Hey, everybody to Welcome to the Giant BombCast, Episode eight one hundred and
twenty three, powered by N sixty. Today is January sixteenth, twenty twenty
four. The year is going by too fast already. I haven't even made
goals for this year. I'm just going to continue in my new year regressions.
I'm your host jam Shoah joining me as always co captain of the ship.
He's not making goals either, because he is the goal speaking about goals
this week, Congratulations Jeff Grub, Jeff Grubb, we scored. We scored
professional football goals. Who is Wei? I am an honorary member. I
always talk about sports on this video game podcast. I know, right,
weird. God listen, we as fans. I also don't like what people
are like we the team, but this one I'll make an exception for because
it really has been my entire life and I rooted for him when they're own
sixteen. So listen, I'm going to take the win. Yes, the
Royal We we did it are our own royal. We biggest sportsman on the
block here at giant bomb dot com. You can't stop talking about pickleball lately.
It's his newest thing, Dan Riker, that's my thing. Look,
it's probably fun, right, probably, Like I love racquetball, but yeah,
I've never played pickball, racketball. There's a lot of moving around.
I feel like pickleball. Isn't that one of those things where you can like
drink and play and it's like you mostly standing still. I like because it's
like taking over the tennis courts and so there's like beef at like every local
playground or whatever. Just like I like the idea of people getting upset about
their tennis courts. Been like these damn pickaball kids. So a big fan
of that. I would try it. I bet it would be fun.
We should do pick a ball next time we're all together. Oh, we
should do Yeah. I have a growing list in person activities. Okay,
uh, speaking about these damn kids. These damn kids are getting onto the
podcast now Terribo. Shan McDowell is in the one. Yes, I'm realizing
that there's a lot of light coming from this direction. You can't tell us
because there's like a foot and a half of snow. Actually, no,
that's that's all for me. I just radiate, just radiate it. That's
why it's behind Jan and everything to a size by grub. Everyone checked the
current wind chill. Let's see who's winning. It's not gonna be you,
guys. Mine is okay? Negative fourteen here? All right, let's see
wind chill negative seven seventeen. Second, let's go negative nine. Well,
okay, Wisconsin, let's go. It's colder where Jan is. Let's see.
I don't think they report windshill here in the area. Where does the
temperature per shoot? But Jim, do you kind of still want to complain
about how cold it is there? Five? But not amongst y'all. I'm
freezing my ass off. I'm worried. It's it's cardigan weather here here again.
Also, cardigans are back in vogue for dudes. I'm living right,
Ja. Fifty eight? Is it fifty eight? There? What is it?
It's probably fifty eight. It's like four to two, jeh, Jen,
I have a question for you. How many layers do you think I
wore on my upper body yesterday when I had to go to the store.
Uh? Four five? I was one away the lower body. Jan,
Well, you just had like a garbage bag filled with milk to insulate you
on the way to the store. Oh, garbage bag full of milk?
Is okay? That might be the grossest immer heard, Jam, what's wrong
with you? I did have to put the Christmas tree back into the shed
yesterday, and so I had five layers on my I'm the upper part of
my body and I was still wearing shorts and it was definitely like negative twenty
five last night with the windshill, and I'm just like just outside medical condition.
If I can't feel it even then, I probably they probably get that
looked at. Like all my Christmas stuff is still on the floor of the
garage and every time I go to the car, I'm like, God,
I gotta bring this out of the shed. But it's like, no fucking
way right now. It was rough, Yes, it was just like we
had to get that tree out of there, but everything else is waiting.
I went to go get my mail this morning, and our mailboxes inside because
it's an apartment. I was still very cold going over there, and I
had like three layers on. Feel bad for me as well, guys,
Yeah, we're feeling for you, so sorry. Jan Yeah, yeah,
you know this this is these unprecedented. There's nothing funnier to me when a
dog falls into a hole, especially when it's like a small Corgie and they
fall into a gopher hole and then they just get sad about it, or
like when a dog tries to jump up onto a couch and they just bitfit
completely, Like that's hilarious. It's the best, it's the best. I'm
not advocating for dogs to have accidents, it's just funny when they have little
goofs, because they're all a bunch of goofy little guys and girl. Dogs
are like one of the best animals at feeling shame because it takes a lot,
it looks like for them to feel shame, but when they do,
it just makes it all the sweeter. Oh yeah, oh yeah, gosh.
Is that some working over? A little light on games this week,
mostly because stuff is under embargo right and we talked about Prince Persia on Friday,
but will continue to talk about Prince absolutely today later. So Sean,
we we asked you to be here today so we could talk about the most
important game. And it's not really a game, it's a sport really interest.
Okay, Okay, what all else fails, We need to pat out
time. Baby. We can always rely on wrestling. Yes, I'll play
along. I'll talk about wrestling with you guys. Yeah, when did Drew
McIntyre get really interesting? When did he get good at promos? Yeah?
Like really good. It's when he just started like saying what he really thinks.
I think he's been very fascinating lately. And it's weird character of like
he's kind of being booked as a heel, but he's not saying anything that's
like unreasonable. Like that promo was set where he was talking about trying to
make his parents proud, but then like having a you know, miss them,
like the day passed while he was applying his trade around the world.
It's like, damn, this is like an interesting, nuanced heal. I
really like, I'm starting to believe that we're not going to finish the story
this year. Yeah, maybe not. I could see a triple threat.
Oh wait, I'm gonna miss the dog playing Gyro made on GDQ for this
shit? What am I doing here? It's the technology of two different tab
show two different tabs. Yeah, yeah, you all talk about your wrestler.
I'm gonna go watch the Important ship. Damn is it really is a
dog really playing? Dog's gonna play Gyro? Or sorry? Euro My Dan.
I don't want to step. That's delicious, all right, yeah yeah,
But but on top of that, you know who I'm loving even more
more than lately. Our Truth. Oh ask Judgment Day stuff, him selling
bootleg shirts the Live Lap Love Ship, Tom and Nick Mysterio. He is
fucking weird and hilarious and I love watching the Judgment the Day guys trying not
to corpse whenever he's doing his ship because everyone finds him fucking hilarious and is
trying to corpse whenever he's doing anything. Yeah, yeah, I this is
how I would be fine if they break up The Judgment Day because of Our
Truth, because somehow Damian Priest is going to become best friends with Our Truth.
Well, he was into it when he got some money last night.
Yeah, guys, cut of the merchantmid he was super into it. I
also feel bad for JD McDonough because he's not even on the fake shirt are
true. There's numerous pieces of Judgment d emerged, but j D McDonough doesn't
have a shit. Man wrestling's in a good spot. Who knew if you
just you know? I hate that cause it does make me want to watch
like the weekly shows, which I would. I've got to a point where
I'm okay missing but now I do feel like I'm missing out by not at
least catching some of these, even like watching or catching up on like Square
Circle and watching the Gifts doesn't really feel like enough anymore. So I'll probably
put this on in the background now in play some games. I guess that
means I gotta do for many, many years ever since. I kind of
like the Daniel Bryan type, you know that rest. Like ten years ago
or so, I was watching week to week and pretty much since then,
I've watched the occasional one or if there's a standout match, or followed Stepsis
online or whatever. And like, I didn't even watch week to week when
I was working there, And now it's like fucking three hour raws. I'm
watching from beginning to end. I'm like, God, damn it. Everything
is going places. Everyone got a character, everyone's got a feud. It's
fucking good. Now we we should uh we should do a power bomb cast.
Uh maybe right after the rumble, right before after the rumble, when
we have kind of a vision of what's going on with Mania, I think,
yeah, yeah, let's do it. I know, we we chatted
about this before, but like any updated picks on the Rumble winner sehn uh
you know the dude, the guy, right, the man, the man
has to win them. Yeah, yeah, she's the smart money. Yeah
yeah. If if Seth is hurt, which it sounds like he's probably okay
from the reports I've been here, Oh man, if Seth is actually hurt,
and I think that the odds of Punk winning Drastic go down, so
we'll see then maybe then it's Drew or the Rock or yeah, who knows,
but I think Punk's the smart money, assuming healthy. Yes, Grub,
I have been watching much recently, so yeah, I just I assumed
it was going to be a punk That's what I've been assuming, just from
like glancing at everything. Well, well, here's the thing, Grub,
I distinctly remember. He's probably the last power BombCast we did. Everyone was
very very sour on Punk, just like, oh, disappointed. I can't
imagine him back in the the WWE, And here I am like a fucking
mark going like, yeah, I think pok should win at Night One.
Clear, nothing we were saying back then has changed in terms of our thoughts
on the dude and stuff like that, but as ours He's always been a
fascinating wrestling character, and part of that character is him just being him and
all the drama and bullshit that comes with that. It makes for fascinating television,
especially when there's this stuff with Rollins where there is real life beat between
the two. It makes it feel much more real. So like it's and
he's been on good behavior because it's kind of his last chance, which has
been reminding him of So yeah, yeah, no, the drama feels real.
He seems to be holding up his end. It's been good. Yeah,
And you know, I know we talk about ww A lot, but
let me just say TNA right now or Impact Wrestling, I forget what they're
calling it again now, t and A again. It's like it's like building
back up to where when like AJ Styles was like the big dog there and
like their main horse. They're working theirselves back up and it's it's pretty impressive.
Sean. What's TNA stand for? Jeff? I can't talk about that
in this podcasting, you know, can you can you imagine if we went
back in time to like twenty twenty and we told ourselves, like, hey,
in a few years, you're all going to be really hyped up on
what we is doing. And also TNA comes up very positively, and AW
is the one that's like really kind of struggling. That's it. Smojo is
champion. Some of the new Direction stuff post all this Devil bullshit has been
better and it's a it's going on in the direction, but there was that
stretch during the end of the m JF reign that was not good at all.
Yeah. Yeah, I can't believe MJF beat Jay White with like a
bum leg and inference and ship and oh my god, yeah those dark times.
Someone also take Tony Kn's phone away please? Oh yeah. I can't
pay attention to AW until that happens. I mean, it's just one of
those situations where you know, he's the boss, he's the guy, Like,
who's who's going to tell him? I'm sure people have tried and it
didn't go well. So he's gonna do what he's gonna do, and it's
uh, maybe his dad could take it away from him. Yeah, yeah,
you couldn't. All right, I guess we should eventually, since we're
a video game podcast, we should talk about video games. Trying to hit
the bun for games. What start watching start watching an anime. But that's
okay, maybe we'll talk about that later. Start watching, Well, let's
just talk about it now. Then, what anime are you watching? I
told you this one shot. I think the Starship Troopers, the nineteen eighty
eight one. It was like, I was fascinated to find out there was
a Starship Troopers anime based on the same book as the movie. And that
movie is like one of my favorite movies all the time. It's a perfect
movie. And so when they go check it out, it was like kind
of blown away. I'm like, oh my god. The story, the
structure is almost exactly the same. It's a very nineteen eighties anime. So
it's got like the weird, really weird pop needle drops, and then you
know, the animation's mostly stiff and they save a lot of money on that
stuff, but they still have like the dude standing in the wind and the
jacket like flowing and all that stuff, which is really all I need from
anime. If you do that, I'm all on board. Yeah, how
we I need shots of that of everyone on staff. Next time we're together.
Okay, next time we're together, we're all taking a k pop dance
class. We're playing pickleball of course, sports esports intro and then cool jacket
blowing in the wind intro. Oh yes, you just want us to have
an anime intro for Giant Bomb content. Is that why I'm hearing here?
I mean, anime is just say yes, yes, just say yes.
I'm just saying you you put all those together. That's basically what you got.
Uh huh. I feel like he's actually yeah, yeah this. I
can't wait till we have a tournament arc here in giant bomb dot com.
It makes a tournament arc. Let's go nickleball tournament. Uh. If you
missed last week's BombCast Revenge. So we had a little review podcast of Prince
of Persia the Lost Crown, go and listen to that. We had a
lot of fun conversations and generally actually completely everyone really likes it. Grub,
you've beat it, Sean, you're in the middle of it. I got
stuck at a really dumb part and h I h looked away from my Steam
deck and laughed of I'm an idiot. Yeah, Grab, how do you
feel about it now? Yeah? I love it. I still love it.
I'm glad I beat it. I think the one thing you realized.
The deeper and deeper you get into is like, oh, all of these
like athorabilities and all these boss fights are just some of the coolest looking things
in a video game. They really go over the top with the excellent animations
and a lot of stuff, like I don't love the story, but I
also like, I'm not I don't hate the story, And anytime like the
story hits like it's like, oh, this is pretty neat. It is
very much like a bad Avatar Nick the Nickelodeon show, the animated show.
