M M. It's a four day week what Vinnian drew. Yeah. A
lot of people like to talk about three day weekends. Yeah, but I
like to focus on the four day week. That's the secret, hidden gem.
Yeah, three day weekend is that the weekend comes even a day sooner
the next weekend. It's like you get two awesome weekends. Yeah, back
to back. I always get awesome weekends. I just won't want your guess
on that man as a man who has lost his weekend in fatherhood. Yeah,
yeah, it's awesome all the time. Well all right, yeah,
hey, four day week, three day weekend, three man podcasts. Yeah,
what anything about that? I like them numbers. I say, let's
let's give it a go. Brad Shoemaker dealing under the weather. Did not
maybe have an awesome yeah that extra day or maybe it was too awesome and
now come Tuesday, by one outside. See that's the first mistake. Don't
did something? No that? Yeah, I mean I I went outside,
but it was to walk from my car to a donut shop, So I
don't know that counts. Would you do at the donut shop? I bought
donuts, you know. It was the first time I had purchased donuts locally
in at least a decade. What's the donut shop's name? I don't want
to say the name of the donut shop holding one. No, because I
got mediocre donuts from the donut shop. They were the first time. Like
I you know, I don't eat donuts a lot. If i'm if I'm
out and about and someone's got donuts, I like donuts, I'm not gonna
go get donuts. I mean, would you get though? I got like
a chocolate donut. I got one that was custard filled, because I like
a custard film Donutuh. I got an apple fritter, all right. And
then they had big old croissants and it's technically not a donut, but I
got one anyway. Was it a cronut, Jeff, No, it was
just a big old croissant chocolate. No, it was just a big croissant.
And none of these items were that great. The croissant was really good.
Ciss Yeah, nice, good, flaky, just you know, good
buttery. So you know, I got a handful of donuts and ate them
over the course of a couple of days. Here, you know, just
just sit down and empty a box of donuts because they were not great donuts.
The chocolate tasted almost like it had coffee grounds in it, like a
little bit just there was some off flavor about it. I could get behind
some chocolate coffee et chocolate. But yeah, yeah, I mean it wasn't
but chocolate covered coffee bean. Yeah yes, oh boy, yeah, you
know it's ruined donuts for me. What this whole quote unquote health craze that's
going around the nation. Yeah, Like I'm a bad person because I do
want to empty a box of nuts. Now I'm the bad guy. Now
I can't enjoy opening up, you know, box of donuts, and you
are a bad guy sitting down. Yeah, and now, like I said,
this is the first time that I have purchased gone to a donut establishment
to purchase donuts like locally as just like for a very long time. Yeah,
they were like there are like three choices in town for dedicated donut establishments.
There's one that I know to be good, but it was all the
way on the other side of town. And their hours are sketchy. The
true hallmark of a of a proper local business because people are just like I
think we're out of business. I think we're out of donuts today, so
we're just gonna close. Okay, yeah, I can hang out till two,
but whatever. So I went to the place that has Chinese food also
okay, yeah, I've seen a lot of yeah, yeah, yeah,
and and picked up some donuts. They were not get un filled with chiming.
They did not offer that. Yeah, I would have probably given that
a shot. It looked like they might also have pork buns at some point.
Well, now there's an idea. Yeah, I do, like there's
a spectrum. Oh yeah, you a baked or steamed? Man, I
like, I'm a steamed, but baked are great too. Yeah. Yeah
uh. And it's there's a couple of Chinese places that will deliver up north
where I am that do sell some steam pork buns, but they're not as
good as what I can get here in San Francisco. When the game Spot
offices were on Clement Street, that was that was. Yeah, that's where
pork buns lives. That's where they were invented. As far as I'm concerned
housing probably, Yeah, people will have to live by the pork buns yea.
And the first like idn't had them before I got that job, and
so I just didn't even know, Like pork bon what is that? That
sounds ridiculous? Who would eat that? And then then someone kind of god
to me and eating one, I was like, oh, okay, all
right. And then I went and got a box of them, like nine
of them, and then and then ate them all myself meat well. And
then I had to hide under my desk for the rest of the day because
on Tyler used to bring in for the those were rich, the big Yeah,
that was a pork bons are fantastic. That was crazy. I like
that, Like that was like the bean, like the kind of Desserty dessert
sweet ones. Yeah, yeah, I like those. It's a different kind
of deal. I like the I like boat nights, the bun that or
it's I don't know if it's a dumpling or what. But they put like
everything in. It's like chicken and mushrooms and eggs and vegetables. It's like
all in one big Yeah, it's like a knapsack. Sometimes when I eat
food that sometimes I want to eat mushrooms. I just I immediately want to
throw it all back up. It sort of pushes me away from doesn't make
you a fun guy. No, wow, the opposite of a fun guy.
Wow. Yeah, yeah, that's it. I'm just gonna take that
and keep rolling with it. You can, you can. You can put
it the brakes. You can hit the brakes on that if you want.
I'm just we're just gonna keep rolling going on those lines. Yeah, Jesus,
this podcast is like truck with no brakes. Soun it don't stop it,
don't stop. Well, then what's coming up next? What's coming up
next? Because I need the brace? I don't know. Yeah, you
put your head between your knees. No, you just watch out what's next?
In the sixth grade comedy class, Yeah, here we go. Soft
park quotes. I saw, I saw RoboCop? Did you did the film?
The new twenty fourteen film, the PG thirteen RoboCop? So I went
in with solo of an expectation. Of course, why wouldn't you, because
you know, like everything about like the original RoboCop is one of the greatest
movies ever made. Yeah, yeah, it's a pretty silly movie. Yes
it's but it's like, you know, it was that like good kind of
biting satire, oh future, mixed with just shit getting totally raw. It's
like a fantastic period piece. Yeah for being the future, but of the
of the of its what we thought the future was gonna end up like and
then and it's it's fun to look at like the ways that like people well
people were people were totally right, but also it's usually the scariest, most
depressing ways that they predicted the future would be. Those are the ones that
came to pass and all the fun stuff. No, no, just like
the Carousel of Progress, Yeah, but gone terribly dark with like an two
and nine carrying up that family. Yeah, just continuing to shoot director's cut
style into that guy in the board room. Yeah. Uh so the RoboCop
I went to go see. I was like, Mommy, and this is
gonna be a train wreck. Well, because like it could go either new
total Recall or New Judge dread, you don't know, So this went,
uh depending on how what your feelings on those two things tend to be to
me were opposites. I like the new Judge. I think it's pretty good,
and this went that direction. Okay, it was. It was a
thinking man's robo cop, which sounds crazy because like robo cop spent about I
feel like five to ten minutes of like, uh, you know, I'm
I don't know, I don't really have time to think about being Murphy and
the flashbacks of my kids and everything, because I'm too busy shooting dude deep
crotch. Yeah. It was like Murphy gets transferred to this fucked up division.
Yeah, goes out first time out. I got this Clarence Bodker,
the guy's p right, Lewis gets the gun kicked at rant Lewis snapping bubbles,
bubbles Murphy Murphy, and then Murphy is getting the shit shot out of
him constantly. Yeah. Uh, and everybody else is too. And then
you've got your like, you know, equivalent of a training montage where they're
putting robo cop together, right, and then you know, you get it.
You're gonna be one bad motherfucker. Yeah, and then it's a lost
swearing, lost swearing, and then uh, robo cop comes back and Murphy's
they're still snapping bubbles and uh, I'm sorry Lewis Lewis uh, and then
uh, Murphy has like five minutes of like self doubt and then he's you
know, guy falls an acid gets hit our car and yeah we're moving on.
Yeah, everybody ray Wise in it this this get the big cobra guns
and just shoot up. Oh man, Uh, this spends the art bank
bank. That's what that is. This spends about I have the movie,
I'd say, really thinking about what roboocop means in kind of like a good
way, in like a in a very like science fiction way, like how
books are you're in like in the humanity, Like what's it like to have
your body parts replaced? Yes, in a societal way. So I heard
that in this movie, like people volunteer for that and they are not shot
up by criminals. First, I don't know that that's true or not,
but you know, so in this was okay, was there something that necessitated
him becoming mostly robot? Yes, okay, definitely all right, but it
is more of like the program that leads to the RoboCop program is run by
uh Gary Oldman and h he is. He's a doctor basically who's helping like
ampute victims and like robotic parts. Yes, uh, nobody's alike. It's
not really elective. But in this universe, like ED two nine's and other
mechanic fully automated machines are like in Afghanistan fighting the war. That is Old
RoboCop as well, Oh is it. Yeah, they kind of gloss over
like the you know, military distribution when we want to bring it home,
like that was the thing. Okay, so that is what's happening here too,
and there's nobody wants it here in the on their soil. Uh.
So that is kind of the premise for you say America is robophobic. No,
I wouldn't say that. Michael Keaton says that, or no, somebody
says that, so Mike, Michael Keaton's also on this movie. Yeah.
Uh, Sam Jackson's also on this movie. I think Sam Jackson might say
it. I think so that's that's what I've heard repeated often in the previous
Sam Jackson as That's a couple of great lines. So he basically is playing
Uh, he's like the Fox News reporter. He's kind of kind of like
your conduit to the audience of like what's happening on the streets of Detroit today,
but at this real kind of hardline view. At one point he said,
has Congress become pro crime because they won't pass it? You know that's
up for you to decide. Wow, but you get you get your same
you get your Sam Jackson moments, which is great. You get your Michael
Keaton freak out moments, which is great. You see where they spent the
money, because that's some When I was first watching, I was Keaton's in
this not in this one. But they might have got one of these clones
from Multiplicity. Uh, and you're like, wow, why they cast Michael
Keaton as an noderle and then you see him in a boardroom or whatever and
doing his Michael Keaton is he playing the equivalent of Dick Jones? Was he
the head? Was he the CEO? No? No, the CEO is
the old man. Yeah, Dick Jones is the guy that's kind of pushing
it two o nine as the solution. Michael is the CEO. He's the
He's the big bad or at the end of Dick You're fired. No.
So they sneak in a couple of lines of weird places. Uh. They
sneak in the I'll buy that for a dollar just like, yeah, weird
places. Uh. I think one of the guys is seeing Rubbocop like,
fuck up, and I would buy that for a dollar. Burn. But
it's good. It's it's actually a pretty good movie, Like, uh,
it's not it's not blood and gory like the original Rubbocop. Like original RoboCop
was only like that in a few limited cases, like that's it's it's a
long movie. I remember that thing being for people who like squibs. If
you like a squib, Every bullet hole in a person in that movie is
like the size of yeah, you're right, you're right there. There's a
lot of that, and then when you think about the yeah, I'm thinking
about the edge. That's it though. It's like there's that Okay, I
guess I get shot through when the guy gets shot in the legs by Clarence
Potocker, it's pretty Nasty's as a scene in a like a white house room
where everyone gets shot, Yeah exactly, the bitches leave. Yeah uh so
there's kind of none of that, which is like some my disappoint some people.
It is like not a funny move, like he doesn't have the satire
not rhystorical aspects of it anymore. It's just no, it's pretty like it's
pretty straight and actually kind of like you know, a little delves into like
this is weird. You know, the things that are going on are like
kind of serious and in a way that guess that makes sense. I think,
you know, people's fears about or or the people's thinking about that sort
of thing. Like back then they call them drones because yeah, yeah,
that's yeah, totally yeah, like that is very much a modern reality,
not some far flung like at two o nine. That's crazy, that would
never happen. It's like, no, it's not gonna happen like that because
they can all fly right, right, So the whole thing is like,
do you need somebody to Americans want somebody who can think, who watches the
watchers, But he's never he's never going to be as efficient as so therein
lies the kind of the movie, right, It's like what's the trade off
between being efficient or being having a conscience? Right? And they kind of
successfully or not explore that for an hour and a half or whatever. Uh,
some of those questions are not answered, yeah, and some of it
is just like I don't care. But all of that aside, because you
know, the movie's kind of fun to watch. They paint RoboCop black because
he's more tactical, which is funny. Start out like silver and then it's
like a PR meeting, Black is testing better. Uh. I think the
Michael Keaton looks as like what he looks like a toy, like because the
guys that he transforms his Viger comes down. Kids love it, make them
black, more technical, it'll test better anyway. It's because you know,
the whole thing is trying to sell Robert Cope. But there is us scene
and I'm not gonna say what it is exactly. So as a kid,
I found that Murphy scene when he gets blown the bits really disturbing me too,
Like I just should not have watched that. I can still see it
in my head playing back. Horrible the way they shoot it, everybody laughing.
It's the look on his face, like when they shoot his hand,
Yeah, and he's just like he's just like so confused, like oh,
just shocked that they would do that to him, the way I remember.
I actually haven't seen the scene in years because I refused to watch it because
I know it'll bring back horrible childhood members. I just wet my pants.
But there's just like just everybody shotguns, just laughing, just having a good
time, and Murphy just getting blown legs getting blown off. Yeah, there
there's a scene that I had no problem with that scene. How about that
I don't know what that says about me, but yeah, whatever they shot
that dude up it was. There is a scene in this movie for being
PG thirteen I find as disturbing, if not more so in this movie.
And then it's a kind of PG thirteen. You don't get a lot of
blood and guts and gore coptual way. Yes, that is just like I
don't want to. I saw it with a friend of mine and we just
he just started laughing like that weird, like what the fuck? Uh So,
yeah, that's it is. I recommend people who like Rubbocop check it
out because I think it's a decent horriblecop movie. Seems like people are all
over the map on that one. I've definitely seen people go in and say
like, yeah, you know it was it was still pretty good, you
know, not necessarily looking for but it still can't up pretty good. I've
seen people just like go like that was not the Rubocop movie and run around.
No, it is not the rubblecop movie that the original one was.
Yeah, it is very different. I think, like Drew said, it's
it's more a lot of like a reimagining, like a Judge dread like done
in a pay is it's tribute, but like it's like, here's a twenty
fourteen version of this movie. Yeah, you kind of have to do that
in some way. I don't just don't think the story of that original RoboCop
hits as hard today as it used to, because all those concerns have changed,
because so many of those things are this much closer to becoming a reality,
and just those like pure action movies don't. They don't really anymore.
It's like you gotta adge you RPG mechanic to your brawler, Like you need
a little more meat in there. Yeah, explosions just don't cut it.
There are like a few kind of really kick ass action scenes, but it's
not that many. Uh you know, he rides his motorcycle in the shoots
a motorcycle. Yeah, RoboCop motorcycle. But I enjoyed it and I think
it's fun. I wonder if they'll keep going with it, though, is
my question. If they make a new RoboCop two, I wonder, I
wonder how this one will do. Do they follow the story of Virginal RoboCop
two and everyone gets into nuke? Is that the sequel to the to this
new RoboCop and everyone gets into Nuke that does that too. Yeah, RoboCop
two is the big nuke addicted, big bulky robot. Yeah, they put
it in their next and the three was the one that had the kid in
it. And I never saw three, so I think I'm confusing three and
two. I can't Three was like don't do drugs or something. I thought
that's how I always remember remembered it being referred to as. But I never
saw RoboCop three. I've seen bits and pieces of it. It always looked
like the worst fucking thing in the world. So that that's the thing with
RoboCop is like I really like the original RoboCop, but they already ruined RoboCop.
Sure, you know, they did that cartoon, they did a TV
show, like, there's all that different stuff that they did to you know,
the video game that most recent one for PS two and Xbox was fucking
garbage. Yeah, they have already tarnished Robocops so much that like people getting
mad about it at this point just seems kind of ridiculous. This is a
dignified RoboCop. This RoboCop is okay, Like it's it's it's a it's a
solid movie. There's there's a grace to this movie, because yeah, I
do feel like Robuck Up just became a characterature, like a lunch box characterature,
totally. Yeah, you know, they were shipping it to kids,
and they got rid of they got rid of the R rating. But yeah,
but you know, the newer ones were not Two might have been R,
but three was definitely not or an R rator. But I'm saying the
original one that had like toys and stuff coming out with you like, yeah,
yeah, they like that terminator. There were Rambo toys back then.
Yeah, they were, they did well, they did a Rambo cartoon even
you know, I think it was just acknowledged at that point that like kids
were into all this raw action stuff and rightfully so that stuff was Yeah,
and and you know he didn't have they didn't have the spike the computer yeah
usb port. Yes, I think they actually do take like a thing I
can't quite remember. I think they take a piece out of his brain and
just plug it into like a USB port. I might been misremembering anyway,
but yeah, he doesn't have like going on his finger. Yeah, but
yeah, no, that's that fucking spike. Yeah, a dumb movie.
That's how I'm gonna jack into this. What is that port to the data
spike? Yeah that's yeah. Yeah, I think you have to do things
to RoboCop to make it work today. But I don't really have a problem
with that. No, I think I said, I think. I think
it's if you go into it being like, let's see what they did to
RoboCop, not let's I hope they remade RoboCop. I think that's is the
attitude I would say, go into it. Yeah, anyway, that's what
I did a Monday, on the holiday or Monday, spent the day with
the robot president of Robots. Yes, I did not go mattress shopping.
I went to the movies. I almost went mattress shopping. God, they
got you. There was a guy out front of the mattress store holding the
sign a real live human, not some robotic No, less because you won't
have it, exactly. I'm robophobic when it comes to sign shakers. Pro
crime, yeah totally, yes, I mean it depends on the crime.
Really, I think there's some crime that enriches society. Okay, graffiti for
examples, Oh sure, yeah yeah, not my backyard. Yeah, you
know you want to cow tipping, you know, just like stuff that liked
drinking on the street. Yeah, yeah, street drinking. Stuff that helps
people learn a little bit about themselves and about each other. Those types of
crimes, I think, except for the cows. Except for the cows,
and the building, the buildings and all depends on the i'man building whatever.
They just making it prettier. Man. They should just have one building that
is like fucking it's up for grab. That's they. That's what kind of
happens now is there are building owners and stuff that'll be like, could do
it, Yeah, you can do it. So in Pedaluma there's the Phoenix
Theater, which is where local bands play and stuff like that. And out
back, Uh, they'll let people throw up their their big pieces. Oh
I thought you meant they let people tag up the outback. Yeah, you
can tag up the outback too, but only outback themed. Uh. You
know you have to write steak, fosters and an arrow pointing. No rules,
It's right, no rules. Never curst Blooming Onion, Yeah, I'm
working on it, working on my blooming onion grades. Tag Blooming Onion,
great Spray, and counter strike. It's kind of long, Yeah, it's
kind of a long name to men you know, I just meant more like
a graphic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just spray it out an actual
Yeah, that would be pretty good. Tried to make a blooming onion once.
