Mmm, Hello, It's Mortal Kombat. Tuesday, April fourteenth, twenty fifteen.
Hold down low punch for thirty seconds, Okay, and then what happens.
I'm charving right now. Then let off and morph into Cantaro. I'll
let you know at the end of the gast what happens. And yeah,
and punch this I think it'll punch this guy in half. You hold on
the button for the entire the next the rest of the duration of this podcast.
This machine have kno morse turned on? Yeah, yeah, okay,
no transformations are in there. Okay, it's the new it's the new boards.
They put the new boards in. The guy came with the new boards
today. I love new boards, and so only use low kick for the
first eight matches. Yes, until you get to the portal. A friend
of mine said that he saw a Polar Bear fuck Johnny Cage to death repeated
totally. He just keeps going. That's really interesting because there aren't even any
backgrounds that have Polar Bears on. I know, but man, yeah,
the ideas coming out of Chicago or just crazy. This week, it's a
giant bomb cast. I'm Brad Shoemaker. Jeff Kersman, the Master of Mortal
Combat is here. Sure, Yeah, let's go with that. That's me
Debo Champion MK nine. Yes, I won the Fatal eight over the weekend.
Pretty excited about it. Mortal Kobat historian, preservationist, Yeah yeah,
I yes, I own a Mortal Kombat two board. That makes me a
preservation so do I. It's it's still in the cardboard box that it was
shipped to me in over ten years. I have a frisbee that says Mortal
Kombat three on it, so yes, I'm something of a Mortal Kombat preservations
historian and a Phisio Nado. Yeah, Jason a striker. Resident fighting game
dude, God, I raised them not very well. Resident resident player of
fighting games. Yeah, that's that's me. I play fighting games and I
did not know that we were in, you know, such a high steam
here with a Mortal Kombat frisbee. That's yeah. Yeah, I have a
frisbee. Wow, it's uh, it's pretty cool. I'm humbled to be
in the same room. I have a Mortal Kombat three T shirt that has
symbols for a combat code on it. When they did the ad campaign with
all the like the different numbers us pretty good combat code. They good shirts
for that. Oh geez, I don't remember, but it's one of the
things that you figure that out. And then it's number six as there's number
six in the empty spots. When you figure that out and it works in
the game as a combat code, then you're one digit closer to discovering the
ultimate combat code to unlocks were they were they showing the codes numerically, was
that like number the missing number? It would it would be the symbols,
the six symbols that you used for a combat code, But in the space
of one of them, it just said six. Okay, so that was
it was not six button presses. Then, no, it was not.
It was something else. But then you knew that that was the sixth character
of the Ultimate Combat Code to unlock Smoke. They had a bunch of different
ads and a bunch of different magazines that revealed the numbers go by one.
You could just put it together and eventually people put it together or put it
together enough of them that they then brute forced the rest of it or whatever
it was. And this was for the arcade version, right man. This
adds in magazines for arcade machines. Yeah, this is human smoke right,
no, no, this is smoke smost cyber smoke yeah, okay, which
was not selectable by default in three. I had to call a pay hint
line and pay like eighteen bucks to figure out how to get I think cyber
smoke on Genesis. Yeah, it's just so much easier now. You just
pay a dollar ninety nine online and total that's almost it's almost half the price
of the game. You can buy a bunch of fatality tokens for them,
yeah, or you could unlock the entirety of the crypt for just nineteen ninety
nine. There you go, and that's hell in residence. Dan reichert,
Hey, how's it going. Hello? I like Mortal Kombat two okay,
two as in as well not yes, I mean and two well two yeah
yeah. In addition to pick two is the second best color me somewhat shocks
that you have the correct opinion on Mortal Yeah. Two is incredible. Yeah,
two is a great game. And then three came out and you're like,
man, this game is so much better. Freeze right up there.
Two. Actually, when three came out, it was like, well,
this is cool too, And then when Ultimate came out, you're like okay,
now, yeah, then they finished the game. Yeah, put scorpion.
They put Scorpion in. You're like, all right, how did they
ship Mortal Combat game without Scorpion? You know, they went for their Street
Fighter three moment. Yeah. Sure, and and just like Street Fighter three
did, eventually said all right, They're like, ah, we can't keep
up this facade. Put these people in here, but no Johnny Cage.
That guy was in that ad and fuck him? Yea god right, yeah.
Daniel Pasina drama mid nineties digitized fighting game arcade drama, digitized martial artist
drama. What was the deal was it? It wasn't Tattoo Assassin was Storm.
It was him and the who sung pack? Right? I think there'd
It was just it was just Dan Pasina, okay, wearing glasses and striking
of a cage like pose. People. People don't know. This was a
like a slight exodus of Mortal Kombat actors to another game. Yeah, if
they're not up on the history of the stuff, yeah, I don't know
if they appeared in the game. Well did they? I thought I thought
they were. They were just doing stands yea, oh god, that's kind
of worse somehow. Yeah, geez. I don't remember for sure if they
were in the game. I don't think they were, but it's possible.
But but yeah, that led to them replacing Hong Pack with was it Robin
Eddie? Isn't it Eddie somebody? I'm pretty sure his first name is Eddie.
That was Robin show but maybe that's the Maybe sure that played him in
the movie is okay, then it's what whoever? I don't remember the name
of I'm gonna say Eddie somebody. The MK three Luke Kang actor. Sorry,
Pack ended up in u W MC Masters. I have a I have
a super He played Superstar. I have a Superstar figure. That's where I
was at at my life at the time. Was that his like his special
superhero name. Yeah, every week all had characters? Does that show?
And was that show basically a martial arts version of American Gladiators. That show
was basically professional wrestling, but they just did fake martial arts fights and they
drew fighting game health bars on the screen and then at the end of it,
at the end of it, there would be like a fight where they
would fight in a dome to see who got the belt. They had a
belt. What was the name of this WMAC Masters that's on YouTube. There's
and then so two characters would eventually and these fights would be like you know,
they staged them on like locations, on sound stages or whatever. It
would be like there's smoky stuff here, like little backgrounds. It wasn't just
all presented as real martial arts or whatever. But then they would get in
a giant dome that was impenetrable and fight in the dome, and then a
voice would come on later, go ninjas penetrate the dome, and then a
bunch of fucking ninjas would run in and fight them while they were fighting each
other. That's where that came from. I've heard that phrase. Yeah,
how I never heard of this show. That sounds amazing. And then at
the end of it, Linda Lee, Bruce Lee's daughter, would come on
and say, but martial arts is all about inner strength, as my father
Bruce Lee used to say. And it was just like every single whatever fucking
platitude she had was always like my father, Bruce Lee, he's Bruce Lee
checks out. And they had like ongoing they tried to have an ongoing storyline
like they were trying to miss Style Fighting Game TV show sort of thing for
the health bars functional. They would get hit every time they see them lose,
Yeah, they would, they would animate. Was there a crowd,
No, I don't think so. I think there was a crowd for the
final the fight in the dome, I could. I'm sure I'm misremembering some
parts of this stuff. Was the dome fight a rumble or was it one
on It was one on one and then the Ninjas would penetrate the dome and
then the Ninjas would leave the dome later Ninja leave the dome and or the
ninjas they're just fuck shut up, like just getting the way. Yeah they
were there, Yeah, exactly. They were there to fight and hit both
both guys and you know, it's rough. Any other names involved in that
thing in terms of the fighters, Well, the daughter of Bruce Lee was
no. Okay, host Unpack is the biggest name that roster. That's I
mean, maybe if you go back now, maybe one of them was doing
something else. I mean I could, I could dig into this real quick
here, but yeah, it was. It was short lived, but it
lasted long enough for them to make action figures. Oh. Chris Cassa Massa,
otherwise known as Scorpion a little combat movie. Wait, really, okay,
was in that show? I guess I'm talking early nineties here, Like
what time period is this ninety five to ninety seven? Apparently it would have
been Prime Time? Like what channel was this on? I've been indicated it
was. It was a four Kids, but I don't think we had him
where I lived. That's right. The Dragon Star that was the belt that
they got or whatever. It was pretty cool name. It was a gold
trophy that looked like a shuriken surrounded by a dragon, the proof that it's
holder was the best martial artist in the world. I remember it being a
belt. Maybe maybe it was a dumb thing that you held that looked like
it probably should have been a belt. Did they ever get a game out
of this? No? No, it didn't last long enough. Did not
last long enough at all. You gonna go back and catch up? Yeah,
that sounds perfect. I found a full episode on YouTube the other day,
so yeah, I'm totally gonna characters like a red Dragon, Tsunami,
great Wolf, Warlock, tiger Claw, panther, man Yin Yang man Yin
Yang. There's some top shelf secret code names for martial artists. Kid Carmichael,
the machine kid car Michael's pretty good. And then there'd be matches for
the Dragon Star every week as a Carmichael with a k uh it was,
it was you would have to get full Dragon that's right. So the Dragon
Star held symbols for the other fighters, and you'd have to beat the other
fighters to get their symbol and add it to the belt like you were collecting
the Dragon balls or an infinity. Yeah, basically, and and so you
would get the full Dragon Belt, the full Dragon Star or whatever. Did
you lose them once you had gotten them? Like that guy beat you.
I don't think the show lasted long enough to really explore a lot of that
stuff. The Wikipedia pages has a section called ninjas. There were many different
types of ninjas that appear in the show, most of them specific to a
battle zone. Were the color coded. There were black ninjas, there were
kabuky ninjas, ghost Town ninjas, blood ninjas, Camo ninjas, Hazard ninjas,
and Juketo yellow ninjas or blue ninjas. Doesn't look like it, doesn't
look like it, Juketo. We're friends of Warlock anyway. Great, So
I always assumed that they recast as unpack because of or you know, they
recast lu King because of some kind of like a bad blood or something.
But maybe he just bounced. Maybe he was like, I'm gonna go to
TV now. I don't need your Arcade game anymore. I have I have
no idea what the actual situation with that stuff was. At this point,
that stuff has kind of gone. Sure, it is not my memory anymore,
thankfully, some Mortal Kombat historian you are, Sometimes you have to know
when to let go. I never watched the live action TV show or the
cartoon that much so about the web series. I did not watch the web
series for the same reasons that I did not watch the TV shows. Oh
Mortal Kombat, like I see was that? Was that that reason? I've
I heard it was pretty good too, just one where everyone's like got normal
jobs like scorpion, some office manager or something. They all look like normal
dudes. It was like a Batman Begins esque reboots. Yeah, it like,
let's ground this thing in actual reality. I watched that first video and
I was like, oh man, that's awesome if that would be real.
And then once it was clearly it wasn't that it was just fan fiction,
I'm like, okay, well, fuck this, Yeah, because it was
right before the E three reveal of nine, and I remember people thinking it
was some nether Realm like viral thing like oh, this is what the new
Mortal Combat would be like, and yeah, like that would have been neat
if it panned out that way, but the second it didn't, no interest
in noah and they're fucking weird things. And then the actual thing they did
with nine was actually great. Yeah, so yeah, I feel like that's
a whole subgenre now, like they did somebody did that for Power Rangers a
few months ago. Yeah, that was kind of like just like short,
short fan films of like, let's take this thing we grew up with and
like here's you know, everyone in LA that is not a like a busy
working actor just has nothing but fucking time between auditions. So they just get
together and shoot weird shit like that's kind of cool. But didn't Legacy turn
into an official thing? They did. They got it in and said like
let's keep making this, and they made like two runs of it or whatever
it was. But yeah, I didn't want to any I mean, you
know, the movies were official too. Yeah, that didn't mean they were
fucking good or the first. First one's all right, good, first one
is no theirs, No, it's all right. I didn't say great.
I didn't even say right somebody who just bought it on Blu ray. I
will defend that movie. Let's say that I don't own a fucking home.
I don't own a copy of that. I saw that ship in theaters and
said fuck this. Yeah, and I went and saw Armageddon with a friend
of mine. He left, wait, second one, Yeah it was the
game. Yeah. Yeah. I rented that on VHS and watched half of
it and was like totally like that. A friend who like basically got to
like the first like stop motion fucking puppet monster. When I'm out Animalties,
I'll be in the fucking lobby. I think who wasn't that had the vision
quest in the Desert? It was Luke Kang and I think it was I
think it was like around the time that Luke Kang was eating peyote in the
Desert was I was like, I can't do this anymore. Yeah. I
think that's an age thing because I remember like seeing that in the theater and
being like yeah, like I left. I super wanted to get more into
like Mortal Kombat lower and stuff. Doesn't he turn into the dry I get
in that one though? Yeah, there's any Yeah, yeah, that first
one I would say surpassed expectations. Yeah, this is how I would put
it. I guess it's better than I don't know. I don't know.
It's no DA movie. Well what is I'm not going to watch that.
I've decided really, yeah, we should watch it with like Jamie Pressley or
something. Yeah, Nash isn't it too? Is in it? Yeah?
I thought that came out yours. Yeah, okay, and then I don't
know. I'll take the Street Fighter movie. There was a tech on opening
day Christmas. Uh, I forget, I wish. Yeah, but I
went to the press conference at Capcom's US headquarters where they had like Grant bush
Or and some of the other actors, none of the ones he wanted to
meet, No, but no, actually actually just wanted to meet the dude
to play ball rock because he was the guy from die Hard that says I
was in junior high dickhead like that, So we were psyched to meet him
and everybody else. Kylie Minogue who cares, no Raoul, Julia no,
no Ul, no Jean Claude at Van Damn. Yeah. Did Raoul die
right after filming and before the movie came? I would believe that's the case.
Yeah, Yeah, there's a you know, the end credits mentioned him
right right right. I think films something halfway through, something like a man
in a cage or something like that. I forget, but he was.
He was an accomplished Yes, and to have that be his last fully completed
piece of work. Did they digitize life into m BIS? Yeah? Did
they digitize him for Street Fighter the movie? The game? I believe they
had done that work already. He did, but he was the one doing
the moves in studio, you know, I guess I don't know. Yeah,
we were talking about that game last week, but now we extra need
to get that thing out. Yeah. I've never seen a whole lot of
that game before. I'm gonna I'm gonna bring it in. Should we should
play that? It's definitely something that we need to document. It's a strange
thing. I played way more of it than I should have, just because
it came out so early on the Saturn and PlayStation that there wasn't that much
else to play for fighting games. I played in the Arcade a lot.
Actually, yeah, there was a drought between like Mortal Kombats and stuff,
and yeah that came in and we're like, all right, fuck it,
we'll play the Yeah for a few weeks. Fighting games into movies. I
have kind of a checkered past. Uh, what's the best one? Do
we have a unanimous best one? I think first Mortal Kombat's gotta be up
there. It's the other way actually good or is that like funny good?
It's funny good and they're aware of it as well. Okay, like it's
it's not unintendedly. No, it's not, say like the street Fighter two
V series is. Maybe it's not a movie at that point, but yeah
that's animated. Yeah, okay, that's like the first street Fighter animal.
I can't I can't keep track of those. I've seen one, and I'm
not sure which it is because every time I would go like type in street
Fighter anime, like eight different things. Street Fighter two V was I don't
know, TV twelve episodes or something like that. Yeah, and you know
it was appropriately dragon ball ish in some spots where it's just like here'shere you
and Ken staring each other, fucking charging up fireballs, just just making like
breathless comments about their power, about their power levels, you know that type
of ship. Yeah, it was like a weird reboot on the on the
story of Everybody. I didn't like it that much. But and then there's
that weird US Street Fighter cartoon that was like the fucking g I Joe style
fucking wow, I didn't stuff that Stuff's a nightmare. Guy like built up
a sonic boom for half an episode and just like whatever the building is fucking
ridiculous. Sounds kind of great. Fighting games into more fighting games, However,
the fighting games begat fighting games, Yes, fighter, street Fighters,
sagot more street Fighter, yes exactly. Uh, there's a new Mortal Kombat
game out there? Is that did happen out this week? The tenth game
Mortal Kombat X. Yes, the tenth Mortal Combat game. Do we have
to call it X or do we do? That? Is? That is
the official alright? I still when I read the title in my mind,
I still hear Mortal Kombat ten. And when you like when the PC version
crashes and leaves it running in the task bar, it is called MK ten.
Really like one zero taught e XC or something. It doesn't even stay
in my task bar. It just disappears comp whenever I try to do anything.
The first time I left it running and didn't actually like hit the button
to make it crash, and it actually just went to a black screen and
I had to force kill it. And then that's when I got to see,
Okay, I am hearing consistently poor things about this PC port. It's
not a game, you know. It's yeah, yeah, it's but during
day one it is not a video game. It is a thing you download
and then is a menu and you push fight and then it like immediately drops
the desktop. Are we at the point where we're just expecting games to launch
non functional one day one now? Like, I don't think we can quite
forgive that yet, right, No, I don't. I don't think that's
not expecting it. But I'm sup we're not surprised. I think there are
there are reasonable technical issues that you can look at and go like, well,
that's the circumstance outside of the game's control to some extent, like the
when Steam fucked up because GTA was big. Yeah, that's something you look
at and go like, well, that sucks, and that's fucked up on
someone's part for a game that I purchased, but uh, you know,
at least that's like you look at and going, well, it's a popular
thing. The servers get hit hard Mortal Kombat launching in a way where it
doesn't download the complete game, and then is well they had they had like
kind of good intentions with that, right, so they kind of preload a
little bit and then lets you start it. Kind of yeah, what if
you just want to preload the entire thing. Yeah, they wouldn't let you
preload, Like the preload was three gigs, and then as soon as you
launched it, the theory was it would then trigger the rest of the download.
But then that never happened, so the rest of the game wasn't there
or something. It tells you when you go in, when you get to
the menu screen the snowy woods and all that stuff, it says, okay,
so you've downloaded like this three gig thing packs one through twenty nine will
be available in streaming in the background or whatever. But then you go check
Steam and nothing's downloading whatsoever. Right, But then on top of that,
they say, like with that three gigs, you'll be able to go into
practice mode and go to mode somebody. You can't even do that. It
just it is just nothing. It is not a game you can't do and
play a video game. Wow, I think I thought I figured you could
at least do. There are menus that you can look at and then hit
play and it and it crashed and it's unh So so it's clarify. We
were courting this on Tuesday morning, so we're just what a few hours out
from that thing unlocking? When did it unlock? It unlocked Hit nine last
night, not Monday night. That was. That was me at like eleven
o'clock last night, midnight last night, going like, all right, let's
look at the PC version it finished downloading. Oh wait, not a game.
I tried this morning too, and yeah, yeah you can like you
can highlight training or single fight and you can hit a and then it just
immediately crashes the whole. That's a huge bummer because the PC poort and nine
was pretty good, right, yeah, yeah, there was. Yeah,
there's some weird is shoes with some stuff and the net code was but so
yeah after and didn't Justice come out on PC? Yes, yeah, yeah,
so like they've got two PC games under the belt. Now, I
figured I Voltage did the work on both those. I believe they did nine
they did, they did X as well. So I so, you know,
I saw a couple months ago the PC version was coming out day and
date with console, and I was like, all right, great, they've
they've they're up to speed on PC. They are going to serve the PC
community right alongside the console. They served them. Damn y'all got served.
Motherfucker's got served. It sucks. That's a shame. I figured that was
like a vote of confidence in their ability to manage a PC port. Yeah,
yeah, I don't know why they would choose this game too, Like
we're gonna debut this streaming thing else you play it sooner, like if that's
a Steam thing overall, or if this is something Warner wanted to do and
they both collaborated to make that work. Yeah, But like the thing is,
like if you're going to preload the game, it needs to preload the
entire thing, Like I understand like the nature of like, hey, you
can play it while it's still downloading, like that makes some amount of sense
or may it needs to work though, and be it should be something that
is only active after the game's out right like if people want to download the
hole, what is a thirty gig? Yeah, something like that. If
you want to preload all that, then just let them do it. Yes,
that's messed up, yep? Is it? Is that? Just the
issue that that it won't download anything else? Like if it were to download
everything, I do we think it would work? I don't. I don't
know. I don't know. The menu screen seems to work, that's the
only men It's a pretty menu and then like that snowy background, it's I
guess my depth field. The menus still call the controller config wireless controller configuration
like it was a PS four, and changing that configuration also crashes against Wow.
Yeah, rad, Yeah, I've got a friend on on Twitter that
actually he's he doesn't have the menus available to him. He double checked to
make sure that all of that DLCL twenty nine of those things are installed,
They're all checked. He still doesn't have that shit available. I have no
idea what is going on? So he actually pulled the downloads. Yes,
he checked the install and it's all there posted screen shot ship two characters available
and everything crashes when he tries to pick man, it's cool, what's going
on I'm really glad I didn't spend time in trying to play that last night.
Yeah. Well, hey, that's a bumpy one. It's out on
console, yes, yeah, yeah, it works good there. Yeah,
I've been playing the PlayStation four version for a chunk of time. Here.
