M hmm. It is Tuesday once again. That means it's time for talking
on the Giant Bomb Cast. I'm your host. I remain your host still.
Brad Shoemaker to the right of me, Jeff Kerseman, Hello, this
is a very solid opening. To the left of me, Dan reichert Hey,
Brad standing ominously authoritatively. I don't know what's twelve o'clock high. Yeah,
Drew scandalon yes on his feet at the end of the Times sing songy
Yeah, all right, okay, nicely done. I wanted to kind of,
you know, there was a good conversation going before this thing, but
it's all stuff that we can't I wanted to surreptitiously just hit the red button
and have it go while you were talking. But then, no, none
of it is stuff that's ready for people yet. Cooler heads prevail can't.
I can't get into that stuff just yet. No, that's that's all December
stuff, but the time is not because it's fan November. Now. Yeah,
I'm gonna apologize immediately. I am a little sick, but it's just
enough to make me sound like that's your snake voice going very timely. Middle
Gear, middle Gear, are we just old when we're talking about, oh
my god, I can't believe there's almost over, happy New Year? Is
that that's just what old people talk about, right, I thinks what boring
people talk about. Okay, crap, Uh, we're moving on. I
don't know, I said, I always just think about it in terms of,
like, there are going to be a lot of games coming out.
Yeah, that doesn't seem to be the case necessarily this year. Yeah.
Maybe, well not as much. I mean not as much definitely two or
three. Oh yeah, there are still some huge games left to come out
this year, and there's there's but the couple of them on the same day.
The undercurrent is not as deep. You're right, you're right, But
but you're you know, you've been doing not get pulled out to see like
you used to back in the PS two days now now, But you've been
doing this for what close twenty years? Sure? Yeah, I'm I'm I'm
at about fifteen though. Was this twenty fourteen? Yeah? I yeah,
I first collected a paycheck for writing about video games that I'm in nineteen.
Is that what defines it? Sure? I guess, I don't know.
I started doing freelance reviews in ninety nine. So yeah, anyway, you
know, you've we've been living this seasonal lifestyle for so long. Sure.
Yeah, I mean like there's there's very clear delineation throughout the year of like
it's like, well, you know, E three, He's gonna be in
June, Madden's gonna come out at the end of August. Yeah, November
is going to be insane from start to finish. It's like tried, tried
to take a vacation before Madden comes out, says it's getting busy right after
that, right, Yeah, you learned pretty quickly to brace yourself for the
end of the year. Yep, I am. I am braced. I'm
clenched, which is yeah, yeah, definitely, let's going well, I
don't know, like you know, it's but again, like I feel like
a ot of this is like residual holdover from the days of trying to review
everything, which we haven't done in years. So it's actually it's pretty okay.
Yeah, yeah, I'm all right with it. There's a lot coming
out. I'm ready to accept the weight. Yeah, I got a spotter.
Yeah, it's true. Yeah, I mean it's you know, for
us, it's it's a lot of quick looks handful of reviews for sure,
Yeah, you're not anymore? And then yeah yeah, and then game of
the year stuff. I'm a weight belt. Yeah, and the game's usually
peter out by what November, like last freaking November. Yeah, Friday cut
off. Yeah, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving is typically the last big release day.
I feel like, didn't Far Cry three come out Rember. There's always
like it was like Final Fantasy ten was a December game. Yeah, they're
always just like one game that ran late or something. One of the dead
or alives. I think it's Smash Brothers. Swee you is December and no,
no, no, that's November twenty one. They put say that they
November twenty one. That's on my radar for sure. I think you're wrong,
all right, Tom Cruise in the December game? Is that a movie?
What sounds like it is? It does register that domain right now,
the December game game in December gamemovie dot com. Yeah, the December dot
game. I think Smash Brothers for GameCube actually came late because it launched in
November of two thousand and one, and I think I remember Smash being a
little late. It might have come out that December. Part of me always
feels bad for those games that ship in mid to late December because they're not
going to get considered on any Game of the Year list. Yeah, it's
like the movie that comes out after the Oscars, remember that? Yeah,
you're right, eleven twenty one. Yep. Well, I I had totally
missed they put a date on that. Yep. Yeah, was that part
of that? Just like ridiculous info dump? That happened a couple of weeks
ago. I think the date might have been a little bit before that.
I'm not positive on retail was reporting that for a little bit. Yeah,
okay, man, all right. Was it really a ridiculous info dump or
was always like a player it was like a little factoid, Yeah it was.
It was a pretty long live stream where they were they player thing was
the big thing? Is there like a proper single player mode in this one?
You? No, I didn't see it, like on the level of
like a subspace emissary or something like that. I didn't see the whole stream,
but I feel like I would have heard of that if there was a
big single player component to that bummer. I'll yes, I'll cop to it.
I thought that game was gonna miss this year. They went so long
without announcing a date for it. I was like, yeah, it was
way yeah, what's them? And then the Amibo stuff is still coming out.
I forgot about is that timed with Smash? It probably should mean he
shouldn't it. That's the big game that that stuff works with, right,
I don't even know if they've announced I think I wanted to say, I
thought I thought Mario Kart was gonna work with it. Really, Oh yeah,
I think there is some retroactive stuff, but I thought I thought Smash
was Smash definitely uses it. If that's the one where you can like store
data. It's like it's like your custom characters and your your tweaked meat characters
and everything. Yeah, yeah sure if kids will be into that, Yeah,
those are That's day and date November twenty first for the first wave of
Amibo figures. Wow, and then the second wave in December. Huh I
guess, I guess the second wave of Infinity two pointo stuff just hit.
Yes, it did. Speaking of waves, I believe Donald Duck has included
okay, uh, anybody interested in the Amibo stuff at all, even even
like academically, even from like just an intellectual curiosity. I feel like they
haven't shown anything that makes them unique or stand out in a way that makes
it matter, Like, you know, it's like making AI fighters, like
you don't need the figures for that. I don't know, there's no I
mean, I haven't seen I don't see the value in Smash Brothers specifically,
and until they start kind of until they have more games that support it,
and you start getting like, well, if you if you leveled him up
to this level and Smash Brothers, he's gonna be able to do this in
Mario Tennis or you know, like if if they start doing those sorts of
crossovers, then it gets interesting. Yea. Was that what they were going
for with the e reader back in the day. I don't know what they
were going forth you, Yeah, there's no The e reader was the thing
for game Boy at the reader tells you how many Thedan's you have? Are
you clear? Drew a little murky, Yeah, we all are. We
all are keeping I know the e reader was It read barcodes basically, and
they sold sacks of cards that would be like these three cards are the nes
version of Urban Champions. Scan them and then you will be able to play
this hot game on your game Boy until you turn the power off plugged into
the cart right. Yeah, yeah, well I'm not sure if I've ever
seen one of those in persons. And then it worked with like Animal crossing.
They were like you would get cards for so you hook your your GBA
up to your GameCube and then use the E reader to scan a chair into
your game. Whoa, it was really stupid. Yeah, and I want
to say, you could just scan to the chair in over and over again.
It's sell it, so may Man, maybe I'm wrong, You're willing
to do the legwork. Yeah, no, the economy. No, I
found all my E cards. It's not that long ago. Uh, that's
stuff is all really stupid. Yeah. And when the Pokemon, the Pokemon
Mini, the little their handheld console that played pinball and was like cartridge based,
but it was also like Tomagotchi sized. Who you're you're not talking about
the thing that came with that one Pokemon game that was like a pedometer.
Right. There was the Pokemon Pikachu that was like a Tamagotchi but but a
Pikachu. And then they they did a updated version of that that was cartridge
based that had like four games for there was like there was a Pokemon pinball
for it. Wow, yeah, I was, I was in I was
in London seeing that stuff. I went to London to see that stuff.
I have no recollection of that. You know, we're Pokemon's from yep,
that dumb stuff and now we have Toys to Life. That's right. I
haven't seen the implementation of the amibo stuff with respect Smash Brothers. But aren't
they kind of missing the whole magic moment aspect of like slamming the thing down
on the pad and having it appear in the game. Yeah, Like,
isn't that the thing that made Skylander so popular? I think that that is
the league that they keep talking about when they talk about Skylanders. Absolutely,
but this is like, yes, is that not how it works? And
it's I mean, Mario was already in the game, whether you have the
amibos or not, you know, So it's it's not it's not. It's
not the same one to one correspondence of like I got the plastic figure and
now it's in the game. So instead it becomes this like a little more
abstract thing of like, well, you're leveling up this AI guy and then
that somehow stored in the toy And why haven't they done like a VMU thing
with an iPhone app mm hmmm, yeah, well, I mean like smart
glass choo on your iPhone. Theoretically the second screen stuff built into the PS
four and Xbox one would be capable of that. But I think everyone's just
realized that all that ship is dumb, and they were really trying it with
like mass Effect three and stuff with the little like ship mini game on iOS.
They could send them off for missions, your galactic readiness whatever. My
ship, my ship, but didn't have my ship be my friend. And
you really like Sonic dress what you're saying, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
feed your mag It's the only thing that needs feeding, the mag more tri
mates. They are still selling Tomagotchi's in Japan. They have color screens,
you know. That's I want to say. They came back relatively recently.
Actually, that's the second time in the last let's say thirty ish hours that
I've talked to somebody about whether they're still selling Tomago cheese or not. I
had one. I did too, who didn't have one? I found I
found my recently after I activated. It was I just covered in feces and
bed sores and crying out for help. Yeah. No, I activated it.
It died about eight days later, and then I never used it again.
I put it back in the box. It came in. Wait,
like from death or from battery failure, from death, okay, cause death,
death or leave or don't I remember losing I remember losing this paper thin,
fucking premise of a video game and going well, fuck this thing forever
and putting it back in the box. It came in, and that was
that. Yeah. Do you remember when Hideo Kajima said he wanted to make
a game to where if you died this the disc would self destruct. Yeah,
you know he said you'd have to buy in your copy. I don't
know how that would happen. I doubt it. Like incinerate, it's like
a mission impossible thing. But like he wanted it to like just delete the
data on the disc or something. I stop there, you know, just
like have it blow up your PlayStation. I guess you're a house Yeah,
yeah, go for broke. Kojima will personally show up at your house.
Yeah you lose, Someone fucking just comes to your door and guns down your
family. It launches an ICBM somewhere on Earth. Whoops. Oh, he's
a true visionary master of the craft. That's that's transferring Stage two. Yep,
just transfer this, transfer this sword into your abdomen. Saw the words
transferring the word transferring today in the wild on the video game Can video game
coming soon to a website near you, Dan, Yeah, do you want
to talk about Kansas City? I want to talk about your casey Odyssey.
Boy, it was pretty much the most like I mean, I drank a
bunch and I played a bunch of video games, and uh my, watch
my dad sit on the floor in a robe and talk about being tired for
eighty percent of it. Tired because he's him. Okay, yeah, yeah,
it just hasn't worked out ever. He eats. Yeah, we've talked
about his something about the diet of energy drinks and cigarettes and taco bell.
Yeah. So yeah, it's just a real fun thing. We're I'll always
be like wanting to get my friends together from college and like, all right,
we're gonna go to the reballoon to night. Dad, what time we're
gonna be there? It's well, okay, tell him, tell everyone at
eight o'clock. I'm like, all right, eight o'clock, everyone, let's
be there, And then seven fifty rolls around. He's sitting on the floor
in his robe, talking about how tired and fatty is, and I was
like, yeah, you told me to tell everyone, and so him getting
mad at me for trying to enforce the times that he wanted to go out
and so yeah, it's fun time and then just trying to shove Red Bull
and Vodkas down his face like every two seconds because all he talks about its
being tired. So but yeah, drinking every night watching baseball. Uh,
city was real disappointed at the end. There, Sure some good baseball happened.
It was it was. It was a good series, and I think
everyone was was really excited to have that experience. You know, I don't
think not a big downer. I mean we wanted to win obviously, but
it was Yeah, it was close right up to the end. Yeah,
kind of a kind of a nail biter there. Oh yeah, for sure.
I didn't see Game six, but that was that was fun. That
was a good one to be there because it was I remember, I think
that would have been it right then you guys got back in it. That
was the ten to nothing one yeah, yeah, that's what I mean.
It was like, yeah, the Giants need one more, They're probably just
gonna take it. And then then then you guys rallied. Yeah yeah,
it was great. Uh and then yeah, just like a one run difference
there at the end of Game seven was I ate a bunch of cheese and
puked in the woods? Okay, yeah, so true homecoming? Then yeah,
yeah, I wonderful. I was super hungover and my mom had a
bunch of leftover caso dip in the fridge, and so I just ate that
all day, like way too much of it. Spoon no with chips.
When you say cheese, yeah, yeah, I think of cheese, I
don't think, well, look at cheese cheese product. My mom made a
nice little dip thing, and I ate a whole bunch of it, okay,
and then I decided what better time to I felt like shit because I
ate so much shit, and I was like, oh, I need to
work out. I haven't worked out since I got the fan City, and
so I'm just super hung over, which I was already fighting throwing up from
that. And then I ate all this cheese dip and I felt real bad
and I start running and I got to the woods and uh, I was
like, I can run through this. I'm a curse, but I can
run through this. I can make this. And then I ran and had
to stop while the metal your Solid three Snake Eater theme was playing on my
running playlist, and I puked in the woods while listening to the snake Eater
themes. Awesome doing it. It was like kind of laughing while I was
puking. And then then I had to find nice leaves to blow my nose
on because I had puke in my nose. Yeah, so then you get
to run a couple more miles to get home with everything's smelling like puke.
That's just a fun time for Welcome back n Y. Well, yeah,
it's great. Now that is that the Is that the song that sounds like
a like a Bond theme song? Yeah? Yeah, totally is one day
you made Dining on a tree Frog on a tree Frog? Yeah? Yeah,
that's great. That's a great song. That's not the only metal gear
you have on your playlist? Is now? I got the meddle Gar Solid
two theme. I've got the middle of your Solid one Boss Encounter music.
I like running the metal gear and rocky music. And wrestling and wrestler themes.
That's my whole running playlist. That's great. It's wrestling rocky and it
motivates you. Most most inspirational music, the most motivating posed I have on
my running playlist is the theme from twenty eight weeks later you mentioned that,
Yeah, I think it's called Done abandons Alice. That's the track name so
YouTube that it just you feel like zombies are chasing you, so you want
to run. Okay, nice, it's a good reason. Yep, yep,
yeah. I'm just played a bunch of games all his home played with
the play the Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze a bunch with my sister. I
loved the first don Kon Country you so much, but like I played through
that with my sister over a Christmas break a couple of years ago and it
was great. So I saved that for playing with her. And it's man,
it's fantastic. It's it's super good. I almost forget it came out
this year. I was. I was just about to ask, yeah,
yeah, because out here that feels like ages ago. It does, and
it's fantastic. I didn't wanted to play that, and we're getting to the
point now where it's like mental catalog of like, what have I not played
this year? Because we're gonna have to decide what the best games of the
year are soon and I should start making up lost ground. So that's the
w U game that was basically the same as the three DS game, right,
no, no, no, no, no freeze me and you did
the quick Look three D. The three D S one was a remake.
Total in your game of Returns. Returns is the first one, got it?
Yes, this is one where you play as Cranky Kong and keep doing
all that stuff, Okay, and it's it's just man, it's just some
of the best two D platforming. I don't know why people aren't constantly talking
about the Returns games because they are genuinely among the best two D platformers I've
ever played. I mean I played the we when starts finish and thought it
was really good. But I mean they're great if you want to like go
for that like major challenge, like getting all the cong letters and puzzle pieces
and stuff. It's I mean, it is up there with the best that
like Supernintendo had to offer. I don't know, no, you know,
Mario World is probably my favorite platform or ever. And I'm not going to
say this is as good as mald but like it's not crazy to be considered
part of that elite group. I think it's just something about the movement in
all of the Donkey Kong Country games. The old ones I thought were they
do not play that well. Yeah, it's just kind of floating and weird,
and you can't really tell where platforms and a lot and you got to
do that role jump off stuff. The graphics end up making that a little
weird. But yeah, these new ones I think are so much more crisp
and it's so much easier to end up enjoying. We did that quick look
and I ended up enjoying it, but never really wanted to go back to
it. Yeah. I think they're far or far spirit of the Super Nintendo
ones. Oh crap, Well that that seems fine to me because I think
that's a like a super low bar. Oh yeah, like those Nest games
I thought were like bad. I know a lot of people remember them very
fondly that they were, but they were tricked by the fall. I think
those games got a significant amount of knowledge out of the graphics. They hype
it so well though, I remember getting like Nintendo Power sent me a VHS
covered in like banana leaves or something, and it's like, oh, we're
gonna sneak into Nintendo headquarters and find out what's going on in Donkey Kong.
And you see like these what looked like three models, and it just looked
incredible. It was like, you know, it was like their thing of
like all these new consoles are coming out pretty soon. You don't need that
crap. Look at this. Yep. I still remember this ad because I
hated the fact the new consoles are coming out, because I knew I wasn't
gonna be able to afford it. And so I remember when Yoshi's Island came
out, there was an ad. It had a crying baby on it,
and it was always an AGM. It said like crying, whining and kicking
and screaming, and that's just the two bought new consoles. And I remember
seeing that and being like, yeah, like this is on Super Nintendo.
I'm fine with Supernintendo. This is gonna be the system forever, like fuck
PlayStation, and it just turns out that's not really how the mergent time works.
Fuck PlayStation. Indeed, Yeah, it's gotten us to where we are
today. It's true. The PlayStation is Super Nintendo like, yeah, I
suppose that's true. And it's catalog Yeah, yeah, that's true. A
legendary console it is, Dan. Yes, did you play much else while
you were on the road. I played a good amount of the last gen
version of w E two K fifteen. Yeah, which is the only version
out so far. Correct. Yeah, they ended up pushing the proper console
versions back to the eighteenth Originally they were all supposed be out of the same
time. And yeah, who knows. It seems like for for the sake
of appearances, if nothing else, you want to at least, you know,
either lead with the new console version or or day and date both of
them. Well, you know it's but who knows, something crazy happen and
yep, yeah, which this version is not that good, the last and
one. I mean, it's a game in a long running series of bad
games. Like what you know, Like, what were you really expecting?
I liked thirteen and fourteen, I didn't like twelve, and the smack numbers
for our series was kind of man whatever, but I thought, I thought
the first SmackDown it's great, like the first first it was such a breath
of fresh air for a wrestling at the time, because you didn't like,
you're the only person that likes those more than the sixty four ones. Those
were the the shitty little brothers of No Mercy games were they were barely even
wrestling games. Oh good lord, are there any license to it? Are
you games? You like that? Midway Arcade games pretty awesome? Wrestle any
of the arcade game there many of the arcade games also in your house on
place and pay on the PlayStation is terrible. Or yokazun was like pulling fish
out of his pants and people with and you're like, you're there was a
wrestling ring in the desert. Yeah, like, for no good reason doanks
electrifying people with a hand dozer? The whole thing is Yeah, Supercard,
seeah, Supercard, that's my epic pro Alberti dal Rio rising up the charts.
