M wake up, sleepyheads. It's Tuesday. Huh. You know what happens
on it Tuesday? We have to do a podcast? Okay, all right?
By law. Also, the podcast has already started Dean's Talk. Sorry
to spring it on you like that spring has sprung. But we're we're actually
podcasting right now. We are. We are bombcasting into podcast night now.
We're blowing my mind, even though we've actually been in this office for almost
five hours already. That's usually when we do a podcast, we've been in
an office for at least five hours. Yeah, but I want to put
that out. But it's ten thirty. It's true, it's in the morning.
It's Tuesday. Games. Calm is upon us. Yeah, it's the
giant bodcast. We came in early this morning. I feel jet lagged.
Yeah, you feel like you've flown curl to where Cologne. Yes, maybe
I put a little too much R into that. It sounded something like you
were talking about chrome over there. Maybe I am. I'm glad we're not
in Cologne though, because we're just gonna be tired today and then we just
go back to everything being normal. Sounds great. That's like twenty four days
long, and it just sounds pretty terrible. Right now, it's a month
and a half. Now, every every year they extended out, okay,
and now it's a full forty five days. Oh good, complimentary pack of
cigarettes right at the door. Yep, I'll miss Danny. You don't get
to smoke them. That someone smokes them and blows the smoke directly in your
face. That's the authentic game's calm experience. That's the game's calm difference.
Oh yeah, I don't know if the show it actually starts today, but
yeah we uh we came in with the crack of dawn to watch that Microsoft
press conference. Now the day is continuing apace. Yeah, here we are
doing a podcasts. Everybody feeling all right? Yeah? Yeah, second cup
of coffee. Yeah, I got my tea and my soda here man.
Yeah, I saw you were hitting sodas pretty hard during that stream. Yeah,
with no real food in my stomach, so there's all kinds of gurgly
stuff going on. What's that going for you? I felt better? Yeah.
I woke up at four in the morning and ate a proper breakfast.
Yeah, and then drove in. Are you hungry? Uh? Yeah,
that was hungry enough. You actually wake up at four and think I need
to eat. I woke up at five and it was starving. Yeah,
yeah, yeah it was. It was less about like am I hungry?
And moore like I need to eat. I got up at five and eight
a handful of peanuts and cheese. Does that make you wonder if you're actually
starving every morning at five and you're just two asleep to know it? What
if I've woken up hungry before? Maybe? Yeah, because I've been hungry.
You should figure out some way to eat in your sleep so that doesn't
happen. Now you're talking, Yeah, that's me getting things done. That's
multitasking. That's that's the way how you want it. Never be asleep hungry
again. It's raw efficiency. That's what I'm all about. Just cut out
all the bullshit, like it all done? Who has time to eat while
I'm awake? Come on, let's figure out why to shower while you're sleep
too. Yeah, that's time I could be interacting with social media. I
have started engaging with the latest hash tags. I have started commuting by running,
so I get my workout and my commute done in the same just running
to work, run to work both ways, and it's faster than the bus.
I am faster than a bus. San Francisco, Muni for you.
Are you showering when you get here? Yeah? Making use of the glorious
second Street showering facilities. Yeah. See the sixth floor and the fourth floor
both have single showers you get out of the basement. Yes, double show.
Yep, there's two shower stalls down there, put only one door.
Yeah, I've used that shower some in the past, many years ago those
experience. I shower at the gem across the street, and there are guys
in there, Like you know, the whole thing about guys the gem,
they are lifting and they're just making too many sary noises and they're just making
a big show out of everything. I think those same guys make noises in
the showers and I don't understand what's happening there. I don't think there's anything
weird going on. I'll just be showering and there's like six or eight showers
in this area. I go and there are guys that are just constantly I
don't know if it's cold, and they're taking cold showers and grunting because of
that. Like again, I don't think they're sexual weird noises. I don't
think so. I'm telling myself they're not because that would be more concerning.
But I don't know what's happening that would cause them to make these sounds.
Well, man, I mean, you know, sometimes if you work out
a bunch and then take a shower, it hurts you get sore in the
shower. But I don't I don't think. You don't even get that sore
that fast, right, It's usually like the next the next morning, wake
up feeling sore. Yeah. So I have no idea what kind of mysteries
going on in these other towers. I'm sure it's not gonna look, there's
a there's a remarkable lack of shame on many people's parts in Jim Locker rooms,
I find and I envy them. Yeah, yeah, okay, envy
somebody who doesn't feel bad about themselves in any way. Is there an inexplicable
number of old men, Oh, they're the most naked. Yeah. The
older they are, the more naked, they are more all of the time.
I just don't give a shit at that point. That always seems to
happen. I never see them in the gym, They're always just in the
locker room. Yeah, they just hang out in the locker room. That's
what they do. Place to hang out naked, Just go there to be
free. I mean there aren't a lot of bath houses around anymore. Yeah,
there's like whatever, Well what Tuesday, why don't we do you go
out of the gym and strip down? Yeah, be moist for going a
podcast here, go hang out in the gym locker room. Yeah that's what.
Wait, what so I do? That's actually where I will be right
after we do this naked in Make sure to get this thing posted as fast
as I can so people will know that where to find. You can head
across the street and find you. Just get in behind you, Duke newcom
sound effects. Yeah, it's just a man. Three stalls over. Those
alien beastards are gonna pay for shooting up my ride. I'd be all right
that. Yeah, that wouldn't creep me out. I think Duke Nukem actually
spends a lot of time at the gym. Yeah, I think it's just
pouring that way. I'd like to think it's just a natural. You know,
his foot, his leg is the most powerful thing. Like he's sure
he's too busy bench pressing camaros and ship one legged squats to go to the
gym. Yes, if you're one of those guys, cut that out.
You don't need to do that. Quit being naked. No, that's fine.
You're naked and shower that's how you do that. Just don't be making
weird grunting noises. It's completely unncessary. Maybe you should just like start making
weird grunting noises and see how you see what you think? Now, I'm
considerate locker room medic guy, like, maybe maybe they're just maybe you're missing
out. All right, maybe I'll try it out to embrace the culture.
All right, all right, winning room m hmm, yep. Maybe if
you like do that, then beer starts coming out of the shower head or
something. You don't know. That doesn't sound good after I worked out right
after you ever? Have you ever had a beer after workout? Beer?
You'll have is it apple? After it startsually like super thirsty at that point,
yeah, but then beer's just gonna make you more thirsty. Well,
and you have water after the beer. I guess there are races and stuff
where, yeah, you'll get like a beer ticket afterwards, and that's kind
of a nice thing. But like on a daily workout thing. No,
I don't want to be like taking shots right after I not shots, but
a beer. Like. So I went on the longest run of my life
a few weeks ago. I just felt really good. I'm like, I'm
gonna keep this going. How long? How long was long? Uh?
Eighteen miles? Wow? Jesus. Yeah. The part of this I had
ever gone before was eleven or twelve. It's almost a marathon. Yeah.
Uh well, uh anyway, Like I got back home and you know,
at some point you're that far, you're so far away, and you hurt,
and you're like, I need to get back. Uh, so you
have to run anyway, It was hell. The last few miles miles were
terrible, and it was so painful that when I stopped, Like you don't
realize that when you stop, that's when it hurts. Yes, Like I
stopped when I was out on the street, and I literally fell to my
hands and knees uh in pain. Got back to my apartment, crawled on
the floor from my door to the fridge, and pounded two beers. Why
does anyone run? And everything was okay. That was my thinking, Like
if I pound two beers, I will maybe be a little bit drunk and
that will make some of the pain go away, loosen you up a little
bit. And it did twenty minutes later. Totally fine. Okay, what
about the next day? Next day it was rough? Yeah, right,
sucks? What are that much? Sucks? So like I used to be
like that after like three miles, right, But if you do it enough,
like you you build up whatever those muscles are. Yeah, So like
if I need to just get close to that, maybe not get eighteen miles,
but you know, just get home, lay on your floor and just
grunt for a half hour and then you'll be better. I do that.
I don't need to run to do that. I skipped right to the good
poor I can just get home and just get into it. You know.
It's a good idea. Yeah. I mean I walked three miles on a
treadmill a couple days ago and didn't even do that. I just you know,
didn't even do my lay down grunt thing. That just went straight to
the drinking. Yeah, I just went wipe the drinking. I mean,
just stay on the treadmill. You know you're there, you're watching TV,
you're drinking a beer. Everything's cool. Sure, where do you guys land
on the moving shower beers. I've tried it. I guess I can see
the appeal. It just doesn't really leap out at me. It's something that
I need to keep doing. I used to do it a lot in college
as just like a pregaming thing or whatever. But it was something I did
once as like a man, I'm living out here fucking like a real lunatic,
and you have that moment of just like, you know what, I
don't need to drink in the shower. Yeah. I've had a couple of
shower forties. That's an experience. Wow, okay, because that usually gets
warm and shitty by the end of Anyway, I'm sure at some point in
college I did that's either a super long shower or really fast forty. Yeah,
it's college. I don't remember much. M Yeah that's fair. Uh.
Yeah, here we are. Yep, we watched that press conference we
did. Was it worth it? We're glad that we got up between four
and five this morning and came in and watched that thing. Yeah. I
think it was fun. It was all right. Yeah, I showed some
stuff, enjoyed myself. It's like a fair amount of action in that thing.
Yeah, not a whole lot of downtime, fair amount of units,
Yes, many many units were represented, doesn't matter of fact? Should we
just skip right to it? All the units, all units? Halo Wars
two, Halo Wars Dan, I think you made the joke. You're like,
oh, what is this Halo Wars two? Yeah, and yes it
was, but I was trying to think of any other Halo franchise that was
the thing. It's like, you say it because it seems so unlikely because
they were they were like, like, we're I forget how they phrased it,
a continuation of the classic Halo story finished Halo ST. I was like,
okay, well, okay, what is there. There's ODST, there's
Reach which ended. There's no sequel to Reach Spartan Assault, Like that's the
only one that would have been more ridiculous then that would have been because that's
they did two of those and no one cares. So like rolling, I
think you said, like, hey, another season a Nightfall or something like
it. But yeah, Creative Assembly is making Halo Wars too for PC and
and Xbox one. Why yeah, like which total units? Like yeah,
like if you when you set aside the absurdity of their being sequel to Halo
Wars, Like it seems like a pretty smart pairing, right, Yeah,
Like if anybody was gonna make a Halo RTS like those guys probably could Westwood,
Yeah, Westwoods, get them all right, Let'm get into that l
Castle, Yes, figure get into it. Figure out what lu Castle is
doing these petric Yeah, so that's coming. I suppose next holiday. Okay,
you said something right before this podcast about to be maybe being episodic.
I don't know. That was something that like there was like a one line
story on Kataku that said, like we heard it was gonna be episodic,
but that's I don't know. Presumably they heard it was gonna be episodic.
You keep mentioning more and more these days. I find that video games have
gotten weird. Yeah they really are. Boy how have they? I mean
Creativessembly like they're owned by Sega, right, yeah, so Sega is bringing
you the next Halo RTS. What it's a real weird sentence. Meanwhile,
Sega not bringing you the sequel to shen Move because they license that out to
some other thing to do it. They only want to make other people's games.
Now. Yeah, Well it's yeah, yeah, making a game with
other people's money totally. I guess that we're going to pay for it.
Sure. I mean you got a hand at the Microsoft. They're swinging for
the fences. You know, they're trying to put games out on their platform.
They're doing stuff. Yeah, you know, sure, why not?
Why not make another Halo Wars. That's a game that I don't think anyone
actually wanted. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea Medieval to Halo War.
Yep. I saw one tweet today that somebody was very very excited for Halo
Wars to one person, So I'm interesting, Yeah, I've always wanted that
Halo Wars is freaking eyes and let's do this or you know, like I'm
ready for them to show me why another Halo Wars. And there are enough
units in the Halo universe to like make an RTS act like big and small,
you know, like they've got the whole kind of hierarchy of like fodder
starting units all the way up to their units, you know. You know,
yeah they need boats. Oh yeah right, this is Halo Wars two,
so it needs to have c stuff. Yeah, yeah, was it
reached that tried to do some like space combat stuff. There's like two levels
or something. They have some space dog fight e type stuff. Remember kind
of liking that, or you know they maybe they could even do some some
Homeworld style like orbital type stuff. You know, yeah, if they really
felt like it, who knows, who knows? Yeah, Halo Wars who
might be the game of twenty sixteen taking it by storm yep right there at
the end. Uh what else did they have at that thing? You know,
footage some stuffy showed a lot of showed scale Bound, I guess the
first time showing gameplay. I feel like that's a game that it looks It
looks to me like a game uh that exists that I don't know about,
you know, like the I am assuming from looking at that that there are
games that have been like that before that I just haven't played. M Well,
yes, no, I don't know. I think that they're kind of
Osaga like that is. I know that that means right, you could draw
some probably draw some parallels, but not really. This to me looks like
you know, some Devil may Cry minds that wanted to make some monster hunter.
Yeah, okay, all right, Yes, wasn't that exactly what I
was calling for when we had our Monster Hunter argument months ago. It's like,
yeah, if it controlled like Devil May Cry, I was some tight
responsive controls, that would be awesome, Dan, if I got a game
for you it starring me, Oh yeah, Drew the headphone guy. I
thought that looked kind of cool. Yeah, I looked. It looked all
right like they're definitely going to a scale with that game, you know,
like it's about big monster's fire, another big monsters, and you're just kind
of there for along for the ride. Was what I got out of that.
You are, in fact writing scaled being literally writing a dragon at some
point. But I don't know, like the actual on foot combat just looked
sort of Yeah. It's like check ups, swing the sword in the air
five times, hover in the air, like that sort of character action.
He air juggling combos. Sure, yeah that could be cool. I look
alright, four player co op, four dragons, yes, like that's nuts.
A lot of on screen dragons. I wish they'd showed more of Crackdown.
Yeah, that was the thing I was primed to be most excited about
it. I mean, on some level, maybe you kind of know what
Crackdown looks like they don't need to show the gameplay, so they kind of
showed some of the destruction stuff which is new, like which I was confirmed
that is in the multiplayer mode only, Okay, yeah, or that's how
they're billing it right now. They it's specifically the stories going around were like
crazy big destruction in multiplayer that's lame. So I wanted it to be like
Mercenaries where you could take down any building during the campaign. I don't know,
but they say that it is excluded from single player or they just highlighting
the fact that was kind of the implication by this of the stuff, but
who knows. I mean, if you if you think about the single player
in terms of like ability orbs need to be placed somewhere where you can reach
that your story points will potentially require you to scale a building. You can't
blow that building up. But I mean the way they did that in Mercenaries
was once you're out of range or whatever, it's just back and it's not
like Crackdowns that serious of a game to where they wouldn't mind breaking the rules.
And that's guyscrapers at that point if all the buildings just respond, like,
what's really the value to destroy everything on top of a bunch of dudes
like there. Maybe, but also if you destroy the entirety of your single
player world and there's just nothing left except for rubble, then it's like,
well, what's your video game? Yeah, that's a that's a weird thing.
So I guess maybe it makes sense why it would be more kind of
focused on the multiplayer, and that starts to make the where they're like,
you know the power of the Microsoft Cloud's gonna make all this destruction possible.
You're like, what is that? No, what's what? But in a
multiplayer environment where they're sinking it across multiple players and stuff like that, and
really I wanted to keep track of what's going on on that server. Maybe
that sort of stuff starts to makes sense. Sure, it seemed really dynamic,
the destruction. Yeah, it did not seem like battlefields. Yeah,
it was not. Revolution wasn't just like here's this like canned thing that can
happen one of them. Everyone's watching the same animation, right yeah, yeah,
yeah, I know it looked like a building falling apart in a pretty
dramatic fashion. But they had you know, they had faction. They had
the announcer guy and they had the agility Orbs. That's kind of transforming car
thing, I guess in a transforming car, and that's kind of what you
need out of a cracktic cinematic trailer. He first thing he does is run
through an agility Yep, I don't want to chase Orbs this time, guys,
Agent yet Love. It's one of the few things I think they added
for two, and it's stupid. I don't like this at all. Yeah.
I also think it's weird whenever they try to get the voice back into
the game and present him as and try to present him again, is just
like, hey, Agent, you need to fight crime. Yeah, It's
like, no, you already outed yourself as fucking an evil motherfucker. Happened
in the first game at the end of the first game, that's not we
can't roll that back. Did they even address that in two? I forget.
I think they might have just fucking said I think they rolled it back
there too. I mean, if I forget, like Crackdown two, size
his voice again for you. It's I mean, it's a good voice and
it's an iconic aspect of Crackdown. Yeah, but who knows. Uh.
They shoot Quantum Break Yep, that looked all right, a shooter from Remedy
where yeah do time stuff like I don't person, I don't necessarily love like
generic sci fi third person shooter trappings out of Remedy because they come up with
some pretty unique stuff. Yeah, but it also looks kind of unique,
like an in a very familiar millieu. It looks like they're doing something.
I think once once they start detonating time bombs, yeah, then it starts
looking unique. Yeah. Yeah, the the time mechanics and the combat looks
neat, but also just the cinematic stuff of like you kind of stand standing
there as time accelerates around you. What about the combat looked interest to you?