It's solid. You guys all seem fairly fond of it. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, it's cool. Yeah, I mean there's there's a lot to
it, kind of like they did with nine. Uh, you know,
they made some some tweaks and changes to just kind of the basics of fighting,
added a few little systems here and there, but it's generally the same
as the previous game. Sure, yeah, plays pretty similarly. Yeah,
absolutely, Yeah, lots of chains. Uh. They added that new stamina
meter. I'm not too fond of that. We can probably go into that
a little bit for running. That's for running interactables. Yeah, like the
Injustice style background interaction is in here and that will chip it. That'll take
a segment of your stamina meter. Does nine have running at all? No,
no added forward dashes and this has that as well. But if you
forward dash and then hit block, you'll break into a run, which is
super awkward, which is Yeah, that's an awkward way to control it,
Like it fucks me up constantly. You said you were like accidentally initiating the
run, right, because sometimes sometimes you dash forward and a block because there's
some shit coming your way, but you hit block and it starts you running
and you eat everything. So you have to double tap block or block it
down. You know, there's like like block is getting to interrupt the run
this Yeah, that sounds really inelegant totally if there were guys think about maybe
if there was a run button. So you know, with the running over
just like forward dashings, you cannot block like while you're forward dashing, So
if you initiate a run, you can actually block sooner and you can attack
sooner and ship like that iver distance. Of course, you don't want to
close the gap as fast as you can if you want to keep up the
pressure. But I just trans that meter super quick. I haven't frequently had
enough distance between my opponent that I feel like a full dash is necessary,
Like I think like I haven't felt that, I haven't really felt the need
to run also, yeah, but yeah, and then like with the comboinders
that will that will knock them back farther than just yeah, if you you
have to run up and finish and then get a little couple yeah extra stuff
in. I guess the stamina thing hasn't bothered me because yeah, a,
I don't really run and be like when you are doing that environment interaction stuff.
It's not like constant, like you're not spamming that. Like there's not
like eight thousand old ladies that you can throw. There's one old lady you
throw, and then a little bit later you can find another thing to hop
charges as well. It's not like limited pard yeah yeah, but yeah,
I mean I've definitely like back dash twice and then like gone for a throw
like, oh I can't, I can't go, you know, because I've
just backdash twice, and that trains the entire meter. I guess that's for
me. It's not like like the running is not annoying, it's the or
like, yeah, I'm not like trying to run, I'm trying to forward
dash and then immediately block afterwards and then accidentally running. Yes, gotcha,
Okay, I'm not running on purpose because I'm not good enough at it to
chase down stuff for the combos and stuff yet and I might not ever be.
But I would have been okay with a dedicated run button. Yes,
now you're talking, Yeah, I mean that's what every moral combat game needs.
I mean there's no platform this thing's coming out on that doesn't have enough
buttons to accommodate a dedicated run button. You know, so they dedicated a
button to stance change, right, and correct me if I'm wrong. That
serves zero purpose. There's a trophy if you do a little dance as codal
Con, you get a Disco trophy. But stance change it is, there's
no he just flips his leg. You just flip your legs and it doesn't
change anything about as far as I know. No, No, there are
some weird things where you know, you have a little more reach with some
characters. Wait, can everybody do this? Yeah, like a sort of
half asked stance change. I'm still not clear what you're talking about. Flip
your if your leg is forward? Which leg is forward? Okay? And
that works for everybody to see the mack of your character. You want to
see the friend. But that has nothing to do with the three fighting styles
you choose the match, right, No, it's not like Deadly Alliance and
m K nine as well. Okay, Yeah, it's not like Deadly Alliance
where you're on the fly switching between these styles or whatever like anybody wants that.
No, no, no, it's just yeah, it has no effect
really at all, do you guys find the I mean, so, how
many characters are there? Twenty five counting Goro twenty four and the default right,
and then that's three different styles for each character, with each with its
own moves and combos and stuff like that. At some point there are a
lot of there are a lot of shared moves and stuff between characters. It's
not like it's a full rewride of their normals and everything. It's just you
know, hey, you might have this this set of three special moves with
this variation, or this one might make your normals have a sword. Uh,
and you know this one or this win sub zero can grab his ice
clone and throw it at you. It just seems like a lot to take
in and not because like I mean, you know, learning three different like
mostly that the similar move sets for a given characters not a big deal.
But it's more, you know, a lot of being good at a fighting
game is knowing how to deal with what they're throwing at you, not necessarily
executing what you can do, you know, So like all of a sudden,
that's like three times the number of things you need to learn to look
out for from your opponent, you know. Yeah, it's a little intimidation,
a lot Like it's hard to tell, you know, if you if
you're not familiar with the game, you know, and you're playing against somebody
who's sub zero, you don't know exactly what that variation does. So,
uh, yeah, there's a lot of variety, and I appreciate that.
Is that a good thing that generally you think? I think? So it's
gonna be toughest shit to balance this game, though, Yeah, I hear
they've got pro players coming in trying to balance stuff. But then again,
we saw over the weekend that the Fatal Eight tournament there's some broken shit going
on. Yeah. Yeah, who's who's the worst cul for it? So
far? Aaron Black seems to be the worst. He's got a one one
two string, which is like you know, scure square triangle, and it
leaves him like plus six some block, which means that he can just keep
doing that over and over until the opponent doesn't block, and then he can
just finish this combo. So how that got out of QA, I have
no idea, but I think it may be patched by now. But still
just stuff like that, that's that's gonna slip through. I found some stuff
with Jung Kim which is pretty pretty annoying. Jung Jung Kim. Yeah what
I said, Kung Jin, No it's Jung Kim. No it is not.
It's I wrote down Jung Kim. You wrote down? What is it?
It's like kunglao. Oh yeah, I guess I totally. It's kunglaus
Son too, right, just like his cousin. Okay, so it's not
Kung's cousin Jung. I mean that Kung is probably the family name in the
systems, right right, right, Well that guy has some real good drop
kicks, right yeah, she's quite a bit which are very vulnerable afterwards.
They should probably get out of that habit. Yeah yeah, okay, well
if they if they blocked that first down kick thing, then yeah, you're
dead. It's the sort of thing that like you it's I feel like a
lot of people played smoke in MK nine and just like whipped up a bunch
of bullshit on people, and people didn't know what to expect and they ate
it up. And a lot of this Jung Kim stuff reminds me of that,
where it's like when you don't know what's coming at you. It's overheads
and fucking eyes lows and just all this shit and you're just like, it
doesn't stop coming. Uh, And once you kind of get a good read
on what that shit is, it's I think people will figure it out or
they won't, and you'll be able to you know, they'll always be new
players picking up the game forever. And as I did with Smoke, you
just fucking work motherfuckers stuff. It's valid, but it's ever. Everyone picks
Scorpion. Yeah, like that's the subtitle to the last couple of more like
to every Mortal Kombat game, right, Scorpion is the kin everyone comes to
Scorpion. I played about five of them last night. Yeah. Yeah,
I know. It's not a brand new phenomenon, but still the idea of
post release balance and sing for fighting games kind of crazy to me. It's
essential, and it is so they can do it. They have an inline
system that lets them update the game without a proper console level patch, so
it'll just pull those same way, like playlist updates pull for Call of Duty.
It's it's essential to the longevity of the game. Yeah, you know,
I definitely wouldn't dispute that, but it's just it's something that I associate
more with like RTS games, and it's kind of traditionally PC focused franchises.
We see what like Call of Duty where it's like, oh, the shotguns
two pack, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know,
it's just, you know, I don't know why there's a mental disconnect for
me with that stuff, but maybe changes used to come with, you know,
the new board Dad, that's I think that's kind of what it is
like, going all the way back to fighting games and arcades where it's like
what was on the board was what you got, you know, and it's
like if they put out new boards and great, but if not, like
you just kind of stuck with it. That's why they needed wave net,
man. Wave Net was gonna save everything was future. They let the future
pass them buy that's right. What do you guys think of the uh the
cast with a k of character? I uh, some of the new characters
are Cass Cage is pretty cool, Kung Gin there's pretty good, Kung In
Jimmy This Jimmy Kung Gin right there you go. Okay, kung Gin is
my favorite. Uh yeah, the look is kind of generic for him.
Yeah. I like Jackie Brad Briggs. Yeah, it's really cool. All
these teens have two man Yeah. Wait are they literal teenagers? Like sometimes?
Yeah, they're all a little spicy. I really don't like total Kno.
I don't think he's fun to play as at. I kind of like
him, Yeah, I like him. Yeah, I'm getting a little more
into him. He's not really into cotalk, not really into fair Tour,
Like the slower characters aren't really doing it for me. Goro, I kind
of mess with a little bit and not digging, dig really not digging.
It not worth buying. How much is he just b himself? I don't
know. It's not it for sale yet? Oh okay, Yeah, I
don't like Taquita at all. I like Taquita a lot. Kid. Yeah,
he's got some some interesting shit, you know, a couple of I
can't decide which stance I like the most. Yeah, because like all his
standard special moves that he just comes with, I fucking hate. But the
the stuff that comes with the variations, I actually like all them a lot.
The whip stuff is pretty cool that he's got. Trying to think other
new characters, it's eight new characters. Uh, and in the full roster
kind of the four good guys, which in the story mode kind of they're
a posse. They're the combat kids. They get out there, they fucking
show up wherever the actual problem is and just solve it, uh, in
a way that is kind of predictable wherever. Yeah, there's like, oh,
hey, I don't know, we're here, fucking all right, No,
we got this, no problem, We'll save the world. Yeah,
sure, Sure sounds like you're a little more lukewarm on the story this time
than Yeah. It's it's one of those things where I think they're doing much
better with the new characters and the general tone and flow of things than they
ever did kind of post MK four with that stuff, because that just blew
out in a really fucking nuts ass way, including four. I didn't like
the new characters and four at all. You know, skocks all right,
sucks, Clunchi's lame, But like, which ones are you talking about?
Then? I thought Raco was alright, Fujin was okay, bo right show,
but fuck bar shoe he could puke part and it's like a pun for
baraco, the Spanish word for drunk. Oh, I didn't know that.
Yeah, uh, it's yeah dumb. Uh. So I think they're doing
better than they did last time. They were at this point kind of in
their pre reboot storyline. I was a little worried. Yeah, But at
the same time, like, I think this story is a little less interesting,
but I'll give them credit. Like they're pushing things forward. You know,
they're adding new characters. They're kind of taking the focus off of some
of the long time uh Mortal Kombat fighters. They are discarding them, not
discarding them. Yeah, I mean, you can still play as Luke Kang.
It's just why would you. Luke King's alright, Uh, he's an
old ass man and still weird, gray hair, still got the bicycle kick.
Ye yes, all right, that's all I need. You can still
turn into a dragon, an old gray dragon. And you know, they're
kind of like addressing kind of some long time rivalries in new ways, like
the Scorpions subzero stuff is interesting in a new way. This taste and just
have gotten together and hugged it out at this point. You know, that's
you should play the story. So I like, I like some of that
stuff, but generally speaking, it's just it doesn't hit as hard, and
it's you know, following up from nine, where they're just like fucking jj
abrams reboot of the first three games all in one, Like it's hard to
fucking top that, sure, uh, and they don't, you know,
like, I think the story in that game is better. But also I
never quite looked at nine as reboots so much as just like, here is
a closer, more dramatized look at what happened, you know, No,
because I mean at the very beginning they explained the thing. We're like,
what is it raiding about? Die? I know, I know there was
like, yeah, it is a literal reboot, yeah, but you know
it was still it was still cool to see, like, you know,
during the first MK, here's some ship that happened in between the fights.
Yeah, yeah, like to give that get like that game had no story
whatsoever, totally Yeah, first endings and it was just like there's a tournament
save the world to like to dramatize the offensive old ass man that hovers wants
to shoot fireballs at you and turn into you, and he's gonna be young
in the next game. It sounds great. Yeah, in the next game.
I think that makes me want to play for the nine storyline again.
Yeah, yeah, it's yeah. I mean, you don't, like,
you don't need to have a story in a fighting game, but when it's
there, I think it adds a lot, you know, it adds a
lot of longevity. I think for you know, for people that that care
about the characters and want to see that stuff, you know, like it.
It creates the potential for hot offshoots. That's Mortal Kombat mythology. Subzero
special Forces, yeah, special Forces Salon Monks is legitimately. Yeah. I
played through that start finish with my cousin two players, and it's one of
the let's go up. It's actually a good game. Yeah, I like
it. But it doesn't hit his heart at the last game. But kind
of on some level, of course it doesn't because that game was them saying,
all right, we teased fucked around with it in MK versus DC.
Here it is we have we have Street Fighter forward, our our Mortal Kombat
back to the way you want it, uh and and with the characters you
know and love. Yeah, every game was firing on all cylinders, hope
they had perfected the storytelling method. And also we're retelling the story with nostalgic
value that everybody wanted exactly. Yeah, it was kind of It was kind
of a flash point that you can't necessarily just got replicated exactly and and and
they don't. But I think that they, you know, they leave the
story in some interesting places if you care about that stuff. And yeah,
I like taking it for granted that there will be another Mortal Kombat game,
Like, is cand you see this going somewhere? Like, I mean they
tease, they tease follow up at the end, you know, so yes,
you can see some places where it could go that it might be kind
of cool. But you know, the story jumps around in time lot.
It starts out kind of after the events of MK nine and then flash forwards
twenty five years forward. Then it's like everyone has flashbacks that are like five
years before. So it's just like there's so many different time lines represented and
so many different costumes that show up as a result of that. Sounds kind
of messy. It is messy. It's it's it's at some point you're just
like, wait a minute, is he a good guy? At this point
in time, or a bad guy like what happened? You know, is
this guy still a zombie or not? Like what the fuck is going on?
Like, there's just there's weird stuff with that. But who was a
zombie? Everyone died at the end of MK nine. Dude, Yeah,
I know what. I kind of want you to just tell me how they
get around that. But they they have some ways, all right, and
in some cases they don't. They just don't even address it. They just
don't make them not zombies. Oh I see, so okay, now I
actually want to see this. So it's weird because their characters like that appear
in as playable characters informs that they never show up and in the story.
But whatever, it's it's yeah, they've got a lot of modes around it,
you know, same as same as last time. They've built up you
know, some meta games and weird little fun so all they've always crammed the
tone of extra content. Yeah, I mean it's you know, there's no
puzzle game or cart racer, but crypt it's pretty extensive. The crypt is
Net, the uh, the test your luck stuff, the random modifiers like
that. Stuff's kind of fun. Test your might Tower yeah, right,
Yeah, it's weird. That's so dumb. You get a bunch of coins
and stuff that way, No, you don't. Und when you get up
to the upper tiers, you start getting more mashing and like what the other
day, and you're I'm gonna point now, popping out of your neck.
I'm gonna point now where I need like ten thousand to open stuff. So
like, no, the test your might tower does not. And that's that
kind of is One of the more frustrating things about the game is that it
feels over monetized. Jeff, It's okay, man, just twenty bucks and
you can unwrite. Yeah, so you can pay twenty bucks to unlock everything
in the crypt. Wait really it really? Stuff is already in the game
really yeah? Oh no, And so you can do the second fatalities without
unlocking them in the crypt first. But all the brutalities, which are the
new finishing move, uh you apparently I think you have to unlock those in
the crypt first. I'm not sure. I actually had one happened last night
that I had not unlock. Really did okay accidentally, so I'm not positive.
Okay, all right, Well, cost their costumes and stuff in there
too, that are that are game relevant. There's also concept art and stuff
that you're art, fan art whatever, paying to unlock things that you can
unlock playing in a sixty dollars game, Like, I think that stuff is
super lame in this specific case. But at the same time, but that's
more of a factor of I really like Mortal Kombat, so it bothers me
more here than it has in like every EA game that did you know,
every EA golf game that was like, fuck it make a leveled up golfer
back on the three sixty. It's like who cares? Sure, like,
just don't buy it because fucking why would you buy the golf game anyway?
But yeah, you kind of you kind of want to feel like Mortal Kombat
can be better than that it is. Yes, that is yes, that
is how I feel about it. Is that Mortal Kombat is such a long
running, storied thing that like to see it get nickel and dimed, like
this is depressing in a way that it isn't in Tiger Woods or you know,
Evolve or something like that. We're already talking about a combat pack which
thirty dollars. Thirty dollars things that are already included in the game. Oh
really, I thought the thirty dollars stuff was all external content that's all new.
I mean, it's all that's new in the But they're characters that are
in the game. You fight against them in like the story mode. Right,
Yes, Tanya is one of the characters. You're talking those up in
the story mode. You're talking about the four which is frustrating. Yeah,
yeah, so those characters aren't available yet, but that's Yeah, their season
pass is like four characters, like thirteen costumes or something like that. I'm
not sure it's uh, but it's that. That's thirty bucks, and that's
if you want to unlock the rest of the stuff that you can get in
the crypt that's another twenty so fifty dollars on top. And also you might
have purchased one of the limited edition versions of the game to get an exclusive
scorpion skin and like a little statue, So you might have spent like,
I don't know, like one hundred and forty hundred fifty bucks on this thing
to start with? Is Goro part of the thirty dollars was a pre or
no, he's not here, a pre order bonus that will be for sale
at some point, but it's not currently for sale. So right now,
you can go hover over Goro on the character select screen and it says push
x to purchase Goro, and you push X, and even after launch,
it still says you can't. So the thirty dollars I assume that'll be up
today, but you know, maybe by the time you hear this, they
will have corrected that. But like you, the thirty dollars thing is their
season pass with Tanya, Tat Predator and Jason from Friday the thirteen, right,
and then all those skins and then yeah, three each one of those
characters will come with three skins, and then there's like a Shinnock skin you
get right away and you buy it. Wait up skins for all the existing
characters. Yes, they will, They're not all these. I mean it'll
be like here's Classic Katana, right, which is sort of fucked up because
when you go into the viewer and view everything you have locked, it shows
classic Katana there already does it say you have to buy the things list requirements,
So you might just be unlocking everything in the crypt, going where is
this, Where's this? Where's this and then never find it until you because
you haven't buy it gross, so it gets worse. Oh go on.
Yeah. In the crypt sometimes you unlock something called an easy Fatality Award and
it's something so remember when we play the game in development and they were like,
oh, just hold down, just hold down block and hit triangle to
do the fatalities. That's like, you know, we're just just we're developing
it right now, so just just do that like a trade show thing for
like, well, we know you want to see fatalities. Here how you
do it? So we made them real easy in this build for that we
were bringing around to show you or showing a E three that is something that
you can earn easy fatality tokens for and use. Uh in the crypt so
far I found about seven of them by token. Do you mean it's expendable?
Yes, you do, yes when you if yes, exactly if you
use it, it's gone. So I have seven of them that I can
do that I've gotten out of the crypt. Uh and and and just you
know, out of the game itself, you could buy thirty of them for
four ninety nine consumables, straight up consumable. And it's like whatever, like
the move list is in the game, like you know, it's it's just
an easier way to do an existing thing that like, at some point,
why would anyone ever buy that? But at the same point time, like
easy Fatalities used to be a cheat code, very much, very much a
cheat code. But also you're earning coins by doing fatalities that you can then
spend on other stuff. Correct, and you spend it in the crypt that's
it. You can't buy those You can't buy those awards directly, right,
But I'm saying there is a utility to doing fatalities consistently, yes, because
you're getting currency out of it. Yes, yeah, yeah, you can
do stuff, yes, your or experience points or you know whatever. You're
so like the chain of buying the easy fatality stuff and turning those things into
coins you can actually buy other stuff with. It's pretty clear, Well,
if you want to go that way, if yes, But the coins you
get per fatality are not worth it, Okay, It's not like you're getting
so many that you're like, I need to do one and I need to
do them easy because I can't figure out these button presses. Well, you
can just pause the unless you're playing online, you just pause the game and
look it up, right, there. So like so for starters, it's
a dumb thing because you can pause the game and look up how to do
the fatalities right then and there. Yeah, but but also come on,
also, come on, like seriously people, it's uh, it's pretty crazy.
And it's like, you know, I don't know, like I go
back and forth on like the season past stuff, because when you break it
down, like per character plus the skins, you start comparing it to other
DLC prices and Matt packs and stuff like that, and you go like,
well, you know, seven fifty a character doesn't seem too far out of
control for kind of what other stuff is sold for Matt packs and and that
sort of thing. And then you total it all up and look at it
and go, this game is sixty dollars and comes with this many characters and
all this other stuff for half that price. Again, I get four dudes.
