Mm hmm. December is upon us. Oh great, that was fast and
this is probably the fullest house the Giant Bomb Cast has ever seen. A
damn it, I get to be Dave Coolier and do that was coming?
Cut? Can we just start over? Just start over? I don't,
I don't. I don't want to be associated with this. So too bad.
We're already I'm your host, Brat Shumaker. That's jeff Erson. Hello.
Hello, if we're not even in the podcast, there are too many
people. We have grown far beyond our means. Yeah, and we had
to improvise. Dan Ragers here, Drew's Dandelon is here. Hello, I'm
also Bob second the usual career. Are you sure? Yeah? Aretty?
Sure you want that? Oh oh yeah, I think long and hard here
I have. You've got all these choices. You could be which one of
us works the bluest? You could be DJ Tanner. See that's the thing.
People wouldn't expect it. It's a good point. Didn't they go back
and look at my old material? Whoa, yeah, whoa, I see
you as he's in half baked all right, and these woes. He's the
guy the narcotics anonymous thing directed dirty work. Yes, he did, he
directed, I directed dirty. Yeah, I'm talented. We are sitting in
the middle of the studio right now because Alex and Varrow is here. Hi.
Patrick Klaffik is here, Jason ay Striker is here. Dear God,
there's a lot of people here. You're sitting at You're sitting at a remote
control running into the control room. Welcome to the future, running this whole
thing. This is pretty cool. I Betty carolels here, Hello, how
are you doing doing? All right? You're like hot off a plane?
I am super hot off a plane. Left that you left that seat burning.
That's true, and you should not that that plane is being decommissioned.
It is not my fault. Now, is the burning anything to do with
the airplane boogers you were talking about earlier? No, those came. Those
are my own. That's my own house. You know. It's like that
dry air and you're just like just crunchy in the nose for like weeks afterwards.
You can't I That's what I'm saying. They charge you twenty five dollars
per plane, bogger. Now, the charge of everything, and sometimes it's
just like Slane got check you next seat for your plane buggers. Yeah,
I made I went to the airport an hour and a half early. You
got there an hour and a half our. Yeah, okay, all right,
that's half an hour earlier. Wow, I'm back up. I'm writting
this down for my back this up a second. How did some of that
hot New York efficiency right there? Jersey? Oh okay, yeah, so
I just sorry new York, New Jersey. I just say New York when
I mean New Jersey, just like everyone else who said that, I live
in New York. Yeah, because that's a kind of a little west,
that's a north Joys. I'm sorry what you say, northern New Jersey.
It is, but I was in Newark and it was just I think it
must have just been that Thanksgiving the traffic, and it can't get rid of
that accent. It's New York for any I'm sorry, what New York,
Neuvo York, not in New York whatever you said? Oh yeah, yeah,
new work. Well you let you left today. I left yesterday.
And so there's two air I got here before you. That's where Chicago at
the other is not a major hub anymore. No, No, everyone just
did, uh Midway. The other airport's not the one I went out of
I went out of my hair. But at one point the security line was
measured at a mile long. That's crazy. So my biggest problem was not
necessarily missing my flight. It was the minutes up to missing my flight on
the security line, and there was just like you didn't ask to go,
like skipp I did, Oh, I asked, and they did what I
guess because it's the holiday, They're like, hey, buddy, and also's
New Jersey, so that's just kind of but there was like just this oh
everybody was in front of me. That was the slowest person, and there
was this little old lady in front of me who just just had a shuffle
going right, and I literally she was right in front of me, and
she was my She was in front of me, and the scanner was in
front of her, and she's pushing her bags along the thing, the conveyor
belt and then just doing this tiny little shuffle. And I literally got up
behind her and just started pushing the back, like just kind of like pushing
her in the back because you know, I gotta go, yep, And
then I ran to my gate and uh, totally miss I've never missed.
The flight was the flight already gone or were you getting there and you hit
the cut off? I hit it was It was weird. I've never experienced
this before. The flight left at seven thirty in the morning, boarding started
at six forty five and ended at seven fifteen. So I made it there
at like seven twenty eight and the plane was gone. So the worst I've
had one where I showed up planes right there. Oh they wouldn't let you
on the fuckers let me out, Like, nope, close the door.
Yeah you see your kids on it, It doesn't matter. I think it's
a regulations. I don't think they can open the door. Can they fly
away with your kids? In that? Kidnapping? Think about that, man,
that really makes you think, Oh, you're saying if you have a
kid on there, like, oh my god, my kids. My kid
is on there. My baby's on that plane. Yeah, how the hell
did your kid get on the plane without you there to help you. I'm
not saying I'm inherent with the kids on the plane. My kid was like
I'm leaving on time. That's a really good one. It was not a
really good one. Uh So yeah, I didn't I didn't enjoy that.
I'm sorry. Yeah, but you're here now, I am. I made
it. We're We're happy to have all of you guys here for a gallon
week of Game of the year of production work, I guess is what we
would call it. Yep, flying him out. He's shooting. We brought
him on. Oh wow. Yeah, last time I was here, we
all would watchdogs that came out right? Uh man? Was that this year?
Yes? Yes, it was. Would you guys been up to Did
you work here in calendar fourteen? Yeah? I like almost half of it.
I know you did those somewhat rhetorical, but it feels like a lifetime
ago. That's been a long year, long summer. It's a lot of
stuff going on this year. But yeah, we're gonna I don't know how
the sound quality isn't here. We're just in the giant open studio. But
that's great. We're gonna be sitting back down here two days hence to argue
four hours and hours about the best games of the year and some of the
worst too. Yes, also that I'm only arguing but for the worst.
Okay, I mean I would You wouldn't have flown me out here if we
weren't talking about terrible stuff. Sopose that's true. But yeah, this is
a good dry run to see how this thing turns out. Yeah, for
many, many hours of podcasting to come. Who had a good Thanksgiving?
Me? Yeah? I want absolutely nothing. Yeah that's a good Thanksgiving.
There's too many people here to go around the horn. I just I want
to hear one Thanksgiving story. It's got a good one. I feel like
there's probably someone that has the best stories based on some what did ever buddy?
Just look at Damn? I just sat around though. Some all had
to watch a video of him throwing up. This the first thing I saw
when I walked in. I got an egg sandwich, and the halfway through
he's like, oh, check this part. This is the part where Danny
where Danny Dyer throws up everywhere. Danny puke before me. So I won
that competition. This is this is so I saw. That is still only
the second most gross thing I've seen today. What's number one? I don't
know. There's a photo on the internet of a guy who put his my
little Pony doll in a jar of his own semen and left it there for
a long time and it melted. The doll kind of melted over time.
That was your thanks Dan similar that just went I went cosmic bowling. Wait,
so were you? Were you in Kansas for things? Yeah? And
Daniel Dwyer went down to Kansas with the cultural exchange. That's crazy. I'm
going to Ireland next, are you really? Yeah? For Thanksgiving? Me
and I think my dad's going. I was just about asking, Yeah,
after this trip we all three side of than my dad's probably go to Ireland.
It does too, So your dad's took as like a shine to younger
Dwyer. Yeah. And Dwyer says that Kansons drink harder than Irish people.
Wow, he said he could not keep up with us. Is your dad
of a passport? Uh? Probably not. He could probably get one.
He works to the post office. Don't they give you a pass I wasn't
insinuating he couldn't get one yet. I don't know either way. I can
see your dad just being like, I'm only I will only travel to the
drinking countries. He's somehow on a no fly list. Somehow they've seen too
many of Dan's videos. Let's keep it there. He hates going beyond like
ten minutes outside of Shawnee, Kansas. So the idea of him in Ireland
just sounds amazing me. So, yeah, it should be. That's three
Drew, I heard you talking about pop maybe Yeah, I don't know.
I wasn't want to go to Ireland. I figure that's the way to do
it. Yep, yep, but yeah, yeah, we had a great
time, cool, excellent. Are we gonna be hearing from from Danny?
We were? We're gonna get his version of events. Oh yeah, we
have the same versions. He has stories that I was not mentally present for
so bodily, for up spros and for mentally more h yeah. Yeah.
So we recorded some stuff while we're out there, some drunken taxi rides and
him and my dad talking like Irish history. Uh yeah, so that'll be
going up probably ten a week or so. He's cutting it now. Goodness.
Will that be a premium Jim bomb. Yeah, it'll be a one
off premium thing. We'll put it on giant bomb dot com. Doesn't sound
like premium content. I certainly did he say your house? Uh yeah,
my mom's and my dad. We went back and forth. My dad's washed
filled house where we slept on couches in the floor, and then my mom's
very nice houseps. Yeah, yeah, two very different places. So wait,
we're not talking about white Anglo Saxon Protestants, right, We're talking at
wasps. Okay, okay, don't hang on. Why why is this house
infested by wasps? This time he goes out to smoke a lot, like
he smokes like chance, smokes throughout the day and just sits on the porch,
plays World Words with friends and smokes, and I guess washed like made
a nest right near the door. So every time he goes up to smoke,
I think more washed came in. They're like, there's just watched corpses
and washed. It's probably over. It's probably sagerating a little bit. It's
not just we're in singing us in our sleep. It's just too many wasps
to be inside a house. Did get Did you get stung? I feel
like it one is too many wash to be inside the house. So I've
never been stung by being, never been stung by wash, warn anything,
don't Yeah, I don't recommend it. Is it worse than like I always
assumed it was like a shringe, like getting a shot. So I'm kind
of allergic, not like deathly allergic, but kind of I got stung by
a wasp the size of my shoulder when I landed on it was Why is
there a wasp the size of your should I was in Virginia, okay,
and the growing big down there. Sure there wasn't just a guy with a
hypodermic me. It was a giant, giant freaking washp landed on my shoulder.
That's how they get you hooked on drugs. Yeah, they stab you
with heroin. Hey, you want to buy some more of this? Yes,
it was big, and it's the entire this entire section of my shoulder
just swoll up and I couldn't move my arm for like a day. It
hurts so goddamn bad. So don't do that. I got stung in the
hand, Yeah it was pleasant. It stings like a needle does not,
Okay, like it lasts for a while after. Oh yeah, there's like
venom in that ship. Yellow jacket a wasp. I think it's a kind
of wasp. Yellow jacket is yellow sick? Is it different? Yeah?
And the hornet is not a wasp. Hornet is also different. They're they're
different. I don't think they're Washenus species. May Kingdom file them which one
can fill up. Which ones die when they sting you? Most of them
anything that will not They all they all come from the genus of stingy assholes.
Yeah, so who made it's like a double like it works? Oh,
you were sitting in my hot seat on the plane. I hadn't taken
a shower in a lot anyway. Fuck wasps? Yes? Is that is
that a position that everyone here can get behind? I think so absolutely.
If you've been stung by one. The only consolation when when something when something
stings you, is that you know died in the process. So sometimes,
don't I think wasps they can pull out most a lot of them die,
a lot of them use the rhythms. They're highly they're highly evolved for that
way. You ever had you ever had a wasp get inside your shirt?
Oh? No, I have got my brother's pain. So that's where the
wasp mechanism of multiple stings comes in really handy for the wasp when it's in
an enclosed space on your body and it could just go to town. Yep,
you can just sting until it's done. It's a lot of fun.
So when Danny was staying over, he was seeing an early riser like when
I always hate staying over somebody's hass top of the morning. You're going with
this racist fucking just downstairs and top hatch, just like cooking. I was
looking for the rainbow, you know, like I hate staying over somebody's house
and you're the first one up and then you just kind of like anything without
them, Yeah, just hang out in the bathroom for a while. I
don't know. No, it was. It was absolute chaos as far as
the sleeping stuff goes. Would be up in like Thanksgiving night, we were
up till five in the morning. Uh. He can tell you that he
woke up one morning on my dad's floor to my dad watching Space porn,
Space, porn, porn setting space. That's kind He woke up and had
no idea what the hell like zero G then what's going on? Like early
morning Space? I saw a little bit. I think it was just some
folks on a spaceship having a good time. And that's so softcore. I
think my dad was doing it like as a prank or a funny thing,
and Danny will Cups like playing. Yeah, but no, it was chaos.
Would sleep like five hours during the day. We were up all night
most nights. Uh. Yeah, we were just incredibly hung over the entire
time, so late rising most of the time. So you went out like
Black Friday shopping and stuff. I took him to Walmart, YEP, I
took him to Walmart and to Target. He bought an America jacket at Walmart.
How was it described? Described the scene? Well, okay, did
you trample anyone? Yeah? No, it was stupid this year. So
Walmart did a thing where it's like we stupid. I didn't get to trample
anybody. I just walked right into something on the she paid for the hell
pointless. No, they would have like at seven o'clock, here's Black Friday
at number one. At nine o'clock, here's another one, and like they
all had different deals and stuff, which I guess is to kind of dilute
the crowd flow or whatever. So yeah, it actually it was like more
dead than the usual day at Walmart. But I just wanted to show him
how great of an experienced Walmart is. Yeah, and he's never been He've
never been to a Walmart. And like they're on like every damn corner in
Kansas, and it's just that's where everyone goes to get anything. A lot
of space done out there. Yeah, for Walmarts. He was shocked at
the size of it. When me and my sister were saying, like,
okay, we'll split up and then we'll text each other to find each other
when we get back, He's like, like, how big is this place?
Yeah? Yeah, but no, I had a good time. He
didn't know who Larry the cable guy was. When they saw the cable guy
merchandise at Walmart. He was like, who is this guy? And I
had wait, Larry cable guy merchandise of Walmart. They like, who could
have? Possibly? Guess like merchandise. They had boxer shorts. They had
a gummy but no they Duck Dynasty gummy bears, got gummy ducks, be
ducks. They had a lot of John's. No, John c has got
the exclusive Kmart thing. That's right, of course. Yeah, which Camart
is like trashy Walmart yep, I don't know if you guys have Camart.
Yeah that sounds ridiculous, but it's actually true. Yeah, Like I don't
like Kmart. I think Kmart was before Walmart. It was it was,
Yeah, yeah, Walmart some respect. Mart's falling on some hard time because
of the companies like Walmart, driving these mom and pop business like missus k
what you hear about it came in Ford to pay rosy o'donald to show their
stuff anymore. I started getting weird about when stores started carrying food, and
like I've gone into them once or twice in my life. A they are
the most brightly lit stores from the planet. I mean they have like they're
like supermarket and dentists and like you know, they have optometrists and it's like
anything that you could live in there. And there was no ways McDonald like
inside the water, like literal subways to get you from one went. So
my grandparents moved to Oregon. When I got into junior high and I went
up there and and Klamath Falls, there was a store called fred Meyer.
Oh yeah yeah, and that was it was the first time I've never seen
one sense. I mean, I don't know if it's the same thing as
Meyer, is fred Meyer the same as thing as Meyer? Is that different?
I don't know. I think maybe they're different. It's also like a
regional. Yeah, so I went, I went into a fred Meyer and
it was like that where it was like it was the size of the fucking
nine football fields and it was this huge store full of all the dumb electronics
and all this other stuff, and I was like, wow, this is
amazing. I can get this Anthrax album, which I literally bought an Anthrax
out in there. And also then they had a supermarket section. It was
just like this into the store's crazy and I just thought I would never trust
the food from that place. And that's when when when I saw a Walmart
for the first time and it had food, I was like, that can't
be good. It's a Walmart supercenter or a super Target. They have the
grocery store attached most targets well, so they recently opened it a Target and
Pedaluma and we're very happy with it except for the traffic. And it has
food, but they don't call it a super Target. It's just it's just
it's just a play food pantry stuff or they they got a frozen section and
frous and style like it's it's you know, you know, I would still
probably rather go to a Safeway or something like that, but you know,
you could still can do it. I have I have a city Target five
minutes for me. Now City, I don't know it's Target, It's Target
I guess it's probably smaller. They don't have case adas because they don't have
the machine. Is it underneath that Best buy it? Sext to it.
There's one there. Yeah, there's a there's a target in Queens, but
it's in a mall. It's the only target I've ever seen that was like
in a showing. They put one in the metro on here too, and
they don't call it a city target though. They just call it a target
the one night I go to Anyone. Oregon also has a store called Big
r which is basically Walmart but for farmers, just for like it's you walk
in there, it's just like saddles and the ten gallon hats and shotguns and
feed yet awesome. Yeah I try. I tried to go buy like like
I want to skipped bow and arrow bolts, like yeah, like farmers,
Yeah you know farm tarannosaurs or whatever the farmer that's like, Yeah, I
bought one of those like uh, black and red flannel hats with the ear
covering las. Yeah great. They recommended Welcome to the giant big box cast.
I didn't buy shot guns. I didn't buy anything. I bought it.
I bought a we you for a controller for ten bucks off. That
was my Black Friday story. Got a blue Duel Shock four for twenty bucks
off. How could you buy another one of those in good conscience until they
put a better batteries I love. I love the control or just the battery
life. The batteries not my problem. I have the thing with the analog
stick where the rubber is running off, coming apart. Yeah, cheap ass
piece of shit I feel I had never had. You should sit closer to
TV. That's my advice, an option. I have one USB cable that
I'm using the charge the controller and occasionally the that wireless headset, and it's
been fine. My Xbox one with double A batteries, pretty good chargeable batteries
and had richargeable batteries like that's yeah, that was too whatever, it's fine.
Half think of the think of the strain on your wrists. It's an
Xbox. It's supposed to be heavy. That's fair. Everything is heavy.
That's why the Duke was the size it was to eventually just have this scaling
down makes sense over time. I tried to go out on Black Friday.
I tried to go out Thursday night. My girlfriend and I we woke up
at ten forty five. We're like, Okay, we're gonna hit this mall.
We're gonna get this mall at menu and and make it happen. You
can't. Yeah, pm pem, We're gonna get to this malle for the
for the midnight uh. And it was so fucking foggy outside. We got
to the gas station and was like, all right, I don't want to
drive half an hour of this mall. We're gonna end up dead. And
also I just don't care. So yeah, we gave up. Didn't get
you the retail probably would exactly. Yeah, No, were you going to
buy stuff or just to like witness? I mean, I had no,
I have no idea. I was just I was along for the ride at
that point. I was like, yeah, fuck it, I don't know,
let's go see what's going on. So we didn't have like a TV
in mind. It's like, oh, that's five hundred dollars. No,
No, we didn't. We didn't have vehicles that were like big enough for
the TVs that I want to get. And I am in the market for
a TV, but how big up a TV I want to get? Like
at least sixty inches whoa, that's I ended up getting sixty when I bought
one on Black Friday last year. I just got it from online. It
beast By. Yeah. I had only meant to get like fifty, like
I had a thirty seven, and I was like, well, I should
at least go up a little bit side it's been eight years since. And
then you go online just the deals are like i'd said, a budgets I'm
gonna spend about and our bucks. There's like seven fifties sixty inches Okay.
I didn't even I didn't even measure. I was like, I'll worry about
it once the TV show. Yeah. I spent like an hour trying to
convince my girlfriend. There was like a Samsung like sixty inch smart TV.
There was like seven hundred bucks as a Black Friday deal. I was like,
we do not need a new television, but we should totally get this
television, and she just she just wouldn't budge. I didn't want to spend
seven hundred dollars of my own I wanted it to be a there. There
was like was a point where I was looking on like Amazon or something in
like curved TVs were a reasonable price, and I was like that'd be a
really dumb fucking thing to buy. That's buy curve TV because that sucks.
And I almost talked myself into it with that exact logic. And I want
to know. This is crazy. I forget how much it was, but
I didn't know this. We're out yeah, out yeah yeah, but we're
out there and get some four K screens and will not watch anything in that
resolution. We should get a curve TV. Let's see how it breaks.
Yeah, did it break? Throw it like a boomerang. I'm confident that
you could break curve TV. I could break a non curve TV. I'm
pretty sure of it. I think I've done it, so I've heard I'll
do it again. Okay, I'm not gonna stop. I think there's video
footage, all right, before we get into the real business, Finny.
Yeah, we get a house update. Oh really on a daily basis.
I'll just give you. I'll give you the last twenty four hours, all
right, okay, okay, So on Saturday, my wife and I moved
half of our storage. We have two storage units, a big one and
small one. We'll call it pop a storage unit and baby storage. And
we moved baby storage unit and a little pop up store storage unit into the
house. Right, hired moves to do. This is Saturday after Thanksgiving,
and the plan was load everything up into the house and then Sunday. I'm
basically I'm gonna stay the night and I'm gonna I'm gonna jump on my plane
and I'm gonna go. And this is the first this will be the first
night I stayed in. Now, okay, the heat was on. Everything
was on. Uh, my wife and our two kids, we're gonna stay
at their mother in laws. Right, no stove, the kitchen's not done
yet, nothing nothing to cook on. So I'm there. I'm super stressed
out because like I was painting a wall in the basement because the wall the
basement weeps water, which is a great way to describe it, weeping walls,
so like water comes in. Like, are You'm sure the house isn't
haunted? No? Okay, no, are you sure? Are you sure
you're not attending Hogwarts? No? No, no, Jersey hard. So
like I'm downstairs the house sad. Maybe it should be happy. Now it's
gonna so like I'm painting and wall with like that kind of could be bullshit
dry lock stuff that you know, like this supposed a little lock and water.
Anyway, I need to do it before the washing and dryer get there
because then I can't get behind it. So I'm doing this corner on the
wall, and all of a sudden, I hear all right, back up
about an hour or two before I took a massive dump in the house.
Okay, that will fast forward back. Okay, So I hear this,
Uh, everybody's going out of that field, like you know, it was
the first one, you say, fristening the house. Yeah, yeah,
a little door on the bathroom, Yeah, just on the toilet. Just
I'm gonna make this go for as long as possible. Is happening. This
is happening in real time. It's a pertetual motion. So I'm downstairs on
painting and I hear, uh this like tippity tap tap tap tap, Right,
what the fuck is that? And I walk over to the other side
of the basement and there's water dripping down into the basement. I like this,
and I like drips on my hand and it's not water, it's raw
sewage. So I go upstairs to the new bathroom that we're putting in and
there's just a pipe with sewage coming out into the now. Granted this is
like ten o'clock at night. You know, I'm there alone and there's sewage
is going in behind the dry wall, right, just going yeah, I
can expose pipe. Yeah, well, like it's where the bathroom sink is
gonna go, right, But they didn't plug it, so it's just just
leaking sewage out into this new wall they had just put up, like a
plane machine pulled on the level. Well, it wasn't like sludge. It
was like it was you know, yeah, when you say sewage, I
mean it's that the literal definition of sewage. Is that just straight up poop?
Or is that like it's water? It is as if you flush the
toilet and somebody on the other end had a cup and caught it, and
it's like it's like it's like ground up like toilet paper in our life.
Oh gross. Yeah, So it's a whole milliew of just think about everything
you've ever flushed down a toilet. Now now coming back up, Yeah,
did you recognize your poop? Mine? I didn't know. I didn't spend
too much time with it, Like I kind of immediately gone on the phone.
Uh was ten o'clock at night, this oclock. When I called the
contract, actually my wife called the contract because I'm a baby. I was
like, poop, it's shooting ship coming into it. It's on our walls.
And it's because I just set up, uh in the basement like a
router, and like I bought this too big, like fucking cage to put
my router in, because that the whole house wide with network stuff, and
it's now full of like sewage, right, And I'm like, there's there's
poop all by round and and she's I'll call the contractor. Don't call the
contractor. And the contractor comes over and he looks at it and he's like,
yeah, yeah, there's there's probably got Oh, you've got a good
eye, that yours. That's a good contract. That's a fine bouquet.
And then so he sees it, and then he's like, okay, there
must be a stoppage somewhere after the new pipes, of course, but you
know, somewhere else, uh, And he puts a plug on the pipe
and we're like flushing some of the other toilets because you can kind of there's
a drain. You can see the water go out, and we're trying to
figure out whether the stoppage is if we have to call the plumber. So
we do that, and we're like we're kind of wrapping up, and I'm
like, okay, it's you know, there's a plug on the pipe.
Are ready to go now it's about like eleven o'clock at night, stopping pat
or done anything. Uh, And he's like, all right, let me
just go tighten up that plug before we leave, so that you guys are
all, okay, nothing's gonna leak while you're not here. Fucking a.
He goes to tighten it, the big bursts off and sewage just fucking ray
projectile sewage all over him and just start blowing onto the floor. It's like
a little rascals and he's just like shit, shit shit shit fuck shuck.