Have you put more time into Supercard than the Nintendo sixty four wrestling games?
Yes? Probably, I'm gonna say probably. I'm gonna say probably on
that one. We're gonna check right now because I just did a King of
the Ring and lost, but I got high enough tier to get a free
epic card. Those things sells for twenty five bucks. Make it quick,
because I just forced myself to lean back from the microphone for a minute.
Uh huh. I think we just hit the sixty second mark and this concludes
your giant podcast wrestling minute. But it's it's wrestling games we're talking about,
Okay, I'm claiming my reward was a random epic card. It's edge.
He's angry. It's a Hall of Famer. Who's edge there is? That
guy had him copeland? What? He got injured and had to stop wrestling.
He's on a crappy sci fi show. Now what era are we talking?
Like? Add a card? I mean, like we'll say ninety eight
to two thousand twelve. What is this era called? This is some some
people refer to it as the reality era, and you only truly name an
era after the fact more or less ended. When attitude era, the ruthless
Aggression era, it's terrible, the PG era, and now people call it
the reality era. But those are all pretty I mean, what was Lithic,
yeah, Mesozoic? Yes, yes, the Hollo scene what all right?
We're done? Okay, moving on? Yeah, Dan, any other
games that are not wrestling uh, yeah, well this weekend mainly, I
mean it when I was back home, but I spent a crazy amount of
time this weekend playing Sunset over Drive. Yeah. I saw you tweeting about
it and start getting excited the things you were tweeting, one thing in particular,
I assume, right, well, it was kind of the whole thing.
Well, it's a great game, like I had the So here's a
weird thing about that game that I am coming to realize was not just my
perception, because I feel like a lot of people are saying it. It
gets a lot better the deeper in you get. Yes, like the writing
gets better, the gameplay gets more fun. I mean they you know,
they give you a bunch of new abilities, so naturally it gets more fun
because there's more things you can do. But it just kind of clicks,
you know, we talked about it on last week. Yeah, introversal gets
a lot better when you get like the air dash and stuff. But also,
for whatever reason, like that game just feels like it's trying too hard
to be edgy for the first two or three hours. Yeah, there's a
lot of just pop culture references and like, yeah, there's like you know,
there's a big Lebowskie reference. There's a breaking bad reference like Reddit at
one point. Yeah, there's a lot of references like that. But also
just like kind of the general tone of the dialogue and stuff in a lot
of cases for the first two hours, three hours or something is just kind
of like, I don't know, a lot a lot of breaking the fourth
wall. Some of that stuff is handled well, but just in general,
the attitude is a little bit too in your face for me, but it
gets a lot smarter later on in the game. Yeah, I'm doing kind
of drop that stuff. Yeah, yeah, they do. I think they
try to establish that tone early on and then they just kind of you know,
yeah, like you said, drop it. Like it's almost it's almost
like they got more comfortable with the like style of humor they were they were
going for. I don't know. And it's not as greating as I thought
it would be because the trailers and everything. I thought it was going to
be trying so hard for this like punk pop aesthetic or whatever. But you
know, there's a bunch of lame jokes and I might roll my eyes every
once in a while, but it all just seems to fit in that universe.
Yeah, it all just seems to be this kind of cohesive like this
is what we won our game to be, and it pulls it off.
Like you remember that first trailer when they revealed it and it showed everyone you
know, swinging on these ropes and shooting stuff, and like it's like,
Okay, there's a great concept video or whatever, but it's not gonna play
like that. It plays like that. They go back and watch that trailer,
like you are swinging around and shooting crazy weapons and everything looks like that.
It's it. I think it nails it. It is. It is
like towards the end of the game, it just gets super busy as you're
flying from one like grind Point or bounce pad to the next and like particle
effects exploding everywhere, like a hundred guys coming out here, which even makes
it fun to Like you know a lot of games that there's just a shitload
of collectibles. It just feels like, Okay, I do this lazy collectible
thing. But because the traversal and itself is so much fun, Like I'm
liking the factor. It's like buying all these maps and just spending time running
around collecting everything. Maps really expensive, Yeah, they do, especially once
you get to the third island, and they're like ten thousand overcharge each because
they so they you rack up the same currency to buys weapons and also maps
for the correctibles. Yeah, and the collectible maps are like alarmingly expensive compared
to what the weapons cost and how much you're getting. Yeah. It's one
of the things where it's like the first one is really cheap. Yeah,
and then from there it's crazy and they get even worse, you know.
And at a certain point it's like, well, I could be buying more
collectible maps, or I could actually be trying out new weapons. And I
always went from new weapons, so I didn't go after a lot of that
stuff. Oh, the collectibles for a reason, I mean you know yeah,
yeah, but you're using those to buy amps. Yeah, these are
the collectibles that you that you are like recipe ingredients. Yeah, but I
mean, know, how many of those do you really need? To fist
the thing? I never got into that, like you didn't need them at
all. I never got into their stamps. Yeah. Yeah, crafting new
ones like the ones that you get in the course of the story, I
found to be totally adequate as long as I have eighth that I kind of
like, you know, I can fill out my whole weapon wheel. I'm
pretty much okay with that. And I don't really like the forth defense stuff
that much. There was like the traps and stuff are just I kind of
got into it. That was the thing that you know, from the early
part of the game that I played before I got into other stuff. That
was a part that there was a big turn off to me right out of
the gate. Was Yeah, so like, yeah, I guess I've only
seen the worst of this game, Like I have to play more of it.
Yeah you should. There's some there's some good stuff in there because it's
yeah, because I got to that base defense thing and kind of hated it,
and then the writing is bad too in the early parts. So yeah,
you can avoid a lot of that for it depends stuff like there's four
main forts and you have to do you know, at least that initial one
the last. They last like three minutes each. Yeah, yeah, it's
like fifteen minutes of the game when it comes down to it. Yeah,
it's just not a thing. I want to go back and I try to
get a better challenge score. Yeah. I didn't go back and do the
challenge versions or anything. But but yeah, I saw you tweeting the photo
of your of your Freddy your make a Freddy Mercery. Yes, it's incredible,
which was like a shockingly accurate likeness, And I was all honesty that
made me want to play that game, because if you give customize your character
to that degree, like what else can character customization? It's full on Saints
Row level of nonsense. Yeah, are you adjusting like cheek structure and so
they've got just a bunch of included faces. Yeah, but you can.
You can change any face and between genders at any time in the game.
There's no cost to it or anything. I mean, you can buy like
different jackets and stuff. I got to buy the Freddie Mercury stuff right and
like and the and the clothing also wasn't gendered, so like you can put
a you know, ballerina outfit on a big like muscly dude if you want
or whatever. I'll say that I was loving the game. I was already
like, you know, ten hours deep when I made Freddie Mercury, and
I was loving it before, but playing as him, like it's actually making
me enjoy the game like significantly more. With the baseball bat because that's what
I could see him doing that if he hadn't died. I mean, you're
just skating around on rails shooting Teddy bears out of cannons. Yeah, he's
a cool dude style like that. To be honest, Freddie Mercury is pretty
great. He was the coolest dude. But it was also the part of
the game that you were tweeting about when you did that, Like, I
think that's like when you get to that third faction, the LARPers. Oh
yeah, I feel like that's when some of the more clever like mission design
and writing kicks in were you're calling in like the catapults and things like that
and stuff like that, and just like the Bard's song I thought was pretty
funny. And then the Fleaming Sword forging mission, that part in the nuclear
stylo. Yeah, that was easy and awesome, a lot of that stuff
that that's when it starts getting just really dumb and fun. Yeah, you're
like alternating between flame sword and lightning sword every time you swing it and just
killing like a hundred robots. It's it's just fucking cool. Yeah. I
love that game. Yeah, it's it really picks up, it's it finishes
strong too. Oh good, Okay, if you haven't done, there's a
side mission. I think it's called Fizzy. The inside story. Is that
the one where you're destroying all the little things that speak, don't m no,
okay, that's the different thing. I'll tell you what it is after
the podcast, but okay, I think that's the name of it. It's
something like that. I highly recommend doing that side mission. I think I'm
gonna do them all anyway. I thought some of the some of the more
amusing stuff was in that's the focus group mission. Okay, so yeah,
do that one. Okay, uh yeah, that's uh yeah. I think
that game maybe in the end, turned out better than I expected me too.
Yeah, I went especially based on again impressions of the first a little
bit of it. Yeah, it wasn't like crazyly on my radar beforehand,
because again the humor and the trailers kind of rubbed me the wrong way.
And then it was the quick look we did where I was watching you play
and you had you were a little past the stuff that was yeah at this
point in the first couple of hours, and I was like, Okay,
I'm totally playing this game. It looks awesome and then there's the other's stuff
with the benefit concert and all that stuff, like yeah, yeah, right
now I'm playing. Is Freddie Mercury trying to put together an awesome rock concert
for kids with cancer? That's happening in this video games mission best the mission
objective. It's amazing. Yeah. Cool, that's really dumb. If you
book them, they will come yep, yeah, it's true two reference.
Yeah, okay, that's what we're working with you. Yeah, all right,
well I suppose it's time for that annual tradition to continue. Yes,
where we discussed the new Call of Duty game, here, here we go,
all right, the new Call of Duty game. Lay it on us.
It's called the Call of Duty colon Advanced Warfare. Just like those other
Call of Duty games where it was modern warfare. This is this is past.
This is advanced. That's how you get past modern. Yeah, this
is postmodern warfare. It's it's really good. Yeah, yeah, advanced warfare
is is really good. I was actually I was surprised. Yeah, I
was surprised by it. There's some really corny stuff in there, and it's
it's not perfect. I think that there's some stuff that they are leaving behind
that they shouldn't like what like Black Ops two had a branching campaign. Yeah,
there was. That was not you know, I mean I think that
that campaign was not perfect, but you know, it showed signs of like,
hey, look we understand, like there's more. There was more we
could be doing to make this campaign cool. And no game since then has
had that branching campaign. Yeah, that was. That was one of the
very first things I asked you when you came back from playing through that thing,
was like, do they do any more of that stuff? And you're
like, nope, it's just a straight ahead Yeah, it is just a
straight straight ahead campaign. The one thing that is, you know, at
the end of every level, basically they've got they've got stuff in there for
they've got milestones in there for headshots, grenade kills, regular kills, and
finding the intel laptops. And as you hit those miles stones, you get
points you can spend to upgrade your exo suit. It's the thing that lets
you double jump. It's your fancy metal backpack. Let's double jump and climb
walls and do all kinds of cool shit. In the campaign, they kind
of assign you a specific load out for that thing, depending on the level
itself, so you don't always have the double jump and boost stuff, but
in multiplayer you always do have the half of the boost stuff. That's what
matters about advanced Warfare is the mobility. You know. It is something that
that you know, Titan Fall earlier in the year, I think did a
great job with like all the wall running and double jump and all that stuff
to just make it faster, more frenetic for that type of competitive shooter.
This kind of does the same thing, only doesn't have you know, it
only the maps are designed for human size players and not human sized players and
giant robots, and that actually adds a lot to it. It's a you
know, it makes the game more three D. I feel like like there's
more. Yeah, it's coming at you, man, Yeah it's right in
the face. Pop, it's popping up. It might be so like yeah,
verticality, Yeah, it takes place on multiple plants. I mean you
used to have you know, it's like some would be up high sniping or
something like that and you'd be down low and have to deal with it,
you know. But now it's just like you are building. Yeah, you
are just double tapping jump and boosting up onto these rooftops, so you end
up you know, yeah, even just rooftops, like you could just like
jump over an obstacle or a barrier right exactly running around it. Yeah,
and you know that you hear that and go like, well, fucking whatever
that it actually makes a big deal kind of tactically, you know, because
it creates then a situation where now everyone's going fucking ape shit jumping all over
the place. So there's value and staying low. Yeah, like right now
early on, yeah, because I mean at the time of this recording,
like the games it's in I don't even know what you'd call this period,
about twenty four hours it's out kind of early whatever. They zero. I
also started selling it on Monday. I mean I okay, oh, can
you just walk in and buy it on a Monday. I imagine you might
have to go through some fucking bullshit. Rigg and role. We're like,
hey, I'd like to pre order the game, and now here I am
picking up the pre order. I don't know how that stuff works, but
I can't imagine they're just like saying, Nope, sorry, come back tonight.
You know, like it could they couldn't have done that, like they're
not gonna do midnight releases tonight or you know, there's no way. I
don't know. I don't know. I'm gonna play with fire here and try
to open up the Steam store on the recording machine. I mean, I
could just have this laptop over. I mean it works on Steam. That's
how I got on. No, I know, but but I want to
see if you can just click buy right now. Oh and not like technically,
Yeah, it says right here now available Call Duty Advanced Warfare Day zero
editions. The game is just out. You just released the day. It
literally came out a day early. Yeah, I just I wonder, I
mean, I bring it up or you know, I kind of want to
belabor this a little bit because I mean it's you know, it's not the
first you know what what they actually aren't really yeah, it's it's actually it
says released time twelve am Eastern Standard time on so they took pre order sales,
unlocked it for those people and God to back up, but it's straight
up says on their storefront it says now available. Well, yeah, it's
now available. Just means hey, if you have the Daisy, you're addition
and already paid for it. It's available from you, but you can't weird,
well whatever the particulars. I mean, it's the first example of a
major publisher and a giant release like this. I don't know how this is
supposed to work. I don't know how this is supposed to work. Yeah,
but I mean, you know, the details are kind of whatever.
Like, it's still pretty unprecedented. Uh yeah, I mean I guess they
put the game on sale on Monday and staid Tuesday. Really it's changes.
Yeah, it's not that it's it's not that big of it, not right
now, but it makes you it makes you wonder if the kind of standard
Tuesday release cycle might get subverted a little more heavily at some point. Sure.
Yeah, I mean you know there's already some games coming out on Fridays,
right Nino. Yeah, you know, and if we get to a
point where, you know, digital sales are more and more prevalent, then
you know, the people that update those stores are you know, on the
consoles. They seem loath to want to update it day to day and want
to just do like one day a week or you know, something like that.
But uh, there's no reason why they couldn't be publishing that stuff whenever.
Sure. Yeah, Like my understanding was that the Tuesday thing largely had
to do with like supply chain and shipping and getting it in store. It's
all just legacy stuff. Yeah, it's it's all just super old. It's
the same reason that CDs were in stores on Tuesday. It's just the trucks
are already set up to do that sort of exactly. So, so if
you're not bound by physical distribution anymore, Yeah, then whatever, maybe that
goes away too in the morning. Just games come out whenever. Yeah,
it's like, hey, this game when cold, it's out now, Yeah,
done, marketing campaign starts and now it's also available. Sure instead of
trying to fucking build this aggressive pre order campaign. Sure. The first time
I tried the Steam preload thing too, and that's that's pretty handy. I
mean it's literally like the second it goes on sales, like, oh no,
I'm just gonna start this. Yeah, I don't have to drive anywhere.
I don't like it works. I haven't. I haven't done preloading on
Steam in a very long time. Files unpack it and that took some time.
That's what I was going to ask. They still do the decrypting stuff.
Okay, yeah, yeah, so's yeah. But anyway, it's uh,
you know, the campaign is is good. U It's it's straightforward,
and you know, like I have to you know, like it's not gonna
fucking change your mind about Call of Duty. Like there's really cool stuff in
here that drew me back in as a lapsed Call of Duty fan that I
didn't I didn't expect to be drawn back in to this degree. But yeah,
I mean if you if you think that it's just like whatever point A
to point B, follow this guy, like it is still all that and
then something uh so yeah you are going to continue to not like Call of
Duty. Yeah, you know that stuff. And on top of that,
like you know, hearing it's another PMC centric storyline and stuff like that.
Yeah, that stuff definitely like it's a it's a good one I think,
and that's largely because of Kevin Spacey. You know, he's good. He's
good. Yeah, A little bit I've seen of it is like yeah,
he you know, there's I mean it's like, you know, yes,
Chris Sabian is out there laying it down, negotiating his fucking ass off,
and in his ski jacket and or sweater whatever the fun. Yeah, he
is the head of the Atlas Corporation. Uh and uh yeah, they're they're
a big PMC. So it is. It is kind of that story for
what that's worth. But then again, any story about military fiction, you
know, any fictional story about the military these days that is set today or
in the future, is obviously dealing with that exact stuff. It's uh,
it's it's kind of everywhere right now. So well, I think even outside
of the Spacey performance, the stuff like the way they direct the Atlas propagandic
commercials and stuff is really really well done. But it's you know, it's
just one of those things like the character models look phenomenal, and Kevin Spacey
being very recognizable is the clearest example of that. So I was actually I
haven't seen much of it outside of just some brief clips at him, but
I was actually curious to the other characters like match up to that level of
fidelity in terms of believe believable like faces. So, I mean, you
end up with kind of two versions of these characters, whether you know,
there's the cut scene version and the the in game version. I think they
both look really nice. There is a noticeable difference in quality, but you
know, generally speaking, like you know, you're you're cut seeing Kevin Spacey.
Like at times you're like, whoa was that? Was that real Kevin
Spacey? What's going right? Yeah? Like your lead character, Mitchell?
Yeah what Mitchell? I just I just meant does everybody else look as good
as Kevin Spacey? Does it look? No, that's true for real life
too. Most people don't look as good as Kevin Spacey. I mean Roy
Troy Baker with facial hair, uh is basically your your lead character. Okay,
so they're modeling other people's face similar you know, I don't think it's
identical to his looks, but you know, yeah, it's uh, the
major characters have that, where like Mitchell has that, Spacey has it,
Getty in that Australia you're with has it. But like I noticed, uh,
it's not a spoilers. Everyone's been talking on Twitter the part in the
funeral at the beginning, like you walk around, there's all these soldiers and
you look at their gener Soldier. It is going to look like General Soldier.
There. They're not going out in mo capping and performance capturing every single
person out there, but yeah, but yeah, I mean the game.
The campaign, man, Yeah, the campaign. At first, you're like,
fuck really, because literally, like you're you're dropping into the South Korea.
North Korea is invaded, and you know you're you're you're doing a drop
that goes wrong and you know you have to kind of kick open the door
to this thing. And as soon as you're through all that stuff and all
the setup, it's like, Okay, now you're gonna play Call of Duty
here. It is the future is now boom, what are we doing?
I'm dropping out here? What are we doing? Well? Can I run
anywhere? What are we doing? You land right above your fucking CEO's head,
A little pip appears is his follow Like, oh, okay, that's
what you're doing, right, called the duty And then you breach a door
and it goes into slow motion and you have to shoot a guy in the
head. It does do that. Yeah, yeah, but it's the future.
