Mmm, Hello, it's Tuesday, March thirty, first, twenty fifteen.
You're listening to the Giant Bomb Cast. Now that you know the date and
the name of the show, I'm gonna rattle off all the people sitting in
this room. I'm Brad Shoemaker. That's Jeff Gersman. Hello, Hi,
you see again, I just throw a little gravel into it. I don't
know, it's Tuesday. It's Tuesday. That kind of thing. Yeah,
there's not that much to it. It is a little rough on your but
yeah, eventually, Drew Scandal, let me hear your gravelly void? Hey
who going? Wow, that was actually a lot more accomplished. I'm pretty
used to doing solid snakes, so oh okay, Yeah, you've put in
your time in the booth. Oh it's some more. That's pretty That's a
pretty good David Hayter. I'm gonna have to say, Jason a striker,
Yeah, that wasn't bad. Damn man, I feel out classed an DJ.
Yeah, are you doing bread? Everybody's gonna grow out some mean chops
now, all right, baby, Yeah, the big Bopper is gonna be
back after the break. How Yeah, spinning platters daddy? Oh see,
it's not got it? Yeah, you got it. It's just a bunch
of professionals in here. Uh Jeff, hello, Hi, Since we are
Dan less today, oh yeah, we all feel like I feel like this
is damn. I wasn't necessarily going in that direction, but all right,
no, I miss Moss all as how you really feel I saw enough of
them over a wrestlingmannya though. Oh sure, also he was all over television.
I was gonna say, I feel like Dan not being here is now
the only acceptable circumstance in which we can actually discuss wrestling. Okay, yeah,
sure? Does anybody disagree with that? I follows Mania on Twitter.
That's how I consumed it. I didn't even do that. I spent most
of yesterday morning thinking to myself, should I just pay them the ten bucks
and get the month and watch WrestleMania tonight? Right, be part of this
cultural moment. That's the cheapest way to do it. Like if the pay
per view out right, it's like seventy I know that, I mean,
I know it's the most sensible thing, but it's like it's more like,
do I really want to spend the four hours or whatever on this thing?
Oh? Four to try six? Wait, really, there was a two
hour pregame thing, and then so the first hour was just them recapping all
the matches, which is like, you know, it would be useful in
your circumstances because you wouldn't know why anyone was fighting except for Roman Reigns.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then in the hour two they actually had
the first two matches of the show were a technically part of the pre show,
which is in the in this era of them controlling their own streaming destiny
is just kind of insane. The reason they do it is because those that
hour is only on their streaming thing, not on pay per view. They're
trying to come up with different ways to incentivize people to stop paying the sixty
five dollars and start paying the ten dollars. Why would they want to do
that, I guess of the tens they're not splitting it with yeah, with
with you know. Ever, so like Direct TV dropped their pay per views,
huh, they don't carry WWE on on Direct TV anymore. Once they
launched this network, they were like, we're not going to let you use
our platform to advertise your replacement platform. Sure, so fuck off. Basically,
so, yeah, it's I don't know all that stuff has gotten even
weirders as they have now had a full year of their own just about a
full year of their own network. But are those pre show matches a bunch
of like second and third stringers and nobody cares about? I mean, like
the bulk of the show is a bunch of second and third stringers that nobody
cares about. Like the tragic thing is that there were people in those first
two matches that are like really fucking good, Like, man, these guys
should be in the main event and not necessarily stowed away in this twenty man
battle royal or this like tag team match. Constant good these days? Though,
is it? Is it skill in the ring? Is its skill on
the microphone? Is it all the above? Like what's the to me?
It's all the above, But I tend to like personally, I favor skill
on the microphone over skill in the ring. I always have I watch wrestling
like it's reverse porn. Wait, okay, okay, you care about the
storyline. I really care about the action. I care, you know,
watch mostly about the storyline. I'm actually just the opposite, Like I couldn't
care less about the storyline. Really, Yeah, Like you should be watching
Japanese wrestling or something, and and I have been a lot more recently,
and I've been loving it, Like I've been getting back into wrestling because of
Japanese, Like you're you're actually into the technique of the grappling and stuff like
that. Yeah, really, I think that stuff's fascinating. And I like
the kind of the set up, the big spots that they go. For
sure. I like that stuff a lot, and and I like appreciate the
art to a certain extent, But at this point when it comes to w
W E anyway, like that stuff's all fine, and at this point,
like I'm mostly just like, how are they going to advance the storyline?
