able to like blur that line for me,
wonderful that you know you've done the same. Like an open world game
strives to be that kind of thing as well, right, and it just
sort of has to hope that you kind of trigger all those checkpoints. At
the same time, I think this is definitely much more you know, forced
and much more spoon fed. But there is something about this game's overall presentation
and how it seems to be this like sort of metamorphosizing organism right where you're
just sort of like I'm playing it. I'm a detective. I'm and I'm
doing the red string and the and the corkboard, and I'm doing that,
and then I'm doing third person horror action, and then I'm doing all these
other things, and I'm just really blown away as how all that stuff comes
together so well and so effectively. I think in a year where like Arisen
Evil four remake comes out, which is regarded as like the king of you
know, survival horror. Yeah, but very much. Look, Mike,
I'm with you there. That's one of my favorite games of all time.
But I think you play this game so many months later and you're just like,
holy fuck, this is a twenty twenty three Survival Hordor successor. It
is a contemporary in the best possible way and such a satisfying like Evolution where
you're just like, oh man and Ari four. It's fucking older than like,
you know everything, right, it's twenty years old, right, is
it not? It's like it's up there. The remake isn't okay, buddy,
But do you understand what I'm saying. Underneath the hood, it's the
same god damn game. It has contemporary look, it has contemporary new gig
But are you wait, are you unable to hear what I'm saying? Like,
yeah, okay, okay, let's yeah again. I'm never gonna pooh
pooh Resident Evil four. But I just think to have a game born of
this era, born of this contemporary is a truly wild thing to see because
it's like, fuck, yeah, survival horror can be this now. This
is the best effort we have now in that genre, because you know,
don't forget like a lot of the story telling devices and the story itself and
all the things that are stuck in that beautiful thing that was Ari four.
Now in allen Wick two, it's like, this is twenty twenty three.
It is so fresh, it is so new it is. It has narrative
nuances and and storytelling devices that are so fresh and feel so new that to
me it is a very like satisfying evolution of the genre for me, for
my money, and I'm really excited to play it. I just you know,
I'm going on a vacation on Thursday, and I'm kind of like I
don't want to. Yeah, don't come back after ten days and try.
That's okay, it You'll be able to do it. You'll you'll be fine.
I'm telling you, do not start this game before your trip. Do
not. And I think as much as horny as Remedy is to like be
episodic and TV seasonal and do all these things this game. They're doing it
the best. They are able to hit these like episodic cliffhangers in a really
really awesome way, amazing original music, just like the whole package. Like
Stays is watching this game, I'm like, you have to. I'm like
doing my favor. It's the spooking time you did. You did Halloween to
be Please let me do this to you and let just experience. And she
is so gripped and engaged to what this whole thing is. God, this
game has skyrocketed on my list. I'm I'm just head over heels for it.
Yeah, how are you finding it? Greg? We talked about this
briefly in How I Felt last week in Game of Mornings, but I think
I can definitively say, as of right now, this is my game of
the year. Oh my god, I mean it's it's and like you know,
I don't. I don't want to keep too much praise on onto it
to build anyone's expectations and they wind up being disappointed. But similar to Backlard,
this is firing off on all cylinders and it feels specifically targeted to me,
and it feels like Sam Blake was like, Jan, this is this
is for you, Bud. This is for you. I know you didn't
you only played an hour of Allan Wake one and you like control and you're
curious about checking out Quanta Break. But this is for you. Everything that
Backlar said times times three. There's a lot of clever storytelling stuff and just
how empowered you feel as the player, specifically as Saga Anderson, and Yo
shouts out, the fucking Saga Anderson. What a character, great name.
I think one of the best characters to come out in recent years. I'm
not saying the best, but like one of the best. The way that
they intertwine live action elements gameplay elements absolutely stunning and fantastic. We haven't really
talked about how great the game looks. Oh my god, I'm playing on
a PS five on performance mode. Absolutely stunning. And hey, you know,
a big mechanic of this game is the flashlight. But the way that
they play with lights or the absence of lights absolutely fantastic. There's an obscene
amount of coffee in this game, so you know, I'm already. I'm
already and the big thought about you coffee, I gotta get you an allen
Wick Thermis or something. Man one right over there. Oh cool, send
it to Jen. That's mine. Okay, bye by Mike. Oh look
at the jamis. Look at those Yeah, I kind of want to grab
one of those. I don't normally buy a lot of gaming memorabilia. Look
at that jump scarecrub. But it's just something about it is just firing off
on all cylinders. And then like you know, the undertones of the story
of Alan trying to grip with the overwhelming pressure of like what happened in the
last thirteen years. Oh shit, I got a right and like the pressure
of being a creative and it's not like, yes, it's a thirteen year
gap from Alan Wake one to two, but this brings in elements from control
very heavily, right out of the gate too, right out of the gate,
And I can't speak to what it incorporates from Quantum Break, but I'm
sure that it heavily considers those bits. I can see where people will get
frustrated with some of the puzzle stuff because it feels like you are given a
pretty long leash to explore, but not given enough information as to where to
go and what to do and how to play within those rules. I do
occasionally get a little bit lost in some of the maps, and I'll give
it that some of the specific little puzzles I've gotten frustrated at, And maybe
that's just because we play games so weird sometimes where we have to like go
find the critical path but also try and explore and speed through the game as
fast as possible. But this is one of those games where just sitting there
watching it and just experiencing, I'm like, I'm trying to breathe this as
much of it in because I just wanted to fill my lungs because I just
love it so much. And you know, if you are a bit fan
of control and didn't really like Alan Wake one that much, there is plenty
for you control freaks out there, yep. And it's there's a lot of
cheap pops built into it, and it really puts over everything that has come
before it in Remedy's wheelhouse, and this is Remedy firing right off, firing
off on all cylinders, and like the budget and the money behind it definitely
shows. Yeah. So I'm definitely in the position where I am afraid of
bouncing off of it. And you nailed exactly what the issue was for me.
Is the X, the navigating the map where I'm feeling a little bit
lost, which I have a pretty short attention span for that sort of thing,
and I think a lot of that is on me. And I want
to like this game, so I'm trying to get in there and get the
hang of things, and I think I'm starting to do that. It's just
there is an order of operations that you need to pay attention to in the
game, and you need to play things that way. So I was supposed
to be finding this object, and so I'm like looking for it, but
it's like, well, no you're not. Don't look for it. Don't
be an idiot. You got to go to your mind place and put some
pictures down first, and then we're basically going to tell you where to find
it. And I'm like, oh, okay. And I had been to
the place where this this object ended up being, and I was right next
to it, and I could have found it if the game would have let
me. But the game's not gonna let me until I do it in it's
certain order of operations, and I think it's it is very much like the
Haunted House, the roller Coaster of You're gonna walk across these thresholds, and
music's gonna start playing. And then if you want to go back and oh
I forgot something, let me go get that. You're gonna come back.
You're gonna cross the same threshold. The music is going to be playing the
exact same way, in the exact same spot. And I think for the
most part, that is not a problem. It's like, no, this
is the game they belt You just need to like play along the way the
game needs you to play along. And it's taken me a second to get
the hang of that. Yeah, I think I think I am getting the
hang of it. I am returning to the mind place now every chance I
see the little emblem, now, oh I have something to do in my
mind place. Let me go do that before I do anything else, because
because you need to and like and it just like speaks to what you said.
We're saying backlare the variety of ways that they enable that they tell the
story. It's in all this gameplay. It's in all the traditional remedy stuff
of Yeah, there's gonna be cut scenes, there's gonna be dialogue between the
characters, there's gonna be little snippets of commercials of live action stuff on the
TV. Then those characters are gonna show up and they're gonna have little moments.
They're gonna talk about even more stuff. You're gonna overhear conversations, You're
gonna have a weird little jump scares, you're gonna find the pages. It's
all feeding into the narrative in such a strong way that that is really pulling
me in. They are presenting interesting questions, they are now giving me the
tools to understand how to get the answers to those questions. And as I'm
like feeling my way through that, I'm getting more and more into it.
So I'm no I no longer think I'm gonna bounce off. But there was
a chance there where I'm like, man, this world is pushing me away.
The Beckler go ahead, I was gonna say that. I think I
was very surprised with how well I thought the game taught me to use.
The mind space. Is that what's called the mind place where the mind mind
place, Yes, mind keep calling it the palace. It's based on the
minds, and that is just basically an area inside Saga's mind where she's putting
together all of the you know, red cars, and it's also a way
that the game kind of like cleverly cleverly that word tracks your progress with like
collectible stuff and other things. And I just think it's a really inventive kind
of way to do it. That's what I think. It's what keeps you
engaged, right because you're on the you're on their path. It is defined
path exactly. And this is not like Outer Wilds where you have a board
up there and you're going to be figuring stuff out and now you're going to
go out and like, oh, this makes me think I should try that,
I should do that. No, that's not how this game works.
It is very prescriptive. But because you are going through the act of putting
up the board and answering questions and like just putting a picture on that thing
and then getting an answer and then that gives you a new question, you
feel more attached to what's happening. And I think that's really smart. And
it reinforces this story too, like I think that gets lost so often where
you're just like, the fuck was that guy's name? Why am I caring
about this? Though so many games tell you something once and they're like,
what we told you, You're fucking on your own, and I'm like,
Homie, I have ADHD. You got to tell me three times, and
you got to tell me each time in a different way. You gotta write
it down, you got to show me a video, and we got to
have characters say it. And like this game actually does that. It does,
and it does it in a way that is not like, oh,
we think you're stupid, which I am, but like the game's not treating
me that way. It is very much doing the thing where it's like,
no, we understand that there's a lot going on and there's a lot of
proper nouns, and we are going to make sure that we spoon feed you
a little bit, but in a way that is always going to be different
and interesting every time, for sure. For sure. It's it's very I'm
as engaged in trying to anticipate how this game is going to let me play
it as I am. Like the story moments and the beats and all that,
the the the sort of you know, villainous cult right that you're sort
of tracking down, Like I think that's great, all that stuff's real fun.