So you have mute charges which you drop on the ground and make everything
quiet. It suppresses all sound, which is pretty fucking cool. Yeah,
some good little gadget type things like that. But overall, the campaign does
pacing really well. It covers a good stretch of time. There's a point
in the campaign where all of a sudden just goes like four years later and
you get to see like the you know, the the reaction civilian reaction to
the events that happened prior to that, uh kind of extrapolated out in a
way. You know, like like basically like you know, if you were
to say, like have a video game that had nine to eleven happened in
it and then go like fast forward to this, you know, and you'd
look at it and go like whoa, people are like lining up and taking
their shoes off, and like security is fucking weird, and like, you
know, like like like that level of stuff. Basically you have to see
the before and after between it. Let the geopolitical yeah, kind of climate
just sort of settle out, all right. It's really smart because like in
like Modern Warfare three, where it's just like it's popping off for the entire
campaign, you don't really have a chance to catch your breath, and it
doesn't literally you don't feel any gravity to any of the situations exactly. Yeah,
you're just like you're just like, oh, well, that blew up.
Let's go to the next days. Falling on my head. Yep,
this game actually does a nice job with that stuff overall, where like the
pacing is better throughout where you kind of have more quiet moments, not to
say that it's just like here's this intimate moment with Kevin Spacey, you know,
but you you get you know, he gets his talk on. You
get to kiss Kevin Spacey on his number, press X, pay respect to
his lips. No, it's you know, And some of those are stealth
sequences that I feel like they, you know, Call of Duty has been
chasing that Call of Duty for stealth sequence like the Gilly super mission, the
Gilly Suit mission, Like ever since that mission came out, they have never
beaten it, but they they I think that fire uh two snipers at the
same time the snow snow. Yeah, it's pretty cool with Brice. This
game I think comes the closest to like achieving that sort of stuff. But
it also has you know, weird spy ship and it's like stuff where you're
just like, you don't have a gun. You know. There's are some
interesting little things that happen along the way in that game that I think,
uh work in its favor. It makes it a more interesting campaign. Mean
yeah, by and large, Yeah, you are running up to a scripted
sequence full of dudes and shooting them all down and running four word. But
you know, along the way, I think the story is well told enough.
They get good performances out of Kevin Spacey and most of the rest of
the voicecast that you know, if you're open to like that kind of like
big dumb, overblown action movie kind of storyline, like, it does that,
and it does it better than Call of Duty has in a while.
That's good to hear. So I like that, And even if it's a
little disappointing that they sure yeah, dropped the line, I want to say,
dropped the ball. That's maybe a little harsh, but you know they
didn't. They weren't as ambitious about trying out some new things as like say
Trey Arch has been. Yeah, but then all when it comes to the
campaign structure, almost wonderous stuff like the branching and the player agency stuff becomes
like a tray Arch hallmark. You know. It's like maybe you only get
that in their games. You know. I think that that's actually like an
increasing problem with Call of Duty. It has been for a while. We
used to joke about it a lot like, oh, you could notice that
the tray Our games had better fire right than the Infinity Ward games because they
just had better firetech. And you're like, why wouldn't they share that?
What the fuck is going on? And you go like, oh, it's
because Infinity Ward is a huge fucking chip on their shoulders about this stuff.
Right. Well, you know, times have changed, and you know,
I would like to think that I'm sure that there's probably some competitiveness between the
studios, but enough is enough, Like, you know, it's at some
point like that there needs to be something centralized, like the experience needs to
have some consistency, and when you end up in this situation where like this
year you can dolphin dive, this year you can't, like, you know,
like at some point, that's just dumb. I mean, it's kind
of it's you know, it's just the problem inherent to annualizing, especially when
you you know, if anything, it's gotten worse, like they're further diluting
the identity of what color of duty is. Yeah, because now they're on
a three studio and now with advanced warfare, they have you know this side
dash back dash boost jump stuff that fundamentally changes the way you play the multiplayer
in that game, you know, it changes what you're looking for, it
changes the pace that it runs at. It's a much faster game. So
like for me, like after playing this, like the thought of, like,
well, what if next year's game is like some historically set thing where
we're just we've gone back to like kind of the standard weapons of the day
and the standard movement and the multiplayer. I don't want to play that game.
They kind of can't, like even if there is part of a segment
of the audience that kind of rejects this stuff, like it would just I
don't know, it would look weird. It would be like admitting defeat kind
of to just jettison all those news sort of maybe, but you know,
but I think that they could they could do it without admitting defeat by going
like, oh, well, this is set in the Korean War, so
naturally wouldn't have that stuff and we're looking to nail some different stuff. Like
that's fine. I think the appearance of taking a step back would would not
sure reflect well on their on their record. Yeah, I think you're right,
but like that's you know, that's that's my personal taste, and I
imagine that a lot of people after playing a lot of advanced warfare, Like,
you know, the first thing I did so like Activision had a thing
here in the area. I went and play through the campaign there and played
through some multiplayer, and then we got it in house, so I was
able to, you know, play it in our normal setup and not just
go off some like hotel, banquet hall, TV or some ship. It
always, it always wears me out, how fast you come back from things
like that. Yeah, Call of Duty stuff. Specifically, it's a six
hour campaign, right right, It's like, oh, it's a three day
event or whatever, and you're back like that evening and it's like, whoa
wait, I thought you were out the rest of the week. No,
it's like, no, the game's pretty short. Yeah yeah, I mean
know, it is what it is. At some point you're like, okay,
I've seen enough. I know. I'men to get some time with it
before it comes out to get a review together, so you know, but
yeah, I don't know, Like I don't want to. I don't.
I think that what they've done with the the EXSS suits and the movement speed
and all that sort of stuff is something that I don't want to wait another
three years for more of that, and I think that there would be a
huge mistake, like a game like so, so the first thing I did
after getting back was I put in Ghosts. Ghosts on PS four is like
a muddy mess by comparison, it is just a blurry, blocky, like
uneven frame rate. And I found myself like clicking in the stick, like
jumping and clicking in the stick, trying to boost forward all the time going
fucking come on, like, all right, that's not in this game.
Yeah. Well, you know, even when that game came out, it
did not look amazing. No, no, very much had had a foot
in each generation. But yeah, I mean, but you look at Advanced
Warfare and you know it's I'm not gonna say Advanced Warfare is like the most
amazing game in the world graphically, but it's pretty sure. It looks a
lot better than Ghosts. Looks a whole lot better than Ghosts done PS four
and PC, yeah are they similar. I mean the PC runs at higher
resolution. You know, the PC verson actually has a lot more options of
visual graphical options than I think a lot of PC ports. I mean,
it's for a game that like has put out some bunk ass PC ports over
the years, Like this has an FOV slider that says, you know,
just like you want to want to preload the the shaders, you can do
that. You know. There's like there's a good amount of options on that
menu that I was kind of surprised by. But yeah, I'm in the
PC version looks good, looks you know, high resolution and sharper than the
console versions for sure. Yeah, you know, their new modes are all
right, but I think I kind of prefer the old modes. Your domination,
your team death match. You don't like dunking satellites through portals. It's
like a funny concept that the few times I've played it, but like this
is cool, I don't really, it's not. I'm see myself doing a
lot of crash and laser while you do it. It was it was better
in UT two K four. Yep. It always seen things were It always
seems like there's some gimmicky mode each year, Like I think last year it
was Crank that was the big gimmicky one. Yeah, yeah, they got
Jason Sathem. Yeah that's well, there was there was Cranky, but there's
also like there was whatever the mode was that was like it was like up
link but without the ball, like you were trying to run into the goal,
right right, Well, I do like in this one they basically brought
back war which I don't know momentum it's called momentum her. Yeah. I
think in World at War might have been the last time I saw where it
was basically five flags and you have to get them all, but you have
to do them sequentially, so like it's this push and pull throughout the mass.
It sounds TF two has that that sounds kind of sequential control points,
stuff get kind of guarantees a skirmish line, Yeah, guarantees what are the
action is going to be? I guess. Actually the difference is that I
think in TF two you have two points that are open at any given time,
whereas this there's just one as you kind of push your way through.
Still no heads, Nope, they have hard point, which is similar in
Spirit two headquarters, but not the same. When was the last time headquarters
was actually in modern More for two Black Ops took no gun game. I
love gun game. Try Arport was really good at the super silly modes like
six and Stones and one of the chamber gun game I've always liked their stuff
with that. So the Creative Class stuff is based on the Black Ops two
stuff. They took a little bit further in a way that I think is
really smart. And it's one of those things where it's like, you know,
if you look back over the years, it's one of the things where
it's like maybe it's good because the multiple studios and they have different philosophies or
something, but I think it's another one of the things they just need to
lock down and go like, this is how the Creative Class works. Now,
it's going to just keep working like this until we have a really damn
good reason to change it. But there needs to be one just in general,
there needs to be one consistent like design through line through this whole series.
Yeah. I think they need need to like come to a consensus,
yeah, about how these things should be. It's just like, well,
now we got squad points and you can unlock this stuff and whatever order you
want. It got real complicated, yeah, yeah, yeah, just like
it's it's one of those things where like having written reviews of these games to
the past years, like the amount of text devoted to like all right,
here's how you unlock ship this year. It's basically the same, but there's
a ton of minutia that is super different and ultimately none of it actually matters,
but it is It is worth noting. Did they dedicate anytime at the
review event to their annual like, well, it used to be eleape,
but now it's going to be this clan war thing or just this thing that
no one really winds up doing anything of an app. Yeah, they have
a war. The clan war stuff is in there, okay, And that's
just all the stuff that came from Elite basically and became free, right yeah,
I think really, Oh my god, Yes, and I forgot about
the existence of Call Duty Elite. Yeah. I had a big deal out
of that. Holy crap. Remember the experience? Oh they did that.
Yeah, I was gonna go to that, but I got sick. I
completely forgot about all of that. The whole studio just was it beat.
They still do it still exists. Who just working on this make gotta make
maps and stuff? Yeah they do. Yeah, they have an app or
whatever. You ever use that? No what No, you can change your
load out when you're in line with the grocery still, so you can't do
that. This year. Okay, you can maps. Yeah, there's an
emblem editor. Okay, so you can make your emblement in the app now,
okay, no, no, I'm sorry. Feed Price. Yeah,
Kevin Spacey, Kevin Spacey that just wants to eat. Did you I don't
know how studiously you look at the credits or whatever, but did you get
the sense this is like pretty much a Sledgehammer joint? Like that was my
impression going in. It's Sledgehammer, Raven High Moon. Okay, whoa,
yeah, okay, but those I mean, I think those are somewhat support
studios in general. Right. What I mean is like Trey Arkin and Infinity
Ward did not contribute to this in anyway. I mean, you know,
like they there are credits from those teams on there. You know, I
think to some extent, there's probably a roving crew that does little bits and
pieces on every game where they get credited because their work is being used on
the next year's game, or you know, I don't know how they how
they determine that stuff. Yea, this definitely seems like Condrey and Scofield's baby
from what I've seen. So I was actually had sledge Hammer that was one
of the last things they didn't Informer was the cover reveal, this drop all
these names. No, I mean those guys like that, this is their
thing. They're super excited to be able to like finally because it because they
worked on Modern Wark for three and they were just the kind they kind of
came in to close it out. That's kind of why I wanted to drill
down on the issue who actually made this game, because the sledge Hammer logo
is big the front and you know it's Activision Sledgehammer Call of Duty specifically because
like you know, like Schofield had left because he ran the studio that made
dead Space, which was like fantastic debut. Ye sound guy is from dead
Space, like and there's a ton at the dead Space. So that was
kind of the thing, is that there was a sort of exodus of talent
from the team that created dead Space, Yeah, to form sledge Hammer like
years ago, like ages ago, right, and then they never they they
game themselves. They made that move right as Infinity Ward was blump. That's
what I'm saying. They basically got presumably they got subsumed into the Call of
Duty machine because they had to help finish three. But then they extricated themselves
from that. This is their full game. That's why I'm saying this is
notable because it's finally there. But I mean, you like, it's one
of those things where it's like you talk about like, oh, this is
their baby. It's a call of duty game, like it's it's it's Bobby
Kodix baby, like they like, you know, they're they're not like right,
like they're putting their stamp on it, and it's different in some ways,
but like, dude, it's the melee range is a little bit different,
like that's that's my baby, Like, no, it's it's not,
you know, it's a call of duty game. It seems like they definitely
had a vision for what they wanted this to be, and from everything I've
heard, it's like this, this is the game they wanted to make,
but obviously they can't just go crazy with it. Originally it was gonna be
a third person yeah, and the tunnels and stuff. No, I mean
they've admitted to it like that that is what it was, and they had
it running. They had like an hour demo or something. You have to
assume at that point. And what I mean is the rumors were that it
was not a core call of duty game at that time. It was gonna
be this weird spin off, some kind of another game Kim or what war
it was in. I think it was in like Vietnam or something. Yeah,
I think it was Vietnam and tunnels third person. It was gonna be
more of a Dead Space style thing. Wow. And then it just became
like, well, no, we're gonna do this three studio system and you're
gonna make the next you know, real ask call it duty. So yeah,
how long can it go on? I don't know. I'm really curious
to see what this like sales stuff coming in. I mean, ghosts really
put a put a damper on things, I think. So I don't know
how this will do. You know, I think word of mouth will probably
be pretty good. Yeah, because you know, the all three aspects of
it, the car, the multiplayer, the survival co op mode. It's
pretty good. I think word of mouth will do all right. But I
think a lot of damage has been done over the past couple of years.
Yeah, I mean the numbers have been have been dropping, sure, I
think, but I think this is the best game they've made in a while.
And for what that's worth, you know, yeah, you know,
I'm sure that's worth a good bit. But at the same time, like
even if Ghosts was like a especially poor showing for them, like even at
its best, like nothing stays the most popular thing in the world forever exactly,
and you know about Ghosts, but it's like it's totally serviceable. Yeah,
Like it's not like ass it's you know, it's like here's a here's
a Call of Duty game that doesn't really do uh, you know, doesn't
really take enough risks. Yeah, basically, So yeah, I don't know,
it's hard to to kind of look and figure, you know, well,
what does this mean for the future of the franchise. Like, I
don't think I'm buying large. I don't think the general buying public gives a
fuck about who makes Call of Duty. It's more about what each individual studio
can bring to right, Yeah, And I think that's that's one of the
things that I think is maybe confusing to the average consumer as well, where
it's just like this year, you're getting this type of thing, and and
these things that could be in the game just aren't here for no really great
reason, and or they've been placed by this you know, like that I
think that stuff is super weird. What's really gonna be weird is next year
when it's trail Ors Turn again. Right, if you get a game that
feels like it is a logical follow up to Black Ops two. I'm not
saying that's gonna happen, it probably. I mean, I'm sure that there
is some collaborative kind of design stuff going on between studios, right effort,
Yes, some effort from the topic. It'll be it'll be the you know,
yeah, it'll be the people that brought you Black Ops to bring you
the next Call of Duty games again. Yes, like we were saying before,
like they've done the most interesting and ambitious stuff with the campaign in years.
Right, so if they continue those concepts when the other two studios didn't,
you know, like, it's just going to kind of be this weird
inconsistent thing. Yeah. Yeah, inconsistency bothers me in this case. But
you know, this has left me curious to at least see what happens next.
But but yeah, like the mobility stuff is huge, and I think
we've been I feel like, you know, games like Titan Fall an Advanced
Warfare, I've kind of pushed this in this direction. For higher speed stuff.
There's nothing high speed about Destiny. You've got you've got a jet pack?
Yeah, no, I but it's like a boost. It's a slow
still a jet pack. Destiny is the most sluggish, slow thing in the
world compared to advanced Warfare. I actually went and played a little Destiny last
night after playing a weekend of our four Days of Call of Duty, and
I was just like, fuck, yeah, no, that's understandable. Halo
was always pretty plotting, and yep, that's just coming the thinking man's shooter.
Yeah. Yeah, I've burned out on Destiny pretty hard in the last
week or so, in the last month or two, you know, do
all the content in the game or so much left to do? You have
time to play anything else? Hm hmm. Now I've been pretty focused on
that. I messed around with the Halo master Chief collection a little bit.
Yeah, I very briefly fired that up. Yeah, it's uh, we
are able to talk about just a small portion of it. But yeah,
I don't know. I played the first mission of Halo one. Yeah you
like Halo. Yeah, it's Halo's pretty good. Okay, and then you
should get the one. You should probably get the game that has all four
Halos in it. Like that's That's the weird thing about covering that thing is
that, like pretty much every person already knows in their heart if they want
to play old Halo games get anymore totally or not. Yeah, I just
want to see how well they did Halo. Yeah, that's that's the big
question. Answer about the the gameplay stuff. Yeah, But the other big
thing is, you know the glue that holds all that stuff together, the
you know, the new additions to campaign scoring and leaderboards and stuff like that.
Yeah, that's stuff. Seems that stuff seems really smart on campaign.
There are four thousand achievement points in that game. It's also that Jesus,
there's a lot of CG and Halo two. I don't know if you knew.
Yeah, I saw one of those right, yeah shit, I don't
know if it's the mission we can talk about from Halo two whatever. It
was all done by Blur, right, which is like the studio that those
CG Yep, yep, yep, those guys. Yeah, I mean they
you know, they did, uh they did like those big old Republic trailers
that were so big a D three and like pretty much every big like sixty
second CG trailer you see a D three was probably done by Blur, and
the talk about their rates is exorbitant. Yeah, and there's like an hour
of it in this master Chief collection in the Halo two remakes, So I
don't know if they got like a bulk rate yeah on the CG. Yeah,
but it's nice looking CG. You know, he's got money. Yeah,
that's true. Yeah. Uh, if you want to see some of
the more dramatic moments of Halo two rendered in incredible detail, and I do,
I think you're gonna be happy with that aspect of it. I'm really
curious to see the multiplayer end of it. Yeah, kind of how that
stuff that's probably Yeah, I have to imagine for the super fans like Drew,
that's probably the thing that you care about the most. Yes, it
is, and at the time of this recording, that stuff is still not
in there, right, Yeah, it's coming probably by the time you're listening.
Time you hear this, that'll be passionate game that sounds like. But
yeah, it's a you know, whatever, game's not out until the eleventh
whatever it is. We can't comment yet. It's uh, yeah, I
don't know that it's an interesting thing. I think the shell and stuff is
nice. There's just it's a whole lot of Halo. I don't know it's
true. I should be real sick of Halo by now, I'm not.
Somebody like, I think we were just talking to the office or something.