What's going to be the cool moment? What are the cool moment's going to
be? And what are the storyline beats that are going to advance this thing?
Which is why I'm frustrated all the time because the writing has been subpar.
Yeah did did the years wrestle may need to do anything to change your
mind? Not really, No, you know, there's some cool stuff,
Like there's definitely some some really good moments like of wrestling in the show.
For sure, there's some yeah, really cool, cool spots, but that
it seems like they're really well, they're still like relying heavily on nostalgia.
Like they brought out like d X versus nWo shit like that, and then
we should have been like a great moment. But like, okay, god,
damn it, all right, I don't know if I should open these
channel worms, but here we are. Okay. So, uh, the
nWo in in today's sense, when you think about them, it's whole Coogan,
Kevin Nash, and Scott Hall. Wait, like in the world of
wrestling, in the storylines of wrestling, does that organization still exist? No,
but but nostalgically, like if you think about it, it's those three.
Everyone they added after that kind of like whatever, like we've swept those
that that's like for laughing at of like when WCW did a bunch of dumb
shit and then in the nineties and two thousands of like, oh, I
remember when everyone was in the nWo. You think about it as those three.
So they had a moment they had a match where Triple H was wrestling
Sting, who had never been in the WWW before. Big deal. Uh
yeah, sure, yeah, he's fifty five. Sting is it's not that
big of a deal. It's just kind of a weird thing at this anyway,
we kind of we kind of went down the memory lane with staying on
upf on Friday. Oh my god. Yes, but his transition from like
blonde like surfer looking dude. So like they had a ready made moment for
RoboCop to come out at WrestleMania and actually save the fucking day. Anyway,
so they had a Triple H and Sting wrestling, which you know they get
Sting in there, Like it would have made more sensence on some level to
havenim wrestled the Undertaker because they were both kind of like the stalwarts of their
respective organizations and all that stuff. But Triple H is a fine surrogate for
that stuff. Also, I thought he was running the biz. Now I
didn't know he's still wrestled. I mean typically he's he's like the he's like
the Vince McMahon character. Him and Stephanie McMahon now play Vince McMahon. Okay,
basically they're the authority figure years to come out and say we're gonna screw
over uh And and you know, Triple H is about forty five, I
think, and he can still he can still out wrestle most of the active
wrestlers that they have. I think it's better at conveying a storyline, but
it's better on the microphone. Like just you know, he can he can
sell a storyline and sell a match better than I think a lot of the
people they have, which, yeah, it's probably a problem. He's definitely
more interested, not interested, but like involved in the business end, Like
we'll see him once or twice a year. Yeah, okay when it comes
to wrestling, I just assume once you put the suit on, you were
just kind of behind the scenes or something. Yet they try to make wrestle
made a big deal. So so they the back up the backdrop for this
story somehow became WWE Versus w CW, neglecting obviously that the part where Sting
continued to wrestle after the fall of WCW, he just didn't do it for
WWE. So like they basically erase like his whole history with TNA, which
is another organization that like whatever, There's been some some great people that have
come through there, but like they are trying the Jarrett Yeah, yeah,
like Jeff Jarrett's real real moneymakers. So it became this like like they they've
been so focused on nostalgia with the launch of their network. One of their
new series or one of their original series has been the Monday Night Wars where
they revisit basically what was the hottest period creatively and ratings wise for the wrestling
business when both of these companies were going head to head right up until Vince
McMahon bought out WCW and then owned both sides of the equations and then at
a head to head when like they're both two separate entities, they were both
on at the same time spot, so it was a ratings battle. Yeah,
they weren't wrestling each other, Oh okay, yeah so yeah, yeah,
so it was like business. It was like they were stealing each other's
stars and trying to create like it became a very heated thing that led to
like some of the best wrestling that has ever happened in this country because every
week was yeah, they had to stop themselves, everybody out each totally.