And I'm just like, oh my god, she's standing there being like she's
turned around and run down immediately it's just like pooling on the floor like I'm
throwing paper towels on it. The floor finished at this point, yeah,
new floors are that God. And then I run downstairs and now there's a
bunch of sewage and actually tripped the breaker on all that. So how was
the router at the point it's covered in fucking shit, so like it's my
shitty internet. So it's just it's that was covered and then there's poop on
the floor and he, you know, God bless him, he's sitting there
just trying to clean it up and like spraying it with anything that says it
has bleaching it, right, just like trying to kill it. And so
that that's that was my yesterday. And she just sorry then. So so
once we capped it and we're like, don't use any want don't you know
everything had drained out of the pipe at that point, and that this morning
the plumber came and fix the problem. Is that the state in which you
left the house, Yes, this was this thing in place, like eight
hours before you had to be on a flight in the contractor proceed to beat
the plumber senseless after, you know. It's so that's you know, I
don't think so, but like he didn't well within his rights. So look
I don't understand things period, because it's like put the new pipes in,
right, So is he responsible to test the whole system? Yes, and
the existing syce So I don't I don't know. Do you just test what
you put in? You test everything because you have been tesked with this job
of making sure that all the ship goes to the right place. I would
think, well, so the so the toilet's all flushed and nothing back to
I don't know, I don't know. There was also this, very quickly,
this other thing where we had to get the gas turned on in the
house, and granted the gas had been off for like six months, but
that the plumber had tested all his new lines, and then the gas company
was like, before we turn this on, you need to test tie the
whole system together. Uh, and we need to make sure this works.
And plumbers like whatever, like all the new stuff's good, and the contractors
like, do you want to test it? Was like, do we have
a choice? He's like, no, not really, you should test it.
And basically what they do is they pump air through it and they have
a gauge and the gauge needs to stay at fifteen pounds for square inch for
like twenty four hours. Right, that means there's no leaks. They test
the old system and it immediately went to zeal which means that there would just
have been gas leaking into the house if you hadn't. I'm learning a lot
so is this a new house like you buy know it's a it's a house
that was basically condemned that we are restoring. So if you're restoring house,
are buying a new one? Like what comes included? Like you have to
buy the pipes and the toilets and like what or is it just the wood
that you're buying in the land what you're doing? Would you buy the house
the house comes with it stuff? But let's say you're building a house,
like you pay I'm paying one hundred thousand dollars to build a house and you're
just the wood. I'm talking. Are you buying this in the under of
Canada? The materials prices they're not going to be that much low. I
don't know, you'll get to like aluminum shanty that you lean up against.
Well, okay whatever a normal normal person house is now? Yes, Like,
so you pay, you pay sticker price. Is it just the wood
and the floors and the steps and the ceiling and then you have to buy
the toilets and the refrigerators. And so I've bought a house that was not
condemned. Okay, when I bought my house and it is now, it
is now, but it should be. But we're getting there. And basically
you have to do a lot of stuff up front, like you have to
do a pest inspection and like so the existing homeowner will often do most of
the inspections and pay for it. Yeah, and they will then present it
and say like, you know, here's the status of the house. But
you at some point have to go, do I trust these people who probably
went to the cheapest people in the world to get these inspections done. Who
knows what they did. I'm going to bring in my own people and have
them inspect it because they work for me, not the sellers. Yeah.
So it's like you I get to have someone come in there kick the tires
to go like all right, this actually passes our pest inspection too, it
doesn't seem like it's on fire, okay. Uh. And so you have
to do like I did that before I bought the house. It's like a
significant investment. So it's one of th things like you if you go the
distance on a lot of houses and put in a bid and then get rejected,
like you might be paying for a dozen different pest inspections on a dozen
different places. Align in the way were talking it's like if you want to
bucks the pop, I don't know. So we didn't have to do any
of that. Yeah, because it was you already knew it was bad.
Well, we already knew it was bad. It was also just a transfer
for because Jesse's dad owned the house. It was a transfer, so we
didn't even have to have insurance on the house because like it was just basically
which was probably a mistake, you know, so we even yeah, so
like but so for us, we basically they tore down pipe down the house.
I told Jesse it was like, we need to get in church right
away. Uh. They toren down the house basically to the frame. So
we have had to pick every every outlet, every light switch, every is
all align item. So you are you're going to home depot and getting all
the st you could, or you can just ask the contract or be like,
I don't care what light switches you put in, every socket, every
outlet, every you know, door knob, floor in. All that stuff's
gonna come from somewhere. But you're kind of looking at locations you like,
I want outlets here. I was here. Yeah that's kind of cool.
Yeah, so I was able to like I was like we're putting like Cat
six in all the rooms, and like you said that you had wired and
stuff everywhere. That's yeah, and so that's cool and yeah, well we
did that hot twenty fourteen technology CAT six. So like I think CAT six,
you know, you gotta pull the trigar at some point, right,
Yeah, So CAT six could be all right. For a while, I
was saying, well, what else would you put in eight, two,
eleven ac? Oh? Whatever, that's extensive. So I also have wireless
access points that are so this CAT six that runs to the access points uh
ass points? Access points? How big is this fucking house like tiny were
doing. I don't know, because if you're gonna do it, yeah,
you're gonna have the walls. Yeah yeah, yeah, I guess yeah,
if you billing it to your speck right like not some like my ass was
built in the seventies and I look at the like the bathroom it's got two
sinks, one set outlets. Who the fuck did that? Well, it's
two floors. They just was like, we'll pull it on the first of
all and one yeah. So like anyway, yeah, and that it becomes
exhausting. At some point I had to pick out the toilet's the toilet paper
holder. You know everything, But did they give you like a catalog and
you just point at what you want? Or do you have to go to
a store If you want to pay like eight thousand dollars for a toilet paper
holder, you could do it. If you want to go to home depot
and just pick one out of a bin, you could tell. But they'll
give you like a brochure and you can just pick it out and there's no
they It's like you have the contractor to do whatever work you assign them,
like you if you know, Like so it's like, oh, well,
I want someone to come in and like, so I have a chandelier in
what is supposed to be the dining room but it is now actually full of
arcade machines, and the chandelier fucking sucks. It's a piece of shit.
It's just it's garbage. So I'm I have a contractor guy that I know.
I'm gonna say, like, look like, I'm not handy with this
ship. You want me to go put it a light, I will kill
myself. So I'm gonna tell tell this guy, like, okay, I
want to get this light in this spot. He'll go okay, cool,
he will go to home depot and buy it, or I could order it
and have it shipped like whatever. But I can say, here's the thing,
put it in it is basically what I'm doing is basically saying, like,
as a homeowner, I am giving up my rights as a homeowner to
do this work myself and say, look, man, just this this towel
ring fell out of the wall and now there's a hole in the wall.
And fuck man, I'm not going to patch the wall. Just patch the
wall and put this thing in there. And planners, oh yeah, you
can be lazy if you want to be sure. They're like they're wedding planners,
right, Like you can be hands on or as hands off as you
want to go. Most of the time you want someone to just need that,
and like, I don't know. The difference with building a home is
that there are laws and regulations about what what legally you need to have in
there, So at some point everything needs to be up to code and not
dangerous, so it sure that sort of stuff. So like if you do
it yourself, you still have to get it like certified and inspected and all
this other stuff, and they'll probably be really bummed out that you did it
yourself, because you're denying a union man a job, and no one likes
that. I guess. So, yeah, like I could go in there
and wire the whole thing, but it saw the past inspection and like I
don't know the codes or whatever, but like the yeah, everything has to
be done to code, which can become a pain in the butt itself.
And you know, it is a lot of we're exhausted having to pick everything
out. Right. I bought my toilet on Amazon, right, I just
want to like, what toilet has the best reviews? The ship a toilet
to you? Totally? Did you get a cool Japanese toilet with buttons?
No? Come on, man, what are you doing? Running out of
money? I'm doing it's a bucket. Maybe somebody can explain this to me,
because people have tried to explain this to me my entire adult life.
How toilet works. It's weird. Yeah, no, you it's weird all
right on the video's floor. Apparently in Layman's terms, as simple as possible.
What the fuck is a mortgage? The closest I don't understand what it
is? Really? Somebody told me that it's like, have you ever.
Have you ever gotten alone for anything? You've got thirty seconds explain this.
It is a homeland, so you don't. So the bank is paying for
the house that you are getting a loan from the bank. They are paying
so so they're giving me when I bought my house, They're not giving me
a check. They're giving a check to the person who's selling. The bank
pays the home people, yes, and and then I pay the bank monthly
and the bank but the house and the bank technically owns the house until I
pay it off. Imagine that you're paying rent to your bank and after like
thirty years, you own the house. You can just do cash though,
right, and then you just own it. You don't have to have any
banks involved or if you have, ye totally. If you have, if
you have that kind of cash on let me tell you a little bit about
San Francisco. You did not have that kind of cash on him. No,
no, no, I just don't understand who's paying who. It is
just a loan. It's just and you have to get approved for this stuff
for so because it's so much money. I don't understand what credit scores are.
And that's another thing. But so that's you should have a credit card
and be building up if you unless you want to go off the grid and
live like jesse Ventura. There are two ways you can go with this there,
Look, there are two ways you can go with your life, Dan,
and one involves me being jesse Ventura. One involves you being off the
grid, jesse Ventura style and paying cash for everything for the rest of your
life like some kind of goddamn fiend. The other one involves getting into the
system, getting this chip put in the back of your stone, and getting
a goddamn credit card and paying it off. Isn't it infinitely easier to just
rent apartments for the rest of your life? Well, that helps, That's
what I have no plans to do anything about that. So here's the difference,
And you may be right. In some cities it actually is more cost
efficient to rent. But you when you have a mortgage, you are putting
money. You're essentially getting equity in that I can sell that house. He
can sell this house, recoup all the rent he has paid over the years,
possibly make more. Yeah yeah, yea. Ideally the property value will
increase. Right, So I bought my house right before all the prices went
to shit when the economy went bad. Oh eight, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, well it was it was like oh seven when I bought
the place, so it was just about had peeked and then went to ship.
So I paid a significant goddamn amount of money for my house and then
overnight I got a mortga okay, and overnight half of its value was gone.
But I am still on the hook for the full amount. It's not
like when the house goes, you know, down in half. I get
a sudden they only pay off half because my loan was for X amount of
dollars. Then eventually you can go So here here's what re mortgaging. Refinancing
your loan is some other company or sometimes even the same company, because it's
a fucking insane racket. We'll say, hey, your loan that you got
years ago, the terms of it, you could do better now. You
could get a lower interest rate on the loan, so you'd be paying less
money on top. Or basically, someone will come along and say we'll give
you a better loan. So we'll give you a loan to pay off your
old loan, and then you pay us back that loan. This sounds terrible,
it is. So if people do this well because you get a lower
rate when you're refining why people do this whole, so we're not refining to
get to a house and put access points into the reality is very few people
can afford to pay the entirety of the cost of the house up front.
So it is like a Tomnok situation. It is, and and it's the
people who can pay it every month. Like it's not like tom knock or
it's like we won't upgrade your house until you pay it off. It's like
if you don't, if you don't pay this payment every month, eventually we're
gonna come take you out of that house. Even even if you had the
money to buy the house, it's still smarter to financial mortgage at a lower
interest rate than what you could be making in hosting the money. So then
you invest the money and pay the mortgage as usual. Yes, the interest
rates are usually not such that you would want to take hundreds of thousands of
dollars and just pay out right, right, you can take that money,
get a return on that for a higher interest rate than you So if I
wanted to someday, let's say I don't want to live where I live anymore,
I want to go somewhere else, I want to buy another house,
or I want to rent or something like that. I own that home.
I could rent it out, but the bank owns it, right And he
said, well, if if I pay off the market, or if or
even if I'm in the process of so, I could rent out my home
right now for more than what my monthly payment on that lap. No.
No, I could rent it out permanently. I could move all. You
could also and rent it to someone like you who wants to rent a house
okay, and doesn't want to buy a house. Okay. I could be
gone. I could be a slum lord okay. And they could do things
like the heat doesn't work and I go fuck you and paying up the phone.
You could make an argument that you're already all or yeah, no whatever.
That place is fine. No, it's it's a bran new dishwasher.
It's looking good in there. Someday. Mortgages are weird. I'm not gonna
ever get mortgages is weird? You are, No, there's no chance in
hell. Well, I see. The thing is like, if you're paying
rent on an apartment, it's just going to another dude. It's just going
off. It's going to me and I'm spending it on fucking Brita. But
I don't have to do anything. I just get the right a check once
a month and then just go one day. One day, you wake up
in your seventy and you have nothing to your name, but also but also
happiness. But but they can also that guy, they know where to live.
The guy's charging rent. Can't monetize that right, you can't buy it.
You can kick you out or raise your rent like you have no agency.
Really, there's another place. Wow, Sometimes it's not that easy,
you know. Like then sometimes you know if you're in a place for a
long time, like there was a there was an issue in New York for
a long time with people who had been in apartments for many, many years
and they were rent controlled, and that means that the price was well below
market value for whatever the property was, and and landlords started kicking these fairly
elderly people trying to get them evicted from those apartments because they knew they could
charge like many or five times what they were already charging. That's happening here
and under the Ellis Act in an epidemic fashion, like it's everywhere, Like
there's no guarantee with a rented property that you can stay there forever. Right,
they will find like landlords will find ways to to fuck you over if
they think they can make more money, go to another apartment, because that's
that's an option if, like yourself, you're gainfully employed. Yes, but
I'm not. And I'm saying, like I have a job, and like,
why don't what if if you don't want an apartment? I do,
though, Well, like what if you want what if you want so?
What if you don't want shared walls? What if you want to play Rockman
real fucking loud. That's the problem I ran into. I'm finally walls.
I've always had shared walls. It's never been a problem once in my life.
You should try not having shared walls some time. It'll blow your mind.
Have you guys, Have you guys seen this reverse mortgage thing that the
Fawns is peddling to old people? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen
that. Two the two people I've seen hawking this thing or the Fawns and
Fred Thompson. The only every time those ads come on it so candidate alumni.
But it always starts, and it always starts off if you're over the
age of sixty two. But it sounds like you're basically like selling your equity
in the house back to the exact Yeah, and they and they're giving you
a little extra money along the way so you can Yeah. So basically,
yes, that is exactly. But then at the end of the pitch,
they're always like, the best part is you still own your house. Yeah,
so you can get like a yeah, I'm not sure how that part.
Basically you could go get like a line of credit on based on your
equity, you go get a loan, but basically using your home as collateral
without that too, if you own enough of it, there's there are a
lot of weird options you can get into if that's the sort of stuff you
want to do. But yeah, that I don't know any any kind of
financial stuff that's offered on late night TV. Buy the Fonds and maybe it
seems like sort of a shell game. Yes with you, uh, and
I like the Fonds. Who doesn't know he's great on Children's Hospital. Yeah,
what is this podcast? I don't know. Welcome to the Giant House
the House cast. But it doesn't matter because property values have gotten such that
no one's ever going to buy a home ever again. So uh, it's
a fucking nightmare around here. Now, Dan, I'm with you. I'm
still renning an apartment. It's still enjoying the lack of responsibilities. Never never
say that, say so, after all, after all was said and done,
after my most recent moves and all that other stuff with the you know,
I got deep in the finance game, kid, I am paying less
for that place than I was when I was renting. Huh, and it
was actually like a better like I am, I am saving money and I'm
a house and exactly I'm owning that thing. Theoretically, at the end of
this, no one can come in and say those pinball machines can no longer
be in this house. I at one point said, then no one else
can say that to you. That's true. That's true. I saw my
world comment machine guy came down from Nebraska and bought four hundred and thirty bucks.
What do you think. Yeah, that's very good. It's gonna bum
right joystick. Joysticks are like four bucks. It's okay. He feel like
it was gonna be more so I cut off twenty bucks. But sorry,
yeah, that's I bought it. Yeah, whatever, it's Yeah, then
if the monitor is in good shape house, Yeah, exactly, you can
live in a Mortal combat machine. Actually, I think owning an arcade machine
is probably more burdensome than owning a house. Really, So I traded machine
has a bum monitor on it currently, but the pinball machine didn't work at
all, so at least this one makes noise. You can replace it with
another c r T or go to like Elsie. It needs a part,
so the monitor actually talk to you still know that guy who can get you
the parts. Yeah, that's how I got the main. Vinny, that
story sounds like an actual nightmare, you know. It's thanks for the updated
Yeah, so glad I have so like, yeah, you know, it's
really really interesting to see every single bit that goes into the house. Like
that part is actually like how many times can you see like where every wire
is running your house and every little bit. But you know, it's like
it's a new system, so you turn it on and sh it's weird.
But yeah, that part was that that's probably the areothing that happened to me
so far with the house. And that is uh, that was like twelve
hours ago. Has anything been so ruined that it's gonna have to be replaced
drywall or flooring or anything. The house I kind of split, so but
I don't think so. As far as the check ins today seemed, no,
it didn't. It pooled a bit, but I think I got cleaned
up. So Hey, the nice thing is I could just went in so
there's like extra bits here. So if the drywall needs to come down and
it comes down, or like the floors need to come up, they just
went down a couple of like a week ago, so you replace that stuff.
But it's been a really interesting and exhausting process. I'm sure houses are
dumb, man. You should do what I did earlier this week, just
living a geodesic dome. Really, Yeah, where'd you find that? So?
My girlfriend has this amazing knack for finding the weirdest, most out of
the way places on Airbnb. I don't know, but we just decided we
want to go into the desert for a few days because it was winter,
it would being cold, so that would be a nice time to go.
She found this place in Pioneer Town, California, which is a town set.
Yeah it was. It was founded by by Roy Roger and I think
Gene Autry as as a film set. It was not actually a town.
It was just a film set they built to film movies out there. So
the town world, the town is now occupied, like people moved into the
old film set buildings and like they're like artists living there and ship. But
this so this this how this place was like miles off even from the town
and this little weird hippie enclave somewhere in the middle of nowhere. A dome
house. Yeah, haven't y no yurt that I was aware of, but
it did have Wi Fi, so yeah, hot side no, I mean
we had a wood burning stove, so it would get hot if you you
know, burnt would but otherwise it was pretty cold out there, but it
was middle of nowhere. It was beautiful. It's yeah, the Ford focus.
I was driving down like the roads out there very much. Payot,
did you consume the amount that I'm legally allowed to disclose on this this company
podcast. You've got a medicinal card for that, I assume time. Yeah,
I disappreciate. Yeah, I've got an elbow thing. They passed that
in New York, right, Yeah, Coyote told me to find my soulmate.
It was great brand I feel like you want to get this podcast back
on track. Gentlemen, we have made it to the first break without significantly
all right, I'm looking forward to making it the second break without good for
us stuff either. Amazing. I'm gonna tell you about my bathroom and the
water damage. I'm worried to my ask it's coming up next time. All
right, all right, yep, let's take a quickne We'll be right back
as Let's talk about video games please finally, Yeah, it just seems damp
in that bathroom is and I'm worried that there's been water leaking. No,
No, the walls are fine. The towel ring that came out, Okay,
that's no good. How does that water smell? Fine? Fine?
I put a new shower head, just had some some people come through.
And is there any visible mold or mildeer? I don't, I mean you
brought it up maybe okay on the walls of the ceiling. Is like a
little black spot on the wall that I'm telling myself is fine, paid over
it. Yeah, yeah, I think that's what the previous owners may him
not. In fact, that always weirds me out that that's like a legitimate
fix for mold. Is layers. There were like layers of mold and then
paint and then mold and then paint on this wall and yeah, paint doesn't
kill them all. Well maybe not live mold, but like when there's this
coloration like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's crazy. It just
crazy. Don't buy a house video, yeah yeah, spend all your money
on games. That's right. Build a house with games, live outside under
the stars, that's right. You and Jesse Ventura, look at him.
He's you. You and Jesse in your games. You'll be fun. That's
name my auto back Jesse and my games. Are you gonna? Are you
gonna grow out the like bald mullet? Me? Yeah? Why would I
go with? Like he's gotten? Have you seen that thing? I mean,
the the back mullet dragon a Dragon ag Inquisition is out? Yeah,
yeah, they're speaking of bald bullets. It looked like a gray warden Brand
shoemaker. IM gonna have to take that one. There's so many people here.
I'm just gonna throw out large games that have been released and let you
guys jump on them rather than going around the table. Who's playing Dragon Age?
I just keep trying like hell too, But like the frame rate issues,
Like during the cut scenes they were just like completely throwing me out of
what platform are you going? PS four? So really, yeah, I'm
gonna try it on h FRA. Right, issues are consistent across all the
platforms differ. The cut scenes run at a different UH frame rate then the
game. Right, like you were explain how the PC vers, So the
PC is weird. There's the game is running at sixty and then when it
hits a cut scene, the cut scenes, the animations and the cut scenes
run out of thirty, but like all the ambience stuff like snow flakes and
everything still at sixty. So I think and it's I think it's trying to
push thirty into sixties. So it's even getting like hitier and weirder. It
just looks like nonsense during some of the Wow, I actually want to see
what that looks like. It's weird. That's really disconcerting. And and the
PS four it's just a little hitchy. It's just odd. It just doesn't
it's not consistent in anyway. It's like there'll be big action scenes, but
it's just as slow as during like a conversation. Do you guys had the
audio completely cut out in combat, like combat audio specifically, Like it seems
like you'll go to the menu or something. This is on the Xbox One
version, and you'll pop back in and you'll still hear music, but no
footsteps, no fight, no fighting, no no shooting, any of that
sort of stuff, Like all just dies. And then sometimes you'll be able
to pause it again and it'll come back. The Xbox one version is weird
in a few different ways, like, well, we're talking at lunch about
some of the weird bugs. Like the one that will happen is you'll be
in a conversation and then just the character will deliver his line and it's just
specifically stick on him and yeah, it'll stick on him, and it's just
staring it yea, and not even not even really like an idle animation or
anything, just sort of staring. Maybe he just really meant what he said.
Yeah, And it will not advance. It won't advance. Sometimes it'll
just hitch forward. But what I've found, at least on the PS four
version, and what's very odd is that I've pressed all the buttons individually.
Nothing changes if I press them all together. No, it hits hitches towards
forward. In the conversation. Really and this this has happened maybe twice in
twenty five hours, so we're not talking about So I watched that happen consistently
over the course of like one quest. It was like every single time it
had stopped for dialogue or and it's basically any time it'll stoped for dialogue.
Like the game just got in a in a way where every single conversation was
fucked. You would make a selection, or sometimes the conversation well wouldn't pop
up because it was just stuck sitting there. Sometimes the skip button would pop
up if you hammered on X to eventually skip it. Sometimes it would eventually
just pop you back into running around the world. You're just missing dialogue or
something just for you dance like your your character will This only happens in the
middle of a conversation. I'll start a conversation and then the character will just
start like pumping his fists and just like floating and doing a dance above.
I didn't see that doing a dance above above the ground a little bit and
clipped a little bit. And then when you finish the conversation, oh,
animacing, he's he's like floating, just above the air, so falling animation.
Yeah, I had a case where the elf Lady was walking around the
world like that, not stepping, just like covering, and it doesn't It
doesn't stop until you jump, and if you jump then it clicks out.
Why would you want to stop, don't? I went for I went for
like a full five minutes, just running across the hair lands, just falling
and dancing. The only bug I've had that was real fun was there was
a it was up against a big cliff face, and every time I would
turn my party around, a soldier would walk out from the cliff, and
then as soon as I turn around, he'd run back and clip through the
cliff again. And like every time I turned my back again, he would
slowly walk out and then clip back through him. And eventually I killed him
put him out of there. I got him stuck in there. So there's
one quest where sometimes the guy who's supposed to kill is like not present or
clip through the world or something. You have to just kind of quick open
world. I'm just gonna quit and come back and hope that it's different this
time. Like, yeah, but I've been enjoying. So I got a
message into my tumbler. I think it's my tumbler saying like like, all
right, you know broken games or on everybody's mind right now, that's like
the big problem in the industry, and like Assassin's Creed and master Chief for
getting all this flak, Like why is nobody complaining about Dragon ages it because
everybody likes it and they're just giving it a pass. And also it's well
so that's the thing. I mean, some of it sounds I read that
and I was like, is it really that bad? But it sounds like
you guys are making it sounds like there's some actual substance to the idea of
Yeah, inquisition is kind of I mean, there's some jank. It seems
like I've never had to reload or anything I've had, you know, everything
is just sort of like, well that's kind of funky. But like the
falling animation I've had, I've had a crash. I've had a crash to
dashboard a couple of times, you know, couple think of it. The
first time much Fast travel to the Hinterlands, it crashed to the PS four
interface. Yeah, yeah, the only thing I've had frame rate hitchiness.