Right after Extra Life, when you guys had spent the better part of twenty
four hours playing Halo. Somebody asking you in regard to this thing, like
are you ready to play a bunch more Halo? And you're like, yeah,
kind of dude, you're a madman. Yeah, it's it's mostly the
nostalgia factor. Do you wish you would have this for Extra Life? Were
you glad you played them all in they're more or less original form? I'm
glad. I'm glad I had some distance between. Like I'm glad two years
ago is the time I played through most of what's in here. Okay,
you know that's fair. Like playing this again for twenty four hours, I
think it'd be rough. Yeah, but I want to. Yeah, I
would totally. I think the first thing I would do well, The first
thing I would do is load up Blood Gulch multiplayer Halo one and try to
smash two war hugs into each other, and if they fla off of each
other in weird directions, then I know we're good. If they just crashed
into each other, then no sales back into the store. Throw it at
the clerk. Gun take that, except you bought the digital version, so
you just have to throw your Xbox at him. Yeah, more damage.
Yeah, that's probably a lethal weapon. Yeah, and then I would play
probably kill somebody with an Xbox one. You'd kill somebody. Was just about
anything you try hard. Well. Yes, have a video on my phone
of a game store employee having an unruly customer thrown entire old three sixty at
his head and hitting him in the face, blood involved, and then he
chases the guy. This is scaredy camera footage from the game store. Who
chased whom it was a girl I was dating. It was her ex boyfriend
who worked at a game store and sent her these videos. Okay, and
he's the one that got hit in the face. He got hit in the
face with the Xbox three sixty, bleeding like crazy, and then chase the
kid out of the store, and the camera outside of the store him punching
the kid on the ground. Okay, Nico okay, but yeah, like
the three sixty hits him in the face, like I think, in the
mouth. Yeah, that seems that seems unpleasant some sense. Yeah, I'll
show you the video aftercott. You know, I feel like you painted a
word picture. I'm good. Uh, yeah, I don't know. And
then I downloaded Vulgar and yes, I also loaded that up and died twice
when I man, fucking Vulgar? Is it still? Is it still free
on Xbox? Yeah? Yeah for the whole month. Get that. I
haven't played it. I just got it. My game's fucking great. I
got through. I got to the second level, one of the second like
you know, there's three levels, a decent amount, okay, Like I
remembered that I could interrupt my jump momentum with the spin like some of the
some of those slightly higher level stuff. I was like, okay, that's
how you do that. I don't even know what style this is. Is
this like a Castlevania type It is a well couple night it is ras Yes,
Rastan is the very most clear com Harrison down to the way the guy
holds a sword. Yea. But it is it is one a linear level
based like arcade style side scrolling action game like sixteen bit style like that area.
Yeah, I guess that's about right graphic wise. In fact, I
mean they didn't they made that fake Genesis box art for this thing, right,
Yeah, so I think they're going for sixteen better than a Genesis though,
Yes, for sure. But it's like that, and it's just it's
just brutally balls out hard and it's not as there's nothing randomized about it whatsoever,
like enemy placement, like behavior, everything is something you can just you
just memorize your way through it. Yeah, you memorize slash like learn to
sort of predict. And Yeah, it's super satisfying, even though it's really
punishing. Highly highly recommend it, especially at the low low press of free.
That's free if your Xbox Live Gold. The achievements are all fifty points
each. It's only twenty of them on Xbox One. Yeah, it's just
Xbox One and did not come out on three sixty if I'm not mistaken.
But you've a pinion of Trouble in Paradise, Yeah on the three sixty,
man, I need to I need to go get my disc free version of
that fast to get that. I just have it with me at all time,
but in a moment's notice, you never know we're gonna need it.
Yeah, although I kind of almost feel like the PC version of the first
game is the best version to have. No, Yeah, you're probably right
for as long as that works. Uh, but yeah, that's that's pretty
much all that I've messed with. I've I have played a lot of Call
of Duty over the past couple of weeks. Here, you're gonna keep going
precige, Yeah, I think I might. Yeah. Uh so, Yeah,
the level cap is fifty. I'm level twenty six or twenty seven right
now. Yeah, so it's kind of it seems like it's the shortest ramp
they've had in a while in terms of just like time to get through.
Also, it's like for their their pre their pre day. Uh, there's
double Experience points. Yeah, you don't have to go to buy any Mountain
Dew to get it up. See you cash in stuff for XP you can
awesome. Yeah, they've they've done that. Yeah, they did that.
I'm trying to think what was the first game that they did the Mountain Dew,
Like, there's a code here that you can get I'm I want to
say Modern Warfare three. I thought it was before that that was black anyway.
I mean, like you earn a gun or something and you say I
don't want that gun. You just right, yeah, right, yeah,
that's yes, that is the first time they've done that, Like the weird
custom guns and pants, right, get a sick pair of Nigerian police pants
and then turned it into XP if you want, turn it into numbers before
your pants expire. Yeah, yes, the pants. The pants don't expire.
Thet helmets expire. I've I've yet to see a pair of expiring pants
thankfully. Maybe maybe your pants, but some helmets. There's some helmets that
definitely expire, like all cosmetic lout Like it's super weird system that they put
in there. It's like it's kind of the Mass Effect three like case system,
but there's no micro transactions involved, like just you'll just your randomly playing
and like on your first death in a match, it'll just go like you
weren't a supply drop, and you'll it'll be a case that you open up
and it's got a little opening animation and then it feeds you guns and pants.
But are all the cosmetics expiring No, just some, just some,
and the ones that expire seem to be ones you get their performance based.
I think so if you kill someone while you're if you get the dog fight
metal, I think is what it is, which is where you are both
in the air and you kill someone, which is satisfying to accomplish. Sure,
you get like a red baron looking helmet you can wear for half an
hour. As someone who really enjoys player model cosmetic items, I think I
would be really bummed out if I had something I really liked and disappeared.
Yeah, so it's just been that on one other helmet, and you know,
but all the pants and other stuff. I have helmets that don't expire,
and you know, it's just kind of randomly get these items along the
way. The thing is, you have a limited number of slots to store
this stuff in, and I guess there are hundreds of weapon variants in there,
so you kind of have to turn you have to dust them, mantled
them for XP at some point. It's a weird system. Weird Yeah,
threw yo. Do you play video games? Yeah? Have you played video
games? Yeah? What did you play? I played one video game,
Stronghold Crusader too. I've been playing that for for a quick click okay,
yo, that game is Stronghold. I don't. I'm racking my brain back
up, I'm racking my brain trying to remember what stronghold is. I can't
remember what stronghold is. You build auld a stronghold, okay? Do you
build it in real time? Do you take turns? Building it? Is?
It is real time? It is a above like view from above overhead
view. I suppose it's an RTS, but it with a heavy bass building.
I think I remember it now. I think what what through me was
that when you said Crusader, I immediately thought of Crusader Kings. Oh,
yes, which is a very different, very different Yes. So stronghold came
out and then Stronghold Crusader came out after that. I don't think it's German.
Why did I think that? Because games like that are most often German?
Oh, I see, especially when you consider the like economy aspect of
it, so like that's a very heavy part of it too. Instead of
just like mining resources, you have to make sure that you are you have
a woodcutter who's depositing wood at your supply area, and then if you want
to make bows, you have to have enough wood, you know, bows
for your archers, and then if you make if you want to have more
people come to your area, which means you want or you need people to
have an army, and you need houses to have people. There are just
so many dependencies like that, but they all make sense. It's not it's
not a complicated thing. The game, though, is really hard. I
haven't gotten past some of the tutorial missions, but I'm really enjoying it.
Like the previous three D incarnations of Stronghold, Stronghold two, Stronghold three have
not been very good, but this one seems okay. Yes, I remember
Stronghold three not being well over. Yeah, this is kind of like they're
they're back to our roots. Lets people like yeah, and like everything like
telling dudes to like there used to be a lot of bugs about like telling
a dude to go up onto a wall and shoot arrows down like that didn't
work in some of the past games, and like, uh, you know,
drawing a you know, making your castle wall like bridge between two other
walls like that was always buggy. But it seems fine here. I'm I've
only played maybe two hours of it, but it seems all right, and
we're gonna do quick look of it this week. Great. I'm enjoying it
greatly. Excellent. Cool. What did I play? You play? Bred?
Sort of think what else I played besides Okay, I guess this is
all I played. I put a decent amount of time into Lords of the
Fallen, Oh, the Dark Souls alike. Yeah, the Namco and City
Interactive have put out Deck thirteen. I think it is the developer. Anybody
ring any bells? Nope, it's that U team app right, Yep,
that's the one. Yeah, that's where the mister Sith Theater guys lived.
Uh. It is alarming how much that game is like Dark Souls. Like
I knew going in, they didn't really you know, they weren't really making
any bones about it. Yeah, but when you really, like just when
you get your hands on it, would you engage with the controls? It
is right there, Like every single function on that controller is basically exactly how
Dark Souls plays. So, but it seems we have a quick look on
the site, Yeah, with Vinnie and Alex. I kind of want to
watch that just to see what Vinnie thinks of it. Yeah. I only
really skipped around just to see like the the U and stuff. But it
seems like they took dark souls and we're like, Okay, this is weird
and obfuscated. Why don't we just make it clear? The UI is is
not at all the same. It's way better and more streamlined. I'm not
I haven't played it, but from what I saw, I don't I'm not
sure the word the phrase dumbed down would be accurate. Yeah, but more
straightforward. It's definitely that. Yeah, there's some stuff about it that's still
not super clear, but you basically know how to play it if you know
how to play video games. Okay. Does that carry over to the items
or is it just like, oh, I got a fragrant branch of your
like I have no idea what the items like, the stuff like consumables like.
They the descriptions straight up say what they do. Okay, goods in
very clear, in very clear language. Although some of the some of the
writing, especially at the flavor text is is very awkward, sounds like it
was written by a non native English speaker. But it's it's really it's just
the running around in the world. It's the playing of the game that is.
Like, it's it's odd because before now nobody had really made like I
hesitate to use the phrase Dark Souls clone, sure, but it kind of
feels like that. So to see it done just one to one where literally
every button is basically doing everything exactly the same thing, is that? Is
that weird? Is that kind of It's not bad? It is weird.
Like you click in the right stick to target a guy and if you hit
R one it's your light attack, but if you hit forward and R one
you kick. Okay, all the little minutia is there down to like you
know, triangle or why changes your stance between like shield and one hander or
two hander and stuff like that. Like it's just the systems are just right
there. But it's a lot easier than than Dark Souls. Like I've beaten
the first two bosses, beating both on the first try, you know,
sure, I don't know. I mean, looking at the trophies, there's
quite a few bosses, so maybe they get tough at some point. Is
it the sort of thing where you're being that stuff on its first try because
you played a lot of Dark Souls and are you are ready for a harder
game or could someone who didn't play Dark Souls get into this and have it
make sense? It's hard to imagine anybody who plays a lot of games having
a whole lot of trouble with it. Yeah, it's it's pretty forgiving.
Is the health system the same as far as like bonfires, Yeah, for
your maximum goes down, there is an equivalent of bonfires, and you have
an equivalent of vestus flasks and human effigies and stuff when you go No,
they don't get that esoteric with some of the the mechanics, but you know,
you you use there a lotment of health potions and when you go to
a checkpoint, it's like a it's like a blood crystal or something instead of
a bonfire. But when you hit a when you hit a checkpoint, you
get all your healing potions back, and uh, the enemies respond, it
is it is that there There There are a couple of interesting twists on some
of that stuff. So the concept of dying and having a blood stain that
you run back to to get your experience back is still there, but your
experience starts degrading over time the longer it takes you to get back to the
blood stain. Wow, so that's different. You can't just oh weird,
you can't just muck around in the world as long as you want. After
you die, if you want to go get all that xpedback like it'll there's
a little counter with a percentage and and a total at the bottom that starts
taking down after you die and respond, and so you kind of have to
book past enemies in some cases. If you want to get all your your
stuff back, there's a there's another interesting concept. If I got I think
I've got this right. So when dark souls, you go to a bonfire,
you rest, you get all your healing, you know, the ESTs
flasks back, and all the enemies respond. Like that's it. In this
you can go to one of the checkpoints, get all the potions and stuff
back, getting freefill your health without responding all the enemies. Is that just
an option every time you go there? Well, no, no, So
so you can do all that and then keep going on. It's you know,
it seems like it's just kind of a a way to make the game
a little more forgiving. You don't actually respond all the enemies until you bank
your experience points in the checkpoint, so you basically have like you have what
amounts to souls, But if you don't convert those into either spell points that
you get your magic with or attribute points that you would just you know,
rank up in like strength or endurance or whatever. The enemies won't come back,
so you can run around. Oh and I'm sorry. The aspect that
I forgot to mention is that the longer you go without banking your your souls
or keep using Darshal's terms, but your XPE, the more you build up
this multiplier that increases the XP you're getting from enemies, yeah, and increases
the drop rates of like loot that they'll drop. It's just risky though,
because you're not banking him at this blood crystal thing, right, but you
can still more or less if you die anywhere near a checkpoint, you can
still kind of haul ass and just get back there and get him again.
But you see the multiplier, like basically every enemy you kill, the multiplayer
goes up, you know, to the point where you like, you're killing
guys and it'll be like, you know, you get x amount of experience
one point three x multiplier or whatever. It'll show you how much of a
boost you're getting every time you kill an enemy. Yeah, if you if
you've got a good multiplayer multiplier, yeah, going and you die. Does
that get wiped down? Yeah, you lose the multiplier anytime you go to
a check if you go pick it up or or go pick up your thing.
Yeah, when you respond at a checkpoint, you lose the multiplayer.
Does it have the concept of invasions and stuff. I don't know there's anything
like that. I haven't seen anything like them at all. I think it's
just single player. It's it's fun, like it's a it's just kind of
a more lighthearted sort of Dark Souls the type experience. Like if you if
you like playing that type of game, like, you probably enjoy it,
although it'll be light hard to like trying to be funny. Just the story
writer and like not as difficult the story. The story is kind of like
typical like Grim Dark Fantasy PAP basically. Like in fact, playing this makes
me appreciate how much I miss the kind of the ambient and the really obscure
storytelling techniques in the Dark Souls games. Like in those games, all of
the lord they sprinkle around kind of just builds up a mystique and kind of
makes you wonder, like what the hell is going on? You know,
It's like I want to know more about this world, even though like it's
kind of those games are impenetrable without like YouTube lore guides, you know,
so like I'm never gonna sit there and watch all those videos, but I
still enjoy like steeping myself in the mystery of the world, if that makes
sense, you know what I mean, Like, it's it's cool to be
there and kind of not get the whole picture, but feel like there's a
bunch out there to be discovered in a game like this. I'm just like
practically buttoning through the dialogue and wanting to just get back to the running around
killing guys and finding Lute and stuff. Is the killing. It's fine.
I mean, it plays exactly like you think it does if you've ever played
the Souls games, Like, it's again kind of remarkable how much it feels
like that better than a bad facsimile. Yeah, yeah, I mean again,
I'm not saying the game is nearly as good because it's weaker in some
other aspects. It's kind of a dog on the consoles playing it on the
PS four, and the performance is bad, and there's a bunch of weird
little like graphical glitches all over the place, like stuff effects popping in and
out and things like that, and I've had a crash on me and stuff.
It sounds like the Xbox version is not great either, and it's kind
of weird with Blood Born coming out in a few months. Sure, but
you know, if you're desperate for that kind of game like this is,
you know you probably do worse, then give this a shot. I'd be
curious to know somebody who like played Dark Souls and didn't like it if they
got into this and found it more enjoyable or not. Right. Yeah,
but I don't know if it's really aimed at that kind of person. So
I don't know if we will get that perspective. Dann, go play that
game. I'd like to. Okay, I liked you like Dark Souls?
I mean just two? Did you never played one? One? R damn
Souls? Now? So yeah, I finally jumped down with two and it's
really good. Did you how much of that did you play? Twenty twenty
five hours? That's where you got to No, No, I didn't beat
it. I know that. I still kind of want to get back to
it. It's a long game. Yeah. Actually, if anything, playing
this game is kind of just making me want to go finally play Dark Souls
two on PC. Oh, it's great one. Yeah. I saw it,
you know when it came out, and it was obviously a pretty solid
port. I just never really got around to it. But part of me
thinks I'm gonna put down Lords the Fallen and just played Dark Souls instead for
for Game of the Year stuff. So which baby just as well? Sure,
all right, most anybody's got any other issues to bring to the table.
Nay, all right, the nays have it. The news, let's
talk about it. Yeah, Okay, get excited at for the news because
there is some look at my face, man, Yeah, we get excited
on him about this news. Bryan, your teeth together, we see your
news face. It's a grim richtys in here. Take it from me.
Uh. It has perhaps not been the best week to be sonny. I
would say. Oh, they put out the PlayStation four version two point of
firmware lasts Tuesday, I believe it was, yeah, a week ago today.
Yeah, code named massa mune m It's been kind of a bubby ride.
Yeah, with that thing. The biggest problem that people are having,
which initially sounded even more dire to me than it turned out to be is
that if you put your system into stand by, which is now known as
rest mode for some reason. I don't know why they felt the need to
rename that, because it's it won't turn on for the rest of its life.
I guess it's damn Yeah, it's a lot of people are having the
system going to rest mode and then refuse to wake up. That's not good.
Yeah, it's it's just tired. It's really tired. I guess you
know, this thing really needs to it's not a rest Just get forty winks
in that thing. Yeah, they're saying you need to hold down the power
button. Yeah, so that's to force power it all the way down,
right, which is you know, I've had to do that before, just
when the system walked up and stuff like. It's not it's not unheard of
for that to be required. I originally, the way this was being phrased,
thought that people were bricking their machines like it would never turn back on.
When this happened, I thought, I saw some people say that that
that has happened to them, But it doesn't seem like that's the prevalent.
Yeah, it's the issue. Seems like just doing this this uh kind of
forced reboot will fix the issue, but still like on the scale, this
seems to be happening. It really makes you wonder like how it got out
the door like this. Yeah, and then it's you know, there are
games that are having you know this this Evolve alpha that was was going on
last weekend, like they ended up basically booting the PS four version off some
time. It eventually did come out. I think it just came out Monday
morning. Yeah, I think you're right, and it's ending Tuesday. So
but it's a yeah, that's the thing where you know, they had to
get out there and say like hey, because the firmware, this alpha broke,
we're working on it. We're talking to Sony. I don't know.
I believe you said a certain review game that I won't name, came with
a note about the PlayStation firm It was a thing where they sent out PS
four discs for an upcoming game and then like the next day we're like,
so Xbox one versions of the mail this one's fucked up. We're working on
it. So there's like just I mean I imagine that that stuff will get
ironed out, either on the game end or on the firmware end before the
game is out, so it's kind of non important really at this point,
I guess so, but in that particular games case, Yeah, but yeah,
it just seems like there are you know, you were saying Destiny,
I know, John Carlos was saying that, like these been getting kicked off
of Destiny constantly since that update hit. Really, Yeah, I had an
issue where the system sound stopped playing, like I was getting trophies and Lords
of the Fallen and it was not playing the trophy sound when it was happening.