Every fifteen minutes was sweeps week. They were looking at quarter hour bakedowns and
we're like, well, this segment sucked when you do this, and you
know, it was that kind of tinkering that probably led to WCW totally imploding.
Also one of the reasons if I'm wrong, but like the last time
I paid attention to wrestling, which was like the eighties to the mid nineties,
Like WCW was kind of a nobody for a long time, right,
Yeah, they were always seemed like the also ran to the WWS the thing.
They're the weird southern territory that didn't have Hule Coogan. And depending on
where you lived and what you were into, like you know, like I
you know, growing up, I knew one guy who was a WCW guy,
and he was ridiculous. He was also the turbographics guy. So he's
the guy who he was double with the Keats Like probably I feel I feel
like exactly Simpsons references are a little played out in the twenty first century.
But he's lived in Shelbyville, that's what you're saying. Yeah, more or
he was the off brand guy. Yeah, okay, you know, like
whatever, and you're kid in the eighties, like whole Cogan was the thing.
Oh yeah, you're just like who the like even though they had history
together prior, like you didn't know that you saw sting and went, why
is there a guy who looks like a bootleg Ultimate Warrior? You know,
And it's just that's perspective, like the reality is obviously far different. But
you know, like, yes, WCW was not WWF, but when they
got a Monday night show in the early nineties and you know what this is,
they built a whole documentary series voiced by Keith David about that very topic,
and yeah, it is. It is. Yeah, it's really good
watch. But it's super well worn territory that like everyone kind of knows all
of the front, all that stuff inside and out at this point if you're
still following wrestling, because it's been beat into you over the years. So
this match also served as a so served to the surrogate for ww E versus
WCW. SO at some point as the match was going on, and this
is like spoiler territory for WrestleMania, I guess they had Degeneration X the members
thereof run down to the ring to try to help Triple H as as they
were the wc the WWF faction that had Triple H's back back then, to
which then the nWo came out to support Sting like Hall and Nash, Hall
and Nash and Hulk Cogan. Okay, Hollywood, Hulk Cogan. I mean
he didn't have time to grow the stubble, but sure he was in the
Black and White brother But the other thing that they've done by constantly talking about
this era of wrestling is talk about how Hall and Nash are best friends with
Triple h like in fucking separable up and down the road over the years they
were the click, they did the curtain call, like like the things that
have been established about the nature of their real life relationship is such that when
the two of them come down to ringside and and fucking tand Sting his bat
and help Sting out in this fight, you're just like, this is the
dumbest fucking thing in the world. And we're saying not a lot of thought
was put into this, this this story beat. I'm saying, yes,
not enough thought was put into how that was going to come on, or
maybe I am overthinking it, because it seemed like a lot of people were
like yay and just took it as just like a weird nostalgia thing. So
they needed like one line where they turned on Triple Age. Yeah, like
some sort of sentence that like sets it up or something, but instead they
just came out. They thought that you time, and like on some level,
those two organizations that were basically responses to one another and in their own
weird way coming together and having it out was like a fun little nostalgia moment.
But for me, it was like totally destroyed by like the reality of
the situation. You just look at it and go like, there's no like,
this doesn't work in any fucking way, shape or form. I've been
there, We've done that. They keep retreading it, and it's just it's
kind of getting old. I would much rather have them focus on a new
talent. Yeah, that too, I mean it was like a fun little
you know, like it's a four hour show. They certainly have room for
the old guys there too, Like they I feel like they feel like they
try to serve all masters of this and they end up sucking up. Will
you guys make it sound like the new talents maybe nothing to write home about?
There are kind of true as well, Yeah, but that's partial.