They just seem gross hard and like it's a really big onion there bad
for you or something for you. But I could work the whole thing.
Yeah, do you really think you can put a hole in down? I
think I almost did once. Almost is not a whole thing because I've almost
done it and it's at last like real grizzly bottom part. I really tried.
I'm not gonna try. But because it's like eight thousand calories, yeah,
and you're doing that and then like eating of steak afterwards anatizer appazer h
do you dip it? Use the great and that's aweso that that's probably another
twenty thousand calories. Yeah yeah yeah. How else has your week gone?
That's a bad way to ward that question. Let me back that up.
Okay, so you saw RoboCop? What else have you done since we last
convened for this podcast? Great question, Vincent, great question. I'm glad
you asked. Yeah, we're not really talking about my week right now.
Okay, but what I can say is man. You're going to have a
lot to look forward to in the coming weeks and months as Vinny Caravella develops.
Great, yeah, all right, look forward, look forward to speaking
with you guys more about it. Great, okay, well, we're definitely
looking forward to that more. What platforms are you on and when you am?
So, I'm in California right now and we're looking at distribution later on,
but we don't really have anything we can commit to yet. Okay,
all right, well, we'll be looking forward to new news from that either
way. Great, Thanks Jeff, thanks for your time. Thank you.
You never get anything from these people. They're so well trained. That go.
Okay, that is that funny, guys? Is good going on?
Probably, I mean when's the embargo? Uh? Let me tell hey,
when's the uh it sounds like it is Tuesday, okay, so probably tuesday?
Ash okay, cool, all right, thank you guys so much.
There's I can't do that, all right, let's tell him tuesday. And
they don't care. Water and stuff. If you guys want, there's a
couple of free consoles and stuff over there. If you guys want to get
your hands on and spend some time, I know you guys are probably probably
pretty busy, but do you know any questions. I'd love to stick around
to play, but we got run to our next day. Come back around.
Uh, he is on his way, Brad shoemaker. Shoemaker, Yeah,
okay, I think I have his email. Yeah you you you almost
certainly do. I think he'll come by and say, hi, cool,
great, great, you guys got a copy of the assets and everything.
Yeah, yeah, we got the disk. We're good. So I'll see
you guys later on. All right, I'll pencil in. Yeah, great,
thanks guys. Yeah, Drew, Yeah, lay it on me,
man. So many threes, so much tough? Yeah really? Yeah,
you see my high score? What do you guys have? Center? What
are you guys up to now? So I got seven thousand? Okay,
that's about where that's I've not cracked into the twenty thousand layer yet. There's
this that's kind of the next bump up. Wow, fil't forming. The
next number is nine. I was playing. I was playing in bed,
and that's where I do most of them. My threes. Yeah, threesomes
in bed. The kid made it dirty. I was literally talking about playing
threes in bed. Okay, well, we'll stick back around to sex.
Great. Okay, fucking tell me about it. Okay. So I'm having
a threesome in my bed round and the kids in the other room. Huh.
And he comes in and I'm like, you need to not be here
because I'm in the middle. This is the greatest moment of my life.
I'm having the best game I've ever had. Yeah, he's in the bed
with me, and then the threes and uh, I am like trying to
move around so that he can't get a hand in there and accidentally swipe something
he shouldn't stop. He'll screw the whole thing up. Yeah, he'll mess
the whole thing up. And I was literally, this is the game.
I'm hitting all my dream scores with this. One one hundred and ninety six
boom, another one hundred and ninety one, who gets prob another one hundred
ninety Si. I just combined him and there's a forty eight coming right up
my way. Uh. And so I'm moving, I'm moving, I'm shaking,
I'm trying to like turn around. Uh, and he's just all over
me. Uh. And I got I reached ninety seven hundred okay's and then
then I then I then I'm against all odds against it. Yeah, and
I felt like I should have got an extra like three hundred because of the
way I had to kind of like shimmy and shake. Ye still over nine
thousand, it was, it was over nine thousand. Yeah. Uh.
And then now I'm never gonna play again because on top because that I'm never
gonna hit. There's so much more to do. I can't. I can't
it gets it takes a long time when it or it takes no time.
And I squear I was just moving. I was just moving pieces. Uh,
but I don't want I don't think I want to play any more.
Yeah, it's uh, I've kind of been playing it, you know,
in the morning or something like as a wake up, like get my head
together, like play game of threes. It's fun. Yeah, but yeah,
I still haven't gotten into gotten out of these seven to nine thousand range,
Like that's definitely where I've been. So I was, I was definitely
in the three to like like three thousands, yeah, for a long time.
And then it's like that one I don't know, everything just hit right.
A friend of mine started playing for low score, trying to build the
board. Yeah, yeah, I got like a sixty nine. But I
saw someone that had like something that was maybe in the forties. I done
like one hundred and fifty. How do you see the low scores? You
don't? You have to just you know, share it, okay over Twitter.
So a friend of mine has been kind of collecting Okay, I just
checked that ahead of Brad right now, So all right, all its good?
Yeah, So what's your like, what's strategy? I combined the numbers
and then the board gets over half full. That's when I start looking at
what the next tile is to try to to figure that out. And sometimes
I have real bad games sometimes, you know, sometimes it goes well.
Sometimes Yeah, there's a random element in there that is can get you.
Yeah, it took me a lot to figure out that when you do slide,
when a new tile comes in, it's from the direction from the direction
it is in the column that like some stuff has just happened, like a
tile has combined. So if I always thought that was just kind of random,
I don't know. You might you might just be imagining that part of
it. But you've gotten like five in a row on the same column,
right because you've just been combining, combining, combining. I guess. So
I don't know. I think there is a higher probability of it sliding in
on something on a column or a row where there is action, all right,
so that's might maybe. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
I don't have any twenty thousand points or whatever said on your No,
I'm not I have not. I have not cracked that yet. The high
score on the thing is like nine hundred something thousands. But people might be
cheating. Whoa, what up, buddy? What? Uh? Yeah,
we're talking about threes because we're talking about threes. Uh, Brad, shoemakers
here, Brad, what's your threes high score? It's like seven thousand something.
I'll tell you, hidling seven thousand, four hundred and one, not
seven thousand, seven hundred and twenty two game. I think the scoring is
broken in that game, and it ruins it. Oh h huh, sure
it is, now that I beat you. It is. I hate the
way they stratify the leaderboard because your score, your high score is basically just
function of the highest single number you got. Like, look at the leaderboard
like it's a whole bunch of three thousands, and then it's a whole bunch
of seven thousands and then it's a whole bunch of ten thousands. Yeah,
yeah, definitely like that. It's gonna kind of just you know, it's
it makes it kind of boring to look at the high scores. I'm mostly
into just like trying to progress as far as I can't get the highest number.
Eating my own score is fun, but comparing to other people is kind
of useless. Well, as I was saying, uh, some people are
are playing for lows, what like trying to get the lowest score possible.
I'm playing for home Depot. Yeah he's hardware that had a bit in but
okay, yeah, yeah, it's good to go pro pro threes threes game.
I've been talking to Osh, Yeah, how are they They're they're good
so far. I don't have a lot of capital, but willing to give
me a you know, part ownership. Cool. Well, other than threes
hasn't been going what else? Well more had I had a few? I
had like an hour. I'm like, okay, what can I do with
this hour? And I actually wrote down on post it note a bunch of
games in like a circle format, and then spun a pen and wherever it
landed was the game. I played. So you made a game about game
about which games you're gonna play? Yeah, okay, there was what else
is on there? It's like Broken Age two Human was on there, pretty
much the same game right there. Yeah, one to one uh and it
landed on war Hoog So I played that. Yeah. Yeah, well it
was like Broken Age two Human and the rest of them reward Hog. But
yeah, I went through going through some more tutorials, you know I'm about
Uh Well, I learned how the targeting pod works a little better. That
thing's nuts. You can zoom in on targets miles away, and it uses
like visual detection to be able to say, like, that's a tank.
I'm gonna lock onto this tank just by looking at it, I know what
a tank is, okay, And then you can you can fire missiles at
it. So that's pretty cool. I want to get through all the tutorials.
So it takes me a long time to get through the tutorials because I
take notes on them. So, like one, that thing took me an
hour, uh, even though like if you're just playing, it would probably
take it like ten minutes, because you know, I'm pausing and writing descriptions
in my notepad because I'm gonna write it all up later for like a you
know, a big a big guide which eventually will become an all encompassing thing
for myself that whenever I want to play that game, I just sit down
and read and refresh my memory and play. So that's when I'm actually going
to play it. I haven't really really played that game ever ever. I
mean I've messed around in it, but it's never like Okay, let's load
up a mission and then use all the tools at my disposal to correctly do
this mission. Like I'll load up and like get shot down or like switch
to the guns and fly really low and strave people, which is super fun.
Yeah, but like reaching the at you know, fighter pilot actually actual
yeah, yeah, correctly the targeting podlaying the game. He doesn't know.
I don't know. You haven't played it. I haven't. I haven't played
it a little bit. What are the games that you do? Have you
not played? I? Uh, well, what was on that wheel?
Yea age? Yeah, I mean I've I've gotten through a couple hours of
that, but not much to human and I'd probably just start over to human
at that point. Yeah, experienced the story as it was intended right all
the way through. Yeah, I did play more golf in the real world.
Okay, yeah, like actual I went to go just alright, but
this time it was a driving range in San Bruno, which was a double
decker. Yeah. Nice, I had never been to Maybe you feel like
I was in Grand Theft Auto. It's fantastic. Yeah, that's I've never
I've never been to one. It looks cool San Bruno. Yeah yeah,
yeah, is it cool? Brad? Hello, how are you feeling not
great? But thank you for coming into this small room and coughing. It's
not It's not that. It's not that kind of not great. Okay,
what kind of not great is? I don't want to talk about it.
M m it's that bad all right? Oh mmmmmm picking up? If you're
putting picking it up'm gonna pick it anything out it or not. Actually,
it's theirs something I've cost all day. I don't know what's up with that
A likely story anyway, talk to me. You just finished reviewing the last
of US DLC. Seems like you liked it. I did, but I
was I was coming up here. No, I don't have any problems with
Okay, should I post it sure, like right now, go for Yeah,
like I brought my laptop for that express purpose. Go ahead, put
it up. I could click the published button. Tell me about it.
What about the side bugs? Should I just ignore that stuff? What bugs?
Which? Which one's in the email? What DLC release is not showing?
Oh, let's do some live debuggings here? No bugs on our way?
Is that intentional? No? Be intentional? That is not intentional?
Maybe I should hold the review look at that stuff after. I mean,
I could load at the CMS. So you can only choose releases that are
on the main Yeah, I designated in emas the review of the DLC.
But on the review actual review. Okay, so the last second stuff is
there that display is not on the actual life side. It just says the
last of us review. That's stupid. Okay, but you can override the
headline. Yeah, but that doesn't take an effect on the actual page.
It doesn't the title tag, but not in the headline. All right,
we'll fix that after the fact and go ahead and publish it. We'll we'll
put that on a list. All right, I'm gonna put that up right
now. I tell me about it, but don't tell me about I hammered
on this point in the review A bunch. But can you think of a
game that less needed DLC than The Last of Us? I bet you can't.
Like maybe Tetris, Fioshock Infinite, most story driven games, really yeah,
but that one is special. Yeah sure, back ops, I mean
yes, that applies to a lot of games. But the Last of Us
is right up there. It definitely was up there. Well, they did
it, and they succeed. They did a phenomenal job of it is fantastic.
That's surprising, and it is really good. I mean it is.
It is a masterclass in how to kind of augment your story driven game without
like sucking it up or we're feeling contrived or just unnecessary, right not,
it's kind of alright, So nothing like I can't even spoil this for you,
because nothing that happens in this will be a surprise to you. It's
not about stuff that is like reference in the main game, Ellie. Ellie
basically tells the story of everything that happens in this DALC in the main game,
like in thirty seconds or something. It's not it's not full of a
bunch of like profound revelations about things that happened, like you know where it's
gonna end up as soon as it starts. Like half of it is set
during the Last of Us. Like actually, it really smartly cuts, like
it's intercut between this. Okay, if you haven't played The Last of Us,
turn this off five four three, but come back. So it starts.
I think it's in Colorado when Joel is impaled through the gut, remember
that all, Yeah, So like you see that happen. That that's how
the DALC starts, Like it's just that cut scene from the game, and
half of this DLC is set like minutes and hours after that, when she's
out there scrounging for medical supplies, Like it shows her patching him up temporarily
and he's like on the edge of death and she's like desperately out there trying
to find some stuff to like properly stitch him up and stuff. And that
that's where all the combat happens in this, because the flashback stuff is at
a point in her kind of evolution as a character where she shouldn't really know
how to fight, you know, like she I think she actually says during
the game at one point, like when he gives her that rifle. She
says, like that's the first time she's ever fired a gun. So,
you know, they couldn't very well have her running around like headshotting, fighting
and fighting infected or whatever in the flashback stuff. So all the fighting takes
place and the present day stuff while she's going through this mall looking for medical
supplies. That stuffs fine, you know, like that's that was not necessarily
the strongest draw of Last of Us to begin with, yea, so it's
good. It doesn't really overstay. It's welcome here, you know, like,
what, what's the the other half of it? Well, so that's
all the stuff with her friend Riley that she talks about during the ending,
So that's you know, it's kind of just getting down to the nuts and
bolts. That's when she got bit. Yeah, that's when she found out
she was immune. So you're moving around, you're running around. It's not
just cut scenes, but there's no fighting, no enemies show up. It's
basic kind of exploring. It's basically a lot of exploring, Like they go
to a different mall. It's kind of weird, like the whole thing takes
place in two different malls. But zombie Yeah, yeah, exactly she's just
she's at this mall kind of reminiscing about the last time she was in a
mall. Uh No, and the second Mommy and the second mall is full
of like bandits and zombies. Okay, so there's none of that stuff comes
up, but I mean it is sort of an echo of what happened before,
you know, in terms of the setting, and also that she had
two people who were really close to her who were in really kind of dire
situations. But the stuff in the flashbacks is fantastic, just in the way
that it builds their relationship, like kind of just these little character moments.
Uh. And it's not it's a lot of kind of you know, pithy
back and forth, little exchanges between there's just these two teenagers who are really
fond of each other, you know, although they've got some weird history,
there's some tension. But I don't want to give any examples. Even though
they're really fun to talk about, they don't they find they use the mechanics
of the game in some really awesome ways, Like in terms of I'm talking
to even even things like aiming a gun or aiming like throw bricks or even
stuff more basic than that, they use all all that stuff that you did
in the combat in a lot of non combat ways. We really fun to
see just really creative uses of what's already built into the game. What's the
Facebook integration, I've heard it's just there's a photo booth that they get in
Okay, and you can upload that, like you can take like the background
on your photo card and the facial expressions they make and stuff, and then
just it'll it'll share your unique assortments and your eyes bigger, not quite that
far, this happened before. The best part is the best part is that
that photo booth in the game world has like when they finished taking the pictures,
it's all pressed this button to share to Facebook, and they're like,
what the fuck is Facebook? And like, really, there's this whole little
thing. There's this whole little thing about like what is the Internet? Because
they're born after because they were both born after internets, the work after things
went to ship, Like there's a ton of that stuff as they're exploring them
all, just a whole lot of like kind of this process of discovery of
like, oh, this is what an arcade looked like when it was powered
up. Even though none of the games work. You know, there's lights
and stuff, and like they go to music store and find like they have
a cassette player and they go and mess with that stuff. Just just real
small little character moments that kind of build up that relationship and then you know
where it's all going because she told that story, all right, yeah,
and you finish the game. So it's like there's this kind of sense of
dread throughout the whole thing because you know that it's going to go bad at
the end. So do you feel like this is a piece of DLC like
flavor DLC for people who finish the game, just like flesh out the universe
more. Yeah, that's the thing. It's not like they're gonna make any
big reveals like oh, the fireflies are actually up to this or you know
this was what was going on and behind scenes and you didn't know about like
you meet the giant alien that is the infection, right, it's like,
oh yeah, you see you see the space rockfall to Earth that carried the
infection on it, or he's at the bottom of the least. It's it's
purely just it's just character development basically. Okay, that's fine. And in
the in the present day stuff with the combat. The one thing they do
that's kind of neat, although it's a little forced, is they start giving
you combat encounters that have both types of enemies on them. What's the other
type the infected, it's affected in the in the hunter type bandit guys.
You know, obviously they hate each other too, so you get some good
uh, you get some good doom style like hitting enemies against each other,
which is a lot of fun. You get any new who wins most of
the time. Uh. And I was playing on normal because I just wanted
to see the story in this and the infected came out ahead, like almost
every time you infected in the end, because what you do is just sit
behind a barrier with a listen mode on, watching their silhouettes like fuck each
other up. And the Hunters would always like they have apparent apparently have some
frames of animation before they fire their gun, and they would always take a
hit before they could get a shot off, and that would reset over and
over, so they would just get beaten to death. Did uh Did they
introduce any other new combat mechanics or stuff mechanics takes place? Yeah? No,
they they show you getting the bow and arrow that she has. Oh
yeah, just forward the winner. Yeah, in the game, like she
just has boone arrow. So it's cool that you're selling to see her pick
that up. And they don't even like there's no cut scene where she's like
oh boo or whatever. It's just like you literally just pick it up as
a pickup. I mean, like they don't references at all, but it's
like, oh, that's how she got that. Do you feel like in
some weird director's cut of The Last of Us that is integrated just right into
the game, You mean like this is a material like this is like a
cut from the game. No, no, no, I'm saying like in
some other iteration of this game, you just play. Yeah, you just
play seamlessly into that event and have all the flashback stuff during Ellie's missions.
I don't think so, because it wouldn't fit quit. I mean the reveal
in the ending, you know, the way she talks about this stuff in
the ending is kind of integral to the way they build up. You think
it's more interesting to play it, like kind of after hearing about it.