But also it's like, man, I really don't know how this game
is gonna treat me next, and I think that to me is equally as
thrilling. The first sort of main boss that you fight in this game,
it's fucking horrifying, Like it is straight up horrifying. Like I'm sorry,
not a lot of games really spook me anymore. This is a scary fucking
game. And I'm loving and I'm just loving, and there's like, I
don't know, I feel like this. Last night, I was like,
is this game doing something that I'm not sure it's doing, Like is it
is it cheating for me? I think it does do that. I think
it does like get easier for you, which is not the first, not
the first game to do that. But I also think like there's there's some
slide of hand stuff going on, where like environments in a way that you're
sort of not expecting and and sometimes lead you back to where you need to
be without actually cutting off, without stacking the furniture in the hospital, you
know what I mean. Like there is some of that, But I think
this game's doing just a lot of inventive things to keep you on the roller
coaster and to keep you engaged. And like I said, I mean,
if it's not clear, I am I'm completely smitten. Yeah, I was
gonna say that. It's also deals with the with exploration and finding all the
side stuff really well and incorporating that into the greater story, but also making
sure that it actually matters that you did kind of veer off the critical path
and like Okay, yeah, cool you are. This will prove to be
useful down the line, not only from a player perspective, but also from
a story aspect. Mm. I agree that it is scary. It is
a spooky game, for sure, but if that is off putting you and
stopping you from trying to pick up Alan Wake too, I think it being
other than like the the jump scares, where it's like the static you're like
a type of stuff. It kind of really uh uh projects to the player
of like, hey, this is when you're gonna be into combat. Otherwise
you're chilling, You're cool to explore around. You will come across some spooky
bits here and there, and like the little jump scariest things or audio design
will change. But if you're a little scaredy cat, I implore that's a
jump scare. Mike, haven't you been paying attention? I implore you to
to try try and be a little, little, little brave buddy of mine
and check it out, because there is so much under the hood here that
is absolutely insane. Also, if you're not familiar with Alan Wick one or
Control, I think the way that they frame the story with Saga Anderson being
new to this whole world completely yeap works as a great vehicle for someone new
to the series like myself, where you're finding stuff out just like at the
same time she is, and you're all piecing this together, and as she
is exploring her mind place, you are exploring your mind place within this world
of remedy. It feels like the story isn't starting in the beginning of a
sequel. It feels like it is starting a media rez which is a good
thing to pull off. If you could do that, you should do that.
Where it's like, oh no, this is just a backstory for this
game. It's not oh, what happened in the last game and it's so
important, and it is important, but it's important in the way that any
sort of like, well, hey where we started here, and events happened
and they affected these characters. But as they reveal these things, they talk
about it and they explained how it made them feel and then so you get
filled in that way, and that makes it just feel like, Okay,
no, we're telling a cohesive story right now. I'll say, like you
talked a little bit about more about the exploration, I'm not like a huge
fan of games where it is we're just gonna be kind of walking around and
we're gonna be looking for stuff in a corner and and hopefully there's something there.
I'll say that this game, like you said, you mentioned this,
usually there is something there, and it's not so expansive that you're gonna feel
really super lost. You're gonna get a little bit turned around, you're gonna
have to load up the map, and it doesn't load up the fastest,
but it's it's it's usually fine, and you're gonna to reorient yourself and get
around. And I'm like, once I started doing that again, I got
the hang of it a little bit and then I'm like, oh, this
isn't the worst exploration. There are different games that that, uh, that
do this worse or push push me away more with the exploration, and I
and I have found enough of these like little extras in the world that I
feel like, oh, hey, I'm not wasting my time, and that's
a big part of it. I've never felt like I was wasting my time.
Just getting a little bit turned around, that's all. I don't know
what it is. Yeah, I if anyone can recommend any more literature or
other pieces of media that are in this whole uh world, or the style
of storytelling, please recommend it to me. I want to. I do
want to replay Control now. Yeah, yeah, I never I never played
the DEALC for Control. Oh yeah, yeah, that's that's probably. I
mean, I think that tell that that does explain a good amount, especially
at the beginning. I think the map. I agree, the map is
not great. It's not Control levels of bad, but it is certainly not
great. I think, you know, I guess like getting to the map
is also kind of a pain in the ass too. I mean, I
I hold down select to go right to the map. Oh that okay,
that'll do it. Okay, yeah, you hold it. But but it
does take a little bit longer to load than to go to the right place.
Mind place load's instantly, which is wild. The especially that first area
you're in, you know, things are, it's dark, it's rainy,
you are really struggling to find like that one singular path, like it's I
get it. I think that does add to it. I think that,
you know, obviously that's a deliberate choice, uh you know, to get
turned around a bunch like that. But yeah, that that to me,
that's been the only thing out of the gate that I've sort of been like,
oh that that can be tedious and cumbersome. And you know, I
think occasionally you do find not like full glitching out, but you do find
a little bit of uh handcuffing with with maybe some movement and stuff like that.
Early on you getta like understand how the characters move exactly kind of they
kind of shimmey to the sigh and they're not going to like animate like they're
walking the right. It's like, no, they're definitely right strafe and I'm
fine with that. But it's like, oh, okay, figure that a
little bit. I did play this on the Roger Ally a little bit,
and it's you have to go into your settings and set the on the on
the on the ally and set the RAM usage for the GPU to auto.
And because I think it defaults to four gigabytes and this game will not work
with that, it just would straight up will tell you, no, there's
not enough RAM here. Uh so you set to auto and then it will
warn you there's still not enough RAM. The game runs pretty okay, it's
just when you are exploring, having that lower fidelity kind of be like,
wait, am I am I seeing what I'm what I think I'm seeing,
or it's just kind of just smudgie graphics that could be that can add to
some of the frustration. And as soon as I was back playing on the
forty ninety, I had no problem anymore. And I'm like, okay,
so you can play it on one of these handhelds. I probably wouldn't recommend
it. And if you are going to play it on there, maybe stream
it from a real PC instead. That might be the real option there.
And yeah, we didn't talk that much about the fidelity. I know you
said Channel Experienced five it is oh man, there is something going on with
this, with this it's stuff. It's really just taking advantage of all that.
What's that, Mike, As I said, it's epic games money,
is what I think. Yeah, definitely helping you. Yeah, yeah,
you know, I will, I will, I will deal with that horrific
piece of software. If if, if you know, I want, if
I have to, you know, control to delete an end Epic Games Store
fifteen times before or Alan Wade too will launch appropriately. It's worth it for
the amount of mister ray tracing going on in this thing. And if you
have a BVS system like we're fortunate to have with those nzx T machines,
Holy goddamn shit, does this game look absolutely It has the global illumination and
it's a ray reconstruction three point five. It is, you know, one
of the first games to take advantage of much of that stuff. And boy
it works. I mean it's a flashlight game, and they always thought flashlight
games with ray tracing and raid reconstruction would be amazing. It turns out.
Yes. I tried it on a thirty eighty and I was like, nah,
dog like that. I know that sounds. It actually steals down to
run on the lot of stop. It's good. It scales down and it's
gonna run just fine. But boy, those extra bells and whistles are not
just extra bells and whistle They do contribute greatly to the experience. Yeah,
I mean it. The default settings took off ray tracing on my thirty eighty.
Yeah, there to enjoy that rate thirty two thousand life. Whatever the
hell you guys have does the PS five do have very tracing in that quality
version. I didn't scan through the settings. They said, it's uh by
the I mean the digital foundry. That's that's what I'm asking about. Yeah,
I think I think it probably has some I don't know if it has
global illumination. Yeah, it probably probably has, like shadows and stuff.
Yeah, it's I mean, look, this is the wettest, flash lightiest
game you'll ever play. And the reflections and all that ship yo, I
like it is like that that first thing with Dusk with the with the sun
going through the trees when you holy You're just like, yeah, I honestly,
I'm not gonna lie like I have to sit up close playing this game.
Do you guys find that too? We're like, I don't know if
you guys play games only on your PC monitor. I'm sitting within like four
feet of this thing. I need to. I want to be up and
its ship. I'm gonna connect it to this TV over here, which I
have pretty close to my my my gamer chair. Yeah, and I'm gonna
get up and I'm gonna get up in that ass. You gotta get up
in this ship. Man, there's too much. There's a lot of crevices,
there's a lot of wounds you want to inspect. Like, you gotta
get up in that ship. Don't worry about it. Mic even human penises.
Penises cool. The last thing I'll say about it is I've seen some
scuttle butt saying like, oh, we should just on Arlan away Charlotte.
I'm like, no, no, no, you were missing You're missing the
point completely. And I think I said this about thirteen sentinels during the Game
of the Year when whatever year that was. But like this is another proof.
This is another proof of concept where video if like there's some fucking great
debate about video games being art. This is like example one A and one
B, because like this is the type of storytelling and type of journey that
can only be pulled off in the medium of video games. Yeah, Like,
my wife is watching the current American Horror Story am I, and it's
like half hour and tell them like too, and she's like this is already
better than the newest season of American Horror Story. And I'm like that,
and you know, like she's like I said, she's a horror weirdo,
I think. But to be fair what you said about Alan Wick two and
n HBO, I do think Sam Lake would probably love going that happened.
But yeah, yeah, yeah, the game, the game will dictate the
show and not the other way around, right, Like that's yeah. I
think this is the game where I'm like, I don't know if it's for
me, like proving that games are like I just got Tom playing supermar Brothers
wonder, I'm like, no, this proves it. What this game proves
for me though, is, uh, they need to stop trying to make
games be like movies. Yeah, if you have movie like ideas, you
make a fucking video game still, because what you end up with is alan
Wake two and all that stuff just ends up making your video game that much
more cool if you lean into what makes it a video game. Uh.
And I think that Remedy seems to be the one studio that really really understands
that at this point. I suppose, you know, near automata is when
the people point to a lot as being able to do that with its multiple
endings and things like that. But this is like, I think this is
carrying forward that legacy, and we're hearing the new game Plus is going to
change up the narrative and stuff. So it's like, yep, they're existing
in that same space, So let's let's go. I can't wait. Yeah,
I mean, I think it's funny that, for whatever reason, on
this website and podcast we've we've brought up the concept of in media res several
times across the board, but that we're much of the Roman Empire and the
Latin stuff. Yeah, it's that is like such a simple concept to drop
into storytelling in a video game that works so well, and I don't think
a lot of game try and use that type of concept of storytelling or that
that type of narrative device, or if they do, it sucks, like
the beginning of Metal Gear Solid five well yeah, well yeah, yeah,
yeah. A lot of people do the thing where it's like, you know,
they start a game and an exciting actions sequence, then they're like ten
days earlier, and then it's just completely linear from there until you catch up,
which is I think this game literally does ten days earlier. Literally ten
days. I think it's exactly that number. Just a shot in the dark
there. Man. I love this so much. It's great. It's great.
Also, the uh, we've got the game spot review cast version of
this review if you want to check it out. I know the game Spot
gang gave it a ten. Yep, they're into it, give it a
ten. So if you want to listen to that review, yes, get
the podcast. I've been I've been making notes in my own mind palace mind
place like like I would be making my own review, and I'll just I
can constantly say if I ever put something together and actually wrote more than a
paragraph about something or two sentences, easy, five out of five for this.
Yeah, all the Giant Boss out of twenty. Okay, I don't
know what he gave resid eval for Calm Down. That's a nineteen out of
twenty. This is a twenty out of twenty. All right, folks,
That's been a lot of games, and look forward to more games. Talk
later this week on Chiabomb Revengeance. But we're gonna take another quick bricky break
or no, we're gonna take our first quick break and we'll be back with
the news. Yo. Audible is the place to enjoy all of your audio
entertainment in one app. You can get a wide variety of audiobooks, an
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catalog. New members can try Audible now for free for thirty days. Visit
audible dot com, slash Giant BombCast, Protect Giant bombcasts to five hundred five
hundred. That's Audible dot com slash Giant BombCast Protect Giant bombcasts to five hundred
five hundred to try Audible free for thirty days. I think that the world
of Alan Awake and Control would be better served if people just wore headlamps.