But like I don't again I don't. I think it's more that it's it's
it's more that the other games are probably a little more popular and widespread,
sure, and you know the issues are more gentilitating in that Yeah, well,
especially some of this Dragon Age stuff has been fucking bad. Well yeah,
you know, if you're crashing out of the game, that's crashing out
of the game, or just like dialogue that want advance or quest that you
can't finish until you reboot and hope for the best. Like, you know,
it seems to have it's issues, but that game is so sprawling and
large that different people are going to run into different issues along the way,
and some people may never run into anything. So it's it's one of those
things where you know, it's like we can only report on what we've seen,
or you know, if there's something we've heard, we can certainly say
like passing, hey we hear it's messed up. I would say, didn
you say there's a certain NPC that if you talk to them that like spontaneously
changes your gender. Yeah, there's no change your it'll change the voice of
your character. It's it's there's like a known issue. They say they're going
to patch. It's in this section called Skyhold, which will make sense if
you're that far into the game, and if you talk to them, then
yes, apparently sometimes your voice will switch. It does change back. No,
and there's no way the game doesn't. You can respect your characters in
Dragon Age, but you cannot like recustomize the look of them. That game
has got some very uh all the player animations are deliberately masculine. It's something
you don't notice until your plan is a lady and she's sitting in the throne
like spread arm out like a right look, tell me, like what the
fuck? Which is weird for a game that, like I would say,
the majority of the characters are like female, Like it's it's like a I
think we're in the main character you're talking about specific like they only map the
That's what I'm That's what I'm saying. It's odd that, you know,
for a game in which, like a lot of the NPCs, a lot
of the characters they drive the plot are winning. It's a game where when
you can tell that they deliberately kind of went out of their way to address
a lot of stuff that you know that a lot of other games don't,
like, you know, there's a trans character and they get into that.
Yeah, but like in this one specific case, you're like, come on,
just these animations specifically, like you could I mean, hey, she
might sit like that. I don't know, but come on, come on,
they could have done better with that. Yeah, I'm enjoying the only
thing. I'm pretty early on the combat seems and maybe I'm I was talking
to you guys before. Maybe it's just that the game is I'm playing on
normal, man, it's playing on harder. Just doesn't seem very tactical yet,
right, They're just kind of holding down, Retrick, I'm playing a
maide. You're managing cool downs, Yeah, managing cool downs. And like,
I'm not switching the characters. I'm not micromanaging. And I feel like
in the combat that I've played, i've been playing as similar. Also,
it's just like, yeah, I only hold down whatever, I only switch
characters in that tutorial bit in the opening where they tell you should try switching
characters and then I did it. I just have not done it since then.
But also, Vinny, we had this conversation at lunch, but you
need to leave. I'm just I'm cleaning. I'm momping up don't do it,
because don't do it literally unbalanced the game. Those people need my help.
Why would I bend the there can't you go back there? You can
go back there eventually. I don't know what this is going to happen,
because if you, if you did, a dragon could descend and light those
people on fire. Less there is a dragon. There are other zones you
get. They also need your help. I don't know. I don't know
that yet. Look, no, no one herald should have all that power.
You should really move on and find some other stuff to do. Well,
I'm kind of not sure what I'm supposed to be doing it. They
kind of just like they were like, oh, our spine network and I'm
covered this person in the hinter lands and like we should go talk to them.
And on my way there, there's like a billion people with exclamation points
being like find my cat. I've got another political problem to solve. Oh
this guy's stole my hay and I'm here like I'm part of the inquisition.
I guess it's probably my duty to go find your ring and your sword.
And so it's been it's been really interesting being the you know, cop in
the Hingeles. But there's tons of stuff to do. I think it's they,
like Byoways weirdly had to get in front of this and like issue statements
saying like you should really leave this area, like it's a design defect.
Like I think they imbalanced the early parts of the game. Uh. I
think specifically to how they balanced the normal difficulty level set against how much you
can do in this opening zone. If you do everything in the opening zone
that is available to you, you will be like five or six levels over
everything for the rest of the game. And yeah, content, Actually I
kind of enjoy doing that in some games. I don't know. Yeah,
but yeah, so you should. Also, the other zones are way more
The hitche lands are boring, I like, relative to the other zide have
you found I mean, is there a similar level of content in all those
submis zones all the other zones at least that I've encountered, Like the th
before I've gotten access to. You jump in for about two hours, you
explore pretty much everything, accept the stuff like one or two quests or two
high level for you, and then you leave and go to the You're saying
you do practically everything there is to do there in about two or two and
half years, so this this one, Okay, Opening zones the game is
not a sequence of hinterlands like zones one after the I'm sure there are probably
a couple of them that are that big, but it's like probably it seems
like a handful of those scattered amongst like a bunch of like smaller ones with
extremely very like one is set in a swamp kind of Louisiana looking area with
a storm raging the entire time. Another one is this really mountainous area in
which you have this incredible moment where like there's just a dragon and a giant
just fighting off to the right. Clearly not supposed to go over there,
but you're just like scaling this mountain at these like enormous creatures or just having
this epic battle next to you. And like the other zones are way more
interesting than the hinterlands, and like the story and the plots that kind of
play out there are are worth seeing as opposed to just but I'm see you're
not gonna do it. I don't believe I'll do it. I'll do it
because I'm starting to get a little board kind of running around. Yeah,
and it definitely like you hit those moments. Like I was in the hinterlands
for like hours hours just chasing down all these quests and I go talk to
somebody and they're like, oh, good thing, you're here, Like let
me introduce you to to Bill and Ed and like I have taken all these
quests from them already and it's still giving me like tutorial stuff after about like
five hours of doing all these quests in the surrounding neighborhoods. Like you should
go see Samantha and be like, Samantha's done, man, Like she's got
She's like queen up. She's good, She's good. I took care of
I've raised her up to her lineage is, you know, seated, Like
you should talk to her because she's a peasant and she needs help. Remember
that time that you cleared out the entire Nemesis system and mortor before you had
done any story missions. You know, sometimes they just need to point you
a little bit, like don't do this. It's like, got it,
You've got a sickness. Man. Well, I think that's what I think
dragon age makes. I think it's a design flaw. I think they need
to at some point and say, hey, like you actually have to go
check out these other zones because there's an act. There is actually no reason.
The only reason I did was because someone messaged me when I was talking
about it, was like, hey, you should probably leave. The game
doesn't point you out. So I've got questioned two or three other areas I
think like the fallon Marsh is one of them, and forget what the other
ones are called, like even storm Coasts. Yes, I've got the like
I've never been there. I don't know where those objectives came from, but
you should go there because you are going to get more characters there. And
I go there. Yes, once you send someone so on the the in
the war Counsole, when you send out like one of your three agents like
that can go unlock those areas. Once they've done their mission there, then
you can travel. So I did all of the available ones of those on
and you can travel to those places. Okay, yeah, so like you'll
see that, like some of the marks on your map will say like they'll
just be cleared off like you just it be completed, and then other places
will say this area is like you know now unlocked, you can explore here.
Let me ask you this. When you get to the point in the
Henterlins and the story where the objective is just like get enough power to go
to val Royo, Like is that are you done? Once? They're pretty
much like if you're once, you're hitting the power levels. Unlike the next
thing, you're roughly the level that you should go. OK, And also
the main story stuff would advise you on what level you should be that So
what we're saying is when I get enough power to move on, I should
move on. You should think about it. At least I go check out
that area. You can always leave and go back at tip. But yeah,
I really like the world in that game. I didn't replay the Dragon
Age, and it's all politics well realize, which I think might turn off
some people. But it's literally just class race and like other social politics and
ideologies and that stuff all is super interesting. I think, Yeah, I'm
in the middle of like you know, it's the primary conflict early on,
the fanatical templar slaughtering, the major vice versa. Like that stuff is.
I mean it starts with a like you know, a fantasy terrorist attack right
right, and like literally very first thing it's actually hit a start, it
goes Yeah, that intro is fantastic, Like it really kicks off literally with
a bang. So it's great. Yeah, the game seems cool. Do
you watch that loop the guy's marching for Yes, I didn't watch that for
a while. It's a nice loop. Yeah, it's a good loop.
You know. It's weird. Also, is that on the PS four version
you can't you can't record it? Yeah, when when it's checking for the
dragon Age servers or like the oh yeah, it comes up, like you
know, with the recording stuff in the PS four at least it'll say like
this section is blocked, like you can't record this, and that's only while
it's checking for the servers, and then as soon as it connects or doesn't
connect to the servers, it says, hey, you can record again.
It's just odd. I wonder why they don't want you to record an error.
I guess basically it okay, Yeah, yeah, that hasn't stopped other
people from recording other errors. So yeah, and having activisions send out flags
for it. Yeah, we talked about that last week Farcry four. Yeah,
I am playing through it again. Yeah, I saw you on there.
I've been playing a ton of a two. Did you like Farkry three.
Yeah, do you want to do more of that? Sure? Dude,
we should totally play farky. Okay, remember how remember how you said
The Shadow of Mortor was like a game made for you? Yeah, I
feel this is also a game made for you. Really, it is just
chock fucking full of distractions. Yeah, there's there's a ton of everywhere,
so much side stuff in that game. I almost feel like it's overwhelming,
but I feel like it's regimented just well enough that you can tell, like,
all right, this is the next story mission. Sometimes the map gets
in such a way that it's it is difficult to actually see, but it's
like, you know, there's the secondary level of like, oh, there's
convoys coming through to hijack and like hunting missions. There are towers to climb,
Oh fantastic radio towers. Yeah, well yes, okay, there are
bell towers probably being used for radio. There's there are propaganda posters to tear
down. Okay, get a grappling hook. Yeah, you get a grappling
hook and you only use in special areas. You get a wing super can
you trip and take fall damage off of like two feet? Like okay,
it's a little bit better than that. It is a little bit better than
that. I saw a video of someone and co op riding whatever that flying
machine is. You can get shooting the grappling hook to the bottom of it,
and then just you can fly each other. That's a good idea.
Yeah, that's neat. That's like the stuff they promised with mercenaries too.
It's like you'd fly by in a helicopter something that I would grapple hook and
shoot underneath it, and it just never really worked out. And you can
promised a lot of things and mercenaries to Yeah, well oil Tech, have
you guys tried a lot of co op and far cry for because I can
do story missions and then is it mainly just open world hunting over and outpost
but the outposts necessarily like yeah, story stories. I heard that you can't
do story missions because I'm planning to do that might be true. It would
kind of make sense if it did if I mean, not that that's good,
but it so yeah, yeah, yeah, you get additional story missions,
uh with what was it like the early copies of the game come with
like more missions with HRK where you you know, it's like you do stuff.
He's the player too, character you go talk to him. I've only
seen her as something the Super Terrible and and you're like, man, they
just they really wanted to just make like a Danny McBride character for this,
And then that got rolled up the first time and said his spiel and drove
off and I went to share and hit save video. So stupid? Is
he the guy that's in all the farkright four ads for the DLC with the
giant spear gun that just says like, here, look at that dick.
Yeah, basically all right, really, yeah, yeah, that's that's herk
Okay, he's he's supposed to be an idiot. I mean it's not,
you know, but yeah, I don't know. It comes across I feel
like, you know that game. I like it for the same reason that
I feel like there's still some residual feelings about how Froccry three stories should have
gone for me, where I'm playing it and going like, there's no way
this is serious, Like they have to know, right, it's not.
It's not in the same way that Frocry three was. But it's this moment
where it's like you're like a twenty four year old kid grew up in the
US, so yeah, coming back to you know, the country where you
were born. You moved out of there when you're like three or something like
that, no special training that they allude to or anything like that, and
all of a sudden, you're like fucking wingsuiting out off the Himalayas and just
gunning down tons of fucking people and skinning elephantsigot bullets out of your arm,
right, yeah, like like all the shit that you can do as the
player character that like you, no one would be able to. Actually the
story. I think the story is really well handled as long as you don't
consider like that identity aspect of it, like the unlikely heroes, and I
don't I don't mind I like, I don't mind it that much. It's
just it's just crazy. I almost one of those things that like makes me
assume that, like none of this has really happened, right, It makes
the whole thing seemed like the game will totally work better if you were just
like a nameless, silent protagonist with no actual connection to this stuff and you
just got embroiled in it, because yeah, it's like, so, why
does everybody pronounce the main character's name differently? Because so he pronounced it is
because he was so he I don't know if I'm giving the game too much
credit in thinking that it is. In fact, he's American eyes. He
is, Okay, so he moved to the US when he was three,
okay, with his mom when they escaped the country. So Americans pronounce it
a J gale, Right, he will often pronounce it aj gale, but
the Natives pronounce it so at first. Because there's also a couple of like
DJ's on the radio, Yeah, that pronounce the names differently, like so
like it's pagan men, but like once every two three hours you'll hear somebody
say like pagan men or something like that. Yeah, and that really liked
video direction. Yeah, that's that's probably just vo direction, but it's it's
it's nice if they address the main character's name going back and forth the Yeah,
they don't address it. It's just just left for you to come.
Yeah. Do they allude to like what this guy did back in the States
or I mean, could he be some bear girls guy or is he just
supposed to be some dude that you know, he's just a product of the
American education. He just yeah, he doesn't like they don't they had no
point and they say like, oh you, by the way, you were
especial, especially for here twenty four, but they leave it open to where
he could conceivably be this like super trainer ye would come up. Yeah,
So who cares? I think totally who cares, because I think I think
games fail at trying to rationalize that part of the player experience and just going
the exactly like at no point is that like ruining the game for me?
But it's one of those things that like when when I stop and think about
it, it reminds me of Far Right three in that way of just like
is this whole thing VR, because you know, none of this could be
happening in this person the mysticism stuff in it too, right there? Yeah,
this has like you go to Shankra Law in this game, okay,
and you have a ghost tiger that you can do. No, no,
You're you're kind of like shang Las has seen better days and you're going through
there with a spirit knife, a mystical time slowing bow and arrow, and
a fucking tiger that you just stick on people and the tiger turns invisible.
Yeah, okay, do you have a name tiger? Do you ever touch
like a roast thing on the wall and just go, I want those so
that those give you carmon bonuses, those money wheels or whatever are throughout the
game is collectible. You never get to actually you never get to like do
what you want to do with them. But yes, they are in fact
there, all right. I like the rebellion stuff is not bad so far.
Like I made my first story choice and like they kind of stick it
to you. Yes, they deliberately make every single story choice fucked. Yeah,
Like I had a hard time choosing. I was like, my girlfriend
was sitting there. I was like, what do you think I should do?
And then when you make your choice the other leader of the rebellion they
are. They are really good at making all there's no like here's the good
here's a paragon, here's the Redigade, here's the good guys, here's the
bad guys. It's just like every decision you make it sort of fucked.
It's kind of it's like you're playing again. Uh so the ending. So
there are points in that game where you have a gun trained on someone and
you can pull the trigger or not. Okay, I need to see what
happens at the end of that game if you don't, okay, because when
you do it, just it. I knew. I knew before you said
it that you were going to say, I need to know what happens when
I don't pull the trigger. Yeah, because I know you, Jeff,
Yeah, you pull the trigger. Considering considering what they did with that,
that kind of easter egg, like fifteen minute long, so you're like the
you know, fifteen minutes they find the secret second ending that the creative director
was talking about another one. He claimed that there is a second secret ending
that people haven't it's the fifteen minute thing is is that you're talking about another
one. Okay, Yeah, so that's awesome. Yeah, there's a second
one. That's like I think that's what that's like. That's like straight out
of Chronic Trigger where it's like like there are multiple points where you could realistically
resolve the storyline. So we're just gonna let you do anyway. I think
that's awesome. I think I think that's like just really novel and clever and
likes a Nister Egg. That's yeah. So the end of the game actually
kind of gives away that that ending exists. Well, maybe it's only you
realize in retrospect if you know it exists. But like it's very much like
if you've seen the video of like I mean, at the beginning of the
game, Like at the very beginning of the game, it's like, hey,
wait here, I'll be right back, and the ending is if you
wait there for twelve minutes or thirteen minutes or whatever, he comes back and
then the same is never acknowledged then. So so you get to the end
of the game and he's like all you had to do is wait there for
not listening to us, which is like a funny way to kind of allude
to, like, look, you maybe could have done this all this plug
shit, yeah, all these ghost tigers, yea, all these ghost tigers.
Yeah, that game is just you know, some good, clean,
dumb, open world fun totally the way the first or the last one was
like this. So this time I'm going through and doing like way more of
the side stuff and you know, trying to unlock the full skill tree because
it's like one of tho things where it's like you can't unlock this skill until
you've completed two of this side mission type and stuff like that. So I've
just been going back through and doing that and just really enjoying it. It's
it's a lot of fun. But yeah, it's very similar to farkright three,
Like on some level, I feel like I would have been just as
well served by going and playing Park right there. Again, I've thought about
doing that actually since they started playing this, like really haven't fun playing it.
But I don't like the world as much. Like they divided land masses
in the first game with water, or not the first game, but the
previous game. Yeah, yeah, like they used water last time to divide
like a lot islands and stuff. In this case it's mountains, and yeah,
it's mountains inherently much more annoying to navigate the world because even with like
the little helicopters, which generally I think are amazing, Yeah yeah, but
those things can't go past certain heights, so you can't even fly over a
lot of the mountains. Well, so it's only the mountains that prevent you
from getting to the north generally. Oh is that what those are? Yeah?
There there, that's it's blocking your progress like that. Basically there the
mountains cut off everything down to a bridge, and so basically you are working
in the south and then eventually you get the mission of just like fuck this,
let's take the bridge, and then that's the thing that opens up the
rest of the world. Plus you can just fast travel the outposts once you're
Yeah, you capture room and stuff. So it's yeah, so it's not
that because I haven't had that much trouble. Did you guys immediately change the
vehicle controls too? Yes? Like the up to go up? Yes?
What is that? I kept it? I don't know whatever, I'm not
driving that, understand. I understand why they do it because it lets you
aim and shoot properly. Right, what do you mean proper you like inverted
control? No? No, no, no, So the default vehicle controls
is all on the left stick steer and accelerate, break and reversal on the
left stick. But you need to be able to look out the side window
to do vehicle takedowns and shoot people like that's crucial. I don't know.
I don't know how. I haven't tried it with the others. Accelerate left,
trigger, break and we left bumper? Is you can shoot? You
can? What is that game? I was it Lucky and Chase. It
was Lucky and Wild, Lucky wild yourself. Yeah, exactly. That's yeah,
aiming is hard. It should come also come with maybe the maybe the
dumbest thing you can do in that game, or one of my favorite dumb
things to do in that game is you can push right on the deep had
to throw a rocket anytime to try to distract guys when you're in a vehicle,
you just fucking throw a rock through the front window. That's like,
I don't so I break out the window in every car that I'm in and
if not with the gun, then with the stupid rock and then you can
shoot freely. Yeah, it's really stupid. The rock thing is handy.
Like if you have to kill rhinos for crafting, something like I'll put C
four on the ground and just throw a rocket a rhino's face. And that's
crazy. If you want to kill rhinos, get the sticky grenades upgrade and
just throw two grenades on they stick to the rhino and then you just finished
off with the gun and then skin it and then skin it. So bears
if you if I think, if you kill an animal with explosives, the
skin is damaged, okay, So like if you blow up a bear,
yeah, the skin is not gonna work, Okay, but with a rhino.
So that's why I finished it off with a gun, just in case
it's three grenades might actually damage. But I don't need that anymore. I
got a good wallet. Oh good, because you need four rhinos like this
for this wallet, it's going to require four rhinos. You're only what you
what they don't tell you is you're only using the scrotal fold of each rhino.
What's a really fucking nice wallet? A million rupees? But so wasteful,
so wasteful. Yeah, they don't use a million rupees? What is
that? How's that convert? Not? Well, like you know old beepers
that are out of date it self for like four thousand rupees or something.
So what was the Vietnamese thing? Was that Don song? Yeah? Yeah,
yeah yeah. That game's fun. Yeah, it is a lot of
fun. Oh what else came out recently? Grant that Onto five? Anybody
playing on the new consoles? Yeah, I messed with it. I think
the time about last week. I messed with it, and when like this
is cool, and but I have zero desire to actually go back, and
I'm gonna get back to it. I just got derailed by Dragon Age and
the far prye for now. Yeah, there's a tongue that I'm trying to
catch up on. It's like, I really want to play this new Grant
of five. Yeah, it probably makes that game inherently less interesting for a
lot of people for now. Yeah, wait for the PC version. I'm
more way more interested to see what the modern community does with that game than
I am in the higher resversion on the new consoles. Look real nice,
fatrid. I brought my WU on a plane. You sent me a picture
yesterday of your we you in the back pouch of the Yeah, well,
so I checked to see the what you know, I I checked in the
night before and then it said what what kind of plane you're gonna be on?
And I've checked online and it said there were no outlets, and so
what if there are outlets? No, yeah, it's I've I've checked that
like WiFi, stay asked before. And there's why I find the plane because
maybe they changed so uh. And plus I was bringing I wanted to bring
out the EU anyway, and I wasn't. It's not it's not gonna fit
in my normal bag. It's got my laptop. I'm not gonna check that
in. So it's like, if I'm gonna bring this with me, I'm
gonna have to carry it on anyway. So so it brought that with me
and then fortunately it was a power outlet down there and because that sends that
separate wireless signal. Yeah, I just shoved them with you in the underneath
the trade table and I've got the game pad and I'm sitting there playing in
attitude different place. So it was ratulations, you've out weirded Stephen Totillo and
his whole plane in the airport waiting room. Yeah, you've actually you've taken
it to the next there was. I was. So I was in like
group two A boarding, which I was very excited about because it meant I
could get my set up all put together before anyone gets on the flight out
of the window. Uh no, I was in the aisle, okay,
And so so I got that all all set up. The only like weird
parts were when the because that the game pad lasts what like three hours like
that, it's like a four and half hour flight. So I got most
of the way through the game, the second half of the game that I
was working through when the game pad was going to die, and then it
came to the point where well, now I need to drop the power outlets,
and so then I had to go back up into my bag like get
out the second charge on it, and then ask the two year old that
was next to me job on the way so I could change the power outlet
put that in again, and then underneath my tray is then now the game
pad and the Weiu machine. What You're a monster. It meant I got
to finish paying at A two on the flight and that game is unfucking believable.
I played, you know, maybe two hours of the original. I
don't play character action games, and largely I don't play them because they share
a lot in common with fighting games. For me, in which the ones
I've played, it's a lot of like memorize these button patterns, like to
do special moves, and I just memorization does not come very naturally to me,
and so fighting games don't come very naturally to me. So a lot
of character action games don't come very naturally to me, so I've tended to
avoid them. But what I love about being added too is it feels like
a character action game made for people that don't like them, And specifically it's
the fact that it's a game built around dodging. It's like, you actually
should not be focusing on fighting. You should be focusing on dodging. And
because when you dodge, it activates which time and which time is you know
what second and a half in which everything moves very slow and you can attack,
and at that point you could just spam whatever you want, and you
could be doing more powerful moves, but you should always be focusing on just
getting out of the way of whoever's in front of you. I've thought that
really freed me up to focusing on just timing based stuff. I'm really good
at rhythm games. I really like that, and really good platforming games,
so those things are like very timing based in a way that I focus on
watching the action on screen, dodging when it's appropriate, and then just sort
of matching on the buttons and it all works out. Well. That's what's
really great about it is it works for guys like us that kind of have
a spamming approach because I do the exact same thing. I focused on dodging
and then I'm just like, well, I'll hit this for a while and
some cool it will happen. Yeah, But for those people that do want
to really deep dive on it's all there. Yeah, like you can go
to the trials men, you like, when you're just out in space or
whatever, the huge list of commands and you can memorize the like okay,
so this is a kick kick, rotate around once and then punch, punch
hold, you know, like you can do that, yeah, or you
can do it the way we do it, and yes, really fun either
way. Yeah, just like walked into an all and on meeting, like
I found my people. Finally people understand I cannot. I cannot deal with
the memorization stuff. That game is so good about letting you play the way
you want to play. It totally applies for both sort of categories of players.