I mean, yeah, there are certainly, you know, everyone's kind of
got room to grow, but there are people that you look at and go
like, you know, they're just about there. These you know, these
guys are you know, with a better writing backing them up or a slightly
better vocal performance here and there on the microphone, like they wouldn't have a
problem. But the writing's not. I feel the writing is not what it
needs to be, and I feel the promo performances are not where they need
to be to actually for those younger guys to kind of get over, as
it were, go back and watch some Mucho Man promo reels. Yeah,
so he got inducted into the Hall of Famous year, So there was a
fair amount of that, Oh isn't that a big Yeah, deals, they're
like a really uncomfortable situation. Yeah, so with him, like he was
in the video game not that long ago, so they got a working relationship
okay there, and it kind of sprung out of that. It was the
same deal with like Ultimate Warrior and they patched those stuff up a Lundra blaze
to some extent, like yeah, they it seems like that there's there's been
a real like olive branch mentality at ww E when it comes to like reaching
out to these people that you know, may have wronged the company twenty years
ago or something like that. It's like, ah, you know, we
turned out fine. Everything's fine pretty much, especially the ones who were dead.
Yeah. Also, Triple H's entrance was like a big product place scion
for the Terminator. I've lost track of the number of emails that came in
just saying literally just like one sentence, just like, ask Jeff about Triple
H's entrance. It's dumb. It was, wasn't I have no idea what
it was? This whole like weird shots of San Francisco and like weird terminator
vision stuff that led to a bunch of terminators being out on stage Like this
was like a straight up silver Was this an actual like Terminator Genesis tie ins?
Yeah? The rest of many a logo on the set was done in
the terminator font for the whole show. And Arnold Schwarzenegger got inducted into the
Celebrity wing of the Hall of Fame this year, so it was like this
whole big desperate tie in thing, and they had him raise up out of
the ground and he had a you know, his like big crown and all
this other stuff, and he's holding like six terminator skulls, okay, and
then he dropped kind of sounds cool, but it just wasn't the the application
being the trip late wrestled six terminators to death. Yeah pretty much. Uh.
And then also so that's the moment where like, man, they should
have had RoboCop to come out, because boy, RoboCop versus terminator. Yeah,
this is an ideas not been fully explored. So you know, like
that stuff just comes off like a cheap marketing tie in. It's like their
biggest show of the year, one of their you know, one of the
whether you like it or not, one of their biggest stars. Like the
like them cheapening it by making it a big dumb terminator thing. I think
it sucks for their own brands. It's the thing you just look at it
and go like, this is your biggest show of the year, Like this
isn't you think about the size and scope of some of the other entrances they've
done in years past, Like this just just it was It was a little
sad for me that that that's where they're going with it. Demand drove a
tank sounds a little embarrassing. Fake Russian drove a tank. A Bulgarian who
was a Russian sympathizer drove a tank to the ring. That was pretty awesome.
Coo, Okay, I don't know. I feel like there's so much
history, like the Russians, I were to try to start watching wrestling,
I wouldn't be able to, like, yeah it was things like that nWo
thing would have been completely lost on Yeah, totally totally and probably just like
like, it was weird seeing all these people on Twitter talking about the Rock.
Yeah, like going like, oh, the Rock's back, like the
Rock this and that, because to me, in my mind, the Rock
is still like the Johnny Come Lately of the like Steve Auston era that came
in after the guys who actually are wrestling, who are like Macho Man and
Wholegan. I'm just saying that's how that's how like rooted in the past.
I am sure, yeah, definitely. But yeah, when when they talk
about the past of wrestling now, they talk about the quote unquote Attitude era,
which is where The Rock made his bones and where right where Steve Auston
was king and he's still arguably like one of the biggest draws. Yeah,
I mean, he's a huge movie star. He's hosting Saturday Night Love,
He's like doing a ton of stuff. Should you say, The Rock is
like the biggest breakout star that's ever come out of wrestling. Yeah, yeah,
with all the movies. Yeah, I mean, The Rock doesn't need
to come back to wrestling. He's got his own thing going on that is
like separate from that. He makes a lot of movies, like hul Cogan
made a lot of bad movies. And you know, hul Cogan is definitely
like a cultural touchstone, uh in a in a huge way, maybe even
more recognizable than The Rock and some certain in some situations, but you look
at him and go, oh, that's the wrestling guy where he's like the
Rock. It's like, oh, he's the guy from the Fast and the
Furious movies, you know, or or the President of the United States quoted
his catchphrase. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Tho he did it for
wrestling. I think really, I think it was specifically Barak. Yeah,
I think that that was specifically they did that on an episode of Raw.