Yeah, like the emotional timber in the end, Like you can't watch the
New Star Wars movies. Yeah, partially reliant on her telling that story the
way Darth Vader to become Darth Vader. And it's a lot more meaningful to
in a way to go through it knowing what's going to happen, Like it
gives it this other kind of a sense of kind of sadness underneath it all
because you know what's going to happen, sad game and you know it it
enhances what happens in the main game, you know, like it shows you
like she's been through this kind of loss before, Like that's why she is
so intent on keeping him alive because it was real shitty the last time around.
And they're you know, they're really smart about what they show adult show.
How much is that in terms of in terms of like, you know
what happens at the end, but it's not too graphic or you know what
I mean if they kind of cut at the right times. It's fifteen bucks
and it's only i'd say at the very outside, if you did everything,
you'd get like three hours out of it. Well, it's like every optional
conversation and finding every little thing you can click on. There's some really good
stuff in there, though, so I think it's totally worth it, even
if it is a little short. Well, what else? What else you
got going on? People can start listening again now Mark at that time,
I don't know, did you guys talk about Strider yet? No, we
have not talked about Strider yet. I think that's probably it. Besides Strider,
how about have you played more Lightning returns? No? No, you
need to find the four codes on the wall. Remember what happens at six
am? Remember when six am rolls around. You're gonna have to come back
to this bright room with me. I'm a real idiot. Remind me what
happens at six six am. You gotta come back here, Hey, Lightning,
Hey, you gotta come back here at six am. Hey, don't
forget six am is gonna roll around. I haven't seen anybody that like says
that they like that game without reservation. Yea. Even the people that say
they're into it are like, well, listen, this sucks, but I'm
still kind of enjoying it. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, Okay,
Well I played Strider, okay did ye? Yes? Uh yeah?
Yeah. I finished Rider. I the reviews mostly Britain, and I just
gotta polish it up a little bit, quick look up on the site for
yourself. You see Strider for yourself. How is Strider doing? Strider is
good? Yes, how much Strider did you play? Brad? Did you
finish Strider? That's why I asked how much you played? Because I didn't
play as much as I thought I was going to play. Yeah, and
I was really looking forward to that game, and then for like an hour
or ninety minutes, I was like, I'm not going to play this one
again. For a little bit. I took about five hours to finish it,
shorter than expected, and that was like seventy two percent items Like there's
a trophy for under three hours in there, so that's kind of their their
speed run thing, but I'm sure you can probably getting faster than that.
It's there are a lot of really good things in Strider. There are a
lot of things I like about Strider, but it doesn't do enough with those
things and needs more like combat variety and more reasons to use your arsenal.
So I'm pretty unfamiliar with the original Strider. Yeah, it was an arcade
game first. Yeah, so that's the version of Strider that matters in this
conversation is the original Arcade Strider in Genesis port of that game. But yeah,
the Arcade Strider is pure action game. You can run, you have
a sword, that's it. Just get to the end of the level,
fight the boss. There's like five levels or what left right? Or do
you have sometimes move left? But yes, generally speaking, it is it
is not a backtracking game. It is linear, linear levels that you are
finishing and moving through. Okay, uh, this Strider, this New Strider
is a retelling of that game. So it's it's just kind of it's it
starts roughly the same way. It's the same basic area. You see a
lot of the same environments that you saw in the Arcade game kind of fleshed
out. Yeah, a lot of the boss fights are taken directly from that
Game's gonna ask, is there a robot grill? Of course? Yeah,
Okay, there's an achievement in there that specifically says I worried about that.
Yeah. But in terms of like skill set, you're you're you're you had
a sword. Yeah, you had a sword, and you could you could
do the slide and you could jump, and that's about it. You couldn't
even you couldn't you could not aim your sword attacks. Jumping while hitting the
sword button cost it to come out of the side. You couldn't slash down.
You couldn't slash up of this one grapples for the ceiling though. Yeah,
you could still kind of crawl in the ceiling and stick to walls and
stuff like that, and you would get some of the robots and panthers and
stuff like that as power up items. Got it. But it was not
like an action adventure in any way. Okay, and this is so the
Metroid style level design is different, yes, okay, Yeah, it seems
like a game well suited to that kind of arrangement. Yeah, it does.
They well, Yeah, so the NES game was not at all the
same game, and it was more of an adventure game, and even it
was a totally separate story that was based more on the mod I spoke with
Strider expert John Carlo Veronini and the NES game was based on the manga that
was kind of made to support the Strider character and also stuff about another Strider
that has gone missing or gone bad or being mind controlled. Yes, yes,
yes he is not Strider. He is Strider here. You talked about
this recently. Yes, how do you become a Strider. Where's the Strider
Academy there is? So what are how do you become a credential Strider?
There is nothing in this game that goes into the backstory of the Striders,
what a Strider is, what a Strider does, anything like that. To
go to get that sort of information, you kind of have to go to
the manga or the nes game or John Carlo. Uh. And the Striders
are it is like a mercenary organization. So you are just kind of sent
in to assassinate the grand Master and you do that. You sitting there playing
chess and you just just roll in there and just be like, checkmate,
motherfucker yellow, one stab and then yeah, I got you basically. Uh
yeah. So it's interesting because it is kind of retelling that game, but
I say like retelling the story. But that's a really weird way of putting
it because there's just so no story. Uh, they're just kind of pulling
inspiration, you know. The music, enemies, environments, all of that
is just kind of coming out of that original Arcade game Scratch any shadow Complex,
which is a little bit but it's not it's not done as well shadow
complex. Shadow Complex is a better game. Yes, that was my initial
problem. Finding the stuff isn't as fun. Yeah. Usually the biggest problem
for me is the level design just runs together, like everything looks the same.
Yeah, a lot of the rooms that you're in, the lighting is
so weird on some of the walls that like you can't see some of the
little passages you can slide through, and yeah, there's a lot of like
looking at the map and I'm like, oh, that's something I can slide
through. Like the visual communication in the level design is not great. Yeah,
yeah, sometimes that is a little a little off. Those robots communists.
No, maybe it's not a Russian on those walls. There is,
and it's you're in like Kazakh City, So it is kind of meant to
evoke a lot of that. But at the same time, the grand Master
is an alien, so okay, it's not really all right. I'm with
it. He could be an alien communist, you know, his views are
expoused near the end of the game in this one. Okay, you kind
of get a little better sense of like what I'll find is perhaps trying to
do I don't know. Anyway, My problem with that game is that most
of the enemies and even most of the boss fights are bested by you running
up to them and mashing on the sword button until it blows up, which
is a lot like the original Strider in a way. But they give you
a lot of different get well, not gadgets, but you get a lot
of gear. Over the course of the game. You get you know,
abilities for your sword attacks that make it do explosive damage or ice damage or
whatever. And bullets, Yeah, you can reflect bullets, but that's not
that's a nonstarter. Like you you do that like in the tutorial where you
have to do it, and then I didn't do it at all since then
because bullets are coming at you at such weird angles that you can't really reflect
them all. So even you know, if you're playing on the harder difficulty
and like where you know, like, okay, maybe I need to reflect
some of these because it's the best way to avoid damage. Now, it's
still not great for that, so I gotta imagine it's it's it's got to
be hard to stay true to an original game and try to integrate new stuff.
Yeah, and they seem kind of caught between it and and they don't
really they don't really make good on either at the end of it. You
know, well, when I was watching you play, the the time it
would take you too reflect the bullets seemed like more time sitting there than to
kill the guy shooting you with exactly I should just be running up to him
before he starts shooting and cutting him into a little bits and seem to work
pretty well for yeah. Yeah, and the amount of damage you took from
that all bullet or two you got back by killing. So I mean,
you can play it on hard, but like you know, the tactics are
not necessarily in place for you to avoid one damage and do all this stuff.
Like you know, they've they've got something in there, like there's a
trophy for you know, kill twenty guys without getting hit. And in a
lot of there are areas where you have a little more open air and you
can kind of get over bullets and get under stuff. But in some of
these tighter passageways, like you're just gonna kind to take some damage along the
way, but it just doesn't matter. Yeah, I had the exact same
feeling about it, like the combat feels. I feel like inelegant is a
good thing for it. It almost like when I noticed I was getting health
out of every kill, right. I almost wondered if they've got a certain
point into development before they did that, when they just realized, like this
is gonna be the only way for people to you know, like this is
the way to fix this. Just give you hell from everything because you're gonna
take damage from everything. Yeah, maybe I don't know. Or either that
or they could have slowed the bullets down to the kind of the stereotypical like
look like it's just going to crawl their way across the screen. Yeah,
inelegance probably the right way to put it. Like, Yeah, it was
still enjoyable, Like it's still I like the some of the animation stuff is
good. I think there are areas later on in the game that at least
look a little different, but it is still kind of like here's this facility.
Even Shadow Complex for taking place in Awe. Shadow Complex, I feel
I got more out of its environments than a Strider does. I feel like
visually it looks really nice. It has like a really crisp, yeah,
like nice saturated look to it. I think Shadow Complex seemed a little more
tactical, a little a little just a slightly bit more puzzly and like,
you know, playing your kills out a little bit. A little bit,
yeah, a little bit. Not to say that it was like kill this
guy first, I'll be fair. You had guns in that game, you
know, and you were a little more fragile. I mean they were kind
of like once you get the ranged attack and strider, like, I didn't
use it that much, but I probably should have. It would have made
everything so much faster because it is so so powerful. Does it work.
It's like it is a spreadshot of Ninja stars, okay, that you upgrade
to do and you know, throw out more at a time you are they
limited, they'd use up energy, but if you have upgraded your energy recharge,
that's not really a concern either. But you know, there were boss
fights that I dealt with strictly by just flinging that stuff at them until they
died. And yeah, you know, there were a few boss patterns to
learn to do well, but generally speaking, there were a lot of bosses
that you just didn't even have to think. It was just like I'm just
gonna chase you and keep hitting you with this sword as fast as possible,
and I will outlive you because I'm really good at hitting this button. I
can't remember, but the Shadow Complex have like pretty tough limits on MMO.
Was it was that something that you were coming not really you got gold guns?
Yeah, you did that a gold gun. Yeah, so you you
beat it and you said you didn't really feel like going back, No,
not really running here. Yeah. No, it was five hours of the
items and you know, yeah there were little spots like a dig into and
get more stuff, but yeah, that didn't feel like a great reason to
go back. And our costume unlocks if you do certain things, like a
ton of them. Yeah, you find different costumes, and it's just different
colors from what I've seen. I don't I don't know that there's anything more
elaborate. I was hoping for some classic capcom stuff in there, but that's
possible. But everything I saw was just like you found this other Strider's outfit,
especially the way that and now you're Yellow Strider, especially the way that
the concept art pickups or that little pal which I don't think it's even from
Strider. It's from like nineteen forty two from like it's from like Commando,
right, like all these other Capcom games which seemed like weird out of place
things. You know, plays the plane from nineteen forty two, right,
I mean I didn't find I'm surprised it wasn't like a Yashi yashi chi because
that's usually would be used for their secret those I would have been down with.
Strangely, I think those were in the Nintendo Strider. Sure, yes,
problem. I think the problem was Yeah, I don't know. Yeah,
it's it's a likable game. I think there's some really cool stuff,
you know, for fifteen bucks. I think it's it's you know, it's
good. It's good. I enjoyed it. But I wish that, you
know, like they they paint striders and Ninja, you know, like all
this the you know there there are not a lot of Ninja tactics in that
game. It's brute force. But his voice actor actually is Japanese, right,
or he's got a Japanese accent. Yeah, they are accenting the Yes,
he talks, he does talk. Yeah, there are a couple of
spots should striders talk, Probably not riders, as it turns out, probably
not. I think a lot of the voice acting in that game is not
great. Yeah, the super Russian sounding guy that comes over the lad speaker
all the time, like, yeah, old be out pastur Few. You're
kind of guy, right, like talking to his robots super and that's that's
like robots. I feel like that guy is one of the better characters in
the game, if that tells you anything about its kind of where it goes.
But like I said, you know, I did still enjoy it.
Uh, that's everywhere except for portables. That's PC's five platform. Yeah,
both both old consoles, both new consoles and PC. Yeah, I played
it on they'd probably have to bust it down a little bit to get it
on the Vedo. I think probably. I played it on the three sixty
a few months ago, and he'd even looked great there, Like I think
you can play this one whatever and you'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah,
it's not it's not bad. That's good in fact, but I feel like
it could be more like it starts out really promising, Like there are things
early on in that game you're like, oh, fuck, yeah, this
is the perfect way to do a Strider and game, and then you just
don't do enough with it. I wonder if that'll come to the PlayStation plus,
uh, freebees. Maybe is Microsoft still doing trying to do theirs?
Okay, they don't they don't have enough games. It was like Gears right,
it was Knock Yourself Out. Okay, they put an age of Booty
in there. I don't know. That might have been on PlayStation plus,
I don't know. Yeah, so I played that, played some titan Fall.
Then you guys, well I'm trying. I tried. I tried enter
those codes codes, and they kept On Saturday, it went free for everybody
to do. Yeah. So no, by that point, I've been so
frustrated, being like, I don't know if this is broken. Uh.
One code was used, and the three other codes I tried it was sorry,
something's wrong. You know that Microsoft is great new Uh technical, Hey
buddy, it's up. Yeah, ship went bad. Try again later lates
and the my favorite was that happened to me the first time I put the
code in, and all that says it's like something went wrong. Yeah,
but then it gives you this giant alpha numeric string, and it's like,
that's that's not the worst part. It's it gives you that string, and
then it's like, take this code and go to this other website and they
give you a link. Oh I didn't get that, and they say,
put this code into the form on this other website and we'll tell you what's
wrong. Oh really, I was like, fuck, was at the bottom
of the page if you did it on the web. Yeah. I just
tried it on the web, and I tried it on the Xbox One and
your error was it was just used right. No. So that was the
first error. And then I got other codes. Somebody had sent me some
codes. It was like, try these. Yeah. In my experience,
you just have to keep doing it over and over until it works. I've
tried like five and then finally I was like, fuck Titan Falls, fuck
it RoboCop smart, but that was the time doesn't work out. That was
like Friday night. Yeah, yeah, you guys talked about robocomp. Yeah.
I did talk and listen to that. It's uh, it's pretty good.
Yeah, Titan Fall's pretty good time. And Fall seems everybody talked to
you that has played Tight and Fall says it's a lot of fun and it's
great. Makes great first impression. And then when I read the Internet,
people are like, fuck it, I'm tight. I'm so dune because you're
reading the Internet. I guess, I don't know. I don't know.
I'm reading the bad parts. Yeah, I don't know if that's like people
who can't play it that are just like lashing out or people that haven't played
it. I feel like that's it's it is one of those things that like,
once you play it, a lot of the stuff makes sense in terms
of I think that game, more than almost any other I can think of,
feels so much different than it looks. Yeah, yeah, I don't
really, and that is well, it's a big part laying it adds so
much more the player, the mobility of the player. I think the thing
you know that sets it apart and you don't don't really get that from Yeah,
that's that's fair. I see that stuff as as things that have been
layered on this core concept that yeah, totally everybody is super Yeah. On
the other hand, the people that are lashing out going like good idiots saying
it's just call of duty with robots, then we'll get it, like,
no, it's kind of call of duty with robots. But it's really funny
because I've seen people you know, and people I follow on Twitter or just
people out there that like wouldn't give call of duty the fucking time of day.
They're just like, oh, that that's a bunch of garbage. Titan
Fall is fantastic. It's like we got a bunch of friends together and played
titan Fall and had a great time. I'm like, you idiots, you
would probably have let's say eighty nine of that good time with Call of Duty.
Also, like I mean, titan Fall changes things up, it makes
it's a meaningful difference. The mobility is huge. Yeah, the addition of
the robots, you know, I mean they have really I think that's polished
that great existing concept. But it's not like Call of Duty is some busted
as it is now. If you have played Call of Duty every year and
now you're like, man, call of Duty, I dont want to play
anymore. I get it. But people that are like I haven't played Call
of Duties. It's modern warfare too, because fuck it, you will you
suck. Well, I haven't played Call of Duty since Modern Warfare. Two
suck. I've tried. That's a lot I've tried, I think, so
I haven't spent that much time. I think people that are just like have
totally written off Call of Duty for years, and meanwhile haven't played it to
understand why they should write it off. And when they should have written it
off. I totally understand what I'm saying. That's it's it's funny to me
to watch people will be suddenly super into Tighten. I feel like there's definitely
an element of thumbing your nose at the popular institution. It is call of
duty, and like this is the feel good story of the guys who said
fuck you to the man, went out did it their own way. I
totally get that. Everybody's all behind that. Yep. Yeah, but yeah,
I totally see what you're saying. They're just going out there tearing down
walls. So the uh I was gonna say, I think sometimes the call
of duty stuff actually, like you said, is maybe not a great thing
for those people who are like, like call of duty, I don't want
to get into it, but I think, having having played some of it
and watched a bunch of it, I think that there are fundamental changes in
there that make it more accessible than Call of duty. Like for me,
as somebody who's terrible at first person shooters, I find I'm frustrating to get
into because of how bad I am, and I'm not gonna put the time
and to get better. Uh. The the kind of oh, the empowerment.
Maybe is it work? Like the robot stuff feels powerful, like you
feel like you're doing something at all times. Yeah, and like being able
to take one down feels cool. And then in a Call of Duty game,
I feel like I try my best just to kill all guy without dying
right right, and in here it's like I can kill the mobs or I
can kill the robot, and like I can feel like I did something.
Maybe I've got a sporting chance and and this is gonna be a me thing
and this is not because this I also think this might be a detriment.
But the smaller map size or the match size, I should say, the
six on six, I feel like I have a sporting chance to get on
a leaderboard at least uh with with with with a group of friends or something,
yeah, or like less of a chance to just gets sniped by the
sixty fourth dude who joined the game. It's it ends up being like I
think that's one of my favorite things about it right now, and we'll see
if it kind of holds true, like now that people have gotten better at
it and once the final game comes out, Like how much of a roll
sniper rifles really play you have, you dug into them a bit because you're
you're kind of going with the medium range. I mean, I never play.