Like the dash move that the guy seemed to have seemed like you had
a lot of mobility. I don't know, I mean, we'll see,
Like it was hard to get a sense of exactly what the abilities were from
that. Yeah, if it just becomes like time bomb straight around behind them,
shoot them and that's you know, that's not could get kind of that's
not a lasting mechanic. But there was that game Wanted based on the movie
Oh right, yeah, yeah, had a cover It was a cover shooter,
but had this like concept of flanking where you'd have to like basically like
very quickly get around behind them and maybe curve a bullet. I forget exactly
how it was, but it was a sort of thing where like you had
to face them head on for a little bit and then at the right time
get over to the side and shoot them and can kill them like on an
null nullify their cover. I always get that and Jumper mixed up about which
one was the bullet curving one. But yeah, the curve bullets and the
loom tells them who to kill. But then there are guys that can also
be in a time rift with you. I mean, that's the only way
to do that, right, It is like you know, yeah, that's
how you escalate your enemy. Like a minute, he's he can do this
too. Eventually you find guys in time suits and they can yep with big
packs on their back that you probably shoot so they can't do it. Then
he was dashing around them too, So was he in a time bubble in
a time bubble? Yes, No, I don't know. Maybe the time
suit is not as good as having native time powers. I'm really curious about
the like kind of TV part of it because they said there's that one X
Man guy in it, but they also had a Kirkatty guy from The Wire.
I think I was the only one excited about that when we were watching.
And you guys have seen like The Wire, I've seen the first.
That guy's an awesome I haven't meant four years to go back and watch all
of the Wire, and I just never get around to it. Okay,
well, well that god, I'm gonna do it someday. I didn't know
that guy was in Quantam Break and he is a really really cool actor.
So okay. So in game TV show, that's what they said, isn't
that just FMV cut I think that's what it actually is. They made it
seem like it was going to an Xbox one thing to where you would like
watch it on there, Like, I don't think it's gonna be like an
Alan Wake thing where there's like an en Universe TV show. I think it's
going to be fully acted episodes long FMV cut scene. Maybe. Yeah,
the characters, I mean the characters in the political aspect of the game or
the same characters from that, yeah, live action. And there was kind
of a moment there where they said, like oh, you know, the
game will focus on the heroes and the show will focus on the villains or
something seemed to be what they were implying there too, So maybe it's just
yeah, i'm FMV cut scenes sounds right to me. I think that's just
part of how they told me it's been good or or obscenely bad. Yes,
yea, And I wonder if this is yeah, it's I wonder if
this was meant to be something else that would live outside the game at one
point, and then as they kind of moved away from their weird fucking Internet
TV dreams that it just made more sense to hold into the game, right,
Yeah, yeah, those studios shut down, So yeah, I don't
know what this thing is other than probably them just leaning into their fake TV
show stuff that they've done in previous games. Maybe. So yeah, I've
I've got high expectations for this game, just because Remedy has such a history
of like their games have such a specific vibe to them. You know,
everything just seems a little weird and off kilter with their fake TV shows and
kind of self referential stuff here and there. But we will see. Yeah,
it's kind of those kind of high points of the new stuff they showed.
Yeah, sure, that new home Front game, right that still have
showed a little more, just Cost three, which still looks good. They
had that abysmal Halo five presentation. Yeah, it's just commentating over a canned
highlight reel of sports competition. Yeah, yeah, they're they're million dollars prize
purse, which, like you know, at the same time, the International's
going like yeah, for like a zillion dollars, right, Yeah, it's
not to say that Halo five doesn't look cool, it's just they presented it
really terribly. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a bad way
to show that game. It's fucking crazy. We're only we're only on day
two of the proper group stages at the International, and there are already things
being said about the teams to the effect of, like, well, the
outcome of this match is going to determine who's going to bring at least a
million dollars home. Like this early in the tournament, there's so much money
on the line that like teams are already being guaranteed like x millions of dollars
just for placing like fifth or whatever. Uh, sure, Danils earnt how
to play Doda but I digrest. I've been quietly getting really good at DODA.
I'll be in next here, so I guarantee you. Although I wait
a second, we're over like twenty one right our reaction times now it's too
sorry. I played a lot of Red Alert. I think I can figure
it out if you can just get it, I mean, just get in
before they start doing proper drug testing, and then you can just take whatever
your way to the top. Now. Yeah, okay, it's like a
master's sure competition for older people. Yeah. Yeah, So it was an
early morning. It was a press conference. All that stuff is should be
on the site shortly, yep, yep. Maybe now uploading trailers like a
madman. All right, are we putting up our the whole thing? Yeah,
that we did. Okay, all right, that'll be up there.
I feel like watching it on demand if you want to check out the vaud
No, no, it'll be on the site. Battle Toads and Killer Instincts
oh right, yeah. Yeah. There are a bunch of little tidbits.
Yes, characters. The way they're phrasing that makes it sound like that is
one of the eight new characters season three. That's not just like some dumb
bonus. They's like, no, this is one of the eight they did
confirm a season, but it does get bigger when he kicks turn into does
turn into the as a little debt bike thing. Yeah, it's like the
it's like Clay Fighter and Battle Toad's mixed together. Yeah, it seemed like
it was kind of a blob. It seems like it's kind of a maybe
maybe not on a season three for that game. Yeah, but then they
confirmed it today. Yeah. I would have thought it would have been announced
prior to this, like an EVO or something like that. Living in for
games come sure, good on them for keeping that thing going though, Yeah
what if we move on? Yeah, okayre I think that was all the
kind of the very top level interesting stuff out of that thing. Some other
kind of backwards compatibility announcements and things like that dv DVR with your over the
air oh right stuff now in an Xbox, which is pretty cool. Uh
whatever, that's all off in the future. Video games are here and now,
and the games are happening. They are occurring at a rapid rate.
End plus plus. Yeah, it's happening whether you want it to or not.
Yeah, it happened. Happening is continuing. Some too happen already playing
that a little bit of it. Yeah, yeah, it's that's just more
in. Yeah. Absolutely, there's some really hard community left added a bunch
of stuff. Uh yeah, I was I was informed that in the four
player race mode, if you're the first person to finish, you turn into
a rocket and can go kill other players. Sounds kind of cool. You
can do that in power Fall, if you turn into a ghost and you
can hunt other players. Yeah, that's yeah, power Fall. Huh,
straight game. No, alright, it's a it's all right, it's okay.
One of the best recent multiplayer games. Uh, it is of that
first tier. It is maybe my least favorite, but there's been so many
after it that have been so subpar that, like tower Fall is definitely a
quality game. I will put power Fall as number one of that this renaissance
of if people keep calling that couch co op, it's not co op,
it's competitive, But of those type of games, I think it's the best.
It's no I take it over Samurai Guns. No, Samurai gus take
a Samurai Gun. I love Samurai Gun. I like tower Fall better.
Like the basic act of attacking in Samurai Gun is way more fun to me
than the nothing awesome, just the feel of the sword, the way the
character moves. I don't like shooting the arrows and tower Fall. I don't
think it's like the whole drawback and aiming mechanic. And I don't yeah,
the power ups stuff like that, the way that was not a big TowerFall
fan didn't really do me on that game. Like Bomberman, Yeah, that's
a good game. Bomber Man is a great game, the best. What
if there were a video series, maybe rank all of the couch competitive Guy,
all of Jos. What if it's just all of the bomber Man games.
Okay, yeah, bomber Man zero number one, yeah, number zero
zero. Stop. We gotta stop talking about here. It's like the second
time today that it's come. It's becoming a common punchline, and I don't
like it. I hadn't thought about it for years, and now that we've
been talking about it more right, like thinking about how funny that you guys
are forcibly reinserting it into the public consciousness. It's not it's not a precedent
you want to set. It sounds like compatibility. Get out there, you
can get out there. And vote for your backwards compatibility favorites that you games
you want to play on the Xbox one that inhaled to the chimp that in
the outfit hailed to the about the club that inhaled to the fucking chimp the
outfit. Come on, come on, stop it, you know what you're
doing. Uh, there's video games are coming out this week. Yes,
video games are back, like some Suber thirty video games were. That's true.
Rare Replay is out. Yeah, it's cool. Quick looked the whole
thing, yeah, more or less. More or less ran into a situation
where the pre release version needed patches for all those three sixty games, which
I was taken aback by like the one part of that thing you would think
would not need any more patching. Yeah, games many years old, but
the backwards compatibility stuff that's still you know, they're still working at Sadly,
we did not technically boot all thirty games in that Quick Look, but we
got pretty close. We booted everything that booted in the Rare Replay interface instead
of the three sixty backwards compatibility stuff, So you can boot the three sixty
ones from the Rare Replay menu, which is kind of takes a lot longer,
and if you want to back out and hold and start, it takes
a bit. So that makes sense though, I mean they did at least
do the leg work so that you can exit out of the three sixty games
straight back into Yeah, the rare replay kind of rapper. Yeah, and
there aren't any of those snapshots though, of the three sixty games earlier.
That's mostly like the old like Slalom in rcpro and stuff like that. I
don't think they have that, yeah, yeah, yeah, And the and
the kind of the internal challenges are all based on just how many achievement points
you have in those games, right, yeah, so it picks of your
existing achievements, like they were out there talking about like, oh, this
game got so many achievements in it, but like, yeah, but I
already have a ton of them because I played Cameo. Because Cameo is all
right, Cameo is all right, Jeff, thank you. I have never
played Cameo. It's all right, it's all right. I keep looking at
that and the rare replay menu, and I'm wondering if I should How long
is this a long game? Or no? It's six eight hours? Oh
shit, maybe I'll go through all a cameo is cameo? All right?
Or is cameo two thousand and five? All right? Cameos two thousand five?
All right? Okay, it was a decent like action platformer kind of
thing. Dan, you might like it. Actually, I'm curious to go
back. I've never touched it, and now I have them. It's okay.
You know, you've got elemental friends that you can swap between, and
they've got to you know, there's a fire guy and you got to get
the fire guy. He'd use his thing on this puzzle and then that's how
you get by. And Okay, I figured that I started it on my
extra live stream last year or the year before, and like it was like
a punchline for a while. Yeah, I mean it certainly got a bad
rap for a while. I'm in the mood for a platformer right now,
and I booted up Conquer and no camera stuff. Like, Jeff, you
talked a bit about your troubles. Yeah, just the the controls didn't feel
very responsive, like yeah, like I was hitting jump and then it was
not jumping as quickly as it should have. You just run off the edge
and you just run off the edge, and that's nobody likes that. I
was having more issues at the camera stuff that was bugging me. Yeah,
that stuff's not great either, you know. And then you have stuff like
Jetforce Gemini, which you know, whatever, it's not a great game to
begin with, but like then it's like, hey, we've mapped the sea
buttons to the right stick because like it's just you know that doesn't you're pushing
up on the right stick to jump. Yeah, Like that's just crazy.
So I wonder if they talked about doing the Xbox version of Conquer, because
they did that like live and reloaded one or whatever, which is the same
game. It just controlled better and looked better. But I guess people are
looking for a Nostaliday with railery play. So that's probably why they've got the
sixty four version. It's probably a lot easier because they were already doing other
and sixty four games, so probably emulating that as opposed to like, okay,
let's get an Xbox emulator up and running, well grabbed by the goolies
with this original Xbox right. Yeah. Yeah, but that's think that you
thought that might have been. I don't. I don't think it actually got
released as a port to the PC. Are you gonna do it? I
am gonna gonna fact check it. We're gonna look that up. I'm sure
that game looks amazing. Yeah, like that grabbed by the Goolies, like
shockingly might be the best looking thing in that collection short of you know,
like Viva Panada and Nuts and Bolts, like the actual three sixties. So
that looks like a lot of the HD remaster games that come out. Yeah,
like the backgrounds, like the environments specially, looks super sharp and like
elections lighting. Yeah, like nice texture, resolute, like it looked like
almost like a like a modern ish game. I was shocked to see that
thing. Also, I learned from our comments that Goolies in the UK is
slaying four testicles. Ah okay, so there's a little bit of a double
on tend or going on. That's pretty good. Good to know, you
know what, I feel like, going back to Cameo for a second,
when you talk about that game being the butt of a lot of jokes and
stuff, I feel like Cameo is almost like an extension of the narrative that
emerged during that quick look when we were playing it was Yeah, it sounds
like you know, all great rays makeing some edgy like like I think even
Cameo specifically had some older art that was not like the way it came out,
like almost like a Joanna Dark kind of revamp. So so okay,
so uh, Grabbed by the Ghoulies was compatible on the three sixty. Okay,
so they did the emulation work there, and I wonder if that's how
it carried over and that's how they did it. But there was no PC
release, No, there was there was no PC release the only original,
but it is downloadable like you can you can actually download that game on demand
on the three sixty. Oh okay, is that the only original Xbox One
and Rail replay? I want to say it is. I think it's.
I think so I'm pretty sure that is the it's the sixty Horror and the
Conqueror, like you said, yeah right, yeah, so yeah, I
wonder, you know, yeah, why not do the Xbox version of of
conquer as well or something? But that had Xbox Live components. Maybe that
was weird in a minute, and it's just you know, and they did
some work here and there to redo menus to say like push A instead of
push whatever button you were hitting on the original Welt Machine. And there's like
dialogue though in Conquer where the scarecrow or someone will say hit L to do
this, and then the prompt shows up like hit X. Oh yeah they
didn't change the voice, right, Yeah, they didn't change the voice.
Yeah, because they weren't going to go rerecord that. But the on screen
stuff at least kind of points in the right direction. Yeah. But that's
a that's a solid collection. I think a lot of those games are,
like it just depends on where your nostalgilize for those games. I was like
pleased to see the blast Core looked like it held up. Yeah, like
it ran good and yeah, yeah controlled all right totally. That was that
was It was great to play that and go, yes, this is still
fun. It seems pretty simple. Is there more to it than I saw
there? Or is it basically just hate blow up everything? That's kind of
it. Did you just do the truck one because you get the big suits
and stuff, like, yeah, yeah we did. We did the suit
first. It's a bunch of different vehicles and like that's fun, and some
hidden stuff in there too, you know, to find in some of the
levels. Like it's it's cool but yeah, some of that stuff, if
you didn't play it originally, you know, you're gonna kind of come to
it and maybe be scratching your head. I think a lot of that spectrum
stuff that's super early, Like there's that's like maybe like ten of the games
in that collection, like a full third of them or close to a full
third of them at least, are rough YEP. I used to play a
ton of slalom when I was a kid, and so like going back to
that was kind of a thrill. But as I was playing it, I
was thinking, like, you know what if I just played this on the
collection for the first time, I probably wouldn't play much slow There's stuff about
slalom that I remembered being in slalom that is not in Slowly. I didn't
look that bad, but yeah, it's you know, like it runs really
quickly. Seemed pretty good compared to some of those spectrum games. Yeah.
Yeah, like you know, all that stuff being in there wouldn't be that
well. It's not a disappointment, I don't want to say that, but
like it would stand out a little less if some of the bigger, rare
stuff had made it in there. And it's obvious why things like Donkey Kon
Country and Golden Eye are not there. Yeah, unfortunately, but it's still
you know when you're saying, like here's thirty thirty five years rare history,
Like you know, there's a gap around the Super Nintendo where you just don't
see anything from the point. Also the stuff where like they don't mention like
the documentary stuff they shot, they talk a lot about Nintendo and Super Nintendos
and stuff like that, but they don't reference the original platform that these games
were released on, any of the kind of rapper or any kind of the
material they showed, like that controller that vaguely looks like any control they made
their fake any controller and that sort of stuff. But like you know,
they at no point did they say like, hey, this was originally on
the ZX Spectrum or anything like just as a as a historical piece, I
would like that information there, right, Yeah, But but overall, like
yeah, the amount of like just kind of care. Yeah, it went
into that package, like the West thirty. Yeah it's thirty bucks. Like
it's a great deal, especially if you didn't have those three sixty games.
Yeah, both of you have a Pinata's nuts and Bolts. Yeah, yeah,
it's done. We're done. Worth a third of it right there over
a triangle. Give them thirty dollars. They did some games I've never heard
of before like that that looks awesome. Yeah. Yeah. They did smart
stuff with control mapping. So it's not like every NES game has the exact
same mapping. It's you know, RC pro am. If you want to
do the triggers right, you can do it. It's naturally mapped. Yeah
yeah, whereas like you know, you look at some lazier things like Midway
Arcade treasures where it's all like, okay, it's all the same mapping.
Shut up, you know. Yeah, this they put a lot of care
into it. Yeah, And it sounded like they might have been out there
saying that they're, you know, not done with some of the control,
like they might take another crack at some of the stuff that's not controlling quite
right. It sound like they were also maybe open to adding games to it,
or doing more of this down the line or something via DLC or or
how. I don't know, but they even do weird stuff like you know,
save states and a rewind thing and battletoads like yeah, yeah, all
that, all that stuff's really well done. And then and again, like
we mentioned it, the quick look, but the amount of supplemental stuff in
that thing, it's nice. It's super heartwarming. There's just not even though,
like a lot of these games are so we're so far removed at this
point, like there's no footage from the actual time of development, you know,
like it's all just kind of people talking about something they did fifteen years
ago at this point. But it's still great to have that stuff. I
still have my Nintendo Power of VHS, so the making of Donkey Kong Country,
So there you go. Got that nice. Yeah, I just I
constantly wish there was more making of stuff on video games. I got that
tape and never opened it. I remember being pretty cool, and I remember
thinking it was the greatest graphics had ever looked and ever will look. That's
not true, Yeah, totally accurate. They got a lot better. They've
never looked better than photo realists. Yeah, we got more combat. I
had real people in Yeah, you can't get more real than real. I
told myself that with the first Mortal Kombat. I also said when I saw
Mary sixty four that graphics would never get better. I was also twelve.