That's it. And headlamps and sexy people. I'm just like an elastic bandy
over your forehead and I'm like, wow, look this and that like six
or seven of those things. I love them so much. And then you
can get like the like the cool cool ones that have like the red lights
so it doesn't mess up your night vision. I used that occasionally. I
used it when I was getting those hornets that turned into that GB animated.
I was wearing a red lamp so they wouldn't come at the light. They
still came at me though, it still came. Did they come, Well,
they came. They came to you, Jeff Grub, because they wanted
the news. This is okay, all right, first news story is Backlar.
What are you gonna have for Halloween dinner? I want? I'm just
curious, I need, I need some help. Halloween dinner were so much
candy. Like what do you do for it's a it's a pizza night like
we're doing. I think we're doing three two piles of Buffalo chicken two Grandma
pies. It's just like rectangular pizza, like thicker cross, rectangle, rectangle.
That's just young pizza. Cool. No, I don't know, I
don't it can sounds they could be the strict Here where I live, they
call it Grandma Pies. I'm sure you have a cute little Midwestern name.
For it, and yeah, and then probably just like a bunch of salads.
We'll do like a caesar, we'll do like a house salad will do.
How would you make a salad? Spooky? You don't, it's just
you don't. Yeah, No, that's normal, that's normal. Viniagarette,
Yeah, vegetables, it's a salad. Yet, well that's scary to me.
I like, we got to feed more people than I'd like to be
feeding. So it's like, you know, you're just gonna get what you
get and not canna be upset. You know, get what you get.
You don't throw a fit. All right, let's get to this news.
Starting with the bad news. As has been our custom for the last couple
of weeks, there's been more layoffs, this time at Bungee Bungie, the
developers of Destiny, have laid off employees. The scope of the layoffs isn't
currently fully clear, based on the people posting on social media yesterday, seems
pretty wide sweeping. Though Bungie has also reportedly delayed Destiny's Destiny Too's next expansion
that's going to come out like later next year, and the Marathon, their
new game isn't going to come out till twenty twenty five. Now, all
of these these layoffs, these delays come about a year and a half after
Sony acquired Bungie for three and a half million dollars. People have pointed out
that as part of that deal, a million or like a billion dollars was
set aside for employee retention. And while that's not necessarily kind of where it's
like, oh, this will avoid layoffs, what it's really there is like,
oh, this is to incentivize people to stick around, so they don't
we even we get a brain drain. Still doesn't look great that Hey only
acquires them. They haven't done much. The Destiny two is in a bit
of a rut, and now we're laying people off just not even two years
after that acquisition. But this is also part of a wider trend of layoffs
over at Sony. They've had a media molecule of the visual art studio,
a lot of contractors that were working at Naughty Dog stuff. So this is
a trend. But Bungie seems like one that should have been able to figure
it out without having to deal with this. And that's kind of what I
heard a little bit internally, is like everyone knew that Destiny two was kind
of in this rut, but they expected because they were at Sony they'd be
mostly mostly protected, So these layoffs came as a big, big surprise.
How are you guys feeling about Destiny, Bungie's future, Sony's live live service,
push, all that stuff. Yeah, this is a mess. Paul
Tassi had some additional info just a little bit ago, and Paul has been
covering Destinies games as a service reporter on that beat and a big right And
according to his source, the layout decision came from Bungie management and not Sony,
which is kind of again shocking. Uh, apparently there's some scuttle but
with the benefits right, because of employee benefits only less till the end of
the month if you're let go, so lain people off on the thirtieth means
a single additional day of coverage, And many employees had unvested shares as a
result of the Sony purchase. Those shares would be received based on staying with
the company for a certain number of years following the sale, but those shares
revert to Bungee if you leave, even if you're fired, which is what's
happening now to many of those effectives. This is yeah, according to a
source, Yes, let's just say, uh fuck why? How what that
fucking man and these layoffs are They're impacting like some of their most kind of
forward facing public faces on social media, social media managers, community managers,
composers, like, what's going on here? Bungie was supposed to have things
figured out? Yeah, of course, Destiny Too's in a rut. It's
however, many years old. Like we have all these live service games suddenly
being freaked out that they aren't as popular as they were eight years ago,
And like, yeah, I know a couple games can manage to somehow not
fall into that truck. But you have to account that that's going to happen.
There has to be a better solution to it than just laying a bunch
of people off, because your next thing isn't happening quite as fast as you
thought it would. All those years Destiny Too was just making all this money?
Was there no war chests built up on top of this apparent money set
aside after the purchase too? How does this happen? What is this?
What's going on? I mean it feels completely incongruous with the reality on the
ground across gaming a lot. If we look at the total amount of money
that the video game industry is making this year, it's up a couple of
billion dollars from last year. Now, it's down from the height of the
pandemic. The year before that, when we were in the middle of the
pandemic, it's down from that. I think most of these companies are like,
we expected that to last forever? What the fuck? How did you
ever fucking expect it? What are you talking about? We all knew that
wasn't gonna last forever. Why did But companies have these short term operating ideas
where it's like, we are doing this this quarter, and so we have
to use that money and invest it to make stuff even bigger next quarter,
no matter what the reality on the ground is. And now who has to
pay for that? Not Pete Parsons, although he's gonna pay socially because he
posted a tweet like oh Man's bad rough day of Bungie Man. Who could
have saw this kind of back to fun I'm looking for the guys this You
could have saw it coming because it was you who did it. It was
literally you, not even Sony, Like you can't even pass the buck to
them. It was you. So uh yeah, he's gonna pay that way,
but he's not gonna pay any Honestly, it sounds like he's gonna make
more money because some of those people's the unvested stock come back to Bungee,
which means I would imagine and part comes back to him. Uh this sucks.
I don't like. What really is messes me up is people work on
these games for a long time. Then they come down and say, hey,
we are We're selling a bunch, We're selling the Sony. We're selling
the Sony. You have all the stock. All you got to do is
stick around for a couple of years and you're going to get in on this
action. All of the work you did to turn us into a valuable acquisition
target is going to pay off for you personally. And you stick around,
you and you stay with the company, and you're waiting for your stock to
best and then you get laid off and now that stock is no longer yours.
Yeah, this leaves a really bad taste in the mouth. And it's
a lot of this feels inexcusable, especially for people like you know, the
composer Michael Salvatory was at the studio for over twenty five years. Listen,
I get the idea of like having an on staff composer. It's not how
the video game industry works these days. Wait till there's stock vests, and
I guess I don't know the individual reality for each person. Maybe in his
top stock is good because he's been there for so long, but I don't
think that's necessarily going to be the case. So we'll see. This does
feel like it is part of a effort at Sony to shift away from whatever
current strategy they were. Okay, they went all in on this strategy for
the last couple of years, Like they haven't even waited for it to pay
off yet. So Sony makes really big games that cost a lot of money,
and they do sell. They sell really well, so they make some
money on those games. They don't make a ton of money on a God
of War or a Last of Us Part two because they're so expensive to make,
and then they're really expensive to market because they put a lot of marketing
in there, like hundreds of millions of dollars worth of marketing. So these
big, big projects are you know, we always say loss leaders. It's
not technically true because they aren't actually losing money, but they are in that
vein. And so Sony has always been looking for some other option here,
or recently they've been looking for another strategy that took them to games as a
service and now they look like, hey, maybe that's not gonna work,
even though they have those twelve games in the work in production. Uh,
there's rumors right now and they're unverified, but someone like reset Erro will say,
hey, I'm pretty familiar what's going on. People seem to believe this
person that Sony is now reconsidering that like, oh, all twelve of those
games are actually gonna come out. It seems like they're going to cancel or
at least indefinitely delay less or the last of US factions and something similar could
happen to a lot of those games. And so Sony's maybe backing away from
the games as a service strategy. Where does that leave them, Well,
they're going to go probably get more third party exclusives, but but that this
has been a major effort, a lot of money put into this, and
again, who's going to pay for this miscalculation? It's going to be people
getting laid off and not to people the top. Although I know Jim Ryan
leaving might have nothing to do with this, it's hard for me to imagine
that Jim Ryan leaves and then this this parade of the layoffs and bad news
happens and they're unrelated. There is no don't know for sure that they're connected.
I'm some like grain of salt with my speculation that I'm putting out there.
It is speculation, but for me, I have a hard time not
seeing as connected. Uh, it's it's, it's it's a fucking big ass
bummer. I mean it's it's such an amazing year of game releases, but
for the actual industry itself, it's very incredibly fucking depressing. Yep. On
on another side, like, what do you think is the future of a
destiny to I mean, it sure feels today, especially with all this boy,
it feels like that's running out of us. Like it it is from
an outsider's perspective, it has always felt near impenetrable to get into right like
you need and I don't think shopsiders. There are people who's stuck with that
game for a very long time who got burned by one of the recent not
very good expansions, who are now like, I think I'm gonna wait for
a Destiny three. And if you those people are saying that, and I
yell at me when I said, I'm not gonna back into it till a
Destiny three. And I've been on board with Mike saying that the entire time,
like, yeah, that sounds right to me. That's when I would
check it out again. I mean, maybe, you know, with Giant
Bomb, maybe we'll go play it sometime. Eh, well, I'm gonna
wait till a Destiny three. That's where I'm at. And they seem against
doing that, but the reality now might be they can't avoid shifting in that
direction because that might be the only thing that gets people to feel, oh,
this is a fresh chance to feel good about this game again. Yeah.
Uh Marathon. Also, it's a we don't that's an extraction shooter.
That's a tough genre to crack. In general, there's a few big successful
ones, including people I think like the Mode and Call of Duty that does
that stuff. But you're going to spend in a couple extra years developing that
game, and so it's going to be even more expensive, and that's going
to put even more pressure on it, and it's going to come out,
And are people going to care about extraction shooters in twenty twenty five. That's
a tough thing to know. And I think that's what really they're worried about
is live service games used to be a much safer beck because you could make
them a cheaper because you could experiment, you could do something small, you
didn't have to make a whole campaign. And now these days it's like,
actually, you are competing for such a limited amount of people's time that if
you don't put a ton of money into these games to make them big and
shiny and stick out in every way possible, you don't stand a chance.
So now they're just as expensive, if not more expensive, than a traditional
game. And I think my personal problem with it is is it does seem
like the budgets are going up in all these games, and they are be
they all do look bright and flashy, but they are all also starting to
look very homogeneous, and I just can't discern them from each other anymore.
Like when we got the news that X Defiant was going to be delayed,
I can't tell you or point out on a police lineup what X Defiant looks
like, yeah, you're gonna I tell you what you see it, and
you're like, no, that's just Call of Duty, right, like your
Call of Duty or whatever Hyenas was supposed to look. I don't know.
Sonic dolls are going to be in that game, though, so you would
have done that. But the ones I'm able to tell apart, I feel
terrible because it's all the anime ones, the moisturizer ones. Yeah, yeah,
the moisturizer games. I don't know. I think that it is easy
to look at what is happening at Sony Slash PlayStation right now and be like,
oh, they're in trouble. They're not in trouble. They know how
to make big games and get people excited about that stuff, and then that
leads people to buy their console, and that leads people. It leads people
to subscribe to PlayStation Network and then spend a lot on micro transactions and live
free life service games like Fortnite and Call of Duty, and Sony's making more
money than ever. But they do have to grow. That is their mandate,
and they also have to feel extra pressure because not a lot of other
parts of Sony are growing, so they're kind of carrying that entire corporation on
their back, which makes it even more precious to get every nickel and dime.