It's like a bad one of those is kind of what it feels like,
which isn't you know great, you want to be good, but but it's
like this, there's a power up you get, an athorability you get where
basically you turn into Goku. But the way it works is like you're one
of your friends that you meet and get in a fight with, like he
has this ability. So when you use this ability, it's actually you doing
the same thing, and then like a shadow version of that friend doing it
as well, and it just looks so slick and neat, and I'm like,
okay, yeah, cool callback. And every time I do that,
I get excited because it's it's a hype moment, but the game is just
it just feels so fantastic in that final boss fight, you know, it's
not like met right, Dread's final boss fight where it's like, Okay,
this is a bunch of patterns you super duper have to memorize. It's a
little bit like that, but it's not quite as challenging as that, but
it's still like a very cinematic moment, and uh, I was just all
bought in at that point. So yeah, really just a huge, huge
fan of this game. Kind of easy recommendation. Yeah, I'm on pushing
up Going also more so than Dread as far as like that last boss fight
and everything, like you can go in there and get your ass kicked and
then it's easy enough to get back out and like kind of tweak your amulets
and things like that and come back and be stronger, which Dread was was
not as easy to do that, So right, I thought the difficulty I
thought was really perfectly tuned throughout. And I thought all the like super hard
platforming sections that were really good, but not for everyone. They are typically
optional things. You know, there there are challenging platforming sections that you have
to do to beat the game. But like the really crazy like Champions Road
type bullshit, I said, bullshit lovingly is optional. Yeah, I found
that Celesti b side thing everyone was talking about with like the weights, the
spiked weights. Yeah, that rules. That's so so cool to be able
to like to have a moment where it's say, hey, you've been doing
these awesome platform and thinks this whole game, do you really want to see
if you can do it? And you have to get these three things all
at once in one run and get back down to the ground. And I
had a couple where I did it. I looked so cool. I was
perfect, and right before I'm about to get back to the ground, I
like hit a spike or I missed the ground platform because I thought the ground
was wider, and so I'm like just falling down into the ether, looking
over at the ground right over there, just yelling curses at myself. It
is so good. It's the idea here that they had so many of these
really good elements from other games, and it's still up there with some of
the best in all these different genres. And then it's still a good Metroid
Venue on top of all that. That is the most impressive thing about Prince
of Persia. Yeah. I think they could have easily kept all the platforming
stuff they've added in all the movement abilities, but like just go very basic
with the combat and it still would be a good game. The fact that,
like you have a very deep combat system where you can juggle dudes and
then grub what you're talking about with like your shadow clone, or you're utilizing
your weapons in a different way like Dan, like I'm glad that you mentioned
to use the bone arrow during combos, Yeah, because that has been absolutely
essential and I feel fucking amazing. It's also you can really cheese shit too,
where it's like some of those like flying pain in the ass enemies,
you'll you can park next to one of those arrow things just like fuck you,
fuck you, fuck you, fuck you like entire that it totally works.
And like once you start like realizing like, oh, I'm having fun
using the bone arrow, it's like, oh, well, I have all
those bone arrow amulets that I've been ignoring. I'm just gonna do a bow
and arrow build and you can get soup like even more powerful on top of
what you already can do with that stuff and have like flaming arrows and all
that. All of it is very cool. And yeah, there are so
many amulets that you really can have very distinct builds in this game. Yeah,
for folks, eventually when you all pick it up, if the combat
hasn't grabbed you yet, there's like an early mini boss. I think he's
like one of the jailer dudes, prison dudes with a He's half naked,
he's carrying one of the pillars. The combat didn't click for me until that
fight because you were just constantly dashing underneath his legs, hitting him from behind,
and it's just so good. And like, if you're having the accessibility
options we sung its praises last week, but if you have trouble with the
Perry timing adjust that make it a little bit easier for yourself, you're gonna
have a fantastic time. Sean, how are you liking it? You're in
the middle of it right, Yeah, I'm I've only gotten a couple hours
into it because again other stuff came up. Uh so I managed to progress
a little bud steam Deck, which, by the way, you got running
on steam Deck. Okay, yes, thank you, Sean. Yeah,
showing you as possible. It's great. You mentioned steam Deck. I didn't
even put through or two together there. That's great. Yeah. Uh.
The installation process for anyone curious, it's it's not I wouldn't even say it's
involved. It's just going to the desktop mode and getting a specific launcher and
then from there just making sure you you be soft connect credits are the same.
Yeah, if you're comfortable doing that kind of thing on your Windows desktop,
you can totally do it on Steam decks that's fine too. And then
can you launch it from the standard like steam deck mode. Yeah, you
just got to add it to Steam and use I use a little program that
lets me add artwork to it and ourthing, so it just looks like any
of our game on my steam deck, like mu deck type stuff, like
you know, making it so you can runcept from okay, yeah, just
steam deck. Steam deck dev is so get at this point. There's always
a tool for something that automates a lot of stuff. But yeah, no,
I'm really enjoying it. I Uh, the more I play it.
Even when you guys were talking about the endgame stuff and or being early game
stuff, I was thinking about, Boy, that's the metroid read shit right
there, like like especially like you know, having an early boss that you
slide under and have to like learn the combat through then or everything like that.
Yeah, but you know, the sincerest form of flattery definitely, because
I got I. Every time I play this game, I'm like smiling.
It's one of those games where I just I do something cool. I'm like,
oh, that was fucking awesome. I love this game. I'm having
even more fun with the platforming sections. More of those come up on the
like on the side. It's usually on the side when you're doing the main
story, but I will absolutely go over there because that's my jam, and
I do this lest thing. I'm trying, you know, trying to get
like the perfect run of dashing back and forth across the walls and even sometimes
doing things a little more difficult that I need to, just because it feels
good to move in this game. I'm so guilty of that in these kinds
of games, and most games, but especially anything with a pary anything with
like really intense platforming, I'm going to try to make it look cool because
that makes me happier. Yeah, perrying in particular. You know, I'm
a third strake kind of guy. So yeah, I love me my Parry's
and I just anytime I get into combat, I treat it like I'm trying
to like make a combat video for you, like just how long can I
extend this combo on this one job or And it's just always a blast and
the shit you can do too with like that shadow guy where you can like
charge your thing up, make your shadow throw your thing, and then you're
shadow throws his beam and it's like, oh man, there's so many I've
already seen some really crazy videos coming out of that, Like, yeah,
that's been awesome to see. Is like that that scene is growing fast?
And is the game actually out out now? I think it's gonna come out.
It's like early you be soft? I play on my calendar. Yes,
it's out in early access for the whatever you be softing they do and
there comes out on Thursday. Okay, okay, right, okayo. Yeah.
So it's just seeing people already going ham on this game with the awesome
combat videos has been really cool to see. Well, in per game that
has so many different abilities, you know, you would think that there at
least be a couple of times that you get a new ability and you're like,
okay, whatever, but like pretty much all of them were like,
oh okay, I can do a lot of shit with this now. Yeah.
I think they really did figure out the sort of escalation curve with those
abilities in a way that it really is impressive, because you know, you
get the double jump pretty late, and then there's some abilities beyond that you're
like, okay, yeah, I was expecting to get something that was inconsequential,
and it's like it just never happened. Everything completely improved and changed how
I was playing already. Yeah, like Man said, the difficulty curve,
I feel it's just perfect. It like it just expertly ramps up. There's
there's the kind of little difficulty spice you want, like the tiny ones where
it's like, Okay, I've reached a challenging boss, but it's not pushing
me too hard for what I can do right now, And I love that
too well. And the double jump and the air control stuff is already so
good like in the mid game, and then you get that RB ability near
the end. It's like, oh man, adding this, it's like this
is a crazy amount of air control. The game's fifty dollars and people I
think some people are hesitant, for one, because Ubisoft games are going to
drop in price really fast. But we take that out, like, is
there any doubt in your minds that this is worth fifty dollars? No?
I no, yeah, No, I happily spent sixty dollars while I spent
what was a eighty dollars in our collector's addition for Metroid Dread Like right,
yeah, Like the game is good, Like, I absolutely spend that amount
on other games of that length, and I think a lot a lot of
people still have. Unfortunately, it's kind of a toxic airnet opinion to have
of like this is a game twoty games aren't worth it. It's like,
get the hell out here with that, Like just because it's not a Naughty
Dog game or a big budget, you know, coalition game that looks absolutely
gorgeous. No, the game is still very fun. It has a solid
length, even for a Metroid vein. Yeah, yeah, and no,
it's it's absolutely worth it, I think, one hundred percent agreed. Yeah,
and I'm not. I think I might be around where Sean is in
terms of completion of the game, but it feels like a fuller game than
Metroid Dread and METROI Dread was full price when that came out, so I
wholeheardly recommend this. Again. Ubisoft has their weird subscription thing, so if
you're a little bit hesitant on that, maybe go sign up for that subscription
thing for a month so you can try it out. Time pointing this out
and this hurts me. Fifty dollars is the new forty dollars. This is
the new budget price absolutely a year ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you know, if you like, I would do that fifteen dollar thing if
you're price conscious. But you know, there's also a bunch of great Metro
venues probably haven't played yet, so if you're like, this one reminds me
a lot of Strider, that old one from twenty fourteen, twenty fourteen,
yes, thirteen, yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's like the combats
for some of this builds on that in every way. This is better than
that in every way, but yes, it's still there's some hidden gems out
there. It's definitely the type of game where this was not a team that
was told you're making a Metroid Venua out of this ip. This was a
team that said, we love Metroid Venues. Yeah, I understand how they
work. We are going to make our take on this genre. Didn't there
used to be like a twenty dollars here. I feel like in the PS
two era, Like remember that ESPN two K five football game, those twenty
BUCKSI Demasi was like twenty twenty years ago. Yeah, yeah, it wasn't
super frequent, but there was that twenty dollars tier that didn't really exist in
the Super Nintendo Sega years. You know, well that twenty dollars tiers still
existed for a long time on Steam. It's thirty dollars now. It's definitely
thirty dollars now though, Like that's that's the price you would get for something
like a indie game that is like, no, we're we deserve to make
a little bit more money thirty dollars, and the occasional one from like a
well established indie studio will be forty, Like like Hades two comes out,
I hope that's like forty make that forty dollars go to two in the heyday
of like Summer of Arcade XBLA Lebo Explosion, man, Like, I feel
like those were like ten right for that, Like TIF it was usually as
Crashers. Yeah yeah, yeah, in fourteen ninety nine or whatever, that
was all fund Microsoft points exactly. Yes, but now you got Vampire Survivors.
Yeah. Well sweet you have SWEEKA, right, which is two ninety
million on the switch. Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah, so you got to
play the switch version, the browser version, the physics are off. No,
the switch version is the real Squeak again. Yeah, yeah, that's
right. Yeah. There's a Blaze Blue metrod Vina in early access on he
told you about this like six months ago. I know it. Listening when
you're talking, I know, I can tell it's about in it. Now.
It's weird because it actually has like nothing to do with Blaze Blue.
The characters are just in it. It's really weird. But yeah, it's
it's like Metroid Vanya Rogue Light things. I was like, this is a
grub game. Get that question for y'all, since y'all y'all are bigger metroid
heads than I I know. In Metroid Dread, they added the like upper
cut Perry thing that Sam's can do. What if they gave Samus a sword?
Yeah, I want it was an energy sword, yeah, of course,
of course. Yeah, it's like a It's like, what's the Mega
man gimmick? The is it zero or like yeah zero yeah zero zero yeah
yeah zabern That just feels wrong. I just unless it's okay, you know
the ending of Metro Dread. If that is her sword, Okay, okay,
that talk, that's what. But otherwise not, I don't want to
see holding hard. I'm sorry. I like it when I when an energy
sword does just go on forever. It can like cut the earth in half.
I'm a big so Rath type stuff. What a game. I played
the hottest new release this weekend. I beat it Messle Gear Solid. Are
you familiar? Oh I saw a little bit? Yeah it is. It
is okay, Now, don't confuse it with Snake versus Monkey the part Snake
Eater subsistence where Snake or Big Boss is hunting monkeys from Ape Escape. It's
the ape Escape three mode where you are playing as a monkey Solid Snake going
around capturing monkeys, and it's just a full fledged, like hour and a
half. Like there's like a metal ear fight at the other there's numerous boss
fights Stelsea. If you have a banana gun, there's a torture scene with
an ocelot monkey and the actual like human character model a big boss. It's
fucking insane and I loved it. So it looked really stupid and I liked
it a lot. Yeah. Yeah, and the snake first monkey thing is
very fun too. I just I miss when games did dumb stuff like this.
Yes, it's so dumb and so funny. It's I loved it.
Yeah, putting a snake in what evolutions skateboarding or whatever and was level or
big shell skateboarding and substance, Yeah, yeah, I love the design of
those stupid monkeys and Ape Escape. Yeah you skate back please, it's sap
eskate back. It is definitely time. Is that a konami like owned I
p? Or does oh my god do that? In psv R two,
you got some good news, I got some bad news. Sony's got a
lot of money. They can make a lot of games. Bad news is
they close down Japan studios. They're not going to do that again, ship
really very much. So. The whole thing is they want games to have
global appeal, and then got that meant that meant like it's got to look
expensive and not be awesome like Ape Escape now and me and grub have been
harpound this for like a year now on various podcasts like High Fire Rush.
Do that for like ape Escape and stuff? Dude, more monkey games?
Yes, yes, Sony, if you're listening and I know you are,
come closer, come closer, Astrobat, ape Escape yeah, or both of
those or just both of those things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh
no, a bunch of apes are in my PlayStation five? Who can save
my PS five astrobot exactly? Yes, there we go, Josh, use
that idea. I don't know somehow Addie plays Astrobot every every single day.
Every day she's playing fantastic platform. She Escape beats it every day. Yeah,
yeah, beautiful, beautiful. Uh. Speaking about games that are doing
something and improving on other things. During last week's ups, the three of
us plus Nikki played Knock and for the folks that don't know, Knock is
probably, after Half Life Alex, the best VR game and it is just
Rocket League yeah with bow and arrows and you're like skating around and flying in
away that makes you want a puke, but you feel fucking alive. Yeah,
but he just works so well. So like with your with your left
hand, like Dan said, you're holding down the trigger and you're skating with
it, so you're like pulling the ground and like slaloming where you're supposed to
go. And then it's right with your right hand. You pull the trigger
down, you throw your arm down, and you jump, but you can
throw the world down. You don't jump, you throw the world down.