That's it done. Yeah, we'll never go to space. But yeah,
you know, I think everyone's gonna have their favorites in that collection, depending
on kind of where they fall with Rares Catalog. And I think there'll be
some stuff on there that you just straight up don't like. Yeah, Like
that Spectrum stuff is damn near unplayable for me because I just don't have the
reference point of that stuff. Yeah. Again, I think it all comes
down to the price of this thing, which is relatively modest. Yeah.
Yeah, I think, you know, even even taking into the consideration that
there are games on that collection that I think are like bad games, Uh,
it's still it seems totally worth. I think even those are worth going
into and go. Right, it's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting to look
at r C pro Am two and go like, man, this came out
really late, and oh boy, this is not a great game, and
man, they really sucked the fun out of the first RC pro Am,
didn't they uh with this one. So it's also fun to like just watch
the development history of a studio, like, oh, this is the first
time they had a story, or this is the first time they did like
art, you know, right, Yeah, I think sound this game has
music's crazy sound at the same time. Yeah, and then here's this weird
boat game which is completely unlike anything else. Yeah, and then little hitting
gyms like I doubt that many people played Battle Toads Arcade, but it's pretty
good battletoads game, you know. Oh yeah, and the pantheon of Battletoads
game in games. It might be the best one, but I mean,
not a lot of people play probably the greatest Battle Toads game of all time
that that is accurate. I would say if we did a video series that
ranked the Battle Toads games bottom of the barrel, Killer Instinct number one,
Killer Killer in six season two point five. Yeah, best Battle Toads game
ever made, Project Spark, Yes, yeah, no, I think that's
a it's a cool package. It's good stuff and a good way to look
at the three sixty backwards compatibility stuff if you're interested in that, and none
are not in the preview program, which this will sort of get you in
partially, at least at least get some of that stuff, messed with some
of that stuff. That is not the only game out this week, though,
Uh that's true. There's a spaceship game, Yes, galax z Galaxy,
though at one point early on in the game, they referred to your
ship as the Gallock Z and I'm like, wait, what the they say,
like that galock you're flying or something? Hey, hang on, hang
on here. I am developing in somewhat unhealthy obsession with that game, really
in the sense that I refused to let it win. Yeah. I had
kind of a dark moment with it yesterday. How many rage quit uninstalled?
None? A lot of that was a dark moment in your soul as a
as a prelude to my sort of poor showing during the quick Look, the
way that game works is weird, like it's roguelikeness. Is kind of strange
that in terms of the way it handles your progress. Yeah, Like,
you know, Jake had explained that to to Drew and I when he came
through a couple of weeks ago to show it to us. But yeah,
I guess they You know, I've got a lot of people maybe didn't know
exactly how it was going to be struct I knew that they kind of shifted
into like more of a procedurally generated thing and kind of went that direction with
it and and that sort of stuff. But yeah, I wasn't necessarily,
I hadn't feel they quite grasped like what that game was going to be specifically,
Like what it was that had me kind of on tilt going into that
look was the just the harshness of the risk rewards set up in that game
of like you can kind of go for it if you want, but if
you blow it, you were going to lose a lot of progress. There's
a lot of starting over at the beginning of things in that game. Yeah,
there's a lot. It seems like the parts of that game definitely required
discipline, Like I need to fucking get away from here because death is serious.
Yes, yeah, that I just started before this podcast, and like
I ran into some big Sentinel guy and I just heard Jeff Belt, you
need to get out of there, get away from there, And like I
didn't expect it to be structured, like you kept bringing up Splunky, Like
I thought it was just gonna be a tough kind of asteroids like you know,
Space Shooter. Yeah, I did not know about this whole like,
oh, if you quit in the middle of the season or whatever, like
when you describe to me it's runs like Spilunkey. I had no idea.
It structured that way, so you have to you have to think about how
you go about encounter. Same here. I figured it would be like,
oh, let's continually upgrade this ship, and like when I first launched it,
I was like, Okay, I have four hole two shield. I'm
sure I'll find upgrades for that. And it's like, yeah, you you
sort of do, but that stuff goes away. They only shield in health
upgrades there are like once you lose them, they're just gone. Like there
are no permanent health upgrades that I've seen. Yeah, I was playing very
cavalierly at first, where it's like, oh, well, if I lose
health, I'm sure like enemies will drop health or I'll pick it up in
the environment. And then like as I played it more, it's like,
oh, losing a health pip is a big deal. It's a huge fucking
deal. Like you you don't heal between missions? That is crazy. You
can buy one health for mission. I found an item yeah that restores one
hole when you finish a mission. What every mission nuts and bolts. I
think it's called every mission every mission only. Shit, dude, that's huge,
So every like one dash three not like a whole like season. Also
you can I immediately fucking died. Yep, did you find that or did
you get the blueprint? I found it? Okay, because you can if
you when you find blueprints for upgrades like that, they are added to the
game's shop. But even then that seems to only unlock the chance for them
to show up at the time you find a shop or presented with a shop.
It is a random assortment of items, so really span the hopper of
potential upgrade. But that doesn't so because I thought I thought getting a blueprint
meant that the ability would always be there for purchase, but that's not even
the case. Yeah, because it seems like, yeah, that's a crash
of stash. Every time you go there, it's like, oh, here's
what I got today, and then it might be totally different than next time
exactly. H And it controls you know, it's it's very kind of thrust
and momentum based, you know, kind of your space thing. It's not
a dual joystick sort again, no, definitely not. You got that juke
so you can like jump over enemies and bullets and something like right, which
is like super effective, yeah, really really useful, and you can kind
of spam it. There's not like a long crew ben on. You can
just keep keep popping over bullets, which is you know, like I've definitely
fucking narrowly escaped death by just timing, like jumping over three different barrages of
bullets and shooting the whole time. And uh and and that can that can
be really effective. It's scary when it's like that, when there's like three
big TEP enemies or whatever and you're just jumping like crazy hoping you don't get
tagged with one of them. Yeah, and so I thought it was gonna
be situation where like, you know what, Hey, these guys seem like
big and bad right now, But I bet if I give it forty five
minutes, these guys are gonna be total weaklings forever. Like no, because
you start with nothing every time you start a new season or start fresh,
you know, so there's kind of you know, the enemies that are fuckers
will forever sort of be fuckers unless you kind of find your way into the
right set of upgrades over the course of a season, or or you just
figure out better strategy just for beating them, Like I'm I'm finally now getting
to the point where I'm you're marking different enemies with like, all right,
that's the guy I need to go robot form and use the charge sword slash
on right, Like that's the guy I can grab with the grappling hook and
throw at other guys or whatever? Do you do? This strafe thing?
Much the l one motion. It's kind of weird. It's weird. The
control on it is really strange, Yeah, because the way it determines,
like which which if it's gonna thrust you left or right, it's your bearing.
It's like where you're it's your bearing and combined with your current momentum.
Yeah, so if you're heading to the right and face you know, the
thrusters will keep you going to the right. It's basically a drift button.
Yeah, pretty much, but I don't know. With some slower enemies,
I was able to get into a thing where I was just kind of circling
around them shooting the entire time. Yeah, that's great, it's handsome.
It's awesome when Yeah, it's awesome when you get the hang of it.
Yeah, but it's a weird. There was a moment everybod I was like,
man, I actually kind of wish that this just was kind of a
dual joystick game. Yeah. The deeper in I get, the more the
more I appreciate all the different options in the combat. Like, yeah,
that's kind of what you just said is kind of how I would sum up
all of the combat in this is. Like it's awesome when you get the
hang of it, right, Like is it satisfying when you do? Yeah?
Like there there are definitely moments in this game, like it can be
frustrating as hell, but there are moments where you're just like fucking yeah,
like yeah, you managed to, Like especially in the so they introduced the
third faction in season two, which is way more aggressive. Uh, and
like there are moments where you can like you get enemies from all three factions
fighting each other and you barely escape and then grab like an explosive barrel with
the robot form and throw it into the mess and like blow them all up
or whatever and just like jumping out of your seat. Yeah, for me,
feel it's really good. The vine environmental stuff, like the exploding barrels
are like in season two, you find these little air you know, canisters
that are on the wall. You shoot them, they just start taking off
and like creating around it in random as it's boosting around, knocking into shit.
And I had a couple of like times that seemed real lucky where it's
like it's just curving around, it almost hits me and then curves back around
and takes out two guys. That's that's the thing. Like they're there are
a ton of environmental hazards, and they're all just as deadly to you as
they are to the enemy. So like you're constantly kind of seat of your
pants trying to get the fuck out of there. Yeah, but it can
all it can all kind of come together in a really satisfying way when you're
kind of just firing on all cylinders, or you might just find yourself dead
all of a sudden, Like it's one of those things where you're like,
oh, we have you know, three health and yeah, my shields are
full everything because wait, wait oh wait, wait oh wait oh wait oh
wait oh wait I'm dead. Fuck fuck fuck you couldn't. Yeah, you
could be desperately trying to set up like a good save file for a quick
look before we have to start recording, and think like, yeah, I'm
gonna be like right before the boss of the season it's gonna be awesome,
and then just fucking wipe upgrades are super satisfying, found because when you start,
it's so just kind of you need to really be penpoints with your shots.
And then I eventually got a thing where it's more of a spreadshot and
it bounced off stuff. So if you're like narrow quarters or something, it's
like, oh, fuck you, I'm just gonna bounce the spread shot everywhere
and kill you. The firing characteristics changed pretty dramatically, Like that stuff is
like getting the big shots and then getting them with plasma and then getting like
the assault muzzle, so it shoots, they shoot faster to compensate for the
slowness of the big shots. Like, yeah, there's there's a lot of
stuff there that that is pretty cool. And I've definitely have to have been
having to learn discipline with the robot because the robot has no real ranged options.
Yea, so you have to be careful. Yeah, you have to
be careful when you get in there with your sword. The robot seems like
very like situational, like you will find moments where you're like, this is
a good spot for the robot, but generally speaking, like I'm not.
I'm not relying on it very much. You got you gotta be real careful
with it. Anything carry over from season to season sort of not really blueprints
that will always be unlocked, persistent crash coins that you pick up. You
can cash those in for money at the beginning of the next season, and
then you have enough money to buy some stuff so you can get upgrades quicker.
Basically yeah, okay, but you can use those coins to continue once
if you die, if you have five of them, you can cash those
instead of So if you die and you have at least five, you can
either start the season over and cash those in for money and buy upgrades with
them, or you can spend them right on the spot and continue, which
is what I did right before that quick look. But they take all your
ship and put it like way deep in the level. Yeah, there's a
recovery crate that has all of your upgrades. Oh so you start with nothing.
So if you're on a like a mission later in the season, that's
a lot harder. They throw you in. You don't even have the robot
form. You are literally just the ship with the pea shooter and that's it.
Yes, Oh wow, I could not even transform when I did that
until I got my crate. And if you die and you're on your corpse
run, are you that's it? So you've lost all your crash at that
point. Yes, at that point, you have lost your progress and the
crash coins that you could have turned into money to buy new ship. That's
why I was so fucking mad when we started that quickly. It's a huge
rest to do. Yeah, it's a huge That was the first time I
had continued and I didn't know about the corpse run mechanics, so I was
just like, I'll just continue and be more careful and finish this mission and
then we'll go jeez. But nope, it's a it's a bastard like that
game is rough, but it's super satisfying when you get really deep into it
and just you know everything is going your way on a good run, it's
really fun. Like I'm I'm not gonna let it win. I'm gonna go
home and beat this season tonight. But yeah, I think that game is
really good. Yeah, it sounds really cool enjoying it so far. Yeah,
uh video games? Who else played stuff? Played a game that no
one's talking about, But I liked a lot. We did a quick look
on the side of the swindle and it's you know, we talked about really
tough stuff in Perma Death, and you know that that carries over into this
one, in which it's this two D thing where it's by the guy that
had like Ben there Dan that okay, but you have a hundred days,
and a day is comprised of either a death or a successful heist. So
you start out in the slums and you're sneaking in and basically you just have
this club to hit guards with or whatever. Two D very simple AI with
little vision cones and stuff like that, and you're just trying to steal money,
hack computers and step and get out of there and buy upgrades between days
and basically you just want to get enough upgrades and get good enough to be
able to sneak into Scotland Yard and steal this Devil's Bassilist thing, which is
this nineteen eighty four things going to spy on people in eighteen hundreds London or
whatever. It's all very steampunky or whatever. I think it's really good.
I like a lot. It's crazy hard, but if you get to the
Devil's Bassilist thing, the swindle, like the big thing, and you fail
and like your hundred days run out, it's over. You gotta start from
the beginning of the game. And so that has happened to me a few
times now, but each time I have figured out the upgrades to get and
it's like, okay, well, if I get the bug upgrade that seeps
money straight in my bank account from these computers, I can afford stuff way
earlier. So you're saying the hundred day run that you were in the middle
of during the quick look did not end in success. That one didn't.
And you can buy the rights the security clearance to get into the big swindle
at the end for four hundred thousan which is a ton. So you can
fail, but if you have days left, you can go back to other
areas of town and earn more money to pay to go into the swindle again.
So I tried to get into the swindle several times in one hundred day
run, probably like ten or twelve times, and I would be super meticulous
with how I went about it, made sure I used all my upgrades perfectly.
I was being super patient, and I think the thing that made me
finally kind of quit the game. First of all, I had a couple
of hard crashes were just air it out completely, and like after I'd spent
like thirty minutes making sure I was sneaking around perfectly. But you can hack
drones, these flying things to fight for you, so they'll have little turrets
and they'll take out enemies. And I was being super quiet and stuff,
and I did all of these security stations like this was like a forty five
minute run, and I was getting ready to steal the Devil's basketless thing and
my hacked drone just flew through a door that I didn't want to be opened,
and so everyone saw me and the alert went off and everything went to
hell, and I was like fuck that, Like that wasn't my fault at
all, the AI, like I didn't tell it to go in there,
yea. And I was just so pissed off there that I feel like I
spent so much time with the game that I want to beat it. But
that really really pissed me off. And I have to start over from one
hundred days now and get all the early upgrades again. And but I mean,
I have really really enjoyed it. It's very difficult, but in a
satisfying kind of way. But I'd recommend playing it. It's on you know,
Xbox one, PS four and Steam. But you got to be very
patient and willing to put up with that stuff. It looked like it has
some neat ideas, but yeah, the the chance of investing a bunch of
hours and then making it to the end and like not being able to,
I don't know, like if it was all my fault, I would have
been fine with that, because it's like, Okay, I wasn't patient enough,
you know, I got to start over. But considering like some bullshit
AI thing just blew it for me right at the very end, it's like,
okay, well I kind of soured on it. Are the heist leading
up to the last one aren't those generated? Or are those they're randomly generated
levels? Yeah? Yeah, Like each new area, like the slums only
has like computers or whatever, and then you do the next one. It's
like, Okay, now you have these security stations and these more advanced cameras
and characters and stuff like that. But I got kind of a mark of
the ninja vibe from yes, the actual stealth stuff for sure. Yeah,
in terms of just like line of sight cones and gadgets and like, yeah,
you're getting walls and stuff like that. Yeah, you're getting gadgets and
upgrades where you can like stick to walls and you can remotely detonate mind so
you're waiting for guards to walk over and you'll blow it up. And yeah,
it's a lot of the upgrades are really cool. But yeah, it
can be frustrating for sure. Well, I mean, if if you're finding
frustration there, then maybe you need to get into a game where there is
no failure, such as where the numbers just get higher. Go on,
Jeff, I played that game. Tell me about Time Clickers. Man,
was it last week? We were talking about it and you were trying to
explain this to me. That is that how it is time has already lost
all, meaning yes, there's only before Time Clickers and after. Here's the
thing, though, I can recognize when something is trouble and get out before
it gets its hooks. And man, that's boring. I spend a few
hours either actually playing Time Clickers or just running it in the back ground and
just checking in on it and like buying some upgrades. But man, I
get I get that. I understand, Like with those numbers getting so much
hire. It's like, oh man, this stuff that was taking you know,
these white cubes that were taking forever to kill before I'm clicking them once
and they're gone, or like my spread fire gun or whatever's just eating everything
up like I got it. Yeah, it's uh, I'm in. I'm
around waves seven hundred and something right now. Jesus. Yeah. See I
got two about like one fifty two hundred around like there, you know,
I got some time cubes and went back and everything, and I realized,
like I need to stop this now because I was getting that thing where it's
like I left work after I had it run on my computer for a while,
and I was like on the bus thinking about it, like, man,
I need to be clicking. I need to be buying those upgrades.