And then it's you know, one of the ways I've tried to describe
it to people that don't know when to play those games like did you see
a Seras Wrath And you're like, man, that game is fucking crazy,
but game wise barely like barely A game like Being at a two is like
a spectacular playing game that also handles spectacle in a way that it's just so
goddamn impressive. It's somehow manages to be extremely epic and very intimate at the
same time, where there's so much going on around you, and yet you're
very much focused on like what's happening with you and the characters around you.
Like it. The way it manages scale is just it's it's It is literally
unbelievable because it keeps stacking and getting crazier in a way that it should.
You think you think it's done to yeah, you think it's done. It's
like, oh no, it's not. It's not very successive. Encounter just
just ups the bar by by several orders of magnitude. Also, also they
manage that scale on quote unquote old hardware, which is pretty impressive. Yeah,
Like and it's you know, it's it's the frame the frame rate,
you know, gets a little bit weird when you're exploring around, but then
as soon as combat because you know, the game zones off combat, So
that's when the sixty frames a second like is rock Saw Like I think it
hit maybe one or two like frame rate it took ups the whole game.
But otherwise it is a damn impressive game. That's the only bummer part about
playing on the game pad is that it's kind of fuzzy, like you lose
a little bit. I think the only place that really suffers a little bit
like the world design, which is just kind of open and it's sort of
spartan, like there's not really a lot to explore or fight. But like,
the enemies in that game are so fuckings are just so ridiculous. So
many different kinds, yeah, so many different weapons, all all the heavenly
enemies, but I think are my favorite. Like it just they're just so
twisted and just bizarre looking. How many boss fights are in that game.
There's like mid boss level size yeahs. And then there's the Giant flight.
There are things that it calls boss fights that don't really feel they just feel
like longer enemy encounters. But yeah, there's there's Oh god, that game's
great. That games fantastic. It's it's just this really great thing like the
sort of quote unquote optional I forgot how you pronounce it, mel i am
or whatever, you know what that thing is like little are doing all of
those ye me? And that's what I think is great about those because they're
just difficult enough that you feel like you can do them, so that even
when I do fail them, like six or seven times. I'm constantly to
myself, I know, never to actually do it. No, yeah,
they're they're only about the only weird things. I wish they just let you
retry them instead of like sending you back to the beginning of that room and
then having to turn into a panther and run up. Come on, just
let me retry. But there, what's the spout turning into a panther.
You don't tap your panther turn into a shoots knives. Yeah, you can't
do that. Yeah. And what I love and because those challenge rooms actually
teach you how to play the game, right, Like they they teach you
about dodging, Like it'll be like, hey, you can only defeat enemies
in which time, so it's like, okay, now we actually have to
focus exclusively on dodging, and you take that immediately then into the main game
and I'm oh, I'm a better player now. It's like the one where
it's you know, beat all these enemies without touching the grounds. I'm learning
how to juggle in the air while keeping or you can only beat enemies using
their own weaponry like that. That taught me how to use some of the
different enemy weapons. Some of those are great. Yeah, like the one
where it's like, hey, defeat everyone in a single combo, which is
then where you learn like, oh, use your guns to like maintain a
combo while you're making your way over to the enemy or you know, do
the and then I started learning how to use the dash move like the double
double forward like toward like it fucking amazing game, Like I don't I don't
use the word like fucking amazing lightly. And that that game really just in
every facet just completely blew me away. Just what I really want them to
make good ship this year. Yeah, just shame it's not out there on
more stuff, you know, like it didn't get out to a wider audience.
Not that you hey, I mean I tend to save that game.
I give them all the credit in the world for actually seeing something in that
game, being willing to sort of you know, put the bill on it,
because I mean, they needed games, so obviously they couldn't necessarily pick
and choose too much. But like I'm I'm just I'm just thrilled that they
actually put it out there, and they haven't done a lot of marketing for
it, but they did put it out there. The people that are interested
in to see will to Bayonetta find that shot? Like they don't need marketing
for that. I mean, you know, like you could argue that it
should be seen by more people, and if they did market it, they
would get there. But you know, like for a sequel to Bayonetta,
like that's that's not The attach rate on we you games is such that.
I mean literally a Mayor Kart eight is a fifty percent attach rate for the
entire console base, like that, Brothers' higher than that even Yeah, I
just really I want a Bayonetta three on like new generation hardware so badly to
see what just because like you can't top it. I know they can't.
I would if they end up doing. I wonder what the status of that
contract, Like what the deal with Nintendo is, if they could go do
a bands To special edition they said that, Oh I don't know about that,
but they they already said that they would like to work with Nintendo on
another Bandetta. It sounds very much like Sega has no interest. So do
you think Bayonetta starts getting integrated into the kind of wider Nintendo family with Like
I think with the way this game is selling, like you know, like
the real shame is going to be that, like this game is gonna go
on to win awards and and do quite well critically, and we may never
hear from it again, you know, like just because of the way the
sales went, because of the circumstances of it being saved by Nintendo and brought
out in the first place, Like un list, Nintendo was willing to do
that again, which I don't I don't see. I think. I think
I think Nintendo has done courting the audience for games like that. If if
they're like they're, they're just gonna go like, well that people tend to
want Nintendo games on Nintendo platforms, We're just gonna go with that. Bandetta
attracts is like a slightly different core audience than like would Nintendo. Eyes On
in Bad Times is a core audience that loves their core franchises, and I
could I could see them betting if they especially if if ban at the three
somehow ends up on the Wei. You again, like the amount of your
money you're asking them to foot is is probably not that much relative too.
I guess. Yeah, I don't know. Awesome, I just want to
see Bandon and like Spatch Brothers or something. That's what I was talking about.
Yeah, I was saying, you know, the same way that I
think that was gonna happen. It would have because you know, that's the
sort of for it, because everything would have lined up. I guess.
So you can play one. That game. It's pretty crazy too. I've
heard that the gameplay tweaks in to make one a little bit harder to play,
but I'd like to give it a shot, like I'd have to see,
especially because some people said I actually like the crazy and one more than
two really fantastic. Yeah, the end of Banta one is I feel real
bad, not like you should see if you should see some chapter ten in
Vanitu All that's the when you enter the gates of Hell. Oh and I
won't say the opening of the final chapter of Bayonetta two, but it is.
I was cackling. I was cackling. It was like, no,
this is not You didn't turn this game into this for the next ten minutes
to two or you did. Okay, all right, okay, don't stop,
please please don't. God what a phenomenal game that is. Yeah,
yeah, I love it. I love that Bayonetta one comes with it.
They just put it on a goddamn disk and made it work on the weekend.
Yeah yeah, yeah. If you buy the dis version, it comes
with it. On the shop, they're sold separately, but on the shop,
I think, well, is it so separately? That's basically you have
to have an external hard drive for that because Bayonetta two is like seventeen gigs
and one I want to say it is like nine or half. That's yeah,
Bayonetta two has got me into the disgusting, filthy world of you external
storage. It's messed up. It's bad word, it really is. Because
he played like a power power Yeah yeah, yeah, they only put they
only put USB two on that thing. So I just bought a sixty four
gig flash drive, I know, and yeah, that works, seems to
work. That works people, that works, But then you know, a
USB drive is going to be slower than a drive. I haven't had any
problems, apparently. I was reading you can get like a I'm maybe getting
the like a why splitter. It's a thing that allows you to plug two
u as deep into the back of the WU, which then powers it enough
for it to be used as an expert. But otherwise you need the hard
drive plug ins in the wall. Oh wait, so you have a powered
hub you can use a nonpowered you And how does that work with like the
wu uh like the adapter for the Smash controllers the game. There's two things
on the front. Yeah, but if you have to put both in power
the drive thing, yeah, you'd just be scored. What's the problem which
just getting like this is sixty four gig flash if you want to get if
you want to get like a terabyte or something, then you're not gonna what's
the biggest they have in like a one USB flash drive? That's a lot.
I mean how many you get again as you think it is? Yeah,
but I have filled up every single console hard drive I have already,
right, but I've had to delete several things, yes, but yes I
had to. I had to go buy the disc version because bab, because
I already filled that damn thing I want. I had to delete just about
everything on my wie you to get me, right, But how much it's
alight? Twenty five or seven is already dedicated to And that's silly, It's
crazy. I hate it. I've had a new hard drive in my PS
four. Not long after I got it, I did that and one tearorbyte
drive and that's been fine. I did that week before last. I put
two tearor bytes in. I'd like just being able to jam your own like
big ass wamping and hard drive in there. Like this whole this whole like
console is having multiple drives attached? Thing is it's just weird? Yeah,
it's yeah, like having to having to worry about which device your games go
on, like specific games, you know, and what happens if you want
to plug that hard drive and like it's it's a little strange. It should
all tie it to your home network. Man, you can have your sam
My drowbo. I just want everything in the cloud, man, just everything.
Where's cloud gaming? Man? What's the guy car doing? What's David
guy Ki up to these days? He's rolling in his money? Yeah?
He vatars? You know, it doesn't take a lot of space. Is
Captain Toad Treasure Tracker? Okay? I gotta play that this week? Can
you can you tell me about it in three minutes or less? Oh?
Probably. It's a pretty simple formula. Hit me, okay, you get
three crystals and you get to a star, and there's a hit an objective
in every level there's several dozen levels and you can't jump. Can't jump because
he's got a real heavy backpack. Of course, it's a real fun game
to one hundred percent. I'd love that they gave like a canonical reason why
he can't jump. That's great. Yeah, when you go to the end
game manual things, it's basically those little puzzle levels from three D World.
It is that, And you know, I think as a main course,
it's not quite as great as this, you know, kind of change of
pace palate cleanser from three D World it was, but it's still really fun.
You know. The review went up. I gave it three stars.
I think forty dollars is a bit pricey for the amount of stuff that comes
in it. But how long is I heard it? There's like two three
hours you can, man, I'm almost one hundred percent through it, and
I can't imagine it's been more than four or five hours. Yeah, Like
you can blow through just the levels, like get to the star and whatever
crystals you can find the first time that's like three World War three D Land.
That's then you've missed, Like you want to get all the green stars,
you want to do all that. Yeah, it's we're all like,
the really nice design tricks have been like where you realize the forced perspective has
been using a super clever way. Yes, and then that's all over the
place in this game. It really is fun. When we did that quick
look, that game like came across to me as like a phone game that
accidentally got made on consoles. It's it's like, you know so many phone
games like Cut the Rope or Angry Birds, where it's like get three things
and then move on to the next level, and we've got a big collection.
To these, it's get three crystals, move on to the next level,
and you can beat it with one, but now you want to get
all three probably be fair. Mario has had that framework for sure with the
stark winds and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, well these are more bite sized
levels and stuff. It's as long as people know what they're getting into when
they spend the money or whatever. I mean, they're gonna have a good
time. It's just it's not necessarily Yeah, I had I had always going
into that assumed it was like a fifteen twenty dollars down aloadable. Yeah,
it would have been great for that. I've been finding audio it's like forty
bucks and on a disc seemed kind of crazy. It's a Nintendo game,
so you pay a premium regardless, and you can download it if you want
to. It's just on the disc. But I kind of, you know,
the way it's distributed kind of implies st something about the scope of it
somehow. The fact that it's on a disc. Yeah, like Minecraft comes
on a disc as yeah. Yeah, so yeah, you know that game
has been on sale around Thanksgiving, like the you know, downloaded for twenty
bucks instead of sixty and it still doesn't seem like a good price. What
if I got it for ninety nine cents on my phone? Can you renegotiate
how much I'm gonna refinance purchase? You're still paying it off and see if
I can. You know, I put the game on layaway and yeah I
got. If I can get Equity and Angry Birds, I think everything will
be okay. But working on that, Patrick, Oh, tell me about
Game of Thrones. Tell me about the Game of Thrones game. Oh right,
I was gonna say, because I don't know whatever is happening in game
the Game of Thrones show. Ever, I just I enjoy it very much.
But if you asked me to name five characters. I think I might
be name five characters. I can't. Alright, you can have you read.
Surely you can name five characters. There's nine Catness, Come on,
I want Jeff to name five characters for me. Lady Roland, Donald Catness,
Harold, Yeah, or any of them they're all dead. No,
okay, Peter Dicklinch what's his name? You know it? Yeah? No,
I'm I'm saying, I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm generalizing. There's a lot
of character in that series that like, it's really yeah, yeah, all
right, little Finger you in it. I thought it was either going to
be that or Lord of the Rings. I don't know he's in there,
the Lord of the Rings. Okay, Game of Thrones is good. It's
like that good Lord zero. What are you saying? Even, do not
engage Manna, I'm gonna let I'm gonna let that one slide because for dan
sensibilities, that makes sense. That is a sensible statement. I guess.
Just let me let me This bulln't because he's normally so stubborn with fantastics is
just a fantastic story. Read the book, the first book, and then
I just watched the show since then, I'm just I'm proud of you.
I'm right there. I can't even read them. This ground is well trodden.
We's sorry. So does this adventure game stuck the same way all the
other Telltale games do or what you can engage that I'm with you. Well,
there's sort of like two acts to tell Tale, right, There's there's
like pre Walking Dead and then like postwalking like they sort of like turn a
design approach after, you know, starting with walking, like the Draft Park
game. I think it was garbage. The Back to the Future games I
heard they were okay, okay, charming, sure, yeah, yeah,
So the game of throwing this game is odd because everything that has to do
with everything that doesn't have to do with the main characters from the show that
they're putting in there to like hey it's yeah, bitter Dinklage and it's easier.
All this stuff's terrible. It's I don't think it works at all.
It's not because it's shoehorned. It's the the character so too. I don't
want to spoil because you've ever't watched the show, but basically picks up it
the major event at the end of season three, Okay, I guess,
or the season wedding. I guess I gets, so you can say those
words. I was gonna ask if the seasons were analogous of the books now,
but they're they're they're starting to diverge more. But yeah, not since
the first one. Okay, when the UFO landed at the end of season
four, it was like it was kind of a season. The second season
was that was pretty much the second book, wasn't it. They started bringing
in stuff that's in like the third book. Okay, yeah, but yeah,
I think the Red Wedding is like halfway through the third book or something.
Yeah, so it's the Red Wedding and then you know, the main
arc of season four, which I won't get into, but basically that's kind
of it seems that's what the track is going to be for for the game.
So the game sort of sets up a series of characters house Forster,
who is involved in one side of the Red Wedding. Their house is impacted
by the events of the Red Wedding, and then it's you played this,
uh, different members of family and how they're dealing with the consequences, and
part of that plays out in King's Landing, you know, where there's a
lot stuff going on, But basically, is any of that stuff canonical or
are they inventing these characters, Like it's not, it's it's or is it
like stuff that like is alluded to in the book. So it's so it's
weird. My my understanding is that it's so you have to follow the lineage,
just like the throw The show is an adaptation of right book. Yeah,
and then I think House Forrester is referenced in the book, but the
game is based on the show, so right, so it is canonical in
the sense of the Game of Three. Stuff in from the books that didn't
necessarily make it into the show. But it's kind of there's like a reference
to House Forresters like, and there are like references I believe in and I
couldn't get this with the rom This is my understanding is there are references to
stuff in the books that allows them to make up a new story to tell
that runs parallel. So it's it's not like if you read the books,
you know what's going to happen in the tell Tale series, Like there may
be references you pick up on and you know this is the whole house we've
never even seen before. Yeah, I think, how again like House Forster,
I think in Passing Me exactly. I believe it's mentioned as like part
of the lore of the world, but it's not like a you know,
folks. So in that other Game of Thrones game they came out a couple
of years ago, that shitty RPG, all the characters and stuff that were
built for that game were invented wholesale. None of that stuff was referenced in
the books. Okay, so this is running more in reference to Okay,
I believe so is the likeness and voices of the characters from the show.
Is it Thnklage and Lena Hetty? And it is. And that's what makes
it like incredibly awkward because it actually, yeah, and it's it's the tell
Tales. It's like the tell Tale style, but with like this kind of
watercolor filter applied overthing. And it's very much a filter because sometimes in the
cut scenes you will see the filter break and see like the original textures with
like the filter on top of it, and it works really bad in close
ups where it's just like this chest is just like breaking between the filter and
and stuff like that. I don't think the filter works that well, but
it's gives it its own spin on sort of the tell tale approach to this
stuff, which it already sort of doesn't work for me that much. Because
Game of Thrones is like a gritty, realistic take on fancy. It's part
of the reason it probably appeals to Dan versus Lord of the Rings. Like
it's it's less fantastic, it's more more stabbing and and it list its sex
than it is like elves running around in the forest setting. The setting is
almost incidental to the how many long ass speeches are there in Game of Thrones,
Like, there are quite a few, how many of them get interrupted
by murder? A lot of yeah, yeah, And you know, because
like Game of Thrones, like there are fantastic elements, there's you know,
magic and Dragon's ball, but it's not like the focus of the show,
Like the focus of Game of Thrones is politics and characters, the like consequences
of like this constant shifting ideologies and such. Hey, sorry, I hate
to keep derailing this, but do you think the dragon Age inquisition being so
political is a direct result of Game of Thrones popularity? They Well, Vinnie
could probably into this better. But I think the dragon Age universe has always
been sort of inherently political, like the classes and the hierarchies of this kind
of dragon Age feels like a byware game. Yeah, man, yeah,
it's a dragon Age is definitely high fantasy with the elves and stuff like that,
and the class stuff is just lifted right out of kind of cookie cutter
fan of stuff, yeah, except shifted around, like like the elves are
normally you know, sort of like highly respected and in which is like the
elves and yeah, yeah, I mean there are no elves and dwarves and
Game of Thrones like it's much there are giants. It's it's much more of
the direct like medieval. Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah. And
and the thing about the game is that they they conceive a story in which
it doesn't feel like the characters from the show are shoehorned, but like their
appearances are so brief that it ends up feeling a little bit shoehorned. And
it's also just odd to look at because the characters feel detached in a way
that it's obvious that they're doing voice acting and not like performing on the show.
Like there's just well, I mean, we've seen how Peter dangliche is
voice acting talents have have been used this year. He's terrible in the game.
I'm sorry he is. There there is a there is a reason they're
called voice actors, right, and then there are actors. Like it's because
they are completely different sets of talents, Like there are people that are crossover.
There is I know, but I'm saying there's a reason. I mean,
Destiny was so good. There's just a reason they're called voice Actually,
Peter Dinklich is phenomenal in the show, like wonderful, and it just all
kind of falls flat. I guess what I'm saying is the larger point is
that the stuff that has nothing to do with the characters from the show,
the stuff that is just about House Forester and like how you're doing with your
own family's internal politics not doing good? Oh man, you're just kidding.
The ironwood business is about to be taken from them, No, to save
the family tree? Is ironwood just wood that's harder than regular wood? Pretty
much? Yes? Yes, okay, go on, is house Walmart moving
in and the well not like wood? This is like all the House Lows
was the original. Yeah, there's the Lost of Happening with the Bolton's in
I don't like get too specific because it gets kind of spoiler into the show.
But the house they build that you're playing with in the Politics that Happened,
they're all super fascinating, especially because it is a house that is like
destined for failure, and like the house, the decisions you're making are just
like a bunch of really bad options. Like it's it's Walking Dead esque in
that what you're presented with is just like, well, all this stuff sucks,
Like you know now that you say that, that kind of makes sense
that they went after this property because like, like the Walking Dead, Game
of Thrones is a perfect yeah, it's a lot of bad it's happening gray
areas, yes, Yeah. And the way the episode plays plays out in
the different ways, like it's it's fascinating to watch how much your choices do
or don't play into it because at the end everything is just shittier. Yeah,
And and like Game of Thrones plays very much into that Walking Dead gray
area of like well, you could kill this guy or kill that guy,
and then that's not really how the choices. They're different types of choices in
Game of Thrones, but it's the same sort of thing of it all.
You're still pretty much primarily engaging with the games through just conversation trees, and
and yes, there is the same kind of contextual action it is or the
action is the best action they've ever done in which there's very forgiving among us.
Had some good stuff in it too. Yeah, like they've managed to
make the way that the action moments play out are just like I kind of
hit right and there's like a big but the way that they aesthetically implement it,
you know, you've got like a big swooping arrow, like the kind
of looks really nice and it's it's well integrated. It's by far the biggest
budget game they've put together. There's a very distinct moment early in which they
have this like really they set up a horse, and they clearly spend a
lot of time on their horse tech, like a lot of time because the
animations and Telltale games is garbage, usually awful, and the human characters are
not that much better in Game of Thrones, but it was clear they were
not going to be able to animate horses without like really spending time to figure
out how to animate these horses. And the horses look really damn good.
It's good, Like it seems like they spent a lot of time animating these
ways us really the important stuff. Yeah, but there's still like moments in
Game of Thrones where you'll see a character run away. It's like cut away,
dude, Like I want to see that animation. I was looking into
the trailer that they put out today and like just even some of the animations,
like the dude getting like thrown down on the chopping block and like him
just flailing around. It's like nobody moves like that. I don't know,
terrible. I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's limitation
of their engine or if it's limitation of the amount of time they have to
put together those those games. But it it's bad, and it's not.
It's a little bit better here, but it's still but they're still using that
same engine, basically the engine they've been using all along for this stuff.
I have to imagine that the amount of time they're in full production on each
episode is pretty compressed. Yeah yeah, based on it's all not faster there
putting those things out, and like you've got to have the thing written and
vo recording. When you think about how like how quickly that company has grown,
like they had four projects running simultaneously. You know, there's that studio
got big fast. They had to move locations like it got you know,
you might you might argue that a little too fast. Bet I bet,
yeah, probably mean you know, like those games have been buggy all along,
and you know, like you're talking about the filter being glitchy and stuff,
and just filter doesn't even really that good to begin with. I think
the filter exists because they wanted to give it a slightly different little shirts.
You know, it kind of fits in with some of the more fantastic stick
elements of the show. But when it works, it works really well.
It's just very clear that, like some of the elements it's applied to,
is a filter as opposed to like a natural part of the environment. It's
probably a cost thing, like it's it's more effective to do to apply it
that way. But yeah, I enjoyed it. I'm you know, my
my bar of playing those as if my wife wants to play the next one,
because she drives all the decisions, I will secretly pick other ones if
she takes too long and take the one I wanted, is this another five
episode season six? Okay? And these are gonna be like back to back
with the Tales from the Borderlands. Yeah this I was gonna say. They
have been pretty prolific lately. Yeah, it burns us out today. Right,
Well, we'll see. Will they be able to get another episode out
within the next month. That's that's the question, because if they can get
them both out the start, but like, well, is there going to
be that another like two month break between episodes? Again, it's the holidays.
It's kind of a lot too, I know. I'm just it's like
last year that was what kind of the kind of kneecap the Walking Dead and
uh Wolf among Us, Bold among Us that the space between episodes of waiting
did they not stick to a their normal schedule for that stuff, because I
feel like with Walking Dead Season two regular, I feel like Wolf among Us
and Walking Into season two both and you know it, granted I'm already kind
of not into those games, but I feel like those just came and fucking
went. They were like, Hey, Wolf Amonggus is coming out? Did
not hear a peep about I didn't even know that there was more than one
episode out until they sent like a retail disc of like season one. I'm
like, oh, I guess they put out more of these, because like
no one was talking about that ship. Hey, new Wolf Amonggus is out,
Like there was zero There were people, as evidence by the fact that
anyone was commenting on those recaps that I was writing, there were some people
who were into that stae. But Wolf among Us was not a game that
benefited from being episodic at all. The breaks between episodes totally sucked all the
momentum out of the story. In the middle episodes dragged so much. It
just it was a bad It was a bad structure for that game. Walking
Dead's problems had nothing to do with the space between episodes. It's that a
lot of the episodes were bad. They were just bad episodes. Both of
these seasons started this year, right, yep, yep. Well, so
Wolf amongst I wanted they started in December last year, so that, yeah,
do you remember when Walking Dead had like an inventory and you were like
picking up stuff to put with item A with item B, like would put
the batteries in the right and then they were like the conversation stuff is obviously
where this is at. So season two Walking Dead has done now right,
Yeah, because everyone freaked out over the first season. I know loved it
and you know, one a bunch of awards and it was season three.