Really yeah, wow, I think he might be right. All Right,
I'm glad we have this talk because it's much like Drew, I feel like
I've got more out of the last ten minutes of talking to you guys than
I would have have four hours. But yeah, but in terms of just
like catching up on storylines, the one thing that they are really good slash
really frustratingly annoying about is constantly reminding you about things that just happened, Like
think about like, Okay, every Monday they put on a three hour television
show minus commercials. It's about two ten and by the end of hour two
they are already telling you, in case you miss it, here's the thing
that happened in the first twenty minutes of the show. And recapping is that
just filler? Is it just stretching for time? Yeah? I think I
think that's part of it. But also I like they do that so often,
and and you know, they have a whole hour of television that recaps
all their storyline stuff before every pay per view for to serve that same the
same purpose, so you can think at any time, Yeah, so I
think they have zero faith in their audience, okay, uh, and and
to remember anything, ever, like they they only reference things older than six
months, like very rarely when it suits them, Like there's this real like
you get the impression that they think that their entire audience has like the memory
of a goldfish, which maybe they're maybe they're right. I don't actually know.
I don't actually know, right, but it's one of those like frustrating
things. It's just like this show shouldn't be this long, and you you
bog it down with all this bullshit, and yeah, I'm not gonna watch.
No, I'm not either. I was about to ask, like if
I stigned up now, is it still on there? But it's always on
there? Totally, yes, definitely. I don't you know. All that
stuff is like that that network is actually a really good deal, and I'm
it sounds like it. I'm like a hair away from like not watching any
of the current stuff but keeping that subscription just to watch the bad, old
dumb stuff that I really like from the nineties. It's not like it's like
that thing sounds like such a good deal and so well put together that it
makes me wish I liked wrestling more. Yeah, so I can enjoy it
because or or you know, it makes me wish other like the other thing,
like the types of programming fit into that, yeah, like if they
did it for all kinds of things like that, Like UFC has something that's
like not entirely unlike it, but it's not enough and and even this isn't
enough yet because they still have their television deals in place, so like the
you know, the episode of television that's on this Monday night won't be there
on that network for thirty days. Talk about Raw, Yeah, it blows
my mind. Like I saw Dan was posting photos on Twitter a few hours
ago of like like yeah, you'd launch on then going ahead and Raw it's
like just came from WrestleMania, Like do you have to be some kind of
out of control masochists want to go back to another wrestling event? I mean
the very next night. Yeah, well that's crazy. So and what are
they even gonna do? It's like how do they follow up their gala like
once again events. That's the beautiful thing about this specific episode of Raw the
Monday after day after WrestleMania, Like they never stop. They go fifty two
weeks a year, like they don't take a week off. But if they
had to have something that was close to a season finale slash season opener,
this is it. Oh interesting, So WrestleMania is theoretically like closing the door
on on some storylines, potentially creating some new options for feuds and other things
down the line, and it's a place like this raw is a place for
them to say here's someone new who wow, who is coming to the company,
or hasn't been on television in eight months because they broke their neck or
you know, like this is this is actually like a big installment of this
ship kind of kind of clean slate total. Well, yeah, not as
clean as you want it. Yeah, they never do quite as much as
you think. But it's not just a continuation of last night. It's like,
yeah, it's actually some new stuff. Definitely some loose ends, but
yeah, really that's a big opening, just a constant like giving you a
little bit of what you want so you keep coming back. Well, I
don't know, like I think the problem they run into now and I think
they've they've loosely acknowledged it to some extent, but like so they they don't
produce a product that's as edgy as it was back when they were competing with
WCW. Right now, the program is rated PG. They don't bleed like
they used to. The last night is something of an exception. Somebody get
it hard way, Yeah it looked like it and then they basically, uh,
it's it's not as edge as it used to be, and now they
have to serve all these different demographics as a public company, and they have
to basically have a show that makes sense for toy sponsors and merchandise and all
this other stuff. So they need to have stars that are kid friendly,
and then they need to try to have stars that appeal to as many different