That's how it is, isn't it the same hand as all like the mobility
stuff, and you domin in hand for the bow and arrow stuff and it
automatically. Yeah. Yeah, it just feels fucking pretty. It's like fifteen
seconds to learn how the mechanics work, and then you're just off to the
races and it's fun as hell. So you skate forward, throw the world
down. You're hovering up in the air, and then you pull the arrow
back and you hit the ball perfectly, and you feel so fucking cool.
I felt so cool doing that. And then we played and then and then
dance like the cell fall on the ball around. I'm like, oh,
I guess I gotta go play for real. I can't just be floating up
here in the air. But it was still a really cool time. Yeah,
we will do that again. We Yeah, we definitely got to do
that. Again soon and they what it's a three arrow limit and then you
got to recharge just getting a pickup. If you hit the ball with an
arrow, it puts one back in, but then you can pick up either
the one or three pickups like skating around. Oh okay, so if you
hit the ball, it rehups your arrow. Okay, that's cool. Yeah.
If folks, if you have a metaquest three or I think it's also
on Steam, so if you have an index, definitely fucking check out knock
that. Let's do a T and T for knock. Oh yeah, lock
it up because knocked up? Oh my god, the shit all right?
Yeah? Because it did? It was a custom lobby thing, right,
Uh huh, this is this is not a quest too, I could do
this. Yeah, oh yeah, let's do that. I like, I
don't know, there's there's probably small indie VR studios out there, dev's out
there, But like, yo, how does this just work? And how
did we just hear of this last week? It's a weird idea and it
just works. I don't think I ever what I heard about it at all?
Had Nicky not Like Nicky was like, let's go research some stuff for
for our upf and then they found that. I'm like, okay, yeah,
I'm down. I'll just download all these and I'm not really even paying
attention. And then I saw Knock was like a like Rocket League, and
I'm like, I bet has a totorial. I'm gonna go check that out.
Make sure I'm ready to go. And I played the tutorial and was
immediately like, I get it. This is awesome. More of this.
I then I was thinktting, I bet everyone else is going to get sick
and we won't be able to play it, but we all did get sick
and we still just kept playing it. I will happily puke for Knock.
Yeah, that was like that in the box. I'll puke for Knock well,
because right before we checked out a pretty well established ping pong game and
we had difficulties even playing against each other or getting into the game. And
I think that game is like twice the price of Knock. Yes, it's
been rare a long time too. It's been out for a long time,
so they've definitely had the time to iron the kinks out. But I had
a much much more fun being a weird cat person. Yeah. Yeah,
it was. Yeah, it was like it was like a weird like glob
with arms. Yeah, it was like. I had a great time in
eleven table tennis though, because I destroyed you. That was a lot of
fun for me, you know, like the the physics over there. I
didn't set my grip properly, you know. Oh that's what it was.
I didn't do the grip that I'm used to. Someone's mentioned in chat that
Lethal Company got a full VR mod that can be fun. Oh, we
could use the we can use steam link. Okay, so if we ever
need to take out Jeff Becklar, now we we have the weapons. This
is a batman plan. His bald head would just explode everywhere I'm starting.
I decided hateful. I'm sorry Jeff Backlark. I feel like Lucy's gonna catch
a stray here, and Lucy's like, like, Lucy, we'll take back
Laren. We'll be It's fine, You'll be fine. Yeah, Like,
as everyone's walking in, We'll like, Lucy, no, no, just
go sit out. Just go sit over there real quick. You just watch
this the monitor you got yeah, yeah, just just use a regular monitor.
Oh man, not get so good. I want I booted back up
and I just played against Randoms and I still had a fantastic time. Really,
I haven't tried that yet. I'm gonna play some more. Uh,
grub you. I don't know if you have time to play some more,
because you apparently have been taking your time and setting up your Aya Neo Retro
Mini PC. Yeah yeah, I and Neo makes a bunch of those handhelds.
But they decided to like just take one of those handhelds and put it
inside a small PC that you hook up to your TV, and it looks
really cute. It looks basically like a Macintosh and even has like the little
rainbow logo on it and stuff and a fake screen, and when you boot
it up, the wallpaper says hello, like like the Macintosh. Did I
like it a lot? It works well. I got the rise in five
model instead of the Rise in seven models, so it's even like the more
affordable version that I think is like not I think it's like two three D
not even it's like like superb It might be three, five and seven.
Because I was looking, I think it was the Rise in three is like
two hundred. I was okay, okay, this might actually be good for
a home server, yes, exact, And then I'm like, I'm gonna
move my My plex server is getting moved over to this. I'm done with
the shield. The shield is a little bit too cumbersome at this point,
so yeah, Plex servers moving over to that. And then I'm setting up
to play retro games and I'm like, you know what, m you deck
got updated for Windows. I was going to try that. And I went
through that and I set it all up and I started trying to play my
games and nothing worked, like maybe the ants games work, nothing else,
and so I was like, okay, I'm sure some of these are BIOSes.
And I got all the bios to set up and still basically nothing worked.
So I'm like, Okay, this isn't quite there yet. And to
be fair, Mudeck for Windows is in like a beta phase. It's early.
But that was like, I'm at a point where I, yes,
of course I still enjoy setting up my emulators and all that stuff, but
I got to a point where I've done that an infinite number of times in
my life. I will kind of just want to get back to playing the
games and not like setting everything up and be like, oh, look what
I've done here. I'm being so pleased with myself, and so I'm kind
of believing in the dream that I could press a button and have it all
just happened automatically. Was beautiful, and it's like, Okay, we're not
there yet, at least with Windows. So I'll go in there. I'm
going to update these emulators myself. But I got like a five hundred and
twelve gigabyte USB three point two stick that I'm putting all the games on.
I might put bat O Sarah on there, which is a build of Linux
that is specifically made to just be a front end for emulators, and it
completely like you would just boot into that instead of Windows. But the things
already has Windows on it, and I was like, I'll try this first.
Now that that hasn't really worked, I think I will go to the
Botto Sarah route. Problem with that is sometimes for these newer PCs, you
have to go into the bios and turn off some like security features to get
it to boot into Boto Serah, and that sounds like a headache, and
I don't know if I want to like have it work that way, So
I have to like set it up every single time or go and like flip
back and forth. If I want to go back into Windows or something like
that, and if I want to use this my plex server, I'll have
to do that. So I'm like trying to figure out what the best solution
is here. But I'm I'm here to report these mini PCs have gotten very
very very good. And if you are looking for something to like, Hey,
I just wish I had something I could connect to my TV. It
can handle all this other stuff that like, oh, some of these smart
apps get closer or you know, I have my consoles set up. Yeah,
but if I could like have a PC that can do all this emulation,
do all the extra stuff I need, and then can then stream from
some of these other devices when I needed to this is this seems like a
really good solution for that. So I've been really happy with it. Hey,
GB, is enough enough? How many things do you need? What's
that words sound? I don't know. I'll talk about the slide again if
you want. If you're not careful, god show me the slide. So
show me the slide. Yea, yeah, absolutely. Just listen to the
clunk on this when because it's it's spring loaded, it goes with force.
What is that the I in EO slide it is. It's from the same
company, and it's got a full keyboard underneath the screen, and the best
part about it is the like amber coloring on the keys, which reminds me
so much of the Sidekick, like just looking down at my little my little
fire in my hands or whatever. But it hit. It also has windows
and all that actual cave man actual cave man ship. That's right, But
it's uh, this has a seventy eight forty U which anyone who's been paying
attention to these handhelds, well, no, that's basically been in all the
top end handhelds and runs games really really well. It's not as not quite
as powerful as like a Acus Roger ally, but it's it's still very powerful
and can run most of your games and I'm enjoying it. It's a little
bit smaller, but it's also uh kind of still thick and heavy and stuff.
I might be interested in that because like I had a long session of
playing Prince of Persia on the steam Deck and that bad boy, the original
steam Deck. It's kind of hefty, a little hefty on the hands there.
Yeah, this this one is still pretty heavy, is the difference.
Yeah, dense exactly. I'll do a comparison. If you're looking for a
lighter one. There are things from I in e Oh that don't have the
keyboard that are significantly lighter. They just announce that they're pulling out the AEO
light. I think it's just us. Yeah, and that's just going to
be a three hundred dollars entry level thing if you just want to play like
lower level games. That's this is for sickos, right, yeah, this
is this is for ciccos. Like the screen like bazz Out, like thirty
percent, that's pretty comfortable. The issue is that the keyboard that I,
I mean, that's really what I wanted it for is to actually like use
my thumbs to type like I did on my Sidekick, and I love that.
I would spend so much time typing stuff out. It's a bit too
why these center keys are hard to get to. I gave it to I
give it to Stephanie. I'm like, can you reach these middle keys?
And she's like, no, my hands are basically going to explode if I
try to do that, And I'm like, yeah, that's that's what I
figured. I kind of wish they would space out these keys to each side
and then put a touch pad here in the middle. Because you are still
using Windows up here, it would be nice to have the touch pad as
an option. So the fact that you still have to go up here and
use the touch screen. Sometimes I found myself like, okay, I'm navigating
Windows. Time to type in a password. I click on the thing,
and without thinking, I just started using the on screen touch keyboard because I
just wasn't like even thinking about the keyboard being underneath because I'm already in the
touchscreen interface. So it's it's neat, but it's not perfect. It's not
exactly what I wanted as a gaming device. It works pretty good, but
you know, the price is pretty high for what it is. Well,
Greb, speaking of you playing retro games, can we tell the fine folks
at home about the old game that I have convinced you to play Sight Unseen
on this website starting this week? Absolutely? Yeah, what am I playing?
Dan? You knowing nothing about this game. Over the next two to
three weeks when when we play time after game mess morning, you will be
playing through Tale of the Sun for the PlayStation one. And don't look anything
up. Just we're just going to go in and we're going to see how
it goes. I will say that the one thing I do know about this
game is it got a zero from EGM. I believe a zero one tell
you one. That's an accomplishment. I mean this like, I understand why
is Some people, and some confusing were like, what the fuck is this
game? Even? I have played through this entire game twice now, and
I can say earnestly, unronically, I think it's a good, fascinating game.
Yep, I'm looking forward to this. I always wanted to play it
when I saw that. Okay, I was. I was gonna ask you,
Dan, are you trying to inadvertently fool Grub into doing two sea?
I entirely played through this whole thing twice and loved it both times. I
Grubb, you might want to have like a paper and pen. I made
my own map as I explored the world. I have to pay attention to
something. Oh no, I'll be there to help, all right. I'm
looking forward to this. Okay, it looks wild like it always looked wild.
I can't wait to actually see what happens in it for real. I
have never played anything like it even since then, so it's I think you're
gonna like it, Okay, looking looking forward to it for sure. I
think Thursday is the first time we're gonna do it, and maybe a couple
of hours next week. So yeah, I look forward in like the early
morning, afternoon, depending when you're where you're at in the States. But
yeah, it should be fun, yep, looking for it to going from
something that no one has ever heard about to other games that I believe,
as far as I know, grub Dan and I have no fucking clue what's
going on, Sean, you put those other three D fighting games on the
list here, yes, And I know you Sikos have at least heard of
Dead or Alive, So don't don't say, oh, don't say you haven't
heard of Yeah, maybe from other sources, but regardless, No, yeah,
this is I mentioned, what was it last week on the BombCast two
weeks ago, that I was doing a lot of stuff on Steam Deck.
You know, I got the O lead and just getting all the retro stuff
up and running has been a lot of fun, revisiting old stuff or checking
out stuff I've never scene before. And so one of those things is that
you know, at the end of this month, we got tech and eight
coming out, and so my journey for the past like month and a half,
may two months even because I just do a little bit here and there,
has been sort of acclimating myself to three D fighting games because I'm very
much a street fighter marl Vus Capcom, you know, those sort of two
D fighters killer and saying that kind of thing. So I've just been checking
out the other big three D fighting games to get myself in the right head
space for it, and I checked out some of the older teching games.
I checked out Virtual I will say the one that stuck actually was Dead or
Alive, not for those reasons, but I played the absolutely hilariously bad story
modes. Oh man, oh there's listen. If we ever need ideas,
guys, I got some games. We ever need to say, grub down
for something. I got some games. It's funny to make you suffer,
Okay, I will say Dead or Alive Dimensions on the three DS is oh
fantastic game actually, because it summarizes the stories of one through four and teaches
you how to play while doing so. So, like, the story is
fucking awful, but while you're going through it and just laughing at how bad
it is the game teaches you. Okay, now we're gonna introduce this layer
of three D fighting games. Now we're gonna teach you how throws working at
three D space. Now we're gonna teach you how this like sort of weapon
triangle of you know, breaking throws, works, strikes and everything like that.
And it just feels really good to play in a way that I've always
thought teching his a little obtuse because he got the two buns for punches and
kicks. Virtua Fighter leans so heavily into throws. That's always been a little
daunting. Deader Alive. You can kind of just like do a three hit
combo with punches or like three hit combo with kicks, and then you can
figure out on the flyhouse string them together. It's really free for him.
And so yeah, I just ended up playing all the Deadoral Live games and
they're actually really fun, and so that was just sort of my little pet
project for the past month while I was checking out retro stuff. Was fun.