Like that's that's where it starts to get out of control. I mean,
you know, like the season passes have been priced that way for for
some time in most games. Uh, you know, like the Battlefield Premium
stuff, which is like bonus shit plus the mat packs, Like that's fifty
bucks. Holy shit. Yeah, I'm a gun. Yeah, what's the
standard, like a thirty typically twenty thirty. I think it's one of those
things where it's like if there are four releases, they come out at ten
a pop, and then you get a break for buying the season. Yeah
thirty, but like the I think the Call of Duty season passes forty okay,
so it's like you're getting for ten bucks apiece, but they're fifteen separately
or something like that. So typically if you buy, if you buy the
pass, you get a break a little bit, but at the same time,
like it's a stiff Yeah, it's stiff. And then there are a
bunch of characters that are in the story mode that they just pull out of,
like you know, Rain, Like characters that appeared in MK nine show
up and fight you in the story like Striker, Wait, you don't you
don't fight and Sindel Yeah really yeah. So like some of these characters that
you know that show up and you start to wonder, like, well,
they're gonna turn those into season two of DLCs. They did another a second
pack of four for Injustice. Oh really yeah, because they only did four
characters for nine, right right, okay, yeah, and then they did
the four and then went back and side. You know what, there's more,
there's another four, which you know, like people like that game,
they want new characters, Like that's a I think that that's a great way
to add characters to a fighting game, you know, like putting out a
full sequel and saying, now there are four new characters. Like that sucks,
Like that's what we did on the s nest. That's what you know.
It's like been getting Super street Fighter two and that sort of stuff.
Like those sorts of upgrades always felt highly questionable, So updating it like it's
a platform the way Ki does, you know, you know, I think
that's a preferable way to do it. But like the numbers don't. Like
the numbers add up in a really a bunch of really weird ways, depending
on how you're looking at it. So like the business of it starts to
get a little creepy, and there's just so much of it at every turn
in this game, Like like having you know, press extra purchase Goora right
on the fucking character sele ex screen I think is gaudy. Like having just
having that that carousel of up selling ad stuff right there on the main menu
yeah, and and just like push triangle to get to the store to buy
stuff, and like I've already purchased a lot of that stuff and it still
shows up. You know. It's like, you know, at least,
do me the fucking dignity turn that off of removing it. Yeah, you
know that stuff. So, yeah, that's disappointing. The game itself is
solid. It's a lot of fun, you know. The net code,
I think it's a little shaky, not having the best experience with that.
The online's a little bit done, both the PS four and Xbox One.
Last night, Xbox One seemed a little bit better. Just that's just luck
though at this point. So but I'm hearing pretty bad reports across the board.
Yeah, it's not up to snuff just yet. But any any early
thoughts on the viability of this game in the tournament scene. It's gonna be
weird. I mean, Mortal Kombat, like the NRS fans, you know,
and Justice fans, Mortal Kombat fans they're they're they're kind of their own
little group. I mean, like they don't they don't all get out and
care about the other games. They just care about JO. Yeah, they
just play that Okay, I don't know if we're gonna see and big like
you know, like an EVO. It'll probably show up at EVO. I
think they already didn't. They already say it's happening, but I don't know
like how big it's gonna be there, and I don't know how it's gonna
be at at normal major tournaments. Normally these guys kind of break off and
do their own thing. Okay, but yeah, mortal kind of bat fans
man. Yeah, they they really dig this, this game an awful lot.
Do you do think the death is there though, to support ongoing competitive
play? I can't say from my personal experience, but based on what I've
I've heard from like a lot of people in the fighting game community, they're
not super high on it. Like it's fun, they don't know how well,
but we don't know what kind of legs it's. Yeah, I guess
time. Time will always tell with the stuff, right, Yeah, you
know, we got to get the net code up to up to speed.
That needs to be more balancing, But otherwise, you know, the character
character roster seems fun and uh yeah, I think some people are on board.
It's very flashy, like watching that tournament over the weekend. It's one
of those things where like you think about MK three combos, the juggles and
the stuff that would happen in those those early games, right, Like that
stuff still happens, but it's like on this exponential, fucking insane ass level.
Yeah, I mean I remember nine kind of like this, yeah,
this is this Like oh that you guys spending half the match in the air.
Yeah, yeah, And it's that that stuff kind of cuts both ways,
right where it's like it's kind of awesome that you can do all that
stuff, but if you're on the receiving end of it, you don't have
enough meter to break out. You're just like, what the fuck am I
doing? I'm in the air the whole time. It's like it's like the
complaining people used to have about tech in as you know, you're just in
the air the whole time. Yeah. I think one of the best editions
from a gameplay perspective is the brutalities. I think those are really really cool.
My favorite part of this uh yeah, yeah. So it's not it's
not a finish him thing. It's not like you win two rounds and then
you do a brutality input it's you end your second round, like you win
the fight with in any specific way, which do you kill the guy as
part of ending the fight. And some of them are super easy to where
it's like, well you just wait until their health is low enough for this
throw to kill them anyway, and then just hold forward when you're throwing them
and then like oh, katonic had his head off, or you know.
Others require like lots of different criteria, like you've got to be above fifty
percent health, you have to run three times in a match, and then
you have to hit with the second hit of a specific move in order for
it to and they have to be in the air or they'd be blocking,
and it has to be damage to kill him. Yeah, yeah, like
was it like scorpions? First brutality is like you meter you double meter burned
the spear at the end of a fight, but you have to have over
fifty percent health to do it, so it's like it's meter burn throw.
So it's the double chains and then you hit it again to do like the
whip energy down the line and then it just fucking makes his upper torso blow
up and leave behind skeleton. It's it's pretty fucking awesome. Seems like it
just sounds a little confusing, but fuck when it happened. Yeah, it
seems like they just looked at the stuff in like two for instance, where
you get the guitar moreph like manifest or even or even you know, you
can only use low kick in the round that you do friendship in or whatever.
They like, they just took that and rid it large. And my
favorite is a Johnny cage. It's your second round. You have to connect
with four nut punches, and then if you win with a net punch,
their head flies off. That's great. So he punched on the ball so
hard their head flies off. Mortal Combat X quadruple the nut punches, Yeah,
gets there. There's a level of and they turn, like most of
the specials into brutalities. You know, it's like each character I have like
five or six of them. So like, that's that's pretty awesome. I
think that stuff's really cool. Like that makes me want to watch tournaments to
see who pulls what off, because that'll be fucking some pretty hype moments.
I like, I wonder if you know some of the ones that have a
lot of these requirements, if it's going to factor into the meta at all.
It's like, if you see that guy running three times of shit,
he might be going for that brutality. Fuck, yeah, that's cool idea.
Or reptiles spitting a ton and in the second round like always gonna try
to melt my face could be jefted that yesterday I did. I didn't know
why you were spitting so much, and then I figured it out. Oh
my god, he's just fucking cheesing me with projectiles spitting a lot. Yeah,
all right, Well, I'm glad to hear this game turn out well
on the whole. Yeah, the monetization stuff is you know, I think
that's part of a larger conversation in the industry. It's it's sad to see
a game like MK do that stuff, but then you go back and go,
well, you know, Arcade games were the ultimate nightmare micro transaction boxes.
So I don't know, maybe this was its destiny all along. I
don't know from my perspective, Like the single player of stuff not nearly as
good as what I found in Justice. I'm not a fan of what they're
offering this time around. Like I don't even get the faction stuff. I
don't care about that, Like you know, gaining all these points for whatever
fucking reason, Like there's no immediate payoff for that. But do you like
do you like the living tower stuff? Not necessarily. I feel like that's
the thing, is Like I like the modifiers. Like, so the fight
modifiers will be like you know, some of the combat codes from MK three
in in in some cases where it's like, you know, quick uppercut recovery,
but it'll also be like, you know, no super meters or no
blocking or turbo speed. I like their randomness, Yeah, that's yeah,
like randomizing it like it's a dumb, little fun thing. But if it's
against a computer, I don't give a shit. Yeah. And the towers,
like they have these these living towers they call them. That'll some one
one rotates every hour, one rotates every day, and then one rotates every
like four days or five days. Yeah, totally. They have dailies.
You have faction. You have daily faction challenges, right that you can use
to contribute to the overall meta war effort thing. Grind that rep totally.
That is exactly what you were doing in that game, is grinding that rep
by picking sub zero twice or connecting five uppercuts continuing on to our nightmare future
where all video games are the same game, yeah, and but at the
same like then those daily towers will be like, you know, you gotta
fight these five guys, but your controls are crazy like that that's not that
fun all told, I did prefer the way nine did it, where it's
like, hey, here's three hundred levels that each one of them is kind
of a different thing with a different gimmick. You know. Some of them
are totally funny. Some of them are like silly gameplay line. You know,
going in that you're gonna get a bunch of weird ship but it changes
so frequently that that's that that's fine. Where it's like you know, just
having like you know, these next five fights are all gonna have earthquakes that
shake the ground and hurt both players, and the earthquakes get stronger as you
work your way up the tower, like that's every single one and and or
in one case, you know, it rotates every hour, so there's that,
but like that's not fun on its own, so you know, or
it's not you know, it just kind of like gets in the way of
the fight. Like some of the modifiers are are such that you know,
they're not really adding that much. You know, they're I'm making it that
crazy, but you carry you can't carry that online like set up a lobby
to do test your luck stuff. Yes, so you can play with other
people that you can do custom combat, which is where you pick your modifiers.
I don't I don't think i'd ever ever want to do that because you
can, you know, you'll be fighting ast somebody who just picks you know,
I've got full super meter. Yeah, so I think it's actually super
lame that that each character picks two in that mode, because then you just
pick ones that make you better or the other guy totally fucked right, Whereas
it should be more like Halo custom games where you're just like you're building a
recipe. It builds it in a you know, like like you know,
you can make it super fucked for one player over the other, but like
everyone's gonna see it and go like, I'm not going to play that,
Like why who would play that exactly and be able to set up like you
should be able to set up dive in that game, save it as a
custom recipe and fucking play it online. Yeah, that would be fun,
But it has a modified. It's in there. I swear to it's I
saw it happen. It's called kick dive. It's not on the goddamn list
of modifiers and custom combat. I don't know why you should have. Did
you happen to save a clip on the PS four? When did that?
Because I figured, like, oh whatever, this is just the random thing.
It rolled the first time I tried this mode, so it'll obviously come
up again and hasn't. And what if you what if each profile and it
gets it once? It's like this ultimate weird dive kick burn right, it
shows Yeah, I don't know what the fuck is going on there? Uh
yeah, like I would want to. But you know, it had the
mode where it basically made the only attack you could do was the Kung Lou
style dive kick any attack button when you were in the air did it.
That's pretty funny. And it was one hit kills, right it was not.
So that's the thing is, like, you know you can make it
one hit kills. You could turn on danger mode, you could turn on
that sort of stuff. You could you know, there could be I don't
think there is, but there should be a modifier for can't walk like you
should just be able to create fucking dive kicks in that game and save it
as a recipe and then play it with people the same way you would do
with like the Halo custom stuff like that. That would be rad I would
be pretty good. That's what that's that's the direction that stuff should have moved
in, I think. But but there you go. All right, Well
that sounds like the straight dirt on Mortal Combat x Dan Grant theft thought of
five PC. Yeah, how is it great? Yeah? Yeah, I
like it a lot. Okay, I'm glad I waited because when they put
him out on PS four and Xbox One, I wanted to, you know,
I did that quick look with you and it looked really cool and everything,
and I really wanted to try the first person, but I knew it
would probably run a little bit better on my PC. It sounds like a
lot better from the little bit of like form chatter of scenes so far,
it looks really really sharp. I really like to play through the like the
first fifteen minutes of it or so, and yeah, it looks nice.
I had trouble keeping the frame rate all the way stable and cut scenes and
stuff. I'm running at twenty five sixty by sixteen hundred with every turn all
the way up. That might have something to do, you know, my
process or this point's old. I don't know how if that's gonna impact.
Yeah, it was kind of scenes mainly for me. That's a little bit
weird and stuff like that. But like I was just driving around like that
intromission driving through the snow and stuff like this looks really fucking nice. Really
yeah, man, I want to see that. But at the same time,
I don't know. You guys, like you finished GT shit out of
g T five when it first came out on three sixty, like what I
mean. I like that game a lot, but I left it with zero
desire to play it again. So like these rereleases, I feel like I've
played about the same amount with PS four and then now I've played that much
on the PC and I'm like, oh, this is cool if you've never
played it before. But I would never want to go like, you know,
not this soon contact years later, the contact with the PC specifically,
I think there probably are a lot of people who haven't played yeah, yeah,
but I'm just like in this in Dan's specific case, like why I
think there's a few things I think. You know, first of all,
it looks so damn good, because I do remember playing it looked great on
last gen. Yeah, but I remember thinking like, man, we're here
with these new systems and everything and PC. I'd like to see it like
really pushed as much as it could go. And it looks so much better,
you know, like new new tracks and stuff, new music stuff,
and mainly the first person thing, like I am playing pretty much she plays
the mouse and keyboard, because I understand they did some some smart work with
how that stuff is implemented in a way that makes the first person stuff work
a little better than it because on console and with the controller, I thought
the first person stuff was kind of clunky. I haven't even tried yet.
I am playing with an Xbox One controller and I think it's fine. I
like it a lot. I've read you can switch back to forth pretty seamlessly.
It's just it's the select buttoner between mouse and keyboard. Yeah, you
can drop the controller and go mass keyboard. Nos, no option nos,
No, you don't have to stop at all. Yeah. So I played
a little bit with the mouse and stuff and didn't necessarily like it felt swimmy.
My viewpoint felt like it was not super fast. So in the first
person, yeah, I mean I think that stuff was intentionally you know,
they're very in love with their kind of like you know, they're realistic,
sort of exaggerated. I saw some people like talking about like raw mouse in
putting all this stuff, and I thought, like, oh, is it
gonna like jitter around like a first person shoot, like like you know,
quake or something like that, because that'd be cool, Like that's the time.
But accuracy I want when I am playing in a first person perspective.
So there are a ton of options if you go into the settings, like
specifically for first person and just kind of how the camera goes, like the
head bobbing and the field of you, Like, yeah, I mess with
a lot of stuff on the PS four and like it seemed like there were
a ton of options there, but at some point it just never clicked like
this, it never seemed like the right way to play the game. I
think I would probably play through it again regardless, but because of first person,
I think, and I do like that you can make it independent where
like I don't like driving it totally. Yeah, no, so you want
the third person camera, yeah, and there's just tons of little details and
stuff you wouldn't normally see without this first person mode. Like you know,
I was just walking around Franklin's house and like looking at all the like books
and stuff that his mom has on the shelf, and like they took the
care to make it be like, Okay, this is what that character would
have. Or just seeing little signs and all their little end jokes and stuff
that they do. Like, I thought it was pretty cool seeing the world
from that perspective. Yeah, between between the first person and just the general
like visual upgrade that they did even on the PS four, Like I gained
an appreciation for being in that world in a way that I didn't have on
the lesson version. Yeah, Like you can walk up to the like clucking
chicken thing or whatever, like read the entire drive through menu and stuff like
that, Like I think it's cool. Yeah, or even just just driving
around, you know, like it's just it's it's more interesting to look out
now. But so you're gonna go the whole way with it totally, You're
gonna get it. Yeah, yep. I might try online too, because
when I came out on three sixty, I liked the idea of trying it,
but it was so busted for a while and I was like, well,
I'll get back to it when it's working, and then I just never
really got back to it, so I might actually try it here. I've
been holding out as well, and actually, like you know, that was
kind of justification for me getting the new video card. I'm like, well,
I'm on a fucking place in Grant. They've done on on this,
so it's kind of crazy. That's the game that drove your video card purchase.
Yeah, yeah, what'd you get? Nine eighty? Okay, I'm
trying to remember. Did the original four people on this podcast have a nine
eighty bread? But what are you doing? Come on, man, Tighten
X or whatever one comes out after outstrip us go one level up? What
is the X is that? I think it's just two nine eighties, isn't
it? Like in one card? The original Titan was the thousand dollars card?
Right? Right? Yeah? So what is this t It is now
a Titan that's based on the nine eighties stuff? Something? Right? A
lot? I don't know. I think that came out at some point,
Like I have to stop paying attention to that. I'm in a weird situation
running Windows ten because I don't get the same drivers I can install. I
could go back and actually install the regular drivers, but like the the g
Force like app or whatever never feeds me new drivers. Why are you doing
this crazy shit again? Yeah, I don't. I don't understand your predilection
for running beta OS is like, because it's just Windows eight, it's fun.
Well, but you running in the compatibility stuff with drivers. So that's
so I could go manually install those drivers and run like whatever the standard d
X eleven driver is. But Windows ten has progressed to a point where now
they're beta testing d X twelve drivers. Uh so I am not running those
and it's it hasn't in the games. I mean, and maybe that you
know, maybe that would impact GTA or something like that. But in the
games that I played on both you know, drivers sets, it was not
an issue. There was no real change. Always I thinks deep, nothing's
running well, obviously you can always run a BEATOS and a VM if you
just want to mess good. Yeah, I just I don't know. I've
been running it production. Yeah, someone's doing what they tell you not to
do. Sounds like they're getting pretty close with that thing. Yeah, it's
out, it's out. Yeah. Yeah. I need more than a new
video card. That's not going to solve my woes. I want to do
motherboard CPU stuff. I think I'm doing a full rebuild towards the end of
the year. Probably CPU is just over five years old at this point.
It's really getting up there. Who else plays? Anybody play anything else of
a note like the GTA and and MK or kind of the releases. Yeah,
those kind of the big ones. I beat the blood Starved Beasts and
I've been playing that's actually, and then I started on the Chows Dungeon like
that's that's kind of my continued progress. And blood Born. I beat blood
Born. Yeah. I didn't spend much time with the Chalice dungeons. I
did like one or two of them. Yeah. Are they worthwhile? Or
they are they cool? Like I've only done. There are some items you
can get if you like use the right seed code. Yeah, there are
variants of the existing weapons. I don't think there are any actual unique weapons
in there, but you say there are are there. I think so because
I know you can get there are some weapons that are only available. Really,
I know that there are two designations I think it's lost and uncanny or
the labels they put. You know, you can find like an Uncanny Blades
of Mercy or something like that. But I think the only difference there is
the types of sockets that you could have on it. Okay, I don't
know. I've only done the first Chalice dungeon and like it was fun.
You know, there are some unique bosses in there, and those are probably
worth seeing. I think any kind of level requirements for the challie stuff or
you need items, yeah, yeah, I think that's it. But if
I have the items that I'm at a low level, should I go in
there to get some cool ship? I don't know. I don't. I
don't have enough experience with that, so I mean there. You know,
there are some very like deep YouTube guides out there for randomized Chalice stuff.
I'm right at the end of that game, and I just keep putting off
finishing it because I want to go back and make sure I didn't miss stuff.
Yeah, by the end, I was ready, like I loved it
and I wasn't really getting bored. But I mean it, I had stuff
coming out, like more of the combat and GTA. It's like I knew
I wanted to be done, so like by the end, I was ready
to be done with that, and yeah, beat the boss on Saturday night.
I want to say I definitely had a case like where I think it
was Friday night. I was like, I'm gonna get this going. Like
I was in the middle of doing MK stuff and I was like, i'n't
take a break and play some play some of this and died to that thing
like two or three times, and it got to a point where I didn't
have enough antidotes and healing items to just like make another solid run at it,
and I was like, well, if I'm gonna run around and grind
for this stuff, like this is a good time to take a break.
And I had that moment of just like I could beat that fucking thing,
Like that's not nice, Like because like that last try, I had it
down to basically like the last hit and then I fucked up poisoned or something.
Yeah, like the timing on poison seems longer than the timing on healing.
So it was just a case of just like I've just fucking mismanaged my
ship. I mean, that's always the way with the bosses, you know,
you whittle them down ninety percent and then you try to shortcut your way
through that last ten percent, sure as you want it to be over,
Yeah, and you fuck it up. Yeah. It was that that crazing,
that that frozen moment of like should I switched to these molotops or stick
on antidote because I get poisoned again? And then in that moment of being
frozen, I died. Yeah. Always if you just stay the course,
you'd be fine. But it's very hard. Yeah, like slept on it
kind of woke up and I don't beat that fucking thing because fuck that that's
a good feeling. Yeah, do you like that? It was all right?
Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I mean, not just beating
the boss, but just like thinking about it outside of the game, it's
like, oh, fuck, I should have done this. I should Well
it was maybe we should do this. It wasn't like a maybe. It
was just like this is what I need to do to do this, and
I just need to wake up and do it. And then I woke up
and did it. And then yeah, like they dropped that drops the chalice
and then I was like, well, I guess god, am I supposed
to go in the Chalice Dungeon next, and I don't know. I went
in there and died a few times, and I was just like, all
right, I am done with this for now. When went back to MK.