segments as possible. It's why they had someone like RAYM Stereo Junior in there
for so long because like, well, I mean he he's like he's been
fantastic over the years, Like maybe not as fast as it used to be,
but like huge in the Latino demographic, they had the Great Kali,
who was this giant Indian guy who couldn't move for shit, was boring as
hell, but he was basically royalty in his home country, So it made
sense for them to have someone like that on the roster. Like it's this
very naked approach to it. When it comes to that, I think they
could probably be smarter about it than they have been. But they're a business
and they're trying to appeal to different segments and as a result, they're not
super serving any one slice of their audience. So you have the people that
have been there since the turn of the century who are just pissed because it
seems watered down compared to that, and you have people that are into it
now. There are kids and just like all these different people that are trying
to be served and it's it's a like whatever, Like I'm you know,
I don't think they're doing a great job of it, but I think that
they have an impossible fucking problem to solve, So I will continue to be
fascinated by this from the outside perspective. Totally with you. That's a smart
place to be, Like, I think that, you know, do not
interest yourself fascinating business to observe from afar, like zero interest in consuming the
product. The thing that happened in the nineties was that the behind the scenes
contract end of things often became more interesting than the in ring the television action.
And for me, that's still the draw. So I'm interested in this
weird fucking business. And then I watched the and it's the fucking worst.
It's the worst. It's the same way fucking people are about fucking comic books
and Star Wars and even video games, to where it's like all I can
do is look at it and go like, man, this could have been
better. I can think of eight ways I would and it's just like what
thing? Who the fuck am I? Oh god, damn it. I
hate it. It seems like the evonline of television. It never stops.
Just once you're in, you're all the way in, and then like you
know, and then you have occasionally come to that realization of just like,
actually, there's like much better product out there. Yeah, that's the thing.
Like, Jason is not the only one I've heard talking about Japanese wrestling,
and you mentioned T and A. I know there's some other like Lucha
Underground, tons of weird regional regional stuff. And then WWE has their own
competitor, n XT that they only broadcast on their streaming network, which is
like their developmental league sort of. But it's kind of breaking out of that
shell in a really awkward way to kind of become the thing like if you
care about in ring product, actual wrestling, they don't necessarily spend as much
time on like storyline bullshit, and that's becoming like the thing that I think
a lot of the older wrestling fans are starting to gravitate towards. So you
would want to think that they would eventually figure it out and try to have
different shows to serve those different segments instead of just cramming it all into one.
Right, But that's probably better for everybody, right if you can specialize,
and yeah, I think so serve more audiences. It's something they've tried
to do in the past and failed at. But I don't know. They
announced like a slate of new programming for the network as part of WrestleMania,
and it's like they're doing punked Oh yeah, with like Bad Grandpa and with
but like Jeff Tremaine from Jackasses producing it, like Jerry Springer is going to
host a show Too Hot for TV and Seth Green is doing an animated series
that will be Yeah, that'll be And this is all just on. Yeah,
it's all just on. They're just like they're doing original programming. They're
going all out, well give them that weird. Yeah, it's a crazy
it's a crazy fucking thing they're doing and it has been for a long time.
YEA fascinating. Like I said, I'm glad we had this talk.
I feel informed now. Yeah, let's never talk about it every Okay,
sold, I'll see you in a year, all right, not to give
anybody whiplash, I know, going from wrestling video games, like what two
topics could be more further from each other exactly and seriously just like zero,
like I think that the only two people that like both things are in this
room. Yeah, but let's talk about him, Jeff. Okay, there's
one game out this week that matters. All right, Well that sounds dismissive.
Every game that comes out matters. Yeah, I yeah, are there
other games coming out, but there are not a lot of releases this week,
is what I meant coming verge. Yes, it should be out by
the time you hear this. Uh yeah, are close to it and close
to it and depending on can be a little Yeah, just on the PS
four it's still coming to the Vita as a crossby thing and a little bit
and then PCs like a couple of months out or something. A month or
two of them, I think, the developer said the developer developing guy.