First series that really did the like multi layered like, oh, I
knocked someone into a off this thing and they went on like, well that's
the first one. Well, no, Virtua Fighter did a little bit of
that. First deador Alive was definitely one where it's like, I'm gonna knock
you off this cliff and there's gonna be like a cinematic I must falling and
be like punching you and then you slam into the ground. I thought that
was pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. Like on how you find playing a
fighting game on a on a portable like a Steam Deck, weir it depends
on the game because like for six pun games, I do use my little
uh, I use my little leverless controller right here for audio listeners. It's
if you are seeing a hip box style controller where it's all buns. That's
why I'm showing off here, just a smaller version of it that's called the
SGF bridget it the name after the Guilty Gear character because a little small thing.
But for any like other fighting game where I'm not used to that layout,
I feel like it's okay a play on controller. Like I was alternating
between Steam Deck and sometimes desktop for these games, and I felt like,
you know, using a controller for a four bun fighting game is okay,
especially as a good D pad. Steam Deck does not have a good dpad.
But like I mentioned, for a lot that I was playing out a
three DS, which has incredible one the Xbox controller currently has a great dpad,
and so for those games, it was definitely okay. If I was
trying to place on those sixunon though, I'd probably fall that to that over
there though. Okay, well, thank you Sean for that quick history lesson
God, we should just check out a bunch of miscellaneous three DS games that
have gone lost to time. I think that'd be fun, could Oh yeah,
yeah, there's uh, there's that early Steel Diver and what it's like.
One of the first games I ever got for it was that Ubi Soft
Tactics game that was based on Tom Clancy and it was like surprisingly good Shadow
Agents or something shadow that Tom's No. I remember there was that project code
name Steam that was like a tactics thing first party Nintendo right where you're like
a b Lincoing x Tom or something. I really didn't like that game.
I wanted to use the nub for the new that's right, Yes, nub.
I liked it. Not that never really used it though. Uh.
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Shadow Wars Grub was that. That's it, That's what
it was. Yes, Shadow wars. Yeah. Yeah, folks, if
you if you got any hidden three DS gems throw marware, maybe we'll collect
those and not so or not so gems. Yeah. Ap mentioning that citri
VR is coming to Oculus, so you could do full three D support with
the with the Oculus quest snaky. Oh yeah, okay, people that version
right. Someone said it's the best version. It did find great. I
think the frame rate was kind of rough, but I think there's ways around
that. Now. Oh man, maybe now I just want to I just
want to dig out my three D s which is just a door the doorstop
one. Someone three D dot hacks. That is that what the website is.
Sean, I'm not hearing anything. I'm not hearing any u r ls.
We're not doing any crimes here. Uh last game we have here,
it's not a Game of the Week or anything. This is maybe just another
spiral, another void I'm willing and happy to jump into. I was telling
grub earlier, uh earlier, before we started the show. Oh how I
hate the nicest man on the internet. I hate David Chen of the Slash
Film cast because he had talked about a book he was reading, and then
I started listening to the audiobook, and now I just want to get all
the way into poker. Let's go. I want to get so into poker.
Jan and I will help you on this journey if you want. I'm
hosting a poker night in a few weeks here if you want to come out
to Minnesota in February. But it's very fun. Dad will be here.
So if you want to learn poker with me and my dad and a bunch
of friends, you can do that, like a good time. Yeah,
yeah, very fun. I only know like a couple of hands and well,
okay, I I think I also only know the names. Okay,
all right, Well let's let's see if you can surmise what they are.
Okay, a full house. It's like all the people cards, right,
no, you're no, no, fuck me, three sevens and two two's
you know, three of a kind? Yeah, yep, so okay,
there's five cards and so yeah, three and two basically is okay, So
that's that's an Uncle Jesse h, Uncle Joey and Danny Tanner and then the
twins basically they call it. Yeah, yes, okay, okay, so
is a royal flush? All the people cards in the ace a royal blush
is ten through ace right now, Jack, Queen King Ace, and then
all of the same suit would be a royal flush. Oh okay, So
a flush is just those lushes. It could be two, three, four,
five, six, the same pads, you know. Yeah, okay,
so I always fix up the flush is higher than the straight straight.
Yes, that's the one I've been trying to memorize for a long forever.
And then there's a straight blush, which is like, let's say you had
yeah, seven, eight, nine, ten, Jack, Queen of Hearts,
that's a straight flush. Okay. How come sometimes when people play poker
they only have two cards because that's the more fun way you can do.
There's a million weird ways to play. The old way was like the kind
of dry card draw type thing or five card draw. Uh. And then
in like the mid twoth when like the world Tiers of poker got us hold
on everything Texas hold them got huge, and it's a I think it's a
lot more fun. Some people, it's demonstrably more fun. Absolutely, Okay,
So that's the one I should love. Like when I play with my
mom and her husband, they do Pineapple a lot where it's like dealer's choice.
They can throw out a third card and you got to like discard one,
but we won't mess with that to start with. Well, just basic
Texas, hold them two cards, yeah, shared pot. Yeah. Okay.
Basically what I'm saying is if and when Sean goes to EVO in Vegas
this year, I'm also going to go to Vegas, but not for EVO
at all. I'm just gonna go and blow an obscene amount of money craft
first. Oh yeah, perhaps is free money? Absolutely, yeah, craft
up on crafts overall. Yeah, I know that it makes sense to do
uh A Game of the Year and the Game Awards in la because that's where
Kiley's hosting it. We have the fandom studio there. There some really fancy
poker houses in l A. Though, just so you know, oh well,
never mind what I was gonna say that, because I was saying we
should just do Game of the Year and like the pyramid thing, Okay,
that's the sphere. Oh my god, damn my god. We're going to
drag that. It's more back of our thing than not being oppressed by the
sphere. That's the most bacular thing in the world. Shocking Jesus Christ he's
gonna be on a missions not wanting to be in Vegas, avoiding the sphere
and trying to find me in whichever miscellane is poker table I find myself at,
and then we're gonna play the uh Keino. We're gonna learn, we're
gonna get big into Keno either. I think you should pick some numbers.
Yeah, Keno's pretty random. Do you know pol tabs? You have pol
tabs anywhere else Sean? Do you have pol tabs in Wisconsin? I have
no idea what you're talking about. Meat rapple style thing, Okay, pole
tapter thing? What meet when you go to bars and there will be like
a separate employee that goes there, like so here's the bar where you get
the drinks and stuff, but then there's like a little booth over here where
it'll be like I think they have kenots sometimes. But then poll tabs where
it's like they're usually a dollar a thing and they're a little cardboard gimmick and
it's almost like a scratcher type thing, but you pull them, they're like
it's like a cardboard perforated thing and you pull three things and it's almost like
a slot machine. Like, get three strawberries and you win this and you
bring it back to the polltab person, you win some money. I think
I saw that your Tahoe. But Tahoe is like super close to Reno.
Uh so that makes sense why that would be there. It's all over the
place here in minnesot I'm surprised. Here in Wisconsin. It seems like it's
just more of like a more complicated way to do lottery or Bengo or something
like that. That's just that's like a scratcher. Basically, it's pretty pretty
simpar. Yeah, scratch. I have a one hundred dollars scratcher. It's
been sitting in my car for a while. I shouldn't say that on the
internet. But do those expire? I should probably go like, I don't
think so. Yeah, but the place seems like it shouldn't expire. I
don't believe so. I used to do some of the stuff when I work
at a grocery store. I don't think they're okay. Everyone scream ass,
yes they do, okay, probably not like after a year though, Right,
we'll cash it in now, grub Okay, I will do it.
Today we did a white elephant thing with the family for Christmas, and you
know you like steal up the three times like each item at a white Elephant.
I don't know, everyone does different, but basically, my dad's gift
that he brought was a quick trip gas station gift card and three Scratcher tickets,
and then he spent the entire White Elephant trying to get it back for
himself. That's a move that sounds Larry David move man. Uh okay,
all right, well, I'm gonna get super into Texas hold them because Texas
hold them kind of sounds like easier majong and I barely remember how to play
majong. I was about to break an embargo? Is a thing? Is
there a teching minigame of Magong? Stupid penalty box? Everybody see you later,
All right, after greb is death serving his time at the penalty box,
we'll be back with the news. Hey, if you got rex for
how to learn Texas hold them, I don't know, don't send them my
way, but let's just play. Just start playing. That's the best way
to learn. Or go back, go back at time and watch Chris money
Maker. No play with us. Let's do like a discord poker thing or
something and there's no real money on the line, and you can just openly
talk about your hand and we'll tell you how to play it. Okay,
all right, all right, I'll boot up something. I'll find a book
as well to read the same Poker Night at the At the inventory, it's
like, oh, the scheme joint, if you have it is still listed.
Oh really, that's a bummer. Well anyway, Uh, Grub's gonna
go serve his time for for him and his crimes, and we'll just keep
him company in the box until it's time to break them out and we'll be
back with the news. Well it it's over for me, folks, it's
so over. I had to turn off my camera. My camera died.
I learned how to play poker, and then I'm just smiling ear to ear,
So my camera died to hide my shame because of how much I now
love poker, poker, break and fast and it's great. Holy shit,
Why don't we should have a night where we all play poker together? Perhaps
Poker Night? Yes? Oh man, is that what that show is about
with Natasha Leone poker Face? She doesn't play any poker in that show,
basically, sure, I think she does in like the first episode, because
she could tell when people are lying, right, I think that's how they
show. Oh man, I'm gonna get us all cool slightly translucent visors,
yes, oh I love it. Sunglasses. Yeah, man, I can't
wait to gimmick this ship up. Okay, all right, oh no,
this is fix some of them, my kid. I'll be right back,
okay. Uh. But yeah, that's very easy to learn. And thank
you Dan, thank you Sean, thank you Grub for teaching me. This
is fun. I hope everyone marks us down in their journals that this is
the day that my life changed forever. Well, and Jon, you're in
a pun spot because the beginner's luck thing is really real because like normally,
when you're playing with a bunch of people who know how to play and everything,
you know that he's going to follow the rules of like just logic.
And I've seen so many times when somebody knew is at the table and you
just never know, like, well, nobody would ever do that, but
they might not know not to do that strategy. It is real and it
works. Yep, yep, oh, fantastic, fantastic. Wow, not
news to everyone, but here it goes gin with another stupid hobby and Jeff
Grubb please save me with the news. Yeah, I'm here for you.
New got Yeah. We played like like two minutes of poker and I'm already
like itching. Oh that's a good game. All right, let's start here
Elden Ring DLC. Excitement is building because there's some things maybe pointing to it
happening soon. Elden Rings DLC Shadow of the Er Tree has been shrouded in
mystery since its announcement a year ago. Despite from Software's silence, rumors and
signs have hinted at its impending arrival. Recent developments include a leaked product page
suggesting a February launch, aligning with Elder Ring's two year anniversary. Additionally,
a mysterious excuse me and coming update on Steam has been discovered, fueling speculation.
The update, which doesn't explicitly mention the DLC, has sparked excitement as
it marks the first change through the game's downloadable content in over a year.
Fans eagerly await more information, hoping for official announcements soon and then furthermore.
Rumors suggest the possibility of a second major DLC in twenty twenty five, indicating
a bright future for elden Rings post launch content. Shadow of the ear Tree
probably happens this year. I could see it happily as soon as next month.
Except for like, man, why wasn't it at the kileis then,
because they had that relationship worked really good when they worked really well when they
announced the game originally, why wouldn't they do that same strategy again? There
are probably a bunch of reasons why you don't do it. It's just like
h I thought it would have I would have expected it, but hey,
I'm I will hop right back in. I just realized I'm missing elden Ring
pretty bad, so I'm looking forward to this. Is it supposed to be
pretty substantial, Like if they said anything of note other than just like the
title, I don't know how much they've said. The assumption is it'll be
pretty substantial. I think they did confirm that you're going to like a whole
New Island or something like that, So basically it'll be like a mini sequel,
I think is how people are viewing it. You know, from software's
expansions in the past have been very substantial. I think the the the assumption
here is this will be the biggest one yet and that's probably going to be
the case. Okay, cool, I am a little surprised. We're like,
oh, already hearing maybe the possibility of a second expansion next year.
But elder Ring's the kind of game that it could just sell forever like a
Skyrim did, so them supporting it makes a lot of sense. This is
also kind of the trend I feel for a lot of games is two major
expansions, like we see a scaling all the way up to like even Pokemon
does this a lot where they just they put out the two expansions. I
feel like I hear a lot of games doing that. We're doing the Fantasy
Draft Alan wait two as those two story expansions listed. I feel like that's
kind of the norm at this point. Like eldon Ring is a big game
to be doing that, but I guess if they're going with the trend,
why not. Yeah. It's also the kind of thing where it's like,
you know, they probably sketch out why that's worth it to them from the
start, so it's built in and then being like, Okay, how can
we make that bigger as the game really succeeds and we can use that to
carry the momentum forward. I bet that'll happen here. I bet this game
will continue to sell for a very long time. And you know, once
both of these expansions are then you do a Game of the Year edition that
has everything in there or whatever, and you then you, you know,
you triple dip and get people back in again, set it to a more
slightly discounted price eventually, and then it just sells forever. Janet, triple
dip beats a flush. That's right, we'll cover. Yeah, we'll show
it's the it's the secret poker arts. There's three dips. Oh god no.
Uh. Halo Battle Royale has reportedly been canceled after years of work.