But Dan, did you beat all the bosses or did you? Because
there are some optional bosses locked behind? Yeah? I did all of the
optional area is that are in kind of the main game, like not the
Chalice dungeons? Yeah, And then they're like three different endings you can get.
Yeah, there's the one like super duper ending when you have to like
put a bunch of items together and fight this thing. I didn't do that
one. I did the one. There's like three edit kind of the middle
of the pack. One. There's one super easy one, and then there's
one where you fight this optional boss, and then there's the super crazy boss.
I did the middle one. I'm working on the super crazy boss.
But I think I'm in the last area before the real endgame starts with those
final bosses, So I'm very close to the end. I just what are
are trying to figure out? If we are far of men's Okay, yeah,
we can just say names of bosses and stuff. I mean when when
like we're our posts on our own message boards, as people saying like I'm
still stuck on the blood Starve Beast, like you've been fighting this thing for
a week, Like no, we are, yeah, not far enough removed.
But also like you know, sometimes is the name of a boss really
that important? I mean, like I don't know that, Like discussing the
end game thing is a fucking coouth thing to do at the stage already.
But yeah, I'm right there at the end. And then I realized that
I had never gotten into Upper Cathedral ward and I was like, I want
to see all that stuff. So I went back and started fiddling with that.
And it's a neat game. I don't know, like it's it's yeah,
I'm still like like you guys, I mean, you finish the game,
you kind of near the end, like does it get like how much
crazy or does you get there is fucking bullshit towards the end of that game,
like crazy like sheep shit? Yeah, well it seems so at first
there's a couple I mean there's generally there's always a method to it, but
that stuff is not apparent when you get there, and until you figure out
what's going on, like you just want to break the game, and yeah,
it can be super frustrating. I walked into one area and then all
of a sudden, all these like red shards, I'm shooting out of me
dead and three seconds and I can't see anything like there there's an area where
just if you're out in the open at all, you were just taking damage
constantly and you and you're and you're becoming frenzied, so that if the frenzy
bar fills, you're just dead, just dead. Yeah, and I and
they don't. It doesn't really let you know what's happening. Where I was
streaming at the time, and the twitch chat was like, oh, well,
this weird thing has happened, and there's no way at all I would
have known that that was what was causing, right, So that's the name
of that entire game that like happening. Fucking crazy that seems like unbeatable and
total bullshit happens, and then you go, oh wait, I've solved this
one particular thing. In that particular case, though, you're also dealing with
some really shitty enemies and it's one of the few areas in the game where
people can invade you without you opting into it. Okay, there's a lot
going on in it, so it's very hard to just like those games are
all about stopping looking around analyzing, like taking in all the like all the
information around you, and like thinking about it and figuring out what to do
right. Like in that case specifically, you never have the time to do
that right. That's when that game is fun to me is when I'm playing
it right, I'm being defensive, I'm checking my corners. You know,
I'm playing the game right. But when that fucking game just wants to kill
me for no fucking good reasons like that that area in particular, Yeah,
like that one felt to me almost like that they ran out of like like
actual challenging ways to make this harder. See that they're just gonna layer some
bullshit on. But like at the same time, I think the most fun
I've had that game so far was the time when I was trying, like
at the gatling gun guy, like he was shooting down at me. It's
where he first starts shooting at you, right, and you've gotta behind this
stone. You can fall off one level and then fall down two levels.
One time I fell down one level and was exploring around there. I fucked
up and died. Respawn did it again, ran out fall down, I
fell down both levels and died from the fall damage. I was like,
well, shit, I need to be more careful, and I did it
again, fucked up, fell down both levels, but I stayed alive,
was managed to heal and get out of there, and then the other hunter
guy that's down there whatever started chasing me, and it's set off this like
I'm just fucking on the run getting away from this thing because I need to
heal. And then in this area and I'm just like, I'm not even
sure how I fucking got here because I ran away, and it's like,
well, I'll probably die, but I might as well explore and fucking just
run around and see what the fuck is here. So it just became me
just super loose, just running around killing shit, it something because it didn't
matter. And then I ended up making it and finding a shortcut, and
then finding the shortcut to get to the blood Star Beast. It was like,
oh, like that feeling of fuck it, I'm just out here going
for it. That was the best thing that's happened to me in that game
so far. And that area I think walks that line a lot more definitely
than the one that we're talking about Lay. Yeah, Like you don't have
that opportunity in that later area. There's not like there's there's a no go
ahead. There's not really exploration in the area we're talking about it like you
need to go here. You eventually get a short cut where you can skip
all that bullshit they're like you have to go through. They're funneling you through
it. It's just a very tight, straight path that you have to run
through, and it's just very painful. And this was right after you know,
you go through another area where all the enemies respond like thirty seconds to
a minute after you kill them, and just constantly keep coming back over like
like there are a few spots that is just like a come on really yeah,
Like I haven't had anything in that game like frustrate me or anything.
It's just been like, well, you know, like this, I just
need to get better at this thing and do it. Yeah, and and
that's that like it when I die, it's it's it's never been just like
god like, it's never been a rage thing. It's just been like,
okay, well, yeah, these two areas I'm talking about, I mean
they're pretty short. But while you're there, like it's it's, it's,
it leans way more forward frustrating than like a rewarding kind of challenge. And
it's a trial and error kind of situation because you don't know where the ship's
coming from, Like in the situation that Jeff was talking about that gatling gun
guy, you know exactly where exactly right. I like that, okay,
but but in this situation, when it is a trial and error, then
there's the forty five second load time and I gotta go farm from where.
It sounds like they're going to patch that maybe down to like thirty or something.
Yes, they did say, they did confirm that patch is coming.
Oh, by the end of the month, they say, which is,
uh, probably what about five weeks after release? Yeah, I guess so
probably the critical mass of people who are going to play through that game have
already finished it once or twice by then. Uh. It's a shame that
YE get that stuff into release. But they sold over a million copies they
announced that as well. That's good, which is a pretty big benchmark for
that series, because I think, what's what's which series Souls games? Okay,
I mean, come on, come on, they're all the same game,
but you know, like the other you know, I think Dark Souls
did like two million and change, like its entire lifespan or something like that.
I think like Demon Souls didn't even break a million. It's amazing what
happens when you put out a game on a console that needs games. Yeah,
people go buy it whether they want. You know, it's also people
coming over to this thing, though, you know, it's not just that.
I wonder, Yeah, I wonder. I mean I guess like that's
you know, that's kind of the boat that I'm in to some extent.
You know, it's not like the reputation of these games is not known at
this point. Yeah, but I feel like the like the thing that I
feel like I uncover more and more of is that the reputation of that these
games is completely deceptive, I mean valid or not though it's what people think
they are. So like, if that's enough to put people off of trying
them, then it's you know, that's clearly not having an effect. If
they sold a million copies in the first like you know, three weeks or
whatever, maybe they shouldn't have called it fucking that shouldn't Maybe they should not
have been all prepared to die at that point in the past, because like
they've been selling it as this fucking edgy man just games fucked up man,
Fuck you dude, prepared to die? Dick like that shit's stupid. You
should play more of the game. Yeah, I mean, I'm probably chip
awayed here and there. I'm curious to hear how you where you fall on
that late game stuff. I don't know, there's not that much of it,
but when it happens, it's like, I come on, you're come
on, game, You're better than this. Yeah, it just sounds like
a bad part of the game, Like it doesn't you know, And they've
always had that to some extent, you know, like there's plenty of spots
and you know, this game hasn't two where it's like, oh, you
get poisoned just by standing on this floor stuff like that. You know,
like it's just kind of annoying things that you have to deal with. But
those games are full of bullshit. That's kind of the name of the game.
Uh, more bullshit and blood born. Yeah, it's true, more
than than the previous games, I think, so, yeah, you think
so. I think there's more cheap shit going on Yeah, blood Born.
Yeah, cheap. Cheap is a good word for those two spots in particular,
even though they're short, Like they're not fun anything else major anybody's been
playing, I'll do a quick rundown, Okay, played uh Pull Nation FX,
I restarted Mario three D Land, I played the PlayStation plus three games
Tower of Guns and the Never loane Eskimo game that's kind of like Limbo,
and also spent an afternoon playing through The Fast and the Furious thing, which
I actually liked a lot. I thought it was really cool. I want
to mess with three DC isn't don't think it's a standalone thing that was only
three until the ten how much I don't know how to cross now, dude,
Yeah, it's it's great. It was a good, like three or
four hours as someone who like, never bought for It's the horizon, Like
I just kind of watched you and the thick looks and everything. It's a
great introduction to the way those games work. Looks good, plays good.
It's just a easy that was an achieving points if you care about that stuff.
But now I was just totally in the mood for a racing game and
didn't even know it downloaded it for free, and yeah, I spent three
or four hours playing it. Does it have like as a smooth, like
trunk aided kind of progression cycle, like to totally feel like you're going from
zero to one hundred by the time you it's basically you're like collecting these ten
cars, which I haven't seen Fast seven, but I've seen in the trailer
when they're all coming out of this cargo plane, and it seems like it's
almost like a prequel to that, like you're collecting all these cars and like
it ends with a cargo plane thing. Yeah, it's I mean, there's
nothing crazy about it. I mean it doesn't like show a bunch of like
clips from the film. There's no voice acting except for a ludicrous ludicrous is
you're like narrator guy. Yeah, yeah, no, totally great. Even
if it's ten bucks, I think it's totally worth it. Considering it was
free, I was even more impressed by it. Sounds awesome, So make
you want to go back and play Horizons? Who know? Actually, yeah,
it's a super effective way to to get people to want to play that
because at the end it actually just straight up links you to like, hey,
thanks for playing Fast and Furious. Do you want to buy portsa like
hearing buy the digital version, you can buy the Digital Deluxe, And I
did actually consider buying it for a second, Like I wonder that going from
I mean, that's like mostly like American muscle cars and stuff, right,
but isn't not not not completely No, there's like a Supras and stuff,
like it's Fast and Furious thing like there's there's there are iconic American muscle cars
as part of that franchise, but it's not so yeah, you're getting like
Chargers, but then you'll get a McLaren and the like because because Horizons,
who was very European, yeah, influenced straight Yeah, there's a lot of
that in this too, all right, but it still has the cars.
I mean you know, the cars come from all over in that game,
all right. That's cool. Yeah, it's nice to hear that things.
It's nice when an advert game also it turns out to be like worthwhile.
Yeah, one of the best examples that I've seen for sure. I guess
that's uh, that's cool. I still haven't seen that movie either. It
wants to fucking go to a movie theater. Yeah, I'm kind of with
you, Phil, Like it's like maybe once a year for me at this
point. Wow, yeah, that's about on average. Like when it comes
to actually like visiting a movie theater and sing a movie, it's probably one
per year. Yeah, yeah, you know, I got a big TV
in a blue right player. Totally like the experience of like being close to
this big ass fucking TV with this good sound system and the only asshole there
is me. I was gonna say, if you live in a house and
you don't have to ride your volume, yeah, control because whatever sounds even
better, Like yeah, why you know they need to they need to eliminate
movie theaters and just put this ship out on discs. Maybe I'm not ready
for that time a while. It's fun sometimes I don't know, it's sometimes
it feels like a lot of effort or you know, it's very time consuming.
Yeah, it's got the kind that the price doesn't make sense a lot
of times, Like you know, the cost to then own the movie later
versus price of movie tickets, you know, like that's yeah, but you
know, plus you know you factor in like length of the movie plus time
to get there and get home and blah blah blah, and like all of
a sudden, you don't even have time to do that on a weeknight.
I will grant you that I don't have D box seats in my house,
So there's why not. It could be because they're super fucking expense. Can
you actually get them from the home. They're super fucking the home D box
experience? Wait, how do you get D box movies? There's like,
I'm not I'm sure regular blue radiers don't have the D Box. Yeah,
I don't think they do, but I want to say that, like D
box will send you the motion code for movies, and I actually I actually
don't know. I actually don't know what the process of that'sulous of d Box
in the home really is. I can't know how to do this. Now,
the seats move, that's fucking great. See some speakers on them too.
Seems like a missed opportunity. Yeah, I'd be a little weird.
They're like vibration in the seat. Yeah, they can lean, they can
lean, they can shake. You know, they'll kind of shimmy. They'll
still shake and shimmy entertainment and and you know, someone we've talked about it
before, but like, you know, someone has to watch the movie and
then figure out how to make the seats move and accordant, you know,
with the actions. So it was the last Fast and Furious movie, I
think where they you know, were in Rio and as the you know,
the big statue and there's a helicopter shot of it kind of panning around the
statue and then the seat waves in kind of like a full one eighty kind
of or around the back to the helicopter to simulate the panning around the statue.
Where is this, I've never even heard of it. It's a select
it's actually, I mean, if you want, like if you have a
fucking theater like this in your area, it's a nice trick to get good
seats for a movie because you have to reserve those seats specifically and then you
pick like I want the ones in the middle, and then you get you
know, like good seats for a movie on top of that. So that's
actually like a good way if you're especially if it's like opening weekend for a
movie, it is probably gonna be close to sold out, Like you can
just usually get in there and just reserve those d box seats that that's always
been a it's a hot life hack, ye for going to the movies,
lashed a minute movie trips, nice movie hacke. Yeah, they had like
a VIP like a seating area they didn't have I don't know if they had
the D box stuff in there, but it's like you'd you pay like a
dollar or two extra and you get these really nice reclining leather seats. They
bring food to you. There's a full bar right to your left, and
it's like, damn this this is the way to do it. I like
that the food and bar thing is becoming more and more prevalent in movie theaters.
Yeah. Yeah, there's the end of studio movie grill shit like that,
which is great for families to want people fucking clinking around plates and fucking
drup dropping drinks like yeah, I've dropped a fucking empty beer bottle and movie
theater before, and let me tell you it's fucking loud, loud. But
a lot of those places plastic bottles. Well, I mean I'm not buying
the ones that they're selling them. Yeah, by oh, they just don't
have big enough bottles. Uh. Yeah, I appreciate a good like art
house movie theater that'll serve like in a beer and shoul like an Alamo Drafthouse
or something's gonna be one here in San Francisco for real ship Yes, okay,
yeah, I just like you, especially when it comes to like smaller
movies like that, those the ones that are often day and date digital releases
too. So it's just one of those things like, oh, you know,
I'm just gonna just get this and wash it at home. Yeah.
I have beer here too, as it turns out, and I don't want
to wear pants. It's all yeah, now you're talking. Yeah, you
can drop bottles all day at home physically. Who's the funa. You find
me a movie theater where you don't have to wear pants and maybe we'll talk.
All right, I can name one. But they tore down. Oh
boy? Uh, how about we discuss some news. Sure, now,
let's move on to the headlines of the day. Guys. Catch the hubbub
last week coming out of the ESA. I hate a hubbub. Yeah,
I'm just kidding. I love a gud How about a ballet? Who?
Yeah, Valley was okay, more of a hubbub kind of guy had some
kind of fiasco. Oh yeah, talk okay, this definitely has the making
of a fiasco. Ruff Uh. This definitely. Yes, this slopper knocker.
Yeah. No, I just learned recently that I have been pronouncing the
word kurfuffle with an extra L for years. You've been saying kurf fluffle.
Yes, oh no, is that just me? Since you you automatically knew
how I was mispronouncing. No, it's just it's just fun. It's a
calm. Okay, I think it's I still think it sounds better like,
yeah, that's fine. You got the word fluff right there, because the
kurf fluffle implies something fluff like, right, I think saying words wrong.
It's fun. Yeah, as long as you do it knowingly, sure,
lean into it, then it's okay. Well John Kim, yep, that's
not fun. Yes. So so last week John Kim filed a brief with
so. So this all revolves around the DMCA Digitalmullium Copyright Act. Awesome Yeah
things sure, cool, so great number of things it does, so so
buckle up. So the I believe this originated with the EF, the Electronic
Frontier Foundation. You know they fight for electronic liberty. Yeah, they did
that song unbelievable, Yes, and they certainly did. But they basically were
petitioning a change to the DMCA to get around some kind of you know,
pretty broad anti piracy measures in the interest of resurrecting games that don't function on
their own anymore, specifically like games that have to contact some kind of server
that no longer exists and stuff like that. Uh. And basically the EESA,
which is the you know, the industry association, the thing that publishers
entertainment software associations, Yeah and not they put on E three. Yes,
but they're you know, they're let's let's face it here, they're more of
an industry advocacy group than a consumer group, yep. Or they're not at
all a consumer group. Yes they are. They are not, which probably
makes it not that surprising that they are fighting this thing tooth and nail.
Yeah, they very broadly are rejecting the idea that you should be able to
hack old games and consoles that don't work on their own anymore to make them
continue to work, right, Uh, you know, citing all the precision
the provisions excuse me in the DMCA that currently stop you from doing any of
that stuff legally. Right. So kind of the rub here is that,
uh, for preservationists like you're basically breaking the law by trying to modify games
that don't function anymore to make them continue working. So like you know,
if you're gonna put games in a museum or something, right, but you've
got you've got Suddenly you've got an illegal display of a game. Hell yeah,
yeah, no, yeah, that that's yeah, that is unfortunate.
Yeah. Uh fucking play Resident Evil Outbreak. God damn it, I'm gonna
do. Oh. I don't think that this needs to cover all such games.
Okay, Oh well, I think in that case, like that one
behind that one is almost like, you know, if you're doing it right,
you're not actually modifying and hacking the game, you're running a private server.
That point, which is I think a separate might could be a separate
situation. I think this might apply more to let's say, like the original
Xbox where Xbox Live is no longer available, and uh, you know,
there would be some games that would only have been available in that fashion,
or or games that only work if those servers are up there. I've actually
done and a shut down mmo, like the Matrix Online right right, I'm
not actually it's private services about that, right? Maybe? I mean it's
it's it's pretty tough for us talk about the stuff because none of us are
lawyers. That's not true. I don't well okay, I'm not a lawyer.
Dan's a lawyer. Okay, lawyer right now? Yet are you where
where? What states are? Are you re representative forty eight of these states?
Okay? Gotcha? I saw some discussions if you remember be net d
Yeah, yeah, that was ago. It was like the homebrew kind of
like Battlenet replacement like that got shot down in court, like Blizzard won that
right, and that was an external thing that was not as far as I
know, that was not modifying the clause of reverse engineering of like you'd have
to modify the client such that it would know to point at that server that
but that's something that you could do with a proxy, right, It's not
necessarily something where you're modifying the game itself. Right. So the point the
point is that businesses have fought very broadly against any such modifications. Yeah,
I mean either end in some on some cases it's like, you know,
they don't want you to be able to play that game for free forever.
What if they want to reissue, let's sell it to you all over at
least fucking remasters and everything else that comes out, like you know, like
Nintendo selling virtual console games, like all this stuff like game preservation flies in
the very face of all the fucking rereleases and shit that everyone is doing these
days, right, uh, and that sucks. We don't want you to
mess with this old thing because just on the off chance that we might want
to sell it to you again late exactly. Yeah, it's not enough that
they're you know, like it's enough that they would want to theoretically be able
to do that, right. I feel like even if they have no intention
of ever ever ever doing that, Yeah, they want to like reserve the
right to do so. Yes. I feel like it's kind of the same
thing as as like, you know, when when like Disney came in and
bought Lucasfilm and then people were saying, like, oh, what if like
Tim Schaefer went and bought back Full Throttle and Grim Fandango or something. It's
like it's the same situation of like a mega corporation like Disney is never going
to do anything with Full Throttle, but it's also not worth it to them
to sell that off because they just in case, yeah, it's better for
them to own the rights to that, except that they I mean, isn't
that one of the games they're doing. They didn't, they never announced full
throttle. They did Grim Fantego, but the gram they announced this, that
are they doing Day of the Tentacle. But but again they they they provision
people to do those things. They don't sell it off whole exactly. Yes,
Like big corporations always want to have everything they possibly can, yeah,
even if they're not actually gonna do anything with it, especially Disney as it
turns out, and they're pretty good at keeping stuff, yeah, and then
very carefully letting it out for people right at a time of their choosing.
That's that's exactly what all of this is about. But it kind of I
feel like all of this sort of just ignores the issue of like, hey,
you pay for these products back in the day and now they don't work
in more and like, is there any legal precedent around that at all?
I think it's one of those things where it's the boilerplate stuff that no one
reads. The end user license agreement sells software as a service, not as
a product that is guaranteed to work forever. That sucks, and that's yeah,
it does and it's one of those things that I look at it now
and go, like, you know, it would be really great if like
there were legal ways to actually go about doing this stuff. And I suspect
like it'll eventually have to happen, but if it doesn't, you'll be able
to get that stuff anyway. That stuff you know that the Internet is what
it is, right, I mean you know, like if you look at
emulation, you look at you know, the stuff that's been reverse engineered,
and you know it's like the stuff that gets traded around online along those lines.