Yeah, yes, it is a hell of a game. Yeah, I
really really enjoyed it. It's uh, you know, it's an action adventure,
it's an inventory kind of game. It's a Metroid vein. Yet there
you go, I know, you greet your teeth a little bit when you
say that. It's just so succinct it is. I just feel like it
just gets as a people can do better. That's the thing that gets me
about the term, like, like there should be a term that sums up
these types of games because it's a very specific things, like it's a progression
constrained, ability driven action game. Sure, yeah, I don't a little
mouthy. Yeah yeah, Like you know graph paper maps, which this has
explicitly some of some some games of this type have dispensed with the grid,
but they still have the map. Oh this is the grid. Yeah yeah.
And it's you know, like this game seems to be going like that.
It's the really interesting thing about it, and I think a lot of
people will initially dismiss it as a result or be super super psyched by it.
Excuse me, is that the game seems to be going out of its
way to look like Metroid. Yes, like maybe a little bit more than
I would like. Sure gets a little too tile based to like, or
maybe it's more that some of the tiles look a little too Metroid. Yeah.
You know, it's like you've got enemies that are crawling around the platforms
like the ones from Metroid. I don't I don't even mind that so much.
It's just like every level looks like it's built out of actual blocks,
you know, like, which is very Metroid one like Minecraft or I think,
yeah, I think what it is is that, like even even Super
Metroid, when they got a little more horsepower, they they themselves tried to
move away from that a little bit, you know, yeah, like the
environment's levels and Super Metroid are a little more organic looking in some spots.
Yeah, this this looks like you know, you you load it up and
you're like, oh, I need to run to the left first, right
because it's Metroid, And sure enough, you need to run the left first.
But there's no morph ball exactly. So that's kind of the thing is
they get you a number of different ways, Like it feels like a bit
of a rope adope. Like the game sets you up by saying, like,
you know what this game is, Look at this thing. It's totally
Metroid. Where's the fucking various suit? What are we doing? But as
it goes, it's so quickly diverges from the weapons and like motion like like
abilities and can like concepts of Metroid Uh that I think that it actually works
in its favor that it does look like Metroid so much because as as you
go down the path of ability upgrades, you just get ship. You're just
like, what the fun like this, This isn't a more fault like you
know, it actually works really well to help set it apart. Yeah,
it definitely sets certain expectations and then just like flip flips those expectations. The
abilities you get in this game are are not one to one maps to to
Metroid stuff, and you know they'll serve similar purposes. You know, they're
like, at some point you're gonna need to jump higher, at some point
you're gonna need to get up somewhere and do something. You know that at
some point you'll need to get through half hight little obstacles that you know,
if you could roll up into a ball boy, that would be an easy
way to get through. You know, they're solving Metroid style problems with an
entirely different set of abilities, and I think that's cool. There are a
ton of different weapons in the game. They're not all useful, at least
in my experience, it sounds like they're not all critical either. No,
definitely like it sounds like you can finish the game without finding like, yeah,
as I there are several I think as of this recording that I have
not found yet, and that's kind of exciting because like I've I'm like two
three hours in the game, and there's not a lot of like like in
Metroid there were resilient missile pickups because because they gave you so little, they
could afford to put like a ton of them in the environment, and this
is lacking that. But knowing that there's a bunch of actual meaningful weapons out
there that are hard to find is like potentially more gratifying in a way.
It's like when you actually uncover one of those things, like it's going to
give you something real, right, Yeah, And generally speaking, there are
notes in the game, so you're you're finding text that doesn't necessarily doesn't know
well, let's say it doesn't necessarily at first glance, have like a gameplay
purpose, and you'll find like the equivalent of like a Zelda like pieces of
Heart thing. You know, like there there are health pickups, but then
there are fractional health pickups. You need six of these equal one. So
I've definitely like spend a long time puzzling out like how the fuck do I
get over there? And then finally got over there only to discover like,
oh, it's one sixth of a health upgrade. God damn it. You
know, like like you do run into some cases where or not every single
pickup is the thing you're looking for. But yeah, there are a lot
of weapons, there are a lot of movement abilities. It's got a pretty
good story to it that twists in a couple of interesting ways. There's like
just enough story to it to kind of keep you moving, I think,
And it's this the story generally, I think is welcome. I suspect that
as multiple endings, but I haven't necessarily, I've only seen one ending.