And I should have known this was going to happen because I just mentioned it
on a podcast over the weekend, so of course it should it was going
to get canceled. The Halo batter Royal project, co named Project to Taka,
is reportedly canceled. The games developer Certain Affinity had previously discussed the project
publicly and mentioned in collaboration with three four three Industries it was going to evolve
Halo Infinite. The project status was unclear, with rumors suggesting it may have
shifted directions. Microsoft is recent has been contact of or comment. They haven't
said anything yet. This came up on xbox eras podcast they mentioned they heard
it was canceled. When you think about it, I don't know if that's
too surprising, because do they really want to launch a separate Because people talk
about this like, oh, it's going to be a mode in Halo Halo
Infinite. It seems like that's not exactly how it would have worked, because
this was made an unreal engine probably would have to stand on its own,
and they would have required a support team of its own for years and years
and years kind of no matter what it ends up doing, whether it's successful
or not. And even if it's successful, that's like a big burden to
carry. And right now they're building up Halo Infinite back to like a place
where people are pretty happy with it, maybe it makes more sense to just
focus on Halo Infinite instead of dividing that audience. So I don't know,
is anyone here like bummed out you're not going to get a Halo Infinite Battle
Royale. No, particularly, it never made a ton of sense to me,
Like I was I was saying about the environments of Halo Infinite and it's
a lot of you know, the Pacific Wooded Area stuff all that, and
I was just like, I don't know if I want to do a battle
rail in that area. Even if there is cool stuff like the grappling Hook
and everything like that, I don't know. It always just felt off to
me. I don't know if it necessarily would have been there if it's its
own project, but just like the vibes of Halo Infinite felt like it wouldn't
have fit if they were trying to go with that theming when I was playing
Halo Infinite and I was going through that map, I felt that kind of
the opposite. It was like, I think a big, like one hundred
person shooter could make sense if you like lopped off a section of this larger
map and let people just do stuff in there. But that was definitely informed
by like having the grappling hook and all this stuff and getting around and I
don't know, I imagine just like okay, you know, hiding in these
areas and getting used to the environment. But we did hear that this was
a whole other engine was going to be completely separate from that, and I'm
like, oh, that doesn't seem like it would be, by the way,
Devil's advocate for that, because since I wanted to call it duty sikos
around here, I will say there was an overlap period when MW three was
coming out where you would fire up the Call of Duty app if you wanted
to play war Zone, it would behind the scenes fire up MW two because
they hadn't yet like upparted it to like support all the MW three stuff.
So theoretically that could have worked. But yeah, it was sure right,
like that is probably what would have happened. It's just yeah, I think
they start looking at it then and it's like, okay, then they need
the separate support team and all this stuff, and I think all those combination
of factors probably does drag it down. They probably would have presented it as
a mode, but it would have been its own thing in many respects.
I don't know. For Halo, I mean it is, it's still in
a tough spot. I think infin it's a very fun game to play,
but it's not like the top tier franchise game that Microsoft maybe needed it to
be. What's next for Halo? They probably just come back and try to
do another sequel at this point, right, I think that's the move,
Like I can't. There's enough problem Halo Infinite and like you said, Grub,
they're building back some positive momentum, but perhaps releasing that Battle Royale and
if it was like you know, poor state at launch, it would just
kill whatever building momentum they had. What is it? Is it a numbered
sequel, is it Infinite two? Is it infinite? Is it open in
the way that Infinite was or is it more linear campaign in the way.
Yeah? I like the Infinite campaign. I thought I did too, honestly
a lot. I really enjoyed it. We should that four player co op
got put in there. We never touched that. Maybe we should go try
that sometime. That was sure, Oh yeah, we thought about that.
I bet they kind of walk away from the openness a little bit and they
do go back to kind of level based Halo. Uh, maybe just try
to do play the hits a little bit, just make a game that they
just called Halo twenty twenty seven or whatever, like oh yeah, god,
probably yeah, probably what happened, right, Infinite was all right supposed to
be like sort of a soft reboot, and then it's like, how do
you reboot, a soft reboot the first time. Yeah, that's how hopere
on it. They would they do something so else Yeah, Stalker two has
been delayed again. Stalker two heard of Chernobyl, which I wrote down here
as Chornoble. The post apocalyptic shooter sequel by GSC Game World has been delayed
again and is now set to release on September fifth, twenty twenty four,
so not getting moved out of this year, but just later into this year.
The decision was made based on fan feedback after they received thousands of players
testing results and a lot of people enjoyed the game, but they said they
want more time to polish it up and make it better. Of course,
this is the studio that was in Ukraine when the war started. They were
that seems like most of them were able to get out and have been out
for a very long time now continuing to make the game elsewhere. But obviously
that put a huge kink in the works and caused many of the original delays.
And now they're like, don't they have a game. It probably could
launch, but they want to get to a certain level of polished, which
is understandable. Stalker two a sequel to Stalker, a immersive sim survival game
that people love. Ever played, I always intended to go back, but
it has a lot of fans. Stalker two will have a lot to live
up to, so I don't blame them for wanting to do put the best
possible foot forward there. The game will launch on I believe Xbox Game Pass
on day one. Yeah, that's what it says here, so people will
be able to check that out when it comes. We'll see. Ubisoft Boss
says gamers need to get used to not owning their games because they're not used
to that yet. Ubisoft C's as significant growth opportunity and subscription services such as
Ubisoft Plus if consumers can adapt to not own owning games like they do with
other media like music and movies. The publisher recently rebranded it's Ubisoft Plus service
and introduced a new PC offering, Ubisoft Plus Premium, which is available on
PC, Xbox, and Luna for a monthly fee includes a day one access
to new releases, a sizeable back catalog DLC early access to title games,
are to select games, and more, and it has stuff like Ubisoft Plus
Classic. Basically, the person who was interviewed here is the person in charge
of Ubisoft subscript subscriptions serve and they said, the point is not to force
users to go down one route or another. We offer purchase, we offer
subscription, and it's the gamer's preference that is more important. Here we are
seeing some people who buy choosing to subscribe now. But it all works,
and then he goes on to say in other mediums, it's been much easier
to get people to move to subscriptions, but for some reason, gamers are
a little bit more hesitant and they aren't moving as quickly as anyone expected to,
I guess, And mostly I wanted to just like check the temperature here.
How are you all feeling about subscriptions versus buying your games? I want
it to stay where we have the choice at all times. Unlikely do like
Netflix, Like there's no guarantee you're going to be able to buy something on
Netflix. I think that we've kind of already reached where where I think most
people are comfortable. Is that where you all are at as well? Yeah?
Yeah, it's a weird comparison because I feel like there's a subset of
folk the music community and movie watching community that are getting back into buying physical
like I know, on top of like vinyls becoming huge again and a lot
of people are pushing to buy physical albums, and then same thing with movies.
Now, like I have to pull my partner off a cliff of wanting
to buy four K Blu rays of existing Blu rays that she already has,
and that's a slippery slope as well. Yeah, I saw that video from
a couple months ago, just this past week of Kojima at Criterion going through
the clouset there and putting the movies into the bag, and I'm like,
I want that for me. Maybe I should get back into getting physical movies,
but no, I can't. I do that with like all my favorites.
So I probably got like I don't know, seventy or eighty like four
K things. I'm trying to like do that thing where I'm like all my
Blu rays, I'm getting rid of them, bring them a good Will and
buying the poor K when they're on sale or whatever. And it's it's stupid
because I did that when I went from DVD to Blu ray. So half
of those fucking Blu rays I brought to good Will were sealed. And now
I'm just buying them all again on four K and then it's probably gonna happen
again. But I mean, most of the time it works. Most times
you want to watch movie, like, even if you don't own it,
you know, you can go to Amazon and just you know, rent it
for like a couple bucks or whatever. But like recently, Bonk and I
really wanted to watch Near Dark, that Catherine Bigelow movie. We'd never seen
it. We were good things, we were on kind of but Katherine Bigelow
kick and it's like, not anywhere on streaming, there was no way you
couldn't rent it on Amazon or anything. I was like, all right,
I'll just buy the physical media. And then I went to like eBay and
Amazon and everything, and you can't even buy it. And so it's like
on a rare instance, it's just like it becomes hard to watch something.
But like usually ninety nine out of one hundred times, if you buy it
physically, you're good to go. I think that does highlight an issue though,
with games in particular, and Jan this conversation just killed them. I
guess games are quite frequently delisted or changed or updated the people don't like,
and sometimes they become different games. Sometimes the games aren't available anymore. It
is so difficult to just go back and play old games that there are people
who see preservation efforts shuch as emulation as piracy because that's what they've been trained
to do by these corporations. The problem is, all right, what's your
solution, Like, how are we going to access this old media without becoming
loss of time? And that's where people are hesitant going into more subscription based
stuff. Not owning your games, Like people are still getting used to owning
digital games because you're quote unquote owning them. You're you're licensing them. You're
not actually you own have a disk in your hand. That's why I still
have a shelf of physical games. It's because for currant ones, I do
want that disk. I want to be able to pop in a cartridge into
a Nintendo system or whatnot. And so the fact that yes, the industry
will move towards streaming and subscription services and all this more digital stuff, but
bro, you can't say that. You can't just get up here and be
like the most No one will call you out harder than gamers can't. You
can't say, boy, I very try. I can't believe where we're not
screwing these people over Why aren't they you know, being SAPs easier? Yeah,
you just can't say that on this level, just like let it.
The reason it happened organically for music and movies is because people let it happen
and they are now okay with just I listen to music on Spotify. I
watched TV on a million streaming services that costs more on cable. That's just
where we are at this point. I think, you know, it's the
movies and music reached a point where they became commodities where for most people they
were very interchangeable. Well, yeah, yeah, I have a favorite song,
but most music I hear is something I'm going to listen to for a
week and then I'm going to listen to the next one. I'll probably listen
to on the radio while I'm working, and I'm not going to think about
it too much. I think movies got pretty similar. It's like, yeah,
I go see a summer blockbuster and I'm just not going to fall in
love with Many of these games still kind of feel precious in a lot of
ways, where it's like we get a game and it feels like a miracle.
A lot of times, and so I think people build a stronger attachment
to games, and that's kind of been this fence mechanism between games and becoming
the subscription fodder. Most people who have been into games have had to view
it because if you're into games, you have to view it in this way
at a certain point because they're so expensive, like spending sixty dollars on a
game. You won't get to that point if you think games are special,
and the next one might be the next special one for you. So I
think that's been a thing that it would be risky for these companies to disentangle
that notion that games are special, because then they don't feel that then they
won't be worth sixty dollars in most people's eyes. We already saw what happens
on mobile when that happened that you know that race to the bottom there,
and now Mobile has been stagnant for for a decade a decade straight. So
I get the people whose jobs it is to get people sign up for subscriptions
being frustrated by this. But this is actually a beneficial thing to your company
overall and probably something you don't want to undo. Right Meanwhile, though in
the UK, retailer. Game, which is like they're equivalent to GameStop is
going to end at game Trade ends, Game, a prominent video game retailer
in the UK, will cease accepting trade ins for physical video games starting February
sixteenth. The remaining pre owned stock will continue to be sold until it's depleted.
Game staff across the country have been informed of this change. Customers with
unwanted physical games are advised to trade advised to trade them in within the next
month. Currently, game accepts most consoles, games, gaming accessories, except
for retro items, which is PlayStation two and older. Trade Ins can be
exchanged for store credit or gift cards. This is I'm a little bit surprising.
That's like we're at this point, but you start I start to think
about it. I don't know many people personally that trade games in anymore.
I know some some does, and I get why. It's like, you
know, games are understand why if you're going to blow through a game in
a couple of weeks and you can still get you know, thirty thirty five
bucks forward or whatever, I mean that that helps. So like I see
why my sister does it. But like the convenience factor of like not having
a line up at a midnight release and everything kind of trumps that. But
it's just it's kind of bummer because I mean this has been just another on
the line of like the slow death of the way I bought and got and
traded in games growing up. Like funkal Land was my whole thing growing up.
It's all right, the Genesis came out, I'm trading in my nes
and all this stuff, getting Genesis, Okay, the PlayStations out, trade
in the Genesis, Like that's how I was able to keep getting new games
and stuff. And it was it was almost like a fun thing, seeing
like you know, the trade in values of everything, and sometimes it's be
like, oh, trade in any three of last generation's games and you get
one of the new generations games. Like it's just that whole trade in culture
was how I got games growing up. So just whenever I see one of
these stories, and there's a million of them every year, it's just like,
ah, yeah, that whole kind of marketplace is just dead at this
point. Yeah, you mentioned Kayla does l I and like I up until
recently, that's what I did too, because games are like we just mentioned
a little biggo really expensive, and you want to keep up on the new
ones, Like I know, I could wait, but you know, my
friends are playing a new thing. I want to play a new thing.
And then now I know there is playing a new thing, well I want
to talk to them about that, and it gets pricey. So yeah,
thankfully. Now you know, I do get codes for some games, and
that definitely helps things out. But up until that point, I was one
hundred percent just trading in the new game while I could still get you know,
like even eighty percent of it back. Because that's that that just makes
things easier on me. And I think, to tie it into the previous
conversation, subscription services are helping with that a lot, because if you can
spend ten or fifteen bucks a month, you know, that's basically what I
was spending on games. After the whole trade in and like fees and shipping
and all that stuff, I was basically spending like ten to fifteen bucks a
month on games. So I think that's sort of we've shifted a bit.
I think that's why we're seeing stuff like this, like brick and mortar retailers
are not doing as much of this. It makes sense, but yeah,
it is still a bummer because it feels like the end of an era.