I mean it's more like are people sniping? Are they I haven't really
seen a ton of it, even though I mean, you know that game
has gotten verticality to it, like you know, you could get up there
and you could snipe. Yeah, but the way the players are moving,
like if you're really just booking across these maps, it seems like it would
be more difficult to snipe, more difficult to camp. Like you're you're better
off. You're probably doing more for your team if you are on the move,
because they are putting those bots out there, and in a lot of
game types, shooting those as a meaningful it'll always have a meaningful effect on
you because it'll take down your time or to get your next robot. Guess
is you're camping the nodes whenever they called the Yeah, if you're playing defense
on the control points, like that's that's meaningful. And they're kind of dropping
in drones around those spots anyway for you to take on or for them to
try to camp out on the points or something. So you know that stuff
does happen. But there there is so much verticality that an attack and come
from pretty much anywhere. So you're looking down at sniper scope, you're very
unaware surrounding. So I don't know, it might it might work out.
Yeah. So that's that's one of my things. So that that's the thing
that you know, it's it's part of the reason why, you know,
certain Battlefield maps get on my nerves because he gets people just set up camp
and just just work you for a full match, and you spend the whole
time going like, all right, how am I going to get that guy
out of there? It becomes the whole match. Yeah, and then you
get them out of there, and then you fail to keep that spot and
they just run right back to that spot and you're like, well fuck.
And you know, Call of Duty definitely, you know, is maybe less
of a sniping game, i'd say than Battlefield, just because the map size
is a little different, but you know, it definitely has its shareff snipers.
I just don't like getting hit by sniper rifles. I don't think that
they're unbalanced. I don't think you know, in games like that, I
don't problem it's just it's a frustrating thing that like, I'm not having fun
with this, Like flush out the sniper is not an exciting gameplay thing for
me to do. Uh, And that's where I come in. It's not
like, oh they're camping. No, it's just like this, this is
fun. This act is not where the action is for me, So timefall
reducing it's reliance on that at least so far. That's how it's felt to
me. That's a real positive thing, and that's something that you wouldn't necessarily
uh notice right away, I guess, But who knows, Like maybe they'll
add in maybe the stuff that they're hiding back on it is like all the
sniper class. Well, so, I mean, there there is a sniper
rifle in the beta, it's just the one, but it just seems like
it hasn't really seen a ton of use. It's only human stuff, right,
yeah, it's pilot stuff. So someone apparently has done some digging around
in the files of the beta, of course, and pulled out like a
list of perks, a list of weapons, a list of map names.
Uh, it seemed legit. It looks legit. Hard to know the digging.
It looks like it's about fourteen maps fifteen. If you count the training
ground, it seems pretty good. Good. I need to go look and
see like how many like you know, the rid shooters ships with these days
really done the comparison. But if they're like any other Titan types besides the
Core three, it looks like they're just the Core three. Yeah. Yeah,
I kind of struggled to think of something else to do with that.
I mean, the chat, Yeah, you've got your all around, you've
got your fast weak, and you're heavy, and it was you know,
and I am kind of extrapolating from some of the stuff because they all though
stuff was bundled together in terms of just like here's all the perks and so
like there's damage Core on that list or Hypercore, which is presumably what the
damage core upgrade that the Atlas has. But then there was one called Marathon
Core, which you would expect the Strider, the faster one to have,
and then there was I think Ogre's the other one. There was one that
was like defensive Core, so maybe they swapped those so that the Strider gets
defensive Core, and then you know, so you can I don't know what
that who, I don't know that you can change that. I'm not sure.
I think the ability comes with the core. It's not something you can
switch out right, I don't think right there, Yeah, the change a
core you changed. Yeah, it seemed like a decent list of weapons and
gear and perks and stuff for just you know, looking at it, assuming
it's legit. Again, I didn't go dig into those files myself, so
I'm kind of going off of a gaff thread, but I'll do that.
It all looked legitish legit. They had images that were pulled out of there
that were images for the other maps that all had file names on them that
presumably are the name of the map. So they have said no, no
micro transactions. But DLC. Yeah, so if even if it's like fifteen
or seventeen maps maybe there would it be weird for them to put those maps
oh gosh and then lock them up. Well, I mean they could already
be in the planning stages on some DLC maps and maybe those images are already
on the disc. That's and and that would you get pushed into the beta
somehow. I guess that's possible. But anything's possible. Yeah, anything's possible.
Well, no, sooner enough that came out relatively soon. So yeah,
you're right eleven. Yeah, that is real soon games. Yeah,
and then that's when Dark Souls is out also, right, Dark Souls out
that day for the Consule, Right, Yeah, I was wrong in our
South Park video last week. That game is actually out of the week before
those other two games. Really Yeah, Fourth of Marsh huh so stuff to
play that's soon too, that's like even sooner. Yeah. Geez, it's
weird how that word. That game's got to be done. Like Thief and
Castlevania are coming up. Yeah, wait, when's that coming out? Next
week? What? Wow? Alex is playing it for review right now?
What's yeah? Thief, Thief, Alex, the Dark Thief, The Dark
Age, Dark Dark Amulet Party. Uh. Castlevania, I don't forget,
man, it's supposed anticipated release of the season. But yeah, it's the
next big game now it isn't It's the next great game in the Castlemania franchise.
I also played t x K. What is t K? Tell me?
That is Jeff Minter's new game for Vita. It is available now.
It's Tempest. It is his new Tempest. Is it Tempest? It is
a lot like the old Tempest. It is Tempest where a space draft is
decidedly not Tempesta t x K is Tempest okay, uh, it is very
much like Tempest two thousand. You can jump whoa whoa like you could in
Tempest two thousand. They've got a different kind of beyond. They've got a
different between level kind of thing that requires you to tilt the vita in a
way that doesn't work quite right. Can you're getting your you're working your way
around a ring or something, yeah, or a shape or you know,
it doesn't have to connect on the other end, so you might hit an
end and have to go back around you shaped or a straight line or something
like that. And same deal. Man, you're on the edge of that
thing. Stuff's coming out at you. You need to stop it from getting
you, oh yeah, and then shoot it, okay. And then there
are the equivalent of spikes like in Tempest, and you can you know,
when you get the jump power up. That means if they get up to
the top of the ring, Yeah, you can jump and still deal with
them. How do you how do you shoot him? When here up on
the top of the ring, you jump and then spin over them and as
you're going over them while you're in the air you shoot them that way.
So is there is it really like Tempest? Is really like Tempest two thousand?
Is it unapologetically? Is it an homage? Is it like? What's
the deal? He's the man who made Tempas two thousand and he's saying,
and he has made another one of those, okay, And it doesn't have
the Tempest name on it. And I don't even know who owns the Tempests.
Well presumably it was in it was one of those ip auctions that Atari
was looking to sell off some IPAs. Can't have just like traded some llamas
for that. One would expect that, I, you know what, as
much as like at the impression Jeff Mentor probably loves tempests, not as much
as he loves those lamas. Sure his sheep and his animals and stuff like
that. I believe that he would not. He is a he is a
good man. He would not do He would not trade animals for ip man.
What a guy. He farms and makes Tempest clones, Yeah, at
the same time, and Tempest and and real Tempest at various points in his
career. Can you say this has like lifted sound effects so when you jump,
it makes the jump noise from Pitfall, and I don't know what the
fuck is going on with that. There was the like the little I jumped
over some animals from the arcade games Zookeeper, a Taytoe classic, one of
the few Tato games developed in the US. Did he work on that?
No, it's a great game. I love Zookeeper, So when that when
I heard that noise, I was of two minds and went like, oh
man, I love zoo Keeper. Why is he stealing sounds from zook Keeper?
Why don't they just make a new zoo Where's Zookeeper? Two thousand Zach
guy's farming the zookeeper, He's getting the net and he's slamming those animals back
into the center. That's a weird situation. I wonder. At one point,
like the artistic merit of referencing a prior work. Trump's like whatever legal
you are? Like you just emitted, like out of your mouth, the
exact argument that music is going through for years and years, like the fair
use case of like well girl talk and mash ups and remixes, although I
mean in that case they're taking an entire song, or at least the beat,
which is kind of the core of the song where it's just like you
know, the the jump sound effect is a very small part of Pitfall,
right, you can play druse yourself. Yeah did it? Yeah, well,
but he didn't own those songs at that point, right, But does
make your own all this stuff? No, No, he didn't make any
of that stuff originally, so it's a lot those stuff. He has no
claim to the jumps. Yeah, he's no claim to Tempest unless he's been
on the IP, which if they had done that, they would have called
it Tempest, not t x K. I mean, the problem with Fogerty
was he didn't get the song writing credits right or or he lost him or
something. But legally poker game, legally, he did not gamble him away
own those songs. Yeah, it was my understanding, right, Yeah,
it's it's a weird thing. And like I mean, the entire catalog of
Lama Soft has been like this. You know. There he made a really
good Caverns of Mars clone for iOS. He did not make the original Caverns
of Mars for the Atari eight bit computer. Did that come out recently?
Yeah? Relatively, yeah, like since Space Draft. Yes, weird.
I thought he I thought he only put out like two games a decade or
something. Now he put out like three games in iOS. Oh wow,
Like some of them were ports of older games and updates of older games,
but like, yeah, just this like a pretty good Robotron knockoff, which
he did. He did Lamatron back in the day for people in countries where
they didn't have Robotron machines. So it's that case where like like Super Gianna
Sisters, where like they played that version first and then realized, like,
what what is his other fucking game? Wait, like how far back in
the day, like at Robotron release. Yeah it was, Yeah, Lamatron
was like eighties. Wow, man, probably it's probably a Commodore sixty four
and like ZX Spectrum game and stuff like that. If Caverns of Minus minus.
Yeah, like the Minotar it's part of the more like the Greek eats
more Beasts to one dollar. Yeah, it's pretty good. That's weird.
It's the original. But yeah, like a lot of his career has been
you know, like grid Runner is Centipede. You know, there's like a
lot of stuff like that that you can just trying to trace back to,
you know, him him making home versions of arcade games and changing things up
and for you know, to not just directly clone them. Does it feel
like this one has changed up a bit? No, that If anything,
it's like one right back to Tempest from what you know. Space Draft was,
like I said, very much not Tempest, as much as it looked
like it. The scoring mechanic and a lot of what you did to excel
at it. We're very much not like Tempest. And they had a play
text specifically says Space Draft is not Tempest. Yeah, exactly does this say
this is Tempest? No? And in all of the interviews and promotion and
all this other stuff, it's like t XK harkens back to the classic tube
shooters of yester year, all of those tube shooters, Slighting Runner, Gyri,
remember all those twobe I got so sick of tube that one level in
GORF World War tube shooters, They're just they were all over the place,
and I'm so glad we've moved on from that. Yeah, it's just saturation.
But t XK is really good. I really enjoy it. It's just
there's a it's just weird. All this all this stuff, like the career
of Jeff Minter is really strange. I guess is what I'm saying. And
and in a lot a lot of ways, I feel like he is like
doing really great remix work in the same way like a girl talk would and
like you know, in music and stuff, and I just I just love
the while Mark Serny is architecting the PlayStation four and like Eugene Jarvis is being
honored at awards things. Yeah, Jeff Minter is just on a farm somewhere
still making cage by himself. Yeah, fucking a. This is our legacy,
this is this is the history of our our medium here. Yeah,
the Cornerstones. Yeah uh and I also played Chroma really yeah, right back
at Dice. The New Harmonic, the New Harmonics shooter. What's up with
that? What's up with that? Harmonics is working on a free to play
first person shooter for the PC, and it's also being developed by Hidden Path,
which is the crew that did Counterstrike. Go oh right, okay,
they know shooters. Yeah, people like that. So they are making a
music like a rhythm based shoot, team based shooter. Class based is a
class based shooter in which music is the weapon. I think the trailer says
music is your weapon. It says music is your weapon, which is very
much not music as the weapon. They knew what they were doing. Look,
it's you know, if you're making that stuff in Boston, whether you're
aerosmith or harmonics. At some point this is how it goes, right,
Yeah, music is a weapon apparently? Yes? Do you shoot CDs out
of your gun? Sadly no? Jeff? How is this shooter a music
game? Uh? So? That happens in a handful of different ways.
Some of it is very simple stuff like if you jump on the down beat,
you jump a little higher. There are jump pads that will help you
kind of leap around a level really quickly, and you have to hit the
jump You have to stand on those hit the jump button in time with the
music to make it happen. So you're kind of like traveling around the level
in time to the music to get from place to place. But all of
the weapons fire rhythmically, and that means different things for different classes, like
so that they're trying to make it so if you don't understand anything about playing
rhythm games, you can play like the Assault class, which it fires when
you hold down the fire button and it's only reloading that needs there or benefits
from any kind of rhythm, so it's like an active reload. Yeah,
it is an active reload where you're hitting right mouse button for four beats in
a row, and if you get it perfectly, you are getting some kind
of bonus. I guess every class has two weapons, but then there are
classes like the Engineer, which is it has dual pistols. They will lock
onto a target if you stare at it long enough, but it only fires.
Like there's literally a rock band style note highway on the screen with it's
it's two lanes corresponding to left and right mouse button, and it will only
fire if you are hitting those. If you're just mashing on those buttons,
nothing ever happens. So you have to fire in time to the music.
But it's tracking the dude, it's locking on, so you don't necessarily have
to like line up a shot while you're doing it, right, So you
lock on and then and then play the track. Even reloading has to be
done by you playing the track. Okay, it seems like that homing thing
saves it, because I if I had to, if you had to do
both, you can never do it. You can never do it. Yeah,
this whole game seems to be a giant question of balance. You know.
Yeah, it's like, do the limitations of this weapon? Do you
make up for those limitations on like the damage side or right? You get
some like I might be mismatching the weapon in the effect, but I'd swear
I saw there was a grenade that only explodes at the end of a measure
down beats, okay, explodes on down beat. There was something that only
happens I think at the end of every measure. I might be wrong,
but the point is, like, you know, if you if you miss
a shot because it's about time with music or you know, something happens,
it is detrimental to you because it wasn't perfectly lined up like it seems like
that could get frustrating relation. And that's what the sniper Riffle kind of was.
The sniper riffle is weird. It's got a scope you can zoom in
and you can fire it at any time, but going around the scope is
a kind of time meter that you know, fills up at the end of
every measure. But maybe that's what I'm say. So you can take that
shot at any time, but if you can line up the shot and wait
until this thing is full then it will do full damage, and that just
seems like something no one will ever do. It's all real experimental. Yeah,
it sounds crazy. When they showed it to us at dicele or they
were kind of showing it off. They have not put out footage of it
of gameplay because the version they were showing us was missing a lot of art
and they were just like, yeah, we're gearing up towards a closed alpha,
which they're taking sign ups for now, and uh, it's gonna look
a lot different over the next month or so because we are ramming art into
it as quickly as possible as it's getting finished. It's gonna look like the
trailer that like Weird Tron Worlds. Yeah, it does sort of look like
that. Uh, it does sort of look like that, like because in
the version we play there was like Red Team and Blue Team, and each
team had kind of a different sound, so like it's the Blue It was
a control point map, but it was like you had to take them over
in order. It wasn't just go control all the points at once. It's
like you're pushing your way across a mapt fighting over control points. Oh Sue,
you know, whole time. I never realized you're fighting against other humans.
Yeah, okay, yes, it is a competitive team based It is
Team Fortress too in tron World with music, with music, it's original scores.
It sounds like, yes, you're dropping in death. They're kind of
open. You can't just drop in your own stuff, but they're they're cannot
you cannot. They are open to exploring a lot of options. Basically,
it sounds like they're going to get this alf out there see what people think
about it. I wonder if everybody would have to be playing through the same
song or if it maps. It very much matters because the level also changes,
so as you're on a map when it reaches these kind of section end
points in a song, like parts will grow up out of the level.
You know, bridges will appear or water will appear that you can't Yeah,
yeah, exactly, bridge on the bridge. There was no dub step,
you know, there's that's in the trailer and they've been out there going like,
look, guys, this isn't a dub step shooter, because I think
people went, like the music stupid, but like it's so in the version
we play like. The Red Team was a more rock focused team and the
Blue team was more kind of electronic music, so as they took over the
control point, that would impact the music that was playing in that section of
the map. And you know, it's free to play, so it seemed
like some of the things they're exploring is like, you know, it's cosmetic
in a weird way where you would get you know, some other sound pack
or some other instrument pack for the class, for this team or whatever.
So maybe you're the rock team against the SKA team, or you know,
there's a lot of different places they could take it. But so instead of
like red or blue your checker, yeah, exactly nice, Yeah, but
that all sounds like, you know, every time that they go to add
one more sound pack to the game, they would then have to go remix
every single song in the game to work with that sound pack, or like
other people hear your sound pack. Yes, that would be the idea.
Yeah, but whilst you could have a vote, well, so they weren't
sure if like sound pack would be team wide or player specific, so you
could have like five different clashing sounds on a team or well, you know
that there's a lot of stuff that they had not committed to, and and
and had to kind of iron out or just straight up weren't talking about at
that point. So I'm glad to see somebody exploring it. It's something shooters
in music is something I've thought it has been a long time. Yeah,
so glad to see, Hey, I've got different ideas what that genre might
be, but I'm glad to see other people finally exploring it. I think
it's I think there's interesting stuff to do there. Yeah, I can't.
I kind of came away from it going like, you know, there's something
to this. Like the version they showed was super early, and it's kind
of hard to tell, you know, if that's necessarily on the right track.
But there are some cool ideas there, so if it all comes together,
it could be really neat. It sounds like something I really want to
play, like just see how it all works. Yeah, it's interesting to
see it all in motion. Like I feel like in my head, the
thing that I always think about is like editing video and cutting stuff to the
beat always makes it seem more impactful, and you know, gunshots and exposures,
So I think that's you know, that's the ideal that they would be
going for. So try to create a game full of those moments. Right,
So if you can get yeah right, kick drum or something like that
might be fun. Yeah, if it works, I think liked said,
is it going to be a hell of a balance. Yeah, yeah,
that's definitely. I think there will be some players that are never going to
get into the idea of I pushed the fire button then nothing happened. Yeah.
I mean, you know, at the core, that's why Call of
Duty is so popular, right, Like you line up your shot, you
take the shot. Second you take the shot, something happens, that guy
goes down. Yeah, like it's immediate. So I think that's why I
was thinking this whole thing was like playing against it. Right now, it's
okay. The mode, I said, the mode that they were showing was
that kind of control points in order kind of mode. But they also said
they're going to do like a cart push, which is like straight up t
F two from the sounds of it, kind of moving the card around.