If you look at you know, like the ability to run a custom
server for fucking Fantasy Star online for the Dreamcast, you know, like people
find a way. I mean, you're not wrong, and like you can.
You'd be tricky to use it in a museum. That's tricky to use
it, you know, in academia, you know, because it is technically
because that stuff would still technically be illegal. File to formalize the stuff by
like adding it to the Library of Congress or something like that's not going to
happen as long as these these regulations are in place. But like, you
know, fuck the Library Congress, Like I don't give a fuck that shit
is out there. Fuck you. I'll build my own library congress of fucking
old ass games that still miraculously work, because fuck you. It kind i'll
kind of always has to exist on the fringe of the Internet as long as
stuff is in place, you know, like and it's like archive dot org
posted all those doss games and I was looking at it and going like,
what the fuck are these people doing because they have like n sixty four ROMs
there and stuff like That's they have huge, full collections of these games.
You're just like, uh really yeah, like that seems like Nintendo. I
mean, especially when Pokemon stuff started getting out there and super popular, Nintendo
was cracking down on ROM sides fucking left and right through the nineties, sure,
because they were just like, here's fucking how to hack Pokemon ship and
then put it on a flash cart. Like they were still dealing with the
physical piracy and you know, repro carts and stuff like that that were coming
out of you know, Hong Kong and stuff like that, like they were
they were suing Bung remember Bung I do. Let's not saying anymore about it.
Yeah, yeah, you're not wrong. I mean, you'll be able
to get this stuff pretty much in perpetuity. It would just be nice to
know that you're not breaking any standing laws when totally yeah, I mean it's
it's yeah. And but it's like they never made an exemption for like ripping
DVDs, right, I don't think so. No, yeah, you know,
and it's like, weird, that's not a problem. Yeah. I
think the it's one of those things where I think the government will either eventually
catch up or it'll just become so widespread that no one's going to actually maybe
you're able to chase it down anymore. I think with the DVD and blue
ray stuff, it was the legal hang up was the breaking of encryption,
right, It was not the reproducing it for a for like a personal backup
or something. I think so yeah, because because you know, way back
when used to be able to like, you know, back up becausette tape
once or something. What whatever the law over the law, you can make
one personal backup or whatever I can. I can. I can basically read
one line from this arts technical story and some the whole thing up. Let's
hear it. While the EFF wants a games online infrastructure to be considered abandoned,
six months after centralized servers you're taken offline. The ESA argues that such
games are still under copyright and may still have a legitimate commercial life going forward.
You may have may have Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean it's
of course, like you know, you you of course they would represent that
position. Yeah, the same way back when fucking SOAPO was going around,
like you look at the companies that we're supporting that You're like, oh,
of course their their corporate interests very much aligned with like not giving consumers freedom
to do this shit. Yep. So like, yeah, it sucks,
but it's the ESA. So yeah, I was gonna say, if anything,
it really drives home the point that you know, the ESA is,
like you said, it's very aligned with the interests of its corporate members and
is effectively kind of the video game equivalent of you know, the MPa,
the recording industry and most picture industry. Yeah, groups, the equivalent groups,
and and it's one of those situations where I'm sure there are plenty of
people, plenty of game creators that don't agree that that stuff should be as
locked down and would probably speak out. I think that's you know, like
the members of that organization to effect change, have to step out and go
like, hey, this actually doesn't represent us the way we want to be
represented. This needs to change. The question is, are the people who
have those opinions in positions of power significant, you know, sufficient sort of
the rub I guess, actually get out there and say that publicly. Yeah,
uh, yeah, that's unfortunate. H And I guess I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know what the like the next step is
for the stuff. I don't know if I actually believe there is a hearing.
Yeah, I mean it makes sense that, yes, they would have
that here in the position, but it's this all ask still has to lead
to some kind of actual court thing here. It is the Yeah, the
US Copyright Office is going to be holding public hearings May nineteen through twenty first
in DC and Los Angeles on these exemptions. So it's not it's not a
settled issue at all, Right, it's just the essay coming out and kind
of doing what they predictably would do. Yeah, it's it's what they assume
or I guess what they know that the companies that are part of the organization
would want. Yeah, I suppose, but I guess you'd have to ask
all the individual companies what they think about. Oh, you know, they're
business people and all those companies, they're totally for this fucking lock it down
internet hackers hack on our video games. Yeah, so the newdy people in
them, Nah, stay tuned, we'll see what happens. We proved to
be incredibly clairvoyant last week and predicting the announcement of a new X game because
that got announced. Oh right. In fact, I think that I think
that leaked a matter of hours after the podcast went up. Yeah, uh
DSX mankind divided faces a Foley. Finally all Merge its one game, not
a whole lot announced for this. I mean, there's a little kind of
a short two paragraph summary, but they did not indicate even what year it
coming out. I would kind of assume it'll be this year, but they
didn't say that. I'm gonna go ahead and assume it'll be next year because
two Raiders out this year. Yeah, you're probably right. I just why
announce it now right before E three when I guess maybe they'll show it at
E three, But I don't know. Maybe I'm still thinking in the kind
of the classical marketing mentality for video games is announced like somewhere around six months
before ship right, I don't unless it's something crazy like Destiny or Skyrim and
you can get Everyone thinks everything is Destiny or sky Rim or this huge thing
and they think they can get away with it. So everyone tries to make
their announcement the huge deal in the world. And then you're like, it's
it's of course you're making a day Sex sequel, Like you said that,
you said as much a long time ago. Yeah, but great, they
should fucking make this game. Tell yeah, Adam Jensen is back. Yeah,
motherfucker's that game is all right? I mean to read the thing,
is it just say Adam Jensen is back, motherfucker? It does mention Adam
Jensen doesn't quite say it in such a charged language. Takes place in twenty
twenty nine, two years at the events of the Last Game and the infamous
aug incident. Oh yeah, is that ring any bells? I don't know,
man. That resulted in the death of millions the hands of those who
had installed augmentations, so that that's them choosing and ending as canon. This
is basically, oh was that a player choice thing? I think I'd ever
finished that game. So they're going the game ended with you like walking up
two machines and flipping switches based on which ending you want. I pressed press
press this button for good ending basically, and then run around the corner to
get the weird secret ending. It sounds like they're going with full on cyborgs
versus normis though, right. Yeah, from the sound of this, Yeah,
just like Google glass. Yep. This event has created a huge divide
between those who have augmentations and those who do not cyborgs or people to let
me wear these fucking Google glasses into the bathroom. There's mention of various factions
looking to nepia the public by twisting public opinion of augmentation like Google for example.
Man kind of divide. It also continues the story of Adam Jensen,
former biotech company security chief, turns super augmented anti terrorist agents. Uh.
Yeah, it's all you know. There's not a lot of hard information in
here. Yeah. They put out a trailer and some screenshots. It looks
like more DSX fucking a. It still looks pretty black and gold. Yeah
for the most part. Uh. There's a shot going around of like crisis
style holding your gun up and like you know, manipulating a bunch of like
attachment points on the gun. Is that new? Was it? Some of
the specifics surrounding das X the previous game have eluded me escape it has been
a while, it's like twenty eleven. It's just I was wondering if that
MENTHOS was gonna be more of a shooter, because I know that previous game
did let you go pretty much full stealth if you wanted to, Yeah,
you go either way. I assume that this. I would assume that this
would go with the same route. But hey, obviously I really liked that
that last game. Yeah, the bosses were you know, obviously it was.
It was. I'll say it was shockingly well received for how reverend a
lot of people are for DA SX. Yeah, it seemed like the kind
of franchise that people would be time to hate. So I'm curious to go
back to it because I've never played any Day a Sex game. But I
heard that the boss fights originally were pretty rough. But I think for the
we U one and then that director's cut that came out later, right,
I think that has all of the rewards those changes. I haven't heard if
it was like you know, drastically improved or anything like that. But it's
one of those alpha protocol situations where if you spect certain ways, the bosses
were fucked. Oh so I want to say that they and then like,
you know, there was a lot of people digging into kind of post mortem
stuff and they're like, oh, the boss fights were designed by this different
company, No wonder there's ship you know. It's like and it's just like
that's irrelevant ultimately, but it was something that the people got very into talking
about back when that game was originally released. Does it seem like a standalone
thing, Like I don't need to go back and play one and two?
Okay, okay, you never played anything? No, not even the last
one? No, No, that's the one I'm thinking about going back to.
Is that director's cut on PC one sounds like it holds up pretty well,
but it is very much like an old school PC game. Yeah,
like you. I mean, I'm not saying don't go back to those,
but I'm saying, like, for the purposes of like whatever you want to
know about Adam Jensen's next adventure, just play the last one. Like day
sex, one and two don't necessarily factor into that absolutely the case from my
understanding. Uh, hey, Jeff, hello, Tony Hawk five fucking a
Tony Hawk five. A caterer might might be the name of the next even
though they're saying it's not. It might be the name of the next Tony
Hawk. That's that someone made the joke. I wish I could credit it
properly, but someone made the joke of Tony Hawk's pro caterer. And it's
pretty good. That's pretty fantastic. I mean you saw the full shot,
Like they're setting up a bunch of banquet tables in a in a skateboard and
a half pipe. Yeah, there's a half five bunch of banquet tables.
A chef took a photo posted on Instagram of him going like I'm catering for
Tony Hawk, and in the background on a projector was a logo that she
said Tony Hawk five. Yes, uh and I mean whatever you know.
Tony Hawk has said Activision has backed up there's a new Tony Hawk game in
the works. He has said it is something that fans of pro skater will
likely appreciate and not much more so. Like the details around Hey there's a
new game are already totally out there. But if they call it Tony Hawks
pro Skater five, that's the most baddest assets. Shit, it's pretty fucking
every in the world, pretty audacious. He said the same thing with Sonic
four. Yeah I did. I probably actually did. I mean it still
holds like that, that tactic still holds up if you want to, if
you want to just make a big splash and say, like we're making the
next one of those games. Super Mario Brothers four would do the same thing.
Yeah, I'm all for it. Contra four Yeah yeah, uh,
never mind, you know, quality of the actual final games, but the
contract for for the SNST they called it Contra four in Japan, and they
did they I'm not sure, wait you're talking about I want to say,
or was that hardcore? Just never? There was no fourth Contra on the
Supernios, was there? Okay? Well, what was the I mean,
the first one that came out Alien Wars it was three? Okay, that
was three? Okay, okay, okay, got it. I have my
timeline is all off. Anyway, I know what you're saying. They made
a lot of other Yeah, yes, they made a lot of other Tony
Hawk games. None of them were called Tony Hawk First Gate or five.
Yeah, I mean I like thug, Like, don't get me wrong,
like that was a cool game. Although this is a little weird because weren't
some of the games actually like like, isn't Project eight actually the eighth is
the eighth game? Like they were trying to in there in a few cases.
I think it's just in that case. So in that sense, this
is a little weird. But but yeah, like so that logo was the
wallpaper on the PC they were using, oh yeah, yeah, and okay,
looked pretty stylized, Like the logo was fairly stylized, like there was
some design work put into that. It's not just looked like the fast and
the fairiest logo kind kind of but you know, you know, Activision came
out and said, you know, it's a working title, not the final
title. But what if it's the final title, you don't make that,
I mean, like like why would you make that just a working title because
your working title would be Tony Hawk twenty fifteen or the next you know,
and then you need something like regardless, like what it represents is exciting as
a working title as a final title. If they are approaching this game with
the concepts of let's make the next game like those games. Then good,
great, that is what they should do. And I don't know if that
will actually work. I don't know if enough people want that to matter.
I don't know if that game, like a game in those styles, is
something that people want enough of these days to matter. But fuck it,
man, let's do it. I mean they tried to remake the original.
Yeah do that I think was a mess. And the potentially like scary thing
is that, like if those guys are doing this, so I don't think.
I don't think we know who's developing this yet. It might just be
a robomoto they did. They did the ones with the board too, yeah,
and the remake they did a ride Shred and HD. I don't know
if they did Downhill Jam No Toys for Bob to Downright Hot a Hot pre
Skylanders Jam Star Control. Yeah. Yeah, Well, this thing is a
guaranteed D three announcement, right has to be totally yea at this point.
Yeah, so I guess we'll find out soon. But like that whole scene
though, that photo just weirded me out so much, Like can you think
of a grungier like more down in dirty sports than skateboarding, like to make
your name in skateboarding, and then like here's this thing, like now that
you're the elder statesman of the sports, Like here's all these tables set up.
It's like it's fucking chardonnay and caviar in the middle of a half pipe.
Like it just feels so incongruous. You don't know what food they were
serving. But he was kind of fancy ship followers on Instagram. It looks
very fancy. Uh yeah, you know whatever. Everybody grows up at some
point, I guess, you know whatever, Tony Hawks. I'm sure he
has a foundation that he does and all sorts of other weird businesses. It
was. It was a weird It was set up in on a half pipe.
Maybe he just came in a directed place. Yeah, he just came
in fucking wasted and went and then pooped and smeared it on his face.
Gg Allen stays and then you know, rubbed that on the table. That's
the Tony Hawk. I know, wait, it's not. That's never been
to Hawk. You know. Like Tony Hawk's Twitter profile is like you list
all this stuff and at the end of it it just says, yeah,
I get it, I'm old or you know, something along those lines like
yeah, you can stop, I got it. Yeah, I guess what
I grew up. That's great, Like, hey, that's great. Yeah,
I'm still doing skateboard and guess what, Like everyone can suck you suh.
Well we'll find out an the three wait till he three. Yeah,
we'll see you D three. But Activision's obviously no stranger to resurrecting old stuff.
Yeah, I mean they're doing a Destiny follow up. Yeah, I
was talking about the new guitar here. Oh right that we played, Yes,
the new guitar. He over that. I thought you were talking about
the Destiny DALC and that's all right. That's kind of a sick burn,
but okay, well we'll get to that later. Guitar Hero Live, Jeff,
Yes, we played it. We did. I would to see it.
We did. They can't year ago, showed it off and then they
announced it today. Yeah, they're making a new guitar Hero are obviously duh.
But they announced the new Guitar Hero and showed it to us, and
I actually was pretty surprised. Yeah, especially having heard a little bit about
it going in, Like we had the stuff about like oh it's all FMV
now and stuff had gotten back to us. Yeah, on the way over
there, and you're just like I was like, there is no way that
anything about this sounds interesting or good. Yeah, But then it kind of
made a better first impression I think than definitely expected. I came away from
it going like, Okay, I get it, like this is cool,
like but for me, like, it's all about the guitar itself. So
they're making a new guitar six buttons. Yeah, that's six buttons. I
think i'd saw like three up on top. Three, So it's three frets
as opposed to the kind of forward that they started with. Or wait,
there's always five from the beginning, right yeah, yeah, yeah, that's
right. Was a guitar freeks was three right right? Right? So yeah,
so they're down to they're down to three frets from the five that they
launched with. But now they're split into top and bottom, so white and
black, yeah, sides of the of the fret board. So and so
each note has an up or a down indication, yes, but sometimes it
can be both and you have to go across. So it's like you can
kind of create like the shapes you make with your left hand feel slightly more
guitari. Absolutely, that sounds really cool. Yeah, I like that idea.
I kind of wonder why they didn't just go all the way and stick
with the five frets and just split them all. It's not like you have
to use all those and you know, if you're gonna do easy mode,
you can constrain it to the first three or something like that. Yeah,
it's yeah, maybe they just want to ease people into it and not have
people that like let's say you play the ship out of Guitar Hero and you
played it on Expert, and then you just get the new one and you
hop right into Expert and then there's ten buttons you're working with. Yeah,
but again, but again, they don't have to make you use all those
up front, you know, but now they don't have the option of making
it harder or more technical later. I don't know, like it. I
feel like I was playing it on the second highest difficulty, I guess.
Yeah, I tried that one one up from normal, and like, you
know, stuff that I could, you know, I could site read it
on normal and play it just fine. Like the guitar felt pretty intuitive for
the most part, Like it was definitely like a learning like Okay, this
is this and this is this, but then you bump it up and then
all of a sudden it's like, okay, I need to hit bottom,
you know, like a white on fret two, black on fret three,
And then then that's suddenly like a very different thing, and that's kind of
hard to do. It is hard that the thing I ran into is I
had trouble remembering which side was the white side on which side was the black
side. But it's like the guitar picks point up for the ones that are
on the top end and down for the ones that are on the bottom end,
so it's like another another decent indicator of what the fuck you're supposed to
hit. It's just it seems like such a seemingly minor change to have that
guitar said up, but it seems like would have a major impact. It's
it's the thing that makes it feel okay that they're doing this at all,
because if it was just the same guitar with that game, it'd be just
like, all right, fucking who cares because it's just guitar. There's no
full band, uh, and is there even two players? I want to
say that. They did say yeah, and it's set up in a way
where the additional song model is going to be really weird, and they weren't
really talking too much about that. So yeah, it's an FMV game.
So there's like two sections of it. There's Guitar Hero Live, which is
you're kind of solo offline experience or I guess you play it two player.
I guess, I'm not sure. And then there's Guitar Hero TV, which
is the online and for you explain all this. So the songs that are
in Guitar Hero Live the background is a first person shot of what the guitarist
for that band would be seeing as they play a live show, and they've
tried to mix the audio in a way that they've shot themselves, shot themselves
with not the real bands. That actually would have been better that they have
assembled a bunch of fake bands that are kind of funny and sort of ridiculous.
Actually, I bet that would have gotten worse facial performances out of real
bands. These from yea, the actors they're the or I guess they're actual
real musicians, right, I guess, I guess, but slash actors or
whatever. Yeah, yeah, but I want to see the real Keith Richards
up there looking at you when you're like, well, is he the lead
guitarist for the Stones? Yeah? Yeah, then you would never see Keith
because you are you are Keith. That sounds even better game where I play
is Keith. So we'll get to that in a minute. But the people
that they have in these fake bands really mug for the camera, like very
very exactly. I think they kind of have to. Like it's It's actually
been interesting watching people react to gameplay footage because they look at it and go,
man, fuck this this is terrible. Who would look at this band
looks awful? And I think like they're forgetting that, Like when you're playing
the game, you're staring at the notes and like the background, and this
is like they have to do these shitty, exaggerated gestures because you're not looking
directly at them most of the time. So I think it works in that
context. It's a little weird. That said, the third time that they
ran the Fallout Boy song, like, I think by the time you got
out there and played it, yeah, I was already tired of that intro
of like walking through backstage up. Yeah, it was like a whole like
good luck, like you know, kind of like the kind of ten twenty
second preamble before every song is just going to be the exact same every single
time. They're like groupies that are eyeing you up. Oh yeah, yeah
absolutely. They really lean into the like shitty, over the top rock star
experience like it's yeah, like any gleeful way, and I think might actually
be pretty good. It kind is. Yeah. So the crazy thing about
this stuff, it's like whatever they shot video, who cares. But like,
the the interesting thing about it is they shot each video twice, one
with the crowd and band psyched because you're playing well, and then one with
them like looking at you like fucking come on, you're playing like shit,
asshole. Oh wow, okay, and they moke. So they I guess
that we talk to them about it, like they you know, they ran
through their process. It's actually super crazy, like wait, like almost kind
of overkill for the thing that they're making. I mean they have they had
emotion control camera on the stage. Yeah, so it replicates the exactly they
mo capps camera movements with the band on a fake green screen stage or whatever
in their studio and then went out and did it for real. So they
have a robot that makes all the camera movements because they needed to be precise
for both runs because it's framed by frame accurate movement. So when it transitions
from the stoked to bummed crowd and stuff like that, it's a blur effect
ages as well. Yeah, and then you never see the camera jolt or
or move into a different position because they don't line up like the camera is
a frame by frame lined up. I would think that they would just like
pan out to the crowd or something, you know, just do like a
blur cut they do. They do some kind of whip pans around. It's
it's a it is a blur when it does do the transition like it's it's
it's a noticeable kind of fade, blurry fade from the two between the two
video because it's still it's still like a reasonably effective it is, like it's
kind of surprising to see it in action. Yeah, and I think that's
pretty cool. It also means that they can't really song DLC every week and
use that format, true, because like they were describing that process as fucking
intense, and it sounds like it was fucking crazy. It sounded like it
was like a like a I don't know if they said multi day shoot for
every song, but it was like a lot of the implication there, I
think was that they were working like eighty hour work weeks. I'm getting these
videos shot right for this thing. It sounded very expensive, So what does
that mean for DLC? Though, that's what the Guitar Hero TV is,
where the background will be the music video for the song. Okay, all
right, so that's it's a cost effective way, I think, And I
think, actually, I think changing the visual style of it, I think
it's fine because like, who the fuck like cares about the dumb characters they
made up for Guitar Hero. Yeah, you know, Judy Nails, wasn't
that Star Slayer? Like wouldn't she based off of like some real life I
think anyway, she's a nice C's nice. I like her anyway, Like,
yeah, so, like transitioning away from their goofy like mythos and stuff,
I think it makes sense at this point. I don't know, Warriors
of Rock really advanced the lore. I thought, Yeah, I guess,
yeah, you know, we left this hanging in a lot of ways.