And we've seen them sort of nickel and diming people here and there with
some of these things, raising games to seventy dollars be the first ones to
do that, and then raising the price of PlayStation network, something that they're
still out there defending. So they are being forced to make choices that might
feel like a little bit more aggressive, that might feel like arrogance and pushing
people away. I think as long as they keep still making these really big
games that no one else is making and making them high quality, they're gonna
be just fined. It's just gonna mean that those are gonna be even bigger
risks where if one goes bad, there could be a toppling domino effect a
little bit, and that could be a little bit. That's scary for Sony.
That's why they keep taking these other bets. You know, there's no
clear answer on what to do next. How can e studio like Sony that
puts out big, giant triple A games, how can they be super fluid
or expect to be super fluid when you know, like you can't adapt God
of War Ragnarok to tap into the current culturals like Geist or whatever else is
popping off with games at the time, right, you do have to make
that giant bet because there's stuff that happens in Fortnite or you know when Fortnite
was really really on a heater where it's like, now we straight up stole
this from these other games, right, is that because Sony is putting all
their eggs in the Triple A Blockbuster basket versus Well, but then, like
you know, I say that, and I'm realizing they made this huge initiative
to push for games as a service or live service games, where that could
have been their opportunity to adapt to whatever is super hot right now. Right,
But it's like what Jeff's say, like that used to be like,
oh, like live service games, you can make those kind of cheap and
then if they're a hit, then you invest in them. Now it's not
even like that anymore. Even just getting any of those off the ground is
this giant investment that takes years and years and years of development, And what
I hear is like it's not even just expensive. No one knows how to
do it, and we've mean, how many times have we seen that?
Like, oh, Destiny learned those lessons. Now, every game after this
is going to learn from what Destiny did and they're gonna come out with much
stronger launches. And that never happens. Every game is still kind of a
mess at launch and has to go through those growing pants on their own because,
as it turns out, and I hear this from places like Bungie,
no one knows how to do it. It's so difficult and and and so
when when a Bungie shows up at like Naughty Dog and Naughty Dogs we're working
on the last of those factions. Here's what it looks like, a bunch
of goes, Oh shit, guys, this isn't gonna work. This is
gonna be a real big problem. Like the game is fun, so the
fuck what this needs? You need this, and you need to have seasons
of content plan and you need to have flexibility in your micro transactions so that
you could put fucking ari on a Grande in there. And it's like and
they the game's not prepared to do that. And so Bunch comes in and
says, this is not great right now, and it's not gonna work as
a business. And then we're like, well, what does work. You're
gonna have to completely revamp everything and that's gonna take even longer. And actually
we don't really know either because we're kind of winging it. So it's games
of a service as a service. Turns out was never actually going to be
this answer. It was because it such a roll the dice, and I
get you know, Sony could roll the dice twelve times and that gives you
a better chance. But we're even seeing it. I don't know. If
Naughty Dog can't do it, who can. It's kind of how it's got
to be feeling coming out of this, and yeah, well look here's my
naivete and again me not knowing shit about game development. But say, you
know, you got all this money, you got all these studios. Isn't
a bit better bet to have the twelve very different things than twelve same things
and hoping that one of those will take off. I I think it's what
the thinking was like a year and a half ago, for sure. But
I think, listen, they're not gonna stop making the very big things,
so they were gonna do both. They're gonna have a lot of the big
things that do this the Sony PlayStation house style, and then they were gonna
have the twelve very different things, or ideally they would have been very different.
But I think for Sony they know it's actually better. Like if they
had to pick or choose one or the other. They're gonna keep doing the
big Sony games that cost a lot of money because they know how to make
those, and they know their audience is thirsty, thirsty, thirsty for those
games, so they're gonna keep doing that for sure. It's just those.
Every single time they go out and they start another one of those big projects,
it becomes riskier than the last time. And it's not just because it's
going to be more expensive. It's because you're gonna get diminishing returns and the
sort of creativity that you can squeeze from these studios we get. I mean,
they look how good of a job they did rebooting God of War.
Of course, yeah, they could do that again. It's like, well,
when we're gonna do a sequel, it's exactly like the last one,
and people want that and that's good, But then we're gonna do another sequel,
it's like, exactly like the last one. Well, no, now
we've got to start changing things up and hopefully people like the ways we're going
to change it again. So it's it's complicated and risky and they're and they
should be afraid of that because that is where they, you know, they
get all their money from, or at least get all the excitement from,
and they want to maintain that. But they listen, they're still really skilled.
They're probably going to figure some stuff out. It just might be it
might mean like a couple of walls like we got this year where there's not
a ton of first party Sony games and they get Spider Man two and that
sort of over covers up everything else. But we'll see Sony's not alone in
this. A lot of publishers are looking around like what is the path to
growth? And they were all thinking it was live service a little bit ago,
and now no one's really thinking that anymore. But the scary thing is
there is no obvious new thing for them to golom onto. Are we going
full circle in that license games? Maybe the the quick fix? Yeah,
because like you know, I don't I can't think of a lot of positives
coming out of ub Soft except this Avatar game. Avatar game, that's Star
Wars game they're working on. People so excited about that. It's this is
what has happened. Is Another thing I hear from publishers is is they know
they need to be making really really big games and starting a new IP is
very even more risky and just as expensive as going out and renting an I
P. So yes, I like that, Yes, and that's what that's
what they're doing. So uh yeah, I think that we can probably expect
that trend to continue, especially if it keeps paying off, which it has
with Star Wars and Harry Potter. Now there's not a ton that will pay
off. Maybe Avatar will. I'm skeptical. I'm probably gonna have a good
time with that, but I don't know. We'll see that translated like real
quick. Like I'm sure we could all name off a couple of properties right
that that could blow up? Call them, well, blow up both of
those. Pop Eye, No, there there was a pop remember that?
Too much of it for the children, and I hate the children. I
don't hate. I still have it installed on my switch. I should play.
We've gotten to every horror franchise now, right, like those have all
been used stuff asymmetrical multiplayer games. Absolutely, I don't. No, you
could probably do an it. Oh you know what I watched. I know
that the Scotta game on like the places too if people really liked it.
But I saw that this would be called the thing for the first time this
weekend. That's really good. They should make a video game about that today.
They should do all of John Carpenter's movies. They Live, would be
a would be the game? I think, yeah, I really do think
that would be great. I was gonna say Skiff for New York, but
that's just metal your solids. We'll do it anyway, do it anyway,
get Ka dreaming to do it? He probably would. All right, let's
let's move along with these stories here. Atari acquires Drew Scanlon's Digital Eclipse.
Atari has agreed to acquire Digital Eclipse, a studio that specializes in remastering and
restoring classic games. The deal is expected to be completed in the coming days,
and it is worth up to twenty million dollars. Atari said the acquisition
will help it further support its retro focused growth strategy. This is a strategy
that also led them to acquire Nightdive Night Di Dive, YEP, so now
night and Digital Clips under the Atari brand, I'm I'm thinking, I think
I'm pretty down with what Atari's got cooking over there. If the idea is
let's find a bunch of old shit that we can make feel new again,
and let's go to the two studios that are the best at that in their
own respective ways. Digital Clips does these sort of now interact to museums great
at collecting the surrounding materials and bringing it all into the experience and now that
you can like read the materials that go right into playing it, and they
set it up. So I mean, God, I really want to keep
a space in my top ten for the making of Karatica, which is an
amazing game actually. And then then on the other side, Night Dive,
who's like the best at remastering these old PC games. If Atari's strategy is
this, I think I'm mostly on board. These days, we'll see and
they say that they're going to keep being able, They're going to keep being
able to operate mostly independently at Digital Clips and doing the game projects that they
want to do. It's just now they're going to have I guess maybe some
extra resources from Atari. We'll see how that plays out right. It's not
like, oh, they're only going to be able to work on Atari games
or anything like that. That's not how it's come to ridiculous now, it's
about Atari branding themselves as a retro gaming company, which I think just makes
a lot of sense for them sense. Yeah, if you want to do
that, then man, Digital Eclipse and night Die before that that those are
the two companies that you want. It's funny you mentioned that, Mike,
because I've always had that association with Atari, Like you guys make the old
shit, right, Yeah, people do, so Basewell lean into it,
agreed. I don't like. I just I'm such a fan of this,
like thinking up the strategy and then executing on it in a way that I
guess acquiring Studios isn't executing on the idea. It's still setting up the idea.
Let's see how they enable the night Dive and Digital Clips to do even
more. But as our Wolves and Chats says, Digital Clips is already talking
in its newsletter about how it's working on the next gold Master series game,
and that's what the making of Krodka is. It's the first time the gold
Master Series of these Digital museums, So if they can have those coming out
like once a quarter Boy and I'm honestly Atari would be a very They did
Atari fifty obviously, so they've done a lot of that history, but diving
in even deeper on some of those specific games, and then hopefully getting to
a point where they've established this gold Master series as such a strong way to
honor a game that maybe then Digital Clips gets to work with Sega or you
know, Heaven Forbidden Nintendo. That would just be amazing. If they could
do this for the original Legend of Zelda or something like that, I would
just I would lose my mind. So you know that's hopes and dreams,
but we'll see. Uh yeah, go ahead. Just that digital Clips made
that incredible Disney Afternoon collection and it's still not on Switch, and I would
very much like that. Please. Yeah, it's weird. Switch Drake,
Drake Drake. I saw that Drake dressed up as the Genie for a Halloween
this year. So my first swish is, of course, the uh let
me get only get three of these Mike Black Shock remake. The second wish
just for the Disney after You collection on Switch, and my third wish gd
freedom. It's not how it works. I'm afraid that's not how it works.
So worked the first movie, I wasted a wish. He the Genie.
He dressed as a genie, not for Halloween, but because his daughter
somehow became convinced that the Genie was going to come over and watch Aladdin with
her. So he's like, I guess I gotta do this. Now,
that's how it works, hey, I dresses the Genie like when that movie
was new for Halloween that year. I remember it was that year we had
a big snowstorm, so I had to wear a coat over it. I
was mad. So listen, listen, what a captivating tale you Jesus you're
leaving us for the going vacation right listen, buddy back what I said that
was? Everyone heard it, Everyone heard it. I need I need to
see a photo of that. If we're gonna have that discussion, just want
to put that out there. Please gonna have that photo? And uh yeah,
thank you? Were you blue? Were you blue? So listen up.
Here's a story, a story about a guy who lives in the blue
world, and all day and all night and everything I see is just blue,
like litter window in a blue corvette and everything is blue for him and
himself and everybody around because he ain't got nobody to listen. To listen to
listen, I'm blue that song? You are that song? Yes, Jeff.
Now you may continue. Dual screen gaming device that could be split in
half. UH patent for dual screen device and basically they're saying you could in
this pattern, you'd be able to take it apart and both sides would still
be able to operate independently. UH. The device resembles a three D s
UH and would use some sort of wireless gaming display technology between these two sides.