Season two well received. No, no, it was not. There were
people who liked it. There were a couple of good episodes. Yeah,
the middle of that season was the best part of it. Like they introduced
a villain and see an episode two, and like the payoff for him in
episode three was actually it was voiced by Michael Madsen and one of the best
performances I've heard from a semi sober sounding Michael Matson in ages. Uh.
But then once they got rid of that guy, like the last two episodes
just felt aimless, like there was just nothing going on in them that was
interesting. Highs of season two were nowhere near the highest of season one.
Yeah, I mean chief critical, the creative staff of the first season left
and they're making Firewatch, right, And that's not to say that there weren't
good parts of season two, but like, are you telling me that Firewatch
is actually the real season two to the Walking Dead? It's embarking. Hey,
now you know what fire Watching finally fucking damn it could have just four
words. It only took like four months for us to exlay it to you,
but I did money play Tales from the Worlands. We played the first
fifteen minutes of it on the show, the live show we did on Wednesday.
I got halfway through it, and then between Game of finishing Game of
Thrones before I came out here and finishing Tales of Borderlands, we finished Game
of Thrones. I'm gonna play it. It was like shockingly well received.
Some people say it's some really nice things about it against the trailers we would
put up on the site. I think we one of our active deck points
was like people care about the story and by yeah right, and then would
get like an extreme pushback. It's like, no, dude, I like
the story, and Bordlands it's like okay, buddy. It was always just
kind of there for me. Yeah, And Tales from the Borderlands seems to
make an active attempt to be like we're gonna try and make this for people
that maybe didn't care for the story, and Borderlands like get a little bit
away from the meme stuff about Borderland's two story is like a little overplayed,
but it seems to be less like snarky in that way and in a little
more like trying to create some interesting character. It also feel like they're trying
to tell a much smaller story, you know. It's about these characters that
are just trying to create a caper, you know, and it's it's a
sort of about like it's it seems to be told in flashback to the weird
caper they got themselves involved in, but it's not really about like, you
know, saving the world or any of that, not not yet. But
I think I think it benefits from that because when I saw eighty three,
I was prepared to absolutely hate it, and I found myself more interested in
it than I thought I would be. Still probably not going to play it.
Uh, I played it when like okay, it's one of these tell
tale games. Yeah, okay, all right, cool, I just I
can't it's actually it's it's I feel and I felt the same way when that
Ron Gilbert kickstarter came along of just like, man, I feel like,
you know, we saw a second rise and fall of adventure games for me
where it's just like I don't want to I don't care about the second part
of Broken Age. I don't care about like all this stuff is like whatever,
just I'm I'm done. I really like I didn't. I didn't finish
the first act, like I got part way through its point, like dude,
I can't uh, and just that style of gameplay went away for me
again and like give it twenty years, maybe we can do it again.
Did you did at least get to the part where Alex for Coppolis shows up?
No, I don't think I did. I don't know. I don't
remember. Is he a character in the game. He's voice is a character
in that game with the name a guy with no okay, but character,
he's the guy you unfreeze. Uh. I'm pretty sure that he says his
name is Alex. Does he? Yeah? I don't remember that, but
yeah, that's that. Acropolis is the Tony Dan's video game voice acting.
Was that supposed to be this year? It just got They just got bumped
next year literally today? Oh really? Yeah, man, if you're a
backer, you'll get access to a version of it by the end of the
year. But the finalized one of the ear with with like an oddly specific
message about what they have left to do. Yeah, Like they spent like
three paragraphs saying like like, what we just got done doing this, so
now we got to go down to LA and record last of the d O
and then these animations are going in. It was just like this. It's
like with the way that some of the space based stuff went there, they're
in a position where they kind of have to be as specific as they can
up. They have so many different projects. I'm glad they would do something.
It sounded a little bit like preemptively trying to, yeah, get in
front of people going like, why'd you just like spend all the money on
hookers and blow? Where's the game? You know? Well, I mean
they've get you know, they've the space Base had. Do you think games
get made? Then? You know they had you know, uh, you
know another game going to early access like it's there, and you know,
weird Spot right now as a company for sure. Indeed, are there any
other big games that I haven't thrown out? That's somebody? Or small games?
Freeze about three? Three? I love three? What's one plus two?
Brad? I'll be out here three. When does twenty forty eight come
to the Xbox one? That's why I want to know about No? It
plays great. I was wondering how they would do the thing to where you
know, if you slide your finger over the screen but don't let go,
you know, you can kind of preview how the tiles are going to shift.
But it's cool. It's the right stick does all that, so you
can shift it and it won't lock anything in the place with the right side.
Use the deep patter left stick to actually move them. But I mean,
it's it's exactly what Threes was. It doles out the achievements like crazy.
I played like three games, I got like five hundred achieving points.
It gives you a two hundred achieving points playing in snap mode. Don't lie
you're a little bit interested. I'm a little bit more. I mean,
threes is a great game. Yeah, but I bought threes once on a
device that is perfectly suited to play threes, and I can play it while
doing something else and having that something else exist in a full screen way.
What if I told you this, Jeff, when I was testing it earlier,
I've played Threes on the right side out of the screen, while on
the left side of the screen. Was nWo sold out ninety seven? What
if I told you I could play threes on my phone while having nWo sold
out ninety seven full screen on a TV. Or what if I told you
I could play threes full screen on my television using my Xbox One that I
bought for money while watching nWo sold out in ninety seven on my phone.
Those are all possibilities. Yeah, exactly. The world is my oyster.
I don't need to split screen share time with anything if everything gets its own
screen all screen. This is the wrestling screen. This is the three screen
howe your yeah masking tape that I wrote like wrestling screen on the TV.
Did you see did you see this completely unsubstantiated rumor going around about like a
new Xbox one interface coming, No, like to somehow coincide with what I
was ten? Huh? I mean with it? Like, is any part
of the rumor like, well, with connect gone, we're just going to
move completely. It was. It was vague and I almost feel stupid bringing
it up because it was very much like message board scuttle butt style, like
I just still got a Windows ten event coming, and like did they do
that all over again? I don't know, like that worked so potably for
them last time of one OS if the one one esthetic in OS approach for
multiple device, but that it would be what they would be getting away from
to a certain extent, because the Windows ten OS is such that you couldn't
duplicate it on a console because it is just old Windows. But when you
bring up that start menu, it has tiles like Windows eight did in the
start menu. Oh, so you're saying would be a new interface, it
would be something okay, there would it would distensibly like you would think that
they would that would be their chance to move away. It would be engaged
to yeah, to like save face though, like instead of saying like it
didn't really work on the first time, you would be able to say,
well, we're making it more like Windows ten. We decided to go more
Windows ten. So they can't do that because yeah, Windows ten just is
a PC. It's Windows ten is Windows seven with its slightly different start menu.
Like you can't make a console look like oh innovation, Yeah, gives
me what I'm right. So now you're just getting away from that rade.
So they could you know this this they could very well. I mean obviously
I think they will totally redesign the UI at something like will it be next
year? Like I don't know. Yeah, hearing you talk last week about
about trying to wraankle the party interface for master Chief and stuff like that,
and like they I thought the party interface was like Junkson's Day one. Like
and they've done work too, and they're still just crazy. You know,
it's still they. I don't know if you've seen. They made a bunch
of changes to snap interface too. There's that little pop up now do you
know what I'm talking about it? Maybe it's a little four away. It
looks like a deepad when you snap. Now, oh no, you do
have guy button? Yeah, double tap the X button and it'll pull it
up. It's yeah, let's just switch between the two pains and a couple
other things. So you be you would you would double tap that button and
it would just swap pains, right, yeah, sum that even more difficult,
Like what it's not difficult? Why are you snapping to get with?
You have that? Tell you have to? No, you don't. I
want a snap option that is never snapped. Just give me a checkbox somewhere
that things has never fucking snaps. Just a button, says fussy, And
and that's that's that. If you view achievements in the game, you can
only view them snapped, and I think that those are mistakes what it made.
That is what I'm getting at. The added functionality. They added this
little four way thing, the selector, but it's not enough. I can't
believe they salvage that view. I didn't know they added that, Like I
I couldn't live without that. I don't know how you would get it.
It's it lets you switch between the two. It's context like SNAP, so
I could be playing a game. Well that's about example. If you have
achievement snap to the right, you could switch between like okay, now I
want to switch over to Hulu, like change the Snap application or go back
and forth, you know, or unsnap. Yeah, yeah, I guess
like that's the things like since I have connects, yeah, I mean,
I don't know if you can alter it from that thing, but I know
you can't. But I think you have to go like into the settings to
alter that, which is like really goofy thing to go all the way to
do that. It seems like a concession to the fact that a lot of
people don't have connects now right, Yeah, they wouldn't have to do this.
You can't say unsnap and stuff like that. And I only know about
it because I watched the like Major Nelson, like here's what's new on the
dashboard update video last time my friend I was playing with that to tell me,
he's like he's just but yeah, like I feel like there are too
many things that they are just like stuck together with bubble gum and you know
it's it's it's a lot of stuff like the breadcrumb trail of like like that
that case of like sometimes you hit the B button and oh, a game
is launching. How did that happen? What the fuck is going on?
Or you go to messages and it launches the last thing you were in,
so suddenly it's launching a game again, and like that that stuff is messed
up, just so finding the goddamn settings menu and that thing Jesus like on
top of ex useful for that, on top of all of other advantages.
Like that's one reason I find myself on the PS four a lot more,
just because like you know, you've got that interfaciated with fat well, that
interfaces got some issues, but it's still straightforward, Like it's still pretty quick
to get to where you need to go without wondering like what am I doing
here? Like, where am I game? So do I need to double
tap a certain button to make a thing pop up to do what I want?
Or you know, I feel like that. You know, my suf's
been really good with the firmer updates and they have they keep adding like interesting.
I don't know if they're useful because I don't know, like who how
many people actually care? But like they added that what's on thing, and
that rolled out in the US now I think it's only in the preview dash,
but now it's like one of the top bar things is what's on.
It'll show you like some Twitch broadcasts. But also it's just like here's trending
television. Here's TV ship programs that other people are watching right now, like
an NFL game or the oscar. Like it's kind of interesting because you're if
it's real data. It's interesting because you look at it and go like,
man, everyone watches shit, but Dynasty's on right now? Now, I'm
good, I'm good. You click over this Fast and Furious marathon right that
setup like you know the trending television show the Year at the Game Awards,
right, yeah, no, that's what the trending television show the House the
cards, but you know, like you can see what Twitch channel somebody's watching
on the friends list, you know, ye, click through and like go
to that channel. Yeah. There's there's some great stuff. There is great
smart stuff with the Xbox One interface, but it's just not quite there for
the game stuff. For for some of that stuff like like party could still
be smoother, and you know, they're getting into and out of a game,
like I feel like they just there. Maybe there needs to be a
more prominent notification they're like, hey, you have a hot game running in
the background. Yeah, and that sort of stuff. Everything. It feels
like a band aid for interface. It's sort of like but you know,
a bunch of committees. Yeah, but you know, I just might never
stoke yea like forever. I'll give them at least some credit for like iterating
quickly, even if it's not like fixing some of the core issue, Like
they have fixed some core issues along the way. But I wouldn't be surprised
if after this entire year was spent band aiding the entire Xbox One price wise,
like you know, just going after a lot of things to try and
make people happier. If next year was sort of like like act two,
which is okay, we sort of gotten ourselves and to be competitive, and
like a new inter face would go along with that, just like your way
to like completely just reintroduce the machine to a lot of people. Second acts
usually pretty dark man. Yeah yeah, I mean if you look at you
know, Xbox strikes back the price cut, like the November sale stuff that
they've been doing, like you know, like sounds like that's been doing really
really well. And anagotally, you know, there was like a thread on
gaff about like post pictures from retail for Black Friday, and it was all
these shots of just like you know, Xbox displays with all the bundles gone
and stuff like that. We like you take out Bloodborne and like, I'm
more interested in the Xbox exclusive. It's going well the bigger you know.
I mean again this is anacotal that like for Black Friday, the big difference
is you've got PS four Bundle at three ninety nine Xbox Bundle at three twenty
nine. Yeah, you know like that that is a big difference at point
of sale. Yeah, yeah, what if everybody already bought a PS four.
There's also that a lot of people. There's probably a few more people
that could die one. Yeah, that's it could probably self me more than
anecdotally. Okay, it's it's it's a thing that's like, you know,
it's a it's a solid reminder that, like, you know, this generation
will last a very long time. And as much as everyone is quick to
want to write everyone off for one mistake or the other people like oh the
Sony fur More thing, they're fucked or this Microsoft thing is they're fuck Like,
no one's fucked yet, I still want to play most mess up on
PC, Like I think that's the Yeah, I mean long term, long
term. The question is are they actually both fucked right because the systems are
not powerful enough or it's just you know, comes down to those big platform
exclusives and those enough Like everything that has been multi console I picked up on
PC, and I think not have kno gone wrong? Like the PC has
been the better version. It's a shame because I want to play that stuff
on PS four and Xbox One, Like you know, Assassin's Creeds would be
nice to use them. Well you shouldn't want to play Assassin's Creed on anything
really. Also, Yeah, fark arthre was like completely broken from me on
PC for like really a week. Yeah, it wouldn't even start well in
the sense that the scripting broke the moment that you did the first time.
You're actually fully control of the character when you have the meeting with who's the
Yeah, peg him in and then the sort of rebels show up and you're
supposed to sprint to this jeep. Yeah, Like, the scripting doesn't go,
We just everyone just stands there, and so it's of cool, Wait,
where there's like supposed to be should blowing up everywhere else there's a couple
of guns going off, and so you would like you a YouTube video of
that, like, So then I started running forward and the occasionally some of
the scripting would kick in, like the icon like go there would kick in.
So then I'd get in the jeep and then you just stand Everyone just
sits there, like the jeep doesn't go, like your gun doesn't come out.
So then what I found out was that if so I would restart to
the to the previous I go to my last safe and then it would do
the same thing would happen. But if I went to reload the last checkpoint,
the scripting would kick in and then I would get to the next sequence,
which is the driving, and then you get to the stealth and there's
like an avalanche thing that happens there. Avalanche would not trigger. Everyone's just
standing around, like clearly waiting for the next scripting to occur. Idle chatter,
I don't chatter is happening, but the game's not moving on uh.
And then finally I waited about like two minutes, and then the avalanche came
down and then the game just crashed. And so then I looked I looked
it up. I mentioned this on twitters, like anyone else running into this
is just like some people were speculating because that games, you know, optimized
for a Nvidio. I have an ETI card, Like, it's just like
a weird part of that. Someone was like, oh, I solve I
solve all the scripting issues in the first hour of the game. I just
all tabbing. I was like, that's not a solution. And then I
went to the Steam forums and someone had the exact exact same issues I was
having, and I tried to go through the intro like three or four different
times crash at the same spot. They were like, oh, there was
an issue with the game pad support. So you have to play with the
mouse and keyboard for the first hour and a half. Then you can play
with a game pad and fuck that. And then I bought your egg and
agent moved on. I think you made the right choice. Yeah, I
want to go back. I'm sure it's like better. It was just so
infuriated for it to be that broken, that's crazy. Yeah, I didn't
have any issues of the PC version. Yeah, I'm like six hours in
on the PC ID. Any issue I would have an in video, so
maybe that'd be too Yeah, I don't know. That's the thing with PC
games was on some level you never know. Yeah, you never know what
you're gonna get with those things. But generally the quality of ports is great,
actually better than ports are I guess, like, yeah, that's yeah.
We've been talking for years about you'd be soft PC stuff being a fucking
burning car crash. So it was weird. Like we played the PC version
of Unity, which everyone had told me was just hot garbage, like just
did not run it could most people couldn't even get it to load properly.
Played it on that like that BFS PC that we looked pretty well, It
actually ran pretty nicely like that looks real good key phrase you said, bf
BC. The largest problem with the U S S PC ports is incredibly poor
optimal and that game run like shit, really just garbage. I mean I
couldn't even load it on my home machine. It was like two years old.
So, and you know, they talk a lot about, you know,
if their CPU bound or whatever that stuff, and you know, maybe
my Sandy Bridge Arab CPU is not what it needs to do it. Yeah,
I don't know. Stiller on in their room, yeah, Cyris,
Yeah, pull my three dffect ship. Yeah. Well he talking about Assassins
Creed Unity being busted. It's a great segue into news and yeah, what's
news? All right? What are we in? Week three? Week four
of our Assassins Creed Unity updates, Unity Watch continues. Assassins Unity. You
should just stop watching tweet of the week. There you go, it's broken.
I feel like this has to be the conclusion of the Unity saga because
they basically posted their maya culpa. They're like, yeah, we fucked up.
Well, when you have your when you have the CEO of the studio
that oversaw the development of the game, say, I didn't know you could
have a CEO underneath the CEO. Yeah, I guess like they're not even
subsidiaries, they're just what I'm saying, studio, Like this is from your
honest blot who has been like been a name since like the first Prince of
Persia in the modern era. Who Yeah, and he's listed as the CEO
of movies saw in Montreal. Like how just doesn't mean anything? Stock any
he was off mantre. Yeah, right, I don't know if you want
to. Yeah, it's a real bear market. It's probably pretty low.
Probably get in ground floor. You know, it's the culmination of the years
of innovation and work and blah blah blah. Unfortunately, at launched, the
overall quality of the game is diminished by bugs and unexpected technical issues. I
want to sincerely apologize expected he makes. It makes you think about that email
we got from uh, the anonymous person right again about the quality of Assassins,
creed unity and all that sort of stuff like that. Did that person
know the game was broken? They blamed a lot. They said that a
lot of their issues who you know, who knows it could be shifting to
blame was that the test environments the dev kits were different than the retail kissues
in a way that impacted. Yeah, the optimization. I mean that game
has issues that go far beyond its technical problems, but but those are significant.
They did they that was one of their chief things, like, yeah,
this this stuff was different than to be fair, I mean, but
the PC version was messed up too. I know that. That's where you're
like, well, that didn't I mean, I didn't change, you know.
He kind of his hat in hand here with this apology. But the
bigger thing is that they made business changes. They're no longer selling the season
pass for this thing. Oh I heard about that. Yeah, do you
get a refund if you bother? So? No, no, Actually,
this is actually pretty good. They made They made good, all right,
as much as you can make good on this, they made good. So
so yeah, the season pass. As as of this message going out last
week, the season pass was no longer for sale because all the DLC that
was to come with the season pass will now be free for anybody humans the
game all or just the first piece. It's yeah, it's just the first
So it's the Dead Kings DLC. I'm not clear. The Dead Kings DLC
is free for everyone, So that's not so that's not the entirety of what
the season pass would have gotten. You know, there's also the downloadable two
D game that they're putting out, the one set in China. Yeah,
there's there's like two other major piece of DLC, so season pass owners,
so you'll still have to pay piecemeal for that stuff. Yes, one would
assume maybe it'll be cheaper as a result or something like that. Okay,
okay, So so Dead Kings DLC is what everybody's getting for free, regardless
of having the season Pass or not. If you bought the season Pass,
which was thirty dollars, you get a free you play point wallpaper. It's
totally sweet. Thirty thirty free you play points. No, they are.
They are giving one of like six or seven different other Ubisoft games free to
anybody who bought season pass. But it's recent stuff. It's like Far Cry
you could get you could get the crew of the Crew. Crew as of
that writing was not even out yet, so like they're giving away like the
crew. Maybe don't get the crew. I mean no, we don't get
the crew. Is anybody another? Yeah? Just like basically playing. Yeah,
it's this endless chain getting your life. So they had their they had
their big story about like, hey, we've we've heard some people complaining about
review stuff and hang on, let you guys know that it's not getting ahead
of ourselves here. Is there more? There are stories yet to come.
You'd be soft. It's just been ship in the fucking bed left and right
right this season man, So yes, if you if you bought that season
Pasty, I love Far Cry, you're gonna get one of the Far Cry
is a great game. That's when it works. If you bought make it,
if you bought the Unity season past, you should take a look at
Far Cry for Okay, that's the one to get. Yeah, one of
the other ones, Watchdogs, Rayman Legends, just the newest Just Dance,
Just Dance, the Crew, Assassin's Cream, Black Flag. Yep, it's
like all that's not bad, justically all the last like half a dozen,
like Bigby Soft games. If you're gonna give you another one about the big
budget sixty dollars games for thirty dollars season pass, like it's yeah, aren't
they putting out Anopoly? Can they get Anopoly for so that they got license
fees to pay on that? They can't? Right? What about Tetris and
they do the most recent Techris npoly guy gets his money, man, Yeah,
what did that come out? The Vita three DS? Tetris come,
Yeah, I want to get that. What's that called Ultimate? Can you
put ds again? That was great? That's a good versions so good.
That's probably ever. I wouldn't say the best. It's pretty good. Next
Tetris. What's the other what's the other better version of Tetris? Tetris?
That N sixty four Tetris game where you're building all the Tetris trish. Yes,
okay, fine, yes, Tetris is kind of cool. Yes it
is, but it's not Tetris. Are you saying that the next version of
Tetris? You know what I'm saying was it is the next Tetris or the
new Tetris. Tetris that's the title is a friend sixty four? I think
it was next Test next Tetris. There was a four player Tetris game.
Oh yeah, that was and you built the seven winners of the world by
breaking all your lines and stuff. What was the game that broke Tetris?
I forgot which one it was, but that's forever. Yeah, like that
is a like Tetris. As you know, the Tetris company crackling a little
bit here is I think, I think, I think up against your face
a little bit. The Tetris Company made that rule change and it is now
canonical. Those those are the rules of Tetris that infinite spins in some games,
the ability to flip it off. Maybe I don't know. I think
I want to say it flip it off every time I come across it.
Yeah, yeah, Brad, what else is going on on this? So
here, just as Ubisoft was cleaning up there tree Unity mess yeah, which
is not clean completely. Well, so you just like that mold, you
just paint over it. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, just paint
over it. And here's the copy of farcright for it. Let's just forget
the same happen. God damn. So patch three came out for Unity of
around the same time as this message, and Digital Foundry did an analysis of
the PS four version then found that performance was like one point five percent better.
Yes, so damn all right? Uh, not exactly out of the
woods on that one. Yeah, yeah, but they are they are fixing
a bunch of bugs. Purportedly. They also said that the frame rate,
like there's going to be a frame rate patch, Well this is not this
claim to have covered some of that ground and the kind of didn't. Uh
it is one point five percent better now seriously, yep, that's better out
runs a thirty one. Can we go five hamps through review scale? Can
we go raise the score one point five percent? Not an unill we get
his zero star rating, it's like two point three. So yeah, just
as just as they were kind of trying to address that stuff they got out
there about the crew because you remember what happened with Unity I do and how
reviews didn't post until noon of launched day, and said, hey, we're
gonna address that by not sending it out to any reviewers at the time problems
solved. They're just saying there's no embargo because there's yea exactly a great reviewers.
Reviewers will experience this game the way it was meant to be seen on
full live retail. Basically, they're pulling the Destiny card by saying, like,
we're not gonna let you play it early because it's an online game and
you need to see it as an online game. No no coverage embargo,
just well you'll get it just because you won't have it, which I mean,
meanwhile, like the pre orders for that game unlock at nine o'clock on
Monday, and I don't know if they've sent it out yet. We didn't
get it, but I can't speak for other outlets. I don't know if
it's gone out or not. Meanwhile, the servers are up and live.
So if you managed to get a retail copy ahead of time by a retail
store that doesn't give a fuck, you can play it. And I've so
that's you know, that's where it gets super anecdotal, is you know they've
been running betas for this game for some time, and if like, I've
had a lot of different users contacting me about the crew saying that they fucking
hate that beta. And then today after I said that, I you know,
had to pre order it so we could, you know, post some
covers this week, a lot of people said, like, so I got
ahold of a copy. It handles like shit, and a lot of people
kind of saying that that it is it is not a good game. So
what are they saying? That is technical stuff or just the gameplayer or just
not a great game. So if it's anything, if it plays anything like
the couple of times I played it at Ubisoft Events. The driving in that
game is garbage. Then the car's handle like garbage. Sometimes your car flies
across the corner. Yeah hopefully, Yeah, so there is that. I
just want to know if it still says Saint Louis in a French way,
like spelling out Saint and hyphenating it like they did in the beta, Like
hopefully that's still in there. Does the US maps still look like it was
drawn by an eighth grader from Australia? Okay, but I don't know,
Like I said, so, like the first time, the first time I
played that game, I thought, this doesn't seem very good at all.