Yeah, you're like, as someone who's spent over eight years working for the
Game Stop Corporation, I can tell you it is not a business model that
works anymore, and it hasn't for a while. So here's a fun little
subscription service. I recommend to the folks at home that are are budget conscious,
perhaps go to your If you live in a major metropolitan area, that
is easier for you. Sign up for a library card and then, sorry,
I just saw the cocking sign up for a library card, and then
you can also get games. Most big libraries in your city do have physical
copies of games. You can stay up with them up to date stuff.
Sometimes they are not day and date, so you may have to wait a
week or so to get the newest hotness. But if something has a physical
release, odds are it could be at your library. And if it's not
at your library, go and request that. Or even if you know,
we have a hoopla. Now now you can get stuff. Yeah, now
you get digital stuff through your through your local library. If you have a
library card, you can sign up for account there and stream stuff because if
it's part of your library's catalog. You'll have access to the streaming version of
it, which is maybe where I found some Pokemon movies that might be part
of a pitch that I have for you. Jan they will talk about it.
If there's that Canopy too, which is like basically like a streaming service
for video that is based on Believe on your library card, and they got
a ton of stuff on there. I was searching for an old PBS documentary
by the guy that does all the PBS documentaries. His name is Escaping Me
right now, about the making of the Brooklyn Bridge and like how these dudes
would go underwater and there'd be all this pressure over him and like one hundred
people died or whatever, and I'm like, I'm never gonna be able to
watch it again. I can't find it anywhere, and it was on Canopy,
So I definitely recommend that. Oh here's the other thing. You don't
got to live in the city that you're signing up for a library card in.
Yeah, I'm still using my Colorado one. Yeah. Like, my
partner students wanted to watch a movie and it wasn't available at any of the
local libraries here, so they just signed up for a Delaware card and no
problem there. And I guess the Delaware library had the specific movie they were
looking for. Yeah, there's no loss in Delaware. That's the last thing
about Delaware, Delaware. Yeah. Yeah, text situation is weird. Uh
huh? Do you have anything incorporated in Delaware? Dan? I think fire
Escape might be. I'm already set up. I have to ask. I
bet he did. He did. That's fantastic, all right. Time for
the Foam Stars News Hour, A couple of stories out of Foam Stars.
Let's see film Stars launches next month on PlayStation Plus. Square Enix announced that
it's four v four shooter Foam Stars will be available on February sixth as a
PlayStation Plus three monthly game until March fifth. After that, it will be
sold on the PlayStation store for thirty dollars. The goal, yes, the
goal of this the deal is to ensure a large enough player base from the
start and quickly established community. It has worked in the past. It worked
for Rocket League. Do you expect Rocket League like success for Foam Stars?
Dude? This game is a PS four and PS five exclusive service game that
they're charging thirty dollars for. You can't copy everything Splatoon is doing. Because
that's over on the Swiss Square Enix. That's not gonna it's not even on
PC. Nope. Oh that's silly. It's real dumb. That's not a
good idea. Yeah, I saw I saw this in the in the run
of show. I'm like, Okay, thank god, this is going to
get some people playing it for a few weeks at least. Yeah, we'll
check in on it. I'm looking forward to it. Although they do that
that, one of the stories I was going to include here in the Phone
Stars News Hour was they want people to stop comparing it to Splatoon. Wow,
it's not going to do that. I'm not going to do that.
Yeah. Maybe don't make a wet game. Yeah, don't make a game
that looks a lot like Splatoon. Yeah yeah, in a while. Uh.
Film Stars will receive free seasonal updates over a year with new characters,
maps, and game modes for everyone. That sounds like the kind thing where
it's like, let's just take some stuff out of the game and just add
it back in later. That's I don't know why. When you began reading
that sentence, I thought you were going to say, Foam Stars will return.
Where's it going. It's going to the same place. Yeah, that's
going to make it all right. The second start here, Foam Stars uses
a little AI as a treat. Foam Stars, an upcoming PlayStation shooter from
Square Inx, includes an AI generated art mid Journey, a generative AI tool
well was used to create a small portion what they claim is less than point
zero one percent of the game's album covers, which I think are things you
can collect in the game. Sean, you played this game right. I
have no idea what they're talking about there. Okay, I checked it out
too, and I don't know what they're specifically talking about. Maybe says literally
something that's like on the ground somewhere. I have no idea. Maybe it's
a spray. Either way, it's like they used to they we're testing this
out. The reason it's like, well, mid Journey definitely is just using
a bunch of artists stuff that you don't have access to. So this seems
like a risky thing to do. If they were like using their artists to
create a a treachro trove of stuff that they then trade a trained a model
on, uh, that would be one thing. But this is not that.
Mid Journey is just a completely open thing that is taking stuff from all
over the place. You know why Square Enix would never do that, though
they have some of the best artists in the world who would not do it
exactly. Yeah, uh huh. If I was if I was on the
squares roster and they said like, all right, we're gonna dump all your
work into and training AI, I believe in a fucking hard beat. Yes,
I believe that that was to take your job from you. Yeah,
really cool. Uh. They tried to explain it. In this instance,
we experimented with experimented with mid Journey, using simple prompts to produce abstract images.
We love what was created and use them as the final album covers players
will see in the game. Everything else was created entirely by our development team.
All right, do you think this whole year we're going to see more
more stories where developers and publishers keep trying to figure out where the line is
that they can get away with and oh, yes, there's gonna be blow
back every time. Like, do you feel like this is on the level
of like that NFT period where it's just like everyone is trying to do n
FT stuff and similar thing. Yeah, with the same level of anger and
blowback and failure you think. I think it'll be the same level of anger
and pushback. I think the the you know, the proof and the pudding
will be does it work and actually save them money? Because that's the thing
to have with NFTs is sure it didn't actually work, and and yes it
made them money, but it didn't make them that long term tail money that
they were expecting, where it's like, every time someone sells one of this,
we're gonna get ten percent cut and we're gonna be rich because it's gonna
make us money forever. And then no one gave a shit in the price
of NFTs crashed because they were never real uh AI could have real implications and
probably could save them money. I think what they'll probably get better at is
the framing around it, where it's like, oh, this is just a
new tool in photoshop, and this is just a new tool built into our
other tool, and when you need to do this one little thing in your
job, you press this button instead and it basically does AI. But still
it's the same artist doing the art now as it was before, so no
one lost their job. They'll probably find new ways to talk about it.
But yes, there will be throughout this entire year, this back and forth
between developers and publishers scene what they can get away with and trying to figure
out where that line is. The difference is that AI can be used for
good purposes and not just stealing job purposes, whereas like the NFTs or just
complete horseshit. So, for instance, like the way that like Hello Games
like like procedural generation isn't in that same conversation, is it where it's like,
you know, like if there are elements of no Man sky or light
no Fire, they're like procedurally generated. That's that's a different thing, right
than different branches of the family tree. Yeah, it's all part of the
similar spectrum, right. Yeah, it's like Catholicism and being a Lutheran.
Yeah, sure, that's all christiananity. You know. The idea with procedural
generation is a human being programmed the algorithm that is them running and doing the
procedure. There is an author behind the procedure, still not scraping the Internet
and literally stealing other art styles, and that's going to continue to be the
major point of difference. Yeah, is there any blowback at all towards like
you know, procedural generation type stuff, or is that just kind of an
accepted like okay, that's actually like a okay, well, there was a
blowback from gamers who were like, I like it when my stuff is authored.
I hate generation, but nothing beyond that. Yeah, no, because
this is just you know, a formula that an algorithm that just some coder
or team of coders programmed, and they're like, you're gonna put the art
assets that we've created, Uh, the computer is just going to randomly assign
them, so like you know, no, yeah, no harm done there.
The same way that like at some point in the chap point out it's
evemn weird that we call this AI to begin with. But they're like,
AI generated are is literally just yeah, we're gonna scrape Twitter all these artists
you know who are putting their stuff out for free. We're is gonna scrape
all and then use as a basis for generative art. That's just it's so
fucking weird. Yep. Yeah, Nihlocks says they work in that space and
like AI art is taking work from stock photo illustration sites, which took work
from photographers and illustrators for the past fifteen years. So it's like it's it's
a new form of what we've seen for a long time. Yeah, that's
they will find new and innovative ways to take money from other people who deserve
it. I mean, the Finals is doing it and they've kind of been
getting away with it with the AI commentators that are absolutely dog shit, like
anytime it boot up the Finals. That's like the sour part of playing through
that game of like, all right, I just wish these two would shut
the fuck up because they're not real, so stop telling me. These people
are responding mm hm at me, and I think on Game this morning,
I mentioned that, like, I think people are gonna get savvy to this
stuff, and that you know, the people that like are paying attention will
get savvy. The broader audience really doesn't care. The broader audience is still
like I just used open ai to write a job, right and that ruled,
and so like, you're not gonna be able to reach those people.
The thing though, those people that are using open ai chad GBT to write
a resume, write a cover letter, they don't actually have the skills to
do the job. Yeah, but yeah, but that's never stopped anyone in
the past. From faking their resume and stuff. So yeah, I mean
what, I don't care if you getting around the job hiring process. I
don't give a fuck. Do whatever you want. But but yeah, I
think most people just see something that's going to do some work for them that
they didn't want to do anyhow, and then we'll have we'll continue to have
this conversation. The thing with interesting gaming is we can get very very loud
about everything Sean said, like you, you know, gamers can have pushed
back against anything you say that Ubisoft guy. That goes true for all this
as well. So things like like that. Remember that to Ubisa courts that
they announced is like their big NFT marketplace and oh you're gonna get the special
helmet with a digit on it and all that stuff. Like is that even
active anymore? Or is that a wholesale abandoned? I want to see it's
dead. I think they made eight hundred dollars and shut it down. Yeah
like that. Games Stop just shut down the market. Yeah, game Style
I didn't even include that story. And GameStop has just shut down their market
shot out. Part of that is going to be regulation, Yeah, but
the real thing is no one fucking used it. No one bought anything on
that stuff. So yes, very shocking. Well, like even Twitter,
of all websites, is ending support for n f T user icons now right,
mm hmmm they are yeah, yeah, Now we can't call out the
idiots. Shame. There's still significant thing if you got to, like some
people get blue checks and and don't hide them. I don't get it.
They give you an option to hide it, Like why wouldn't you hide it?
Like, are you actually proud of your blue chet blue checks? They're
actually proud of it. That's the That's a whole discussion. All right.
Let's see here new Burden, the next Battlefield is going to lean back into
destruction. Repel Effect, which was previously known as dice l A, is
working on a new battlefield game that aims to deliver the most realistic destruction effects
in the gaming industry. Their job ad seeks a senior three D artist to
help achieve that goal. Ripple Effect is one of several studios currently contributing to
the Battlefield franchise, which has undergone significant restructuring following the underperformance at the launch
of Battlefield twenty forty two. Destruction seems like it's back in a big way.
Battlebits had a lot of destruction and then the finals former Dice people going
on to make a very popular shooter. So it doesn't surprise me too much,
but it also feels like, oh my god, you are the leader
in the space and now you're playing ketchup again, where you're like, okay,
we should go back to making destruction be a big part of battlefield evolution.
But another company? Yeah do that? Yes, please do? Is
there any chance that that's what's happening here, that maybe like this Dice La
team the Ripple Effect is actually working on Bad Company while Dice Proper is working
on the next Battlefield. I don't know what the fuck is going I Bellfield
anymore man or whatever. No, God, that was such a mess when
that it was Yeah, it's so what I always heard is like Bad Company
is the one that they wanted to keep in their back pocket as something they
can go back to and get people excited. There was Bad Company one and
two like remasters in the works for a little bit, and then when Vince
Sampello took over, he's like, let's actually let's hold up on that,
because if we're going to do that like, let's do it, like we're
gonna go really big when we go back to Big Bad Company. So that
was years ago when I heard that. Who knows. It seems like they
kind of have to get their feet underneath them with Bad with Battlefield overall before
they could start maybe doing some more offshoots. But we'll see. Uh.
Mario puts Rabbit Sparks of Hoped it all right. After having an initial launch
where it was like, oh, this game underperformed, it's now reaching about
three million copies sold, which is pretty good for like a strategy game on
the switch. Now, they did have to lower the price that the original
game I think did pretty sim smilar with far fewer switches out in the world,
but for a game where people are like, getting the three million copies
sold is pretty impressives. I still have not played it. I own it,
but I've not really played Sparks of Hopes all that much. Did any
of you guys ever check it out? Off of it? Yeah? It's
good. Actually, I'm looking at this website and I think you did.
Yeah, I did. Yeah, I remember why I stopped playing this,
and it's because of the new rabbid they introduced edge. Yeah, you called
the character edge. That's right. Yeah, it came out around the same
same time as Bonetta three, right, and it had the same exact character
in it. Oh that's right, that's right. Yeah, like it a
lot, and I did not super love Kingdom Battle and we're not beating it.
But like sparks, I hope like really got me take two file to
trade Bark dispute over Remedy's new logo, saying it's too similar to rock Stars.
Now they both are are, but the rock Star one has a star
and the Remedy one says fucking Remedy underneath it. So the argument here would
be, like this is going to cause confusion for the consumer in the marketplace.