They have any dates on that stuffers way too early. They are going to
start a small closed alpha pretty soon here that they are taking sign ups for
right now, and their Steam page says it will be out in May,
but like out out or well, like Alpha out, I don't know,
well, none of the stuff that they sent over as like, here are
the details about this game, said may, but the Steam page says may,
so that who knows, Maybe it'll be a work in progress for a
long Yeah, that's one of that's one of those like free to play things,
right, is it's got to be a work in progress forever or something.
So, yeah, there's something to it. There's there's definitely something to
it. Uh So I'm kind of curious to see how that all works out
for sure. Yeah, and that's uh. Yeah, so that took place
at Dice, which, by the way, at Dice, the Dice people
have put up all the talks from Dice. So if you want to watch
Eugene Jarvis get honored, uh, and you've watched Trip Hawkins say a bunch
of crazy shit about Angry Birds or a bunch of crazy shit generally, but
then also be kind of salty about the success of Angry Birds. Yeah,
I had no idea about that. I didn't either. That's crazy, I
don't I didn't either. That Like apparently the people that May made Angry Birds
were at Digital Chocolate and left and made Angry Birds and then he was just
like we did it with a penguin, and it was just God, I've
done it with a pang. God. Damage from Pocus is yet to sign
them for any kind of No. No, they're all just on YouTube.
But if you go to if you go to their site, they have like
easy links to all of that stuff, like a playlist or whatever. You
can watch the award show. I don't quality, I don't know, watch
the award show. It's all right, okay, so you know you can
hear the people talking. Ted Price's talk was more about kind of leadership and
courage and leadership and stuff like that that you know, it's a kind of
some free management training if you haven't gone through management training. Uh. When
I went through management training, it was just that it was it not Ted
Price. Though. It was not Ted Price, so way less convincing resistance.
Yeah, okay, let's get into some Well okay, so this is
not quite news, but it's you know, it's everyone's talking about it.
They playing Pokemon on Twitch. The thing everyone's talking. Everyone's talking about great
Twitch plays Pokemon. That's all I did up like seventy eight thousand people this
morning. There were over ninety thousand people. It was down to about eighty
last time I checked, But it is and that's around the clock. Yeah,
it has been going for about five six days now. I think they
have an insane pile of money. I don't know. Yeah, maybe,
oh yeah, I wonder how they're monetizing that. It's they're getting there.
There are pre roles, but uh the person behind the channel who was I
guess, remained anonymous thus far. This is not a twitch No, no,
no, no. Like I wonder if you'd have to some point say
like, I can't mind, I can't take money for this because of the
ship I'm doing to this game, you know, like this is he did
not create Pokemon. I assume he does not have the source code to Pokemon.
Well, at some point you are like saying, no one should make
money from streaming anything. Ever, I'm saying he has gone in and obviously
done things to Pokemon. How is he taking inputs? There's a there's a
script that is being piped to an emulator that is running the wrong Okay,
so okay, person types left, person in chat types left, it theoretically
goes left. But because Pokemon only takes inputs when it's not moving or anything
like that. If you if it's already moving one square to the left and
you say up, it doesn't do anything. So there are only set intervals
when it will take input. And there are tens of thousands of people just
typing garbage, typing garbage commands over and over again. We're left up up
a start and they're just people, just assholes, just making it hitting start
to bring the menu up, and they have disposed of key items. They
have let like high level Pokemon free, but they have also beaten like four
of the gyms whoa Like, it's they're making real progress, but also it's
fucking chaos and it's insane. This is like, it is amazing, the
actual manifestation of a thousand monkeys totally on a thousand typewriters. Yeah, pretty
much. So you'll have people that have a basic idea of what they want
to do fighting against people that are just typing start over and over again.
It's crazy. Or you know, there was, oh, man, like
most of yesterday or maybe it was Sunday or maybe both, there was this
one area where there were a series of ledges, like kind of three or
four of them, and there was one kind of staircase that would take you
up the ledge, but if you walked down off the ledge anywhere, you
would fall, and they just needed to walk up, but so many people
were typing down they would just get you know, or trying to get left
and right to get to the staircase to go up the ledge. They would
then just keep walking off down the ledge, down the ledge, down ledge,
like a half a day, if not more, just on this one
spot. It's a it's a fantastic statement. Yeah. The Internet totally about
games. So they have rent of they have revised the algorithm that it uses
take inputs. The thing that changed when I saw it this morning is they
now have two modes. That mode of people just typing everything and it taking
input. When it is taking input is called anarchy, and they have another
mode called democracy. And when you're in democracy mode, it takes votes.
So people type all the commands. You see the votes kind of instantly tally
and it eventually takes the motion. It's ten seconds. I don't you know,
I don't know how how frequent it is. So you can also input
strings of commands at that point, so you can go up to left two
as your vote. Only in democracy mode, and somebody would have to have
the exact same string. Yeah, okay, how did it change from is
it on the guys? People? People are also, in addition to the
button commands, typing either anarchy or democracy and it'll swing this. You'll see
a meter swing back and forth in real time as it's tallying it up and
when it gets over to the side like it was in democracy mode. When
I fired it up this morning. I checked it before we came up here.
It was back in any and people just type anarchy, anarchy, anarky,
anarchy, and then they start type start nine to hit the start button
nine times in a row. I wonder how it knows. So would you
have to do like a comma B comma up, comma left comma Know how
people are typing string You're typing like up to left two okay or eight left
eight eight eight or you know whatever it is, okay, man, So
anarchy wouldn't count as an a press no, no, no, recognize it.
Yeah it recognized. Yeah. The whole thing I think is fantastic.
It is the if you are not playing right, you know, learn to
play this game. You're not playing this game right. Taken to its extreme.
Oh, and seeing people get angry is so much fun because there are
people in there. It's like they're trying to coordinate the world's largest wave and
then getting angry when people aren't doing the wave right or like no, we're
gonna sing rod rod rod your boat. Then you come in. No,
you came in early. So it's people going like, no, you need
you're not sticking to the plan. Yeah, click this, like read the
plan, this is what we need to do. Let's start. Yeah,
and then just and then I was just in there typing start over and over
again, because fu fuck them. You need you need all types of people
to make that thing go exactly. You want chaos. But even in democracy
mode it is still plenty chaos. Did the game Boy not have a uh
uh push like four buttons reset the device thing like some of them I think
some games may have. But also you can't hit multiple buttons at the same
time. Oh okay, so the processes in a row. Okay, that's
safe. Yeah. For a while. The solution to the because of the
start problem, like people would type and start and when it got got taken,
the menu would come up. Yeah, and that's how you got situations
where it's just like looking at these objects over and over and again that have
no bearing on This's like you can't use that here. Yeah yeah, or
like the fucking up and releasing Pokemon, so they can't do that anymore.
You can. But so what they did for a while was sometimes the start
button would get disabled and it would randomly work again for a while. So
people sometimes you would see start come up on the stream where they're kind of
processing commands. It would be great out so you'd see like that's not going
to get processed, But sometimes it would be could you quit the game?
I don't know that it has a quit two menu function you can save,
but I think you quit by turning it off. Okay, so there's no
way to de leade to save. I don't believe. So, I don't
believe. So you'd have to maybe reset the device. Yeah, probably.
Yeah. The whole the whole concept is great, fantastic, and I fully
support it. I think it is. Take a look at this. Is
this where you want ahead? Is this the future? You want? Think
about this? Think about what you're looking at. Yes, I want to
destroy what all anarchy? Anarchy? Anarchy, anarchy, I want to type
anarchy forever. Oh, I want the end of the world. It's the
only way out, he said, is a was the did they name him?
Does he have a name? Did they get get to the point where
the trainer the trainers named Red because it's Pokemon Red. But a lot of
the Pokemon got gibberish names that then people tried to make into nicknames that they
could remember them by. But the two that had the best nicknames were the
ones that got released. It's yeah, like i've I've I turned it on
randomly when they were getting into one of the fights against some one of the
gym leaders, and it was awesome to watch they and they won. Yeah,
eventually eventually because they've been grinding for hundreds of you know, like a
hundred hours. Yeah, they're Pokemon on all level eight totally. Yeah,
you know they're they're because they're getting in all these random fights and doing all
those random bullshit along the way. It's taking forever to get there, so
they're ending up with Pokemon that are usually over leveled by the time they get
there. But they're not playing with any kind of real strategy because it's impossible
because the twitch stream, I mean, remember Twitch implemented that long delay on
top of this, so it's not you're typing it and then seeing it.
You're typing it with thousands of other people. You're seeing stuff scroll by at
a blinding rate, but it's also happening forty seconds of the future. Yeah.
Yeah, I wonder what that says about the Pokemon's game design, whether
it's rock solid or terrible. I just it's it's more of a factor of
time than anything that you could just I wonder if you like recreated this,
but instead of having people put in the commands, just random so that exists
that is called r n G plays Pokemon, oh boy, and they are
running all fired up and see if it's still running. They are just running
a random number generator that is randomly pushing buttons. They are also running the
emulator at five speed, so it is kind of burning through things a little
more quickly, or at least it theoretically could be. But it's also pure
chaos. I'll load this up and see how it's going. Oh, this
might be running playing Pokemon Crystal, So I wonder which one would be quicker,
you know, like, is there some something about a human collective human
human CONTI I think there is I think that because on the human side,
maybe maybe less so now because it has become so popular. But you know,
enough humans pushing it in the right direction, knowing where they needed to
go. It was getting there, like I said, they you know,
they've they've gone pretty far. They've beaten a handful of these gems, whereas
the random number generator might just run around in the tall grass forever. Yeah,
is that the random one? That's the random one? Al right,
So it's just it's just sped up and randomly running through games. And yeah,
any idea where it's at in the game. No, I don't know
Pokemon well enough to know, but it okay, maybe they restarted it,
because yeah, they must have restarted it because it's Pokemon's level five. So
next we need to start running songs through here to see you know, like
if the entire Elo catalog could make it through Pokemon by assigning tones different keys
and then and then you can write the perfect Pokemon song. Yeah, and
who can get like damn fucking Aerosmith yea makes it through Pokemon. Music is
the weapon? Yeah they know it. Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
So this so this thing so so that one's interesting the random number generator
is interesting. The other one that I saw that was kind of cool was
someone was taking the chat inputs from the original Pokemon stream and then filtering that
into Tetris for the NES. So it's using the same inputs as the Pokemon
second, right, so they're using game Genie codes that let you push up
to move the blocks up. Yeah, so the blockers just sitting the blocks
are just going all over the place. Uh. And then there are a
ton of knockoffs of this. One started up this morning. That is street
Fighter two running, but like you know, different inputs for both players.
And that's that seems to be going nowhere. A ton of different Pokemon runs
trying to do the same thing, Like none of them are catching on the
same way the original did. And and those other two I mentioned, I
think are are interesting and doing something really different. You work on typing,
B, I'll work on type, but just people just like no, no,
no, it's gotta be always gotta alternate. Well, so you'll be
in charge of BS, I'll be in charge of a's. We'll just spam
them out as fast as we can and hope it lines up. But nobody
would ever do it everybody would just yeah, that'd be just too much.
It's all you're gonna do dive kick. That kick could be pretty good.
Man. It's great concept. I love it. Yeah, it's it's it's
great, and it ties into a lot of the stuff I think with you
know, the stuff we were talking about with Jeff Mentor and with you know,
kind of remixers and stuff like that. They're like, this stuff is
all quasi legal in the grand scheme of things. It's well, whatever emulation
is legal, that's the the If you've got the downloading these ROMs, you
check it out for twenty four hours, then has no you know, you
can dump your own cartridges and and and that's technically legal, and as long
as you're not going into the game and fucking around with the code, then
I think you're over. So on this mainstream they are running a hacked version
of the ROM that lets you get all one hundred and fifty one Pokemon without
trading, because it was it's you'd have to trade with Blue to get them
all. And they say that this is some modified version of the game,
but not in a in a grandiose way. I think it's just like we'll
make it so everything shows up everywhere, or that you can potentially get all
of them from one copy of the game. Really shitty. If like Nintendo
went out for him to shut it down, it would, yeah, but
may help they do better by, you know, letting people experience the magic.
I think, uh, in a lot of ways than to yeah,
than to than to try to shut down this stuff. And yeah, man,
it's it's one of those things. Like I said, it's it's only
possible because of the pervasiveness of emulation and the new pervasiveness of streaming. Ye
that that a lot of the stuff is happening. You know, you're starting
to see people that are like randomly glitching ROMs. They're running for artistic purposes.
You know, you say what you will about whether it's good art or
bad art. I think it's fun. It's cool to see. But there
are are Lewis scripts out there for emulators. Theyll let you pick up Mega
Man with a mouse and drag him around the screen and then let off and
let it keep running. You know, like people are doing interesting things.
People are finding out more things about these games. People are finding hidden photos
of Dave Lange and cartridges because of emulation. Because this stuff is out there
because you anyone can be a video game historian as long as you are willing
to live on the other side of the law. In this technical, weird
way. It is sort of victim lists but maybe also crushing Nintendo's virtual console
business. Let's be honest here, that probably has a real impact. Hey,
you know, I don't know, they're not doing that great a job
on their own. They're doing a terrible job with the virtual console. But
you know, if but imagine if none of this emulation stuff existed and that
was the only way you could get it, we'd all be broken not play
any game, all right, you wouldn't. You wouldn't have that comparison point
anymore. Of like it's trivial for anyone to get these games. Right then
you're gonna charge me like ten bucks for the shitty one. Yeah, and
it's terrible and it's not as feature rich as right. Yeah, it's weird
that that stuff coming. There are people out there coding achievements into old video
games. That it's crazy, Like there's there's there's a lot of great stuff
happening around old games, but it's happening in this you know, like relatively
lawless, like kind of gray area. But that's the most exciting stuff.
Always has it always has been, Yeah, totally, and like that's the
stuff when you look at like big outlets, even us, like we're not
gonna go there. We kind of can't really, but like that's the future.
Some of that stuff has changed a little bit a bit. But like
when I think of, like what's the next video game feature, like how
do you make a feature with video games? Video game game show? Like
this is the ship? I think is awesome? The billion people playing Pokemon
at the same time. Fucking genius. That's great. Yeah, yeah,
yes, that's what do you say, ninety thousand people playing at that time?
Boom? I don't care about what guns are in the next big game
release. I want to watch this stupid ass thing happening. Yeah. I
can find out whatever fucking guns are gonna be in that game anytime. I
don't want to miss this. Yeah that's great. There's a heel beam in
Chroma while we're talking about the guns of Chroma. Great, what else?
I have to wait until next week? That's right for the next gun reveal?
Now they actually they when it came out and said what all the guns
do would waste an opportunity. I know could have the guns of Chroma.
There's a rocket launcher that will re aim at enemies. You lock onto it,
fire it, and then if they move out of the way, you
hit the fire button on beat with the music and it adjusts every time.
It's so kind of keeps its great the edge, take them to the edge.
And that's right, you two. Let's get into proper news. Irrational
Games MHM is on whoa what dude, Irrational Games is shutting out? Is
that just for effect? Yeah? Okay, I'm the audience surrogate. Brad.
Wait what Yeah, that's actually the reaction you had, not Yeah,
I was We told you that what and I wish that we hadn't said anything
until we got you up here and said what shutting down? Can lop BioShock
flop floppy bird. I didn't want you to be an audience surrogate in that
way. I'm gonna keep the flop. And man, the number of people
coming out this morning going like, well fuck BioShock inf it was terrible anyway.
Really yeah, really I didn't see any of that song. I don't
know what internet were you on. You're on some fucking grunge k bullshit.
I think you know you want that was actually on Twitter that I saw that
you weren't. It wasn't. It wasn't that many people. But just like,
come on, man, have a little bit of respect for come on.
So what's the story? The story is Ken. There's an update from
Ken Levine on the Irrational site that I actually have here in its entirety that
I could read if you like, could your paraphrase? How long is it?
It's just those two paragraphs in the middle of it kind of sum it
all up. Yeah, yeah, you know. He talks about the kind
of the founding of the studio and all that sort of stuff and kind of
gets to a point w says, well, what's next? Here we go.
Seventeen years is a long time to do any job, even the best
one, and working with the incredible team, but Irrational Games is d the
best job I've ever had. While I'm deeply proud of what we've accomplished together,
my passion has turned to making a different kind of game that we've done
before. To meet the challenge ahead, I need to refocus my energy on
a smaller team with a flatter structure and a more direct relationship with gamers.
In many ways, it will be a return to how we started a small
team making games for the core gaming audience. I am winding down Irrational Games
as you know it. I'll be starting a smaller, more entrepreneurial endeavor at
Take two. This is going to mean parting ways with all but about fifteen
members of the Irrational team. There's no great way to lay people off,
and our first concern is to make sure that the people who are leaving here
have as much support as we can give them during this transition. Then they
talk about, you know, he talks about how there's going to be support
for these people to find them other jobs and recruiting, you know, endeavors
and stuff like that. So why couldn't he just pull a Infinity ward and
go start his own gig. He was going to do that, he goes
on. In time, we'll announce a new endeavor with a new goal to
make narrative driven games for the core gamer that are highly replayable. To foster
the most direct relationship with our fans possible, we will focus exclusively on content
delivered digitally. When I first contemplated what I wanted to do, it became
very clear to me that we were going to need a long period of design.
Initially, I thought the only way to build this venture was with a
classic start up model, a risk I was prepared to take. But when
I talked to Take two about the idea, they convinced me that there was
no better place to pursue this new chapter than within their walls. H goes
on to thank the fans, and if we're lucky, we'll build something half
as memorable as BioShock. We'll do our best to update in the space as
questions come in. So, Brat, I have a question for you.
What do you exactly? I talked a little bit to Jeff about this.
Do you think this is where? Do you think this initiated the journey?
That was the thing that I especially as I saw this huge outpouring of negativity
towards kindline this morning, just all these people going like, well, the
fucking the creators on Easy Street while he fires everybody, fucking asshole, So
what do you think? So? Yeah, so the whole we'll think about
the other side of that though. If the creator doesn't have his heart in
that project anymore, should he be then tethered to these life. Well,
first of all, I'm not agreeing with that sent up at all, but
more to the point, Yeah, like that was the exact question I was,
I'll talk to Alex about it. So and I was amusing about that.