Yeah, stuff like that. Yeah, I had some. So I've
had the little weird things, but it's it's hard to know. Like some
you know, like I'm playing Call of Duty before it's out and there's something
where he's like is that the game or the firmware? But then you know,
once the game hit, I was, Okay, that's fine. Yeah,
I mean, it's you know, it's not hard to imagine there will
be a two point oh one in the near future that hopefully, Yeah,
and I guess some they also, I believe they like yet again pushed the
PlayStation Plus version of Drive Club off, this time saying like, oh the
firmware, yeah, because because regular Drive Club, by the way, is
still not functional. Well so you can play. Yes, you're right,
there are aspects of that game that don't work. Like the last time I
put a disc in was last week and the challenge system was still not online,
and at that point, the I couldn't view my club profile, which
that seems to kind of come and go due to like server capacity, Like
if you're there and there's capacity for it, then you can do it,
or you know, I've seen it in the past. But yeah, that
stuff's been a mass They just put out another Drive Club patch, I want
to say late last week or over the weekend or something like. It was
something pretty recent. And then yeah, there was the thing from uh Shooya
Shita like kind of apologizing for Drive Club. That thing's been rough. Yeah,
it's been kind of a rough few weeks on that system. I mean
at that point, just add another paragraph to it. And by the way,
the game didn't turn out so hot in the first place, so like
you know, when I when I played it, everything worked when I was
playing it for a review. It didn't break until it came out and and
more people started hitting the servers. Do you really think server load is that
big an issue at this point though, like a like, as long as
that game has been down in one way or another, or they're really that
many people trying to play it every day, I have no idea. Yeah,
I mean, who knows what their server capath. It could be obscenely
low. You know, they'd say they're making strides on it, but they
all had to disable some stuff to get there, and you know, so
at some point you'd imagine they would turn it all back on, but like,
what are the you know, who are they turning it back on for
at that point? Who's going like, all right, now I can get
in some Drive Club? Like I don't think that game is very good regard
like even when it's working. So yeah, the idea that this is like
the idea that like a game like Drive Club, which is just kind of
is this throwaway sort of thing at this point has become this like big thing
hanging around their neck like weighing them down is really wild to me. Well,
they still have to make good on it, you know. Yeah,
absolutely, they sold it to people they promised to some kind of PlayStation BLUs
thing Like I'm yeah, I'm not saying like, oh, we sho letting
off the hook like fuck dad. No, absolutely, it's more like when
they finally do get when they finally do get it, like congratulations. Now
you can play drive club like no one wins in this scenario and become a
big anti climax at a certain point. Yeah, yeah, there there are
some nice aspects of that new firmware. I don't know how much you guys
poked around and a little bit here and there. I never like they said
they added like people you may know. I hate that. I've never had
it. I've never had it show up for me on your friends list.
Yeah, it's never. Every time I go to the friends page, the
first slot where a friend would be is people you may know. So maybe
go try setting your privacy to not allow people to send your friend requests that
might have something, which is how I have it set. If that aren't
currently, I mean, I like having people be able to send me your
friend requests, but if it'll turn that stupid module off, I totally will.
That's the only thing I can think of, because the friends list was
already not great to begin with, and then they just shoved it further down
the page with that thing. Yeah, so when I said it to no
one. I mean, I've mind set to no one and I've never seen
that thing. I don't know if that there's a link there or not,
but I'll give that a shot. Yeah, party chat out way better though,
Like, oh that's right, they change like the Kodak or something.
Yeah, well, I don't know if they don't know that they ever came
out and said that, but like I anecdotally, I tried it, and
it is significantly better. You can broadcast and have the audio from your party.
Yeah, it's it's not as easy as I would like. It's it's
well, it's it's probably the way it should be. It's opt in on
the user level rather than like the party leader just flagging it for the entire
party. Like each individual person has to go into their options and check a
setting that says, like allow me to be broadcasted on streams? Is that
is that for that is the options for that specific party or is that day
system level setting that you set once. I hope it sticks. I hope
it just you set it. Nah, forget it? Okay, thanks Ron
poop hell Yeah, but uh but yeah, the party chat sounds way better,
which was like it was insane that they shipped a console in twenty thirteen
with like almost inaudible voice chat in some cases, you know, especially combined
with that pack in crappy headset. But I saw people saying, I'm using
like a nice headset with mine, and I think a lot of people do
too. But I saw people saying, even like even the included head season
like a US, like, what do you use use as a forties?
It's nice because that you know, controllers, you have the jack on there,
you just plug it right in. I was thinking about trying one of
those, the official Sony the Elite Gold set. Yeah, I have that.
Those are fine too. I think I only like something like the forties
because it's kind of universal, you know, like I use them on my
PC. Yeah, but we've had those around here and I don't. I
really don't like them. Really, They're like, by far my favorite,
and I just I think there, I just I find them super comfortable.
Yeah, I just that they were not comfortable to me. Really. I
wore them for almost the entire twenty four hours of Extra Life and didn't have
a problem with them. But but yeah, it's it's nice to be able
to just plug a straight up headset into a controller and just have a go,
and then the voice chat sounds better, Like I said, you know,
it's it's nice on that end. So there are some some decent little
usability features that they put in. Plus all those free themes, right Call
of Duty theme, Yeah, but they dynamic Destiny theme themes are not audio.
Yeah, yeah, all the all those and I guess if you have
I think, if I think, if you have music turned on the system,
music is different really to the theme check, you might get some destiny.
I mean they're also the three like Sony made themes. They're generic that
are dynamic like there are there is it is built into that system to have
like three animation stuff going on in the background like the PS three did.
There's Yeah, there's there's a handful of free themes up there that you can
you can try out. I would assume they'll start selling them at some point.
I don't know, one would hope not. I mean, especially if
they're just gonna be like promotional in nature like SCR upcoming games like that.
No one should have to pay for those. I was like when they were
trying to charge for well, I guess they didn't, but I was gonna
say, like, that's akin to them selling gamer pictures on the sixty for
like movies. Yeah, but if you were quite no, they never sold
the movie ones. There was I think early on there may have been one
case where they were like, oh, you should really pay money for a
last but it's like, no, I'll just take the tom Cruise from Mission
Impossible because that one was free Burger Kingland's really good. First of all,
it's from Live Free or Die Hard. I still have the TGS two thousand
and six icon as my like private one, and then because the three sixties
and then the public one is the Pringles logo. That was one of my
favorite things about the three sixty. One of the reasons I liked it so
much was just how stupid everything was. Yep, that ship was stupid as
fuck, right, Like, I've got a picture of a fucking Whopper as
my gamer picture perfect because I could, you know, like just because you
identify with the Whopper like they tried to. They tried to force through so
many crappy things, like you said, like charging for promotion artwork, and
you found ways to subvert it that you could feel good about, you know
what I mean? Yeah, it's like, I'm gonna go for all the
dumbest free gamer pictures I can find. Fuck you. Yeah, there were
a lot of them. Everybody loses. He used my Xbox Live vision camera
to take a picture of Norm McDonald for mine, right right, Just don't
get around it that way. Yeah. Yeah, it was just fun in
a really idiotic way. I enjoyed it. Uh. You know, I
don't think they gave any impression of how fast they're going to try to fix
the stuff, But I, like I said I would Sony Firmer stuff.
I feel like they have like their Twitter account the like ask PlayStation has been
on fire for days just saying like you should hold down the reset button right
or or you know, they're just saying like, hey, don't use rest
mode right now. Right. But there there's I feel like there hasn't that
hasn't really been like a significant company level thing of us going like or of
someoney going like, look we are working on it. Yeah, Like there
that hasn't happened. Yeah, like a good resounding, unified response. Maybe
hasn't. Yeah, But I mean, you know, stability improvements has kind
of become the running joke about for firmware updates already. Yeah, so I
would assume the two point zero one with stability improvements. Well, yeah,
exactly will be soon forthcomings. They need to have their big you know,
their big full version number increase that includes like lack of stability improvements. It
almost makes me think, like I I started thinking in my mind that it
was similar to I would do. I don't know, usually I think elsewhere.
Yeah, it's a good call other body parts yea better at that.
But like it's similar to like say, an iOS update in some ways and
very different in other ways. Similar in that it rolls out a bunch of
new features that are invariably broken into some degree, but dissimilar in that you
can't get on the internet with this console and use the core features of it
without updating, you know, right, Like you can't get a friends list,
you can't play online games, you can't do anything but play single player
games by yourself unless you take this update. Yeh, Like it almost makes
they have you a gun point exactly. It almost makes you wonder if you
get the firmware up to your head and push the button out like you could
use you can use an iPhone four iOS versions ago as long as you want
without any losing any functionality. You know, it almost makes you wonder if
it's time for these things to become more opt in. The reason that they
did that is because you know, especially on the three sixty, but you
know eventually with the p S three as well, Like these updates are including
the anti piracy updates, right that you know that they don't very much want
to force people to update. That's classically been the reason. But I mean
in the case of these new consoles, like, are is piracy a problem?
Yeah at this point, and maybe it will be at some point and
it's a little more understandable. Right. There have been optional PSN updates as
the Yeah, there have been updates where you can still get on the network,
but there's technically a point update of like twoint oh one yea that they
haven't forced on everybody yet, so they do that. It has happened,
ye but yeah, no, hopefully they get this thing short up quickly.
In a happier PlayStation news or Sony news, they're talking about the PlayStation experience.
It's you holding out on the power button for ten to fifteen seconds,
waiting for a safe mode to start up. The white knuckle anticipation of whether
this is a system will reboot or not. Yeah, uh yeah, that's
that what that two day event in Vegas that's happening. Yeah, they're doing
a thing and that was the sixth and the seventh or something. Yes,
And it seems like they're just trying to put on their own like they're selling
tickets to this thing. It's it's not just like a sign up in the
fans or kind of. It's like it's a it's a it's a full event,
I guess. And they're gonna have you know, it seems like they're
doing like their own PlayStation focused packs or something. But maybe just the show
floor and some announcements like they're not gonna have I don't think they're gonna have
panels or anything like that. Maybe they will, maybe they'll have the developers
on hand do well talks or something. They key they are. In fact,
I'll just read the quote. We also have something super special plan for
No Man Sky. I can't say much, but let's say that Saturday night
should be memorable. So I was about, yeah, yeah, well we
can only hope. Wow. I mean, there's Kid Rock playing No Man
Sky, though he's doing a cover of that song they've been using the trailer
also, that's separate, so you know, maybe there's some musical acts Saturday
Night or something like that, but it does sound primarily like a big show
floor with a ton of boots. I actually wouldn't think there would be a
musical act. I think the No Man Sky thing is just like we're going
to unleash details on this game and let you play it or something like that.
You think that'd be my guest, maybe, like if it was like,
here's our big No Man Sky announcement and it was just the band from
that trailer, it was gonna play a show like that's not Maybe that's not
the sort of thing you tease that way. Yeah, I guess so.
But they've got they announced a bunch of developers. They've basically every big publisher
you can think of on board from the looks of it, and a whole
bunch of indies. Uh they ran down. It's a pretty short list of
confirmed games so far, but they say there will be a bunch more they
haven't announced yet. I'll just read the games. Battlefield hard Line. Okay,
big fest, Yeah, I'm ready to have a big fest. I
don't know what that is. Isn't that that music thing that they showed at
a game maybe so blood Born? Yeah, DC Universe Online. Finally War
of the Light Part two. What does that? I don't know. That
is that universe equel to War of the Light, But that's it. That's
an add on for DC Okay, okay, and Legends pv CO auditions.
They will have that Destiny expansion. Okay, that's that's like coincides with its
release though. Also that comes out the ninth, so that'll be like two
days before that we'll get to that exclusive dragon Balls Universe Dying Light, Game
of Thrones a Telltale game series, Grim Fandango Hell Divers Journey for PS four.
How is Hell Divers not out yet? I have no idea. We
saw that game a long time ago and it seemed like it was in a
pretty good state of completion, but I don't know. Lara Croft and The
Temple of a Cyrus Order Combat X Playing Aside two, Tales from the Borderlands,
tear Away, Unfolded, The Order, the Tomorrow Children. I guess
there's an alpha starting for that soon. That game looks cool. I want
to see more about that. The Witness and Until Dawn yes, I have
about every three to four months a random just a random flash of awareness The
Witness is still a game that's coming out, and it makes me happy every
every time I remember the Witness is still yet to come, I'm like,
yeah, I do want to play the Witness. That's exciting. It's gonna
be a good lineup. Yeah, it's not bad. Uh. And and
again, like they've they said I saw a figure somewhere. It's not in
this little story, but like they had something like eighty booths for indie games
or something like that, indie developers, Like there's gonna be a ton of
smaller games there. Uh, there will be a hands on Project Morpheus opportunities,
uh stuff stuff like that. They use the term eyes on makes sense,
but uh, yeah, you know it's kind of interesting. I guess
seeing a platform maker taking a stab at a like at an event fan event
like this. Yeah, I didn't think to check how much the tickets are,
you know, I want to say, I want to say it was
like fifty bucks or ninety bucks. I know, I know there's a big
gulf in there, but I can't remember that seems doable for two days?
Yeah, Uh, Las Vegas in December. Sure, curious to and curious
to hear how that thing goes. Yeah, Las Guardian, what what do
they announced it? There? I don't think so, Like, do you
think there's any chance at all? Who fucking knows? Like, wouldn't they
be teasing that as the big Saturday night thing, We'll have a special thing
to Saturday night. No, because you can't. That thing is so fun
far into joke territory that you can't tease it. No, No, I
don't mean mention the game. I'm just saying, like, wouldn't that be
the biggest news to come out of this? Of course I would Duke Nukem
Forever come out. Chinese Maocracy came out? Yeah, I know those were
both fucking awesome. Escrat is a pretty good album? No, No,
A couple of okay songs on pretty good? Was it released after nineteen seventy
eight? Uh? Yeah, I think by your own definition it's fucking terrible.
Guns and Roses. No, he's got a point. Once in a
while, Dan Reichert has a point. If like that point is Chinese democracy
is anything other than awful, except for like that one song, which one?
Which one? There was a time that's a good one. The one
that was in a guitar Guitar hero better. I guess. Actually, at
some point the whole thing was in there, wasn't it. Yeah, I
guess so Shackler's Revenge, Yes, that's that's the one song one. I
like the Chorse and that song is pretty pretty good. Yeah. I like
madagasc Madagascar. Yeah, that's a great one. I have any ever even
listen to the entire album. It's not a Guns and Roses already yeah,
GNR lies, now that's a Guns and Roses album. It's sorry, it's
more of an EP. I guess technically it is the acousticccept. Real good?
Yeah, I patience? All right, Nintendo, I'm just gonna read
past. I mean, I wasn't big on us your illusion? Oh the
ballads? Which one are my favorite? Guns into? You know, if
you, if you, you could make one really good album out of like
with most double albums. As the person who schedules all the discussion on the
podcast, I'm gonna say sit on that for let's say the next thirty minutes.
Oh okay, okay, we'll get back to it. Patrick's headline Nintendo
wants to monitor your sleep. Fuck Nintendo is watching you sleep, watching you
sleep. Do you remember when they were talking about their quality of life initiatives?
Yeah, there was like something we're thinking. We're like, I don't
know, man, games aren't working. What about health? Health? Do
you like health? Right? You want to be healthy? I mean not
the Nintendo away, but sure, what is the Nintendo way? Well,
I don't know. I kind of expected that stuff to go the way of
the vitality sensor, which is to say, nowhere strict diet of balance boards.
Yeah, they put out a balance board for the week. Okay,
I have a foot for a balance board, A foot, A little the
clamp on like it has four little feet that fit over. Yeah, I
have one of those. I don't know where the balance board is. I
don't know. Maybe you know I have one of the feet yep. Found
at the other day. Went oh that's I know exactly what this is.
But I don't think I have any other parts of this. Should throw that
in the trash. Yeah, that's probably where that goes in twenty years when
balance board feet are there's a hot aftermarket. Yeah, are the new currency.
We're all gonna be broke. They never even put out a we fit
on we we fit you. I'll take your board for it. Well,
anyway, this quality of life stuff supposedly is going somewhere because they have,
uh, they have announced a partnership with res Met Incorporated, a company known
for treating sleep disorders. It says, okay, and there's like there's very
little detail on this, Like there's no product name, there's no real strategy
for like how it's going to be implemented. Super Mario Brothers four is a
product name clipped to your sleeve. Yeah, no, Actually the thing is
not wearable. It goes on your your kind of night table, goes on
the table next to your bed. Okay, I watch your sleep. It's
to monitor sleep. Yes, there's a ton of things that do that.
But it measures like when you're in rem sleep and everything moving. Again,
not a who lot of detail. Okay here, I just don't understand if
you're not wearing it how Yeah, I don't know. I don't know either,
But that you know, they're they're promising the little video camera record a
bunch of data about how you're sleeping. Video camera. This is next to
the bed, right like the iPhone, like down sleep cycle and stuff that
can feel the bed moving and stuff, but sitting on a table next to
the bed. I don't know how that works. There's all kinds of weird
ways that you know. In fact, I this reminds me of this was
like literally done at university, you know, a lab experiment or whatever.
But they found out that they could monitor, you know, pretty bluntly,
like this wasn't fine data, but they could more or less sort of track
people's motion and breathing patterns while they're sleeping with Wi Fi signals. Whoa like,
like your body was disturbing the Wi Fi signal just enough that they could
extrapolate that into kind of figuring out your breathing patterns and stuff. So it
could be something like that. Maybe this is some insane advanced technology, but
it's Nintendo, so probably not. And you know, I'll just read what
Patrick wrote. The device will, in theory, seamlessly upload data to the
cloud and provide users information on quality of the previous night's sleep and fatigue levels.
And Nintendo has not outlined how the software side will work just yet,
which seems like the crazy part to me. And then you push the button
then you can vote on fun stuff, right, well, but I mean
more the vote channel like more of the point. Nintendo is a video game
company, so everybody votes, how did I sleep? Checks out channel.
I wish Sony would do this, and they you just integrated run in to
wake Up Club. There you go. I got that. I got wake
Up Club. That's great. I don't really know what's happening everywhere. Wait,
do you use it? Uh? You know? Still use it?
Yeah? I mean yeah, yeah, you're probably waking up robots. No,
have you heard of a waki I have? Okay, that sounds crazy.
It's not on iOS yet, but I'm gonna get it the second it
is. Have you heard of this bread Nope, Drew, No, it's
a app. It's an alarm clock app for Android and Google or whatever.