Like you know, no one's no one's clicking those upgrades right now. It's
just it's just yeah, it's just like the time you you the efficiency is
being lost by you not being there to click it. Yeah. And I
thought about it for a second, like I wanted to go home and watch
an episode of the Shield, and I was like, oh, I could
just have this on my laptop here, And I mean I could still pay
attention to the episode. I just I just need to click stuff every one
something. No, I'm not gonna be distracted by this. I'm not gonna
let this be constantly running on my laptop and distract me from everything else I
want to do in my life. So I think if you look at my
Steam profile, I've played eighty hours. Yeah, so yeah, I'm uninstalling
that. I I looked into what that was, and I backed out before
it sucked me out. Yeah that's a good call. That's so, that's
that's how you know, I end up kind of seeing that point and then
I just keep going. But then, yeah, how I break myself out
of it is by literally breaking the game. Yeah, by just like,
like right now, Adventure Capitalist won't launch on my PC, on any PC
because my steam cloud saved for that game. After using cheat engine to fucking
do a bunch of nasty ass shit, it won't boot. So actually,
never boot Adventure Capitalist again. Saved yourself. It's you're you're like an alcoholic
who takes that pill that makes it to you get physically sick if you drink
a beer. But yeah, it's like, you know, but you eventually
get to a point in those games where you've amasked so much stuff that the
numbers are going so fast that you're like, Okay, I mean this isn't
even fun anymore because like I'm not getting the I'm not feeling it. I'm
not feeling it the way I used to. We need more and more numbers
to feel the same high. Yeah. Yeah, and so that like that's
the thing that's gotten me out of a couple of those Yeah, that's that's
where I always the clicker heroes, I did the same thing. I'm just
like, I'm gonna fucking check this speed hack, but button in in uh
cheat engine and hack some different stuff and get some hero souls that I'm not
supposed to have and do a bunch of shit that way, and and it
eventually gets to a point where you're like, Okay, well, now that
I've cheated and broken the progression, experiencing this progression that way it was meant
to be is totally meaningless. Yeah. So it's kind of fascinating from a
psychological standpoint, Yes, Like there are things you would say about like the
reward center of the brain in game design. You look at that thing and
yeah, what, yes, what it says about the kind of nature of
all video games is like sort of a dark I wouldn't say all video games
because look at something like, you know, the Last of Us that's telling
a good story and something like that, Like, I don't think that's operating
on the same Let's dangle the carrot. Imagine though, if the Last of
Us had numbers that only got higher con fashion that yeah, exactly, Like
I need to buy a giraffe that then builds grenades for me. What if
it was something What if the shanks you were picking up were graded by color
exactly? What if you got a purple shank? What if I got a
genuine shank? What if a chest dropped with that could have a shank in
it? And if I bought a key to the chest, and I'm talking
up, there might be a better shank than the normal shank in there that
keeps And there's a number and it tells me how many people I have shank
with the shank. I almost went too far there. I'm glad I didn't.
Yeah, King of Vital Games, I've not played Sakura Clicker I did.
You are not fit to speak on this topic? That thing? That
one too? Poet like I did. I gather from the screenshots that you
have to click, and I think click strategically. I think you click the
anime ladies to make them part of your anime harem. And but the numbers
only keep going up, so it's like it's like doubling down. It's like
they're they're out there, like I've sometimes I wonder, are these things being
made by a machine race that wants to take over humanity? And every time
they may have a revision of the clickers, whether it's a revision of the
game itself or just like spitting out another game in that style. If they
get closer and closer to just enslaving, the human race starts like this is
the screenplay that I'm working on right now as of four seconds ago, where
in Idol game Idol clicker games are being generated by a machine race that wants
you to save the human race. This is terrifying, terrifyingly plausible. That
is, it's the number, the number. The numbers keep going up.
All I know is somebody wrote in and said to check out Tap Titans on
your phone. It's gonna plant that seed. The iOS. The mobile ones
are both more and less insidious more insidious because they're always with you. Less
insidious because you don't leave things open on your phone for hours at a time.
Okay, and it can't run on the background. It does, you
know, time clickers. I mean when you close time Clickers, it's still
generating money. Oh yeah, at the same rate, I think. I
think so. Yeah. Some games will have a function where like what is
there was one that was like a bitcoin, like a spin on like bitcoin
investment or whatever that like, you would have to find these other tokens that
you use to purchase your offline earning and make it better and better and better.
So there's like a subcurrency for that stuff that you could then put real
money into if you wanted to get more of those who Nope, nope,
I'm done with those. You should probably play Secura Clicker. Somebody has to,
Hey Dan, do a quick look of Scorer Clicker. Okay, now
he has to play it. I know we're not doing that. I'm assuming
that the anime ladies in that game have specific clickable zones. I mean,
if I were making that game, they absolutely would. How doubled down on
the filthiest, fucking, nasty ass fucking anime Darkness that you can, you
know, like, like, why not go all the way with it?
If it was just click on the lady anywhere, then you know you're you're
missing out. You could make it more. You could add more purity to
that thing, to refine it. This is something that is more fucking Just
get it closer to its darkness, exactly. Put phil the fucking my heart
with the darkness and make the numbers keep going up. I have bad news
for you. Your heart is already as full of darkness as can get.
There's not room for anymore. Never can keep going up darkness number. That's
true. That's true. Drew save us. Did you play anything I did?
We haven't talked about here. Uh well, you probably talked about Rising
Thunder on previous podcasts. We know, we didn't know we'd talk about not
played it last week? Really okay, so interesting. We've been announced,
but we had not. I played some of that. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, I played a few matches, which may come as a surprise because
I've never really played a fighting game. Uh yeah, man. The last
fighting game I actually played was the Power Rangers game for the second Genesis back
when it came out. Geez, I mean I've like picked up a controller
that had you know, street Fighter attached to it and mashed on buttons and
stuff, and I kind of understand how a fireball works. How do you
perform a fireball? And street Fighter is it? You charge up your key
right right? First, all scene will teach you the ways of the dark
Hadau correct? And then wait, what does he know about it? It's
a man, don't ask me, man, I didn't write this ship,
okay. And then he teaches you how to throw that fireball, and then
you spend two whole episodes charging up one fucking fireball. I was gonna say,
half, circle back and and punch no quarters, circle forward and punch.
Yes, okay, you got it all right, yep, pal pal.
So that kind of stuff like always kept me away from it, Like
I don't want to have to memorize move lists and even games where, like
you know, you pull up a list like Devin mccryer or something x x
y or x x x y b B A xy like that stuff. Just
no thanks. What if there was a fighting game where you performed every special
move by pressing a direction on the right analog stick because calf converse s and
K two EO might be the fighting game for you. You don't have to
memorize anything. You just press stuff on the right stick and it does cool
stuff. Okay, I think Rising Thunder might be the fighting game for him.
Yeah, because that's what that is, because it is that really how
does I haven't played it, but it is. There is some easy operation
to the way rising. Here are the buttons you can press in Rising Thunder
forward and back, down to duck, up to jump, and then you
have a I always forget what they call them light, medium, and heavy
attack okay, uh, and those are context sensitive, so if you're just
standing, you'll punch, and if you're uh or maybe not even punch.
But there's a standing attack for all those, and there's a crouching attack for
all those ended jumping ended jumping. Yes, and in some cases if you're
holding forward or back, it will do different things. Okay, Like special
moves are those are just but those are only three buttons that like and then
other they are modified by your position. Uh. Then there are three specials
Alpha, Beta, and Gamma, which are different between all the characters,
and they will do different things. And those are also buttons. Yeah,
those are also just buttons just hit a buttons so they're special X. So
it plays a keyboard. This reminds me of like on DS when they had
Street Fighter four and you could just like assign dragon punch to a button on
the touchpad or whatever, and that just kind of felt weird to do.
Well. The reason it felt weird is because the game wasn't built for that.
Uh. With this being so, the other thing this game does is
it treats the specials like a special move in like an MMO or a MOBI
or an ARTS where they have cool downs associated with That's the crazy part.
Yes, is there an on screen indicator so you know when you can use
you and then there's always sound cue, so is there? Yeah? I
kind of missed that because that's good because the very like I think that if
there's if there's work to be done on like some of the information side of
Rising Thunder, it's about like being a little more like in your face about
when the cool dimes because already I found that I could not look at the
cool down timers while I was trying to fight. Yeah, it's just too
much. Yeah, and they're different for every move for the character. It's
not like it's so it's it's very specific to seem to It seemed range between
like kind of two and five seconds ish. Yeah, I want to say
that like shells like Hurricane kick equivalent might be a six. But are there
any indications on your character, like your eyes glowed, they need more,
they need more feedback in the kind of fighting plane and not because it's just
down in the lower corner of the screen, so it is like an MMO
thing, where's a little box with a timer on it. I feel like
that could be cool if it's like, oh you have this like purple aura,
if your a is ready, your eyes glow or whatever, you have
an aura already to kind of depending on what you're doing, Like they're they're
kind of indicating when you have armor and when you are invulnerable, like which
frames of a move are different things by giving you a glow huh uh.
So so that's already kind of in use. But yeah, I think that,
you know, that's that's one of the just the UI things, just
like information presentation. It's just like be a little bit better about the Yeah
it's technical. Yeah, yeah, it's it's super Yeah, it's crazy early.
They sound like really cool ideas like the idea of especially moves on a
cool down is really interesting. And then so like you, you know,
you can play the game with a keyboard. I have been. Yeah,
and there's dedicated button for throw, So in addition to those six buttons,
there's a dedicated throw button and a dedicated super Yeah, and you just hit
the space bar to do your the space bar huh. So you can do
diagonal jumps though, right, okay, you can say it's back to block.
It's you know, like that aspect of it being a fighting game,
is is still a fighting There are a double tap forward and back dashes.
It does have built in game pad support, right, it does. It's
uh, it's a little people are running into some problems with it depending on
what sticks they're trying to use and stuff. But you know, if you
think about like how most sticks these days are eight buttons. Yeah, yeah,
like it's it's perfect for that. Yeah. None of the sounds like
the mechanics would require a game pad by any means. It seems like you
could probably pull it off fine with the keyboard. I've been doing okay with
the keyboard. The where I'm running into problems with the keyboard is that my
hands, Uh, slip off the buttons. Uh, and I'm having trouble,
Like it takes me a second to find my way back. What are
the defaults for, like, you know, the the attacks ull start on
j Yeah, it's it's it's JKLM heavy's throw uio or your three specials and
space bars the super Yeah at least space is super easy if you need to
pull it out real quick. Yeah. Yeah, so, uh, they're
currently is not a tutorial or anything in there, and when you launch it.
When you first launched the game, it defaults you to a character called
Edge. Is that his name is? Edge is dauntless. The it's Edge.
It's a it's a Chinese okay, red robot Okay, kind of looks
like the meg swords. Yeah, the robots, I'll speak different languages.
Yeah, I fought a giant grappling Russian robot. Yeah, which I've heard.
Uh that Edge the default one, like is kind of hard. Yeah,
so anyway too, I really liked this this concept, right, like
taking the execution part out of fighting games but still making it more Yeah,
like it's it's not like a dumbed down fighting game like there by by Jason
and Jeff's accounts. It was like a very solid fighting game from the unfinished
that we did. Yeah, it works, it works strategically. Yeah yeah.
Uh So I wanted to play it, but I didn't. I don't
know anything about fighting games, so I did a live stream uh and then
had the chat basically give me a crash course on fighting games. So I
would play and then they would tell me like like I don't know when to
use a throw, Like I don't know why you would ever throw it doesn't
do any damage, And they said, well, it breaks you out of
like if you're getting hammered in a in a in a corner or something,
it'll help you break out of that. And it does. It does it
does do damage. It doesn't do a lot, but yeah, or like
you know, when when I get knocked down, what do I do when
I get up? Or when I knock them down? What do I do?
Uh? Like I'm still like trying to figure that stuff out, and
I think that I'll just come with uh practice, but like that stuff is
so much more easy to focus on when I'm not having to worry about the
execution part of it. Like I'm just now worried about the stuff that I
find interesting, which is the strategy Like I throw a fireball, he jumps
to dodge it, and then I can uppercut him, right, Like that's
sort of a key pillar of fighting games, right, And I like learned
that over the course of this like ninety minute stream that I did, right,
So that was really cool and like by the end of it, I
was I was no longer uh, I was able to go into a match
do okay, still lose, but like learn from it. And that was
within like the first ninety minutes of playing fighting games. That seems way more
accessible for someone who might be intimidated by like the genre as a whole totally.
And if they if they have a good tutorial, like not everyone's going
to have a chat that can tell them things like if they have a tutorial
for that game like that, Like the free to play nature of this thing
could make this thing humongous. It's really smart. Yeah, it seems like,
you know, there's there's definitely room for some kind of tutorial that's like
a little more general in nature about kind of just fighting games stuff. Yeah,
and then just being a little bit better about the characters, what they
do and what their options are. Right, I think would be really useful
too. Chat was using a lot of lingo and I had it's for clarification,
like what's a DP right, yeah, yes, well not on this
podcast, not here. Come on, he's got to learn sometime it's your
filth out of here, all right? Fine? Yeah, totally like like
getting rid of the and and it's it's interesting because you know, in some
ways, playing this game has really exposed my bad habits because a lot of
the times I'm playing against people that do not have rock solid execution, I
don't have rock solid execution there. We would will be times when I attempt
to do a dragon punch and fuck it up and and a lot of times,
a lot of my strategy is based on like I'm going to keep the
pressure up and know that under pressure, this person is not going to be
able to perform, and I will be able to jump in and not get
dragon punched out of the air every single time. I will get in and
do my dirty business. Right. Uh, when the dragon punch is just
press I that is no longer a reliable way to play anything. Yea.
So it's it's forced me to stop like in a way that like it's a
common problem I have across all fighting games. I just jump in over and
over again and just go like fucking stop me. The beginner's mistake, right,
yeah, or like that's the thing you do until you can't get away
with it anymore, exactly, And in this game, you it's the time
at which you can no longer get away with that is way sooner because everyone
just can push a button, do the dragon punch, knock you out of
the fucking sky, and move on. It becomes more about strategy, yeah,
and then it becomes like okay, right. However, there is a
flip side of that, which is that like by knowing all the other characters
that you're fighting against, you can basically by having the cool down system,
you can and learn when to exploit the fact that they don't have those things
available, Like you can know like, oh, he used that within the
last five seconds. You can eventually pick that up. So they actually don't
expose the meters of the other player to use, so you don't see their
cool downs. You would just have to pick it up on it. But
I mean that's something that's something I'm very much used to in something like Dodo,
where it's like, oh, they that ability they just use has a
twenty second rundown, so I know they're not going to have it for the
next fifteen second. Yeah, right, Like now I've got an opportunity.
Yeah, so if you can bait out the dragon punch there, you know,
the the dragon punch equivalent, then yeah, then you you know can
probably jump in. Yeah, that's like a whole interesting extra layer of strategy
in this game. Is the timing for every character on our special moves?
Is it? There? Is there a two second or five second and ten
seconds everyone different for everyone. So Shell, the character I've been playing is
which is the one that the chat recommended that beginners play, and I started
playing with her, and yeah, it's had a good time with her.
It's she's very I mean, her moves map very much too like Reu and
Ken. Like there's the fireball, dragon punch, Hurricane kick equivalentce. I
mean they're they're used a little differently. Dragon punch or DP is an uppercut.
Yeah, yes, it's true. So her fireball is interesting. I
don't know that there are any other moves like it in the game. Because
as soon as the fireball dissipates if if it's if it hits the character they
block, or whether it hits some that cool down immediately drops and you can
throw another fireball. If you miss with the fireball and it goes off the
screen, you have to wait for the full two seconds or however long it
is to go down. So you know, if you're hitting, if you're
landing your fireball, even if they're blocking it, you have another one right
there and it does kip damage. Yeah, so you could if someone's just
blocking all the time, you can just get falls. What God damn it,
what I know how you play fighting games. Yeah, but you know,
like there are definitely ways around that ship too. You know, it's
it's not really that you can get around someone corstly throwing fireballs. And that's
interesting. Uh, there are a couple of systems involved, Like there's a
kind of a combo breaker in there, but it's toggle. So some some
characters will will have and I assume more of them will have more options as
they get further into development. Right now, it's like this character will have
two options for like the dragon punch or something like like Chell has a dragon
punch that goes up for your beta special slot. Yeah, basically it's like
a load out yeah, pretty much. Uh and and so by default it's
a it's an uppercut that hits and then a kick that slams back down to
the ground, giving you a chance for one or two juggle hits. But
you can swap that out for something that seems to come out quicker but is
lower and doesn't have that follow up potential. And I'm not really sure what
the use of that move is, Like I I tried it a couple times
when like, I'm not really seeing the potential here, but there might be
something I'm missing, so you kind of and you can also swap between the
combo breaker and like a cancel, a kind of a dash cancel or jump
cancele. So with Chell, you can throw a fireball immediately jump, and
there's a meter that protects you from you know, keeps you from doing that
over and over again. But so one fun thing to do that I don't
think is actually like tactically that exciting, but is kind of fun to do
anyway, is throw ground fireball, immediately cancel out of it into a jump,
and then throw an air fireball. So you've got two fireballs on the
screen at both at both heights now and it's like, well, you're gonna
eat one of these. I mean, that's not You can at all obviously
block them, especially if they try to jump the ground, when they're jumping
right into the path usually yeah, I mean, it's it's fast enough that
you know, yeah, you might be able to jump over and get over,
you know. But but but again, that is governed by another meter.
You're kinetic meter, you're kinnetic h Yes, yes, the kinetic meter
has two segments on it and it'll recharge. But you know, yeah,
it kind of keeps you from doing too much of that stuff. So if
I didn't know better, I would say this game was designed by somebody who's
spent a very long time thinking about the ins and outs of fighting game design.
That's yeah, yeah, I mean, you know this, this is
coming from the Cannons, the Cannon Brothers that you know are involved with EVO.
Seth killians involved in it. You know, it's like this, this
feels like it, This feels like a I don't want know if I want
to use the phrase like next level fighting game, but like an evolution of
the genre in a way. I want to get Seth in here and we'll
we'll talk to him about kind of some of the genesis for this stuff,
right, it seems like something that yeah that like he you know, like
the people involved in this project sat down and said, like, what what
are the things that are keeping people from enjoying fighting games the way we enjoy
fighting games? And they seem to be specifically trying to address that without necessarily
tossing out so much of what makes fighting games fun. Yeah, so it
seems like there are people who like fighting games that are still having a good
time with this. It's not the same situation as like when EO came out,
right, because that was honestly, you know, because you know then
you had, you know, these moves that you very much have been doing
a certain way for years, and now all of a sudden, it's just
like I'm gonna push on the right stick and psychocreshure immediately. Yeah. And
like I want to say that they didn't allow filtering online to filter out EO
players. I could be wrong, but I remember being pissed about it in
a real way, not in a like theoretical way. I think I think
that's probably what it was. That like Xbox Live was just you know that
you just never knew right, but I could be wrong and then Smash Brothers.