It also features a touch screen on the outside for interaction even when closed,
so screens on the inside. You fold it up like a book,
and then they're still a screen on the outside, so it could continue to
operate. The patent obviously does not guarantee that will get an actual product released
like this Nintendo patent stuff all the time. No, they of course that
said, I don't think I want this thing, even though I described even
though I described needing something exactly like this earlier when complaining about couch co op
with one which two was like this, you'd be you don't want it back
along. No, I just I don't trust wireless display. I just think
like we're in a bad place with that. I have to see it work
in any real meaning. I mean, the way you was was mostly fine
unless you try to go like unless you unless you walked walked in between you
and the line of sight frequent, that's that happening a lot. I got
that thing, right, I remember, I got that thing, and I'm
like, yo, I'm playing Call of Duty in bed and no I couldn't
because it happened to go through one wall, one hollow ass sheet rocked wall.
It wasn't concrete, it wasn't brick, it was motherfucking sheet rock.
The thing sound has no problem penetrating. Yeah, anyway, I yeah,
So it's just that shit doesn't work. Well, I realized that was a
long time ago. Maybe wireless video technology has improved in some way, hopefully
through Wi Fi. I don't know. I just like the DS and three
DS A lots to the idea of maybe getting some like ports or new ways
to play those games. Are you know, god forbid like sequels. If
this is what I need to get a leap beat agents too, then so
mean, let's see of all the surprise like gimmicks they could do to the
next switch that like maybe I would assumed I wouldn't want this one. I
would be mostly okay with because again, stuff is cool. I've been pounding
this drum for how fucking long now, like every game mornings for like a
year and a half. Now cut the check, Nintendo, come on,
I'm with you guys on I would like a dual screen. I think I
agree with Jeff, like let's avoid wireless display stuff, Like the next switch
should still have a DOC of some sort. It shouldn't be like here's a
dongle and then now you just flip this thing on the on the switch and
now you're beaming the stuff to the TV. I don't really trust that.
So, yeah, you don't want the thing to go wrong with your system
to be the thing the system is right, like joy con drifting, Like
yeah, absolutely widespread malfunction. But you could just replace those like that's let's
not have the thing that the console is like centered around not work. Well,
that would be horrible, you problem, Yeah, exactly. I think
it's probably unlikely that the switch to has anything to do with this. Paton
probably just clear it's is probably going to be a switch to yes, yes
exactly. Microsoft is support for unofficial third party peripherals. Microsoft has started blocking
the use of unofficial accessories with Xbox consoles. This is reportedly related to Microsoft
expanding its program for approved third party wireless Xbox controllers. Third party Xbox devices
that are part of the Design for Xbox Partner program should not be affected,
which is probably what most people have others, but other things might actually be
affected, and those could include like certain third party fighting game controllers. It
will definitely include things like some a couple of devices that I have this company
set me where you plug this into your Xbox and then you plug a mouse
and keyboard in there, and then it tells the thing you're using a controller
when you're actually using a mouse and keyboard, so you can cheat in video
games. Oh wow, coo cool. Yes, right, that's like a
fun Yeah, I want to I want to cheat in video games that way
every once in a while. Well, they don't like the idea of these
faults in the system. I think that that's kind of what they're how they're
talking. They're saying safety and su security, but I think they also this
is a weakness in the chain there where like people could cheat that way.
Really though, it's probably about this approved for Xbox thing, where they maybe
Xbox gets a little bit more money if they have if everyone has to go
through them to get approved. At least that's how I read it. I
don't know. There's people in the fighting game community that are upset about this.
There's people who are worried maybe about accessibility, although that Xbox accessibly controller
will obviously still work, so there's some weirdness here. I think it's a
shame to have stuff work one way to the point where people make purchasing decisions
based on and then to change it mid stream. But at the same time,
these are closed systems. This is how they work play games on PC.
I guess. I don't know. It's not really a great overall.
I wish they could find another solution here that would be ideal, But I
don't know. You guys, I just don't think this affects us too much.
We probably are mostly using official stuff, right, yeah, mostly using
my freaking Starfield control an amazing controller for a game. Yeah yeah. The
The upside to this, though, is that more of these third party controllers
will now be wireless where before like a lot of stuff you get, like
I got a couple of eight bit does that are for Xbox and they're wired
because the Microsoft uses proprietary wireless technology. Well, it seems like the whole
point of this is to expand that stuff into more of these controllers, so
that'll be something and that will go work for headsets as well. But still
it seems like you could probably do that without having to cut off all of
these other devices. Yeah, it seems like it seems unnecessary to be I
agree. Capcom will have a major title by March twenty twenty four that is
currently unannounced. It will apparently it's apparently gonna sell millions of copies according to
the Capcom I think it has to be beautiful, Joe. That's what I
wrote down here. It's Monster Hunter as hell. It has to be Monster
High either that or maybe Bresident Evil nine is sooner than we think, but
probably Monster Hunt. I don't do that to me, you can, dude,
Why would you even put that in my head? Mike are nine in
March? Like, what are you doing? Yeah, that's way too early.
That's absolutely it's it's gonna be Monster Hunter. It could be two things.
Two things, right, it's probably Monster Hunter. Also, I've heard
good things about the Niantic Monster Hunter game. Yes, I can't. I
can't dive back into that world. No, don't do it. Two viewed.
Yeah, Resident Evil six remake. First, what do you do?
There's no way they skip five and they're gonna past five because they're not gonna
want to deal with deal with it. I'm like, because is it the
five of the one where you punch the boulder? Yeah, but a lot
of punch a lot of poor African villagers. Yes, they are like six.
No, just stop, just stop, just stop. We've we fit,
We've reached the end of the ride with are four Veronica coach? Yeah,
Coonic. Yeah, they're gonna do I think they're gonna do It's able
one remake next, that's the next thing, you know. I think you're
right. No, they are going to do five. They're going to do
five. There's easiest logical thing for them to do. Then they already do
one. I know. Yeah, he one twenty years ago for game,
but that was two thousand and two, but they didn't do like the new
that was just two and three. Okay right right? Four now, yeah,
so go do one great. Do one love it? I think they
will. Yeah, I mean one zero because zero has problems. Make zero
amazing. Now make zero a good game because zero has got a good concept.
You're on a train, Chambers, it's cool. Yeah, clearly the
message is anything but five and six? Okay, anything but five? And
look I kind of like five. It's a snow I paid five. I
played five two years ago with Abby, and if it wasn't four, how
charming we both were, that would have been a complete disaster. That's why.
That's why they'll make it better now. Yeah, I want to play
sex. By the way, who wants to play with me? This is
me not raising my hand if I'll do it. If I don't play,
what is Yeah, he's just tricking you a little bit with four? Is
that the thing you don't you don't like? My thing is? I love
four? And I just say I already played that game though. Okay,
game Mike. I'll even take your side on that argument because wrong, like
yeah, yeah, which is which is just as valid. Yeah, what
if it's a dark Void remake? Well, remake Dark Sector. That's the
right dark game to make Dark Sector. That is there anything else it could
be we're not getting a new Devil May Cry yet. No Beautiful Joe three
confirmed. Yeah, I would not sell millions of copies, but because Monster
Hunter is like do or like that's it's a one do and it would sell
millions of copies. And they're they're always making Monster Hunter like they like SU's
Hunter was the world was done, they started making another one even though Rise
was also coming. Yeah, so so like they, yes, we're due
and it's gonna happen soon. So I imagine that's what I just don't want.
No lost planet now, don't bring that ship back, that Rising planet,
and I'm going to do that Powerstone them Powerstone ship. It was that
God. I wish just just give me that Powerstone collection you made for PSP
on like a switch, that's all. It's a release of Dark Stalkers.
That's what's gonna happen. But that'd be cool. But they already did that's
they already did give us the Dark Stalkers a collection and it ruled. Uh.
David Hater is involved with Metal Gear again. Konami has enlisted fan favorite
Middle Gear voice actor David Hater to promote to promote its recent series revival.
This includes the release of Metal Gear so Master Collection Volume one, which includes
a number of the earlier series entries and a Metal Gear Solid three Snake in
a remake for PS five Xbox series. PC Haters also teased that this is
only the beginning and that and that references to other Metal Gear series games have
been found in the files of volume one, suggesting a second volume could could
be released in the future. Uh, what if they got him to do
the voice for, you know, Snake in Metal Gear Solid five. That'd
be pretty good. That'd be great. I like, hater, I mean,
I like, you know, we all like Kojima. That was kind
of fucked up when he you know, his star fucking height, his star
fucking yeah, taking over his brain like worms. Yea, it was such
a bad call, like such a story ball Snake, Yeah, for the
guy that I liked in fucking twenty four. We know you were watching twenty
four Kojima. Obviously that's high high art. I get it. I love
it too. We're all in agreement. We're agreement here. But then going
and like pulling this one that it was a dick move. Yeah, it
was a dick move. But in terms of like the choice of actor in
a vacuum. I mean, are we really about to say that, like
Norman Redis is like uh a cool thing? Like well, like Norman Readis
wasn't replacing anybody. But but listen, but that's what I'm saying, vacuum
dead and now I want to put him in a video game. Also totally
loser behavior is that who sees that as like audition successfuls? Like this is
a thing with all developers for sure. They see something they want to put
it by, Like Japanese developers love doing this, They love watching American TV
and putting kind of I don't think making Foxes in any prestige TV. I
don't know where that came from. Yes, Edward's just like, uh,
I don't even know. It's not it's not the same thing. It's the
same kind of thing. Though Jan won't say it, but I will put
Walton Goggins in a goddamn book. Let me smile on What are we waiting
for? He's waiting for gos Uh. He's playing the ghoul in the Fallout
TV series. She's gonna be TV show. He should play the medieval guy?
What maybe like from the game from the game for yeah, the skeleton
night. That's actually pretty good. That person Johnny doesn't speaking mumbles, yeah,
has got a good mumble voice. Walter would be very charming in video
games right now. You know, I wonder I want to live in the
world where instead of uh, what's it not to for Grace who's in twenty
four, Keifer kee Keefer to for I get it. It's the same you
think, you think, you think names I get it, Yeah, and
I get it. YO. Give me a world where instead of Keifer Sutherland
blowing up and taking off, give me a world where it was David Brianna's
he Stavy Seal guy Angel from the Buffy verse. That's that's in between generation
thing there. That's a big forehead gang. I always want to watch that
US Navy Seals show with David Borriann I honest, which has been going on
for like ten years now or something like that. I'm always so weirdly curious
about these shows that are like on network TV and have ten plus seasons,
right, but what's the what's the hospital show, Grey's Anatomy? How many
seasons does that have? Like eighty four? She's not on the show anymore.
Ellen Pompeo is not on the show, but she was on She was
on it for like dozens of like almost like two dozen seasons or something.
But the thing is it is called Gray's Anatomy because she is married with Gray.