It's either either he said I want to make smaller games and they convinced
him not to leave and stay there and did it, or they came in
and they said, we are shutting your studio down. You can hang around
with the Skeleton crew if you want. Okay, Yeah, So what do
you think. I don't know. I don't think there's really any way to
I mean, he'd obviously takes like full responsibility for it in this in this
messaging. I think we were talking about it. So we did that interview.
Yeah, sure, we did that interview with with Ken Levine when he
came in, you know a little bit before BioShock Infinite was released and kind
of asked like, you know, what's you know, you're going to sign
up for this whole you know, he kind of talked about the process of
starting one of these projects and going through it again, and talked about it
in this way of like, you know, because he's got his screenwriting thing,
because his Logan's run right, yeah. Yeah, which I initially when
I heard this news, before I read the thing, I was like,
Oh, he's just going off to be a screenwriter now, I mean,
you know, assuming you know, the smaller projects, mean you know,
like a slightly less time investment once the design ramp up is complete, right,
Like it would leave him time, sure maybe, but at least he's
still staying in games. Yeah. Yeah. But when we talked to him
then I got the impression that he was kind of at a crossroads in a
lot of ways of just like, you know, is this is this really
the thing I wanted? Am I ready to sign up for another beast like
this? Another? I mean, god, what was it? It was
almost a six year cycle, something like like late latesh mid to late seven
through Yeah. Yeah. So none of this really surprised me because of that,
because it's you know, I looked in the man's eyes. He seemed
like, you know, he was a guy that had a lot to think
about in terms of what he wanted to do next. Uh, and and
that you know, just trucking on and let's make another BioShock or let's make
another something else that is this same size and scope and you know, be
put through the ringer on this again didn't necessarily seem like his first choice.
I am surprised he's not doing his own thing. I'm surprised that it wound
up being like, we're gonna carve out a new thing here at two K.
I suspect that that is, you know, like I take what he
says about that stuff at face value. That you know, he would have
been prepared to go it alone. No, no, no, And they're
like, how about your I mean, you're still ken Levine, So we
would we would rather make the investment and take the risk on paying these fIF
teen people to own this thing you're gonna make, rather than let you go.
They do, I mean they probably will, They probably will. But
I mean it's just there's always the chance that they promised him some some proper
actus for retaining some ownership or whatever. Who knows. I mean, he
must have gotten favorable terms as the point, you know, because he has
Ken Lean he could god, I mean, he's got some he has representation
out there on his behalf looking for the best deals. So right, So
so I wonder I wonder what happens now. So I mean, you know,
if this did start with him. I don't know. You can't begrudge
a guy in a creative position for not sticking with something he's not into anymore,
or you know, for pursuing what he is into now right. I
think the only thing that one could say to that point, to your point,
Bratt, is that like without Ken Levine, does that mean that whole
team go, that whole team has gone, like that whole team has been.
That's that's the It's just the Yeah, I could somebody else have stepped
out. It's usually unfortunate. But like the people that are blaming him for
it, like are I think, acting pretty naive about the way that big
corporations work. And I would hope he would have the best interests of his
tea. More the point, it's not his decision, Like he doesn't own
the name Irrational Games or the studio or any of it. You know,
that's take two, and the name Irrational Game still has some cachet to it,
whatever you think of buy a shock Invvent or whatever. I mean.
If two K thought that was a brand and like an institution worth maintaining,
like they would have kept it open. They would have appointed a successor,
and they would have. But if those people, those fifteen people are the
core leadership and real decision makers at that studio, you know, yeah,
at some point they would have to transplant a new team in or look at
that team and go like, are there people here that we can promote to
these new leadership roles? You know, and maybe at that point they were
like, you know what, like we've already kind of gotten out of the
studio business and some other parts of the country, maybe this is you know,
maybe this is just characteristic of the way Take two does business, but
it is atypical of this kind of situation that's happened elsewhere. Yeah, you
know, like It's Software lost most of their founding people, but they still
are called his Software. You know, they're still hiring people to keep that
studio right, right? What was the other example of Infinity Ward is the
other example? You know, it's like you have these storied names that have
reputations, and right the game development business, like you keep them going and
pump new talent in there if it seems like it's beneficial to your company.
Yeah, and at some point, like the name on the door doesn't matter
as much as the names of the people who were there and what they're actually
capable of, And that's been the thing. You know. It's like people
talk about, like, oh man, I really want Rare to make another
game. It's not the same people in a lot of cases, Like it's
some of the same people probably, but it's not the same makeup. It's
not that it's not the same mission. Sega is not Sega anymore. Yeah,
you know, even Irrational if they kept the name going, it would
not be Even if they keep the name going with you know, his new
thing and call it Irrational Games, it seemed like that wouldn't be the case
either. Van Hagar was not the same band as Van exactly, but if
they called it van Hagar, you might have been a little more accepting us.
It's when they decided to put the dungeon Keeper name or anything, they
sucked it all up. Yeah, I just you know, it's a lot
of ground cover in a little bit. But yeah, it's just it's hard
to know, you know, I don't I don't know what the sales on
BioShock Infinite, what that ended up being, it was great or not.
That was the other aspect of this, Like I didn't realize this for myself
but I saw it in a lot of the chatter today that in their last
earnings report they didn't mention the sales by a shocking infant at all, which
is yeah, pretty atypical of them do that if there's something there worth talking
about, Like right, you see how how how they got out there with
the sales and GTA five and stuff like yeah, yeah, well yeah,
then GT five you've kind of get out there with well, you know,
so this could have been twofold. This could have been a timing thing where
they were like, hey, this game didn't do great, like we either
need you to double down on a military first person shooter or you know,
there could have been pressure from that end as well. But I am saying
that, like, you know, I feel like the move he's making,
the thing he is looking to start up makes perfect sense to me from kind
of where he was at and the impression I got last time we spoke.
So so that bit isn't shocking. If there were other external financial pressures that
kind of worst this or or made it happen a different way than than maybe
he thought it was going to, then you know, that's certainly possible.
I don't want to completely discount that end of it. But I will say
that you know from talking to him that that was not a shock. The
words he used for his next endeavor really interesting. He says he wants to
create narrative driven games that are replayable. Yeah. Yeah, interesting. Yeah,
let's see what he does. Yeah, yeah, I'm curious to know
what form that takes, if it's you know, because it's a small team,
if it ends up being a smaller they do, say if folcusing exclusively
on digital games, But I wonder, like how much outsourcing they would do,
Like do they you know, do they try to make a big,
small game or do they just try to make a small game. Yeah,
we're talking a fifteen dollar game or adventure games. Right When he says replayable,
I think about like a lot of the games that are driven by kind
of randomness, procedural stuff like you know, like FTL and stuff like that,
you know, games that are repeatable in the way. Yeah, I
wonder if he's trying to maybe bring a more narrative sensibility to that kind of
game. It could be. It's impossible to know right now, but I
wonder if he had left owner, if they would have shut down irrational because
I suspect he couldn't have taken fifteen people with them, presumably, Yeah,
like he stayed and they're shutting it down. Well I wonder, I just
I just I don't. I don't see how it would have been his call
in any way, what happens to that studio? Right kind of once once
you know, once the decision is made about what he's doing, then yeah,
at some point that's that's a two K. I take two decisions,
right, But I expect he couldn't recruit out of that. I think he
definitely could, like if he's not necessarily illegal, sounds like those like bridge
burning moves, but it's might be contract more to the point, Yeah,
yeah, we don't know. We don't know what the commune structure. The
point, it sounds like he already has recruited. He's keeping his fifteen people
or whatever, and it's probably all he's getting for a while, right,
And this I was I was wondering, just kind of thought experiment. If
he had left started his own thing, there probably would have been some kind
of non compete stuff there. You know, you never know, but weird
weird times two K. Yeah, it's not like you know, I don't.
It's not like he's going to go off and do his little skunkworks thing
and just say, fucking drop the hammer on those guys, fuck them.
Yeah, you know, like I don't think so, Like why like why
would he maliciously tell tu K to shut that studio down? Well, best
of luck to those guys. Yeah, it's it's a shame for everybody.
Boston's real rough right now. There was there was a round of layoffs at
Turbine last week, so it's it's yeah, Boston's real crazy right now.
What game jobs pot full of talented people looking to make some hot properties,
I hope. So there's there's a ton of studios on Twitter today saying hey,
we're hiring right and none of them are in Boston. I got to
figure that a lot of the people that were a part of Irrational, that
would have worked on Infinite or the original BioShock, or you know, maybe
even further back than that, would you know, they've got good shipped games
on their resume that they are, and they are used to working in a
tense under fire situation. So I bet that they are as long as they
were not broken by the experience, they are probably rock solid motherfuckers. So
you know, maybe we'll get a bunch of awesome, smaller games out of
this. Yeah, it could be, you know, maybe this fuel is
the next indie boom in Boston or something. I think we see more BioShock
like in any form. I mean he he did say two ks taken over
the property, right, yeah, I mean they own it, they have.
Wasn't there wording in there employing they can to keep it going? Or
did I dream that he said? He think? He says, you know,
hopefully that whatever they make is Yeah, it's half as good as BioShock.
Yeah. Yeah, I guess their their dealcs out right, they're done
with their it's not quite out. Episode two hasn't come out yet, but
yeah, but it is done. There must be done with it, and
that's the end of their season. Pass yep. Yeah, yeah, I
don't know. It's industries, it's a it's a it's an interesting way for
that stuff to go down when you think about how studios usually close and how
it usually all happens. That's, uh, that's a unique one. So
I wonder if it'll be uh people will be watching that as the industry continues
to churn like, how well does this? Do? You know? Do
I have the name to get out there and do this like other people in
a Kent Leavine like position, yeah, who are like I don't want to
do you know. Maybe it was after infinite shift and they're like, all
right, great, Ken, what's next? That he literally says like that
is kind of how it went. Like people are starting to wonder now that
we're running out, what's next. It's like, ah, I'm burned out.
Motherfucker's next is I'm writing the script and I'm going to sleep in for
a little bit, sitting here in my underwaryat and cheetos. Yeah, doing
nothing. Seeah, I wonder if there are other designers out there they're like,
I'm gonna leave, or maybe you can give them my own small team
could do something something something. I don't know, small expensive team seems it's
weird. There's weird environments for making games. Yeah, depends on what you're
making. That that's you know, we don't know enough about that part of
it to to really say one way or the other. But there it is
an interesting series of happenings, and best of luck to everyone that's been and
you know, put out of work by this, Yeah for sure and yeah,
man, Boston. Wow, let's see what else. Uh npds came
out. Uh PS four seems to be out selling Xbox One by about two
to one in January, and I feel like I'm seeing stories about people that
are seeing Xbox ones on shelves, whereas the PS four still seems to be
pretty tight quantities. So I don't know what's going on out there. More
than that, there seems to have been this weird push from multiple retailers all
of a sudden, where they're all going like the heart to find Xbox one
is in stock. So I've seen this no like we got maybe I was
the only one that got it. I got a press release about that from
one retailer, weird and saying like, hey, we're about to announce we
have Xbox ones in stock. And I guess I saw some form chatter saying
like I think it was Walmart or some similar and you know, Big Box
Chain was saying the same thing, like it's kind of weird that they're all
out there at the same time proclaiming hey we got them either one yeah,
the next flood of the channel, or maybe they had a bunch of maybe
they're sitting on some sitting and can't move them. You guys are dark.
I gould be so cynical. I don't know. We got movies. I've
had an order for Xbox ones for our studio since December. They can tell
them to stop going through preferred vendors I have, and they will not.
They want to pay eight thousand dollars per Xbox one, should just cancel that.
We should just buy xboxes and totally right, because that's when we first
got here. That's what I did. Totally. We bought all that ship
from Amazon and just expensed it. So we should just do that. Absolutely,
want to just do it, not right the second, but yeah,
it's just gonna make sure somebody's going to improve that right here, Man,
do you don't improve my expense reports? I could? You could just like
direct me as I mean, it would be totally out of protocol, but
I drew bio prove it. There you go, you've solved the problem,
violating only two corporate by laws. Yeah. I don't know where they Yeah,
they're trying to buy them from some weird person who also sells high end
video cameras. I'm sure, right, Yeah, exactly that they don't get
any allocation for an Xbox that's such a specialized thing. Well, who were
they working with over there? The best, only the best, all right?
Great. Meanwhile, we are a few days away from the Japanese launch
of the PS four, so that is crazy. The twenty second is when
that's out over there. Finally, maybe I can you put some of those
on my next cap ex order, get some of those in. Yeah,
they would work Japanese. PS four is would totally work here. Uh congratulations
Japan Yeah, well better the next generation import. So over the weekend,
the Japanese version of the PlayStation Network Store went up, So, I,
uh, because the console's not out over there, they wouldn't need the store
to be up until just now a few days before launch. So I went
ahead and created a Japanese store account, and you can totally pay five hundred
en for a Sadoku game. I saw that Strider was for sale, Yes,
Strider was for sale four days Like do you think just just they had
it ready to go for the launch? Yeah, and just figured like,
oh, well, you know, it just needs to be there for the
launch anyway, So nobody's gonna someone forgot to flip a switch, or at
least there they were making people pay for it. Yeah, any horse racing
games fourteen? I've not seen any horse racing there. Yeah, the FF
fourteen beta was there, but the servers were not up. Was that not
up on or that doesn't exist on us yet? Not yet? That's supposed
to actually hit the twenty second, I think, is when that's supposed to
go wider or when it's supposed to go live. You don't want to play
that? No, it was just free, So I was just down.
I was just curious to see if I could download stuff out of the Japanese
store and if it would run on my US account. It did, and
then it said, can't hit those I don't know what these servers are.
Fuck you. So but I totally went to the internet and bought a Japanese
points card and then bought Sadoku, and then bought the other Japanese titled game
I saw in the store, and then whoops, it was anime Sexy Majong
You can rub the girls with the touchpad. Wow, you can't launch console
in Japan without a Majong game. It's true. One of the girls is
fifteen? What wait, like it said, do you read Depanese ones like
twenty nine. No, it's just numbers. You know, you can see
the numbers. I can read numbers. What's ther blood tip? I don't
know. I don't know how to play Majong. Yeah, that's the bigger
problem. Yeah, so I just kind of randomly picked tiles, and I
don't know if I'm winning or I don't know, right, I don't know
the girls smiling or they angry. They're always kind of smiling or demure or
some kind of you know, are they on the tiles or are you playing
the game with you're playing against them? Okay, So I don't know how
that goes. There's a big image gallery that most of the images are locked
in because I have not beat any of the girls. There's like five or
six of them at Majong. Yeah, and I assume you unlocked there.
You can rub the girls of the touchpad. Okay, we'll do a quick
look that stuff. It's a dooku that I can play. Okay, do
you rub? Yeah? Touchpad does nothing in that game. ZIP Welcome to
the four zero UH. Nintendo's uh micro transaction nightmare is becoming a reality with
Rusty's Real Deal Baseball what is the nightmare? The nightmare is there is a
virtual character that you can haggle with over for prices. It's a it's a
mini game collection. I guess it will come with one, and then you
can use items you get from that game, or talk at the right times
to day or something and haggle prices with a virtual character. It's kind of
like the rabbit that would come up, and it's a different rabbit, I
think, to what end? To get a lower price on the next mini
game you want to buy, you can haggle with a virtual character for prices
of mini games that are all baseball themed Rusty's Real Deal Baseball. It is
called It'll let you'll at least let you know when you hit the minimum price
up. Okay, so I won't go any lower than yeah, yeah,
these scumbag Yeah, I gotta talk to my boss. Yeah, let me
go. Welcome to back. I really want to see how this works.
Why it sounds like a hellish nightmare. Why wouldn't you just always do the
things I feel somewhat responsible, Just look up online how to get the lowest
price every time? Because you might have to grind for those items. Who
knows that you have to use to get the lower price. Can I just
pay for those items, buy those items? Goddamn? Yeah that sounds rough.
Yeah, that sounds rough. A big balanced patch announced for Dive Kick.
They're calling it Dive Kick a E, where AE stands for Addition Addition,
which I think is a pretty funny. They are changing character some characters
very dramatically. They are also adding new characters. The games coming out for
free on the existing platforms and then it'll be kind of rolled into the next
generation versions of the game. But they put up like kind of balance change
notes on the site. S Kill doesn't teleport anymore. It seems like they
kind of smoothed out like some of the characters that were a little too crazy
for people to deal with, Like the Bazz is totally different and s Kill
doesn't teleport, but they both become kind of crazy when their meters are full,
basically, so it kind of gives players a better chance to just kind
of figure out what the fuck is going on. And then they said they're
going to be at least one new character and one new background when that thing
is is finally out. Big things, big things in store for Dive Kick.
The World of dive Kick Dive Kick universe. Yeah, but my controller.
They are adding actual dpad navigation to the menus. Such a weird concentative.
But they love deepads. Deepads are huge, man. Yeah, they're
coming back. Battlefield four DLC will be out today Second Assault, which is
a bunch of Battlefield three maps, So that means Battlefield four is fixed kind
of. I don't know. I'm sure that there are plenty of people out
there that are still running into issues. The past couple of times I've played
it on PlayStation four, I have not run into any major problems. Major
problems. It's commander problems now, sorry, commander problems. And I guess
the Second Assault stuff has been out on Xbox One since launch, sou so
they're rolling that out across the other platforms. I don't know what this means.
They kind of said that we were not going to do any more work
on DLC until the game is fixed, like you were alluding to. But
mission accomplished maybe, I don't know. I don't really know what to make
of that. Uh, let's see here. I've got some emails here.
If anyone has anything else to bring to the table, like news, Like
I don't you know what's going on, guys, heys, go around one
more time. What's happened over the last couple of hours for you? Guys?
What's it been like about that thirty five dollars to item? Really?
Yeah? Yeah? Really? You want to know why? Why? Because
you might say, but it'll be there forever. You could buy it whenever
you want, like when it's on sale or something, but I'll be there
forever. You might be able to buy whenever you want, when it's on
sale or something. But if I bought it before the end of the New
Bloom festival, it would say the word exalted on the front. Okay,
that's the time I can understand. Okay, Oh really okay, yeah,
okay, claud we're sympatic on this now. That totally makes it exalted.