You know, we need to kind of wrap some of those things up.
So Guitar Hero TV, they weren't really talking about the business model aspect of
it, but it is sort of a twenty four hour channel based system where
you will join a channel and be fed songs, so you don't buy them
individually. So I don't know, I'm gonna say probably not or maybe there
will be an option. So there's also an on demand library where you can
go select those songs and play them. And they wouldn't necessarily pin down like
what the model was. They just kind of said, like, all players
of Guitar Hero Live will be able to play these two channels of songs,
okay, and so it's like, okay, then our additional channels subscription based.
Is there some kind of free to play at least there's like a coin
energy system, you know, like am I watching ads to play more songs?
Am I signing up for a monthly service. Am I buying black access
on a per channel basis? Like that's all stuff they said they were hanging
on two free, three Okay. This is a super interesting though, Yeah,
and so like multiple players will be able to get in there, and
then you'll just see, you know, the names of you know, the
leaderboard stuff will shift around based on who's playing the song the best at that
moment, and you can kind of just jump in, jump out, jump
into the channel, start playing, stick around there for as long as you
want to, and then bounce and kind of go that way with it.
I thought that stuff seems potentially really cool, and it probably solves the problem
of like, you know, what do they do for for DLC, for
add ons, for that sort of stuff exactly. The Yeah, I feel
like the tech and the techniques that they're employing here generally kind of impressive.
I think for me it comes down to like, do they go get them
aster tracks and have the guitar line stop playing when you stop playing I want
the streaming stuff? Or do they just play the music video and you don't
really have any real feedback? Yeah, that would be kind of unfortunate.
Yeah, Like that's the kind of make or break thing for that stuff for
me. For some big I have about this thing is that the everything they
showed in terms of song line up in this thing skewed incredibly modern. So
they have everything announced a handful of artists, Okay, because we only had
three in our demo. What was it was like Fallout, Fat Boy,
Black Keys, and Killers, Yeah, which is all like from the last
like ten years. That's like a larger problem. I think, like you
know, you look at like rock band, I think they can probably safe
face a similar problem with like, you know, do enough people give a
shit about guitar based music in this day and age? I mean for that
to work, even if even if you treat this largely as a nostalgia piece,
like a lot of the most iconic guitar risks of all time are from
like the seventies and eighties, you know, like you need you need a
lot of that stuff in there, So you're one kind of throwback act in
the announced artist is the Rolling Stones? Yeah? Really? What else?
Can you read all? Some of the others? I can The Black Keys,
fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Gary Clark Jr. Who I
don't know, Green Day Okay, Ed Sheeran, who just that guy?
He can captivate a stadium like he's just popular act. Oh yeah, the
War on Drugs, which is a pretty good band name, The Killers,
scrill X what the Rolling Stone guitar? I mean, I don't know,
I don't know. Scrill X can do anything? See an actual like musician.
Sure he is. He puts out albums, but I mean, does
he like play instruments? He creates songs? Is there a difference? I
don't. I always picture the line is he's a computer an instrument. So
it's like to you like, oh, you know, like that girl talk
guy that just does stuff on laptops. I don't consider him a musician,
no, but well he's he's like creatively mixing up other people's stuff. I
think a creative person an artist in some way. Yes, I don't want
to say musician unless you can play an instrument. Computer is totally an instrument.
More. Yeah, I know, I do not know what I'm talking
about. Let me make that perfect more then, you know, just as
much as guitars and other stuff these days, this is this is all a
lot of semantic wankery. Yeah, the delimin ears, pierced the veil and
blitz kids. So yeah, like it's one of those things where yeah,
you know, like so like like demographically, I don't know who they want.
Well this this this list so far seems to skew. I mean,
I don't don't. It's not even just demographics for me. It's like the
age girls I don't know who the fuck likes, but like the real the
realities of creating a fake Fallout Boy on stage, I feel like are a
lot easier to grapple with than making like a believable faux rolling Stone. But
that's only because you don't know or care what Fallout Boy looks like. No,
I won't, but I have enough of a sense of Fallout Boy that
when I saw the lead singer from behind with his hoodie on, with the
hood up like, it took me a while to realize it wasn't real Fallout
Boy, because it's like, I don't like Fallout Boy, but I've seen
enough of their stuff to know that guy wears hoodies. Whereas if it was
all right, if it was like a Hendrick song, you had more the
disconnect would be more. If they had a Hender I think that's Saving Bowie
or something, and they dressed somebody up like that iconic rock star and put
them up there, I'm just gonna be like, come on, but I
think that's specific to your experience and your your likes and dislike. But again,
like someone who's a huge my Chemical Romance fan is going to see some
fake my Chemical romance up there and go fuck this maybe the same way you
would for maybe, but those but like those fashions are more contemporary, so
they work in a more just want to know if the scrill x fake band
will have someone with scrill x hair, Like did they put that prodcasting?
Like did they just you know, so you're supposed to be a big rock
star, but you're really just in a cover band. And it's so it's
it's and for each song it's a different cover band. So they actually give
those bands names. Yeah, they're all they're they're all like that's that's the
point. Every thing that they shot, they dressed up. They found a
group of people that vaguely sort of look like the band, Like yeah,
in the fashions that those bands, that's what I'm saying. It's like,
wow, I don't know they went to that extent. That's why it took
me a good thirty seconds into that Fallout Boy thing to realize it was real
Fallout Boy, because until you see the guy's face, it's like seeing him
from behind in the side, it's like, oh, that could be him,
Like they are they are attempting to make those bands appear like the real
band, I think, but like only superficially. Yeah, I don't think
they're like, you know, it's not like we need someone who's this type.
I don't think they're going out at all. It's just like, this
isn't fucking emo band. We want a band that looks like they would fit.
There's hair styles and stuff like, and that's I think that's the approach.
It's not like, let's make them look exactly like And I haven't seen
most of these songs, so maybe they go the other with it. But
that's what I was getting at, where if like, you know, it's
like they try to do Bowie or something, and they go out and raid
a bunch of thrift shops to try to find the right fashions to make that
work, and then white duke outfit or something right like at that point,
like, I don't know how you approach that problem. Again, as long
as they're not trying to completely cause play, like you know, like if
it's Stone, it's not gonna be some stoic lead singer guy. They get
some guys that's kind of pranting around, like Jaggary, or maybe maybe they
just don't give a fuck. Maybe they do what they can and just like
yeah, roll with it. Yeah. So like the band that played the
Black Keys song is called Broken Tide, Like they just and they you know,
I'm just gonna the other Like they've got logos for the bands and we
get back together. Oh great, Yeah, broken tis two dudes, Shut
the fuck ups, four people. Look at these tides. Broken Tide needs
little people to make it happen. Yeah. I don't know like that stuff.
Yeah, it's crazy. I don't know I feel about this. Yeah.
So it was. It was a super impressive first demo, and we
as we were walking back from the demo, I was like pretty improudly.
We were both talking about it pretty excitedly. And then it's been one of
those things that as time has gone on, I've thought about it more and
gone back and watched the gameplay videos which we have up on the side if
you haven't seen them, as well as pictures of the guitar and stuff like
that. Uh, looking at the gameplay and looking at the video footage of
these fucking goobers acting like they're in a real band, like the magic is
kind of gone, and I look at and go like these people all like
dipshits. FMB is so seldomly done rights. But again, you're you're even
even like you know, you're not gonna be focusing on it because you're gonna
be looking at the screen. But if it's a thing where it's like the
note, if they're trying to make this another big party thing like Guitario and
rock Band were, like you might frequently be in a room while that's on
the TV and not playing and looking hey, look at these idiots. I
don't think if you're in a party situation, you're probably gonna be in the
other mode seeing music videos anyway, Like this is the flashy kind of like
look at this crazy thing we did. It's almost like the single player career
mode almost exactly. Yeah, which I guess that is by definition less of
a party thing. Yeah yeah. But also if you're in a party situation,
you're gonna be playing the new rock band, So like, yes,
I kind of I kind of want to like state clearly, the only reason
I'm excited about this guitar ero stuff at all is because New Rock Band still
exists, like that full band experience with Character Creator. Yes, yes,
thousands of songs of DLC and like all that stuff is still there for people
who want it. Yeah, so that's kind of the thing, is like
they're you know, it sounds like they're not They're not going to let you
play bass in the new guitar hero even it's just like these it's a guitar,
right, They're going back to the guitar. Like in that context,
I'm glad to see Activision trying something different because if they were just trying to
remake rock band again or go toe to toe with them again, like I
don't want to see that fight again. Yeah, Like I'm glad they're doing
something different, but I'm also very glad Harmonics is like staying the course and
kind of I really want to see what Rock Band four ends up being,
like just visually, just the look of it and all that stuff, like
how how blown out it is, how you know, or if it's if
it feels very small or you know, like like that, I'm really interested
to see what that thing ends up being. At this point, I am
expecting the more no less than a next gen rock band, you know,
like yeah, kind of all the same pillars that held up the last ones,
just that work on new consoles. You know, I wouldn't be surprised
if it was like one fewer pillar and it just didn't really have a career
mode the same way, and it was just more about leaderboards, and you
know, it was just like, Okay, here's the trappings of rock band
blitz blown out to be the full band experience visual update, just gonna go
back to the old to get like the original guitar Hero model of like here's
your forty songs, just go. I'm just kind of like saying, like,
we know people just want to play these fucking songs and you don't want
to go through our bullshit fucking band thing or something, you know, other
than like we'll give you some customers. I don't. I don't. Yeah,
I don't really know. I don't really know what they'll do with that
stuff. Uh, but yeah, you know, like like rock Band was
the game you played if you cared about DLC, and Activision was never dedicated
to it the same way. So like, of course rock Band needs to
be able to import DLC and at that point then they're stuck to the old
instruments and and all that sort of stuff. And I think that makes one
hundred percent sense for what they're doing, and I think that's the right move
but I also think this is one hundred percent the right move for Activision two.
Like the new guitar feels cool. Uh, and I'm excited to do
something different with my left hand. Like that stuff makes some sense. Is
there any other the functionality? I think I thought it's like a wammy bar
in there. It's got a Yeah, it's got wammy bar and then a
star power button same as the old guitars, kind of down like by the
palm. Does it still do the motion star power thing? I don't know.
I don't know. I think so probably. Why wouldn't it, Yeah,
I I don't know for sure. Actually, but you still earn star
power and still deploy it wireless guitar okay, Yeah, and they're doing an
they'll do an iOS version. Oh that was the other crazy thing. Yeah,
like the full game will be available on phones, and you can tether
your guitar to your phone, look your phone, or hook your tablet up
to your TV, or just play it on the tablet, or just play
it on the tablet and that. Yeah, it'd it'd have to be Bluetooth.
That's the only standard that the phones all support. They're basically they're basically
talking like you'll be able to buy just the guitar and buy the game on
iOS or something, or theoretically you'd be able to buy like any version of
the game for consoles and then also be able to buy the mobile version and
use that guitar there too. That's really cool, and it's kind of it's
kind of neat, like I don't necessarily want to hook my phone up to
the TV and play that, but it's kind of cool that it's there for
people that. Yeah, they would, They talked about that in context of
like the last Skylanders they did, they actually sold a portal for phones and
actually made that full game on tablet. It was the same, the same
basic experience. It's kind of this weird wake up call for me of like
cheez that you know, mobile is actually powerful enough to just do the same
thing and all the doing all their graphics are video, so you know,
those those things can play video just fine. So it's just like here's the
same game, it just happens to be on your phone. Yeah, Like
I don't know, Like I'm sure there are some people that will use that
a lot, and some people that will never ever, ever, ever ever
do it. But it's kind of cool. Yeah, so yeah, I
don't know, it's kind of it's kind of a mostly optimistic wait and see
for me on this. Yeah, and it's being done by the studio that
did DJ Hero Oh Cool Freestyle Games is doing. It's awesome. So I
just I want to say again they should make a new DJ Hero. Those
games were great, thought I want. Yeah, you know, if they
want to shoot first person people looking down at some decks or something, fine,
it's whatever you gotta do. They should make a new DJ Hero.
Yea with srilis sure? Why not? All right, Well, let's keep
this activation bringing old games back train rolling. Talking about the new Destiny deals
you roasted. You knew it was coming. House of Wolves. The second
major at in for Destiny has been dated. The rumors were true as May
nineteen. It will not have a raid. Okay, I'd have to just
get that out there upfront, because that's all anybody is talking about. Now.
I'm out. I don't give a shit. You were out months ago.
Come on, not having a raid makes me a little more excited.
Really, It's something that you don't have to fucking like a tune for and
get all fucking like finish all this stuff. As just give me the fucking
gameplay content, Like, right then and there, what if what does a
raid? What does it have? What if instead of a raid it had
a hord mode? That makes sense? Yeah, that's considering how short and
dumb some of the missions in that fucking game are. Yeah, like putting
some kind of thing that is a little more endless and a little more repeatable
without it fucking force feeding story shit down your throat, Like what little of
it there? Yeah, sure, hord mode, they should do it.
I'll readetitive. I'll read you the quick cut. I mean, all right,
well, hang on, I'll read their statement real fast. House of
Wolves will not have a raid activity. We didn't make this decision lightly.
Our team has been humbled by the reception of Raids and Destiny, and we
are creating a raid for a release later this year. House of Wolves will
have a new cooperative endgame activity focused on variety, replayability and skill, a
new battle arena called the Prison of Elders. So that's your board mode.
They haven't they haven't liked just enumerated everything that's going to be in this thing
yet. I know there is a new strike, there will be new story
missions. Who knows what else, But I don't actually know if I'm going
to play this, Like I already paid for it, but I don't know
that I care enough to go back. Well, if it's anything like the
last one, you can play through the story missions in an hour and be
done with it if you want. Yeah, but that was not a that
was not like a positive, awesome experience, Like I didn't get enough out
of that to feel like you can't wait to do that again, Like it's
like, yeah, I mean then they also confirmed the Reef as a new
playable area, so finally a new zone of some sort to go to,
like a full say. They said they've got a schedule of events coming.
They're going to do some like weekly streams leading up to this and uh,
next week the twenty se seconds, they will have a stream a walking tour
of the reef, okay, so you'll be able to see what the reef
actually is in terms of a playable area. The week after that they will
reveal the Trials of Osiris, whatever the fuck that is. I guess everything
will be Egyptian in this I always was prison of Elders. A week after
that, something else. A week after that that they haven't decided yet when
it comes out. I don't know how to feel about this, Like the
raids are the best content in that game, but also they're super fucked up
and broken all the time, Like they still haven't fixed all the problems in
Crona's end as far as I'm aware, And maybe they finally have, but
it takes some weeks after release to start fixing that stuff, you know.
Yeah. Yeah, So if they implement this Horde mode and I'm like,
a more solid fashion and it's easier to get into and more rewarding long term,
maybe that's a good thing. Yeah, I don't know. I mean,
that game definitely has good enough combat to hold up a mode like that.
Yes, I thought, like I thought it was kind of criminal that
game did ship with some kind of Hord mode to begin with, Like that
seems like an obvious way to extend the lifespan of that thing. Yeah.
Yeah, those modes can be good when done properly. Bungee has made a
good one before, But who's to say how this one's gonna turn out.
They haven't given any other details. It just depends on like, you know,
like, what what do they do to the level ramp? And items
and stuff like that. It's one of those things where it's like, oh,
I played the Horde mode for you know, the equivalent number of hours
it would have taken me to play a raid, and now I have all
the stuff all over again, and fucking I guess I'm done. Yeah that's
no good. Yeah. But then if they just fucking shit up the game
with nine more reputation systems to grind out and it's your grinding rep in the
fucking Horde mode, yeah that's not good either. But all that stuff remains
to be seen. Destiny is still a very fun game to play. When
was the last time you played it? I mean it's been months, because
there's nothing else for me to do, right, I did all the stuff
that was in there, But you know, it's something like a Hord mode
is more inherently repeatable. Sure, so if that's something you can pop into
on a more equal basis, that might be cool. But they also say
that there is new raid coming later this year, and then it just leads
you to wonder how they're going to sell it, yep, Like is it
going to be part of the next like they said on an Earrings call At
some point like the big expansion will come this year at some point, you
know. Oh yeah, so are they just holding raids back for that at
this point? Like who knows if they I mean, if they look at
the numbers and if they see that raids are the thing that are drawing people
back to the game, then yeah, they would absolutely attach it to something
you pay for. Well, I mean you kind of assume there would be
new raid in every piece of add on content they put out, because that's
where people are seeing the most value. You know, Well, yeah,
I guess. But you know, like at the same time, like it's
nice to actually think that, like maybe each expansion could be a little different
and add something a little different to the game, right, rather than just
like have one raid per expansion, Like if they flesh the game out in
different ways, Yeah, that's probably more interesting to people that might not be
psyched on just here's a new raid, third raid. Yeah, that's almost
guaranteed to launch with a lot of the same problem was with the last who
did right? Yeah? Yeah, I mean I'm like, I'm not immediately
ready to write this thing off because of this. As much as a lot
of people seem to be in an uproar about it. Keep holding out for
hope, man. Uh, but you know I'd still like playing Destiny and
would like to play more of it. That's cool if there's some valid content
in there. So because we'll find out on the nineteenth. Uh, that's
gonna do it for news. Read some emails and then get out of here.
Email. What do you say? Okay? Email? Rick and Grover
Beach sent an email to BombCast giant bomb dot com. That's where he sent
it. Okay, I almost forgot. That's where he sent the email,
and then it got on the show. It's entitled to Mysterious Jason. I've
been a subscriber for a few years and so have a grasp on the stories
of Jeff Vinnie, Ryan Brad, Drew Alex and how they ended up in
the gaming industry and ultimately a Giant Bomb. Dan has been upfront on his
path to where he is today. But the missing pieces Jason, I have
no idea how he got started in the gaming industry and doing what he does
today. So Seinfeld voice, what's the deal with Jason? What's the deal
with Jason? Any Uh that right now? Not ready to announce that at
this time. I'll try and I'll try and make it brief. Jason fancied
himself like he wanted to get into the video game industry, but probably as
a programmer. Which school for programmer. It became a programmer programming soul crushing
bullshit that And uh, actually in college I took a course in like multimedia
arts video stuff, and I'd fell in love with it, did it as
a hobby, so all my free time is dedicated to that. Soul got
crushed by programming gig and decided to try and do the video stuff all time.
Was it a was it a gaming programming gig? Or no? It
was not counting software. No, it was that like some shady like in
a home loan like mortgage place. It was. Yeah, it was you
crashed the banks. It was terrible. But I also did some like web
programming afterwards as well for a long time, so that was that was kind
of fun. But yeah, eventually, you know, i'd been doing like
a podcast, you know, with a bunch of friends, so that was
kind of flexing those muscles. Uh, you know, the video game side
of things went to E three and ship and but yeah, like I said,
that was all just free time stuff. But I wanted to eventually do
it as a career, so I started getting more serious with that. I
found a job where I was actually doing a video streaming and then that led
to Game Informer after a while. So I had my sets the site set
on two places, actually game Informer because I have a lot of family over
in Minneapolis, and also Giant Bomb, so I hit both of those.
I don't know where I go after this baselined and here you are. Yeah,
so you just gotta built your production shops on the fly. Yeah,
like all on my own, Like you know, I never went to school
for that kind of stuff. Just lots of trial and error, lots of
research, lots of failed purchases. You know. I had to do things
in a budget a lot of times. But but yeah, like I said,
that was all my free times. Yeah, yeah, lots of does
so cool. Well, there you have it. There we are now the
history is known. Uh and we can move on to the next email,
which comes from Daniel uh in London. Right. So, then about the
PlayStation plus cloud save limit that we were belly aching about last week. Mortal
Kombat has a specific issue with that that really fucking sucks. What's that?
Uh? It creates a different save file, a different ten meg save file
for every match recording. You have what it tries to save your matches and
then put some stuff like that. So if you are on a PlayStation that
has auto upload set, now, every time I turn on my PS four
at home, I get like nine different error messages, one after one just
pops out. And that's only if you have automatic uploads. Turns yeah,
which I have everything on my on my main primary PS four set to auto
upload. But there's no But there's no way too, there's no way to
go into a game and selectively say just auto upload this save. I think
instead I would have to go in and selectively say yes to every other game.