I don't understand how you continue to have the show without her. Yes,
it's wild nineteen seasons, Okay, that is I'm so morbidly curious about
that, because those seasons have like twenty four episodes per season. They have
spinoffs as well to tie into to it. I think you need to protect
yourself from Gray's Anatomy. I'm just gonna say that. You know you're right,
but I might not what we were gonna say, Mike, Well,
like Basic Philly is the same thing, right, because he's like beloved,
like cultiv yes from five and then like his actual careers were first that show
where he was a writer Castle and then he's been on the rook Rookie if
with just another network cops show that's like that's where they all find themselves in
the end. Yep, there's a that's where all the money is, lots
of money in them. They're cop hills. All right, let's see here.
Okay, Boulders Kate three is still on track, to hit Xbox before
the end of this year. They basically just give an update saying latest on
on the Xbox version is, it's being actively play tested, still on schedule
for this year. Will announce the exact release state when we're sure it's done.
Hey, that's that's good news. And there's you know, it's November
now you feel like, well, you should must have to announce it now.
No, they could drop this whenever because it's gonna be digital only at
first. So yeah, I know, we were kind of expecting to see
it in that Xbox Partner showcase and a little surprise and show up and we're
maybe a little scared it was gonna miss this year, but it seems like
it still should be. Okay there yep. And then Remedy is also still
working on Control Too, Max Pain wanted to remake, and a bunch more
Ready. Entertainment has provided updates on several upcoming titles, including Control two,
Max Pay one plus two remake, Condor, and code name Vanguard. Control
two is in the proof of concept stage let's see here, while the Max
Pain remake is in the production readiness stage. A Condor, a cooperative multiplayer
game, has progressed from the proof of concept stage to the production readiness stage
and then code name Vanguard, a game we don't know much about. Is
still in the early early planning stages. So obviously they just finished Allen Wake
two. They are working on a lot of projects, but doesn't say.
I'm like they're working on them super parallel. It is like an order of
operations thing they're finishing now in way two, and they will mostly move on
to one of these other projects. Sounds like Max Paying one and to Remake
and Condor will be the ones that they're getting to next. Should I play
those? Well, that's what I'm I've never really played the Max Paying games.
They're most there shooters like First and Foremasts, but very fun, very
detmosphere. They get credited with like bullet time. Uh yeah, I played
those in college in a big way. I just remember you there's something about
mouse and keyboard with those games, were like, while Max is just parallel
to the ground, you could just like swing that mouse around and just have
them flop around and the air like that. It really is great. I
highly recommend mouse and keyboarding that if you can't, that sounds great. Not
the GBA version well I'm gonna say no. I'm gonna say no, you
can play keyboard to do a GB if you really can put your control.
Control only came out in nineteen yeah, not that long ago, right,
Does anyone else put remedy in this, like they're just a little developer kind
of like bog my head yet more? I do. Yes, They've always
liked because they just put Almack two and they had they were working on that,
uh what's the shooter that they helped out with. Oh yeah, yeah,
the thing cross our campaign. So they've like had work for higher projects,
multiple sequels that they're working on, remakes, you know, Ala two
obviously a multiplayer game. They have a lot of projects cooking. At the
same time, they've they've been trying to expand. Seems like it's going to
work now, especially with this Epic money and allen Wick two money. But
they got to be way more massive, right, like hundreds and hundreds of
people, right, Yeah, I have no idea. I would probably put
them around two hundred people, two hundred, maybe three hundred people at this
point and probably getting bigger. Wikipedia says three sixty All right, there,
there you go, three sixty. Good guess, good very good, all
right, And then Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door has already been rated for
Switch. The highly praised GameCube exclusive turn based RPG has been rated already in
Brazil and South Korea. This has happened for a lot of games before,
and when it has happened, those games usually come out within about six to
ten weeks after they get rated, So that would put this game as very
early twenty twenty four, which I hey, I would love that, lie
welcome it. It would expect a bit of a buffer between this and the
Mario RPG remake, though, I would you would expect it, unless like
they're worried about some other big games coming. Then they're like, well,
no, we got to get this out because you know, Princess of Peach
games coming out, and then it's all in on switch to later in the
year. So listen, it is better to get this game out a few
weeks after a super Mare RPG than anytime after you announced the next switch,
because these games kind of just go out to die if people are waiting for
that next system. So saw it happened with Bowser's Inside Story remake on the
three D because that is exactly the worst selling game ever. Yeah, that's
one hundred percent of avoid that situation. They've obviously learned the lesson there,
I think, so I wouldn't be surprised if we get the Super RPG is
in November. God, how far away are we from that? November?
I think tomorrow? Right, it's tomorrow and Mario Ware in like three days?
No what? Yeah? Okay? Yeah, uh so it's happening fast,
and then you know, I could see this game coming out in January
or February or something like that. Could be like even like, I guess,
is there gonna be a physical version of this? I suppose there might
be. It might not shadow drop it, but at like the next director,
it's going to be a box game. It better be in sixty phase
per second. By the way, Oh yeah, right there with you.
That'll be very frustrating if that thirty frames per second turns out to be the
case. Uh all right, that does it for the news jam show.
It's yours again. I feel exhausted, So I got to take a quick
breaking break. Let's do it, and then we'll read some emails, some
shout outs back. Calar is going to go tend to I got Halloween,
I got Halloween affairs that need attention. So everyone have a great holiday,
enjoy yourselves like, see you next time. Welcome back to the Giant BombCast
everyone. Jeff Beckler had to go dip to go take care of Dib and
all of his hoodlums Halloween. So Mike and Greb and I are gonna read
some emails emails. First email comes from Chris. Oh also, you can
write into the show by writing to BombCast at giant bomb dot com. BombCast
at giant bomb dot com. I read all of the emails. I appreciate
all the emails. There was one funny one that I got to send to
Backlar about his where he was over the weekend and being spotted had a very
hyper specific place the strip Club. Yes, yes, spotted him as the
trichologist. Uh God, that just reminds me of a conversation I had yesterday.
First email comes from Chris. They write in just finish the series.
Oh uh, this is an anamorph's check. Just finish the series because the
only benefit of one hour train rides to and from work is tons of reading
time. And wanted to see how Jan and Grubb were doing on their animals.
Read reading the series in my thirties really hammers home that I read them
entirely too young, missed the crippling PTSD and casual war crimes as a grade
school kid, but love the animals and PlayStation jokes, Love Chris, Yeah,
of course, I mean, who's not gonna love the animals and PlayStation
jokes. I still have only read the first book, but hearing that you
got onto book ten jam makes me want to continue because I enjoyed myself.
I had a good time. Well, they're very quick reads. I mean
it's there. They're YA novels, so they're very thin, and like the
they're like not like oh YA is like oh Harry Potter's y A. It's
like no, it's it's younger than that. Yeah, And I think they're
they're actually legitimately good books, and I think it's it's interesting that no one
has tried to do it again and try and adapt it yet. I feel
like it could be very good, but it is very challenging because like,
you know, you're gonna have shoot animals, you're gonna have c g I
animals. It's hard for animals to emote, and that's why I didn't like
The Lion King uh, John Fava, cats can't move their jaws left or
right. They can only move them up or down. How are you gonna
make a face when you can't even move your face? It doesn't matter.
Eat check cats. That's right suck? But is it Lion King? One
of their biggest blockbuster, that's the highest grossing animated movie of all time,
the Jon Favreau one, right, but on fab roh one technically an anime.
Technically it just is an animated movie. That's insane. Apparently he took
that tech and has made a dinosaur show kind of want to check. Not
the Mama, not the mama. I'm the baby God? I love me?
Don't you wish they're warmer of me? I should just got that whole
song you are? You remind me of the baby from Dinosaurs? I know,
I know the mikey God. I love me. Don't you wish they're
warmer of me? Okay, we gotta make a holiday shirt Mike one.
Okay, one in a millionaire. You gotta love me, you gotta love
me? All right? Uh We We talked about some oreo tech last week
on the show, and Adam from Boise, Idaho writes in about their own
not Oreo quiz oreo tech Uh they write in and tell us the your giant
bomb perves. That's true. Any way you can buy an oreos and milk
is probably great. But I think the best way is to stick a fork
in the cream and then completely submerge the oreo. Takes a little trial and
air to get the timing, but generally when the initial bubble stream slows is
the right to take it out so it doesn't fall apart much. I love
Adam from Boise. I don't like what oreos. I don't do the milk
stuff. I like a crunchy regular oreo personally, aren't you You're not much
of a cookie guy at all, though, right that's true, but like,
you know, not even that much of a chocolate guy. But oreos
are fucking amazing. If I was the one that says he like doesn't ever
have cookies, he's right. But I bet if we told Dan like oreos
are cookies, he'd be shocked to learn that. I think he cookies.
If I think, if I wonder if telling him asking what flavor he thinks
an oreo is, what answer that would uh? We'd get it means just
cook He's a cream. It's like chocolate cookies and cream flavor. But what
do you say it's chocolate? I think he'd say it's just chocolate. I
mean that is the predominant flavor is chocolate. I mean the cream fill is
basically just a sugar filling, sugar chocolate. Yeah, I hope. Oh
maybe I'm gonna get Maybe I'll get a pack of the Halloween Oreos before I
go. So, like see my nevity nieces for trigger treating because he's eat
them all. Yeah, well that's why I watched an addiction for me,
right exactly. I'd never buy them because I just know, like, if
I buy a pack of oreos, I live alone. It's just admitting,
well, all that is going to go inside me at some point, and
that's a problem. We can't do that. So I'll buy them and bring
them in a bunch of kids will eat them, and if they don't,
I have a family, And now I'm a family on to myself. When
it comes to oreos. Yeah, oreos, they yeah, those are just
good good lard cookies. Oh yeah, so top top tier lard cookie.
Oh yeah, they're not vegan, are they? Oreos can't be vegan?
I thought I sustly just well the cream inside right, Yeah, even the
cookie has a ton of like fat apparently really okay, So yeah, some
hard esque product, Yeah, Chris, go okay? Where where where do
you two fall? On the double stuff regular or the thin Oreo regular regular?
I think I write most ratio. Yeah, I mostly want a regular,
but I'm not gonna turn my nose up at any of them. Double
stuff these days are a bit too much for me, which is do you
remember you guys have It's gonna happen to you too, you know what I'm
scared. I talked about headlamps for a little bit today. I used to
really like those white fudge covered ones. That's a bit much for me also,
but those are fun. Uh how do you? How do y'all feel
about the different skews of Oreos? Like the holiday flavor. I'm glad they're
out there for those freaks that need I'm just giving the give me the regulars,
give me the I like it better when they just color them, like
the Halloween ones that are the same flavor. That's good, the cinem the
there's like a digitar bread cookie one that's okay, But yeah, I just
give me. I can have so many like those ones. I actually maybe
I like cause I can stop eating them where Yeah, okay, okay,
God, I gotta go to the store after this. Yeah, me too.
I gotta buy some fucking oreos now, damn all of you emailing?
All right, Well, while we're at the store, Mike, maybe we
buy some juice because Jeremy from Montreal writes in about juicy games, Hey Bombers.