Then I played it right before E three this year and thought, you know,
there's something to this, Like the parts are almost like a car RPG
kind of thing, like the idea behind it, the idea is that kind
of fun. And then the beta came out and I saw some of the
story stuff about like you know, you gotta take over the gang and your
brother got killed and they're they're pinning the murder like you get another Troy Baker
voice game and you're just like, look at this, he's in its car,
And the story seemed like it like Troy. It made me long for
the heady days of need for speed. Most wanted the original one. It
was good in a different way than I normally do. Uh, Razor Callahan
is the true character of the adding games. Like these guys just seem like
terrible. So so seeing that story mode and like seeing that they had made
a Ubi Soft game, like there are towers that reveal things. It's it's
a satellite dish you have to drive up to and sync with to reveal jump
into a haste with your car, and you can't stealth murder anyone with your
car. It's not so so much stealth stop. Yeah. So like they
took that design approach, they need to have applied it to a driving game.
They need to sit down in a meeting that listening to twenty fifteen and
we put the fucking tower in the game, your fire, fucking fire.
They need to sit down and go like, and I think I might have
said this like last week, the week before or something. We're like,
they need to sit down and go, let's make the next Assassin's Creed game
a linear experience and just have it no more open world stuff, or let
the open world open world. It's like, you know, you go to
a mission in which they've hand crafted like this an open zone. You can
attack it multiple ways, which is what they tried to do with Unity not
super well, like there's there are some cool ways to pull off those assassinations
we want to but in reality, like to do to start down a couple
of smoke bombs just stablish Yeah, that's all you gotta do. This ninety
minute mission just took you two and a half minutes. Yeah, it's interesting.
I feel like that. Yeah, the yes, it is. It's
interesting that they found a way to apply the ub saw her designed to like
different genre. It's interesting that that they are trying to push the limits of
the I mean it's also push that and maybe tragic. I mean what's interesting
watching what's interesting is watching how far they will go with this. I mean,
you know, and you start to wonder why, Like I mean they
have a zillion employees, yeah right, I mean, they have like a
trillion fucking studios. It doesn't seem like there's a great reason for them to
make every game or the vast majority of their games or don't play in that
way. I don't know if you remember the Naro two games, they made
less generation, but those games were the same thing. Really, they were
open world games. I mean I think I had fun play, Yeah,
I remember they being neat games. It's got to be like a focus testing
thing, right, Like they just found this formula that they They've got players
that they found that they liked it. People like the idea of a map
full of side content. Yeah, they don't do it. I don't know.
And it's it's it's really fucking things like handles it well fault no no,
I yeah, every mission is a five star man just doing street Unity
opens with a fucking chase mission. They took the ratings from the last game
and fucking ignored them and obviously win against what everyone must have voted because it
was the worst. It's a pretty easy chase mission, to be honest.
I don't give a what's the So what else do they have? So the
crew is coming up and then they have a watch Dogs this year, it's
the next there's nothing the Division, the Division and Siege. Yeah, Siege
probably will not have towers for you, but what if it does. It's
a multiplayer games. One of the game. What if one of the hostages
is a tower climbed the Hostage Siege was that super short demo where they shot
through the Yeah, yeah, like I played that. That was cool.
It was like a multiplayer focus thing. I don't think The Division is an
open world game, but who knows. No, I think it is,
or at least it's open environment. Maybe I don't. I don't think The
Division is a game. So yeah, yeah, I just feel like the
stuff they put on paper, like the crew on paper sounds really interesting and
it's like and then to hear that it's maybe not executed really well, it's
disappointing. But like if you were to give me that pitch, it's like,
yeah, I'm really interested in that. But then that's that's kind of
a bummer. Well we'll see. I mean, I you know, by
the time you hear this, we should have some coverage on the site probably
right, Maybe not coverage on the site, but you know, well we
will have played some of it. At least. Do we know which forty
seven Ubi Soft studios worked on that game, the crew, I don't.
I don't keep track of which studio does. What's that company? It's impossible
Puma made that. Yeah, I just the audacity of the message they put
out so to say, are you saying it's apology of the year. Is
that what you're saying, because it's not apology. This is about this is
that the crew? Yeah about the crew? Yea. The crew will be
available to media to begin their reviews when the game launches on December second.
There will be absolutely no embargo on any type of coverage once the game is
available for seeing. Thank thanks thanks for making that clear, Thanks for thanks
for understanding what the problem was. This may have been a weird extreme,
but I feel like this is going to be the game that goes down in
history as the last game that people did this for like had a an embargo
that was like the morning of release instead of the midnight because a lot of
cases is like that's holdover from like like the concept of a game, you
know, opening up on midnight at midnight is still relatively new in the grand
scheme of things. It's the thing it was a digital yeah, yeah,
you know, like you know, in in the grand scheme of things,
if we if we take the entire history of the past couple of generations into
context, embargos have always been Tuesday morning because that's when stores opening, they
go on sale and you'd have supposed to be the only way to get the
game exactly, so, you know, and you would have some cases where
a publisher would step in. Occasionally, Activision would try to claim Wednesday,
which was hilarious, and you know at that point you'd go like, no,
no, we're not going to do that. Uh. And then sometimes
you know, you'd have someone try to push for like Tuesday at noon and
you'd be like, why, that's that's not reasonable, Why would you do
that. I think this is a case of just like, you know,
you have a lot of people that have been doing this for a very long
time, and at this point, like like yeah, if if if like
review sites were like people that are super focused on reviews, probably should have
pushed back and said like, no, this needs to go up when the
game goes on sale. Otherwise I could be live streaming the game and still
not review it yet. Like how that's crazy when you're talking about Yeah,
when we had to push back to in the morning show and I had bought
it the night before it and locked in midnight's like I can talk about the
game, and so I'm fucked. Yeah, Yeah, So it's a it's
a it's a weird situation, But I just I look at it as one
of those weird holdovers, like like, was Ubisoft trying to pull a fast
one on people? Uh? Probably a little bit, Probably a little bit.
Yeah, I'm not necessarily because of that, because I mean I think
that they were a little dodgy about when they were sending that game out to
begin with, Assassin's Creed usually goes out pretty fucking early because those games for
long. Yeah, because those games are long and they're very confident about I
think I got it the Unity Thursday or Friday before it came out. Yeah.
Unity, we all went out like like yeah, we would get it.
We would get a p s three discs that was like not quite final,
like maybe a month out sometimes. And this game there was like it
was like a black fucking box. You're like, hey, what's hey,
what's up? Statins Creed? Nothing? Rogue didn't even show up until I
didn't get it. I got, I got Rogue Dave release I got a
day after Yeah. Yeah, yeah. A similar Shenanigans with w W for
the current generation consoles, Uh, to some extent, but that's neither here
Norther. I feel like there is some reason for hope like some some publishers
are coming down, coming around to modern realities of release timings faster than others,
you know, like I feel like Bethesda has been really good about like
the embargo was always just like well it's nine am or I'm sorry, nine
pm the night before release. Yeah, and then and you know, like
they made that adjustment because people complained and said like and you know, they
used to say midnight Pacific and go like this unlocks at nine pm on Steam,
like you can't do, and so they made the adjustment. Like that's
you know, and that's the adjustment that everyone is starting to make. Really
to Clea, the embargo should never be later than the game that was for
sale exactly. But you know, they can set whatever embargo they like if
you want to agree to that copy on their terms. And that's where it
breaks down. It's just like, you know, do you actually want to
do that? Yes or no? And but if you think about stuff,
if you think about a strong franchise like Assassin's Creed, which can sell in
the brand right, like why would if you and if you feel like the
reviews are gonna be tepid, like why would oh yeah, yeah, no,
I mean yes, I mean like Bargaret should do this, like they
should push it as far as they came to like there's a clear I mean
that's the thing is, like you know, like we don't know for sure
if they did that, but you know, everything lines up in such a
way that you look at it and go like, of course they tried to
do this because that's their job. Their job was to sell the most motive.
They're under zero obligation to send out copies to the media or anybody ahead
of release to review the game. And I think it's also like like a
bit ties into the way people are digesting game media and stuff like that,
like reviews that you know where reviews fall and like the you know, do
you need a mouthpiece a review to let people know about Assassin's Creed? No,
not really anymore. Well, then on top of that, like that,
the whole element of like a streaming contention, like that's still a relatively
new phenomenon that I think PR people are still training. They had they had
an event like the week before release where they had a bunch of prominent like
YouTube stream people or whatever go down there and capture footage ahead of time and
all that stuff, and there were there were people in the days ahead they
were just streaming the game because they made individual right commitments with Ubisoft two.
Yeah they were so yeah, you know obviously with yeah, like you know,
the idea the would show positive coverage, right yeah, I mean you
know, like like you know, we didn't get a copy of the Crew,
but sure enough on Monday, like IgMs like presented by Ubisoft, like
look at us playing the Crew video went up you know, so like yes,
obviously that sort of coverage is still going to exists of the Crew.
Yeah. Yeah, the tires of the Crew. I would love to get
it. Let's get back into that line, that era of previews. I
need a screenshot of a new tire every day. Yeah, tune in tomorrow
this we're going to show the level four tires. Yeah. Oh man.
Also, here's a stone called Steve Auson screenshot. I don't know, Yeah,
that's he's in there. Well. Well yeah, other video games still
broken. I've heard that, Drew. Do you have another master Chief update
for you haven't tried again? Yea, this very anecdotal podcast. Yeah,
my buddy said it's better, better, but not perfect. Well is it
still just matchmaking issues? I've seen all kinds of stuff. I mean,
it's not it's not like competitive multiplayer is still the focal point of the problems.
But I see people tweeting randomly about like, well, co op crashes
every time we play at ya, I've never tried cop yet. Yeah,
or you know, there were people going around for a while talking about like
campaign progress getting reset. I've ever bet like weird scripting issues and the campaigns
and stuff. Yeah, it sucks. What's going on? Apparently, I
can I don't get a game machines shipped earlier than everyone thought they were going
to, and all these games are rushed. I can say I talked to
someone that I was. I was, I'm allowed to allude to the more
that's going out in the game, and the game was extremely rushed. Okay,
Project shifted around. That game was accelerated in a way that it was
not intended to be accelerator. What the game was going to be maybe you
know, not known until a little bit in and the test environment stuff for
that game did not reflect at all what happened in the real world in a
way that they were just completely caught by surprise. Now, is that is
that a failure of their test design or is that a failure of of something
I like, like did they just not not play like test it properly?
Person I talked to wasn't quite sure whether they were, like the line of
failure was but that when that game shift although that game from start to finish
was hot right when it shipped there, it's not like they shipped to in
like who pulled a fast one on everyone, like like they did, they
had no idea that it was going to be that fundamentally broken like, which
which you know, on one hand, it's like, well, great,
they didn't trick everyone with like a game that that was like messed up.
But on the other hand, it's like, how did that get out?
How did that? You know, like how does how does that failure in
the system occur? It's probably partially of column A that it was rushed and
then part of column B and that like just the I don't fire. I
don't if it's failure in QA, like stress testing is difficult, the stress
testing, but also you know it's stress testing, Like you know, it's
easy to look at it and go like it's just Xbox Live. That thing
has worked for like a decade, but they have made significant changes to how
a lot of that stuff works and suggesting that's a simple process to figure all
this ship and it was they would have flipped a switch and be fun.
But yeah, it's you know, like it's fucking crazy that that thing is
what it is. Yeah, especially because it's it's not just day one,
it's not just two, it's not like the first week. It's like,
you know, are we were approaching, we were approaching a month of this
game being out, So how long? And Drive Club has been out?
You know, like there's another so Drive Club they gave away the first similar
to the Assassins Creed stuff they gave where the first DLC that's out, Now
that's just free. Doesn't work, it's just free. I have no idea
I download it at all. I don't know why. I'm so how long?
How long was better you've got? I do? I put that big
hard about a year? And okay, so that's still kind of be the
wreck, right, just like like just fucked up functionality. Well, you
know, Battlefield was one of those cases where plenty of people were having no
problems, plenty of people were having serious issues, so it was a little
less I mean, yeah, like when it was broken. It was broken,
but you know, they were it seemed like they were getting there the
whole time. But then also with Battlefield, part of it was the PR
approach, which was pretending everything was fine, like then everything's cool, even
though all these serious problems, like at least you know, with three for
three UB stuff like three three for three is now issued like several maya kulpas
did you come across as like heartfelt and not particularly robotic even if but there's
a lot of well so, I mean, there is some genuine contrition in
this this latest apology. They finally stepped it up to Bonnie Ross, who
was the head three four three. Can't come much higher than Phil Spencer.
You're getting outside of the Halo group if you go any higher than her.
But she, you know, she posted another big, you know, a
more general statement about you know, you haven't received the experience you deserve and
etcetera, etcetera. Uh, but it sounds like they're also going to give
away free stuff. Yeah, I just wonder what that ended. They don't.
She doesn't go in any detail, but she just says, our primary
and continued focus is first on fixing the issues in hand. Once we've done
that, we will detail how we will make this right with our fans,
which I don't I don't know what that would be. Think of a give
out. I'm sure it's gonna be something nice. Season past. Yeah,
then get you you know free. I mean Halo five is a year away,
so I don't know what they do in the interim, Like, I
don't think a free TV show is gonna cut it. No, well,
you know they do have another Spartan whatever whatever. That doesn't seem I'm not
saying it's a good. You would free Halo Wars as as a good.
So what is new in the Master collection? It's I mean, it's just
it's Halo two has been done the same way Halo one was the like select
the graphic style. Yeah, and then with three and four are also upgrade.
Yeah, they're uprest. And then they have the multiplayer like they have
every map all those games and the correct physics per game, and it's done
the one, for lack of a better word, executable. Yeah ok.
Yeah yeah, Like if it worked like it's supposed to, it's kind of
an amazing problem. Yeah, I agree, Like people like Drew and it's
some other like super hardcore Halo fans I know, were like super excited.
It sounds like a pretty big feat. Yeah, I'm still excited for it.
Can't wait to play it. Yeah, don't telling how long that's gonna
take. I mean they've put out multiple patches where they basically said like,
all right, this is the one that's gonna fix it, nip, and
then that betas in three weeks, right, yes, yea, which if
if you think about like all, like you know, obviously it's terrible that
people bought this game and they're not having the time they want it, but
it's like it's also like essentially this was the beginning of like the pr campaign
for right, a little five stuff leak out ahead of time, Like they
just say everything was on fire all at once for those guys. So it's
like like, hopefully by the time the Five's beta starts, you'll be able
to you know, actually play the Master shipection because you launched that through you
do, Yeah, and like I still have you well I guess maybe I
haven't tried, but like that Halo Nightfall stuff is supposed to launch through the
Halo channel, and when we tried in the quick look, it just said
like you need to buy a master Chief collection to watch this, Like we
are launching it from them, I'm talking about I haven't tried it this last
time I did, but oh yeah, you sound enthusiastic this Like it's intentatively
enthusiastic. It's a huge franchise for them, Like you don't want to suck
that one up. It is the It is going to be the game that
a bunch of kids now with purchasing power, grew up on. Right,
is there, Like, oh, the first game I played was Halo and
like I love that thing, and like you know, it's their Nintendo,
it's their Zelda, and like you are introducing and you're introducing concept. It's
totally true that I mean that I think came out and what wouldn't it Halo?
They deserve better than so like now you're trying to introduce that series to
a bunch of kids on a new console, right, and be like check
out Halo. It's broken, right, And it's like, you know,
you're trying to leave people into Halo five. That's terrible. Yep, I
feel bad for him. Yeah, it's a shame. You know, I
don't know what they do. I mean, if nothing else couldn't they just
like credit people like twenty bucks of Xbox Live credit or something. Yeah,
they could. I mean I'm just trying to think of twelve bucks. Is
it really? Yeah? It was, they think it was. It was
five on Origin for like a day. You know what they could you know,
what they could do is they could put out an updated version of the
Best Halo Game and give that away for free. Halodest not in the package.
The Best Halo Game is not in the package. You can update that,
get that jazzy soundtrack. I don't know, would you actually trust them
to updated at this point everything else going on? And then if you know,
if it's free and they haven't directly attached money to it, or they
gonna actually do a good job. I just want to play an up Residents.
Really, you give away something you're already made, you can't you can't
put new resources behind make good? Right? Or if they were going to
do odst as like an add on to the Master Chief collection and now they
just say screw it, finish it and just put it out for free for
everyone. Yeah, I mean, here all these unsolved, like you know,
they're they're willing to obviously like take some losses, like you know,
the price cuts for the console and stuff like, you know, they're in
the middle of trying to sell the console two people generally, you know,
like bigger issue is that they can't sit around on this. They can't stowe
to their thumbs, like whatever they're gonna do for people that needs to happen
soon. Well, they've been writing a lot of apologies, so I don't
think they're sitting on their thumbs at least. Yeah, yeah, but yeah,
just the larger issue of games shipping broken, you know in an extravagant
way that they that we haven't seen in a good long time. Last last
year that had a pretty good run at it, how many how many games
between but it was like but it was like basketball and it was Battlefield,
right, well, it was something that was launch, and it was something
that was it was lunch. It was something that was happening where it was
a big deal. And I feel like now it's more like, oh,
this is still lappening. How many games have you guys played this year that
had multiple hard crash problems like in this is where you had to reboot the
system multiple times while playing Throat. The ones that I had were related to
that two point er firm where on the PS four but that was it,
so it was kind of Sony's fault. Okay, Yeah, I've had like
like multiple review games where I'm just like, oh, hey, here are
semi repeatable crash bugs that just seem to keep happening, game stopping and that's
the kind of stuff that like it happened every once in a while in the
past, but usually that ship was the kind of stuff that they wouldn't let
you through sert because of Yeah, and yeah, yeah, when I wonder
if like the consoles themselves are slightly half baked in that sense, Yeah,
it's like if like that's the thing that that two point o firm made me
kind of realize, like, man, like maybe some of this stuff is
just not ready for prime time to begin with, and they're just fucking making
it up as they go, because if they can put out firmware that breaks
like multiple upcoming games and the existing games and exist and some existing games just
keep functions of the system. Like EA was sending out messages to reviewers saying,
don't play the PS four version of Dragon Age and it is broken,
it will corrupt your save don't do it two point. Oh, don't do
it? Like how does that happen? Like like how right? I had
a weird thing with Sunset Overdrive where I downloaded enough to start playing it yeah,
and then let me play it and then it said it finished and then
didn't open up any of the story missions. While I was playing, I
was just running around doing those trials. I'm like, this is fuck Brad
dumb, but this guy kind of sucks. Like I'm just running literally and
like no missions. I'm like to the point where I'm like this game can't
be this bad. I have to go look something up. Uh, And
it was oh, you know first mission here, I'm like, what the
fuck is going on? I did delete it, download it again, the
tire game downloaded again, didn't play it, and then as soon as I
booted it up, it was the dude being like, hey, go here,
we're getting I'm gonna make you a namp and do whatever it happened.
You probably could have just a leader to save. I want to just hit
start and like closed the game. No booted, like pull the power out,
like the whole thing to be like this is, you know, trying
to get that thing working. Try to blow on the disc you know all
that ship. Yeah, when I played D four, the same thing happened,
and which like it gave me the indicator like hey, you can start
playing, which I figured I had that too, where it's like, okay,
I'll just jump in and play like whenever the first twenty minutes till like
hopefully keep floating or it tells me to to wait. And jumped in and
it said like, hey, you need to purchase the episodes. It's like,
well I did, Okay, I'm ready to go. So I backed
out, shut down the application, waited for it to finish, jump back
in, and it said, hey you should think about personal yeah, you
know, and then I started it over like shut down, the machine turned
it back on like everything hard, reset and we're all good to go.
Lach is a hate thing about my beause I had that problem with resu Gun
when they put out that resume on Heroes Update, where it just never acknowledged
that I had purchased that DLC and I could redownload. The whole thing is
many times I want I don't know it. The PS four has a function,
and I forget what it's called, something like rebuild licenses. Oh right,
yeah, get that store licenses. Yeah, store licenses, that's what
it is. But you know, the three sixty used to have problems where
you like it would think you were playing the trial version of an xpla game
that you had bought and stuff like that that was like user like multi users
on one system, and sometimes it would just get confused, like your you're
the local copy wasn't but you can. It seem like you can usually just
go to like purchase full game and open and clothes and go, oh you
got it. Yeah, it would, it would do stuff like that.
But I feel like a lot of developers have been subverting that, like I
don't know what the colloquial name for the like play as soon as it's ready
thing yea where like like you get that on the PS four a lot where
you put in a disc and the bar will fill up super fast when you
watch the game, but it's done and send you to an install screen like
Destiny did it. GT five does it. It's like GTA five is the
most nasty deceptive one My understanding of GT five Did you download it? I
did? Okay? Is this how it works? So when you put the
disk in, that bar fills in like twenty seconds. So I downloaded it
entirely and as it doesn't do the same thing. Sold. Yeah, it
downloads like a six hundred meg file that is the game. And then I'm
like that can't be right, so I boot it up. It starts downloading.
It starts out the game while that loading screen is on where it's like
all that like the character stuff makes it that game loading screen. It took
out that game. That game is over fifty gig and you have to be
in the games. Yeah, so you just have to dedicate that. So
it downloads enough for you to launch the application, but then it downloads the
entire game after you do it serve you ads or something while I was doing
it, if if But there it's a case to just keep downloading in the
background and not force you to run the games so you can exit out of
there. And I think it'll it'll keep telling as long as it's like running
somewhere in the background. I mean, I think Destiny did the same thing,
right, No, or do did? No Destiny would do a full
install, uh like from there, sure you didn't have to launch Destiny to
get the download started. I feel like that, Well, it was during
the the initial Like I bought that on a disc, so yeah, I
have it on disc. Also. I don't know, I just I feel
like I feel like a lot of develop developers are not using that feature as
intended. Yeah, it sounds like Sony requires it for like a QA thing
is like, hey, you have to build this in and they're saying like,
hey, we're not gonna build you know, we're not gonna We'll do
it, but it's not exactly what. To be fair, certain games are
not given to that type of access, Like like an open world game,
you kind of need the whole oven world. They're off the bat if you're
gonna be able to run around and stuff. But I don't know, I
would appreciate a little more care being given to the messaging on stuff like that.
Yeah, I like like some of the features of that are interesting,
Like you know, Call of Duty when you buy it digitally and you go
to download it, asks you if you want to prioritize single hillyer a multiplayer.
Oh wow, that was one of those things that so it does that
you know, you can pick multiplayer and it'll download seven gigs and you know
it'll download single player in the background. I almost wish you could do like
you can on Steam and just say like, hey, don't download the single
player because I don't need it, Uh, save me the space, but
it will eventually complete the download. Sure. So I'm looking at something here.
It is rewards dot Xbox dot com slash my missions. It says,
relive Halo now with legendary rewards. What hail to the master Chief this December
when you're you're invited to earn fifteen thousand rewards credits when you pick up Halo
games, add ons and videos asterisk from the Xbox Store. Embrace your intersparting
with the Halo Master Collection, Halo videos and more. There's no better time
to relive the Hailo experience. Claim your reward. I disagree with that.
Does anyone know what reward credits are? I think you can eventually turn them
into Xbox Live dollars like thing rewards. The if you use Bang as a
search engine, you get like this fake current. It's it's a separate it's
a separate program. It's not literally trying to pay you to use Bang.
Yeah, the rewards on Xbox dot Com has been around for a long time.
Like they they like have surveys that turn into reward points, and you
know, if you hit certain tiers with it. I think I don't know,
right, it's impressive or it's you know, that's part of the medic
what. But it's karate rupees, so don't worry about it. Okay,
December first through December thirty first, So I don't think they're retroactive. I
don't know. I just saw that Westland twittered a couple more very quick stories
to get through before we move on. Kojima is premiering quote metal Gear online
at the Game Awards this week. What do you think that is? I
think it's d MGS five multiplayer, but maybe I'm wrong. That sounds right,
that makes sense. I think I don't give a shit Gear multiplayer,
like all come on, like another thing called meta Girl, Well that's the
thing. The multiplayer in MGS four was called metal Gear on the right.