I mean it would be exalted quality. Yeah. If I waited till I
think today, if it might be tomorrow, I'm not sure, But if
the festival's over, it would no longer be an exalted item. Fuck that?
Fuck that? Who wants a non exalted ito that? Yeah? How
often do you play is that? Care to actually use your thirty five dollars
item? I've only played him once since I got it good stuff. Well,
that means one hund hundred and something characters in that game. You can't
play the same one all the time. Why not? It would be good.
That's what fighting game players do. Honestly, they did. They do
that to get really good at it. I would get boring. I have
been finding if I stick the same handful of characters, I've no, that's
what It's not that sticking to the same characters. It's kind I've kind of
been able to focus on sort of game since and general flow better. You
know, when you're not thinking about like you're not sitting their eyeballing ability tool
TOOLTI text all the time trying to figure out it's like, oh, I'll
never played this guy before, how does he work? Like, if you
know how to play your character, you can kind of focus on the larger
stuff. So that's that has been working for me lately. Yeah, but
playing the same character every time. I do know people who only play supports
and only do blah blah blah. But like, the value of DODA isn't
all the variety of the matchups? No, Well, let's get into emails
then BombCast a giant bomb dot com to the email address, and you can
send in your emails to that address and then I'll look at them and something
happens. I don't know, they end up in this form and then I
read them out. Ben and Wales sounds like a great ice cream company.
Yeah, right, since is at the moment we're in a titan Fall media
typhoon. I know that interest in this game is huge, as it's one
of the most anticipated releases of twenty fourteen, and of course the gaming community
wants to know as much as possible about the game prior to release. Yet,
ever since the media embargo on the game was lifted last week, the
various podcasts, YouTube channels, and websites I visit have been literally crammed full
of a near endless stream of titan Fall content. I've seen her to know
so much about the game, I'm already starting to feel burned out on titan
Fall and I didn't even get into the beta. Do you think the big
release titles such as titan Fall can sometimes receive too much coverage? And on
your end, does having to offer up so much content on the game even
before it's released. I mean, you can't actually enjoy it once it has
been released. I've got such bad news for him. He's in the beta.
Everybody's everyone's in the beta. Whether you like it or not, you're
part of the problem. Now it's over tomorrow. Though. It's funny,
like I've seen this a few times and it's it's kind of funny to see
because up until last week, there are people complaining, how do we know
so little about this game? They haven't said anything about the Xbox three was
They haven't. They still haven't said anything about the Xbox three sixty version.
But there were people complaining that, like, this game's coming out in a
month and I don't know shit about it. What are they hiding? What
do they have? What? This game must be terrible. They're hiding all
this stuff, and now here we are they have realized that, like,
oh wait, we spend all this time not talking about the game, and
now no one knows it exists. We had better do something. And then
they did something, and now we're getting emails like that, so no one,
no one is ever happy. But at the same time, yeah,
there's a lot of red meat. It's like there's not a lot of games
coming out. There's a huge game. Every outlet's gonna jump on whatever they
can do to put coverage up. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's
like, yeah, this is Yeah. I feel like, you know,
we did that one video because I went and played it elsewhere, and then
we did that other thing because I just wanted to play more of it.
That's you know, talk about it here and there. But yeah, the
only thing I feel like they've been remisson is describing the campaign stuff a little
more. Yep, Like the structure of that stuff is still kind of a
mystery. Yeah, and that seems like a huge part of it not be
out there with the number of maps and stuff like that, Like they're you
know, not that games are just summed up by numbers, but it's one
of the concerns because they have this multiplayer only game like it more than most.
It becomes about like, yeah, the value proposition of the content,
and coming out of the beta, I feel like, you know, I
know that the core mechanics are enjoyable. I have a good time playing that
game, but I want to know that I will I will be able to
play it in a variety of environments, and that the unlockable gear will be
various enough for me to try out a bunch of different things and a bunch
of different things. We'll have good news for you. What that stuff's all
in the pr plan for next week whatever. It all fucking leaked on the
gas and those numbers look all right. How did the servers do on Xbox
once they opened it? They I was shocked to see that they did.
That was like, that seems risky. It seemed like that was the plan
all along. Yeah, was to to get it if if they were happy
with where it was, with the codes they had sent out to eventually just
go fuck it. Man. So I mean, yeah, if they're if
they're scaling, really is as elastic as they've been acting, like yeah with
that cloud stuff, and I think it's super weird. Like so the first
thing in that game is like you launch it and it connects to a data
center. Yeah, lets you pick. It's like he's paying to your closest
day center. Is this okay? And it's like, I mean I get
that it's a multiplayer game and all that stuff, but like, you know,
they tone it down a little bit, Maybe let me get into the
menu without like walking away for a couple of minutes and having it kick me
out of the game. Even just because I'm taking up a spot on their
data center. But that seems weird. Yeah, tied demand. Hey,
if you think this saturation is bad, man, wait until Dark Souls two
comes out. What if you think this saturation is bad, wait until Lords
of Shadow two comes out? Yeah, I know everyone's gonna be trying to
play the streams constantly. Dual mode. Yeah, connect your data center first,
Yeah, connect the call center and then call Zobeck and then he comes
over your house with the pizza. We're not supposed to reveal Zobek duel until
next week. Ship's cool, man, just take that top slide. Then
fuck, I spent someone sign photoshop of so Beck with the pizza. You
mean that was not a provided asset? Mark writes in and says, after
listening to the work stories in recent weeks, I feel compared to share what
I find to be one of the more hilarious adventures in my career as a
police officer. Yeah. Wow. Several years ago, I received a call
regarding an argument. This is like a for how flip this story is told?
It's dark. I received all regarding an argument between a couple. We
arrived and found the girlfriend running out of the house, screaming that her boyfriend
was inside planning to light himself on fire. My partner escorted the girlfriend to
the back of his squad car and we proceeded into the house. Lo and
behold, we found the boyfriend, heavily influenced by the meth, covered in
lighter fluid, and flicking a lighter near his chest in an attempt to immolate.
Instinctively, one of my partners shot the mail a couple of times using
bean backgrounds, and we were able to subdue the man before he could harm
himself. We took the man to a nearby hospital, where we essentially baby
sat him for the next five hours. Eventually we left and returned back to
our police department. By now it was morning, as the call had taken
all night. As a usual tradition, we gathered out back where we parked
our cars and talked about the night's events. As one of my partners pulled
into the lot, I heard another burst out, laughing. I wonder what
caused this laughter, and then I saw it. The girlfriend of the man
who my partner had escorted to the back of his squad car at the beginning
of the night, was still seated in the back seat. She herself had
been rather impaired by illicit substances and apparently passed the fuck out shortly after we
went into the house to find the boyfriend. She spent all night on my
laptop, just she had spent all night in the back of my partner's car
without ever making a peat. My partner ended up driving her back to her
home, where he woke her up and pretended that nothing had happened. Wait,
all right, Ronnie, know I'm not gonna ask any questions. All
right, Okay, I don't know who's really at fault there, yep,
but sounds good man, everybody everything. I don't know this whole thing.
I wonder if that laughter was a nervous laughter or a genuine chuckle of shit.
I gotta go, like the end of the Back to the Future,
We're gonna go. Wake up. She's been asleep out in front of the
house for two movies or something. I'm moving him. Yes, Yes,
don't don't do math, don't do drugs, don't get into squad cars.
Anthony says, today is my birthday, and there's also a podcast. I'm
twenty five today and wanted to know what you guys thought I wanted to know
what you guys thought space travel in general. I'm gonna say it was about
space travel general. Do you think warping or jumping through space will ever be
a reality? I think space is super dope twenty five you said, yeah,
okay, I agree that space seems super dope. I've never been there.
It would be cool to go, Brad. Is it positively or negatively
curved space? Yeah? Or was a flat? I think it's negatively Curveies
is a big question. I'm just guessing that's my guest buzz. My gut
tells me negatively curved, and you can fold it over on top of itself
and that's how we'll warp. I've seen it. Yeah. I think the
answer that question determines whether the universe has an end or not. Reading about
this recently, I think you can definitely jump in space. But that doesn't
sound too hard jump he said, jump or warp? Right? Yeah?
Yeah, I predicted our in our lifetime, somebody will jump while in space
bodily. Yeah, like it. It's dude, good prediction. It's probably
already app I think it's several times. Well, okay, yeah, listen
to me. Will anyone jump bones a space that I fell asleep in the
back of this space shuttle. Massive testing to that effect, like space boning.
I think they have. They haven't, but they are. There's one
instance where it might have happened. No one knows for sure. They don't
publish those papers. They don't talk about space. If you're in a fucking
I don't care who's with you. You're in a space shuttle, you're going
into space. It happens like twenty times total. Uh huh. You're gonna
get some bone on. You're gonna be one of like twenty people who've been
like and we're fucking up here alone. This is a lot of cameras around
here. But like, don't just don't you just want to know? Don't
you just want to know? You have to know, don't We have to
know when are we gonna When are we gonna be back? Never it's true,
we won't talk about it. I really want to find out now.
I think there was a husband and wife cosmonaut team that was up at the
same time and in a space station. Yeah, it's the papers you don't
read. M h. Space babies. I hope, I hope we warp
around in space I mean make it's a lot more interesting. Yeah, if
we can go somewhere far, that would be useful. Yeah, it seems
useful. If we can't get far without I'm just waste the more time.
And then we have to build colony ships. And then it's like we're gonna
get on these ships knowing that our grand kids will maybe get to a planet
that they might be able to live on. Yeah, it's all reapers or
something exactly. It's the problem is the problem is that even if we achieve
the speed of light, which is a big fucking if. Yeah, it's
still pretty slow. The closest star is still four years of that away.
What about a wormhole? Jeffary said, it folds like a piece of folds
like nap just through the hole. Yeah, like you know, all of
the ship and star trek relies on being able to go thousands of times faster
than light. Well, should we know can travel really fast? I have
seen it upsets thus cheat is run like sixty sixty five miles. Well,
they actually go through a wormhole. I guess that's true. That's what the
spots are. Look, all we need to do solve the problems in the
Middle East, go in excavate all of Egypt find the stargate. Yeah,
totally, Yeah, where's they only have to activate the one on the other
side. Yeah, how do you do that? Kurt Russell will still be
alive on the other side. Yeah, that's where he is. Yeah,
he keeps the stargate. It's in his place. Oh. Thanks Wikipedia.
Sex in space is human sexual activity in the weightlessness and or extreme environments of
atter space. Thanks for clarifying. I wasn't show, okay, John and
Philadelphia says. I went into my local game stop recently to purchase and PlayStation
four. A mistake, I know, but I was excited. I just
got my tax refund. Fuck and taxes, that's gonna happen. We defaulted
on the b all right, I'm my federal nom done, and thus allowing
me to jump into the next console generation. Finally, I was target first.
They didn't have any, so I went into game stop. Hope's foolishly
high. There was a stack of PS four boxes right by the door.
Each monk marked three ninety nine and looked promising, But boy, I was
wrong. I asked to buy one and they said I could buy the empty
box, but there was wait for it. Won't be any PS four's in
the US until April. The counter help went on to explain that Sony announced
a stoppage of production in the US to focus on the Japanese release. I
pointed out that this doesn't make any sense since they have their first big first
party release and Infamous coming out in a few weeks. His answer was a
shrug, and that's what Sony told us. But if you wanted to get
a six hundred dollars bundle, I could have it here by Wednesday. Yeah.
You went on to explain that it comes to the next control or two
games and PlayStation plus. Long story short, I told him I didn't want
to buy his shitty bundle, then win a home and bought one on Amazon.
It will be here by wednesday. So my question for you is this,
did Sony actually stop US production to focus on Japan? Am I wrong
for thinking that sounds nuts? That sounds nuts. That sounds nuts. I'm
sure that they are that they have put together. They have probably been stockpiling
shipments for Japan for some time and having consoles that are configured and boxed up
that way. But I don't think they have completely cut off the US to
accommodate that launch. But you know, but supply is going to be tight
for a while. Yeah, they probably want to get a bun. Supply
is gonna be tight for a while. But I think Amazon was back in
stock for a little bit this weekend. I mean he said he ordered one
on Amazon. So obviously, Hey, no, we have ordered what PlayStation
four? Yeah, from December that have not showed up yet because those got
ordered the Xbox One. But they got ordered from some weird ass company that
fuck man, I don't know, and selling lights. I don't know,
lights and routers. I have no idea. I don't know. But they're
a preferred vendor. Yeah, they're a preferred vendor. We need they need
able to take a purchase order. The hell. They must be preferred for
a corporate preferred vendor program where they can you know, se get you ship.
Yeah. It's it's a mattress and the PlayStation four. I haven't seen
them. Weird, Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Apparently they're somewhere.
I don't know. It's weird. Times. You should cancel that order
and then we should just order something from Amazon and then they're bought, they're
paid for. Okay, all right, well, Xbox one, we get
these xboxes. Let's just get them as soon as we can. We'll just
get to get it done. Like that's ridiculous, all right, talk to
some people because it's in the budget, right fuck man, I don't know.
I forgot that. That's actually the hard question. It's all sorts of
stuff in the budget. Man, I just add lines and excel. What
do you want? Do you want? Right? Uh, let's see,
Juan says. So I was driving around with my wife in an impossible question
came to me. She would not dignify this question with an answer. So
I was hoping you guys can help me out that it was a good sign.
I don't even know. I you know, I pulled this because it's
like, you know, if you can't get an answer or anyplace else,
I mean, we have to step in. It saved the days, right,
it's what it's the we signed the the Podcasts Compact, and now this
is we are legally bound if not us, right? Who? Who?
I don't know, Adam Carolla? Who else does a podcast? What are
what other podcasts? I think it's just us, the Tappitt Brothers. What
that doesn't that doesn't exist? Car talk what car talks on radio show?
That's different. They're they're like number one podcast. You're a number one podcast.
You go to your favorite foodery and there's a new item on the menu.
It happens to be your exact favorite regular item, except for one thing.
It is haunted the food. Would you eat this haunted food item?
What's it haunted by? This is at the end of the question. That
is the end of the questions. Would you eat haunted food? Haunted by?
What? Ghosts? Like? Thin the ghost? I think you're saying
like haunted is bad? Right? Is it haunted by like the ghost of
Hitler? I don't know. Would would food continue to haunt you after you
ate it? Probably? Could? I say that there is will haunt me
after I eat it for some amount of time, But then well, the
light is green, the trap is clean, and then it's no longer a
problem. I'm not sure. I don't know if I could dignify that with
an answer. I don't think I would dignify that, would not eat?
What's the incentive to eat your because it's your favorite food? I guess yeah,
I don't know. By the transitive property, would you then become haunted
That's what I want to know if you haunt you after you know, I
don't think it would, would you just I think haunted food? Yeah,
I think haunted food. You would be freeing the ghosts, eating exercise.
It's fulfilling its purpose. Perhaps you would past haunted stool. That's more of
a problem that happens to me once or twice away a ghastly stool. Oo,
you're okay in there, I'm gonna go. I'm just gotta Oh,
I'm okay. Thanks for playing that out to its conclusion. I didn't want
to leave anybody, you know, you know, wondering where those good Gotta
spell this stuff out? Uh, number one podcast, Number one podcast,
Take that click and clack. Jeff and China writes in and says, Hi,
this is Jeff Wu from China. We are a factory which produces pet
clothes, pet harness, pet leash. Please let me know if you are
interested to buy from us. Thanks. I will send the price lists and
website to you then only if you get back them. Yeah. Do that
make stuff for guinea pigs pets? The pets with the Z nope Max from
Australia Rights and it says last week some guy named Max from Australia wrote in
saying how it was okay to wear thongs with jeans and at work and a
bunch of other crap as another person named Max, also in Australia. Do
not listen to this crazy person. He is crazy beef. It's the same
guy. Yeah, thong beef freaking out right. So wait, what did
I do? That's not right? I made the wrong impression. Couple people
writing in about some of the things that came up on this podcast about the
mem wage in Australia. Yeah, no one really refuting it. Dania right,
some people saying like, you know, it's the exchange rate's gotten weird
and you know the top salaries are still lower, so it still is kind
of a thing. But Alec writes in it says, just listening to the
latest podcast and realized you may not have been aware of one of the features
of the Sony credit card, Brad, Okay, you can use that card
to purchase your PlayStation four from any retailer. Yeah, I know where this
is going, and then file the form with Sony to give the cost exchange
for your points, so you buy your PS four for three ninety nine.
Felt the form have three hundred ninety nine points and in points subtracted from your
account. He is right, but they added a pretty significant seurcharge to that,
yeah, a year or two ago. So like how significant are we
talking here? You buy a four hundred or something in points like you,
Oh, I lose an additional fifteen or twenty percent worth of points doing it
that way. I would still do it that way. Yeah, we'll see
how dire the situation gets. You can buy a sick bundle. The longer
I have to weigh, the more appealing that becomes. Also, I don't
think it's any retailer. Maybe I'm wrong. I thought it had to be
like I had to go to Sony Style Store or something like that. I
don't know. Yeah, I know with with my my American Express points translate
directly to Amazon, so I can just yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna dish
that card. Yeah digit not digit, but you hang on to it from
my credit history. But I'm gonna get a more versa tole. Yeah,
rewards card. I mean you're paying for the rewards up front, and well
it depends on how you treat your credit, I guess. But anyway,
no annual fee you on this thing at least? Yeah, annual fees in
credit card, that's what the fuck our corporate card? Wit. You have
an Amazon card? I thought, I I have an AMX blue like those
American Express points. Just huh, I think the Amazon visa I looked at
head an annual fee. Yeah, no, I don't have an Amazon say
the one that's like, hey, you could save, might do it right
now. But also it might be wrong about Yeah, it might be wrong
that this thing the rewards the stuff like they're either passing the savings onto retailers
by charging them higher fees. They're charging the consumers higher fees. No one
ever wins, and there's no free lunch. Credit card companies get free lunches
all the time. As it turns out, pay off your balance every month,
come out ahead. Yeah that's what I do. Yeah, So that's
why I just don't buy anything. You don't have the money for. What's
a credit card? So how you buy those? It's yeah, it's how
we make those Xbox ones show up. They were invented by kid Icris.