In game design, there's a term that describes the extra details that don't
directly affect gameplay, but instead aim to invoke feelings from that gameplay to make
it feel better. That term is juice. I've been playing Super Mario Wonder
over the last week, and while you can argue whether it's the best two
D Mario platform or there's no arguing it is the juiciest Mario game. Mario's
new and varied animations, when he jumps the drum roll and crash, when
Mario butd stomps the enemy faces, when the witnessed the murder of their fellow
enemy, it all comes together in an explosion of juice. Do you guys
have any favorite juicy aspects from Super Mario Wonder? And also can you think
of any other games with this level of juice. Thanks for all you do.
Love you guys. Jeremy from Montreal. So I started watching some tiktoks
and some YouTube shorts about Super Mario Brothers Wonder and I would watch them on
a loop, way longer than I intended to because of this juice. Like
hearing the it's like a it's like a slot machine almost this game. Yeah,
like collecting I think my family. The juiciest part for me, I
think is collecting the purple coins. The sound that those make as you collect
them, and they're all usually bunched together, so you're getting the even really
fast. It's really it just lights up my brain. But the whole game
is that way. So yeah, I'm definitely like a huge part of I'm
like definitely super down Jesus Christ. Yeah, just like the different pipe animation,
especially since that's such that's like the biggest point of comparison of the complete
lack of juice in New Super Mario Brothers. Just nothing happens when they go
down to pipe except that literal character model just literally moves like down the axis
into it. There's no animation. It's like just clicking on it and sliding
it down, like that's all they're doing to it, right. So like
the fact that there's like animations and all this fun stuff when they're doing pipe
shenanigans in this game, that's the juiciest part of Wonder for me. Yeah,
I love that aspect of it too, And I this pains be inside
as a Sonic fan that Sonic Superstars is devoid of juice. There's very little
juice. You're correct, there's not much juice, that's for sure. You
know what was a really juicy game, and I think that it helped it
pop off so much at first was Overwatch. That was very juicy. Yeah,
remember how excited people were just about the reload animations and like, yeah,
that's the kind of stuff that in year five you kind of begin to
take for granted. That was so much a lie. Overwatch was awesome at
first. It was juicy as all hell. Trying to think of other games
as like good juice, I think I think like there's like subtle juice,
Like Hades has a lot of just extral elms on all the all the attacks,
and as you upgrade them and unlock more abilities for them, they get
juicier and juicier the last ration, and Klank has a lot of juice as
well. Yeah, yeah, it's the parts juicy street Fighter six pretty juicyal
Combat one literally more juicy. But six Vampire Survivors is a good one.
Yeah. Oh yeah, that's that's almost too much juice. It's it's your
bathing and the blood drowning in it. Yeah, it's like a it's like
a blood rave almost all right. Next email comes from someone and I forgot
to write their name and I apologize. Feel free to take these forty podcast
points as a consolation prize. This is about Luigi's mansion. Is Luigi's mansion
an Alan Wake like? Or is Alan Wake Luigi's mansion? Like? Should
you refer to games where you have to use your flashlight on enemies before you
can defeat them as an Allen's mansions? What other Allen's mansions and Alan Manchin's
lights are there? An like? Uh? Well, Alista mention was definitely
first, that's for sure, so I guess it gets the bulk of the
credit. Although like it was first and right compared to Yeah, yeah,
so that means it would be so actually, then Alan Wake's name would be
first, like it would be Alan Manchin for sure. Okay, yeah,
yeahs, you're right. Someone please mod in a Luigi skin into Alan Wake.
That's got to happen. I mean, that's probably happened the first one.
At some point people have made this connection, right, that's how to
have happened. Yeah. Yeah, Three is such a good game. That
game has juice. Talk about very juicy. The punch out for me from
from Next Level as well. Yeah, Toad has juice? Well yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, Mario Mario games have juice, but three D
Mario games and they're spin offs. Definitely a lot of juice until Wonder,
Yeah yeah, Sunshine, literally a lot of juice. Kirby has juice,
well, Kirby, uh, Forgotten World, definitely Forgotten Land. Excuse me,
tons of juice. Kirby has juice is the name of this episode,
by the way, I thought it was going to be Mike Minave. Okay,
that's also pretty good. All right, Next emails about cream For reasons
we don't get into. I once had to research fat percentages in milk and
cream. This is what I remember. Skim milk. Skim milk is virtually
fat free. Yes, milk is self explanatory. Whole milk is around three
three and a quarter percent fat. It's also called whole milk because no fat
is removed from it. I'm no cream expert, but from what I understand,
when non homogenized milk is left undisturbed, the fat separates from the rest
of the milk. This fatty part of the milk is cream. The cream
does, in fact rise to the top. Cream comes in multiple milk fat
percentages. Like cream is about twenty percent fat, but can go upwards to
thirty. Whipping cream, also called light whipping cream, is anything from thirty
to thirty six percent fat. Heavy cream, also called heavy whipping cream,
is anything thirty thirty six percent fat or more just for good measure. Sour
cream is made by introducing lactic acid bacteria to cream, which makes it thickened
and ferment. Cream is using soups, stews, whipped cream, ice cream,
and lots of other stuff. Cream is great. Joe from New York.
I realized we should have saved this for when Dan is around, but
I don't know he wouldn't. Yeah come in initially surprised that cream and milk
are similar things, like, what are we gonna do? Yeah, Joe
continues, PS, here's something you can do at all. Take some heavy
cream and pour it into a bottle about halfway. Close the bottle tight and
shake for around ten minutes. Eventually you'll get a big lump of stuff in
the bottle. That's butter. That liquid that's left is buttermilk. Oh,
there are better ways to make bitter. There are better ways to make butter,
but it's still fun. PPS centrifuge, which I have. Of course,
out of all of us, you know, Backlard probably have a central.
He definitely would. Yeah, he would have cnuts and just never gave
it back. Yeah, and they never realized that they had. All Right,
we'll all end the email segment with a quiz, A TV quiz.
Oh, let's go, hey gang. Several weeks ago, you talked about
TV shows you had heard of but never knew nothing about. This made me
realize how little I knew about a number of shows I definitely watch as a
kid or young adult. Trying to figure out if I could recall a single
episode that pursuit. I was surprised how long or short lived a number of
shows were, so I made a simple quiz about it. Each question is
a group of three shows associated with a TV network except the last one.
All you have to do is say which of these three had the most episodes
produced. Some of them didn't air all of their episodes, but I think
the correct answer is the same in either case. Answer keys at the bottom.
Don't worry boys, I did not put the answer key here, great,
thank you somewhere else to avoid wandering eyes. All right, maybe I
wasn't he I've opened the doclke once this entire don't worry about me? Okay,
Now, which of these had the most episodes? Network? ABC?
The options are better Off Ted, cave Men, cop Rock. Cave Men
was one for like two episodes or something, so it's not cave Men.
I don't know about those other two. Yeah, I want to say better
off Ted, but I think cop Rock got a full season, so I'm
gonna go with cop Rock. I think people are too upset about CapMan,
like, oh, I can't believe they're turning a commercial into a sitcom,
like how dare they? Yeah? Pretty network commercializing network television. Mike.
Yeah, I said, I'm going with Coprock. What's your answer, Mike,
I'll go the other one, better off Ted? Mike, you win
better off Ted had twenty six episodes, Let's go Wow, Caveman had thirteen,
and cop Rock had eleven, though none of the three shows ended up
airing its full uh to full completement. Man, that's more for Caveman than
I thought. Okay, all right, Number two CBS. The shows are
CSI, Colon Cyber cool. I want to see that now. My big
fact is and then third is shit. My dad says, aka ship,
My dad says, start Shatner, all right with William Shatner. I think
I think Ship my dad has got us season. I think they had,
They gave that the old College try. I feel like a CSI show like
just automatically gets a ton of episodes, even if it's not gonna be a
full Season'm gonna go CSI Cyber Grub You in CSI Cyber has thirty one episodes.
My ship right, uh sh My dad says, somehow made eighteen.
In My Big Fat Greek Life had seven episodes. It would it be great
if we just watch every episode of CSI Cyber. That'd be fantastic. Oh
my, don't say that. The content the content is that? Is that
on Paramount Plus? You think it's on dot Org all right, NBC.
The options are ALF, my Name is Earl, and Suddenly Susan. I'll
go with my name is Earl. My name is Earl was on for a
while because that was on because it was like a It was on the same
time as The Office, so it was like they benefit benefited from Office.
It was like the same night, Suddenly Susan. I've never heard of Suddenly
Susan. That's is that the Lily dreyfust one that it's not? I thought
it was. I've only ever heard of Suddenly Susan when they make jokes about
it on Mystery Science Theater three thousand. The thing is, my name is
Earl. It was I don't know how many episodes of season that one got.
I feel like it was on forever. I thought it was on for
for forever, but it was on for I mean, ALF wasn't on for
like a short amount of time. So these ones are all My other guests
would be ALF here. These are all multi seasons. Yes, so Jeff's
saying, my name is Earl, right, yeah, and I have to
beat him, so I'll go. I'll go Suddenly Susan. Actually, Oh
okay, I like this movie. Our course well, you both are wrong,
ship shit and it's alf. I wish I could have changed my answer,
but in the end it's always alf. Alf with one hundred and two
episodes, my name is earl Uh with ninety six and do you guys want
to guess how many episodes? Suddenly Susan had five. I'm gonna I'm gonna
say ninety three. Oh, okay, Dan was close. It was close,
close race there? All right, Fox, we have Ally McBeal,
the Bernie Max Show, in the OC. These they are all popular shows.
I'm i'm gonna say Alan mcbill right now, I feel like that was
on forever, Allan m'abel. I'll go with the OC. Then, Mike,
I think you're in the lead here with Ally mcbeil m. That's definitely
the right. I don't know always. I know what Eleman Bill is because
people talk about all time. I couldn't tell you a single thing about that
show. What's about? What the genre is? The baby? What the
dancing baby? Like that? I remember the Dancing Baby that's from Ally McBeal.
They like co opted it. Okay, okay, is it comedy?
No, it's dramedy, right? Does it's star a character? Named Ally
mcbeil. Yeah, yeah, it's like a it's a it's like a lawyer
show. Right, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, all right,
Ally mcbeill one hundred and twelve, Bernie Mack had one hundred and four,
and OC had ninety two. Right, we'll get this. There's twelve of
these, so number five tbs. We have ten items or less? Are
we there yet at the Bill Engvall show? All right? What ten items
are less? We're guessing who had the most right most episodes? Do you
mean what are we guessing? This is the fifth one? I was distracted
the horrifying dancing baby thing. Ten items a less? Probably it's right,
but I'll go with are we there yet? Mike? What did you say?
Or less? Grab? Are you even at back up? All right?
Luck? Cluck, lug luck? Are we there yet with one hundreds
ten times their last only managing twenty one episodes? Or are these shows and
then being Bill Engvall hitting thirty? Okay? All right? Next we have
USA, where characters are welcome the shows to choose from our burn notice Monk
and White Collar have infinite shows episodes. I think a new Monk special is
coming out, or it did come out, But I think it's burn.