But what I mean is you can't. You can't have the game upload
just your cling progress, and no it treats them all is just like these
are saves that are sitting here. You either have to manually up upload just
your progress or just nothing. Rights you can fill up like one hundred and
forty three megs real quick with just ten maths or whatever. That's the worst
example I've heard of that so far. Hich makes it that makes the one
gigabyte limit on cloud saves sound even worse, but I don't know, Daniel
writes in with a breakdown that kind of sheds some different light on it.
Your discussion last week about Sony only offering a mere gig of storage for Cloud
got me thinking. According to your pals at game Spot back in October,
Sony stated they had around seven point nine million subscribers to play PlayStation plus.
We can probably assume that's above eight million by now. This means they need
to provision eight million gigabytes of space or eight thousand terabytes to give everybody their
gig. Upgrading everyone to say a ten gig limit would mean having to provision
eighty thousand terabytes or eighty petabytes of space. That's a non trivial problem.
If they use something like Amazon Web Services with something like S three, providing
eighty pet bytes of space would cost northwards of two point three million dollars a
month. That's not taking into account the cost of bandwidth of uploads and downloads
to and front consoles to AWS. Obviously, businesses like Sony could probably negotiate
that cost down but still very expensive. Maybe they could partner up with Microsoft
and use Azer. I'm sure Microsoft would knock down the price for a laugh.
Yeah, maybe it's just the case that Microsoft can get away with it
because they have their own cloud infrastructure and they just just leverage that because they
don't put a limit on it. So it wouldn't be about allocating a gig
to every single user. It would be about allocating as much as a gig
to every user, right, and just being flexible, right, because you
imagine there are a lot of people that don't use that feature much at all.
Yeah, right, so like maybe you scale it more to the more
active users and then kind of make up the differences with people that don't use
it as much. Like there's got to be a more intelligent way to approach
it, you think you'd think, But stuff like this MK thing and like
GTA on PS four can you know they saves on there can really balloon.
Yeah, it's not a great experience, even though the money and of it
obviously is pretty complicated. Uh, all right, Andy from seem Valley.
All right, seem semi semi Valley, see me, I'm not sure,
Jeff, you know, yeah, yes, I am I okay. He
writes it in with would you rather would you rather have were you or scorpion
be removed? From their respective series from this point on. For you God,
I gotta go with Scorpion. Sorry we saw you that went last time.
I know, but we use move set is pretty much exactly the same
as Scorpion doesn't have. But the original were You is street Fighter. Yeah,
I know. But you can play as a guy that plays like were
You Without were You, you can't play as a guy that plays like Scorpion.
You can play a robot Scorpion. That's not that's not part of the
questions. That's not part of the question. I think if they got rid
of Scorpion and replaced him with someone who had the exact same move set,
that'd be fine. Like the character stuff like that could be an interesting twist
like they've they've definitely like done more with the lower I think with MK to
where that there's a way that they could make that work and not make people
crazy throw shit against the wall. Yeah, totally, totally, yeah,
exactly, Just fucking roll some dice and go, I don't know, this
guy dies, this guy turns into a robot. This guy's brother now he's
Revenant but U and then let's give Jackson farmer outfit. Yeah, the Dice
Club farmer yep, I don't know. I don't know. I just I
feel like Scorpion has embodied Mortal Kombat less and less over time, Like,
as you know, the other characters have moved to the forefront and stuff like
that, the player one default icon is still Scorpion. Yeah, but still
the because it's always been that way, Like everyone still picks Scorpion the same
way. I just can't. You know, mister f is the Reu and
Scorpion is the Ken in a weird way. I've always seen Lou Kang is
the face of MK over Scort. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, Like
there are other people but reused. There are other characters that represent Mortal Kombat
more to me than Scorpion at this point. But yeah, like the thing
you want to see, like, hey, we're doing a new street Fighter
is like show me where you're throwing a fireball? How's it look? How
many friends? Right, let's look at this ship, Like, you can't
have a street Fighter without that, I think, saying he probably could,
but yeah I probably could. Dramatic fashion like that was more for you.
Yeah, I mean we've already got a demon for you, right, Yeah,
we haven't Evil. Yes, you know, he's always hanging around in
the background. Psycho Ken. Sure wait did that happen? Those red fucking
eyes? Yeah? When did? It was a Marvel Oh yeah, And
by psycho you mean like in Bison Psycho Power or just like they just needed
the name. Okay, they needed to come up with a cool name for
Evil Ken that was not just Evil Ken. All right, that's a little
different. I guess the Dark had oh sure infused with anyway that makes more
sense than some of this mortal combat stuff. Yeah, yeah, like yeah,
kind of yeah, yeah it does. We sure have spend a disproportionate
amount of time talking about fighting game stories. Started a fighting game tournament and
his daughter is on a boat at the same time in some war Torner facility,
Bayman's just getting shot to ship and then Zach has a helica. Wait,
okay, now I know what you're talking about. Team is just wrestling,
Okay, cool. When you hit Zach, I was like, is
it? Then you said Tina, and I'm like all right, now I
know. And then everyone got thrown into a volcano. Yeah, that's a
real fighting game stuff. That's that's that's what I want. Tech and eight
to be a just every fucking stage is the different shot of the inside of
a volcano, and everyone is just fighting to see who gets to leave the
volcano, playing tech and ball and yeah, just hey hote dropping every single
one of them in there. Totally shall use just to sleep the sleeping bag
like she was out camping volcano. Fuck you, this bear got trapped and
whoops, fell into the volcano. Here's Paul, He's gonna jump his motorcycle
over the volcano. Didn't go so well. I'd play that or I would
watch that. I don't know. Damn all right. Uh. Next email
comes in from Ryan in Dublin, who's got a little fyi for us for
finally some fucking real information. Yeah, about his about his indigenous language.
Hey guys, just writing in to give you a quick tip on Irish names
after hearing Jeff butcher domnal Gleason's name is Ryan because it seems like Brad would
be interested in knowing since he's into linguistics and stuff in Irish. To the
other h indicates the should be pronounced softly. In the case of Donal,
this means a faint V sound, But for the most part it's totally fine.
To just admit the letter instead, as long as you're not in a
guail talked so donal is pronounced dough. Now. The one exception to this
rule of thumb is where there's a bunch of bells surrounding the letter, like
in the name's nieve or Quiva. In these cases, mh is replaced with
a hard V instead of the soft one you'd use in Irish. None of
this matters, though, because sometimes the names just exist to fuck you over.
For example, the D and pork is silent and Myra is pronounced Moira
anyway by Ryan Dublin, Ireland. Do we have a translation for that?
I couldn't really clicks up at some point. Sorry, I've been working on
my Irish, but I guess they've got some more work to do. I
should show you this email later because none of the names in that are spelled
anywhere fucking close to the way that they're pronounced like. I had got halfway
through this email and I was like, I can't D is silent. I
can't do this. I need somebody else to come in. I need a
ringer. Yeah, we should bring that guy in sometimes. Now you know
who, I don't know who you saw who you're talking about this bran or
something? Oh yeah, right him. Sure. I feel like people that
listen to the premium feed have no fucking idea what we're even talking about.
Maybe maybe not, I don't know. It was some ad shit. Yeah
I know. I'll come on, You're gonna hear the name Donald Gleason more
often in the future, I hope not. He's in the new Star Wars.
Okay, fine, okay, fine, I didn't know that they're making
a new Star Wars. No, okay, it's bonding. Hey, guys
love this at the time. Three's a per fighting system with RPG mechanics ye
like experience points for leveling up and skills that you could equip depending on your
play style. It seems like every genre these days has some form of character
progression in them except fighters. This mode seems perfect for franchises with a deep
well of fighting systems and characters, like World Combat techn or even a virtual
fighter Rest in Peace. What gives? I don't, uh, four systems
like that. I don't care for them. But really, I think it's
hard if you because because if you're building a character that's always changing, then
like playing competitively, it sucks. It up because you know, you might
have a character with a bunch of different shit on it than the one that
you actually play in versus mode. So like, I think that that's a
good reason not to do in a fighting game, right, what what were
you? Like, who were you playing in that mode? I never played
that thing. I think was character, I think any characters Okay, yeah,
it wasn't like you were. It wasn't like any three had the like
characters that you could build and add moves to and vision Jinko in Deception or
whichever one of those Mortal comps. Visually, were you just picking a character?
Yeah, it was just like Ken, but now I don't know his
foot does more damage, which like, yeah, like I think if you're
thinking about fighting games in a competitive way, it probably sucks. But and
I was, yeah, yeah, I just I don't get into a lot
of single player stuff and in fighting games, I thought it was funzies.
That stuff's okay. I thought it was an interesting question to look at because
ka ext just came out, and you know, they've got their very specific
take on you know, what a what a fighting game campaign should be.
But yeah, that was certainly one of the you know, the first incarnations
or something like that, like an RPG level up pinnet system one of the
first, not the first. Yeah, sure there's something before that. Yeah,
you're you're probably right though. I mean that's obviously where fighting games get
their legs is from the competitive aspect. Yeah. Uh. Daniel little Anna
right in with a question about the three sixty. Uh. In the Xbox
three sixty dashboard preview program, an update was recently rolled out that adds support
for external USB drives up to two terabytes. Yeah, that's sure would have
been nice to have no ship the whole time instead of that dumb ass,
arbitrary thirty two gig limit on external stuff. Yes, thank you for finally
enabling that. It's a little too late, and it kind of busits me
off that like they had the capability previous to this. Yeah fuck yeah uh,
he continues, I know it's last gin, but what are the chances
Microsoft releases another revision of the Xbox three sixty, this time with no optical
drive, with a form factor in line with a Fire TV or Apple TV.
It seems like kind of an interesting idea, like if they start selling
everything in that system's catalog digitally and just I don't think they could get away
without having an optical drive, because I think there's still plenty of games that
wouldn't be available digitally want to install onto a hard drive, and you know,
yeah, I don't know they could, but you know, at some
point, I guess there are so many discs still floating around out there in
the wild, yea to not be able to use them at all would be
shitty. Yeah, I guess you can go get Xbox three sixty games for
like three bucks. Yeah, unless unless they were pricing the digital stuff aggressively
enough that it actually made sense, you never would. It's like about that
most of these games or ten bucks. Yeah, I don't think so.
Now. I kind of like that idea though. I kind of like the
idea of legacy support for old systems and like super tiny form factors. It's
a neat idea, especially if you've got like a lot of arcade stuff,
like I've probably got three or four hundred XBLA games and I don't want to
bring out my big thing and connect TV every single time. If I had
a little like fire TV thing there was yeah, yeah, if you had
a system the size of a hockey puck, it would make it a lot
easier to think about that thing around randomly. Want to play Castle Crashers or
something and be nice to do that? Right? That does sort of solve
problems games the Best four? What's that connected up via HDMI and USB two
and Xbox one and then you were able to just launch games out of the
Xbox one shell off that thing? Yeah? Yeo, man, what if
you could live in space? Also? Yeah? All right, sure,
what I don't know, maybe not living space kind of sounds like pain in
the ass. Let's do it, I do it. I don't know.
Let's die on a different planet. Maybe would you sign up for that Mars
thing? Not that Mars thing? No, not that one. But oh
there's some talk about like getting volunteers to do the first man mission to Mars
because it's like, well, you're super gonna die there, Like, would
you do it? Please? I didn't have fun, I got you.
I didn't have fun stuff going on? Yeah, I do it, man,
I don't know. There's a lot of practical realities of being in space
that are a huge fucking bummer that people don't think about, just mainly like
crapping and stuff. Right, No, I mean, like you're like bone
like a loss of bone density. That's if you're planning on coming back.
If you're gonna die in Mars, it doesn't matter, or you know,
like there's no shielding agains the cosmic radiation that will give you horrible mega cancer
after however, long, fuck it man, stuff like that. Man,
Mars. Everyone's gonna die anyway, Yeah, someday, sure, why not
do it on Mars? That's fair, all right, it's not for me.
I'll see you there at this time. Okay, not this mission,
all right. Woody from Sydney asks about games that we finished out of spite.
After Jeff talked about his frequent frustrating experiences with Final Fantasy ten two,
it brought back memories of the time I, too, walked into a gaping
hell hole. The whole hole of my choice was, of course, twenty
eleven's Duke knukeham Forever. About thirty or so minutes in, I realized the
patient's testing nature of this fifteen year old muldy excuse for a game. However,
in the anger at both myself for thinking it could possibly turn out well
and at the game itself, I set myself with a goal of finishing Duke
Knukeham in a single session, which took an irreversible mental toll. Ok at
god Man, I believe my method of thinking is fuck this game. I'm
not going to let this sexist on original piece of trash get the better of
me. I was high school at the time, which explains my free time
and my very flawed reasoning. So my question is, have there been any
games which you hated so much that you finished it out of spite? I
still think the only way which Duke Nico Forever could have been good is if
it took on a cart life art style and dealt with Duke's fading cultural relevance,
his non existent relationship with his strange children, and his tragic and unnoticed
death. Yeah. For me, my game in this category is quite literally
doing Forever. Yeah. I fucking hated that thing so much that I wouldn't
let myself stop until I have, Like I got like eight hundred and fifty
of the thousand points on three sixty out of that game, like some kind
of massochistic like unstoppable urge. I'm sorry to get through that ship. It's
like full auto for me, getting all the achievement like some of it mine
where a lot of them were tied to achievement points. Yeah, it's like,
no, I'm gonna get all the achievement points in this game, and
it sucks, and I'll be the only one that has him because it sucks,
because who would do this except for me? Fuck me, open season.
My time is worthless. The season was like quick though, why would
you play those though? Like what's the interest in those games? Anyway?
For me, it was it was an achievement thing. I don't really care
anymore, but I remember, especially when I started a game Informer and they
have this giant vault with like every three sixty game. It's like, oh
shit, I'm gonna look up like all I'm like all the college hoops two
thousand and six. I'm gonna get like I have access to everything, so
I might as well like boost my achievement score. But then after like six
months of just trying to do that shit, I was like, this is
not worth it at all. I'm I'm super afraid to say mine, but
uncharted, like, hi, which one the first one? First one one?
I could maybe see that, like I don't think it's a bad game,
but it's nowhere nearest Like it really started a drag on after one,
like the game Playing Mechanics. Yeah, I just not. I think it's
a super overrated series. But yeah, I just stuck through because all of
my friends were like, oh my god, this fucking game is so great,
and I'm like, there's not no what done a great game player here?
I'm kind of with me on that bag. I can see that.
I think State of Emergency was one because I bought it in high school thinking
it was gonna be like the next GTA three. And then I bought it,
you know, back when fifty dollars was like a huge thing, and
I tried to return it to funkle Land or whatever, and they're like,
no, you opened it, And I was like, fuck, I just
waste fifty bucks. Okay, fuck it, I'm gonna beat this this repetitive
fucking game if I paid fifty dollars for it. But there were so many
guys on screen. There were a lot of guys on cool. I did
like the one thing where he's just the mall and it just fills up with
like just infinite enemies and you see how many you can kill, yeah,
ten minutes or whatever. Yeah, it's not fifty dollars. The game is
not good. Did you finish it? And I guess from the grand scheme
of things, but I I liked it. One of that fifty bucks.
Play that again. I've never seen it in a really long time. I
can't think of a time I've ever seen it in person. I would be
curious. Style again, they made it too, didn't they? Oh?
Yeah, that was not published by rock Star got just like shoved off to
the side. Developed it a pretty bad game, viz that it was on
a rock Star developed game. Oh I didn't know that. Yeah, we
should play that for UPF or something. Yeah, take a copy of that.
Bust that out. I would be cured. I think I have a
copy. I don't know. Take a look at. Then Matt writes in
about the Skate three come back. He says, after hearing you mentioned how
Skate three you rendered the charts, I thought I'd pass along some infu on
the strange buying habits of the gaming public. In my four years of working
in retail, I have never been asked for an old game more than Skate
three. Now somebody asked for it roughly once a month, and this number
grows exponentially when kids are off school for an extended period of time. Weird.
People also constantly ask if we have PSP games in stock, but give
zero fucks about Vita for the most part. But we have long since stop
carrying games for either Jesus. So there's your brutal assessment of the state of
games retail. Yeah, but yeah, the skate three thing continues to be
kind of weird. Yeah, well there was nothing else quite like it.
Yeah, it got internet popular or something, so it did. Uh,
let's see. Let's yeah, best cost, the best coast. Everyone knows
that, all right. Well, with that out of the way, Brad.
A while back you mentioned fucking said it noted it's a matter of republic
record. Now who A while back you mentioned the SIMS online was the first
time that you had one of your reviews featured on the back of a box.
This got me thinking it was actually a preview. Have any of you
had review quotes horrifically edited for marketing purposes anytime an unscrupulous marketer decided to cut
your quote down to misrepresent you. Do they ask you when this happens.
It's a good question. I don't think I've ever had a quote and edited
like that. I've had quotes edited for space and stuff like that, but
not in a case where it was like I clearly meant this game was dogs
just change your intent, but it was just like edited, yeah, now
not to change intent, and about even just to like pump up the enthusiasm
a little bit. We're just like edited down to one word like immersive.
Yeah right, incredible explosive explosives. Yeah, words that don't actually necessarily mean
good. But uh yeah, I can't think of any off the top of
my head. And it's one of the things where, like, you know,
the proper procedure is for people to contact us and ask it, and
a lot of companies do. Yeah. Yeah, I can't think of a
major instance of company not asking permission. First. There was a while there,
like, uh, you know, there was a while that EA was
was including numbers like winner of x number of awards and kind of stretching the
definition of awards. Yes, yeah, yeah, and and like concluding like
e three awards in that which are kind of not reward awards for the quality
of the final product. And you know, there's just some fishy stuff with
there. I know a game spot had to you know, there's some stuff
there, but but nothing that was just like, yeah, like editing a
quote. There was no like I want her sweet can a moment. Yikes.
I wish there was so explain to me, Like you know sometimes when
you buy a game, like it's it's day one and you'll see you know,
review quotes, yeah, on the back of the box. Explain how
that works. So, I mean print magazines have a leade time, you
know that much and that stuff. I think there might be cases. I've
never done this, but I think there might be cases where outlets are like
sending reviews over to publishers and saying like, yeah, if you want to
quote it, and it's here's the review. Yeah. That's been my understanding
as well. And I've never done that. That seems crazy. That seems
crazy to me. I know that there were cases where like, yeah,
you see like IGN quotes from reviews that are showing up on game boxes and
the reviews not running until launch day, and you're like, wait a minute,
like we didn't even like and then we're checking that against when we got
a review copy of a game, and it's going like something fucking crazy is
happening here. Uh, And yeah, I mean it's that'd be a good
question for them. Yeah, it's been Yeah, it's super interesting. Even
with print, I never saw that like hey, here here's the review and
casey when you use it like if you're a print I never saw that happening.
I've heard of, yeah, pr like contacting some of the people that
they knew were reviewing games, seking if they could get like an early preview,
like a preview of a review or so. I've definitely had like companies
say like, hey, did I just want to you know, what are
you thinking of the game. So we are like after they send out a
review build, but before the review has gone up, because they're trying to
manage expectations. So if you right back and go it's fucking garbage. They
can tell people like internally like well, you know, it's like we'll see
what the score is end up being it's whatever, or like hey, I'm
gonna take a vacation because all these reviews are gonna hit and I'm gonna get
fired, so I gotta get me out of here on launch day or you
know whatever reason. Uh yeah, I don't, I don't know. Like
the yeah, the when it comes to online outlets specifically, it always really
that always seemed really shady to me. But yeah, we never we never
did that. I certainly I would get requests and stuff like that rare,
rarely, but occasionally he was like, hey, there's there anything you know
you can share about the review? Like nope, yeah, try to try
to politely dodge that question as much as possible to be fair. You know,
some of the quotes on release staid game boxes are not from reviews,
but you know, yeah, yeah, that certainly happens a lot as well.
That's true. I've gotten stuff where I would write like an E three
preview or something and say like, yeah, this is you know, probably
one of the most anticipated PS three upcoming titles whatever, and then they would
want it to be like most anticipated PS three title, and I'd be like,
ill, no, hey, that's not what I said at all.
So but I don't know if it ever actually like ran anywhere? Right,
Yeah, Hey, what did you call Rise? By the way, do
you remember it's like dial a combo bullshit? Oh. I said a lot
of things about Rise. A lot didn't get out about that. It was
at San Francisco, and I saw you there, Jeff, where they had
Rise. It was that Xbox one event yeah, yeah, and I remember
because normally with preview stuff, you want to give stuff the benefit of a
doubt it's not done yet or whatever. But like what I played a Rise
was close enough to it coming out, and it was so bad. I
hated it so much that like it's one of the few like scathing previews I
ever wrote, and ever people got pitted off about that. Yeah, I
forgot what I said. Yeah, I was like, oh, it was
about as fun as dialing the phone number. Yeah. Yeah, I don't
know. I've dialed some fun phone numbers before, but uh, Rise.