I mean obviously, like you know, the Specials and Smash Brothers are
not super hard to do. But that's a very different, different thing.
Yeah. Yeah, this seems to be more in the traditional fighting game,
like two D plane, one guy versus one guy, you know, not
the Smash Brothers silliness. Yeah, it's it's back to block, it's nine
hit combos, it's juggles. You know, Like there are things in this
game that you will take you some time to figure out. It's not like
you're just gonna walk into the upper tier of play. It just removes some
of the early barriers and theoretically would let you get to that stage later as
long as you stick with it enough to figure that stuff out. But that's
like, that's a fun part of it because like I would go into a
match and I would have like things that I wanted to really nail, like
don't all right, Drew, don't jump when you don't need to, right,
because that just leaves you open to like an upper cutter or some kind
of anti air attack, and then you would you would see where you got
crushed, Like, Okay, I keep getting like knocked into a corner and
I just get hit over and over again until I died. Like how do
I get out of that? So it becomes like and analyzing what went wrong
and then problem solving and figuring out how to solve that to get over it,
and then trying that out on the next match, right, And like
that's a that's a great little loop there. Yeah. Kind I kind of
wish like it's I understand it's detecting lava, but like, I think that's
what would be really intriguing to me about like a single player component or at
least like some kind of AI. Yeah, something that that teaches you the
ins and outs of that stuff, yeah, you know, or lets you
practice that stuff in a meaningful way. And it's not just like here's an
AI dummy. You can set it to do whatever you want it to do,
but you set jump up and down. Yeah, but you need to
know what you're you're practicing for and why you would ever want to do that,
yeah, before you do it, you know. Which it's something that's
and it's kind of good that you that my only option and really was to
just jump in right and fight against humans. Yeah yeah, yeah, because
it doesn't have any It has a training mode and ranked matches straight up.
That's it. Yeah, it's interesting, Like in some ways, it feels
like because some of this stuff is stuff that dive Kick did, but dive
Kicks, like the things you learn from playing a lot of dive Kick are
only like applicable in sort of a theoretical sense when it comes to other fighting
games. Like there's stuff like you know, like like playing dive Kick,
I kind of learned about like, you know, just biding my time,
not just fucking running in all the time and just hoping that I'm gonna get
them before they get me. Like you start to like kind of see it
from one step further back and go like, Okay, if they do this,
here's the counter to this, and thinking about thinking about things that way
in a way that I, you know, like I used to think about
fighting games, but then I just got lazy and I just got kind of
bad at him and and stopped h kind of thinking about them that way.
Dive Kick kind of got me back into that frame of mind. U.
But like the lessons you learn aren't like directly applicable. I guess I would
say, like there, well, there there are things that are like,
you know, the theory that you can apply. But then Rising Thunder by
you know, by virtue of it being like okay, well you know it's
it's it's a fighting game. Like you know, you're doing attacks, you're
juggling, you're you're timing your combos out like you're you're doing this sort of
stuff. Like I think some of that stuff, you get into it a
little bit more. You get into proper fighting and proper just like nailing your
timing and all this sort of stuff in a way that they, like Dive
Kick didn't have. And I think that, you know, this is like
more of a game in a lot of ways. Yeah, and it's cool.
Like I think both of those games have something to teach people that want
to know more about fighting games. But Dive Kicks a little more abstract,
like if you don't know a certain amount about fighting games, you're gonna play
it and never like understand what it might actually teach you about what what you
could be doing. Uh, Whereas Rising Thunder, I think like lays that
stuff pretty plain. Uh and that's pretty awesome. Yeah, it's in technical
Alpha. You can sign up on their site and uh, yeah, they
do rolling, you know, emails, so you'll get a code eventually.
I think they've got a good, strong foundation, and I think it looks
nice. I really like the arts. I like the look of the robot
design. There's just kind of a slickness to the whole presentation of it that
looks really solid. Yeah, they're they're onto something. I think that,
you know, like free to play fighting. I think, you know,
Killer Instinct is really interesting and and I think that there are other ways to
kind of do like a free to play fighting game. They're not that's not
like grossly offensive h and can still be cool. So yeah, with with
three Fight or Five charging ahead with the full price retail disc model, it's
nice to see some other fighting games trying some different stuff. Yeah, and
then and then three Fight or Five is going to have a free to play
style. You know, you're still you're still buying in sixty dollars. Yeah,
before that, you know, but even they're trying new ways to get
their stuff out to people, you know, and and learning from the free
to play world, you know, is often like sort of thing that sets
off alarm bells and you're like, that's the end of the world, right,
But it actually seems pretty smart and some of the stuff might end up
being okay. I'm really glad to see the fighting genre evolving in different ways,
you know. Yeah, like it kind of kind of died out in
late nineties. It was gone for a good almost ten years. Capcom snuffed
it out. Man, they put out too much shit, I know,
and really they did it to themselves. But then when it came back,
like when Street Fighter four came out, and it came back and it was
like, all right, fighting either back, this is fucking awesome, let's
do this. And then they almost killed it again. Yeah, like they
almost fucked it up again, but now finally like even Street Fighter five,
but also these other these other properties. I feel like people are doing some
good stuff, some smart stuff. Yeah, there's a good mature community around
that sort of. I don't mean like mature and the like being mature adults
sense, but I mean like it's been around first times, I get ahead
of ourselves, get too crazy though. There are certainly aspects that are.
But you know, there are people that have been thinking about fighting games for
a good long time, and now it's nice to see some of them,
like more and more of them get into Asians where they're actually impacting the games.
You know, Schoolgirls came out of something like that too, and then
this this is well like it's it's cool, good time for for that stuff,
all right, somebody, I don't spink of any other major games you
want to bring to the four before we move on. I kind of think
I feel like there's something I'm missing. I feel like there's something that I've
been messing with on the low that Oh hey, you you played the Gears
of War? Oh god, yes, right, I knew there was something.
Yeah, it turns out I'm the one that has a game to talk.
I went and played some of that. Yeah, Gears of War Ultimate
Edition a week ago yesterday. Is it truly the last edition of Gears of
War? Is it truly the Ultimate? Never say never? I don't know,
man. Do you guys remember Gears of War? Yes? Ye?
Would you like to play Gears of War again? Maybe? Not particularly?
I might play some of it. I got to play the multiplayer and into
the campaign stuff. It has Horde mode right off that I know of.
I mean, they were putting. They sure didn't mention anything about that.
If there, if it's in there, because I don't want to play multiplayer
Gears of War. I played some of that beta and it just reminded me
like, oh man, I'm I don't want to do this. I kind
of had some fun with it. I don't hate it, although I mean
I I very quickly got to the point where I was either having a guy
roll up to me and shocking me yep, or having a guy roll up
to me and stick a grenade on me pretty consistently without fail. You have
described the Gears of War multiplayer experience in that sense. By the end of
the five or six matches we played, I was like, I either need
to get way better at this or stop playing it because I'm gonna end up
having a bad time with it. Gears of War is one of those games
that's really fun. Well I don't maybe maybe not anymore because it's been around
so long, but like traditionally, that was a game that I always had
a ton of fun playing multiplayer against other press people. Okay, yes,
yes, yeah, because you can you can fuck them up, sure,
most of them, most of uh. And then it comes out for real
and then it's just like fucking Shotgun City. People who have been playing the
previous Gears for up until years, Like they stopped playing that one yesterday and
switched over off the new one and they're like, oh fuck, I'm terrible
at this. Oh come on, yes, literally that is that is exactly
what comes out of my mouth every time. Yeah, the multiplayers sixty frames
a second now, which is interesting in a little weird to play a Gear's
game at sixty Yeah. I thought I played some of the beta that came
out of the three. I touched that once or twice and literally and had
the moment of like, oh, I'm terrible at this, Like this is
no, this is not going to be fun for me ever, like I
need to this is nope, Nopeuh yeah. I guess you know, everybody
kind of knows in their own heart if they want to play more Gears of
More multiplayer or not. But were you saying campaign was a thirty campaign is
thirty ish? There are even parts of what I played in the campaign that
we're a little chunky frame rate was yo, that doesn't seem like a good
thing that you for deferred to exist in that game at all, Like we
mean what it was no better or worse than the original game? You know,
the first game was a little. Actually, you know, the first
game was pretty fucking bad. Actually, my memory of Gears one is like
bad frame rate, Like it looked amazing, but it did not run well.
It certainly should be better though, Let's say based on my recollection of
the original game, which is nine years ago at this point, Uh,
this is better. But it's not the first game. It's just the first
game. So it's the first game with some content from I guess I think
it was the PC release of the first game that was cut that is being
added back into this. And then I've won multiplayer stuff and then a lot
of the gameplay elements from Gears three multiplayer are in the multiplayer for this,
like spotting and stuff like that is in here. So there's no there's no
like outright content from the successive games. But but on Gears of War one
multiplayer maps, I don't believe there are any maps from other games that Okay,
that is that is my understanding. But like, ask me anything thing
about the Gears of any one Gears of War multiplayer mapp, I will tell
you there was the one with the snow. Hey, the iced tea skin
is in this one. Also, the Aya skin is in this like they
brought some character models from the the later games back into this one for multiplayer
skins and stuff. Does it have the cowboy hat? Guy? He does?
He act? Don't think so. I think it was just iced Tea
and Onya and civilian Marcus without a headband with bandana. How many birds?
I am sit. I didn't see a single bird. I'm sure he's I'm
still to this fucking day, so disappointed. Twenty birds, fifty birds.
That Marcus Phoenix is not just super fucking bald under that bandana. That really
pissed me off. He just wanted to keep the sweat out of his eyes,
it turned out, I guess. Yeah. The campaign was like,
it looks decent, you know. They like they sent some assets over after
the event. They redid all. It's all redone. All the graphics are
redone. Uh. And I bring up the assets because they had a bunch
of like side by side shots. Gears of Ward is not aged as well
as it had in my mind. Oh man, no, I remember even
just playing Gears three and going back and playing Gears one, You're like,
man, Gears one, it's a fucking piece of shit compared to the way
this game it looked. It looked genuinely mind blowing when it came out,
Like I was just that was That was one cinematic that I always think back
to whenever I think about Gears of War. And it's like one of the
very early missions and they're running across the ground to a chopper and there's a
piece of wood that's vibrating on the ground because the you know something's coming up
from the underground, and the wood has no texture. It's just like a
polygon virting. Some of that game did not look Yeah, this is definitely
a little better rendered than that. Like listen to what you're saying though,
and tell me, like, is it a little better or it's it's significantly
better, like side by side. It's a very striking difference, like they
redid it, but you're not looking at it and going like, wow,
this looks like modern game. It's not Gears. No. This so yes,
this does not look nearly as good as modern games. It looks dramatically
better than the old Gears of War, which again is a nine year old
game. It sounds like a step up from like the God of War.
Yes, yes, this is this, This is more extensively redone than that
by far. And again the sixty frames and the multiplayer makes a difference.
That feels good. Yeah, but you know, I don't think this is
a full price product. If I'm not mistaken, I think you're right.
I want to say, it's like forty maybe. And now it comes with
the asbox three sixty versions of all four gears. If you as long as
you as long as you have played this thing by I think like the end
of December on your account, they will just gift you all four previous like
one through four on three sixty, just with the backwards compatibility, like when
the backwards compatibly update pushes as not day one. This I think this game
louding judgment. Yes, but not four, not four, but all the
three sixty games you get for free, which is a nice little gesture.
I guess. Yeah, Like you know, you kind of everybody knows how
much they want to go back and replay Gears of War. I want to.
I want to see this from myself. You know there's but yeah,
like if there's really no man, I guess I just haven't been following it
closely, because like it's could be an alright co op game to go back
to you on it. Yeah, yeah, but it's like, specifically for
me, it would be like if there's a Horde mode in sixty frames a
second, like that sounds interesting, Like I had some fucking amazing times with
Gears three Horde mode. Yeah, I mean, there's a reason why we
call this stuff, all these things Horde mode. Still to this day,
Gear's three version of that I thought was fan fuckantastic. Yep. Uh So
yeah, in that sense, not having any ord mode whatsoever in this game
is kind of a bummer. Here's the word three. Hord mode is synonymous
with Gary Wood of yelling in my ear. Yeah, yep, yeah,
yeah, uh, but that's out soon. We'll take a closer look at
that once we get a hold of it. But you know, it's it's
it's kind of self evident what it is when you sit down with it.
Sure was my experience with it. So all right, that's video games.
Let's take a quick break and then we'll get into some news. All Right,
we covered the Microsoft stuff pretty thoroughly, I'm gonna say at the top
of the show, but there are some other headlines, arm headlines from around
the world, So let's talk about add around the globe. Man, I
have done my best and near the planet to not over report on Destiny in
this section traversing the Sphere, But man, we got to talk about this
Destiny. I could really get used to recording this thing on Tuesdays. I
feel like we pick up a lot of breaking news that way. Game informers,
a new cover has come out. Wait till you hear the Wednesday news
man to make you wish that we pushed the show back even another day.
Just keep pushing it forever. Game Informer has got Destiny on their cover.
Caught new game Destiny two. Yep, that's the one Destiny's Which month is
this? I think it's it'll be the next one. I couldn't be October.
I think it might be the news stand thing, But the way the
newstand works usually wouldn't just be the I guess September for five years and this
still confuses me. I never quite understood jan point is this issue will be
going out soon, right, subscribers, like in the next week or two.
Yeah, the Digito one's probably out. When they announced that they put
the digital one out day, all right, So the full extent of the
stuff is is getting out there. But They've got Destiny The Taking King on
the cover headline number one, they're fucking yanking Peter Dinklage out of Destiny.
Wait what klige? Yep? Every line the Peter Dinklage recorded for Destiny is
being rerecorded by Nolan North. What yep? Yep? Did they just go
see Pixels and say, Man, we gotta fucking distance ourselves when this fucking
thing right in that movie? Yeah? Really Yeah, he's like the Billy
Mitchell type character. Wait wait what I know? Right? That was my
reaction. That's why it's at the top of news. Who so trying me
if I'm wrong? My understanding is that ghost the character, you know,
the little flying robot dude, huh, is going to be in The Taking
King. I mean, I guess that has to be the implication. Yeah,
because my guess is that they wanted to add dialogue to this and boy,
having like a famous fucking actor that probably is pretty expensive and very busy
is probably a bad thing to have for the game that you're gonna make for
the next decade. If they ever considered that when they first cast him,
maybe it's a good thing. There's not gonna be more metal gears because they
have to get key for every time, right, yeah, yeah, yeah
sure, but yeah, so you know, in the interest of making Ghosts
a more viable and kind of frequently heard character, they are going back and
redoing all of it because, like you notice, like the deal, the
expansions they've had to so far, I've had like zero Ghost and it is
very conspicuous that they find other characters to do all the talking in those in
those dealc's. Yeah, after this, this one character was kind of like
your liaison with the world throughout the entirety of Destiny. It's fucking crazy,
man, i'd I'm like unprecedent. I'm really curious to hear how that will
sound. I don't know that. I'm trying to think, like articulating my
problems with the Ghost character is like, partially the fucking dialogue was stupid.
Partially I was not a huge fan of his voice. I thought it worked,
and I thought it was exactly what you wanted from Like if you thought
of Ghost as an extension of like Guilty Spark, if it's like just the
latest in a long line of kind of whimsical flying disembodied robe from dude dumpletely
it's there. There is. It's take it from somebody who has played every
mission in Destiny two dozen times. They were like five lines in that game.
But you go like, oh, ghost is ghost is okay? There
is. There is a kind of amused, kind of detachment from that character
that is very subtle, too subtle, and maybe maybe it's very subtle.
Yeah, and there's nothing fine. I'll accept that. But like, this
character very much sounds to me like a goofy robot that has seen it all
many times before. I suppose that is a character trait. Uh. In
the article, yeah, I think Nolan said that he's going to try his
best to kind of keep a lot of the just speech patterns and the general
tone of that character. But he's not gonna try to sound like think voice.
I don't think. But yeah, it doesn't sound like he's going to
be super slavish to it. Uh. Like he says right there, like
they really wanted me to put my stamp on it. They let me bring
what I wanted to the role. You have to give it your own spin.
For that reason, I specifically said I didn't want to hear anything that
someone else had done, so that I didn't have some preconceived notion of what
it has to be. Instead, I just gave it my stamp and let
them direct me accordingly. Oh okay, so it'll probably sound pretty different.
Yeah, I'm I'm if he's not doing the Dklige impression, right, I'm
kind of curious to go back and hear this stuff. I mean, Nolan
North is a dude with range, and yeah, it gives them a chance
to, like, if you know, if it gives him a chance to
fix some of the just the dumb, dumb dialogue what some of it was
just delivered really poorly too, like that. I remember playing it and it
would kind of like take me out of it. After hearing a line,
I would just think, like, that's not how I would have said that,
That's not how that's intended. Again, you know, I felt like
the character was very overtly not human, you know. So I remember playing
the Beta and thinking that it was placeholder vo. I think everyone thought that
with the Beta, and then like everyone thought like, oh, well,
clearly they'll make a bunch of changes. And then the one change they made
was to take out that wizard is from the moon or whatever, right,
but this one, assholes are the region they took. Yeah, like that
was the one line that you were like, that's really dumb, but at
least like it has an approach like then it just became the super dry,
like lifeless thing that I don't even think worked as like a robot. It
was just like it was not enough in any one direction. It's just this
weird middle of the road. It sounded especially bad in the Beata because they
didn't even have like the robotic filter on it, so it just sounded like
this really bored Peter Dinklage or at least kind of helped to have that sent
the feel to it, and then sounded bored, but not like that the
character had seen it all. It just sounded like the voice actor was bored.