I mean, it's just it's gonna be that again, but better graphics.
I mean it's just which it was never good, I mean, having no
subsistence for it was never great. Where where is he doing? Did you
the Game Awards? Okay, the Jeff Keeley the Video Game Awards. I'm
curious Drew, You've spent much of the last two months playing Medal gear games.
Have you even thought of the idea of wanting to play a multiplayer No,
no, that's not it pops into my mind. Is like Spies versus
Marks. The only I mean, the only thing I'll say in his favor
is that I think that the Ground zero is plays better than any Medal Gear
game. Yeah, like like buy a country fucking mile. Like the shooting
is competent, the movement is competent, Like it feels pretty good. Rat
with shooters and movers is competency. That's that's what we're looking for, not
except Meal gear games. In a serious that's saying yeah, I mean yes,
when we look at the old medical games, to play that game and
just like not even think about like, oh this field's clunky, you're outdated.
Like to just play it, right, I think it. You know,
I would like them to go just super weird with it, But yeah,
who knows, who knows what it's gonna because this is they don't do
that well. Everybody plays a boss or something like that Big Boss Rush.
Just thinking of like a little gold statue of Jeff Keeley holding a BlackBerry,
just staring at it. That's that's what you win get. Yeah, that's
that's your wine. Well great, Uh, last story that I've got.
Destiny patch came out today, Yeah, yesterday, I should say, I'm
sorry. We are one week out from the release of The Dark Below,
the first expansion for Destiny, The Dark Below the Dark yes, the Dark
Below or the Dark Below Underneath. Less interested, but then you immediately made
me start wondering what Dark Blow is. It's like, it's a Destiny drug.
I'm really curious. We'll give you a Graham for two strange coins.
Those friend prices, yeah, no, friend prices are one strange coming is
the only show up once a week though, Yeah, you're we you can
farm it, but there's a lot of processing. So that's the only reason
I even brought this up because I barely played Destiny in the last month.
But this patch basically lops hours off of the end game. Ground sounds like
this, It sounds like the thing they do to Wow, you're saying there's
no better time to get no better time They basically I mean for people who
didn't spend a lot of time in the Destiny end game. There are a
bunch of materials that you have to run around the world finding to upgrade your
endgame gear. They have now made it so you can just go buy those
materials from vendors in the town. Because it's like when you were getting helium,
like ring around. You can buy helium for like an actual pittance.
It's like it's not pen band guards pretty cheap, which is like you get
thought that, Yeah, you could get that in there capped. So there's
a weekly limit on how many Vanguard marks you can get out of it.
No, what Brad is someone who collected a whole bunch of helium? Yeah,
I mean, hey, man, helium was a lot of fun.
And don't even get me started on Relic Iron. What a good time.
Fuck Relic Iron. That's just the worst. I didn't spend as we're like,
I'll come on, I wasted a lot of time. Yeah, it
sucks that I but I mean I if I had to put a number on
it, I bet I ran around for like two hours cumulatively on the moon
looking for that shit. Like I know people who've done way more than that.
Because I did not max my characterized at a certain points said fuck this,
but yeah, it's totally the it's totally the wow expansion thing of like,
let's make the previous content. We wondered if they were going to trivialize
the content, and it just seems content. They just made the ramp shorter.
I didn't expect it to happen so fast. Do you think part of
that might be driven by a lot of people just hitting a wall and going
yeah, I wonder if their numbers are down and this is like a way
to get them back in prior to or I don't if I don't make them
indicating that the content and that expansion is going to be high level, that's
maybe a problem. I bet, like most expansions just trivialize everything, right
as soon as it comes out, Yeah, you'll just get better here,
yeah, yeah, in your first draw. I mean, the expansion content
has to be leveled appropriately for like returning player, Like they can't say,
hey, you gotta be thirty to play this ship because like you know,
there's a bunch of people that are just excluded from that, right, But
uh yeah, I mean there's still aspects of it that require a lot of
grinding. It's only for exotic weapons that they have reduced a lot of the
requirements, which is what fourth the gear that you're using, Exactly, It's
it's you know, one weapon, one arm or slot can be taken up
with exotics at a given time. So I just, I just I didn't
expect these types of changes to happen before new contents start coming out. I
know it's when age we live in Jason is distraught by this new I don't
I don't think. I don't think you necessarily have to look at it as
like a reactive move, like we're losing people, we got to get them
back. It's just you know, we're raping. Yeah, that's that stuff
shouldn't have been they have begun Well yeah, yeah, you're right, But
then who would still be playing in Destiny? Like everybody would have hit thirty?
Why shouldn't exactly? I mean there's no good reason for that, like
out like putting it a bunch of bullshit, grind stop. I'm not saying
it's not a good reason to keep saying that, right, it's just you
know, that's why they did it, Like maybe they should have put some
more fucking missions or another planet in that game. Hey you're in Luck next
Tuesday? Three missions? Yeah, problems solid, guys, what are they
adding they're not oh these missions are on the moon primarily. Oh great,
I'm I'm fuck that game. Decited to play more concent in that game.
Of course you are. I will also bullish whatever you're gonna play that ship.
I will also play that. You fucking launch testimony this morning. That's
because you said a patch was that. I told you were both fascious about
what it was, and then I saw what they did, and I think
we both went yeah, fuck, God damn it. Yeah, yeah,
I should probably go max that Suros though. Emails, emails, emails,
the first email from Charles, I haven't even know where to send them.
God damn it. I was getting to that. I was just going to
say that the first email Earl's got summed up almost verbatim at the end of
the Broken Games discussion, so I'm going to skip it. It was about,
hey games, we're broken last year too. It's not a new trend
some city battlefield, right, it's not a new trend. It's just a
trend that it's not just the a anymore. Congratulations to be soft. You're
in the big league. Maybe next year, Activision. Yeah, that was
a nice reminder that you know this is not a new phenomenon, so that
makes it worse somehow. Anyway, bombcastt give on dot com is the email
address where you would send the emails? Okay, if you want them to
be read, all write that down on this podcast? It was did you
write it down? Nd x b R dot M Okay, I forgot the
emails. I don't know. I'm glad that you're here to serve as official
stenographer for the podcast. I don't take notes like Patrick does anybody else?
Right down the email address? Somebody help? I heard bomb cast bump kit,
bump kit, bomp Bumpcast's where you get the dark blow. This is
not bombast right part? Okay, Well, since our family style cast,
uh, since our first series email got cannibalized, I'm gonna have to start
with Paul from Oregon, who says subject line I miss Vinnie one exclamation mark
only one email body, I miss Vinnie three exclamation call me. I wonder
if I wonder if you'd like to respond to that? Who is that?
Paul Paul from Oregon? Ali Paul exclamation Hi Paul, Hi, Paul,
see you in Oregon. No. I neglected to mention that it was also
all caps, so oh wow, really meant Hi, Paul, there you
go, great, appropriate, excellent. He's in a fred Meyer somewhere here.
Uh. David from Los Angeles. I recently saw the Star Wars teaser
and I felt a ton of nostalgia, not for the movies, but actually
for the games, which are a big part of my childhood teen years.
Games like Expling, Alliance, the Dark Forces series, Republic, Amando,
and Cotur are some of the best games and their respective genres. It's crazy
to think there hasn't really been a good Star Wars game since the end of
two thousand and five, with Republic, Comando, Cotre two, and Battlefront
two all coming out within a year of each other. My question is,
are there any Star Wars games you guys want to see made or or Star
Wars games played out like World War Two games? Thirteen thirteen Force at least
three Squadron? Did you like to god they made a two though? Right?
Was right? He was manageable, Mark Squadron? Was I feel like
that was a game that is beloved by people that were kids when that came
out? Yeah, I was, yes, it was a little bit.
I still pretty great. Did anybody not like the Empire like that. I
think that games sort of size. I love, I don't like it was
the Empire. It is a clunky fuckings. Yeah, that is what a
great name. Yeah, and the out run. Don't don't forget about Prince
She's or Oh yeah, I'm sorry they never forgot about She's or the spie
Prince She's or his rap album and flooring me. Not to forget about the
Prince She's or I would love with Prince She's day and everybody's celebrating, I
would. I would play Yeah, keep going with current gin hof, I
would play another one of those. Didn't they made layer right? That team?
Yeah, Factor five sucks. That would have sucked. They and there
they are no longer five. Last game, Squatching three was not great,
that's true. That Leader That's two. One was that the on Foot one
where you're like going up into the at s and sah. That one wasn't
great. Yeah, it was the There was the like Age of Empires RTS
game that was pretty good. There was Grounds Battlegrounds. Yeah, yeah,
Galactic battle Ground was Rebel Assault, what a great game Rebel Assault and uh
well the Jeda nin games are pretty good. Yeah, that was another good.
There's another RTS was it Galaxy Masters of R three D one? Yeah,
Forceman First Commander. Yeah, Star Wars games, a lot of Star
Wars games. I just haven't played episode one. Racer. That's good.
That was pretty good. That was not a sec bomb the arcade. Yeah,
Racer is fucking incredible. Segon made one where you actually have hy that
was Yeah, that's a cool SPI Ridential arcade. I remember the PC version
of Racer that I played not being the worst game, and he wasn't.
It was one of those things where it's like, man, I got a
good three D car. This looks nice. Yeah. Yeah, benefits of
that a good sense speed. It wasn't. Battle Grounds? Is that the
front Front? The one that they promised where you can fly between the world
and this guy, this guy has included what he refers to as a mini
rant about battle Front If you want to hear it, Sure you haven't hear
the mini rant. I was hopeful for a resurgence in Star Wars games when
I heard about a new Battlefront, but then I heard Dice is making it,
so it'll probably be way less fun than the other games in the series.
Those games were pretty much Bttlefield anyway. Well, yeah, it'll probably
be more like Battlefield, thus removing a lot of the crazy power trip fantasy
stuff from Battlefront one and two and replacing it with completely underwhelming map destruction,
tons tons of dust, tons of dustin bloom, a weapon unlocked system that
will allow people to put red dot sites on lightsabers, and we'll have and
we'll have space levels available only to people who have the season past. Is
this person on the dice team that ran actually got a little bit good close
to Yeah? Yeah, I'm still up for game. I'm really curious to
see what they do with it. I don't mean take some dust game.
I'm most curious about that visceral game. Oh, I'm real curious to see
what that's gonna be like. Yeah, that trailer was awesome. Yeah,
yeah, you liked it. I don't know. Fucking broad sword shit.
People are super pissed about the light Shut up. Nobody said a fucking word
about the double ended one. Yeah. People are saying it's unsafe and unrealistic
to have a hilt on a light. Say it's red. He's a bad
guy. I don't care about safety. It's a goddamn sword made of light.
For fuck's sake, they're already fan edited trailers on YouTube that have like
cut out the little hilt and people are your own worst enemies. Yeah,
I can't make a jerking off motion big enough. I mean, I agree
it's a poor design choice, but it looks pretty cool. Yeah, pretty
cool, And I'd always go back to like there is so much more dumb
shit in Star Wars, Like I feel like people get up their own ass,
you mean, like most of Star Wars. I feel like you like,
like we're like I'm terrible, Like what you know, we're arguing about
garbage here, Like of course it's gonna be I didn't say that. Like
the trailer looks pretty good. The trailer looks like something they can finally get
this thing back on track, and you go like, all right, cool,
and you know who did it? The guy that made Star Trek good
again, right, well, not so much that set in one whatever the
first second movies also doesn't matter. Is it making the second Star Wars film?
True? All right? Yes? Made luper is right? Yeah,
Rian Johnson awesome. But like you go back to the original ones and you
have like Chewbacca the Giant, like you know, Gorilla thing shooting a crossbow
that shoots a lasers. That's like, that would be fucking dumb. I
don't think that was in the movies. He had a crossbow. I don't
think in the movies. I think he's a bowcaster. I don't think that
was in the movies. I don't think he ever shot lasers out of that
thing in the movie. I'm pretty sure that's a video game thing. When
he is, he is shooting his bookster and he's got a bandolier. He'aking
and we's a bandolier. He never takes off. He's like his hair is
his clothes. Anyway, Yes, more Star Wars. Does everybody feel good
now? I mean you can't flow the city in the clouds anyway, that's
not real old space. Where are the bathrooms? Just like in Star Wars?
Who needs a bathroom? Just like cut a hole in the floor,
like where's it gonna go? Who care? Just poop into the sky?
Who cares? Because a ship? Because you're even a ground down there planet
is we know it's a giant collective of all the racation. Somebody on the
planet becomes, it becomes a layer in the ozone. God, we need
more of that's the That's the one with his writing is that when they descend,
Yeah, yeah, he's right in the real nuts and bolts. One,
it's like where do people go to the bathroom? As these questions feeling
in all the lower holes. He's got this whole scene of just like,
hang on, I've got to take a leak. Okay, let's go,
and then people are like that totally wouldn't work. That's crazy looking at the
lights screen right as they push a button on R two D two and then
just pops open. Just pee in there? Why not? Why would he
have to run on suffroom with solar powered? What the fuck? That is
a great ideas. Robots are people pedroids? See three p are two deep
Yep, nailed it. Okay, I got a job moving on two.
So unhappy right now? One Auntie from Finland, Hi, I have a
couple of questions. If Internet had a smell, what would it be?
I'm gonna say burning tires, dried semen s under a theater seed hugo boss.
There's other question? Why why are fantasy dwarves always Scottish because they were
that's their class. Why engineers always build turrets they're not in dragon age.
Right, Mmm, they're gruff. Yes, I think they're just what's correct,
But I think, I think and they're also no way off here.
But I think in the Tolkien universe, you know, it is very much
those races represent. Yeah. So wait, the Elves, the fair people
of England, the Elves were I think? No, No, the Irish,
I'm sorry, they're the fair people of Ireland. Yes, I've met
some Irish people. They're not that, they're not that fair, they're not
that, they're not that mystical. There here's a pointing. It's weird.
So wait, I mean, who are who are the Orcs? Are they
the Welsh? The French? Probably? Okay? Actually, isn't that where
like talken like? Yeah, I think that's the part we don't talk about.
I'm pretty sure the Orcs are are like Nazi Germany. I thought are
supposed to be like lower class like you actually don't think we want to go
there. Let's not have this conversation and blogs about that all right? Then
in that case, I have to read another email. Okay, uh,
Andrew from Maryland? How long do you think the PS three and three sixty
servers will stay up? Also, with everyone's PlayStation Plus and games with gold
growing backlogs with these games just become unavailable if not already downloaded through the console.
I assumed trophies and achievements from these games would no longer unlocked one's profile
once the servers are shut down. I mean, he thinks, you know,
he's kind of in a roundabout way saying like how long will the online
services for the old consoles be around? I think this stuff like hopefully when
they were building the infrastructure for the current consoles, they were at least sort
of thinking about that sort of stuff, and they may not have to shut
it down. You can't even get snapped to work right, fair enough,
fair enough. At some point they had to slash and burn everything. I'm
sure, But yeah, I don't know. I mean, you know that
we lost stuff on the original Xbox when Xbox Live went down with you know,
they had that Xbox Live arcade disc that was like you can buy Miss
pac Man from a store using this disc, uh and various DLC. I
think they charged for them as Halo maps at one point, didn't they.
Yeah? Yeah, so at some point I want you want to have it
download it basically like the short the short answer is buy a big hard drive.
If you think that stuff's gonna well, I guess you can't really do
that on those systems, I guess, but I bet everything. They will
revisit almost every UH franchise sell it to you again, yes, in congratulations,
probably version of let's do it like God, God forbid. We get
into a situation where they are deprecating the previous online service every time a new
one comes out, you know what I mean. The first Xbox Alive was
kind of like half formed to begin with, so you can see why they
would take that one down. But like, yeah, but at some point
you can't keep it all up and running. No, I mean, if
you're using the same infrastructure across the board, then yeah, you absolutely can.
But there's probably I mean it can. I don't have no idea.
Who knows how that stuff works. I mean, you know, anecdotally,
I have heard that anecdotally. I think that the PS four infrastructure is maybe
too similar infrasture totally with you there, but I mean, you know they
both have commons separate folder on some side. I mean, I still can't
change my PSN name, just add it just is that anecdotal Let me change
the name. I'll pay you. They know that, they know that people
will pay. Just out a field. Here's how I think you can do
it in Japan. No, no, no, if you can do it
somebody, there is something core to the way the PSN stuff is done on
PS three that makes that incredibly difficult. So on a go forward basis,
just create another like line in your database that is current PSN name and just
you know, like let people you know just nick names or something. Well
they use real name for some stuff. But look, I'm not it's it's
it's not worth it for me to explain the actual technical how I have solved
this problem in my mind, not not knowing anything about the infrastructure, but
it would totally work. You would not believe how many people I know who
get very emotional about wanting to change their PSN names. But I know a
lot of Like I can think of two people in this room who have expressed
it's a shitty name. I pull it off a poster in my wall,
right, I mean about a decade later. It's not it's not enough that
we're like losing purchases when systems go down. I lost purchases when I didn't
want to use the name game spotting anymore. Suddenly that name didn't fit me
anymore. Well, and instead of actually solving the problem, I just went
with giant bombing. So that's just pant forward. I don't know how realistic
this is, but then this is I'm just pulling this out of thin air.
But if something like you know, the three sixty, I'm sorry,
that was that was my Oh my god, it's rubbing on the microphone,
still happening. I hate these microphones. If they if they were, we
don't have to keep using them. Oh god, damn it all only another
like, sorry, twenty hours of podcasting with these things. Just take your
jacket off like I'm doing right now. Ope, this is actually not working
because of the way the cables are run. Trap. I'll wear my jacket.
Look, you're a prisoner. All I was gonna say was if they
could maybe rig it so that they're like like virtualizing the three sixty version of
Xbox Live, you know, where they don't have to believe a bunch of
servers running all the time, but they can spin them up as as load
increases and stuff like that, like whenever I want to play a wick Fable
of Souls yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, just let them fifteen minutes
in advance they get the servers up. But you know, it would be
nice if if ins in like relative perpetuity, the stuff remained available the power
of the clouds. So yeah, totally. I mean at a certain point,
losing access to purchases and stuff like that, and it's one of those
things like you know, I think it's like people look at the where Windows
is and I assume, like it just doesn't happen on the PC. There's
no guarantee, yeah, that that will continue. The one thing that's different
on the PC though, is that you have if there is a passionate enough
community, fan bases will figure out a way to make that game right.
Like the systems talk too. Again that just recently got like a proper renovation,
but that the other Looking Glass games have had fan communities making that stuff
work for Well, it's a little harder with player servers, but like they're
doing that too. Yeah, you know, like you can play the Dreamcast
version of Fantasy Star Online on like private servers if you try hard enough.
It's insane, but you can do it. If you've been doing that,
haven't you. I've playing it on the PC. I've been playing Blueburst running
a private server that is local to that machine, and I edited the drop
tables so everything in the first zone drop spread needles like plus, it's fucking
great. I did that like a year ago. People are sick. I
also ran a World of Warcraft private server for an afternoon and it was fun
because you could just type you could target something and type slash kill and it
would die, and it was like, man, I should be a GM
this is fun. Have been. There was I can't remember the name of
it. There was a service that you could a very small steam like surface.
We could buy games that has gone out of business. I can't remember
the name of a bit of bad like three games from the game gamers Gate.
It was a gamer's game. No, they're still around bummer for that.
I can't remember what the it was. But like, I feel like
there have been things that have just disappeared and then yeah, but also you
know like at some point, like you know, don't we top out on
this architecture someday and at some point they have to just say, hey,
we're making the next version of Windows for this entirely different CPU that breaks compatibile
and we can get there, Like the enterprise concerns would be grave. I
think that it seems like they've bolted on, you know, up to sixty
four. What else do they need to do? Though Quake Servers is still
up. Yeah, Quake servers are still up. I think I think you
reasonably if they could run the three sixty MP three stuff till the next generation
of machines, like if it's if the PS four and Xbox for whatever,
like that would be a time then I think you'd be fifteen twenty years into
those machines that I think that I think the outcry would I think the outcry
would be really minimal at that point. But I think that there's something to
be said for kind of the historical for sure, the side of this stuff
stuff. And that's I mean, honestly, like if we're getting into the
historical nature of games that are not meant to last, and it's to that
slash and burn stuff, like we're looking to pirates to save the day.
Yeah, and when we always have been its ads like pirates and hobbyists and
you know, people that are willing to be like, well we're gonna dump
this rom, We're gonna find we're gonna go bias to tell of you e
proms off of eBay and hope that we find the game we're looking for because
they're all unmarked none of them work. And then we're going to try to
piece together these weird audio broadcasts that came off a satellite like that. You
know, like people are willing to go to extreme lengths for some of this
stuff. But I don't know that. I you know, like it doesn't
apply to every single game, like you know, it's not like every single
MMO that ever lived has an active private server community. Like I think you
can technically play the Matrix online, but I don't know that they've actually built
the quests or any of that stuff. Last time, I looked something like
like Asheron's Call that Microsoft MMMO like that when they introduced two, they shut
down one and the community hated too, right, so they brought to this
day to this day like like the ash call community just figure out to way
to Oh they did themselves. They didn't micro stuff, Okay, I thought
they sorry, no, no, no, the communitys figured out and they
still like an active player base. Yeah yeah game. And that's it's weird
because it's like one of those things that is gray area, quasi legal at
best and all that sort of stuff. But at some point, like you
know, like it's why I don't worry too much about like game preservation stuff
in this people are like, don't you worry about all your digital persons?
Like no, someone will take care of it. Yeah, it'll get it'll
get emulated sometimes. Yeah, I'm pretty complex. Yeah, yeah, three
D things. I don't know how easy that would be. I mean,
the original Xbox has not been well emulated. Yeah, did they figure out
the Saturn? Yes, I'm not completely, not completely, But it's the
games that they can you can view the menu or something like that. You
can play Fighters Mega Mix, so it's done, all right. I got
no argument against that. It's a car that can stand up. Throw on
the car is to put the fucking dude's face to the wheel, one of
the wheels on the car. The pand is pretty good too, because when
he attacks, he goes. Yeah, just like like inflatable bear man.
That that what a great game. I'm holding out for PEPSI man, we
all are. He's only in the Why have the Japanese version fights Megaya?
I know? Kind of sucker, all right, Elliott from Hertford. Sure
the UK, says I come from the UK, Okay, and as such,
I'm not too familiar with such things. All I've heard is that hillbillies
or white trash. He puts those both in quotes, eat exclusively from bad
fast food places, love American flags, wrestling and drinking, can be pretty
slovenly, and are fans of awful movies. Patrick, They're gonna start talking
about you here. I know that's yeah, that's true. I don't know.
I'm really starting love the site, and to be clear, I'm a
big fan of Dan and his mad cap ways. Sorry. Also thanks me
for quote great hosting. I think I lost the subject line Jason, you
write this one? Did you just claim to be from the UK? Yeah?
Sorry, man, I think move to get this off. The subject
line was something of the effect of like is Danny hillbilly or something like that?
Hillbillies and like Western Kansas, that's it's all super rural. I was
very much just like there's no class, there's yeah, well so what do
you what do you? What would you define a hillbilly as to somebody who
does not know? I think I haven't really seen the show, but like
when you see stuff like Duck Dynasty or Larry the Cable Guy. I think
those are like parodies that those Billy Jim well just his name, the overall
big beard, yeah yeah, yeah, the overalls with no shirts. That's
usually number one signifier. Yeah. Teeth, he might have something on.
I guess I think one. You're a lot of people are missing one teeth.
Okay, all right, as long as it's not like a front stoeth.
Yeah. Yeah. I've always seen it as like rednecks for like country
boys driving the trucks and stuff. Hillbillies were like actual like like hill folk.
Yes, I feel like Hillbillies a scary ports somewhere it's going mountain,
Yeah, like a lot like rocking chairs, Yeah, a lot of rocking
chairs. We drove, me and my dad drove to the Jack Daniels Distillery
outside of Nashville. I went through a bunch of like back roads and woods
and stuff, and there is a concerning amount of people through the woods there
that all they do is they're just sitting on a lawn chair in front of
their house just looking at the road. They're not reading anything, They're just
looking at a road. Dude, that as a country way of living man.