Now it's coming to iOS where Yeah, Android, Google or whatever. Now
yep, it's on the Windows phone. I think, actually too, Yeah,
it really is. And what it does is like I set the alarm
for seven o'clock in the morning or whenever I went to and it's seven o'clock.
Some Yahoo with the app calls me, could be anywhere in the world
and starts talking to me being like, hey man, what are you doing?
You should wake up? And so you start the day by talking to
other users of the apps. I don't know if it's an actual phone call
using like just the normal Apple thing, or if it connects you through the
app, but yeah, just a live person just calls you and it's like,
hey man, what do you up to? You you get to work
or whatever you do, Like you just have a conversation with the dude.
Do you ever have to call other people? You can when you went to
if it's like, oh I got a three five minutes, I'll just wake
people, Okay, so I assudent. They'll just they'll just match you with
whoever happens to be at that time up at that point. Yeah, that's
chat roulette for waking up for you don't want to wake up a chat.
I think it's I think it's a pretty cool idea. Yeah, I'm not
gonna get that as soon as it goes up, I might have to Wow.
Wow, that's kind of unsettling. Yep. But yeah. The weird
thing about this Nintendo stuff is like that, you know, there are no
details about it tying into an existing Nintendo platform or service, you know.
Yeah, yeah, it's like like, hey, we're making this thing,
right, It's not like dam and watch. But for sleepers, right,
It's like it's not like the data will plug into your three dsor or like
be reflected on your me on the WIU or something. It's just like,
here is a product we are making duct tapeing a mebo forehead, right,
I don't know, it's it's kind of weird that they would announce this with
so little detail. Well, is it a full announcement or is it just
like this is a patent application or something like that. I mean, no,
I or this come out of like an earnings call where they're like,
ah, we're kind of working on this, Like it's not a product announcement.
Now, looking at the Patrick story, he'd does not actually talk about
where the information came from. But I got the sense looking at Twitter that
it was some kind of story because he made it up. Yes, okay,
all right, he dreamed about it. No. I saw people talking
about on Twitter as if it was a stream that like they talked about this
directly. This was not something that somebody uncovered. Okay, they just didn't
really tell you any of the stuff you'd want to know. But stay tuned.
Sure, I can sense your excitement every morning seven am. You get
a phone call from Pitt from Kitticers fame. If I if I could pay
some amount of money to have Satoru Iwata call me every morning? Yeah,
I'm with a pleasant lilt of his. Or does Charles Martinette doing I went
away? That'll be all right, But I really I would. I would
go for the Wata pack. Yeah, do you want a tear? I
would love to hear from your water every morning. I wouldn't feel like sleep,
be so relaxed and put it easy, just be like, oh you
I low you MANI every morning. I feel like it would that's just a
great way to start your day. Well, Walluigi would just he would get
one up on you by just not calling. That's class. He was too
busy playing tennis. That guy they announced that danced dancing tances. They announced
that to go. Nope, that's staying in all right. People said they
wanted less editing in the podcast. It's too interactive. Go. That Destiny
expansion got detailed. Yes, it did. The dark below like pin stripes.
What are we talking? Yep? Did you lower it? Put on
bags? You're sucker, I don't know what you're talking about. Got detailed.
The windows put on the bags and then deflated the bags. Jointed.
Read the stuff, run it down. It won't take long. No,
it certainly won't. Won't. Oh you know what, I copied it out
of the press release and they actually gave a little bit of extra detail about
some of the missions, but I won't read that stuff. Here we go,
three news story missions, three new multiplayer maps, two new strikes if
you're on the PlayStation, four if you're on the Xbox one New Strike,
Xbox one News Strike. Yep. Uh, there's one new raid. And
then you know there's the expected kind of like raft of weapons and armor and
drops and things that go along with all that. Yep, to raise the
level cap to thirty two. And the level cap only goes thirty two.
And so we heard about this stuff a couple of weeks before the announcement went
out, and at the time it was not confirmed, but the information got
to us and I was like, and it was the person who related it
was not sure it was legit or not. But even then when I heard
it, I was like, I can't be right. It's gotta be more
than that. And then this news hit last week. Nope, that's exactly
what it is not only is that exactly what it was, but I feel
like the response to what it is was even more pointed than it was when
we heard about it of us, Like for me, it was just kind
of like a like a hang dogs, like, oh, come on really,
But a lot of people seem very unhappy, judging by comments and stuff
last week. It's the thing, you know, the thing when people complain
about DLC and like, oh they're talking about DEALC whore the game is out,
or oh this deal season the disc and blah blah blah. Like the
thing is I feel, like I always say, is like it doesn't matter,
None of that matters, as long as you feel like you're getting your
money's worth off of the disc itself, like you know, the add ons
and how they deliver it, Like, as long as they're not like blatantly
putting out games that are under serving its audience and then trying to sell people,
you know, a full length experience after the fact, then everything's fine.
Everything is not fine when it comes to Destiny, yeah, yeah,
yeah. And it's one of those things where if I'm sure like on some
level, if you did like an hour count compared to any of the Halo
Games, Destiny is probably longer. I've spent more time playing Destiny than any
game that's not dooted this year. But Destiny is a very different type of
game, and with it become very different type of expectations, and it fails
to meet those expectations. And that's it's large problem. So when you when
you come out and say, hey, there are three more missions, like
in the back of your mind is someone you know who has played a lot
of Destiny, You're probably thinking, great, I can play those three missions
and probably about an hour and a half, and then I will be expected
to grind on them again and again and again four months and months and months
for bounties and all these other bullshit seasons that they want you to go back
in. Also, these are not set in new environments. It's not there's
no new planet. Well, they are setting probably in the new areas of
maps that we haven't been to yet. And to be fair, people have
snuck into enough of those areas in the existing game in the most style,
you know, find ways to break the collision and stuff that what I've seen
of that stuff looks pretty significantly different for the existing areas. Even though they're
on the same planets. And you know, the next expansion is coming out
in February, so there'll be more to content. So I'll go through this
whole process. You're totally right, Like, that's you're right, You're right.
You know, some people, a lot of people were out there last
week going like this just proves that they just chopped the game up and held
a bunch back for DLC, Like, I don't think you even need to
make that assumption here, right, well, like, regardless of how it
happened, Like, just look at the amount of content in the game,
which is fairly spare. Yeah, And whether they're holding it for DLC or
they had to cut it because at some point they had to ship a game
and stuff wasn't done in time, like, it doesn't change the argument either
way, whether right, whether it was a business decision or like an issue
of production that they couldn't finish. Yeah, and my money would be on
it was an issue of production that they couldn't finish. And this is certainly
not proof. You know, it could be spin, but they have been
Budget's been out there saying the storytelling and stuff in this add on as being
influenced by what people are saying about the shipping game. We have added storytelling,
they didn't go in a lot of specifics, so maybe, And it's
one of those things where I feel like, you know, like on some
level, I wish that they would break up DLC even more finally than they
do, or focus it more so that people can pick and choose instead of
putting a little bit of everything in each one. Because I don't want to
play zombies in a Call of Duty game, but that's part of the season
past for Advanced Warfare. I would much rather have just more regular multiplayer maps
instead of like having this mode foisted on me. And I feel the same
way about Destiny, where I don't really want three new multiplayer maps, Like
I feel like it doesn't necessarily have enough multiplayer maps, but I don't necessarily
want three more either. You know that though I don't, I don't really
like the competitive multiplayer. That would absolutely be the generous way for them to
approach this. But they know that, you know, they've been doing it
the other way for years and it's been working for years. Yeah, like
that, they know they know that they can sell you all of the DLC,
even if you only like one of the types of content in there.
Yeah, because you're gonna have you're gonna have to buy it all to get
all of the you know, in this case single player missions or whatever.
Anyway, yep, so why not do it that way? And it sounds
like they're tying it was one of the things they mentioned in one of their
patch notes was this idea of like letting you hold ten bounties instead of five.
They say ten, or they said it would be double the bounties,
which I believe would be ten at that point, I would it's five now,
I just thought they said more. Anyway, that's listed as part of
this update. What that can't be right? So I wonder if it's,
like I want to say, Borderland is it's something similar their level cap increase,
where it's like, if you bought this one, you get to this
level cap and then we've attached two more levels to this one. Well,
Borderlands was the classic example of like, uh was it? I think the
bank was in mad Moxie, which is the worst DLC, so like you
had to buy the dealc. Nobody liked to get the bank, which everybody
wanted, and stuff like that, Like that's kind of been a shitty aspect
of DLC for a long time. Yeah, and it's it's one of the
things that you wish that they would break it apart or find different ways to
offer that to people, or find different schedules for releasing it, and to
say like, look, you know, this game is a lot of different
things to a lot of different people. Like you know, they can sit
there and like front and be like everyone's gonna love all of it and sell
their DLC this way, or they could just go like, look, we're
gonna do multiplayer map packs, and we're gonna do single player content packs,
and we'll put exclusive stuff in all of it. So if you want all
the shaders, you know, even though if you play single player, there'll
be weird reasons for you to buy the other ship, you know, like
there's no reason not to do that stuff. But I feel like at least
like the option to get a more meaningful amount of single player content out of
these packs instead of having it having to touch every little piece of the game,
Like what if this had been six story missions instead of three. What
you're proposing is nice, but I don't think that would have made them make
six story missions your profit. They would have just chopped this thing in half
and sold it for half the price each or something, or the same price,
you know, or something horrible like that. Yeah, I don't know,
like my mind, and you know, I don't work at Bungee.
I would think that those story missions, the way they're designed, would be
like probably the easiest kind of content to make in this sort of game.
So when I heard there were only three, I was like, you gotta
be fucking kidding me, right, But that's what it is. It's twenty
bucks if you just buy it off the store on launch day, and what
if it's like thirty five thirty five if you buy the pass for both of
them, yeah, or thirty if you bought the ninety dollars edition that just
came with the right expansion pass. Early on. I'm sure Activision looks at
this thing and says, like, because what are called duty map packs?
Four maps or maps? Four maps for fifteen And in some cases, like
with the last one, it was like it was three maps and one zombies
map, so it was split in a way that was like, well,
if you don't like zombies, you're getting three maps, yeah, Or if
all you like is zombies, you're one or aliens like this was aliens in
the last one. So I'm sure that you know that at some point the
business people look at this and say, well, this is three maps of
one type, three maps of another type, two other types of maps,
and the huge value probably five dollars more than what we charge for call of
duty, like this is price. This is like the steel or whatever.
Yeah, but no, people that play Destiny know better. Do they come
on? Do they just go with it? We'll make my point, all
right, that you know this is like they've made an incredible game and have
chosen to like drip feed the content for the next X number of years.
You know, I you know, I yes, I don't know that chosen
is the right word. Or however, whatever circumstances they have, regardless of
how they got there, this is where they are, you know. And
I don't know, I feel like that on some level, like they can
they can fall back on their numbers and look and go like, well,
are all these hockey sticks are going up and you know the number of hours
people are playing? Like the numbers are great, everything's good. Or they
could listen to what people are saying and and try to do the right thing
for what they are investing for the next decade for yeah, you know,
because if they are out of the gate doing wrong, you know, it's
rough. How are they going to establish this thing? Like what's going to
happen to the sequel? What's gonna happen down the line? Or even sooner
than that. They're out there talking about like the next iteration of the Iron
banner where apparently they're going to add like two more levels of rep to grind
on there and stuff like that. Rad Like, no, I don't I
don't want to play that. Yeah, Like I have not played the game
a whole lot for the last like two weeks, basically because I did the
raid and yeah, but you got I mean, you know, if you
look at the number of hours, yeah, I played it for and I
six. You know, there are a handful of you know, afternoons or
mornings or whatever where I ran around for thirty minutes collecting helium and that sucked
ass. But ninety percent of my time with Destiny or more I've really enjoyed,
you know, even like I you know, I was happy to run
strikes a lot more than some people like you were. Yeah, but even
I have gotten to the point now where there's not a whole lot else for
me to do. You know, I could do the hard Raid until I
get the last piece of gear I need to hit thirty, but that that
is literally it. Yeah, once I beat the hard Raid and hit thirty,
there's nothing else to do, right barring any crazy weekend event stuff they
do. Yeah, it's just like it leads me to feeling really torn on
that game because like, mechanically and visually, like it is far and away
my favorite thing to come out this year. The backbone of Destiny is really
solid and like it's incredible awesome, But they're just I just wish that I
had more of it, Like I would. I feel like a sucker for
saying this, but like I would, I would fork over the forty bucks
right now if I could get both of those expansions right now, you know,
like I want to play more Destiny. There's just no more of it
to play at the moment, and it hurts. It hurts inside, still
very much looking forward to this expansion. They should make those expansions free.
That will never happen, You're right, but it would be nice. It
would be that, you know, I can feel like that that exact thought
has occurred to me since the game came out, And I know, I
know it's a pipe dream because it's one of the things where it's weird because
like I from where I'm sitting, that game is in need of a good
will gesture. Yeah, uh, based on the quality content. But again,
like that's one of the things where they can you know, and they
put those numbers out like very you know, like calculatingly. Look, people
fucking love Destiny. Fuck you. Yeah. They they played twice a day.
They played for at least three hours. Ye, fuck off, people
love Destiny fuck you. Yeah, Okay, that's fine, Like keep falling
back on the numbers, and when the numbers fall off, what do you
gonna have left? I'm with you, Like, I'm realistic enough to know
that, you know, they're their long term business plans are too rigid for
them to just all of a sudden say hey, we're gonna make this update
free. Yeah, and and so much stuff has gone sideways with that game
over the last year, and all this stuff like who knows what corner they
found themselves backed into this fucking thing. But they need to do something if
this DLC isn't gonna be free like they need to. I don't know what
they do, but they need to do something a new mode, like something
like what I don't know, like aah, I'll say it again, like
a firefight equivalent. Yeah, sure, it should be a really nice with
some kind of new I don't know, faction or some loot rolled into it
or something. Oh yeah, wave based stuff on the multiplayer maps, like
like the survival stuff that Call of Duty does that maybe that would be something
that would that would be helpful, you know, like some of the stuff
that they're rolling out these events, like not making them just a week long
or whatever. Some of that stuff should hang around longer, you know,
they you know, I hope that they are thinking hard about a lot of
this stuff. Yeah, and have plans in the works, because I would
like to get back to Destiny, but they need to make that game what
it should be. Hey, it could happen. You know what else could
happen? What Star Citizen, Oh, it might happen. It's probably gonna
happen. You think it's gonna happen in some manner, it's somehow in the
process of happening. Two big fail. That's what you're saying. No,
I wouldn't say that. Uh, Australia, Australia, Packs Australia. I
was trying to remember the name of it's Roberts Space Industries. Isn't that the
name of y Yes, Robert Space Industries was in attending, said Packs Australia.
And they showed a bunch of Star Citizen footage, yes, particularly the
first person shooting aspect of it. By the way, Yeah, well it
known they talked about this stuff ahead of time, that there was gonna happen
person shooting. Yeah, okay, this all just got me thinking about dust
five one four. Star Citizen is a weird thing. I got into.
I got I got looking into some of this stuff in the light of this
footage coming out, because the footage looks really nice. I watched over the
weekend and I was like, wow, that looks really good. Yeah,
yeah, it's on their site. And then I started looking into this thing.
You know, I mean, the broad strokes of Star Citizen have been
known for a long time, you know, a big, living, breathing
universe and like capitle ships and blah blah blah. But then I noticed that
they called this thing the first person module. Yeah, and I was like,
what, it's like a plug in for this game? Like what is
that? And then I went and looked and there is a racing module.
Oh yeah, that looks like wipe Out. Yeah. Also this first person
thing being made by Elphonic oh man, the guys that made Nexius. Yeah
really, Rafael Sadiq is making the first person component for Yeah, what I
know? Right, it's a bizarre that's fucking crazy. It is what happens
when you raise that amount of money. I guess, like, I don't
know, if they're like way past forty million, they should put they should
put some partion of that game out and then build onto it after the facts
instead of like it's kind of out. It's crazy. You can kind of
play parts of it. I mean, yeah, the dog you know we
talked about in fact like destiny that way. Now that I think about it,
I'll come on. I know you're right. Now that I think about
it, we get better when when I think about back to when you were
messing with it. They refer to that thing as the dog fight module,
right right, Like everything is just a module in this game. It's crazy.
I been meaning to do. I mean the video of it, but
it's just it's it's here, it's changing, and there's always something better on
the horizon. So this, this whole idea, this structure really squares with
my perception of Star Citizen is trying to be all things to all people.
Yes, it's trying to be the or Space. Yeah, it's like it's
trying to have it all. It's trying to have it everything that you would
want in a game where you are in space with your own ship. Is
there? Can I land on a planet and go look for helium? I
don't know where's the helium farming module? I would hope, So who's making
that? I would hope. So it's crazy to think, though, when
they raise that kind of money, that they can just contract a whole other
developer out to do part of the game. Yeah you know, yeah,
but yeah that you know that first person in zero gravity? Yeah, yes,
it's got zero G in it. It's real weird. That footage is
out there. You should go look at it. I think it looks really
nice, looks nice. Yeah. I wonder if I feel like the first
person that's currently in there, because it's I could not walking around the hangar.
It feels strange. I could not imagine playing a first person Well,
you know, if a different developer, and especially one that is used to
making first person games, is doing that stuff, I would imagine that will
probably be pretty fleshed out. Yeah. I just seeing that made me go,
like, all right, fine, this is probably going to happen like
to some like to some reasonable degree of or it'll be it'll be a reasonable
facts emily of what they promised it to be, probably, And it got
me thinking about what that's going to be like when it happens, because there
are so many people that have put like hundreds and thousands of dollars into this
game, that have like hung all of their hopes on it, and then
there's this whole other faction of people who are just like getting high on schadenfreude,
like desperate for the thing to fail and be the biggest disaster in game
development history. And I don't know which one is gonna be more like which
one would be more smug if one of those things came to pass, right,
Like, I just I'm basing this on like a bunch of like just
message board arguments between like the people who have backed this thing to a high
level, right and the people who are standing standing there like pointing and laughing
at the people who have backed it. You know, yeah, somebody and
somebody is going to lose their ship when this game comes out one way or
an right, it's either going to be the best thing ever made over the
worst thing ever made. I mean no, because it's gonna be something in
the middle, because it all is. You know, it'll be like one
of the things where it's like, oh, that's cool, came out like
it's kind of rough and shipped to this and then get out and shooting first
person, but like only at certain times of the day, and then it's
got a loaded different executable. Yeah. And there was no one and no
other players were there when I got there, so it's kind of like I
flew out there for no reason. And yeah, yeah, I mean if
anything, though, it's nice to see the stuff and know that it's progressing.