I didn't want to be there. Yeah, I don't agree. That's
that's how a lot of that stuff played to me. But regardless, it's
a moot point now because that stuff is going to be gone, like just
gone. So if you topple it back on like that work is just lost
to history now. So if you just bought the original Destiny disc like me
and never got any DLC like me, I'm still losing Peter Denklage. Yeah,
that's all. This is being patched in for every owner of Destiny,
regardless of any deal, so you patch. No, it's not that much,
actually, I guess it's yeah. I mean it's yeah. It's like
a it's a handful of aligns permission, you know. I it's maybe maybe
an hour hour and a half a dialogue or something like that. That stuff
always felt to me like they did a lot of sessions with him for a
different game, and then when Destiny became what Destiny became, they fucking used
what they could. That's possible. That that's its entirely possible. That's how
that always sounded to me. Give it sounded like Bruce Willis and Apocalypse.
It sounded like them doing what they could with this vo session for a game
that was very different when he recorded that view. I would pay a significant
amount of money to know everything about what happened during the development of Destiny.
If I could pick one game from the last like ten years to just get
the full fucking scoop on, it would probably be that one. So I
would love to know what else is out there that didn't get used, But
who can say at this point? So what do you think what kind of
voice, does he go for a Bronx native. I mean, you know,
like he said that stayed given the moment, it's still it's still Bungee
directing him here. So I think Jerry lewis okay, Yeah, if they
you know, if they didn't want him to go outlandish, then he didn't.
Uh, but we'll see, I guess not remotely. The only change
they're making dedestiny, Yeah, with this update which is coming September fifteenth.
And also all this stuff is going in for everybody. Like I said,
it's not just the vo stuff, but every change that we're talking about here
is is not limited to the taking King. It's everything that's uh or it's
going in for everybody. They're also getting a little rid of the light system,
good as it exists, that was a bad idea, or it was
executed in a way that made the end game less fun. Yeah, or
you know, it passed level twenty, it tied any leveling progression at all
to the type of gear you had, which largely was at the mercy of
the random number generator. Okay, that's that's what light does. Yes.
Light was just how you leveled up past level twenty, and it was tied
to your gear. Yes, each piece of gear in the end game has
a light rating, and the more light you have, the higher level you
are. So does this fix the thing that you would talk about, like
spending all this time doing a raid and then be done and you get nothing,
Because absolutely not. So that all that stuff still destiny, Dan don't.
Oh, Okay, this Game in Former article does make it sound like
that there are changes to the loot as well. Maybe I don't know,
or the way the loot drops will be biased in favor of actually trying to
give you things that will help you. Yeah, that would be nice,
which it was. It was. It was agnostic before, like it didn't
give two ships if you had five of something already, or if you had
never gotten a weapon drop or any of that stuff. Like, there was
no rhyme or reason to it. It seemed completely arbitrary. Yeah, but
so that they're so. The XP cap used to be level twenty. Yeah,
and then everything above level twenty was based on you finding gear, buying
gear, getting gear that that brought you above level twenty. That's why I
stopped playing the game at level twenty. I didn't want to deal with that.
Yeah, it's a, that's a valid place to stop. You stopped
just it was getting started, man, I mean to be fair. Game
be fair. Like the leveling up was not that much of a problem.
Like if you kept playing the game, it would continue giving you gear like
the blue gear that you needed to get to like twenty six, twenty eight
whatever was not a problem to get you would you would hit humps though.
Yeah, definitely felt like if you weren't doing the right thing, or you
were doing too much of one thing and not the other and not like well,
I need Vanguard marks to get this, and that'd be the fastest way
to get it. Like there's there's a lot of time you could waste,
It's true, but making zero program Yeah, but that came at the kind
of the end of the leveling curve. It was sort of like in the
original game, it was kind of twenty six to thirty is when it really
starts slowing down. Yeah, but it did happen eventually anyway. The point
is the new expansion, the level cap is going to be forty, and
you were just going to earn experience by doing quests and killing monsters like every
other game like this, right up until level forty and then gear will be
used to make yourself more powerful. Yeah, Like they didn't say that the
light system is completely being removed, it's just being completely reworked. So yeah,
I mean the Game in Former article doesn't really get too deep into the
house and wise and all that stuff. But when we saw it, any
three like damage numbers and armor numbers were not on any items, and they
kind of they at the time they said, add just that's just placeholder,
like, don't don't take that, but it just said light level thirty two.
Yep. Uh. And I don't know if that'll still surface in some
way or if you're scrapping all that stuff. No idea how that's going to
manifest, But that that sounds like an improvement. That sounds like it's just
some some legitimate, real problems with Destiny's being able to constantly make character progress
by playing the game. It's just like a core tenet of this genre.
You know. It makes me want to actually play this DLC, which I
had absolutely no desire to play Destiny after level twenty before, Like, I
will probably try this out. It does it does create an interesting question.
Well, I was gonna say, if you skipped the other DALC and just
went straight to this you're you can't. I mean, like at level twenty,
you can't go straight to this stuff. It's all going to be leveled
for like in the game characters. But if I could take advantage of the
new leveling system. But that's what those I'm saying, like, what do
you play from level twenty to level thirty four, which will get you into
this new content? And maybe they rebounce the expansions in such a way to
support they have to rebounce large parts of the game to better support the new
leveling system, Like are you gonna have to go back and play the dark
below and blah blah blah. I mean I would do that for the new
stuff. Yeah, I mean, if you're getting character level out of it,
it might be more satisfying than what might be willing to do it.
There are very few story missions and those suxpansions, that's the thing. Those
aren't that much content regardless. It's sort of like, but you know,
maybe they'll go back and add more quests that tie into those missions that will
grant you large amounts of XP. Like, who knows how they handle this
stuff. It seems like a massive rework to completely change this leveling treadmill.
You know, when you when you start to dig into what it must mean
for yeah, like creating this like stable treadmill from one to forty, Like,
yeah, that that becomes a lot more work than just like, oh,
we're fucking making it so you can level up like a natural, right
fucking video game. Think about like how I wonder how that feels being on
the design team for that game and having to go back and redo so much
stuff that you already. I mean, there must have been someone on there
must have been multiple people on that team that were like signed off on this
thing, and like you know, probably fought for it, and one fights
and said like this is the way, man, this is gonna be it.
This is how we're going to do it. And they just seem like
experiments. Yeah, which the light thing that seems like a grand experiment,
it is. It's it's yeah, the auction house. The kind of the
sticking point is that once they internally deemed it to be a failure, it
took this long for them to wrap back around and redo it. You know,
well, they only had so many different inflection points where yeah, yeah,
I could have forced this change into the game. So this is probably
the natural time when year after release it like this is the big one too,
you know, yes, I mean if you're yeah, if they're gonna
revisit the Dingledge stuff, like clearly you know this is the the one year
mark where they do a lot of work to the game. Also when you
described this as like the one year of mark, like this is year one
of Destiny. I can't remember a time before Destiny. I swear to god.
It feels like this fucking game has always been with us. I loaded
up X Split last night just to patch it up and see if make sure
it was running on Windows ten. It was not, I had to upgrade.
I'd go download a new version because it doesn't recognize Windows ten. But
anyway, the like staging, It's been so long since I've streamed anything from
home, you know, you know, a sentence stuff up or whatever.
Like there was still a title in there they said test stream for our Destiny
stream tomorrow morning, ice, Like I still remember waking up with you at
whatever five in the morning, five am when the servers went live. That
was fun. I kind of like getting up and make it a character first
thing. Yeah, before the sun came up but by the end of that
stream, I was like, man, I don't know about this game,
and then it just kind of reinforced that feeling over and over again after that.
I mean, for me, it was the realization of like having come
out of the beta where you had access to Earth with the sneaking suspicion that
that's all of Earth that there was yep. Yeah, Like and initially I
saw the beta and I was like, man, this game is gonna be
fucking awesome. This is there's gonna be like eighteen more of these planets.
I've spend someone time in this. Nope, well I did spend a bunch
of time, and personally, right the planets existing planets, we're not.
Yeah, man, you're like tuning the color filters on your TV and you're
like, now it's now, it's Niptune. I've said it many times before
the game that I want Destiny to be is the best game in form made.
This is all no man, Sky does It's just change the color filter.
But but yeah, like I never would have seen changes like this coming
to the shipping released version of Destiny, Like this all seemed like stuff they
would say for Destiny too. Boy, when I play Destiny and the Witchery
three and twenty eighteen. They're great. Yeah, they sure are, but
you know, like, good on them for making such sweeping changes and recognizing
that they needed to, Like I don't have it right in front of me,
but there's a there's a quote from Luke Smith about this change to the
leveling that it's just spot fucking on about like the existing game makes it so
that your leveling progress is tied to factors beyond your control, and that sucks,
you know, yep, like accurate, Like not being able to pursue
gear and get it reliably and level your character rely believe is shitty, you
know. So they have going back to address that, and it seems like
it could lead to a very different set of circumstances for that game. We'll
see. Yeah, I mean I would I would like for Destiny to be
a good game because I put a lot of hours into it and it'd be
nice to have that feel like it was going somewhere. Sure, Uh,
just go to go to wasted on Destiny dot com and type in your name.
Tell you right there how much time you spend on it? Oh?
Really, I was only like one hundred and sixty hours. I was kind
of shocked wasted on Destiny dot com. I believe that's the case. I
think that's right. I bet I got fifteen hours out of it. Yeah,
that sounds about right. To go through the story my PSN user name.
Yeah, okay, I'm tentatively excited about where that game is going after
all this stuff. I kind of am too, because it always played well.
Yeah, the shooting is so good. Yeah, it's nice to know
that they're not afraid to change things as seemingly fundamental as that. Sixty five
hours Okay, that's that's a decent amount of Destiny. Thirteen hours okay,
I'm probably a like nine. We will see in uh oh god, in
like six weeks, so it is pretty soon. Damn really snuck up on
the Holy shit. Yeah, it's almost September, like the years half one's
over. We're almost dead. What is happening here? Jesus? All right,
let's move on to some juicier news. Y'all heard what's going on in
Konami A good place to work? Oh my god, that's a good time.
And also this is not I mean, it is scuttle, but but
it was reported by the nick the esteemed Japanese newspaper. Yeah, so this
is not just like that, it's fat babies level rumor mongering. Yeah,
like it, you know, and you're presumably they're fairly not about Neil the
Castro, so it's not fat babies mongering at all. Right, presumably they
are fairly uh confident and their sources in their reporting that Konami employees are under
constant camera surveillance at their desks cool, most of them don't have access to
email accounts cool, And that they have been punitively reassigned in many cases from
game development to such positions as security guard cool or custodian at a Konami health
club. We're still talking about home front. Wait, is it that they
don't have email accounts or they don't have internet outside of their like it's under
office now. It sounded like a lot of them, I believe it said,
I'm trying to find it in the story they don't even have internet access.
Yeah, there's there's some cases like that, but also that like,
yeah, some people will have a temporary email address that they can use that
will then rotate to a different string of random letters and numbers. I've seen
some of these addresses before. When I read that snippet, I was like,
this explains a lot about some Konami emails I've gotten over the years.
Yeah, I've definitely, Yes, I've seen emails economy that are just fucking
garbage at least dot com in the front field, like who the hell is
this and then you see their name and it's like, oh, why why
is that your email? It? Anyway, but yeah, even among the
people that do have Internet access, only a few of them have email access,
and even then a lot of them are only allowed to send internal emails
within the company, and yeah, they can't search the wider web, right,
but it's it's the really the time. Yeah, the aspect of this
that is so fucking crazy to me is the vindictive reassignment of employees to lesser
positions. Yeah. The story kind of went on to say that, like,
you know, if someone got out of the company and posted on Facebook,
hey I can starting a new job, and then other Knami employees went
and liked that post, that action would be taken against it. It would
be sent to Business Siberia that in fact basically that is closed. That exact
scenario is described in this in the story as having happened. Uh, dude,
I don't even know what else to say about this other than it's kind
of appall thing. I mean, it's you know, yeah, it's it's
ridiculous, and you know, I think it helps kind of inform some of
what's been happening at Konami for a while nows sort of yeah, or at
least kind of gives you the background for like what sort of thing this company
is doing. Yeah, I don't think it connects all the dots not.
No, you mean are you talking about specifically in the Cogima productions scenario.
Yeah, yeah, sure, I mean there's got to be more to that
stuff, you know, Yeah, they I guess they kind of implying that
story that Metal Gear was eighty million dollars. Wow. Yeah, that's a
big fucking budget. That's not a lot of people talking about. How for
an open world game that actually seemed cheap? Well, who are these people?
Developers fan twelve No, no, no, no, like developers on
Twitter. I don't know. That still sounds a little high from what I've
heard, but maybe maybe not yea for a game of the scale kind,
It depends, But there was a there was a I believe it was a
musician that had worked on some metal gear that had gotten out there recently,
Like some scuttle buck came out about like just just wasteful development practices on the
part of Kojima, you know, like throwing away a lot of work,
and like obviously, you know, if you want to argue from a place
of oteurship that you know, he needs to exercise total authorial control or whatever.
And if it's like it's not right for the game, it's got to
go and blah blah blah. But you can see how management would get tired
of money pouring down like the metal gear drain right after after so many years,
and yeah, and it's yeah, I don't know. It's like I
feel like people have kind of quietly talked about potential organized crime involvement in Konami's
dealings. Like this story does not tie anything into that sort of narrative,
but like that's the sort of thing that I've had in the back of my
mind for a while. It's just like, yeah, there's like yakuza involvement
and stuff like na, hey, listen, I've watched them big in the
Apache slot in the pachinko business. I've watched enough sopranos to know how a
front is run. Okay, don't give me mail. Step one to Soprano
was like this, make sure they can get off the internet. Yep,
that's exactly forget about it. Tell them to forget about it. The internet.
Also don't produce any games. Yeah, yes, exact businesses don't actually
any businesses. Mhmm. Yeah, an oppressive work environment to say the least.
Yeah, Cannom, he's not in the video game business, not not
the way they used to be. Yes, that's for sure. But it
makes you feel for the people who are still there, one last big one
working, working in whatever business they're in. Yeah, speaking of games that
are soon, right, just five is less than a month away. Also,
they just they just move the PC release date up to that push the
online back. Yes for everything online is that. I'm not sure when that's
actually coming out. Yeah, it's a ways off, but PC will be
day and date with the consoles. That's what I will play it on.
And then we can never talk about mettal care again. I might have talked
about that. Find your own venue for that's every review you've ever written pre
two thousand nine. Yeah, I had people stopping me after that, it's
like, hey, look, ye left my own devices. Yes, it'd
been everyone. Yeah, uh yeah, well you know, we'll see if
COmON he ever puts anything of worth out again, who knows what else is
there to say? Uh, speaking of business boondoggles, M with that red
ash kickstarter man, right, hey it did not make it, but b
it's happening anyway. See what the fuck? Yes, the kickstarter did not
make it. Yeah. Yeah, Like people were pulling money after this latest
after this latest development where a Chinese company stepped in to finish the game,
to to say, hey, we're gonna put up the money to finish this
something company called Fuse. Yes, it has a gray website. I heard.
I hadn't seen it, but I heard there was a lot of like
stolen artwork on there. Yes, like a picture of Master Chief. And
then just like they think they're clearly kind of making their own console, and
they're just like all these other consoles are underpower. Look at the Master Chief.
He's like, I don't have the power. That's exactly what they said.
I'm sure it actually says like I'm not enough power. You know.
It's like it's really yeah, it's it's like fucking ridiculous, that's fucking stupid.
They I didn't mess with it, any of you guys mess with the
playable kind of prototype thing they put out. Like they very hastily rushed this
demo out a week or two ago when it started seeming like they were not
going to make their goal, just like fairly modest goal. Let's be serious
here, it's like five K, right, it was eight hundred K.
I think they made it to a little over five hundred. Im sorry,
Master Chief says low configuration. What the fuck? Wow, we're kidding.
Yeah, that's crazy. But yeah, you know, their game characters say
things such as expensive price and locked area, poor performance. Can't believe this
can be called game console man fused are straight throwing shade, that's right.
Uh yeah. The kickstarter, by all accounts, was incredibly poorly run.
Like I said, they kind of rushed this playable demo out with like a
week or so to go, hoping to drum outs more money. But in
fact, like you said, it just caused people who had already pledged to
start pulling the money. Just everything about this thing topped the bottom. You
know, they already had the mighty number nine thing, which is not delivered
a product yet. They ran two kickstarters concurrently for this thing, both of
which for for like kind of not even full products. Yeah, it was
like, if we meet this minimum, we'll make a prologue, right like
what No, Yeah, that's not just top to bottom. Nobody seemed happy
with the way this thing was going, which is crazy because you know,
it seemed like Mega Man Legends is a pretty well liked property right by some
people, but probably not enough to like, all right, maybe there's not
enough of them out there. Yeah, you know, you think about it,
it's a subset of MegaMan fans. Okay, so like you know,
you think about Mighty number nine and it did like not one hundred percent of
those people are gonna then go and legend. Fuck. Yeah, Like it's
just not I have to assume, Like, I feel like there's kind of
a public backlash against Mighty number nine forming where I see. You know,
you just look at comments on forums and YouTube, comments on trailers and stuff,
and a lot of people seem to think it's not living up to what
they thought it was going to be. I don't know, I guess I've
seen it both ways, but you know, it does sound like that there's
there's been some reporting lately like claiming that retail is pushing the against next year.