Brad likes Rise. I don't hate Rise. I don't love Rise, but
nor do I hate it. Brad is okay with the exist. Okay,
it's an okay game. It's all right. Did he beat it out of
spite? No? I beat it because I was reviewing it. Oh,
okay. I don't know that I would have finished it if I wasn't reviewing
it. Yeah, but I didn't hate it. It was okay, Like
the combat was decent. It was kind of funny. I remember getting that
game home. There are way way worse games out there that there are worse
games, Yes, totally, but man, fuck Rod. Yeah, it's
like, yeah, like the sixty bucks was kind of maybe stiff for that
game, you know. Yeah, and this position is like launch games,
you know exactly, there are a lot of external factors to that game that
that exists outside a review that you can look at me. Yeah, like
as representative for a system launch, like I guess, like yeah, and
that a lot of games that system latches fucking suck initially supposed to be a
connected game as well. Yeah, she's right, but I think like a
lot of people kind of brought into the narrative of it being the quintessential shitty,
shallow launch game, uh huh, and kind of ascribed to those qualities
to it, maybe to a greater degrees than they should have a little bit.
Hey, yeah, I guess, I don't know. It came out
at a time when, you know, it comes out at a time when
people are harsher on the internet than they have been in years past. So
that's also like shit gets eaten alive when when there's stuff like that. Now,
I would say Rise is largely cut from the same cloth as the Order,
but it's not quite as man I could see that comparison. Really for
me, it's that for me, it's that the act of playing the order,
and you know, at some point, I guess it's a personal taste
thing where it's just like it's a cover shooter, like I have liked those
in the past, and you like the way Rise plays. I fucking hate
it. I thought, you know, there's there's counters involved, there's some
timing, but it's like the way all that stuff, Like, yes there
are, but like just the way it feels kind of top to bottom,
the way you deploy those elements. Yeah, I got repetitive for sure.
Really really yeah, I'm not you know, I'm not saying I love it
or anything, but yes, I guess, like I think it's probably similar
to the Order in some ways, but I I would take the Order over
Rise any day. Yeah. Like, that's a real shitty choice staff to
make. Yeah, sure, it's a bad desert island you're about to get
stranded on, but fully agree with you. I would go to the other
way on that choice. Uh. This email comes in from the probably not
no, definitely not. Uh. This person with held their name, but
they claim to have survived working at a riff raff show hobably okay, although
they straight up say where they work and in what town? So I should
leave that part out. I guess Okay, they work at a theater in
a major city. Okay, I won't say which ones. We had riff
Raff come through and headline last night. I really wanted the email and podcast
about this, and none of the hip hop ones I listened to care two
craps about Jody high Roller. So I guess you're next on the list.
Congratulations us, He's the neon icon. Riff Raff didn't come out until ten
thirty. Versaci emails. Riffraff didn't come out until ten thirty last night,
thirty minutes after his original set time. He's like fucking way earlier than most
hip hop acts. Go ahead. He arrived five minutes prior. But the
bigger mind boggle is that there was there was ninety minutes of dead air on
the stage in between the Versace Python and the opening act. Riff didn't seem
to care, but the venue owner and promoter promoting agents were running to and
from the office to the backstage, and they seemed pissed along with the crowd.
They seemed more bored than anything while waiting. When riff Raff finally did
get on stage. He did a forty five minutes set, half of which
just included his DJ spending current hip hop records like Everybody's Favorite, Hot Boy
and Tuesday. Riff Raff jumped up and down for most of it and occasionally
wrapped a word or two. Afterwards, he then announced that the crowd can
party with him backstage. We and his team had no idea what he meant,
so we had to hold back the swarm of fans lining up while trying
to learn what we're supposed to do. It turns out party with him means
to pay fifty dollars to go backstage for ninety seconds and get a blurry picture.
Yep, he does the VIP meet and greets after. Overall, riff
Raff didn't seem too interested to be there, and it was hang on.
It was one of the most disorganized concerts and weak performances we've ever seen.
It was exactly what I was expecting, but I felt sorry for all the
fans who thought a guy like riff Raff would bring professionalism to a show.
I don't know if this is at all similar to what Dan experienced in Minnesota,
but I'd like to cross reference stories. If possible some stuff about air
Force skater. Oh yeah. He didn't ask for any crazy backstage amenities like
a pogo stick or a rainbow afro. Only four or five bottles of hard
alcohol andy pizza. All right, So there's your riff raff concert report.
No super soaker is filled with red Bull and vodka like I saw. No
sounds like it sounds like it really sounds like a way cooler show that that
was the pre show. It sounds like afterwards when he does the like meat
and great pay money. Yeah, this is like him getting drunk for before
his set. Sounds like okay, it sounds like this guy really caught him
on an off night and kicking out every groupie that was not currently wearing Versacci.
Wow. Yeah, everyone like show their tags and stuff, and if
it was not VERSACCEI he would say, I only fuck with girls that were
Versacci. Get out of here, and they'd be like, no, this
is a five hundred dollars dress, is it Versace? No, get the
fuck out of here, man, And then he started, yeah, shooting
super soaker shots down the faces of all the girls that were wearing Versacci.
What a guy. I drank coronas because I didn't want to drink anything that
wasn't sealed high roller indeed. Yeah, that sounds like, yeah, okay,
I was. I was very responsible that. Yeah, that's uncharacteristically savvy,
if you don't mind saying I was the total like square back there.
It's like, oh no, it's one of sealed beer please, Yeah,
yeah, yeah, it's I don't know what a refrash show would even be,
you know, like, yeah, it's one of those things where it's
like, you know, can he do it live or not? And is
it is it about him performing his songs or is it about you going and
having a good time at a weird party that is also a rap show sort
of the rip rap riff raff is at Hannibal Burst describes the experience of a
riff raff show to where he just plays his own songs and then every once
in a while, at the end of each line, he'll just say the
last word yeah yeah, oh you mean with the prerecorded vocal track, yeah
wow, and we'll talk about how he wants to do comedy that way in
a few years. That's like say the punch line. I mean, that's
exactly what this guy is describing. So yeah, so, and that's I
mean, there are a lot of rappers that do stuff like that. There's
a there's a Two Live Crew concert album. There's a live album the Two
Live Crew put out. You know it kind of in the middle of them
being Two Life Crew right when they were big and getting arrested and all that
other stuff. And yeah, it's it's mister Mix playing the album and then
rapping over it. And granted they rap more words than it sounds like riff
raff is, but still when they need a breath, the album has their
back and a lot of people, I think you go to a lot of
rap shows like That's why hype men exist is so that you know, the
rappers that are jumping up and down, that are normally in a booth,
very climate controlled booths, doing their rhymes, U can can move around a
little bit more, run out of breath and still have someone who has a
towel over their head and water bottle in their hand go yeah, you know,
or or say whatever rhyming word needs to be said more emphatically so that
the other guy can go and keep rapping. It's why It's why Snoop was
such an impressive live show. Back at the up in Smoke tour, which
is a very long time ago now, but that is on DVD, not
not the show that I saw. But he fucking did it all like he
fucking wrapped his ship and was fucking pro about it. Did his ship,
did it well, did it very well, and didn't need a hype man,
didn't need a million people fucking on stage with him shouting all the words
and all that stuff. Like, he just fucking did his business and it
was impressive. A shit expecting the less from the d double G exactly.
U. Yeah, So you know, like at some point, what do
you want a riff refuge? Yeah, I was wondering if himself seems like
he's almost done with music. I was gonna say it, like, has
the nature of his acts changed since he got all bulked? He directly the
stuff. He directly said he doesn't care about music anymore. Because when I
did that game Inform video with him, at first I was trying to talk
to about video games, and he made it very clear that he's not given
a shit about games since the Superintendo, and so then like we're trying to
make small talk with him about music, and I yeah, my boss Rhyner
said something like, oh, yeah, you got a new album coming out.
He's like, I don't give a shit about music, all right,
cool, yes, do you want us to promote anything for you? It's
like heading, he's well on his way to just being famous for being famous.
Yeah, I mean he's he came from out of a reality. Yeah
I didn't know that and kind of that was his first appearance, and then
he honed his craft whatever that creates. It's a it's an impressive craft,
like you know, like I heavily has a new inherent social value. But
sure, yeah, you know he's he's he's doing it. Yeah, whatever
it is, he is out there doing it and more and louder than anyone
else in that particular space. Yeah. Like it almost makes the show sound
more like he's just like a party promoter, kind of like he just shows
up in parties in your town the same way they're like, there are a
lot of like, you know, women that do that. You know,
like they tour around to different strip clubs and MC parties and stuff like that,
and they're not necessarily stripping in the traditional sense, but they're getting up
on the microphone and you know, okay, getting the party going, and
so maybe like club promoter is the is the more natural fit for lubomotors typically
work at one location, so it's more like a club promoter bringing in a
show. There's more of a party, and then some venues are gonna better
equipped to handle that and not like that ideally like that's you know you think
about like a riff raft part, like it just kind of almost should be
a strip club. Well and that's I mean that's a dark I wouldn't want
to go to that, But like that seems like the Yeah, it seems
like the circles that he's operating in. But and he's moving like merchandise and
stuff. He sells flip flops and he's got an iPhone game about a dog.
He just tweeted today that he's got another iPhone game coming out. Like
this guy's like doing like kind of like independent pro wrestler levels of promotion with
merch and things like yeah, yeah, he's he's constantly putting out new shirts
and styrophone cups and like iPhone cases or like stickers to put on your bullshit.
Like yeah, he's got a lot of dumb shit that he's selling.
And it seems like it is selling. Yeah, I think I think he's
probably Yeah, he's he's building a weird empire, and like it's work,
it's working. Yeah. Yeah, I like his thing. Like I don't
even listen to I don't have a single track of his I don't I can
name like the ones he his music videos for. I don't listen to his
music. I just think him as a thing is kind of fascinating. Yeah,
And I think like some of his music has actually been legitimately pretty good,
Like he can rap decently well. You know, he's come a long
way in a short period of time. You go back and listen to kind
of his early stuff, he was like, damn, what the fuck is
going on? But he found it, you know, and and found found
a way to kind of you like, he found he's lane and is doing
his thing and all that sort of stuff. And like, I'd be curious
to hear another riff Raff album, but I don't think that last one did
that well. So it's one of those things where it's like there's there's a
there's an Internet level of fucking craziness and people are fucking psyched about riff Raff,
But it's not always translating into album sales and that sort of stuff,
translating into selling and selling out these places. He's constant. Yeah, exactly,
he's on the road. He's fucking making you know, he's he's I'm
sure he's doing just fine. Yeah, like, oh yeah, musicians make
their money on the road. If people are paying tickets and leaving happy,
then it doesn't matter if he's fucking rapping all the words or not. There
you have it, your semi annual riff raff updates see even six months.
Uh Johnny G from Dayton, Ohio. The Johnny G Writes in all right,
so stop saying that, Okay, Bombers. I love the show and
I've been listening every week for the past three years. However, there are
a few phrases that I would appreciate you stop using. They are as follows,
tent Pole, died in the wool, piece Meal, watershed moments,
dark souls. Also, I have really enjoyed Dan Reichert's contribution to the show.
Well, I can't deny he is a total piece of shit. It
seems like there have been some people on the show who really don't like him.
Is he really that bad or is it all in good fun? To
keep up the good work, Jason. I'm gonna punt this one. That's
a question for Jason after our soul caliber comments. But never mind the mission
to Mars. Dan is a idiotic man child, annoying as shit, and
I love him just as much as I hate him. All right, so
he gets a fifty. She's saying, yeah, very good, Yin and
Yang embodied in one person. I liked it. He's an annoying little brother
sometimes. Yeah, he's also begin the Yang. And then like the bloody
third one that waged the Warrior had, where did that fit I've been shooting
for and I just cut it into thirds? Okay, we should play some
way of the Warrior. Yeah, yeah, I feel like that sentence leaves
someone's mouth somewhere on this website wants every six eight months we should placed some
way of the Warrior. I mean we did that one three deo stream age
this go yeah right, we absolutely we must have played it on that although
I don't actually remember. Yeah, must have, and you can't do a
three deo stream of that way. The controls and three D are so fucked.
Yeah, getting those finishers to come out and possible that whole games ass.
How's the three DO emulation scene pretty pretty sufficient at this point. Yeah,
it's it's decent. There are not there are not very many emulators,
but the one that is available is that I'm surprisingly good. Kind of came
out of nowhere relatively recently. Now we can play a way of the Warrior
with a good controller. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what I My
first thought was when that stuff. I was like, alright, alright,
final email comes in from Captain Joel. It's maybe a little creepy. I
don't know. I haven't decided yet what an email from Captain Joel is creepy,
but I'm gonna read it anyway because it's just kind of weird. A
pillow like I. It's about Okay Cube. It's the best opening line.
I just wanted to write in and have you seen my pillow? Stay tuned.
I just wanted to write in and say that not only do I agree
with Dan on his preference of dating app, he's actually quite right about okay
Cupid's superiority. The questions that each user on okay Cupid has the option to
answer can give some of the most insane insight into who a person is.
I found out about this first hand a few years ago after I had a
pretty long relationship end and decided to try okay Cupid. Over the course of
two years from twenty ten to twenty twelve, I messaged almost nine thousand different
women ages nineteen to forty seven worldwide and got replies to most of those messages.
Went on more than a few dates and found that the friend slash enemy
percentages actually had about a twelve percent chance of total inaccuracy. I know those
statistics sound insane, but the reason for it is that I talked to around
two hundred different ladies. After talking to around two hundred different ladies, I
fell down a dark rabbit hole and began treating the whole thing like a grand
social experiment who learned the best opening line possible. He's not the first and
I've heard of that has fallen into this particular hole, and I tried to
game OKAQ if I can make some assumptions based on that comment. While it
does obviously depend on who you to ask, I compiled the data as I
went and found the top five opening lines they got me the most continued responses,
and I'd like share them with us feed article and email form. Let's
do it pretty much. I like how a lot of these are written in
the kind of choose your own format, though. Number five. That is
a beautiful dog slash cat slash animal? Is it a guest random breed?
They look so majestic slash huge slash cuddly? Number four? Hey, I
noticed that you really like Banned in profile and I love them? What's your
favorite song? Have you ever been lucky enough to see them in concert?
Number three? Hi? You like name of TV show in profile? I
just finished marathoning it the other day and I really love the themes they brought
in towards the end of the season slash series, and I've been dying to
talk to someone else who've seen it. Who's your favorite character? Number two?
That one comes off as I don't know anyone? Yeah. Maybe,
Actually you're right on that one. If you're sitting there saying I don't know
anybody that watches popular TV shows, that doesn't necessarily say anything good. Number
two. I know this is coming out of nowhere, but I just saw
that you like to cook slash bake and I recently just took a class and
found it to be freeing slash fun. What's your favorite thing to make?
Number one? Wow? I know you probably get this all the time,
but I really like the way you write about yourself and your profile. You
do a really great job of painting what sounds like a fantastic representation of yourself.
I always feel like I do terribly at this. Could you maybe give
me a few pointers? Take my which one of the things got me your
fonts? At leastree hundred and seven different users that made it past thirty five
messages. Number one got responses from five hundred and seventy two different users,
with at least fifty nine messages each. I feel slightly discuss he continuing to
read this email? More like that more trivia from my time with OKAQBA.
If you want me to keep going, might as well see it through.
Let's keep trudging through this fucking nightmare. You me and Katain Joel all right.
Free pussy Riot was the most responded to random opening message and got ninety
one responses, with at least seventeen messages from each user. How is there
any does he have a split as to how many of the responses knew what
pussy Riot was? I don't know how many of them were like what would
I would hope most of them were aware how many blocked them? Uh?
Young women into four says love non sequitors and always almost always respond to them.
H this is so weird. Nude pictures are most often sent on the
seventeen, twenty first, and twenty ninth of the month. On average,
elevenages in powers to get a user cell phone number when in doubt, talk
about coffee, tattoos, or piercings. I don't drink coffee or have tattoos
or piercings, but they are hot button topics that seem to help find common
grounds of Most of it may seem kind of random, but it worked.
Now I'm engaged to in living with a wonderful woman that I met on at
a k Cupid. Wow, thanks for reading. I guess if it all
ended in something I guess, then get then great. I'm not sure.
I'm not sure or what to do with this data that's been collected. Yeah,
those those five. Yeah, I would just say, don't use opening
lines and dinner like a canned like template or whatever. That just seems so
cold and impersonal, Like I don't like that idea at all. I talk
to someone like their human being. That's that's good advice. Dan, Thank
you for being the voice of reason here. Well, he's engaged, and
look at you. I took my okay, give it a kind of down.
Damn. Why where should I not ask? I'm going on? Is
that okay? All right? I won't the question by by come congratulations,
Captain Joel. Keep the emails coming. It's been a little dry on the
email front the last two three weeks, actually, so step it up.
Send on some stuff. You see what I've got to work with here?
Not okay, keep its debts. Wait a different podcast for that bullshit.
That's true, That is very true. Uh, that's gonna do it for
this week's edition or the ship. What should we tell people to look forward
to this week? Well, doesn't be a membership sale coming up here pretty
soon, so keep your eyes peeled for that mid week grounds. We don't
have a date. We don't have a date in front of us here this
week coming up? All right, Mortal Kombat X quick look is up on
the site. GT five stuff we're gonna do. Yeah, thanks guys.
It looks like the cloud say it doesn't work. That's what I've heard on
Twitter BC. Yeah, I've played a bit at home last night, and
we got it set up to a real nice mission to show off, and
I don't know if I can do that. So okay, we'll figure out
what that one. We're gonna go to dance house and record it. Sure
still cribs while you're there. Yeah, and then, uh, there's this
game called Mario Party four. Finally we free ourselves from the shackles of the
single analog stick, Brad, I want to tell you something. What from
everything I've heard, I think four might be way worse than all the ones.
I say that, that's what I've heard, And honestly, I think
it's impossible for games to be worse. Yeah, let me let me tell
you something here. So so, yes, he makes a good point,
like we've already hit bottom. No, I don't think Mario Party is one
long bottom. There's no ups and downs. They're all shit, Like,
I don't see how it could get me worse. I looked at IGN had
a list when Mario Party ten came out of the They ranked all the Mario
Parties. And I don't want to break it to you guys. Scientific Yeah
yeah, uh they said one, two, and three. If I remember
right, we're in some order the three best ones, which one tropic?
That's right, So I think it might be downhill from here. Uh.
I did not play the game, he wons much. I was an adult
man in college when they came out and had serious adult things to do,
so i'dn't have time for such children's activities. Uh So, I don't know
what to think of them. I heard they get slower and worse, and
four is one of the worst ones from what I've heard. Yeah. Cool.
Everybody keeps citing the microphone in four as like, I don't think it's
four. I think that's I want to say that's seven or five odd numbered
one. Maybe you're right, we're gonna need to get a microphone sometime over
the next year and a half. The microphone one actually sounds pretty interesting,
Like I don't know what that entails, but that sounds funny and weird and
different at least. Like I heard, four is super slow, like everyone
moves at a glacial pace and you can't speed it up at all. So
I mean, if we're doing fifty turns, which is sound pretty bad.
Have we agreed that we're doing fifty turns on every one of these yeah.
I mean, okay, yeah, I mean this might be doing what we're
That's what we're doing. He just gave you the options. That's what we're
doing. I love that attitude, Jeff. I like that. I just
won't be shocked if this is a four hour party. I think I think
for Mario party. I think Mario Party four. I'll bring I'll bring some
forties in. I'll be a good host here. I'll get us all in
the right mood. I'll bring four forties of minutes. I can't I drive
a car. I can't. I have to drive a car home at the
end of this, I'm not Yeah, okay, all right, you might
have to stay overnight. Anyways, Jason, I'll bring a forty for you.
Thank you. Yeah. Hopefully Drew will like fucking rage quit again.
I'm in for the lot. That was That was That was the moment last
time when I was like, he's generally the most placid of the staff,
and he just got up and stormed off. I was like, man,
we are in a really dark hole here. It was testing me. By
the end of three and four is supposed to be worse and take longer.
Those games all suck. What day is this Thursday. Thursday, Yeah,
Thursday, tentatively two pacifics. What we were talking about, look forward to
it. Might want to make it one, Yeah, maybe we want to
make it one. We should go a little earlier perhaps, if that's go
one, potentially going to be that long, like, yeah, it won't
get some stuff, but yeah, well we'll figure it out. We'll figure
it out, all right. Well, stay tuned for that and whatever else
happens on the site. If we don't all put ourselves out of our misery,
yeah, after Thursday, the end of Chinant Bomb. Yeah, yep,
we'll all be done, just like the podcasts. Stay tuned for another
edition of the Giant Bomb Cast next week.