That's what a trademark is all about. It is a brand out that
you would to have protected so that when a consumer goes to pick up a
product, they know the thing they're picking up that has that brand on it
is definitely from the company that they're thinking of. That's why, like oh,
Mickey Mouse is in the public domain, those ears, their trademark is
going to be protected for forever because they want to make sure that people know
that's a real Disney product. I think one way that's going to help people
from knowing that it's a Remedy game and not rock Star is it says fucking
Remedy in it colizer for audio listeners who may not have seen this, just
like I did not see this up until just now. The rocks AAR logo,
as you know, is an R, a capital R with the star
next to it. That Remedy logo is an R. It's like a capital
R with like ripples through, so it kind of looks a little weird and
funky like you expect from Remedy. And then yeah, bellow, it says
fucking Remedy. Think we're gonna get heat for calling BombCast re Vengeance bc R
and then if we just own R absolutely, uh grow up? The other
thing here? Do you think that Take two knows that rock Star is working
with Remedy on Mad Max remasters? Like they're doing that? Now? Maybe
you just call a person, what's that Max Pain, right? Max Pain?
Yespecially? What did I say? Yeah? Thank you? Yes,
just that just the brain part there, Max pay wanted to, Uh,
yeah, they're they're doing that. They're making that right now. Uh so
these companies are already working together. Uh I don't know. It's a bit
strange. It's like, oh, Take two's lawyers maybe got a bit big
in their breitches for this and just rushed out and did this without thinking.
Now, it's not like I don't think it's a lawsuit. It's I think
it's just Remedy trying to get their trademark approved. And then uh, there
was just a dispute filed by Take two to say, hey, we don't
think should be filed because it's similar to our logo and it's not that big
of a deal. But also maybe you could figure out another way to make
that work. Last couple of stories here, Dragon's Dogma two director says newcomers
can safely dive in because the hero has a video game, is gonna do
the thing. Yeah, basically it's so you know who's the director. It's
like, no, don't be afraid. The character also doesn't know what happened
in the last one, And anytime a character in a video game has amnesia,
I'm just so happy. I get so happy. Yeah, I guess
so jazzed. Yeah, imagine the first developer that thought of that, like,
Okay, people aren't going to know what's going on in this world.
And then someone says, but what if they have amnesious they have to have
everything explained to them, And it's like there should be a statue built to
that person. That person. If we're looking at the ripple of fact,
the barfly effect, whoever invented the concept of amnesia, So the first person
to lose their memory invented the rogue light, right, Well that's the responsible
Look at that. It's beautiful. Finally Capcom is backtracking on its DRM that
was putting into a bunch of old games because it didn't want people to mod
those games. Uh, it was a really weird thing we talked about one
morning. Yeah, yeah, I like just kind of like threw this in.
What what happened here? Sean? I also haven't other people have made
videos about what happened here. Basically, my understanding is Capcom finally got caught
basically with it because they've been doing this for a while now. I've variety
of different games adding in. I forget what the name is of the DRM.
Someone's gonna tell us a second here, but this has sort of been
their fallback when they like take Danuvo out, is they'll take Danuva out and
then sneak this one in instead of Crack, and basically some people in Steam
common Enigma Enigma thank you. Like it started causing issues for whatever reason,
and some people started calling it out and that's what led it to being a
big deal. I don't know, the whole thing is weird. First of
all, fuck DRM in any way, shape or form. But it's just
this is one of those stories that's a little odd to me because, like
y'all, this has been there, Like I get they they might have been
added to more games that they didn't want. Rich two was the recent one
that got it. I think that was the one that where people are going
to pay attention because that's a very popular game still. I know they like
alternate between it depending on how big or high level it is. Like I
think what they the RI four demo Haddnuvo, but then the full release had
Enigma something like that. I don't know. Well, I'm looking at the
Steam page right now for Dark Void and it says incorporates third party DRM secure
rum but good news it is. I'm saying, like five dollars for dark
BOYD now so secure that's yes, the ancient version that's that goes way man
I've been getting a craving to play Dark Void over the last week. I
don't know what that is. They've been thinking about Dark Void. Yes,
in the last me and Mike were just talking about it. But yeah,
even before I talked to him out aim like that, come up Rocket Night.
That's why you don't think it during Blake Club because we're talking about you
should play a good cover shooter, and I was like that vertical cover shooter
dark Void. I think of Dark Void every time I travel with Tim Turry
because he still uses his fucking dark Void media toiletry bag. That's a power
move. Yeah, dark Void's got a great soundtrack at the very least,
so should we should we play Dark Void's club? But if we play dark
Void, we can do it. Okay, best the rocketeer likes play that.
You're gonna play Dark Void? Hey, listen, the GB plays banner.
We could just play anything. Yeah, you can give it. Played
Power Sun in twenty twenty four. Yeah, how was that game? Like
probably like twenty years nine older game? Right? Yeah? God, let
me see it's PS one ninety six April twenty six, ninety six. Is
that older than you? Show? I was Let me think ten months old,
Jesus Christ. Disgusting. Actually, Sean, it's it's not for PlayStations
for it's this other console called duck Station. So it's very population kids nowadays
now though, so we got work around exactly. That does for the news.
Jan, this is your show once again. My camera's still dead,
so I'm still using a jpeg of me in my old place. We're gonna
go collect some emails and then we're gonna go read them together. Maybe we'll
get a quick round of poker in between. Who knows, I don't.
Let's fucking go. Uh maybe we'll just conduct mike checks and poker now,
Oh god, okay, all right, that's good. All right, Well
we'll see you after quick breaking break with emails. Poker is is now my
new favorite thing. I'm glad that this has been documented within the span of
what three hours, I've become all in. I already have the visors in
my Amazon cart there it's two day shipping. Don't worry, folks, Jan,
you haven't played shoe poker yet. We're imagine how good appeels when you
know you've got a great hand and you got some fish on the line.
There, you got people you know you can get some money from and you
say all in and you get to push all your chips out physically. Oh
man, that sounds cool. That's the big one, the little one tower.
If we just want to a little caller, We're just gonna toss some
chips out there, stack them up, you know, just physically. Poker
feels very good too. Dear listeners at home, this is what we call
being in enabler. Yeah, recommend it with your friends. Dan, Yeah,
this is I call it being a friend. There you are, you
know what, Scott in the s F office, I will respond to your
poker night, Invice me and Scott tear it up the town what department Scott
works? And I don't fucking know, uh, but I do know.
It's time for emails. BombCast giant bomb dot com is the email address to
send your emails too. You can send them about virtually any and everything.
Tell us about what books you're reading, tell us about what movies you're watching.
Tell us perhaps about dumbest injuries, as Joe and Michigan writes in shouts
out to Michigan again in honor of Dan, what's the dumbest way you've injured
yourself? When my wife and I were dating. I snapped my thumb trying
to show off by doing fingertip push ups. Hell yeah, she has to
help me open ziploc bags sometimes because I never got full strength back. She's
still very impressed. Love you all. Joe and Michigan. Oh Joe.
Oh no, hell Joe. I got really bad tendonitis. H Well,
my my tendin ice was reactivated because I was playing a mobile game for too
long. I think it was called like Brawl Stars or something thing it okay,
God, I gotta find it, but I was It was a dual
analog sticks shooter. But because it was like touch dual analog that's what threw
off my thumbs. I guess wow, because like there's no like pushback or
whatever from using shoot analog sticks. The digital screens fucked up my thumbs.
I got a month months of physical therapy because I was training every day to
try to be Tyson around one TKO. So I still haven't really played it
since. Yeah, I was in like maybe the second grade, third grade,
and I tried to jump from one end of the monkey bars to the
other and I would grab it and i'd hook it, and I did that
like ten times, no problem, like swinging from one arm, and I
looked pretty cool. And then I did an eleventh time and landed right on
my shoulder, and I'm pretty sure I broke a bone, then my collarbone.
But I went to boy Scouts that night and I was telling people like
the other boy Scouts, like I fell down. I heard it. It
hurts really be like if you were to hit it right now, like you
know the kind of shit like kids talk like you know, dude, you'd
hit it. Hurt so bad. And the guy just goes like just hammers
right on my shoulder with a full fist, and I was like, excuse
me, And I just went out in the hallway and crying so bad.
It hurts so bad. And I'm like like go tell my parents, and
they got me like it was like the ship wasn't even like a cast because
it's collarbhone, they can't do anything. It was like straps they put around
your shoulders. But I had a broken collarbone once and I was in a
sling and I was playing soul Caliber against my friend Charlie, and We're just
sitting on the floor playing soul Caliber and I was going full shit, heal
just you know, just heal tactics, really rubbing and then being a real
asshole. I got some cheese dick ring out or something like ha ha,
just being an asshole, and he wasn't thinking he reached. We had like
a metal bucket in the room. I think there had been like a stain
or something, but there's like a metal bucket. He grabbed it by the
handle and whipped it directly into my freshly broken collarbone. I just yelped,
like a dog who's tail you step you step on? He was, oh
shit, like I saw on his face. Yeah. Like we were playing
gold Night with my friend. We were on the football team in middle school,
and we all hung out of his house because he broke his leg,
and we're like, oh, we'll have to make you feel better. We're
playing gold Knight, and I got pissed. I just slammed my fist on
his leg without thinking his broken legs. So I suppose this is still funny
a story about how I got injured, because then everyone else beat me up
for doing that. So I'm really hard here, exactly. I've always been
such a careful person, Like I've done saying it's like oh yeah, out
of anger one time I spiked a controller or something. But the only thing
that comes to mind is when I was just you know, I was like
fourteen, real real dumb age. You do dumb dumb stuff at that Yeah,
me and this guy were like beefing hard over a girl, as you
do at fourteen, and so for whatever reason, we're at a party and
we did this game. Ever heard of a game called tennis? Not in
reference to the to the racket. No, Yeah, you walk up to
a guy, you do like the predator handshake, fucking slap each other's hands.
That's it. That's the quote unquote game. You take turns slapping each
other's hands, smack the other dude's hand, and the whole goal is like
you know, who chickens out for basically bloody knuckles type thing, Like you
know, it's like, yeah, game of chicken, like who who who
leaves first? Again, I can't have fantasize enough. I was very dumb,
and boy I stayed in that way longer than I should have. Well,
was the girl impressed by either of you, Sean? Uh No,
she thought we were both idiots. Now, granted I was dating at the
time, so I guess I won. But people are very very stupid that
age. Oh yes, yeah, they have like probably ten other times to
hurt myself in really dumb ways. But I can't think of anything right now.
Yeah, I think there's a time where a friend, uh like cut
me really bad on the shin because of a knockoff bay blade. There's just
something you just deserve it. Then that's just right. Long's car bad magic
because let me tell you, like knockoff bay blades and folks can attest,
uh they're part of a bay blade is the weight ring to like give it
some centrifugal force. Some knockoff bay blades would have like these little like little
studs poking out these little nubs that would if they sparked against concrete or another
knockoff bay blade and create sparks. If it's going really fast and hits your
shin when you're like ten, it's a shred skin. Yeah, messed up
ones like they even they had knives basically, they just had really there two
things. One time I was trying to get the mail out of my mailbox
while I was in my van or my car. I don't think I had
the van back then, and so I reached down the mailbox and was getting
the stuff and then I started sort of started driving away while my arm was
still in the mailbox because I was very stupid and kind of like it bent
backwards enough that I was like, what am I doing? And I had
I gone like two feet further at my arm would have just stabbed in half.
So I stopped myself from hurting myself. But it was very close,
and that would have been real dumb because it's like I was fully in control
of everything in that scenario. I could get my arm out of the mailbox.
I couldn't have done that. This is the dance between you and me.
I willingly got hurt that one time, being an idiot. You were
just like, just just live adio. Yeah, that's my whole life.
Yeah. The other thing breaking news story epic is kind of doing a pretty
sad and desperate thing and letting some meme game on there called Monk Island Rise
of the Beast that I think is trying to be like that King Corny.
It is pronounced monkey, okay, return to monkey as the kids say.
Yeah, I've never said the memes out loud. So Monkey Island Rise of
the Beast, and it looks like it's trying to be that King Kong game,
and they have stuff like features include a giant monkey. It's good and
urge to play this masterpiece fifty thousand for frames per second RGB lighting. It's
kind of pathetic, but I also kind of want to play free. Yeah.
I also just got an email that was added to my epic libraries.
Yeah, so you see this is genius because that cong game that which,
by the way, Netflix gave us a DMCA over thanks to Netflix. Are
you kidding over on TikTok? It's fine, it's just my work that I
got affected is genius because that game's EXE is named Monkey and Monkey, so
they're very clearly yep, I'll check this out. Oh boy, oh boy,
we're going to check out another email. This is a queue for the
sandwich artists. Is from Jerry in Wisconsin, Hey bombers. This week,
Subway is rolling out new nation wide menu items. A foot long turo what
foot long pretzel? Foot long chocolate chip cookie? What the fucking I don't
know if this is for shoot. Since y'all are connoisseurs of fine dining and
have a former sandwich artist on staff, Hi, I was hoping to get
your thoughts on this foot long trend. I would personally quit on the spot
if I worked at a subway and a customer asked for their tuna melt between
two foot long cookies. But I digress. What's the endgame in this foot
long flatbread? Pizzas, foot long glizzies, a foot long ball of holopenos
for grubs breakfast? Are there any foot long a fied items you'd buy at
a sandwich place? Cheers Jerry in Wisconsin. Food is better if you tell
me it's foot long. Yeah. It's a shoot too, by the way.
Yeah, but it's not like bread a bread option. It's not like
you're gonna be able to like put the sandwich on the cookie. It's just
like a dessert thing. This is them trying to like reset the SEO because
they bone themselves with a whole five dollars foot long and then they're like,
oh wait, prices go up over time, but everyone still thinks footlongs are
going to be five dollars and now they're like fourteen dollars. That hasn't been
that way forever. Yeah, right, but it's still in my head,
and I think they're trying to like fix that here. By like, no,
foot long means fucking churos. You idiots take that instead. Did you
guys see the article I just linked in the chat. I'm looking at it
now. I will check it out. Looking at this picture, Oh my
god, I want this foot long cookie so bad. When I was so
movies, yeah, like I thought on my head, I was like,
Okay, this is gonna be a really dumb gimmick where they make one giant
cookie for the store or no, they're just making like really ray law.