That is the little addendum to the story, which is that nobody seems
to agree on this rumor as yet, but there is. Yeah, there
sounds like some possibility that that Mighty number nine is being pushed next year.
Yeah, though it might just be the retail release, And as of now,
that sounds like it might just be the retail disc that the digital version
is still going to ship on schedule, which is, what is it next
month? I think? So trying to find in the story. Let's say
next month, I'll see it. Anyway, red Ash is gonna get made.
But these circumstances are somewhat dubious. I would say, what are you
talking about? It seems like a perfect publisher to hit your wagon too.
Okay, sure, yeah, I mean they're making a new console. You
know they need they need content for that thing. That's fair launch. They're
gonna make a powerful Android based device that red Ash can run on really well
that everyone will loan. Here is here's this thing that is just short of
being copyright infringing for your new platform. Low configuration okay, well and you
put it that way. Uh. Lastly, there is a new dragon Quest
game, a real one, Like, yes, it's not Drag Number Builder
or whatever that Minecraft looking thing is. Like, this is a proper it's
a dragon Quest eleven. I don't know if it's a sign of the times
or what that. I looked at this and said, does that rate in
a new section? Is that the one where like line up around the block
depend for it, but no one really does it? Here I gets the
law where they can only release the game on the weekends because you know,
kids were ditching. Yeah, that's the one with the blue hurt you kiss
things to the eyeballs, right, Yeah, Dragon Quest used to be the
biggest thing in Japan and by extension kind of the world. But I don't
even know if that's still the case anymore, And even if it is,
there's certainly bigger, bigger fish out there now. Pretty reboot the dragon woa,
okay, okay about it? All right, see where you're going with
that? Come out for PS four and three es naturally, which al right,
okay, not PS four in Vita. Well, yeah, we put
it out on systems the people own roll that one around in your head a
little bit. No, I said, you wouldn't put it on PS four
if you want to put it on systems of the Japanese people own't right what
I'm trying to remember? Like eight was PS two? Is that right?
And then was it nine that went to ES Yeah, and then was ten
on ten was like the online thing? I think that's right. I don't
know, man, I can't keep up. Yeah, the game is fun.
They were great, yeah, back in the day, fucking first few
of them, like for the archetypal Japanese RPG. Yeah, they're killer.
Such great enemies, man, fucking gold Man metal slime, metal slime made
out of metal, and it's hard to kill. Yeah, and it is.
It's you get stuff. Yeah, for sure, Dragons weren't nothing to
fuck with. No, even though you were the dragon warrior on a Dragon
Quest, tread lightly around the dragon. We just tell you that. Yeah,
those games were hugely influential and important back in the day. By far.
I kind of don't really know what the public opinion is of the recent
ones, and people have seemed to like them, yeah, for different reasons,
but yeah, I think I think people are into them. Here's another
sign of the times on the PS four, Dragon Quest eleven is an Unreal
Engine four game. Look what is that crazy? Right? Did you see
what they're doing with the three S version? Yes, yeah, it has
fucking old style graphics on the touch screen, right. Yeah, So so
on the three DS, the top screen is it's all polygonal and three D
and cinematic. It's obviously not going to look as good as the PS four
version, but it's the same general style. It's you know, it's all
polygonal. On the bottom screen, the exact same things are playing out with
super nes looking sprite tile based graphics. It's great, that's pretty cool.
Yeah. So there's a bunch of clips going around of them playing it where
it's, yes, the exact same ship on both screens and two completely different
arts styles. So if you wanted too, you could just look down nor
the stuff on the top screen. I wonder if that'll be or maybe,
I mean, there might be some mechanic Yeah, maybe it's maybe that's not
completely viable, but yeah, like it's it's just weird and cool in a
really quirky way. Yeah, it's awesome. That sounds cool. Yeah,
I would like for that game to come out and be like super rad and
I want to look at it. I don't know, Yeah, I don't
know. It looks like the first Dragon question very long time that I could
potentially get into. Also, no news about a Western release as yet,
though, so stay tuned now, stay tuned for some emails, emails podcast
champ on the camp. I don't have a ton here. I think we're
all kind of running on empty here, so let's just pound through these.
What do you say? Okay, yes, per we're Chest from Sweden writes
it about Mojang or Moyang. Clearly we need some education here because they were
saying Mojang. Yes. Not only American guy said it, but said Mojing.
That dude is as far as I know, that is the Minecraft dude.
He is the guy who runs Minecraft now. And it was a Microsoft
guy that said Moyang, right, I believes yeah, uh, you know,
well, this guy is Swedish and he wrote it in this email came
in after that press conference, So let's get schooled here. There seems to
be some confusion regarding the pronunciation of Minecraft developer Mojang's name. Here's the deal.
Mojang actually spelled Mojang with an a oom out. It's two little dots
over the A for what, but stylized without the oom outs for international use.
Is a Swedish word that translates to gadget, gizmo or do hikey in
Sweden, home of mojang. The letter J has a soft pronunciation similar to
the letter y and English. Most native Swedish speakers, being unfamiliar with the
English hard ja sound, won't perceive the difference in pronunciation and default to the
soft y sound. Hence, most of the Swedish speaking developers will say mo
yang and would similarly similarly say yoke instead of joke, John instead of John,
etc. With that said, either pronunciation is correct and the variance is
simply down to different accents, So we can just say mojang again. Ye,
you're right, and you can feel good about it as a website.
Can we agree we're are we unanimous on the mojang? I'm going with mo
yang alway's got to be an iconoclast mojang. It's all good on that one,
John in Pasadena. No other console maker seems to have the weird marked
up third party prices Nintendo does on Amazon, And I'm just curious if you
know why do they make a deal with physical stores to not sell directly online
or something. I have no idea. I am hoping one of you guys
knows. That sounds like Amazon has to buy them from Nintendo at full price.
So the Nintendo Amazon relationship got really weird at some point. Yeah,
and this has been going on for years. Yeah, and I've never quite
understood it. And I've seen some people theorize that it had something to do
with the cracked hinges Oh on would that have been the first dear that was
the DS light? Which which DS was that? I forget which DS it
was, but the cracked hinges on the DS is uh, and Nintendo not
being quick to step in and like solve problems for people and kind of left
retailers going like, uh, yeah, they're not really accepting this as a
violent fault that I've seen some people theorize that it was related to that left
a bad taste in Amazon's mouth. Yeah, and that as a result,
it's gotten that that's not a it's the relationship has not been the best since
like the current state of things that Amazon effectively does not carry Nintendo hard We're
directly right, I guess I don't know. I'm actually looking. I think
you you kind of have to buy an incentive consoles from third party sellers through
Amazon. No, I mean the three DSXL is here, and it is
it is appears to be straight up from Amazon. They have prime. It
doesn't say it's coming from a third party. How much fourteen that's a weird
price. It's you know, they're always that slightly lower than the list price
of one nine nine. And then of course other sellers are carrying it as
well. But some let's look at the wu here m M the Luxe Set,
three D World and Nintendo Land bundle sold by some other company and fulfilled
by Amazon. So but that's a bundle. So maybe that's not the current
we use skew and that's just coming up weird that way. But yeah,
I'm not really seeing Yeah, same deal I'm seeing. We use a lot
of we use seem to be not coming from Amazon. Yeah. There you
have it, case closed, clear as much, still spotty. Nobody knows
why. Okay, well I assume people knew. I assume there was some
explanation behind all this. I don't Yeah, I mean it may have come
out, but I you know, I haven't seen it like definitively defined.
And the most I've heard is people speculating that it had something to do with
the cracked Tinge stuff. But you know that is just speculation. That's as
plausible a theory as any. Next emails from Chris Kay in Austin, Texas.
What's your favorite menu screen to look at or listen to? Skyroom is
pretty high on my list. Dirt too, dirt too, just a look
at like would you let it? Would you let it? Idole or you
gotta be sitting there animating it? All the Saints Row Garage music three yeah,
yes, although that's not even Saints Ro music. I know this is
stock music. The licensed it from some Yeah, no, we found where
they licensed from. They was just they wanted a lot of money for it,
So okay, we did not. We did not add it to our
repertoire. All right. Came close though, Yeah, that would have been
great, say no Mercy on sixty four Dignity Dog and then so that's pretty
good, Hunt. I mean I wouldn't call it good. I would call
it iconic, yeah, okay, legendary, yeah, legendary, but genre
defining. Oh yeah, it was abby grade, Yes, hobby hobby grade
and great was it was? It was it pac Man ceed X that had
such great yea menu music. M Okay, there's a good one. I
don't know if this quite qualifies. But remember def Con, Yeah, oh
yeah, yeah, I have to this day never played a game of def
Con, but I have let it simulate many played games over the years.
Yep, every once in a while, because it'll play itself, you can
tell it. You know, it's just like number players there, yeah,
just or or however you know, can have like multiple factions in there,
or you know, just a bunch of AI players. But yeah, it'll
it'll play out an entire game against itself. And that game is so like
creepy and haunting and cool looking with all the little like sounds of people like
softly weeping and coughing and nuclear fallout shelters as as you watch the entire world.
I never though about it as a fallout shelter. I always thought about
it or maybe yeah, like you're hanging out at Crystal Palace. Some of
the sounds made it sound like people were in bunkers, like yeah, like
kind of you know hospital well stuff, I mean, you know, all
that stuff is deep underground to survive. Yeah, that's yeah, that's true.
I guess we're both right. But yeah, you can kind of watch
the world annihilate itself in a very abstracts kind of stylized fashion. Is there
a screen saver of that? There should be there, totally should be.
Yeah, kind of Conqueror always had really good music and just kind of like
the military interface stuff for the menus, a lot of yeah, oh yeah,
yeah, lots of that had a great install screen. It would always
have. Yeah, yeah, I'm amazing. Like the Windows versions, like
they took that out, I think, what, No, they restore it
at some point, Like the DASS version had the full crazy install I always
got them some point at some point when they re released one of them,
like they took out that original CNC intro or didn't have it, and I
was like, man, that's all right. There you go. Classic menu
screens. Now, Mike from Northampton, New Hampshire, write something about classic
video game albums. What's the best album of songs specifically about video games?
Pac Man, Fever, Mortal Kombat, the album. I would love to
hear your input on this very serious topic. Uh, if you put Symphony
the Night into the PlayStation and went to the music CD. Yeah that's right,
Alard talked to you. Oh wait, really it wasn't just music.
Yeah, track one was Alacard going like this, the PlayStation format disc.
What Yeah, weird. I probably knew that at one point, but I've
forgotten if that sounds it's the sane. There's some some PC Engine CDs that
have some pretty we stuff depending on what you stick him into. Yeah,
that doesn't count as an album though, No, I'm afraid. I mean
I think Pacman Fever, Yeah, probably pac Man Mortal Kombat. The album's
terrible? Is that? Did that come out in the nineties? Is up
super old? Yeah? Okay, that's different from the thing that came out
with the two thousand nine Mortal Kombat? Yes, which was inspired by or
whatever. Yeah. Yeah that was like here's scrill X doing the reptile doing
a song about reptile, right, which was not bad? Am I remembering?
Right that? You could put Twist Metal three into a CD player and
hear the rob Zombie songs. I uh, I can tell you a goddamn
thing about Twist and Melt. It's it's not a good twist of metal.
No, It's like the worst twist of metal. No, ye, small
Brawl, I don't even count that one. That was the one that came
out simultaneously with Black and that was like the kiddy like PS two is already
going on right, and like, yeah, I don't count Small Brawl.
As far as core twist metals, the count three is the worst, four
is the second worst both. The night Book is closed on twisted metal too.
He is the best blackest text. Did Pat man Fever even have any
contemporaries when anybody else doing that? No? Not, That was just a
fucking arsia kind of thing. Yeah, that they were. They were the
entire genre, Like I mean, with a whole album with hyperspace. Yeah,
Froggy's Lament. I didn't even know until you Berserk, like basically until
they wrote that song for this Trap, I didn't even know there was anything
but Pat man Fever. I realized it was a whole album of songs about
do the Donkey Kong. I don't even know how they got away with that
one. Maybe Nincao was not as litigious as they are a long time ago.
Yeah, sort of. I guess so free advertising man, Yeah,
it's a lot more free wheeling back than although Donkey Kong he had his own
cereal at that time. He did important to remember it was a barrel shaped
captain crunch. It's pretty good, is it all? It was? Yeah?
Pretty much. I feel like I remember it being different. But take
your word for it. Barrels instead of little pillows you know. Okay,
wait, they're chests, aren't. Yeah, they're just yellow things. Why
would there be pillows in a pirate cereal? It doesn't matter because you should
only be buying oops allberries all the time. Also, is is the captain
even a pirate or received law biding seafaring? He's a commodore. It looks
like I mean, he seems like a captain. He seems like he's a
good guy. Okay, he's not. He's not. I don't think he's
a sog monster sailing sailing for the Commonwealth. Yeah, I don't know.
The debate about what the fuck a captain crunch. He's a captain crunch is
supposed to be rages on. But to me it just looks like pillows.
If it's supposed to be a chest, it's a bad chest. Yeah all
I all I know is it's a mouth shredding nightmare did they used to just
be called man, Yeah, it's not crunchy. I wants soggy captain crunch
Did they used to just be called crunches? Because I'm watching Twin Peaks right
now and it's set, you know, early nineties or whatever, and the
box says Crunchies and it had like the captain on it. I didn't know
that that was a copyright thing. Just sounds like they didn't have any they
didn't have the rights to use that name actual captain or maybe I mean,
so parts of Twin Peaks are set in Canada and they're close to the border
in that series, so maybe there's some possibility Canada it was called different Cereal
snoke its way across the border. Fucking God, damn it. I was
in a bag. I'm sure of it, all right. How about another
email? How about another email? How about this one from Kyle also in
Austin, Texas. Austin is a hotbed of email sending austentatious out there.
Aren't they on the keyboard? Yes? Uh, he says it's about three
Fight five. Seeing the increased coverage three Fighter five lately, I can't help
but continue to be struck by how underwhelmed. I feel primarily because of the
art style. I'm not good enough at fighting games to appreciate the technical challenges
in the game. So all three, five, five looks like to me,
there's a slightly prettier version of Street Fighter four with more sumi a ink
strokes. And I've already played plenty of Street Fighter four. You think the
decision to stick to the previous games aesthetic is going to harm cop compsability to
market street Fighter five two more casual players. How badly might this impact sales?
Different characters have different art style associated with him, so Reu primarily has
that that ink oh really style. Okay, the characters don't really have it
the same way. I didn't realize they were diversifying it like that way.
Birdie has a weird kind of you know, because you'll see like the streak
of it, the his mohawk really create this wide swath as he's rushing forward
and stuff like it. It's kind of it's neat that just that sounds like,
yes, Like when I first when they first started showing Street Fighter five,
was like, this just kind of looks like the same thing, right,
Like that's kind of an unfortunate coincidence of like the character that looks the
most like the last game also happens to be the first character you reveal.
Yeah, well he's and the one you have to reveal first. But still
like it kind of it did sort of start off on the wrong foot with
some people, myself included. It wasn't until I played it that I felt
good about that game, right, So yeah, but also at the same
time, like a lot of the things they're changing, like if you're not
like big on fighting games, like it's stuff that will come across to you
as like nuance that may be lost on you. Like if you just pick
for you every time you play a street fighter game and all you do is
throw fireballs and dragon punches, Yeah, then like, you know, the
ability to fucking perry stuff and the you know, the is not gonna it's
not gonna be a huge thing for you, right, Or the use of
the V trigger. Yeah, and instead of focus attacks or what, the
V trigger just gives you electric hands so you can throw more damaging fireballs.
It's cool, but it's you know, it's still just sort of the same
type stuff. It kind of depends on how you play. But yes,
I think to like the the the player that that played Street Fighter for that
way, or played any fighting game that way. There, this is more
of that. You know, you throw fucking fireballs. You combo the low
medium kick into a fireball like it works? You do it? Is that
what you do? That's what you do? Okay? I always did the
light punch. I always did a jumping light punch into a fireball or it
you do that in Street Fight or five. I just spend enough time in
training mode. We talked about it, but I was gonna say, like,
the it seems like like jumping in then the low medium like it seems
like the hurricane kick actually does more damage than the fireball. And it left
me wondering if that's been the case all along, that I should have been
just now waking up to this important truth. Yeah, you know, I
don't have to wait until there's a lot more footage of that game out there
before we see how the kind of the mass market embraces that. Yeah,
but you know, I think the people that are intended to get excited for
it are ye And you know, like the more gameplay detail gets out there,
I think you know those people are are into that. But yeah,
if you're reading up on the gameplay details and just going like what then,
Yeah, you might not be the audience for that time. Maybe not for
you. Ryan from New Hampshire is already asking about game of the year,
and since it's August, I guess it's not entirely inappropriate. Sure, I
mean time Clickers is a great game. It's a dynamic visual style. Okay,
good to know. Clicker of the Year, Clicker of the Year,
Idle game of the year. Clicker of the Year goes to the last quess,
has have we have? Have? Have we have as a culture settled
on a name for these games? They're either seen both idle games or they
think about idol games is that it doesn't necessarily they don't have to involve clicking,
right, I mean, progress Quest is an idle game. You don't
really click. It's kind of the error idle game, right, Yeah,
as idle as a kid. Yeah. Whereas Cow Clicker was about the click,
it was all about them clickers. Yes, the visceral feel of pushing
in the mouse button the actual touching of the cow, tell me more about
touching the cow. Also, you floated an idea of this very morning for
or was it you somebody in this office. I think it was me floated
an idea about the Game of the Year theme this year. So shit,
Ryan from New Hampshire has this question. With most of the major problems with
the Witcher three finally getting patched, how will that be factored into the Game
of the Year discussion? It took two months to get almost everything fixed,
but a game like Fallout four released in November, we'll only have a month
worth of patches before Game of the Year talks. So are you judging the
game on how it played on release or the state of the game by the
end of the year. I think a game launches poorly then that will kind
of weigh against it in discussions. But generally speaking, it's where it ended
up, or or it can be where it ended up, or to me,
it's kind of how it how that affected our experience with Yeah. Yeah,
Like if you played all of the Witcher in the first week and he
really hated the motion right or the movement, then it's going to totally different
than if you played it all and for you personally that might weigh against you.