Notice. I love me some Shalub. I'll go with Monk. Mike,
he said burn Notice. Notice this was a dramatic pause. Oh, Mike,
you are incorrect. No, grub ekes out Monk with one hundred and
twenty five episodes. Tony has never failed many man, But I knew that
was on for a while. Jeez, but burn notice very close with one
hundred and eleven episodes. I knew it also had a lot. Yeah,
white Collar was the other one, White Caller. I watched white Collar.
White Collar had eighty one episodes. All right, color is the one.
It's like, catch me if you can. But the TV show version like,
oh, a guy that did crime is gonna help himself crime. There's
too many episodes of Monk to do a watch along show, guys. No,
uh, you can one of the first few seasons before it begins becomes
a little route. Maybe uh next the WB the shows are Angel, Dawson's
Creek and Felicity. Ohy coming up next on that bay. It's another bad
show that no one appropriation. You're not allowed to do that. I can't
be that frog with that frog's name, William J. Frog, Right,
yeah, something like that, Billy Frog, Mike, you have tied with
grub I believe Dawson's Creek with one hundred and twenty eight episodes. Yeah,
Austin's Creek was on forever. All right, that's another watch along Angel with
one ten and Felicity had eighty four. I can't wait for the Felicity cast.
Angel keeps coming up today for some reason or spike that we talked about.
Now, Angel, excuse me, Buffy's True soulmate number eight Comedy Central.
We have John Benjamin has a Van. Lewis Black's the root of all
evil, and that's my Bush, a loose Black. I'll go with John
Benjamin has a Van. Mike is eking away now with Lewis Black with eighteen
episodes, ten episodes to John Benjamin? Sorry, what the fuck was that?
And that's my Bush with eight episodes? There should have been more.
If that's my bush, I wonder what now that holds up? That's my
because that's the whole thing, because they were going to do either a Bush
or an al Gore show depending on who won. Was the South Park People's
live action say, oh, I didn't even know that's what that was.
Okay, yeah, man, I remember what was happening. I watched a
little bit of it, but I don't remember anything about it. Uh.
Now we might be in Mikey territory. Number nine, the network being Nickelodeon.
Okay, the choices are ah, real Monsters, Angry Beavers, or
cat dog, and these are all pretty equivalent. I feel like, yeah,
I'm gonna go with the one I'm most familiar with and go ah real
monsters. I remember Agriy Beaver's last episodes. Man, they made a lot
of cat dog, though way too much. They added a cat at one
point. Yeah, a putgesque character. I'm gonna go with cat dog.
Actually, yeah, I could see it being cat dog. And you're right,
Mike, it's cat dog. How about that cat dog? Sixty eight
episodes are Real Monsters? Fifty two episodes Angry Beavers had sixty two. Note
that each of these shows was usually divide it into two segments per episode,
which doesn't end up affecting the winner. No. One, Fine Day with
the Wolf and a purr Baby was born to cause a little sir, how
do you remember that catchy song? Yeah? All right? Uh. Number
ten the Disney Channel. Oh it's gonna be like these Twin Girl shows that
I didn't watch. Surprisingly not say that about these shows. We have Dark
Wing Duck, Goof Troop, and Tailspin. Oh okay, well, certain
these weren't Disney Channel shows. These were made for syndication. But I get
it. That's fine. This is part of the Disney Afternoon. Okay,
interesting, Dark Wing Duck, Tailspin, and goof Troop. I'm gonna go
with Tailspin. Bet Tailspin might be last, it might be. I don't
know anything about this. Yeah, Like these shows are all had relatively similar
season orders. I imagine. I think dar Queen Duck was popular. A
goof Troop is easy. I beg go Troop. I'm gonna say, Goose
Troop. You're both wrong. It was Dark Wing Duck. Yeah, dang
it, Dark Wing Duck with ninety one Goose troops, seventy eight Tailspin.
Wow, much less than I remembered was sixty five. You see tails we
got started earlier, I think. But then, Yeah, I just assumed
that they probably were just shown the same episodes over and over. Tailspin.
When you're in it, you can win it in a minute when you spin,
spin and spin it, so spin it. Tailspin, tail Spin the
one with what's what's her name Rebecca or something? Yeah, yeah, I
know, you know Rebecca. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know Rebecca.
But I be Goose Troop had Pete's wife also, right, yeah,
yeah, oh yeah, okay, all right, now Darkwing Duck was missing
of some kind of you know, mommy dommy. Oh yeah, that's its
big failing and that's what we're all missing really, all right, two more
boys, two more adults swim. We have Assie McGhee Moral Oral and Xavier
Renegade Angel Moral Oral. I remember that day Moral Oral. They had more
seasons. You would think I gotta go with that too, even though it's
not gonna help me. Well, you both win points for that Moral Oral
with forty three. Asa McGee and Renegade Angel both had twenty. Moral orl
was pretty good. Actually no, I was Claimation, So that's why I
avoided it. Yeah, it's like it was one of those like fake after
school special kind of things, and it would actually be terrifying. Now this
one isn't specifically tied to a network, but I guess a concept of Sunday
comics. So you have Baby Blues, Dilbert and For Better or for Worse
I don't know what the other two are, so I'm gonna go with one
of those. I'll just guess for Better or for Worse? No Baby Blues,
man, I remember, I only remember that Dilbert show. I remember,
I actually kind of liked it, but it did not last long.
No, for Better or for Worse, I'm gonna say for family feud is
not working right now. I guess I'm gonna go Baby Blue. Gilbert was
not on for long, but maybe these other ones were on for less.
I at least remember the Dilbert Show. It was like eight episodes, though
it was just so little. I'll go with what Baby Blue was. The
other one, Baby Blues, and for Better or for Worse? Uh?
Well, Mike, I think you would have won anyway, no matter,
no matter how this shook out. But you were both wrong because dilb Gilbert.
No, of course, it was thirty episodes. Thirty episodes, man,
more than I remember. Baby Blues had twenty six. For Better for
Worse had sixteen. Man, it's a bunch of bullshit, but it had
seven made for TV specials. Okay, all right, I hope you remembered
some shows Matt and Colorado. Matt, thank you so much for that love
and very involved quiz Quickly. We're gonna speed through shout outs, because I
think my throat is dying. No one think anything, soussio, any meet
it to it, buddy. Oh it's okay, Mike, it's okay.
We'll get there. I will call upon your powers when when I truly need
them, when when I away everybody gets it once. Uh Special shouts out
to love you, Cheyenne, love you, Lily, love you, Jace,
hey Nose, Spooky fuck you, to fuck you, to you,
Eggplant. Grandma Pai is in Minati's search history. That's funny. Beware of
Army of Darkness, the Jandy Man, the grubbin Head, Richel Myers,
the Tomorrow one thousand, Jeff of the Back Lagoon, Micula, Lucy Face,
and the horrifying and deadliest of them all. Bailey shouts out to me.
Two years and two hundred pounds later, I finally hit my weight goal
today. Gained or lost, I'm not saying, uh. Starfish spider emoji
shriek out to thick thigh saving lives. It's a very small far. That's
not a star face shriek out the thick thigh saving lives, especially in lifeguards
and mountain plane crash, cannibal situations, Train train Travelog, Train Travelog Travelog
Pocket Eventually y'all Gasolina by Daddy Yankee Cosmo from Chainsaw Man Halloween Uh sad face
emoji, egg plant emoji, chicken emoji, eggplant in pain emoji, and
poop emoji. Happy Halloween. Gosha Douco Gang Giant Skeletons stand forever. It's
not a like, it's an ocean, shouts out to the backlar X Manati
yahwe anthology. I'm working on right. I like it. I don't know
he's gonna. I like fun fear into the hearts. And while it's in
the bourgeoisie, there's just nothing but like occasional. Like at that show,
it stainly gets faster and faster. We are all just brains piloting bone mix
with meat armor. Hey now you're an all star. Whoops, thought I
thought that, said Shriek. Shrekouts Giant Bomb's extra life coming soon to a
stream near you, shouts out to Conduit aka Rowena Valentina Kofy Divina. Apex
Legends is first Filipino Legends which will be playable in a couple of hours.
I think it's pretty cute. Her first animated trailer showcases her siblings and cousins
costplaying his other Apex Legends characters, while she coincidentally is costplaying as herself.
Oh that's sick. Can you costplay as yourself? Is that just you being
yourself? You just get dressed. It's just dressing variables. They seem intense.
Uh pourus semi up to the cribby flicky, lucky, locky on me,
blicky, take a flicky, make a movie with me. Uh,
take a flicky, make it real drippy. Uh Grub doesn't even need to
dress up for Halloween since he's a clown all year round. Very true.
Drive slow head on, swivel chop ski hounk in former blame a licky boom
boom down, folks, shouts out, it's supposed to be fun. Shouts
out, why? Why? Why are we taking jabs at each other?
What a lucky boom boom down? Who's at a job? What is that
anyway? Folks? What do we got going on for the rest of the
week? Games, mornings popping off Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, blake club
tomorrow? H what are we calling it? Ride to grub Jeff Tribution.
Ride to grub Jeft Jeff Tribution is what we settled on. I think it's
great. It's great. We're really good at naming stuff. We're the best.
We're the best. Voicemail dump popping off on Thursday. Gosh, let
me. I wasn't at the meeting, so I actually don't know what's going
on this week. H For Friday, we might do a bit of a
grab bag, but warrior Ware will be involved in some way. I think
we'll do some Warrio where maybe Boom might make time some of that jack box
and stuff. We'll see. There will be some fun stuff happening, and
if it's Warriorware, I want to play it and make a fool of myself
because it's the most control games. That'd be fine, it says later today
GV plays Ellen Wake two. Yeah, we'll see. I want to,
but I'm just realizing that I gotta get a bunch of stuff at Center for
Halloween as well, So we'll see if we can still make that happen.
Maybe we could do that tomorrow. Yeah, maybe will shift that around to
tomorrow. I want to do with that. To do that this week,
though, I would like to play some of that on this site. I
would love to watch that. We also have the conclusion of this season of
Friday Night Forking, Get your Forks out, It's the Fork. In July.
Dan Reikert will be on Friday Night Forking. Also the premiere episode of
Giant BombCast Revengeance on Friday as well. Should we just settle what we're going
to talk about the Switch? Yeah? Yeah, I think we're gonna talk
about is the Switch the best? The best video game console ever made?
Well? I won't be there, but my answer is yes, okay,
fantastic. Well, we'll put that back to that in you can leave some
notes for us and we'll just read them verbatim. I'm gonna put that in
an envelope and we'll see. Maybe I'll call in from my phone on the
boat and scream about Smash Brothers or something. We'll talk about, well,
talk about Warrior were on there as well, and stuff like that, because
we'll have played it by then. So yeah, the whole whole idea is
going to work out just like we were hoping. I'm hoping to have beat
alan Wick two by then and uh perfect, you know, well, maybe
there will be time to talk about that there as well. I love and
appreciate you. I've been Jan, he's been Jeff, he's been Mike,
and Bacalar was Bacalar. We'll see you next week for another episode of the
Giant BombCast. Until then, consensual kisses on the cheek oh my, except
to you. Giant BombCast is now over. See you later,