Yeah, and then it'll be a thing. I hope it comes out
and he's awesome and everyone plays it. That'd be great. That'd be fucking
fancast. Would not want who would not want them to deliver exactly what they
promised, because like that sounds like the best game ever, biggest, scariest,
most nightmarish space simulator of all time. Yeah, mixed in with all
this other stuff like sure yeah PlayStation home but a video game sure, Uh
yeah, keep an eye eye out for that. And lastly, real fast
because me was running along. Dennis Dyak is back. Dennis Dyak is by
ak Okay, that just came out. I don't know. Uh. You
guys, remember he never left a word. Uh you remember when he they
tried to get a sort of spiritual successor to Eternal Darkness off the ground.
Yes, it's called Shadow of the Eternals. Yes, that did not happen.
Yes. Uh. They had founded a new company called Precursor Games.
There was some questionable stuff there. Is there a kickstarter involved? Kickstarter?
Yes, that then got canceled. Yeah, I believe was well on its
way to not being funded. And then they canceled it some other dubious aspects
that related to like who was behind the company and whatever. Anyway, that
was kind of that, uh, and then it wasn't because now he's back
with some other people. Uh. And they have a new studio called Quantum
Entanglement Entertainment. Oh q E two Yes, q E two is it not?
Is that how they spell it? It's like QE Squared. I saw
it with a railer two. But it's not just a games company. Oh
no, oh no, it's not. It's social hucks. Yeah, trans
media. Yeah, it's trans media. They're talking about getting into games,
television and film production. Of course, why wouldn't you. And Shadow of
the Eternals sounds like it's going to be. Yeah, sounds like Shadow of
the Turnals is going to be kind of their flagship property. Yeah, it's
yeah, it's good. It's good to plan for that stuff before you know.
If the IP has any legs and is going to be successful at all,
that's that's always the way to go. Yeah, they've got a site
out there, you can go look at it. They're working on something called
the Singularity. I think that's. The Singularity is what they refer to as
this grouping of the music or the movies and TV and like all the other
they're the trans media stuff. I think that's just their fancy term for that.
Well, according to this, it's a it's a no. The Singularity
is an open forum on their website where avid fans can avid fans of what
of entertainments? Okay, yeah, I mean yes, I'll be there.
I mean what it basically sounds like is a kickstarter back or forum. Yeah,
it basically like forums. It's a place where the people can go and
discuss the development of the stuff with people doing it. It's a way too
hardest the social media engine. There are social hooks. I just made that
up. Yeah, that's sounded good. But that sounds like what it's you
know, they want to interact people crowdsource development. I don't know. Do
you think this will ever happen? I don't know. That's the block.
Yeah, I mean sure, I hope it does. Maybe people like Eternal
Darkness people, do you know there's there's there's absolutely no guarantee that they could
replicate that. Yeah, but Dennis Dyak has always seemed like a nice man,
can't hurt. Yeah, in my interactions with him, same here,
which the best goes well. But you know, I hope no one gets
burned. Somewhat sketchy history with some of the stuff, so we will see.
He's an unreal engine. I somehow I doubt it. Somehow I doubt
it anyway. Emails emails. Let's take some BombCast at GiantBomb dot com,
because where you send the emails, I did not put these in the order
that I meant to read them, But now I'm gonna hold myself to it.
Drew. Yeah, start with an email sort of addressed to you from
J N M. Should I assume is New Mexico? But he didn't all
letters. Yes, the letter J from the letters n M, brought to
you by the letter just writing in the comment on one of the photos Drew
had shown on Friday. But first day question, Okay, Drew, were
the women dressed in school uniforms? Where the women dressed in school uniform I
asked, because the JK in JK style Girls Cafe definitely doesn't stand for just
kidding. As Jeff and Mary funnily suggested, it is most likely the abbreviation
slash slang for Joshi cocosa, meaning high school girl. It's lucky that Drew
and his group went during the day, as I can't even imagine how the
place would be with other patrons there being a bar. I'm sure there are
no actual high schoolers involved, but damn does it still seem creepy as hell?
Uh? I did not see what they were wearing so much because they
were behind the bar. Yeah, when we walked in because it I don't
recall them looking like high school age. Okay, I missed that discussion as
I was not there. That's uh. I wouldn't put it past Hockhaver though.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know a lot of sense.
There's all kinds of you know, there's the Made Cafe, isn't other sure
other establishments of questionable repute in that area? So mirrored floors really maybe not
not Caabra, but uh I did. I got another I got another email
from somebody who didn't include in this saying we should come visit in Osaka and
that Dendon Town is way less creedy. Yeah, that's way less creedy.
Everything I hear is that that's the spot. Yeah. Also, I bet
it hasn't been totally cleaned out right by foreigners yet yet, but by virtue
of talking about it in public, we're helping that process right along. Great,
all right? Uh assif or receive a question about a picture, well
he was asking about that that one in this specific Well the question was were
they wearing the school uniform? Okay? Oh, yes, and I did
have a picture of the establishment, yes, yes, all right, Assif
in London wants to know about reviewing bargos. I have the impression that review
bargos generally used to end earlier than they do at the moment. I can
remember reading reviews and being disappointed that the games were still a week or two
away from release. I rarely notice this anymore. I understand that publishers want
maximum hype just as the game is released, but sometimes a bit of notice
is welcome. Case in point, I've slowly lost almost all interest in the
Call of Duty franchise, as it's gone from innovation to diminishing returns to completely
stale. Having now read the reviews of the latest game, I'm actually going
to pick it up because the reviews all hit on release day, I'm now
scrambling around for a copy rather than actually playing it. If you have an
inkling that your game is good and we'll review, well, why not get
the word out at least slightly sooner first, to probably address the general review
thing, the embargo question, Like, I don't remember there ever being a
time that like embargo timing was standardized, either to release day or beforehand.
I think it's always been like a very much like an eighty twenty split of
release day versus occasionally earlier. I feel like in buy and large it's been
released day stuff and kind of always has and that's something where you know,
like, regardless of that, like the data that we built over the years
at game Spot definitely showed that most people were looking for review on release day.
That was that thing of like, this game is out, I want
to know if I should buy it right now or not, Let's go look
for a review. And so the putting up a review a week early,
actually, like from just a raw business perspective, was worse because it would
have gone up and been out of the system, off the homepage, all
the other stuff by the time people started looking for it, So it actually
wasn't it was less useful generally speaking, to speak directly to a call of
duty, I think running a review earlier than we did would have actually been
pretty irresponsible because we're talking about an online game and you need to kind of
see it under real circumstances at least for a little bit. That was a
weird situation because of their day early release, because didn't the game technically become
available and playable before the reviewer. So that's that's actually one of the other
kind of frustrating things that is very much non standardized. Is that they you
know, the stuff that we agreed to was midnight Pacific time. You know,
you sign that stuff to get the copies of the game and blah blah
blah, and then you see that you know, oh wait, it's actually
releasing on the West coast and East coast time. And that's frustrating. But
that's one of those things where it's it's kind of more of an oversight because
people don't like to think about time zones and do the math. And by
the time you realize that that's happening again, it's too late and you're like,
oh, fuck shit, well all right, maybe next time, you
know, And this used to be you know, keep mind, like embargoes
used to be like nine am, ten am, and some of them still
are on a Tuesday, and that stuff was more meaningful back when the only
way to get it was to wait for the store to open and right.
Yeah, and you know, the the the advent of the midnight embargo is
definitely picked up a lot of steam because of steam over the years, thank
you. But yeah, there are still companies that try to say like ten
am borning up or six am, and you know, and and that stuff's
like, yeah, there's nothing standard about embargoes, like refinitely, it's just
been you know, you get a letter with a thing and this is this
is what it is, and then if it's something insane, then you like
go back to them and go, no, this is nuts, Like what
are you talking about? Like Activision used to try to embargo games until Wednesday.
You get you get a copy of the game and a letter that said,
like run it Wednesday morning. It's like PS two era or something probably
and used to be like fucking no, it'll be out for talking about it.
But in this case, like you know, the three hours between nine
and midnight, we're actually really useful for me to do kind of like my
final checks on live servers and I mean the servers has been up for days
and there have been enough people to play Team Deathmatch, but most of the
playlists were empty. So actually having the game go up at nine, I
probably would have been up holding that review until a little closer to twelve anyway,
just to check out the other playlists, make sure that that stuff worked,
you know, over real network circumstances and not just not on land,
which is you know what I was able to play like a week ago or
whatever it was, right, So, yeah, you know it's it's one
part. You know, it's one part, like an embargo. But I
think it's up to the outlets ourselves to really do the due diligence. And
there are some outlets that just want to be first and they'll they'll cut whatever
corner they want to get it, and that's that's fine, it's a valid
approach. I think it's risky. You're you're playing with whatever trust your audience
is put in you when you do that sort of stuff. And also the
race to be first is kind of an endless war of attrition, you know.
Yeah, so you can never let up. Yeah, some other outlet
is always going to be there when you're not right, and you know,
so it's just it's it's exhausting. Yeah, it's like we used to play
that game and it was it's hard, fucking sucked. And I never wanted
to run reviews that way because, you know, we wanted to make sure
that reviewers had enough time to review games and not always just rushed for the
embargo. We would hit them more often than not. But you know,
like it's nice to do when you can, but yeah, never want to
compromise the quality of the review for it. Yeah. Yeah, so it's
all that stuff's really weird. Yeah, it's getting weirder because of things like
the Monday night steam unlocks, because you know, yeah, and then you
end up with like the weird like set your region to Australia and get it
eighteen hours early, and a lot of streamers or VPNs. But you know,
we would end up, you know, we would end up seeing people
streaming or putting up screenshots of games and stuff days before in embargo because someone
somewhere had broken a street date and sold copies. And you know, that
used to be the thing that would trigger us calling publishers and going like,
look, it's on sale in North Dakota, Like what the fuck do you
want us to do? Like we have to fucking run this, And they'd
be like, what are you talking about? Its North Dakota state barely even
exists as a direct quote. Yeah, I'd be like, well, I
guess I see what you mean. No, it's yeah, that stuff is
always weird, and it's it's something that people are still adjusting to, publishers
are still adjusting to. I want to say, Bethesda now has everything in
Bargo till nine pm Monday nights, Monday nights basically when it when it goes
on sale on East Coast or unlocks on Steam on the East Coast. Yeah,
yeah, I would say they they have probably been the first to hit
that consistently. Yeah, And it's just a matter of like everyone needs to
kind of realize that that that's how the Usually you'll run into a lot of
cases where like the pr people setting the embargoes don't even fucking know that the
game is going on sale nine pm, right, So in this case,
you know, you can call them up and go like, hey, this
thing's gone long, and you might get someone to go like, what are
you talking about? Yeah, that was not No, I'm reading the thing
right here, Like I pre ordered a copy of Call of Duty on PS
four to get that black shader for death and Shaker rules, and damn it,
it's said right there in the text that unlocked at midnight Eastern time and
then the countdown time or and all the other stuff. Yeah, that stuff.
So yeah, it's you know, digital games on consoles are still kind
of coming together, and it's still sort of a weird thing. People are.
Everybody is still kind of fumbling their way through it. Yeah, But
generally speaking, like you know, people tend to look for reviews on release
day, Yeah, and that's usually the actual best time to have them.
Totally, totally. The last thing I'll say about it is that I've seen
this bizarre resurgence lately in the idea that having an embargo set till release day
means the publisher thinks the game is bad. Yeah. I don't understand where
that came from. I think, you know, you end up with like
a lot of people that spend a lot of time on message boards just throwing
conspiracies back and forth at each other, and somehow they all hit upon this
one again, you know. I mean the anticipages later, yeah, and
the anticipation for certain games like Runs White Hot in the days leading up to
it, and a lot of people are like, you know, maybe grasping
at straws, going like they don't want us to know because it's bad or
something. But yeah, it's the only the only like consistent indicator that a
game is bad and the publisher knows it is when they don't send it out
for review. Exactly. If we don't get it ahead of time, then
you can probably assume like a movie. Ye, yeah, exactly. And
that's not just like if we don't get it at a time, anybody,
anybody. Yeah, if it's a widespread thing, you'll totally always see that
sidebar and newspapers and stuff like, oh, you know, so and so
studio neglected to screen this movie for critics, and it's always like horror films
and stuff, but they know that critics are gonna be like, this is
dog shit. It's the same as true games, you know, like one
and it doesn't even happen that much anymore, but once in a blue moon
and something doesn't get sent out and then you know, ye, well do
you think it benefits a game like Bayonetta two to where it might not have
been on some people's radars? And then reviews went up like three weeks prior,
and reviews were pretty much across the board raving. When you think that
helps, I think maybe it helps pre orders or something like that, like
yeah, yeah, maybe maybe it it sets people up if they need to
get hardware or something like that, but I don't know that that ends up.
It's sort of a weird. Maybe they wanted it to serve as their
marketing when they had no marketing budget. Yeah, that can definitely be a
part of it, because they knew that the game was good. Yeah,
yeah, that reviews would be positive, right, yeah, or you get
end them in a situation where I don't think Bayonetta too was in this situation.
But if if your game is coming out the same day as something huge,
like let's say someone was shipping a game this week, you know,
going up against Call of Duty, which is just going to dominate like a
news cycle headlines for a little bit, then maybe you want to have that
review hit a few days early and just so it's out of the way of
that ship. But then you're just getting into like pr and marketing theory,
and that's I don't know enough about that stuff, and you're better off.
Yeah, I don't want to keep it that way. That's the thing you
stare. You stare at it long enough you start to figure out why they
do what they do, and then then you're one step closer the edge,
find yourself standing on the ledge out the window. You gaze at the abyss.
Hey, gaze it back. The ABYSS says for immediate release. Your
soul Colin says, Hey, guys, hey, Colin on the last podcast
you talked about Sushi X. I want to know what was the relationship between
him and wrestling Back in the late nineteen nineties, there was always some dude
in the front rows holding up a giant Sushi X sign at WWF events.
As an EGM reader, I could never figure out the connection and it drove
me crazy. If you know the answer, please spit some truth so I
can finally put this to bed. I don't know. It's probably just someone
was an EGM fan that we wanted to for that stuff. There's no legend
about Sushi X getting around and this was when with us the nineties, late
nineteen nineties. He says an attitude are No, I never heard anything about
that. We get Miguel on the phone, try he might have some idea.
No, that would be before late nineties. Would have been before he
did that because he was working here. Yeah, and two or three late
nineties would have been like who was who was running EGM back then? That
was when like Riccardi and yeah, that would have been will those guys were
still there? I guess so, Yeah, I don't know. Was there
even a sushiac acts at that point? It was out the first time they
retired. Ye, I don't know, no idea. Welcome to this week.
So if Davis History minute, uh he digging or something I don't know?
And another thing about Johnny Wilth not if Davis History minute you want to
go deep? Oh boy, I don't pen that can of worms. All
right, here's a Here is a fairly lengthy but interesting email from uh Mohammed
writing to us from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Okay, also known as
the place with the worst Internet in the world other than North Korea. Sorry,
Drew, this is in the light of I guess talking about like giant
and or necessary day one patches on games and stuff. Sure, yeah,
last week with the Evil Within and master Chief. He says the highest internet
speed here is sixteen megabit, which equals or to one point six megabytes per
second and has a cap of four gigabytes per month and is outrageously expensive.
WHOA, You can buy more gigabytes, but they cost about what an average
person makes in a month. Yes, most people I know, including me,
have one megabit Internet with a hundred k per second download speed, not
to mention that ninety percent of the Internet is blocked in Iran, including Giant
Bomb, so I have to use a VPN to access your site. Smart
Wow. It takes around twenty minutes to download the bomb cast and about three
to four hours to download the quick looks. It is painful. When the
new consoles were announced, everyone here dismissed the Xbox One immediately because it needed
to be connected to the internet twenty four seven. We do not have MasterCards
or Visa cards here, so we have to buy prepaid PSN and Xbox Live
cards from black markets. All that shit aside. The economy is so terrible
that sixty percent of people cannot justify spending sixty dollars on a game, so
we pirate the hell out of everything. The amount of new consoles sold has
been minimal because everyone is waiting for them to be hacked. In conclusion,
I've been back in Iran for two years and my gaming situation has been terrible,
to put it lightly. Sure, I hope this email has been enlightening
your internet crippled follower Muhammad Wow. Yeah, thank you. That sure put
some things in perspective. But if you have a hundred K bandwidth, you're
not looking to play Halo online anymore. No, probably not. I guess.
Yeah, that one maybe the most extreme example, which is why I
pulled that email. But we definitely even got some some emails from people in
the US who said, like, oh, I moved back to the family
farm a couple of years ago or whatever, and I'm on like a four
G my Fi for my internet connection because there's no wady to get real broad
band, and like, I can't download these patches either, you know,
people talking about going to the library to download PS four firmware, undo a
USB stick. What if this is a safe way for me to go to
Iran. I don't know, That's not really why I brought that email up.
Good luck with that. Just install a bunch of patches on an Xbox
one, bring it over there and sea. Yeah. Yeah, uh yeah,
it's weird. I feel like, uh, I feel like the generally
poor state of American broadband has been in the news a bit lately. Yeah,
I don't know if. I don't know if like a report came out
on international broadband or something like that, but I feel like it's been a
headline enough lately. That's definitely one of the things where you take the entire
country into consideration. Yeah, it's it's the ships. It's bad. I
mean even even even in the best served areas, Like what you're getting for
the money is a fucking joke compared to other parts of the world. But
clearly we have it a lot better than some people. Uh, make it
a utility. Yep. Although mm they were handling off. I want I
don't know if I want. I don't know if I want the public sector
entirely in charge of keeping the Internet going to some man in a turtleneck sweater.
Yep, there you go, Dan, ps keeping the Internet running.
There you go, Dan. I wanted to know your thoughts on jose Can
Saco accidentally shooting off his middle finger regards Nate. I was watching the game
at the bar back in Kansas City. My dad went out to smoke,
and I got a text message saying jose Can Saco just shot his finger off,
and I started laughing really hard, no any context, just picture you,
like falling off your bar. I laughed pretty hard, and then I
checked my Twitter and like eight thousand people that tweeted me the same thing,
and I really just had to have this moment with myself, where's like,
how much of a dick? Am I willing to be on Twitter here.
Yeah that's a rough one because that's a funk. That's a bad But you
know how much of it? How much was his middle finger? He shot
it off, clean off all the way. I think so, and I
think they maybe reattached it. Okay, so this is not a tragedy.
No one was scrippled, no one, and no one's you know it.
It probably sucked a lot, but I didn't tweet anything directly to him.
I just said keep being you, jose Can Saco and uh. I put
one of my books that has nothing to do with jose Ca and Sacho on
sale to commemorate unrelated news smart So yeah, that's some good synergy there.
But it's like the most jose Can Saco thing and he could ever do.