That's that's where there any where there any cars up on cynder blocks in
the front yard. I think they're actually were. Yeah, I'm gonna saying
I think my finding hillbilly item is a banjo. Yeah, I think if
you annoying hillbilly j yes, yeah, yeah, or you know, like
blowing on the jug and a sort of rhythmic okay, now yes, and
now we're like overalls, no shoes and a floppy you know, I would
say, I would say a fiddle is up there? Okay, not a
violin of sure? Have you seen deliverance? Pretty much like that sort of
unnerving cackling laugh. Sure. Maybe a mop pole in a bucket with a
string on it. That's a base for the good job. Yeah. Thanks,
I really got it, you know, I'm all about that. I
mean, most of it was so low my years couldn't Yeah, yeah,
it was really I appreciate. I appreciate the hip Tom for Brighton also UK,
I have a question for Jeff. Dear Jeff, how does it feel
to be nominated for the inaugural Trending Gamer Award alongside four guys with made up
fucking names? Much love Tootle pip. I don't know. So that's so
I was a judge for those awards. Uh And when presented with that category,
it was presented as like best YouTube Personality and miss YouTube slash Online Personality,
and it was not listed as trending gamer I believe. So one of
the things you can do is a nominee is if you're not familiar with the
category, they don't want you to just like fill in a bunch of junks.
So I didn't write anything in. But at this time, no,
no, no, no, this was like them and so I may I'm
trying to remember if I wrote my own name in as a joke or if
I just in the when I was sending the votes back just said like I
almost wrote myself in there five times because I thought it'd be funny. Anyway,
see you here's my here's my picks, and then I don't. So
that makes me wonder if like one of the other judges picked me because I
think that's funny. So I have no idea that whole thing. Yeah,
like I whatever, that category seems like a poor choice in general, whatever
seems like a good response. Yeah, yeah, that that thing is is
funny and silly. And fan voted, So I don't know, like on
one level you look at it and go like, I'm like the last bastion
of video game website men being served up to the YouTube kids or something like
that. But whatever, it's whatever. I think it's funny that that picture
got pulled. I don't know, like that picture resurfacing yet again. It's
pretty fucking hilarious technically, I mean it remains true, yes exactly. I'm
as someone who's technically on YouTube when it but but you know it when it
came out the other end, it was just trending gamer, which I think
there are You know, if that was the name of the category from the
get go, it could have come up with five names and they wouldn't have
been anybody that's on that list. SIG sixty six, yep, SIG sixty
six, hot trend, It's true. Connor from Syracuse keeps the Game Awards
train rolling. I was looking at the nominees and was surprised that one of
the categories was the Best Remastered Game. Do you guys really think this is
a legitimate category to give out an A War two? And should the Master
Chief Collection even be nominated for this category? It also says, where the
fuck is a strategy game? Because there's no strategy game category. I'm guessing
that nomination was put in there before anyone really knew with the problems with that
there. Yeah, that's yeah, by and large, I think that's that's
probably the case. I like standard answer is like, it's, you know,
a testament to what happened to this year that there are enough remastered games
like that to put in the category. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
And you know, then you get into like, is that a trend
that should be rewarded with an award? And I think that's up for debate.
But if you're gonna do it, it is what it is. If
you're gonna do it, do it well, right. So if you're gonna
you're gonna bring that stuff back, just don't do a crappy job on it.
Yeah. Sure, it's like Last of Us. That was Last of
Us was really good, Like yeah, GT, you could argue isn't even
remastered because it's probably a year old, but but that Last of Us was
not especially old. Like they're I mean, they're both like CUSP games,
you know, they both got made at the tail end of that hardware,
like they're you know, like kind of yes of the best. At some
point you just call it fanciest port, at least with like, you know,
some of the sony stuff like Flower, like if you'd already bought that
game, Like here, here's a fancy that's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. I think coming up with the categories for award shows and having
them be relevant is difficult, and you know that's yeah. The same time,
it is a tad alarming. Remember I have no input on the categories
for the number of types of games out there, though. Uh. Andrew
from Athens, Georgia has a pretty cool email. When I was a kid,
my dad worked as an accountant for Cadbury Schwepps Incorporated what was then the
Canada Dry Slash sun Kiss division. It's quite a division. At the time,
a big focus of the industry was Mountain dews stranglehold on Males fifteen thirty
five. I remember my dad coming back from a trade show and talking about
rumors that Coke was working on an md K or mountain dew killer. The
key elements of the recipe were fairly simple. Citrus and caffeine. Okay,
the citrus isn't just necessary to copy calf to do. Caffeine is bitter,
and citrus helps mask when you've added more. As I understand it, the
recipe Coke settled on was actually an amped up version of Fresca, which relied
on grape fruit juice for its citrus. Now they use bitter orange juice to
cut costs, but it still has twice as much caffeine as a coke.
And what and what is what drink are we talking about? I'm not clear
who put out what did Coke put out in the nineties? Similar to Mountain
dew? Are you are you? Are we talking about surge? I don't
know, Okay, yeah, yeah, Surge is a Coke product. Because
ship this maybe another issue where the subject line might have clarified this. He
does not mention surge in this in the body of this thing, but I
think that's what he's talking about, drinking surge right now. I don't like
I'm having this. I'm having this another kind of surge. I kind of
realized it when we were most of the way through that can last week.
I don't like search, I don't hate Surge is really ineffensive for the most
party, Like what if you just drink one can? Of it. It's
not the worst. It's I think it's because I only drink diet sodas now
and that's the that's the sweetness profile I'm looking for, Like surges too sugary,
too sweet, Like I just don't like it. Benny hasn't heard of
it surge before. Never it was nice the late nineties and like now it's
kind of this novelty thing that they put it back on Amazon, so everyone's
like a late nineties and maybe late nines. Like the only caffeinated like thing
was Jolt. I feel like when in the nineties that was more. That
was actually like late eighties, early nineties was more that was in junior high
when when Jolt Jolt hit the scene. Yeah, I like that. I
was on I was in junior high when Jolt hit the scene, and it
destroyed my ability to process caffeine in a way that like nothing like right it
could like sodas don't amp me up at all. To the Jolt was like
a big deal, Like kids were getting high on jilt, Like you know,
gotta get these kids off that Jolt and now it's just you know,
they were definitely like scared, like you know, you're kids you're getting ahold
of it. Doesn't isn't isn't jill whole thing like, it's one milligram over
the limit. There was not like it. I don't think another big was
a limit. Really, they probably lied and said there wasn't. I thought
there was one. Caffeine and sugar. It just always kind of double the
caffeine a regular cola. It was. It was kind of their thing.
And yeah, I mean because it wasn't. The flavor was not mass like
you taste it. It was like, yeah, sure enough, we'll get
to the search can. It's orange juice concentrate is one of the top ingredients.
I like frasca, Like a really heavily caffeine as a fresco would be
pretty good. I like the m DK. Yeah. Do you remember DNL
upside down seven up? Yep? That was really stupid. Yeah, that
wasn't really stupid. That was really stupid. Some people wrote in about Okay
Cola. I'm not sure where that's from. Yeah, I'm not sure what
territory that is. I don't think it's here the sub brand of Okay Cupid.
I just liked the idea of a mountain dew killer. Sure is that
what they're talking about in Demolition Man. Yeah, okay, yep, absolutely
not a shiny game m DK yep, yea. It is indeed a buyower
game. One of them was Zach from Kansas City. I just listened to
your latest podcast and you had an email talking about Double Fine and them canceling
a game. I've heard that two out of three games and never see the
light of day. Where does that game go? Sure, some assets might
get reused or tools repurposed, but is that the usual course of action?
Do publishers ever demand the assets and tech? Do they have contracts forcing them
to wipe the drives? Just curious and wondered if you guys knew anything or
if any developers out there can spill the beans. This is first specific games.
Well, it started because Double Finne had those layoffs, because they had
a publisher cancel a project. I think it probably depends on whatever contracts,
like, you know, whatever, you know, whatever deal they did.
Sure, I feel like all of those things are none of those things.
Yeah, It's like there's a couple of high profile cases of like I mean,
you know Copernic because is probably the biggest one where Rhode Island was trying
to auction off the assets or the work he'd have been done. What was
the the what game? Did Disney cancel? Pirates and Care of Pirates?
Yes, that's game that Who was making that? It was the Turrok people.
Yes, uh like that Spiracy Entertainment Like you played that, right,
wasn't played? Pirates seems cool? Yeah, I don't know how much of
a slice it was, but like they Yeah, they showed that off at
a pre E three event and Pirates seemed good like that one. That's another
one. It was like open world sailing, like you know, you look
at Assassin's Creed. I bet that a lot of people that worked on Pirates
when fucking Black Flight came out, they were fucking pissed, like god damn
it. Yeah. Some of that Pirates stuff I think ended up in Infinity.
Okay, I remember correctly. Some of the character stuff from that Brothers
in Arms game that they never made that Furious four games, so that stuff
ended up in battle Born. Well, oh right, that's that's a different
that's gearbox canceling. It's its own project, its own project. Well,
I guess you'd be seft would have been Does youse have owned the Brothers and
Arms franchise. I don't know because it was shown it at press conference,
right, I don't think so, I don't know who knows, but yeah,
I always'm always curious about Yeah, I think that's such a case by
case basis thing like hard drives or tape backups out there. Yeah, so
if you're curious about, like what happens when games are over, when they're
done and shipped for a while, my job was to go to the central
directory where everybody checked in their code, copy the directory listing so you would
see where every file was and then print that out as a physical copy of
the directory tree and files and stuff. Then put that in the binder along
with DVD uh backups of all that data in just a giant binder. DVD
DVDs. Wow, how many DVDs were talking at the time, how many
created DVDs. I I can't remember the size of the of the games,
but it was like, yeah, bindery DVDs. It wasn't like, you
know, entire volumes, because I always assume, I would assume the work
in progress build and all the assets must be way bigger than the final Yeah,
final product. That's not that's not like super long term though, because
dvdrs are not permanent by any means. Yeah, I mean you copy it
to other stuff I have. We have some DVDs burns in the early nineties,
the nineties, there are still you know, ver work. It varies
by the type of disc and stuff like that. What is the half life
of a DVD the I will have some CDs act I guess, not DVDs.
But you know, I have some review copies of Sagasin games that still
work. Fine. Laser Rot man, Yeah, laser Rot's gonna get them
all. Laser Rot will get us all. Eventually. Hesitate to even bring
it up. But I know a developer who I would love to talk to
you about this on the record, who hid Yeah you know what I'm talking
about. Which talked to that person? Should he had a significant amount of
work that had been done in the ceiling of in the ceiling an old office
which is still there and occupied by other tenants. No kidding, like that
work may still there be we should move on, that would be. Yeah.
So like I think tape is something that you can want to keep around
in perpetuity, but we should follow up on that story sometimes, uh man,
I am just all over the place with these emails. But this week
here's one that I didn't manage to get the cender on. I could read
it anyway, though, go for it. I don't know. Okay,
they're from Toronto. Can tell you that there's a chain here in Toronto with
a secret menu, and then they pasted a link to restaurant called the Burger
Priest or the Burgers Priest. Although I don't know, I don't know how
secret the menu is. When the address is slash secret menu, it's just
like, yeah, that's like that's like them from the capitalize on the concept
of a secret menu. However, the item, one of the items that
he that he describes sounds kind of crazy. One of the items on the
secret menu is the Tower of Battle. All the Tower of Battle is two
beef patties with cheese, a portobello mushroom injected with cheese, and then deep
fried lettuce and tomato, two grilled cheese sandwiches as buns. It sounds awesome.
Why is it called the Tower of Battle because they're the Burger Priests all,
you know, maybe all their religious themes, all names, and a
cheeseburger in which the patties were replaced with grilled cheeker. You know, maybe
the burger is man's attempt at building too tall a burger. Okay, God
is going to smile for trying. You eat it and can no longer speak.
I reached the point in my life where I don't I can't do like
competitive eating or would you call it or would you call it frank eating?
You're eating your comfy competition days, or I refuse to believe that. I
know, like I kind of keep seeing it's still I know, I know,
like I could enjoy it. Are you still doing the annual KFC bucket?
Like it's not that appealing to me? Are you at least training max
to following your footsteps? You gotta find your own way. Yeah. Some
people do ballet, some people do stunt eating. They're not a stunt eating
like stage dad, I'm not gonna for you. I'm not gonna force that
on him, but like it's bummed me up. Was at a restaurant recently
and they had their like stunt food and usually it's the first thing to go
like oh, thirty dollars where they're like, you know, sixteen pound burger,
Yeah, bring it on, I'll do it. And I was like
we don't think a Turkey club. You know, I just don't want to
do this to myself anymore. Was it? We went to the there was
a Raman place. Who went to Dan and I in La and it was
a you that got the spicy the super that was Timur Summer slam yea their
spiciest bowl of ramen, which was gigantic and basically just bright red. Uh.
And he got I'm gonna say, like a quarter of the way through
it before he had to throw in the towel. His entire face was just
completely everywhere. Did you win anything? If he If he didn't, I
don't remember on the wall and my picture on the wall in a restaurant,
the most prestigious surprises, the things they were like a bunch of the twelve
year old girls like had done it and they were up on the ball.
It's like tim it had to be bad though, because I've seen him do
a bunch of like crazy competitive eating things from like putting like fifteen of those
heads in your mouth at one time. And you know, I got a
skin off your time. I got the ruck to do it, I got
the rum And there was one step above the normal level of spicy, and
there were like three more levels but to get to where he was and that
was even almost too much. Yeah, yeah that was real bad. Yeah,
I'm with you, like I kind of it's kind of sad, like
yeah, like I go to like a like buffet or something now and it's
just like the joy is gone. Yeah, your body no longer wants it.
Yeah, like it's just like I'm not gonna eat until I throw up
anymore. I don't know, I don't know. I don't know if that
happened. I know, I don't know what happened. Like it used to
be a man, I never throw up. I never threw up from it
for other reasons. Yeah, I just feel real sick. Yeah, it
was definitely like, oh I did it to myself again. But yeah,
it's I just does New York have CC's pizza? Uh, we have,
we have real pizza. But I know what CC is really good? I
mean, do you have it as an option? I don't Old Country Buffet?
Yes, yes, I think that. Okay you do. Okay,
maybe it might be like an upstate but I feel like that's not a thing
that's in New York City. No, not in the City's a big place
it's like the palms another yeah, buffs while island. Yeah, I don't
know. It was kind of kind of like a sad moment like where it's
just like I just want to eat food. I think it's got to the
point where, like I knew I had to function with kids now, Like
I couldn't just go home and lay down and be like, oh yeah,
that was awesome. Now it's like I have to be ready to get up
and do other stuffy Dad had his burrito tonight. I mean, I don't
you know, like like eating just a normal sized portions okay, well slightly
above size, a normal portion like a fast food thing does not lay me
out. No, no, no, I'm talking about like you're talking about
like going I'm going to like the Chinese food buffet, and oh yeah,
I've been able to do that now, Like you know, like you used
to go to like a mo ongoing and barbecue and you know, like you
get like five fucking bowls and it all be beef or all be you know,
meat, like no, no, nothing else in it other than the
hot oil and meat, and you're sweating and you're just I got to get
through this so I can get another one just can't get kindn't And there was
all you can eat pizza place. Yeah that was that once once once a
week, we'd like inflicted all you can eat pizza on ourselves and you were
getting like pizza with like bacon on it and shit like that. What am
I supposed to get? Alfredo pizzas and stuff like, I'm just taking something
slightly less greasy. Perhaps you're slightly less greasy. I mean that I used
to be like I could still eat really quickly like that that skill that's not
a feed, but of the quantity, Yeah, the quantity is gone.
No, I can still put down a burrito. And for me, like
like that sort of transition came with this realization of just like maybe I don't
actually care that much about food. Oh like you're just not enjoying it.
So yeah, like it's just maybe I just don't I love food and it's
not I'm not I'm not like in a point where it's like, oh,
you know, I want to have better food. It's like just like you
know, like I kind of came to that same place where it was also
like going out drinking or getting a drink, like I don't want to get
sick anymore. Like I want to drink, I want to enjoy it,
but like I'm past the point where I can wake up and just be like
what did I do? I don't really drink very often anymore. No,
no, no, And it's for me. It was just like I mean,
so, you know, I had a friend who was a bartender,
and you know, like we wouldn't hang out when she was working, and
you know, some other people we would all kind of hang out around a
bar, and like, you know, it's just it was what it was.
And we spent a lot of time drinking and got a lot of free
drinks along the way, and that was a lot of fun. But even
that wasn't necessarily like my heaviest drinking phase. But I just got to a
point where, yeah, I don't know what it was. If it was
a feeling of like I'm not rebounding from it like properly enough. I think
it was more just like circumstances changed. Everyone kind of grew up, and
no one wanted to hang out in a bar anymore. I got a mortgage
now, No, I had the mortgage first, Like I did everything in
the wrong order. Look at me, I'm a grown up now. The
mortgage came when I was at my drunkest. Probably that's how that's how you
ended up with the house. Yeah, it's like whoops. But I feel
like I'm feeling like it's like one of those things that they, like you
read about like heroin users, right where they can build up a tolerance and
then the danger is, you know, going on, coming back on,
and I feel like my stomach's gonna explode if I, like you guys want
to go like a Chinese food buffet, like yeah, let's fucking get down,
like right, and then he's going, there's yeah, explode Like I
can feel it sometimes even like I'm a d like a little grilled chees sandwich
with some fries, beaning like I'm stuffed? What happened? If you want
dessert? No, you've gone soft? Really you think that you actually are
maybe not eating as fast as you think you are. I think you used
to because like that was always the way to cram in the most food was
to eat as quickly as possible. I see four I've seen that dude to
eat like I just can't. I can't even explain. You can stilly pretty
quickly. And I think that the scary part is now I see Max just
like I have to literally teach him about choking. Imagine trying to tell somebody
about like Max. He puts like a whole salami in this matter, right,
and it's just like you have to chew Max, is you're gonna choke.
He doesn't know what choking is until he's like, I can't breathe remember
that time you couldn't Breathe eat so much? Max eat? His daddy says,
not as ye, he's as soon as man. Yeah, suppressive stuff.
I never forget seeing you go at a burrito or you know, just
any handheld item. I get the ship in before. It's never steal it.
It never touches the plate. I just never leaves your hand on the
like you know, if you can't put it, fall out of it.
Yeah, like I cambur it down. Yeah exactly what you put it down,
it falls apart. Yeah, you put a hamburg exactly, It's it's
never gonna be the same. Well, see, so you want to solve
that problem, don't put as much bullshit on your hamburger. There's nothing to
fall apart. It's just meeting fun exactly. You can say, I can
set a hamburg after the day and and get right back to it. It's
not a problem. But I still, yes, I find I had a
burger and fries the other day, and I find I don't know how this
happened or why this happened, but I find myself eating all of the fries
before touching the hamburger. And I don't know why I did that when I
was a kid all the time, I don't know what change like. And
also I don't use ketchup on fries anymore. Yeah, I stopped doing that.
You don't know why? Just man, no, God, I think
I think at some point, like I just want and salt. Just give
this. I just want salt here. We shouldn't invent at this table.
We should invent hamburger edible hamburger staples so that like you can staple, they
go to the bun to the patty to keep that ship on so it doesn't
slide off. It's like what they do with the toothpick. Yeah, but
who wants Yes, it's like a twizzler or something, a sharp twizzler like
a sugar Yes, twizzlers terrible. How about a piece of like beef jerkee
or something that. Yeah, I am together. It's just something like a
stable door and it's like, but it's edible. Yeah, yeah, I'm
in. Yeah, slap it on Kickstar sand from Ohio. Last email,
you have to make an impossible choice. I can't do I it's it's impossible,
can't You must choose? All right? You will be cursed with either
having to fart very often, as in oh no, like as in as
could ever imagine such a faith Wait, we got to hear the other.
Let me finish the let me finish the email. You will be cursed with
either having to fart very often, as in several times per hour in a
manner imagine God, just kill me now, several times per hour in a
manner that is easy to hear but not our but not outrageously so, and
the smell of the fart is odorless. It's just like, hey, let's
have a part. Maybe maybe he's like, maybe these are impossible good choices,
Yeah, this is actually all right choice or a million dollars, or
once per day you will have an extremely deadly but mostly quiet fart, but
everyone in the room will be able to smell strongly. Can you schedule when
this happens? In both circumstances, you have little control over when the farts
happened, but you can be have a small amount of control when you can
feel it coming on. Also, what's your favorite final boss in a video
game? The multiple loud under less farts? Yeah, yeah, wait,
so they're just they're just loud, but you can't hear them. I'm sorry
that so they're loud but you can't smell. That's yes, well, you
know the emails that they're audible. Loud is different. It says not outrageously
here that needs to hear. In that situation, you would have to like
warn people, like if I'm on a date, I would have to start
the first date by saying, listen, I'm gonna be farting this whole night,
but don't worry, it's not gonna smell. And that's not the best
way to start a day. That'll totally put every one of the ease.
Yeah. Great, But but then would you have to like like preface that
you're going to just let one rip like a real loud ripper at time,
You're just gonna get up and leave the room like a gentleman. If you're
problem, I don't know this is this what like the knife in baseball bat
like conversation is degenerated into it this pay like we're just kind of getting down
to that level. I don't know, we haven't had one of these in
a while. Parts speak for themselves and we don't need to do any further
talking. Also, Psychomantus is not a final boss. It's not a final
final boss. Oh shit. And what Bison? Motherfucker's show is better than
Bison and has got a cool hat. He does have a cooler with his
mask, and the mask is done and Bison is a much better fight than
the show. Con that's true fights? Does it? Does it count the
final level of Doom two? Sure? Yeah? Yeah, like that's yeah,
the icon of sin a Hitler. Yeah, that's gotta be way up
that good one. I really not a final boss, Virgil end he was
a really good fight. Mm hmm. I like the end of Acarina of
Time quite a bit. Oh yeah, wait, wait back and forth or
fighting fake out of Like this was kind of underwhelming. And then oh ship,
although Windwaker Gannon was really good. Yeah that was good. Uh.
I didn't hear anybody make their impossible choice. Oh, I think I'd probably
go with the one big loud rapper. Yeah, me too, smelly one
silent but very deadly smelling. Oh yeah, just blame it on somebody else.
Yeah, that's not even a choice. I thought it had to be
really loud. You just carry a dog around all the day. Yeah,
that's say. It's the dog. That's the that's the old caravel logic that
I've been missing, because who's gonna be like, I guess if you're always
surrounded by the same people to be like, ah, you know, that's
there. It is twelve o'clock. And then he added again, because I
feel like that fucking happens anyway like that, that's just life. Yeah,
once a day, and I think it was once a day. Yeah,
like you're gonna have a big fucking nasty part once a day. There you
go. The emails on this podcast are a metaphor for life. BombCast a
giant bomb dot com. Yes, giant, Yes, we evalvated this course
again and you're welcome, and you're well friend. You know you get from
a bunch of trendy gamers. Yeah that's true. Oh boy, trendy gamer
at this table. That's true. The rest of us have not yet become
end Hey, I did not win anything. I don't even know when.
I guess Friday, when that a ward show happens. Right, Oh,
that's right, Yeah that's coming up. The voting is still open. I
guess what is happening this week? We have got a whole lot of heavy
lifting to do one Game of the Year production, so I don't know what's
happening with like daily content. We'll have some quick looks. Yeah, we're
looking to get into some stuff. Some stuff will happen. Fucking Guilty Years
coming out? Okay? Is that? Damn Japan? Are you? Are
you gonna take the plunge? Yeah? What about? Hang on? What?
What isn't there another fighting game? Who? What's the full title of
that thing? I thought that was coming out here this year? It is,
but it's looks in Japan like a week or coming out here. You're
that serious? Huh? All right? That game looks pretty cool. Yeah,
that's the one with it like Fox three D. Yeah, yeah,
they're crazy. It's a really cool. Look. Yeah, that's a really
cool. If you're planning on reading sphere before our book podcast got about a
week left, we're thinking next week some time I finished talk about it,
we gonna watch the movie. Yeah, it's true. What does fear about?
It's uh, what's a non spoiler? We non spoilery way of the
thunderwater alien shit? Okay yeah yeah they find a psychological horror. Yeah yeah.
Michael Criton book right, does it Dustpan? Yeah, it's not from
stone. Yeah. I read the books good though. Yeah yeah, well
great, crack your books. Get reading. But for now it's gonna do
it. We'll be back with more stuff next week. See you later, Mr