Yeah, like a tray of cookie, the longest turo you've ever seen,
and are really long pretzels. Much. Cookies are pretty pretty decent too.
Yeahs my favorite thing from Subway actually the cookie. Yeah, it's by far
the best part of Sway. Trips are already pretty yeah. Yeah, this
isn't too odd. Yeah, because they're not like twelve inches. I guess
they're probably like eat and she's normally I suppose, but listen, you know,
to give me that look. I was giving that give the audience all
right, Okay, okay, they're not I was doing the camera. I
can't order one this Acxio says, it's well, this is Actuo Chicago,
so maybe that's why they say Chicago. Is it nationwide? Uh? I
was just January eighteen, Oh that's why. Oh yes, it's right there.
Well we'll celebrate later this week that that's not like cookies to do that
when we expense our poker paraphernalia. I like the visors, we'll do it
all at the same time. Yeah yeah, what what what scene? Which
would you put a foot long turo cookie or pretzel in? Maybe that'd be
good. Yeah, actually that would be good. Like the pretzel definitely.
Yeah, yeah, the prets would be good on most of those. The
pretzel actually would be good on tuna. I would actually eat that. Oh
I am totally going to a subway and asking them to use the pretzel as
the bun. Yeah that was too small. I don't care. Jan we
gotta make this work, dude. Oh man, I haven't been to a
subway in maybe five years. Am I about to go to a subway later
this week? Fine, that's fine. I think the last time I went
to a subway Dan was one of the like last in person San Francisco game
of the years when we all got the Ultimate meatball marin era. That's right,
and there's like that wet bread that like super garlicy bread. It was
a lot, but I remember being pretty good. It was pretty good.
And then that nothing else happened that day because everyone else food come, it's
so hard, but I think I got. I kept getting well, you're
you're built different, You're building different. That's uh man. That was Did
we even answer the question, like what do we want to see as a
foot long starbars? Just one big star burst a long star verst long way
our forstal love dancer moving on? Yep, yeah, no no notes,
no notes? Uh A footlong spaghetti anyway? Right? Yeah, but just
like I want straight noodles, it comes out of the box straight and rigid.
I just want to get it twelve inch stiff spaghetti noodle going right down,
talking about eating raw like spaghetti box. Listen. I remember pulling up
to a one on one meeting with Jess and then she was eating a box
of pasta, and I was very confused of why she was eating a box
of just straight raw pasta? What kind of kind of pasta? What was
the pasta shape? Bow tie? Few silly because that was a real silly
thing to do. Okay, all right, next email is about permanent records
We got a bunch of emails this week, by the way, so I
shout out to y'all. Yeah them. I appreciate all of them, even
the mean ones. I appreciate you take your time to send them, so
thanks anyway. This email comes from Pete from Calgary, Canada. Hey bomb
crew on the Prince of Persia video Jan and Nikki. We're talking about permanent
records. I don't know how this works in the US, but students do
have to file do have a file that follows them throughout school. Mostly it
lives in a file cabinet in the office and gets copies of report cards,
program modifications such as how is this child learning, how is this child's learning
disability being accommodated? And records of contact home for behavior, attendance, et
cetera. It follows you from school to school, and I believe has to
be held for a certain number of years after you graduate. But beyond that
it's not much. The main reason that I'm writing in to the class is
that we don't follow them permanent records and I uh oh okay, and I
would like to hear chancery action to their name. They are called the student's
cumulative file. But that's so long. But in conversation, every single teacher
I know calls it the cum file just cume for short, uh huh spelled
cum the cum file, Yeah, he said it. The first time I
got an email from admin asking about a cum file was a very confusing day
for a young teacher. How do they know I have one of those years?
I hope all of your cum files remained squeaky clean. Pete from Calgary,
Canada, and oh man, that's that's very good permanent file. Like
yeah, but like no one looks at those beyond school and probably not even
like later in like high school. They probably hadn't no interest in your because
it's like more work and like like criminal files goes away after like seven years,
So I can't imagine your elementary school file does much for it. Seem
know a lot about this grub listen. I mean, they definitely look at
the permanent record of more recent years when you're like going into college, and
sure that they'll look till like late middle school even into early high school.
But okay, that makes sense. I'm now I'm curious about my cum file
and seeing what was stored in there. Nikki ordered theirs, right, Yeah,
Nikki ordered theirs, and I think it. I think they said it
was two to three business days, so they may have their cum file in
hand. I thought no. I thought it was all a really long amount
of times. It was like a month front of it because I just got
back Trump of the Country. Yeah, twenty, just leave it off the
zero there. Yeah. I think they're they're going to get it in like
long after we all forgot about this, and then that'll be fun, good
content. You love when your cum files surprises you, all right. This
next email is actually a pair of emails. Last week, maybe two weeks
ago, we were talking about how Epic had bought a mall to convert into
an office building. Well Will and Ben right in separately to give us updates
about the Epic mall. Will from North Carolina Rights and Hi Bombers was listening
to the BombCast last week and realized I was driving past the mall Epic bought
this bought right as y'all were talking about it. I decided to pull into
the parking lot see what had been done. Seems that much like the Epic
store, this was another half baked idea that had no intention of following up.
Oh, my god. Really wow. Only about half of the mall
has been demolished so far and the other half is still standing and there's no
construction equipment anywhere to be seen. A quick Google search shows that the plan
for the plan was for new Epic campus to open in twenty twenty four.
Oh And reached out for an update on the project in October of twenty twenty
three. Epic still has no updates in what is planned and uh and when
it plans to resume work on the site. Cheers Wheel from North Carolina.
They also shared a picture which is just a bunch of gates. Why I
didn't even realize that they were like demolishing the mall, Like, I think
it's point. What's the point of fucking buying a mall if you're just gonna
strip the land and build something else. Just use the old fucking mall?
Yeah, right about how fun that'd be? Yeah, you can turn into
a Tony Hawk two level two level. Uh. Well. The Ben also
writes in dear BombCast on last week's episode, you brought up Epic purchasing an
old mall, old shopping mall to turn into a new office building. Fun
fact. Not only is that mall carry Town Center, the mall my family
frequented for multiple decades, but my father actually works for a company that was
involved in the whole Epic deal. Wow. He was there on site as
a as part of the group giving the EPIC team the initial tour of the
property, and had various anecdotes such as Epic employees riding electric scooters around and
excitedly banging on abandoned storefronts and machinery so they record noise and noise for the
audio team. Oh, that's fine. My father remarked that he and his
coworkers, who are all older men, suffered a bit of a culture shock
from the EPIC team. We're all twenty to thirty years younger on average,
according to my father, who still works at the same company, lives ten
minutes away from the repurpose small There hasn't been much progress on renovations. While
demolition apparently starting twenty twenty two, nothing really came of it, so the
property is currently nothing but a wasteland of partially demolished buildings with no further progress
in sight. I'll be, in fact moving back to the area a few
months later this year, so I should be able to see this astounding lack
of progress for myself. I can try and send you guys some pictures if
you want. Ben I do want that, yes, please please, I
want to stay on top of this story. Yeah. Yeah, it seems
so stupid. It is, just especially if you're gonna excitedly right around a
mall and electric scooters. That sounds so fun. I mean, the good
news here is it's not like this money caused them to have to lay off
anybody because they spent in on this instead of oh wait, what the fuck
that's exactly what happened. This is baffling. I can't imagine spending this amount
of money on something and then just be like, well, I'm not gonna
do anything with that. That's like a okay, I was gonna say epic
misappropriation of money, but I'm just gonna stop right there instead. I'm sorry.
Ahead, you can say, you can say yeah, well no for
the I'm just gonna let that count instead. Uh. Yeah, this is
absurd. Yeah. I don't know what would y'all do if you bought like
an abandoned mall. I'd live in it. The Rising Museum. Yeah,
oh fun fun, just like the biggest game of laser tag you've ever seen,
yeah, or paintball even Yeah, I actually did that once. There
there was part of one of one of the game centers somewhere here. I
it was so long ago, I can't remember which bought like the building next
door, and then just converted this like abandoned large store or whatever into a
laser tag area. So there's like multiple floors and everything that was sick that
I mean, making it like an experience, like an experienced area. Obviously
you'd have to like make sure it was safe if you're going to do this
for real, but like, yeah, a haunted mall for Halloween would probably
crush, would probably make a ton of mone my god. Oh yeah,
make the first level all like a ball pit and let people jump from two,
three, four or however many stories there are, the first one that's
never gone back for anyone, what I thought, and ship like that,
And yeah, I mean, so you'd be safe. See when you said
waiver of course and now cool, I forgot. I don't want to get
sued. Yeah, yeah, Dan, are you aware of the twitchcun foam
pit. I'm just curious if this is yes, I am okay, okay,
okay, yes, yes, safety is important. People need to know
what they're doing. Yes, yes, yes, that's the whole first floor
is balls. I get it. Okay, the whole first floor is balls.
Just like the level of shoutouts this week, folks, We're gonna punts
on the shoutouts this week. We we we gotta clap. I got meetings
to go to since we had to start the podcast a little later then normally,
Greb, what do we got going on this week? Well, uh,
I gotta say one of my favorite weeks of any time of the year,
the week where I no longer have to play a Blake club game and
it's ned. We're doing Mortal Kombat mixedologies Colon Mike mcqwonchie it's for audio listeners
dancing and you can't see me with his hand that has a slight like band
aid on it. Now, yo, splint, it's a yoke. Splint,
I need it. Uh Yo. Explint could be the name of this
podcast, Jane, if you need that, and then okay, then what
else we have going on? We're gonna have most of our normal shows the
Grub. On Thursday, We're doing Tail of the Grub. I'm gonna be
playing Tail of the Sun, which is an old ass PS one game that's
very weird. All I know about it is that e GM gave it like
a point five or one out of ten, and then Dan's played it and
it's like it's actually pretty neat. So I'm gonna be checking that out.
And then Friday a new video game is out, Jan, are we playing
that? Yes? Yes, the original well, the original plan was to
be another VR UPF playing knock and perhaps poker. But folks, something comes
out into early access on Game Pass this Friday, that thing being Powell World.
Shoot those Pokemon, Jan, I'm gonna load up and we're gonna go
to town. We're gonna go hunting or maybe go hunting with nice. I
don't Yeah, we all need to download it or other games were but yeah,
I also they didn't free to play. I don't know. If it's
a multiplayer, we'll all get in there. Like, I'm not in a
Pokemon, but if you give them a bunch of guns, I might be
interested. I watch a video where they're just like there's a girl with like
an AK forty seven just unloading into the biggest Pokemon you've ever seen, and
it's sort of just sitting there, like, please don't shoot me. It's
incredible. What was that? Like, MMO we checked out like sometime last
year? Yeah that and yeah what the was that? But I feel like
it's gonna be like that, mate, I think so too. Yeah,
what the fuck was that? That game? I'm like about to go through
my library of like a thousand games and try to find it, but we
can probably it's probably an easier way to do that. Hope chat Come on,
folks, at least, yeah, act as her brain. Another episode
of Jeff Jeff's this week. I believe Uh okay, I can find same
mere Land Chimera Land okay yeah, character creator? Yeah, yeah, yes
right yeah. On top of that game, Mess Mornings popping off Wednesday Thursday
Friday. We'll have an episode of the Voicemail Dump Truck on Thursday, as
well as another episode of Pompcast Revengeance this Friday. Who knows what the topic
will be, We'll figure it out. It's gonna be the Detroit Lions.
Let's go, there we go. We're gonna we're gonna turn into a sports
podcast and then a movie podcast as well. We're gonna talk about poor things
and the and then the Detroit lions. Oh man, god, that movie.
You watch that movie. I'm gonna check it out. Everyone seems to
love it. I watched Gotti again, made by Movie Past, starring John
Travolta. If anyone's been watching that, what do you mean? Made made
by Movie Pass? I didn't. Movie Past put out Gotti and it got
a zero percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, but the user score was higher.
So Movie Passes marketing campaign was like, oh big movie critic doesn't want
you to see this, but the people love it. Baffling, terrible fucking
movie. It's awesome, family because whatn't like? Does it? Movie Past
benefit for people not going to see movies? Why are they encouraging people to
get they ever knew what they were doing any God, biggest, Dan Reikert,
I know what's the opposite of saying, looks incredible and this looks bad?
Yeah, it looks ship, looks awful, looks looks not good,
looks not good. You look good at home. I've been Jeff No,
I'm not fit chef. Oh god, oh man, god, he's just
got God, he's got me fucked up. I'm gonna go play poker after
this. I'm gonna teach scout how to play, so we'll come up with
strategies together. I've been Jan, he's been Jeff, he's been Dan,
he's been Turbo Shawn and you at home have been great. Thank you for
tuning into today's episode of The Giant BombCast. We'll see you next week for
another episode of the Giant BombCast. Hey, there's a budget great stuff popping
off on the site this week as well as last week, so go check
that out. You love you see then Kisses on the cheek, kisses on
the mouth. Uh fold called big slides the terms I learned earlier from poker.
I'm gonna remember the ball. Bye Slides, What was it, big
little guy. The Giant BombCast is brought to you by the crew's newest addictions
this week, Poker