Uh, how do you do that? This is the handgut fucking your responsible
gun on her shift its gears. Yeah, how much How much of a
fucking idiot do you have to be to wave a gun around or clean it
without making sure that it's not loaded. He's a really big idiot. Yeah,
Like, you know, I still want to do that video. People
go home run derby me against you, and some people are routinely killed by
the sort of thing. So he's lucky. Was just a finger, Yeah,
he's an idiot. My dad lost his middle finger on his right arm,
right hand. I guess, uh, and then I guess what.
His index finger was kind of bent at the first knuckle, kind of like
that permanently. It was like got caught in a tire machine years and years
and years ago and h and yanked off. It was always really fun.
Uh. When he would shake people's hands, he said he could see people
like just maintaining eye contact with him and like freaking out, like they want
they either stare down immediately or lock eyes and try and like not look my
cousin. My cousins fully lost his pinkie in a wood shop working accident,
and we're not able to reattach it. So imagine that handshake, like it's
yeah, do you very much have that reaction of like just act weird?
What's going on down there? I really want to know, but I can't
know. If I look, then I'm a dick. Yeah, it was.
Yes, Fingers they're good to have. Yeah, you should have ten
if you can, if you can, if you could have more, that's
cool too. I mean I don't know. It's probably cool. Let's go
for fall on more Arms if you can pull it off. Yes, probably
super useful. Matt from Virginia has a question. Hey, guys, I've
noticed three or four conversations recently in which you mentioned the release dates of all
the major games coming out this fall. That's true, we have it on
the brain at the moment. Not once have you even mentioned a Little Big
Planet three in these discussions, and in fact, you have specifically mentioned that
Sony has no big first party titles coming out from now until the end of
the year. Guilty is charged. We have done that. Yeah, no,
uh huh. Go on. Are you just forgetting about a Little Big
Planet three or do you not consider it a major release? I know it's
not PS four exclusive, it's PS three as well, but it seems like
it should at least get mentioned when you talk about upcoming games this fall.
I enjoy the series and I'm personally looking forward to the third game on my
PS four just thought it would I would mention it in case you guys have
somehow forgotten about it. I'll say, for my part, I have forgotten
about it every time. I like that series a lot. I think you
lose something when you take Medium Molecule away from that, because I mean,
I think so much their personality went into those games. Well maybe true.
I don't know that. I can't say ready to throw the other the new
developer under the bus yet in the new game. But but you know,
I loved one and two and I thought, like the VIDA and PSP ones,
we're all right, they were fine, but I thought they were kind
of lacking. I personally thought a Little Big Planet was a fantastic one and
done sort of thing. I've been fine. The stuff they did into to
build it out further was was impressive. Sure, but at this point I
did like when they get out there and say, and it's got full compatibility
with the previous games, Like that's not a positive to me from completely break
it, break it and make something crazier. You know, that is so
crazy that none of that old shit works, like you know, change the
physics, like you know, the the jumping physics, like you could get
by in those first couple of games, because so much of it was so
novel, And now I just look at it and you're like, I don't
want to I've done this twice, Like the the four player, the different
characters like that's I don't that doesn't really appeal to me. Yeah, Like
nothing that they've shown of that makes me go like, yeah, a little
bit Plan three. Yeah. I mean, you know, no ill will
toward anybody who's excited about it, but I am not, yeah, remotely
excited about it, and I just have admitted it a couple of times.
I would say that it's I feel that we stick by our original statement.
Sony. Maybe it doesn't have anything I'm looking forward to. I don't think
it's gonna blow me away, but yeah, yeah, I guess so.
I just, uh, it feels a little wrote to me. Yeah,
a little by the numbers. It's a little bit of like what is a
what's a franchise we can easily pass off to another developer and they can safely
iterate on. And that's what I feel like on PSP and Vida, Yeah
totally. And you know, like what, you know, what, what
can they leverage the strength of brand loyalty with you know, it's like people
like these games and some number of them will buy another one. It was
kind of the thing that bummed me out when I was writing the Sunset over
Drive review. I can't remember if I actually ended up putting this line in
or not, but like the immediate tendency is to say, like, oh,
this is a great start for a new franchise. Or I saw a
lot of people out there going like, oh, it's a great new ip.
Like I know that's you know, it's a it's a sequel and hit
driven business. But like, how much of a bummer is it that it
can't just be it's a great new game, you know, Yeah, like
everything has to be the start of a new franchise that you will see three
to six entries in if it's if it's good and successful, you know,
it's too expensive to do anything else. I know, I know. It
doesn't mean I can't help lamenting it a little bit. Yeah, but I'm
sure a little big planet really fine. All right, here's a question from
Jake uh in the wake of this price cut. He's talking about the Microsoft
or the Xbox price cut, which I'm sure it was referenced in the subject
line that I cut off. In the wake of this price cut, I
started to wonder if this has ever been done before. If it has,
If it has, how long did it take for the price to go back
up. What do you think is the likelihood that Microsoft just keeps this price
cut even after the holidays. I want to say that there's been temporary price
cuts before. Certainly. Usually it's like if they're trying to like blow out
some pre stocking stock, Yeah, to make room for something new. Although
this game, in this case, it's crazy because they're three bundles. What's
the third, oh, call Duty? Yeah, all three game bundles are
holiday games, right, so these are new like fresh al, Assassin's Sunset,
Overdriving, and Call Duty. They're all fresh out of the manufacturing two
stores. Yea, so this is obviously just a push to build user base.
But yep, I think you're right. But I can't think of any
examples of when this has happened temporarily. I don't I don't think they keep
the price No, I don't think they keep the price cut. I think
they they put it back up. This is just a going for it,
like let's get everybody we can and take the hit on. Yeah, let's
take the hit for the holiday and then get it back up there and you
know, get back to where we're comfortable. And then I'm sure you know
they like everybody else is working on cheaper ways to make their consoles. Yep.
Yeah, there's some news floating out around a new PS four revision.
Sure, but it's it sounds like it's super basic. It was I think
it was uncovered from like an FCC filing or something, and it's and it's
stuff like they if they're using a different type of Wi Fi antenna now or
something like that. Just real basic stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I want
to how many revisions of the PS two where they're like nine or cycling right,
one a year or something like that. Yeah, but most of the
more just internal revisions, Yeah, just ways to make it, shave a
little bit of money here and there, streamline the manufacturing, stuff like that.
It looked like there might be a new controller revision also on the way.
Anything they can do to get the battery life up in that damn thing.
Yeah, that is a constant source of frustration for I guess I just
sit close enough to my TV that it's not an issue. I could I
could get a long enough yeah cord, or I could plug it into the
MacBook or something, right, but at a certain point, I don't want
to plug wireless control. Yeah, it's a wireless controller I want to enjoy
it wirelessly. It's a shame how fast you have to plug that thing in,
because I really like the control. Earthwise drew from Toronto. It's kind
of a somberg email from the tea and yet hopeful. Sadly, after two
years, my wife and I are getting divorced. It was not to be.
Things are amicable and we have no children. We're happy with our new
lives. However, we are in the middle of finalizing how we divide our
stuff. Man and I am left with a difficult choice. What game console
do I take? We both bought our Xbox one and PS four as a
couple. I own more single player games on the PS four, but more
of my close friends own an Xbox One, and so this is where I
bought most of my multiplayer focused games, Destiny, et cetera. My wife
is letting me choose. What do I do? How do I make this
Sophie's choice? Keep the PS four because it goes for more money right now,
and then you can buy a cheaper Xbox One to replace it. Yeah,
I would say, if you want to have both of them in your
home right now, keep the PS four. Good, Buy one of those
discounted xboxes. Yeah, but if you're not looking to have both right away,
maybe the Xbox. If he's gonna be playing with friends. I would
figure if you're going to the divorce, you probably don't want to be sitting
around by yourself the way, but you also don't want to be sitting around
playing games either. Get those friends and say, hey, I don't have
an Xbox and we can't play games. Let's go drink. Yeah. Actually
that's the right. Yes, Yeah, hit the gym. Hit the gym
and anger your way through it, Fleach your Facebook, whatever, fleet everything,
sever whatever the Internet tells you to do when you go through a breakup.
Fucking burn it all down. Get a fucking Guy Fieri haircut kid out
there. Brother, I feel slimy noo. Yeah, well that's probably by
design. Uh yeah I would. Yeah, I would keeps four and by
a cheap Xbox. But that's just me. Okay, do we have more
emails? We do? Here's one from Brandon. I like the people just
asking us random ask questions. Now, what is the origin of the verb
to book, as in to hurry up or move quickly? Example, the
dragon was about to eat me, so I had to book or we have
to book it on out of here before Brad starts talking about doda again.
I always thought it was a strange shortening of the slang to boogie, also
meaning hurry up. But the more I think about it, the more I
think that's not that's too far off to be accurate. And maybe I'm just
way out of the loop on this one. Anybody have any ideas? Oh
boy, I mean I could google it, but I'm not going to.
Yeah, I know, I'm putting it to the panel of experts here.
No, uh, yeah, I think it's just you know, it's if
you look at the when we talk about books, we often go back to
the good book, okay, and and look what got done in seven days
there? Exactly booked his way right through creation, exactly the fucking that they
booked right through that ship. Or didn't they throw the book at you the
police station? They book you like book him Dan, they do that.
Who throws a book that judge? Maybe yeah, yeah, m hmm.
Maybe you want to run fast to avoid the book that's gonna hit you.
Yeah. Part of part of me hope this would be some kind of long
lost hip hop slanging, but apparently not. It could be, but cheese.
I think I think it dates back cheese. It it's the fuzzy No,
yeah, I couldn't tell you. I would be tempted to say it's
like some some kind of Valley Girls slang, some kind of I want to
say it's older than that, and no, no, no, it could
be. Yeah, it probably is, but we got a book like I
don't know. Yeah, I'll believe that until somebody proves otherwise. Yeah,
all right, let's say this is the last email. Let's all right,
let's do that from David. I'm going to admit his Twitter account. Can
you ask Dan to unblock me on Twitter? All I said was it wasn't
really impressive. The Guns and Roses released two albums in one day. There
is a zero percent chance I've blocked you because I don't block anyone. He
could mute me if he wants. I just want to see his feet in
my stream again. My account is blank. I'll tell you what it is
later. I'll look at it. But like I never block anyone. Yeah,
yeah, I rarely mute. I mean I don't. He seems to
think that you have shut him down. If that's the case, it was
certainly for something that wasn't about Guns and Roses. Yeah, I don't get
offended. I don't block people. I don't. This is one of those
things where people complain about their form moderation and they completely misrepresent what it was
that got the band. It must have been because there is, yeah,
a zero percent chance I blocked someone because of a Guns and Roses. I
mean, to be fair, that is an outrageous statement that What was the
statement that it's not impressive that the Guns and Roses put out two albums in
one day. It is extremely impressed. I find that to be a feat
a towering feet. What about the band dan is that they had at the
warehouse? It has yet to be repeated in the music industry. Was that
would that make it more impressive that the warehouse had custom Guns and Roses bandanas
for the release? Wait? What do you mean banos? They had like
black bandanas for when User Illusion came out. Oh the w H E R
E House? That warehouse? Yes, that warehouse. I think you met
the warehouse where the CDs. No, no, no, no, they
had they had like promotional animal bandanas. That's pretty cool. I think I
have one somewhere. I was I was just barely too young to be like
an autonomous mall goer at that point, Like I was not old enough to
I didn't have any friends that could drive me to the mall, so I
wasn't like out there seeing what it was like. When the New Guns and
Roses album came out, Yeah, mess that that was by the time,
by the time I was able to drive, they were fucking done. You
lived through the release of Chinese Democracy, so you know exactly that's by exclusive?
Chinese Democracy? Was that really a best by exclusive? Was Joe?
Of course? What a fuck? Of course it was. I still,
you guys need to get on me next time we get John Drake on here
to tell the story. Yes, I really want to hear that. We
have you not even heard it? You? You? You or somebody told
me told me the story once. Here's a video on YouTube John Drake's life
Hill. And I think Alex was there at the time too, for about
a week during e three two thousand seven or eight eighth, So but I
want it's not the same without Drake here because I actually want to hear his
full experience of him putting out fires because of some shenanigans I did before I
worked in the industry, I do. Before I knew Drake, you know,
yeah, I do want to get that story publicly documented, which I
told him at the bomb cast, the first one I was on at E
three. I pulled him into a room him, Pope and Alex and think.
I was like, hey, remember this thing a few years ago?
That was me. Oh, they didn't know it as you No, not
at all. Wow. I waited until I knew them long enough to know
that they wouldn't want to kick my ass. Yeah, that seems like playing
with fire. I mean, those guys seem like fighting guys. To make
no mistake, John Drake wants to kick your ass, not necessarily for this.
I do want him sitting right here across the table that stuff to get
Drake back down here. Yeah. Great albums very same day, I miss
I just it was one of the things where like by the time they came
out, I was kind of done with guns and Roses. Yeah, you
weren't into the ballad stuff. They're stranged and locomotive and remember Rain for I
mean I remember Rain and Don't Cry. It was just on MTV all the
time those albums. Ballad which wasn't a ballad locomotive. Okay, I'm thinking
more just lengthy songs. That's a long song. I don't even know if
I call those ballads. There are more strange and don't cry or fucking rock
ballots are like operatic ballad, sells them short, my friends, It's just
like a Axel Roses operatic wankery for nine minutes of which is the best axe
are O? No? I mean yeah, I love that ship. Hip
hop is getting into that, isn't every song is two songs? Now?
Drake does it all the time. Logic. This guy just put out this
album. It's got a nine minute fucking track on it. It just goes
through like three full changes, three movements. Yeah, basically like you know,
it's the same theme but of the course of Yeah, basically three movements.
Like half of Drake's songs now seemed like they are two songs. Wow.
That just at some point, it's just like there's a breakdown and it
never comes back from it, right because now all of a sudden, it's
a different song. Sure. Prince was the musical guest on US Now this
week, and he was on for like in one segment, like over ten
minutes and played like nine different sounding songs. Yeah, and no one gets
to do that except for I guess if you're well, yeah, I mean
the Prince doesn't do it at all unless he gets to do something like that.
I'm sure. I just want to see the conversation between Prince and Lauren
Michaels. That sounds like something I'd like to say. I would be surprised
if that conversation occurred. Actually I heard that what I've heard about Prince,
I actually did hear that Chris Rock was the one that lobbied for it,
Yeah, or on behalf of Prince. I mean, if you notice he
like he subverted the he subverted the entire structure or the show. He showed
up and played one eight minutes set and then vanished. And if you notice
he was not standing with the cast, you always staying with the cast at
the end. He was, he was there, he was just in the
back being short. I read a thing about what he was on American Idol
years ago, and uh, they basically didn't know. It was like the
season finale or whatever said they had. I think the Kodak is where they
were, which is like where the oscars. Yeah, like it's been the
big theater in La at the time, and it's like a two hour Galla
Live event and they Blake supposedly didn't know for most of the show as it
was taping live if he was gonna show up or not nice because the way
he comes in, like the music literally starts playing over Ryan seacrests Seacrest stretching.
You can do too much tell he is stretching, just trying to get
people to applaud and stuff, and all of a sudden, Prince just starts
playing because he finally showed up and came out on stage. I used to
work in Crazy Person. I used to work with a guy that directed Prince's
music videos, like for a weird like bad Dance era thing or whatever.
He's like a marketing guy, a game informer, and you know Minneapolis he
directed bad Dance. I don't think he did bad Dance. He did some
weird one around that era. But like Prince would just call him up at
like two or three in the morning and be like, I've got an idea
for a video. Come out here. We've we've got to get set up.
And so this guy would have to drive out to Paisley Park and like
I spend all this time setting up all the lights and stuff on this sound
stage and like, all right, Prince ready to go. I don't want
to shoot a video. It's a god at Prince. I mean, if
you I'm sure a lot of people listening to this have read or heard Kevin
Smith's stories about dealing with Prince, but if you haven't, you should lift
for that stuff. It's interesting. Yeah, sure you've been being the lives
in his own world. Yeah, well you use your religion too, is
probably better? Yeah, of course, yeah, yeah probably. I don't
like getting the ring. Yeah, that's a dumb one. I ran into
some trouble with that song. I don't think I've mentioned recently my dad took
the tape away song. He's ranting about Bob Guccioni Junior or whatever. Ye,
pretty much it's about time BombCast a giant bomb dot com, Penthouse dirt
Bags, yep, BombCast at GiantBomb dot com. Send the emails there,
perhaps they will be read. I believe that is going to do it for
this podcast. Uh, what's going on in the site this week? Are
we ready to commit to anything? Well, we already basically actually it's on
the site now. Yeah, it's a metal gear scaling. Uh, sons
of Drewberty yep, man, all right, I can go all the way.
Huh, that's going up. Yeah, we just played it earlier,
Drew, h Drew. I don't want to spoil how far he gets or
anything, but you know he's seen some of the tanker and everything. Can't
yeh, can't waste to the controls. Can't wait to hear your ideas for
sneak Eater. Oh oh yeah, I haven't done of that yet. Yeah,
that's gonna be his favorite. I'm calling it out nothing off the top
of my head. Yeah, but yeah, I'm working on two. I'm
already getting reminded of a lot of stuff that I forgot about in that game.
It's it's gonna be a good ride, all right. I know there
was something else that was disgusted. I don't know if it's been scheduled.
Oh, I think I know what you're talking about. Maybe we should just
let that one go. Yeah, I'll say that I'm really excited about I
bet you are. I'll leave it at that. We're gonna trying to have
the archives. Yes, we're finally almost done with her, like ninety six
plus hours. Yeah, that's a lot to dump on a website. Yeah,
so that's why we're like making sure everything is in order, specially yeah,
with multiple video formats and things that have to be cut together and yeah
transcoded and blah blah blah. That'll be up soon. And I think I'm
gonna bring a jar in from home and answer some questions here in the office.
Interesting for a change, Yeah all right, yeah, like just at
your desk, I don't know. Yeah, maybe everybody milling around. Yeah,
I don't know. I just thinking about ways to change some of that
stuff up, Like maybe like we need some more like widespread Q and A.
Alex used to do that column. Yeah, you should do that again.
Like maybe we need to figure out like what's a what's a better way
to do that sort of stuff to get more people involved, Like you do
your jar thing, Patrick, what's Patrick's coffee? Relating to think, Yeah,
I don't know coffee. Yeah. I thought about doing one myself,
but I didn't want to bite anybody's style. Come up with a unique spin.
Sure, I'll do wrestling and food you can do. You can just
do dating advice. Let's not get too high concept with our content ideas.
Dan actually Jesus world's not ready. Maybe y'all, I'll let my guinea picks
play dive kick, all right? How about that? Sure? All right?
Well, we are going to workshop these ideas away from microphones. Thanks
for listening. Stay tuned for more next week.