Like we all play games at different enough times that I think that uh,
you know, it all tends to balance out a bit. Like,
as subjective as reviews can be, I feel like the Game of the Year
process is a thousand times more subjective totally. Yeah, Like it's all about
the experiences we had personally. It's not like ranking of fighters where there's a
hard, can cold science to it, like the Game of the Year.
Yeah, there are no white boards involved, Yeah, exactly of the year,
just like Game of the Year is just like who has the most impassioned
argument about this game that seems like the right way to go. Yeah,
it's very much about jockeying for position and like picking your battles and no one
when the strike. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's what we spit it
out there, because that's so everyone knows exactly what it is. Like,
we're not out there going like no, this is this is a big serious
deals like no, this that we're taking this as seriously as we feel is
appropriate. Right, Yes, So in that sense, there's no hard and
fast rule about like I'd had too many patches before it got good like that
that might factor it might hunt, yeah, whereas it fall Out Launch is
broken and isn't fixed by the time that we do our Game of the year
stuff. Then there will only be one possible attitude to have about it,
and it'll be fuck this. Yep, so totally. I hope that doesn't
happen too. Yeah, that would be Yeah, it'd be nice if that
game is good. I would like that to play well. I think it
looks pretty good, Jesse writes in in the wake of All I'll talk lately
about platinum trophies and such, He says, is getting the platinum trophy on
a game something that scratches your completionist itch, even when there's stuff left over
to do after the trophy pops. Some games set the bar very high i
e. Typical JRPG requiring minimum one hundred hours, while others set the bar
far lower than they could. For example, Far Cry four had left over
quests and items even after the platinum. I wonder if the whole hundred percent
thing is important to any of you, and if you care more about a
goal set by the devs than one you set for yourselves. For me,
a platinum should mean that I experienced everything the makers of a game wanted me
to see, So it pleases me when the trophy goals are just right.
Varies heavily based on how into a game you are. With Red Dead,
I loved it so much that it's like, Okay, I want to get
all at thousand and chieven points on this and I actually in that game,
no, you know what, I think. I didn't go for the thousand
and that because a lot of them were multiplayer and I didn't care about that.
But I did get one hundred percent on the endgame story, So in
that instance, the hundred percent ticker was more important to me than the thousand
and chiefs. That's exactly what I did in that game. And yeah,
that was a case. That was a case of I, yes, I
like this game so much that I just want to have done everything there is
to do in this game. But something like far Fry four, I was
very glad that Platinum did not require you to get everything, because way too
much stuff to collect in that game, and I was very bored of doing
that because a lot of that stuff isn't fun. You have to go up
and spend this wheel or do whatever, whereas like the Red Dead stuff you
wanted to do was fun. Right. Yeah, I definitely feel like if
I've gotten every achievement or trophy in the game, that I've kind of done
everything I need to do in it. Yeah for the most part. Yeah,
me too, for sure. I don't even feel like I have to
do it in those games I play. But sometimes it's a good it's a
good excuse to go back and play a game. Yeah, you know.
I mean, you know, a driving game that requires you to drive like,
you know, two hundred miles or right, or you know it's like
I finished a course backwards or some crazy shit like that. You know,
like like the best achievements make you play games and ways unconventional ways you wouldn't
think to do by yourself. Yeah. I feel like when I was like
hard onto that stuff, like those were the achievements I was just getting done
immediately. I was like finishing the race backwards, like Okay, let's see
how many I can get in this very first moment. Yeah, by just
intelligently, you know, doing these things as quickly as possible. I definitely
had that moment with Rocket League recently where I was like, let's just go
down this list, like you can get them in AI matches. I'm just
going to target every one of these trophies and get them all. And it's
been a full five m match driving on the walls. Yep, yep.
I'm going to boost back and forth ten times in a match until I get
this, Like, I'm going to back up and score a goal backwards.
I haven't done. Oh yeah, you know, you're right. I did
that one. You could do that one by yourself. Yeah, you can
do that an exhibition match with no bots. Yeah, you can just back
the ball up into the goal by yourself and get the trophy. I have
not gotten the one where you have to bump an enemy into That one just
happens naturally. Yeah, I guess that'll just get this point. I've done
like five accidentally. Yeah, that one. That one's a little elusive for
me. But uh yeah, it really just depends on the game, you
know. Like, certainly I would never say that, hey, you've got
all the achievements, you should stop playing the game. But oftentimes it feels
like a good litmus test for me. It's like, all right, I've
gotten what I need. Nate from Tacoma, Washington, that's a burning question
about independent game stores. Hey, podcast, I'm interested to know your thoughts
on smaller independent game stores. About two years ago, a small store called
super Smash Games opened in my city see them super smash games. It is
what it is. I immediately fell in love with the place due to their
selection of games and hardware of all types from all eras, but worried that
there wouldn't be enough demand for a store like this and if they'd be closed
within a year. We'll flash forward two years when they've moved to a larger
location, have hired more employees, bought space adjacent to the store to open
a full arcade, and have even opened a second location in Seattle. Their
success completely surprised me, but I couldn't be happier about it. I love
being able to browse and purchase retro games without having to hunt through numerous websites
and Amazon sellers, simply hoping that the game will be fully fun ouctional when
it eventually arrives. Do you think there's space for more stores like this?
Do you think I'm sorry? Do these types of stores have a future in
the face of things like emulation, online resellers and retailers like game Stop getting
into the retro game business. That's got to be so rare to have that
level of success, because I feel like every time I've seen an independent game
store, opening a mall or whatever, they last a year or two and
then go under. Like, I don't know if this store is particularly great
with prices or selection or whatever, or if it's just a location that doesn't
have a lot of you know, big stores or whatever. You know,
building a community around a store like that can be key too. Yeah,
it sounds like that maybe what has happened here, yeah yeah, or front
yeah, or Konami's running. Definitely that possibility. That's really cool to hear
that though. Yeah, I'm shocked to hear that, But like the idea
that they're opening a fucking arcade like that's as cool. It's it's always hard
to you know, because like it's always hard to envision some of that stuff
because the pricing can get weird. It's like people open their stores and if
they just set their prices to eBay prices, then you're like, well why
yeah, yeah, you know it's not that's not a great deal. You
gotta got a foster sense of community, but also give people a reason to
keep shopping there. Yeah yeah, but yeah, man, that kind of
make I mean, we're going to Seattle soon, so I almost want to,
yeah, check it out, but you think about that we should look
for that place. Uh that said, idol, I would be super squeamish
about the idea of putting a store like that, Like I feel like it
would still be pretty hit in this Also, I've just never ever understood the
lack of mom and pop game shops in this area, like of any place
in the entire goddamn country. Totally, areas should be the place that's got
a bunch of small shit independent game stores. Those long gone. Yeah,
weas et cetera is long gone. In the East Bay, we had Matt's
Game Exchange. It's pretty sweet, real bumming that away. Yeah, I
think there were there were a couple. I remember a few years ago we
went around the East Bay and went to a couple of different spots, and
like, none of them were places that I've felt like compelled to go back
to. Yeah. I went to a few different places, Like you know,
you got stuff and like the prices seem outstanding, right, It's just
like, you know, it's weird because you know, they've got overhead,
they got a rent to pay, you know, so they're they're selling.
They're in a business. It's not like a flea market where it's like just
people just blowing out old Nintendo tapes or you know whatever. So uh,
yeah, I don't know, it's weird. Obviously, you know, Manhattan's
got its places, Vinnie's Vinny went to what is the Video Games New York.
Yeah, I probably think that's what I put some put some video on
the site. And that's where I bought that early copy of Modern Warfare.
Two that have shipped to you. So why you gotta blow up their spot
like that? Maybe I should take that out breaking news. Yes, there
are two Matt's game exchanged locations in South Carolina. What yep, what,
I can't be the same people. That's the one you were talking about in
the East Bay, right, Yeah, Hartsville and Florence. I don't know
either of those places in Italy. This is it is very lititious too,
so I probably want to change the name of yours. That one go to
pact South Carolina. Yeah, obviously I know there's at least one or two
places in LA because LA people would buy Broken Street Street Day games early.
Yeah down there, Like some of this is just utilitarian, like once in
a while, when you can't get ahold of the game before releasing this line
of work. You really wish you could go buy it somewhere, Yeah,
like the Thursday before it comes out. Yep, that would be super usful.
Couple places that would be pretty reliable if you needed a Call of Duty
game before release? Yeah, then wouldn't give you a receipt? What weird?
Uh? Yeah, because they can't. They can't have the receipt rung
up prior to the street days. Just a cash deal, write down,
nothing, So I can't follow the money. I used to when I was
in college. I would go to Walmart and my trick was I would go
at like three in the morning when the employees give the least amount of shit.
Yeah, and like when you had heard like reports on forums, they're
like, oh a lot of these stores have them in stock, they just
can't release it until Tuesday. I would go that weekend or wouldever and be
like, oh, yeah, I was just I read you know, you
gotta than stock. It's just not out here yet. And like, you
know, this is before they were really putting the do not sell before orange
stickers on everything. I remember I got a few games a few days before
release, just talking to the right don't give a shit employee at Walmart.
At three in the morning. Well, they I think they updated their point
of sale stuff to where when they scan the game in it pops up and
says, don't fucking sell this. Yeah, I doubt that works now,
but yeah, yeah ten years ago. Fucking robots yep, ruin everything I
know. All right, that's why we smash them, hitchhiking across the country,
keeping us for buying games. Fucking robot die. This is how it
starts. Hitchhiking, robots and pachinko. Yep. It's the end of the
human race, all right, Joe im with the last email. It's a
question for the ages. My friend and I've been playing through all of the
flagship Mario games the summer, alternating between the three D and two D games,
so Mario sixty four, then Super Mario Brothers, then Sunshine, et
cetera. Today we started Super Mario Brothers too, and now we're faced with
the seemingly unanswerable question, does Burto have a mat or a nose? It's
a mouth, a nose, It's got to be a nose. Who's what
I feel like. When I've seen Burto drawn in other medium and stuff,
it's looked more like a snout or a nose. But in Super Mario Brothers
Too, it definitely looks like it's opening its mouth and shooting the egg out
of that. But where's the nose then? Doesn't that one? What?
Or maybe it's just got a slight hole that you can't see because it's small.
It's much more plausible than not having a mouth. Yeah, saying there
is no mouth and Burto must scream what are you guys all on team mouth
here? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, pro mouth because I cannot imagine a
world. It's just a nose either way. Why are the eggs coming out
of there? It's a it's a fantasy world dreamland. Yeah, to think
about this, which is just a weird fever dream of Mario. It doesn't
have to make sense. I guess that's true. It spoiled that Mario two
happened. You can't tell me other it's real. God, damn it.
It's the best Mario game. Wart has never come back. Mario two is
real to me, damn it. Yeah, exactly. I think Wart deserved
better. Yeah, I like worrying, like of all of all the of
the of the handful of things from Mario two they repurposed into the greater Mario
universe, shy guys, and I feel like I feel like certain things got
short shrifted in there. It'll be kind of fucking cool. Mouser, Where's
mousers if they just like took like Super Mario sixty four and made a sequel
to that, but it was just Mario two shiit Wow, Yeah, that'd
be great. And it was just like he was just polinal fucking all the
Mario two ship, pulling up radishes, yeah, pulling u radishes, grabbing
this fucking key. Dark worlds assholes after you because you get stole. Was
fucking keys name Nando Fanto Fanto God, it's terrifying character. Yeah, the
thing was horrible. Is the scariest character, and him, Mike Tyson and
the angry Son for Mario three. Those are the three scariest characters about any
slender Man. Crab Fanto is scarious. Like, I don't want to hold
that key. Everything is terrible. Yeah, I think's terrible. Put that
fucking key down. I'll pick it for like two seconds, tossed as far
as I can in front of me, and then walk up slowly. Yep,
the way it would just rubber band around you constantly and like the screen.
Yeah, no good. I've said it before, but I wish that
New Super Mario Brothers Too had just been a new Super Mario Brothers Too,
A new should have New Super Mario Brothers USA. They should have remade Super
Mario Brothers two for that game. They wasted a golden fucking opportunity. But
that's all water into the bridge at this point. I'm mean, I get
why they don't. I guess it's just one of those Nintendo Japan versus versus
the desires of the US based players. That's why no one gives a fuck
about Metroid. It's just so different. Yeah, I would have loved to
play another Mario game like that. Imagine their perspective on it, where that's
like a different game that fucking Mario got slapped into and this bastardized fucking thing.
Like I guess, I guess their argument is that that gameplay style is
heretical. At this point, it's like not part of the actual Mario cannon
or whatever right it is it is. I agree, be a great game
making of Maria Too. Yes, just do it all right, that's it
for emails. Super Mario Maker two. Yes just makes yes fucking put it
out. Put out DLC for that thing, and put that in there.
Please. It needs to be its own game, all right, fine,
games so different it needs Okay, Okay, if you insist anti logic cannot
be and turnips, fine, I'll accept that. Just make it happen.
Pop Pop block anybody podcast, John Bond dot com email address, send them
blah blah blah. Let's get out of here. Okay, yes, I
feel like everybody's everybody's getting anty at this point. Let's sleep. We've been
in here for a while. At this point, I need to go to
the bathroom. And I have two more meetings today. Nice. That sucks,
Sorry about that? Uh? Has anything going on this week to look
forward to? Ah? Yeah, well what Rare? Replay and Galaxy are
on the site. Some more mental gear, right, and he was working
his way through Act two. Okayt Vamp and some a bunch of metal gears.
All right, Okay, that goes. I want to mention this thing
we're doing, but the email that I'm looking for is not to be found.
Damn it. All right, hang on a secon here, I gotta
actually find this talk amongst ourselves. We are going to go to Los Angeles
and September and put on a goddamn show. All right, Okay, all
right, I'll be there. Uh. So that is, yes, in
LA at the Sofa Tel, which I believe is actually in Beverly Hills.
But that's that's just what I have here. Fancy we are? We are?
Is that a hotel made of sofas? Yeah? It is. Uh.
The it is taking place over three days, the eighteenth through the twentieth
of September, the LA Podfest, and we're gonna be there. I believe
we are on Saturday night on the schedule, and they're still selling weekend passes.
You can come see us in person, along with Doug Loves Movies,
The Thrilling Adventure Our Lauren Lapkis will be there, Paul if Tompkins, We'll
be there. Uh. And you can let's see here. You can also
stream it if you're not in the LA area. Uh, and you can
get some money off. You can buy a streaming pass at LA podfest dot
com and if you use the offer code bomb, you get five dollars off
of said streaming pass. So yeah, I mean, if you're in the
LA area and you want to come out and see us, well, we'll
be there that weekend, so all right, you can go to la podfest
dot com for schedule details and stuff like that. Like I said, pretty
sure, we're on Saturday night. We'll have some more details about that as
it gets a little closer. But yeah, just you know, while tickets
are still available, I wanted to at least say something word of the wise,
now, you know. Yeah, and now we can get out of
here, and we put at the end of the show so only the diehard,
cool motherfuckers that all show exclusive top secret information. Later on it'll be
you know, closer to the front of the show. But this this week,
you guys are part of a secret club. Yeah. Also we're going
to packs. Also, we're going to Yah. Yeah, the Thursday before
packs, we will be live. We'll be taking signs one on the site.
Pretty soon. We'll be a Facebook event page I think for that thing
too. If it's not there already and it's a foreign post, Yeah,
there's a foreign post with more details about that Thursday event. But we will
also be doing events throughout the weekend. We'll have our own panel on Saturday
night, but there will be multiple things happening. Uh. In this weird
fucking comedy club we rented out Tony Rock played the Chris Rocks brother was there,
Squar Brothers. You know this, this is like a legit comedy club.
We're going into so parlor Live parlor lives called yeah, pretty close to
Packs. You won't need a badge to get in. You'll need a Packs
badge to get in. So you want to come to see us. We'll
have a number of opportunities over the course of Packs weekend to come and see
a show. They got stages and booths and bars and all the stuff,
you know. On Thursday night, I believe you're gonna be able to just
get some drinks. Yeah, so come through booths and booze. Yeah.
All right, Well that's where we're gonna be in the near future. But
for now we're gonna all gonna go live face down somewhere. Yeah. Just
meeting. Yeah, come to my crash, my meeting, go to my
meetings for me. Great, Yeah, I know how I gotta addit this
podcast now, alright, Podcasts, over see you next week.