Okay they call him. Oh that's the money pit. I've seen. I've
heard the money pit. You can get more hammers. You can defeat the
eggplant Wizard. The only way to destroy it to cut it in a half.
Yeah right, I've seen it. And then call up and say,
I'd like to cancel this card, but I want you to note in my
file that I am canceling it. It is not you are not canceling it.
My credit is still good. Yeah. Yeah, if you canceled credit
card at all, have an impact on your credit history? Really, yes,
I can, oh yeah, consolutely. Yeah, Like they say,
like you're you're a bad customer. No, your credit history only extends as
far back as your oldest card currently held card. So if you have like
if if you if you first credit card is like ten years old, and
then you got another one four years ago, and then you canceled a ten
year old one, like that nullifies that initial six years of credit history.
Is such a well, it's fucked up. It's so weird. There are
all these weird ins and outs to it that are not intuitive like or liked
you never know about unless you did your research. It's bullshit. It's so
weird that you're better off having used the credit card and paying off that stuff
than to have never been in debt. Yeah, like the people that I
see you going around like I've never had a credit card that it's like,
dude, you're screwing yourself over like you were not godstry. You'll never be
able to buy a house. It is it. Yes, you have to
get into this system and it's fucking it's a real fucking racket. Or you
have to be off the grid man only. Yeah, bitcoins, which,
as it turns out, or not quite as off the grid is as cash.
Last question, bring up this old chestnut. Michael writes, Sinces,
I have a question about Call of Duty and resolution gates. Don't don't play
the resolution gate bumper here there's we've been a letter of resolution gate pumper.
I don't know we sent that out. Yeah, ign, Eurogamer and a
few other sites ran with video side by side of Call of Duty ghosts that
were found later to be inaccurate. The PS four resolution was later upgraded to
ten ADP with a patch. I remember Giant Bomb waited until after the patch
was released to cover the game. Activision stated that the discrepancy was due to
a configuration issue on the PS four. What really happened here was Activision doing
Microsoft a favor. No recently, numerous multiplatform games run at ten adp and
sixty frames on PS four and at least nine hundred and sixty frames mostly seven
twenty p on Xbox One. What is the deal? So, yes,
there was a yeah, call of duty when it launched, wasn't running at
the resolution that it did after a patch, like they you know, games
go gold. Guess what what? Making games for consoles that are not out
yet is more difficult than making games for consoles that have been around for a
while. The tools are not as good, the path to optimizing your game
is more difficult, and you're spending a significant portion of your development time developing
for a console that maybe doesn't have its specs locked down yet. Weird,
So a lot of things come together real late with those games. Even games
that are coming out now might as well be launched games, and you know,
they haven't really had time to learn from the first generation software to make
noticeable improvements. So you get these situations where by the time they had to
press discs for PS four, they were locked into this thing. And whether
it's configuration error or not, I don't know. I remember hearing before it
was out, Before the PS four was out, they're like, oh,
Activisions trying to get a patch through that's going to bring it up to ten
ADP and all this other stuff, and the game still has some frame rate
issues on on PS four in terms of like Microsoft like somehow paying for that
process, so they launched not at ten ADP. That is the conspiracy nonsense,
like, that's not that's not where the battles are fought. It's not
like you need to make it look slightly worse on the other guys and we'll
pay you to do it. That's shortsighted bad business for the people making the
games because they just want to sales money as possible. They don't really give
a fuck. Like the co marketing money that people get out of these people,
out of these publishers for various things. It's not insignificant, but compared
to having your IP available on all platforms instead of just one like that,
the money does not make up that. So people just are so quick.
It's the problem with our culture, you know it. I think a lot
of it gets into the same reason why people are so afraid of fucking science
and all this anti vax stuff that goes around. It's all the same mentality
of people that are just like so quick to mistrust large corporation. There's there's
a lot of there's a lot of weird basic psychology around mistrust of experts.
Yeah, there's the same thing happens in the political process. Yeah, Like
you see, like the educated elite is considered untrustworthy because they're not down to
earth. They've got to be putting one over on right, Yeah, right,
like people they are sometimes that they are sometimes that's the bigger problems.
Yeah, but established like a clear pattern of the people who know what they're
talking about being wrong all the time, and then maybe we'll talk yeah.
Right, But it's one of the things where if you follow the money back
on this and how these deals generally work like that, that's not a scenario
that is financially beneficial to anyone involved. Like they don't sell more Xbox one
copies of Call of Duty by the PS four one being inaccurate, especially at
launch where all of the launch allocations are already sold out. It doesn't fucking
matter because all those consoles are already sold. You have to be able to
point specific examples if you're gonna sail the credibility of the quote unquote experts.
But it depends who you put up as a quote unquote expert. Fox News
will put up like any dude as a quote unquote expert. I don't think
anybody is taking anything, Fox News says, seriously, not anybody, but
yeah, plenty of people are. Anybody with a remotely open mind is not
looking at that and saying that that's you know, but I mean, you
know, just get back where like we live in in a world right now
where Jesse Ventura is literally running a show out of Mexico where he's off the
grid. Yeah, he's an expert because the conspiracy either out there. I
love Predator. Yeah, and god damn it, that man can wear a
boa the way a few people can. But fucking come on, he was,
he was in our political system. He knows better than anybody. He
knows what's up. Yeah, I mean you look at you look at you
know, look at the experts, not necessarily in the scientific field, but
looking at her politicals. That's what I was talking about, Like, that's
terrible. I feel like the bulk of the political spectrum at this point is
just fucking noise and garbage. It's noise is garbage, But those are paid
those are elected officials that we have said you are the expert. Yeah,
you're my delegates. You have to cater to all sorts of people that just
want like totally meaningless information out of them, And that's the private industry.
Yeah, You've got so many different interests that have swayed the political realm to
their fucking whim over and over again, be a corporate interests or religious interests
or whatever. You it's fuss. See how fast this Comcast time order merger
goes down? Right? No shit, So I think it is. I'm
not I'm not trying to justify crazy conspiracy theory stuff, but like you know,
like I think, like you said, sussing out the getting through the
noise, sometimes I think it's more difficult than maybe. It seems like you
got a lot of information out there and then people doing some really fucked up
shit that you'd never imagine, Dan, how is that even possible? Corporations
are what? I feel like the number of times that I am, like
having to decide whether I'm going to post a link to Snopes or not has
gone up significantly. Yeah, over the past couple of years of like people
on Facebook going did you know that this happened, and it's like, no,
this is not at all. I stopped responding to those to my dad.
But well, that same token. The number of times I read stuff
in the paper being like you gotta be out of your fucking mind, this
is real has gone up as well. Yeah, like the amount of like
how did this? Yeah? What? That's crazy? But you bear this
out, like you follow the money on this, It doesn't make any sense,
you know. The notion of just like we're gonna make the ship at
a slightly lower resolution that only nutcases will make a big deal about. Well,
I mean, I mean the Call of Duties sold more on the Xbox
anyway. Yeah, that's the empirical truth, right, If there's money to
be made, then that's probably the least likeliest or the most likely scenario.
If it is an activision's best interest to make these the best products on each
platform, that's most likely what they're going to try and do. Yeah,
I mean, I feel like, in general, when you're out there trying
to weigh your options in terms of who to trust and who to believe,
drilling down, Yeah, drilling down on their motives and their methodology is always
one of the best ways to figure out should I trust this person or not?
And even then it's it's not always going to be the case. There's
been some stuff going around about titan Fall that you look at and go like,
well, maybe there's some merit to this, Like after they pushed back
the Xbox three sixty version of the game. There are kind of two scenarios
in that case, and some people are floating around that they're they're pushing back
the Xbox three sixty versions so that more people buy the the Xbox One version
of the game, and that's somewhat plausible. But to believe that, you
have to believe that Microsoft is stepping in and making that beneficial for EA,
and I guess response maybe blue point at that point, I'm not sure,
but probably just EA that it's in EA's best entry to move that game back
a couple of weeks, potentially, you know, lose sales for a little
bit of what the version of the game that will be shipping like on probably
the highest installed that'll probably go on to be the best selling version of that
game. You have to believe that Microsoft is so focused on trying to get
people to buy the Xbox One version that they would they would get EA to
delay that version two weeks possible, possible, or or the core version of
the game that Respawn is doing is so down to the wire and so last
minute that they're running this beta to try to figure out how the servers are
going to go, that the version that is chasing it that is being developed
by someone else has to be late because they're making changes to the main version
so late in the game that there's no way they could be accurately reflected in
the Xbox three sixty version of the game. Also, also the version that's
going to sell do tens of millions more people or consoles, so they could
have on the servers might be in their best interest to say, hey,
let's get make sure Xbox one and that stuff is up, that's before before
dumping all these people on it, before handing it with maybe there's all or
the money. I think that there is a very real possibility that that money
changed hands and that the game got slipped specifically to push the Xbox one version
of the game, because I think when that, you know, having talked
to a couple of people here and there that that did see it and say
it looked fine, I think it's one of those things that if people look
at it, they'll go like, wait, how come these consoles that are
a generation apart looks so similar? So this that to me is the part
where it starts to make sense. But so this is the part where I
think it can get You can start conflating things kind of easily where people would
be liked, Oh, could Microsoft then payoff Activision to say, let's,
you know, make a mistake, you know, for two weeks, Like
that's not necessarily like that. Yeah, but like the leaps of conversation,
and also they were working on getting that patch done before the discs were on
shelves. I know that for a fact that information isn't the case. Yeah,
so I see what they reported it before it was on shelves, so
it was pretty radily accessible. Well everybody should be reading exactly well yeah,
but yeah, we're definitely in a weird age of like information overload and just
all that garbage is gosh, what like things come together in such a way
that anyone can come up with any sort of cockamami scenario. Yeah you see
which, Yeah, sort I getting there. The scary thing to me is
that the mistrust of kind of established scientific and medical doctrine is going up.
Yeah, like you know, look at you know, I mean, don't
trust. Don't trust the corporation. I mean that's just yeah, the reation
does not have human interests in mind either. You know, no one does
right except you. You look out for you. So trust. Try to
be sensible about trust. Science the usually science and published science is usually pretty
good, peer reviewed, Yeah, peer reviewed. Trusted in the science is
usually pretty good way to go. But well, let me extend that out.
What about the chemical that was used in yoga mats that is in us
that Well, now, I definitely don't trust yoga in the subway. It
was in the subway bread, but it's also in buns at a lot of
fast food restaurants and all that other stuff, and it's still in their subway.
Has got out and said we're taking it out. But it's not because
of you. We were taking it out in any way. Shut the fuck
up. What's wrong with the subway bread? It had this chemical in it
that was also used to make yoga mats puffy? Is it bad chemical?
It is generally accepted as safe. Okay, we'll is generally recognized as safe.
It is also banned outside of the US as a food added it.
Well, that comes down to the FDA, right, you know, the
FDA has has gone on said like it's generally recognized as safe. Yeah.
I mean they also used to work, you know, small children in factories
twelve fourteen hours a day. Yeah, you know, like they'll they'll do
what they can get away with. Ye. Mistakes, mistakes get made.
So if that if that chemical is harmful, that's on the FDA. Is
it though, that's should be. They are the ra body, so it
should be harmful. Oh is it harmful? Because there are people just like,
oh, it's causing you know if if if people breathe in the dust,
it's causing asthma. But then it's there's so much information and misinformation out
there about it that it's become very difficult to decipher what's real and what is
is people just freaking out kind of about nothing. What does science say?
I don't know. The FDA says it is generally recognized as say, meanwhile,
in Europe and other countries it is no, it is not allowed to
be used as a food. There's a lot of that stuff that is banned
across like the EU, and one would think that if this chemical is being
has been used for a significant length of time, Yeah, there'd be some
we know about it by now, it would have been removed by now.
I don't know they're there are some strong powers that be I guess our cigarettes
harmful? Like why is that a fight? Why was that such a drawn
out legal battle for so long? Well, that is just right of corporate
interests and all the other stuff, right, But what do you think the
manufacture. I don't think that there's like a I don't think there's a yoga
lobby out there. I bet you'd be surprised. I bet you can maybe,
uh yeah, but that sounds crazy. I don't know who to trust
anymore. Trust Giant Bomp, Trust this podcast. That's right accurate information.
Yeah. All we want you to do is sign up with us, and
you know we're not going to resort to any trickery to do that. We
hope that you do, and we hope you'll like it. We hope that
we offer a product you feel is worth paying for. It took all the
p s, three versions of tight and fault, ground them up, added
to aluminum, and now they're distributing them in the atmosphere with aeroplanes using to
make the subway bread rise faster. Yeah, generally acknowledge as food safe.
Generally generally. I think in the EU may I don't know if it's just
UK though genetically modified foods are banned, it is all right, or it
may be labeled. Yeah, I think it's a it's a labeling thing more
than a MSG. Still bad. I like it can cause temporary, but
it's in some some people are sensitive to it, right, Is that the
case? You get sleepy, don't you? We get headache headaches? Yeah,
I don't know. It's never been a problem. We bought I put
MSG on a steak once or a roast or something we were making, like
you just had it. Yeah, we bought some msgeks. We thought it'd
be funny and then we had laying around and then it's like, you know,
had all this meat and like we're doing up this big old roast.
Damn. I don't know. It's try putting much MSG on it. See
what happens is what happened? Nothing? That was fine? Just get a
headache? No? Was it good? Yeah? It's fine. Mono sodium
glutinate, Yeah, that's the one mate glut mate. I can't remember one
of the others. It's it's it's one of those things that you know,
it's like people are always like trying to say that aspartame is going to kill
everyone is very rotten. Uh do you ever look at the study for that
stuff. It's also like one of the most tested chemicals around because of the
stuff like that that he's been thrilled into the into the ground testing on the
hydrogen monoxide. It's at some point it's like the cut the tumors out of
the rats and then they submitted the rats that these rats are healthy. That's
one of the things I heard. You heard this is what I heard,
yeah from it was a weird Yeah, it's it's actually it does have a
really and it's posted on Facebook, and yeah, you know, maybe it
is causing all sorts of problems if that's the problem is. You know,
the Internet and the availability of information has also led to the rise and the
availability of bullshit. Oh yeah, and then the best bullshit is when it's
a kernel of truth, yeah, and then surrounded and they're like, oh
man, that's plausible, and then surrounded by extrapolation, right yeah, like
oh yeah, I know, they cut the too and it's like, no,
that's not they did, but not the reason you think they did,
and like all that stuff. That's where like at some point they just need
some kind of like dumbed down peer reviewed thing of just like here's science for
the people. Shut the fuck up, here's what it's really is. But
then people would just not trust that. That's why I think snopes is actually
pretty great. I use that a lot, and usually the best ones are
the ones that are like Snopes was driven button. But as for what is
the deal with the you know, multi platform games running a different resolution?
The PS four is more powerful and the tools are better, Like maybe that'll
change, maybe it won't, but the power is what it is. Maybe
the tools will get better so it'll be less of a gap. But there
you have it, right right. I'm no scientist, okay, but that's
I feel like we talked to enough developers now to say that the PS four
i've ever heard that continues to be a more powerful machine and that the Xbox
one tools are not where they need to be. Yeah, heard, the
STK is kind of garbage. Yea, Yeah, that that seems to be.
So that will get ironed out. The power thing will be the power
thing. You know, we'll see if if a better tool chain closes the
gap. I don't know, Yeah, I guess what it comes down to
his head room, right, Yeah, like is there more power that can
be realized from this thing that hasn't been tapped yet? Yeah? Well,
man, if they keep making good PC ports, the whole thing is off
anyway. Yeah, Like sure, that time fall, it's all right,
it's super duper high insane, same textures that look all right, it did
look nice, but yeah, that's gonna do it for emails and I guess
the entire podcast, right, I mean, unless anyone's got to talk about
more theory and conspiracy bullshit, it's just it's just so fucking exhausting, and
it's like, you know, it's hard to know where to turn. But
like, I feel like if if people kind of try to use their heads
a little bit more on some of this stuff, you know, you're not
always going to have the expertise to fare it out what's really going on,
but in some cases you can start to follow the money and at least try
to extrapolate, like okay, well you know, like what interests are involved
in this? Who actually who actually benefits in a real world way, not
in a message board bubble of like Microsoft paid so many to do this,
why so two hundred people could like go, oh shit, what a sick
burn. That's not where they're spending their money. And how much money would
it cost them to pay off yeah, that other company? And then where
does that money come from and where does it get put on their books?
I don't know. It's it's it's a comar like that stuff does it gets
buried? It's co marketing money. The shitty thing, though, is tomorrow
they could totally be a leak that said Microsoft paid off Activision to do the
ship and then we'd be like, fuck man, I give up because everything
is so stupid. Everything is really stupid. Like but when people make moves
like that, they do it. They are bigger moves, I hope,
and they do it for real reasons. They make some stupid moves too.
There have been some stupid moves that come out and being like why would anybody
ever do this? And I think you can get away with this. It's
dumb, Like what yeah, like Chris Christy, what are you just about
to say? What the hell is going on? Expect us to believe you
didn't know what any of the people in your apart department I'm doing. I
don't know. I'm not gonna it's fucking dumb, though, even your staff
gay close down to fucking GW bridge, close down lanes and not think anybody's
gonna be like what foods construction? God damn it dumb. Seemed personally affronted
by this. It's a really big bridge, a really major piece of is
it a real shitty thing to do. It's a real shitty fucking thing to
do, not not just shitty in terms of inconvenience, but think about,
like I don't know, if they try to get emergency vehicles across that bridge,
like if if if things were if like life and death situations were not
addressed in a timely manner because of this gridlock or whatever, then that's just
the audacity, just like, yeah, we can get away with this.
Not only that, but the reasoning, like as just as political retribution.
I don't know, fuck off, I guess like that's the video. It's
the ultimate problem at the end of all of this is that humans are the
ones making the calls and you should go and playing Pokemon. Yeah, yeah,
that's right, we've got humans at the controls. We need to take
people out of the loop. We need computers that can launch those missiles.
Swopper will solve the problem. You know what, a whopper sound solves a
lot of problems. No, man, it's got fucking yoga dust in the
buns. Man, you will get puffed up asthma disease. Let your stuff
on fire, Okay, Yeah, that'll solve the problem. All right,
I'm gonna go bid myself on fire and uh, we'll talk more next week.
Bye. Alright. Hurry hurry, hurry, hurry. M hm.