Are there specific like branching like player choice type moments or is it no?
No. When you finish the game, it actually pops up like your stats
and they'll say time to complete number of deaths, item item collection, and
map collection, and if your your numbers are in a certain range, the
color of the number will change. So my map was ninety seven percent when
I finished, it was a different color and all the other ones, but
it took me nineteen hours to finish, so that color you know like that
one wasn't lit. I suspect if you do certain things and manipulate those certain
those numbers in different ways and finish the game, that you'll get something a
little different. I love that you don't know that though, Like I think
this game. It was really fun for me to see the Giant Bomb wiki
page be as sparse as it currently is, because I just know that in
a few months time that thing is going to be huge. Yeah, here's
all the stuff you can There's there's crazy shit in that game, Like,
you know, there's stuff on top of you know, the action adventure side
of things, Like some of the secrets are uncovered in like really fascinating ways
that you don't see in too many other games. Right, there's like one
in particular I can think of without without having seen most of the late game
stuff that you're talking about. Like it almost makes me wonder if this is
sort of an answer to that email from a couple of weeks ago about what
is the next Fezzy? Like games that basically contain mechanical elements that they're completely
different than what they appear to be. There's stuff in this game. It's
been so fun watching you and Dan kind of compare things, like, you
know, comparing maps on each other's screen, like you know, oh you
found that weapon. Where the hell did you get that? It's been so
refreshing. Yeah, like that. That's kind of the thing with like,
you know, all the weapons aren't on the critical path and stuff like that.
It seems like there's a lot of yet discussion. He and I finished
the game with different sets of weapons. That's awesome. You know, there
was stuff that he had that I hadn't found, and vice versa, and
just like, holy shit, like where did you all? Right? Okay,
I need to go back and get this. I guess I can't remember
a time when I've seen people in this office more excited to talk about comparing
their experiences. Yeah, and in a positive way. The last time I've
seen it was like me and Vinny with Dark Souls or something. It's like
it's got that level of discoverability to it. Yes, it seems like on
a different scale, I think. But yeah, absolutely, and it's uh,
yeah, it is a lot of fun to uncover that stuff and get
in there. The game is not like world crushingly difficult. You know,
there's a hard mode that you know makes it see just take more damage.
I didn't find that to be like balanced in a way that I found all
that fun. But uh, in normal, would you know you die as
a Yeah, yeah, I hit my first boss this morning that I actually
died. It was the third boss. Yeah, it killed me a couple
of times. But like, this is a snap judgment based on that experience.
But it was hard because I wasn't really thinking about how to use what
I had already picked up exactly like I was trying to beat it just by
like jumping to dodge shots and shooting it in its weak point. And then
after the second death, I was like, all right, this seems overly
harsh. And then I used some of the stuff I had, like non
weapons stuff, you know, and I was like, oh, that's what
they wanted me to do. That was not apparent until I tried that,
and that made it totally manageable with that stuff. To me that it seems
really smart. Yeah, I think the again, you know, first impression
type thing, but I think the hack tool or the glitch addressed disruptor or
whatever it's called, the thing that you use to hack things is like,
that's what makes that game for me so far, Yeah, it's it's trying
a cool looking tool. It's like something you can try in any situation and
see if it'll you know, it's like just platforms that appear out of thing.
Yeah, like creating a platform platforms I don't know where, making enemies
behave differently or drop different things, or just like all the weird little variations
you can put on everything by by just spraying that hack being emailed over the
place. Yeah, it's it's cool. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a
lot of fun and and I think it looks really nice. It's uh,
it seems deliberate and and it's yeah in its style, you know, and
and you know, I think there there would definitely be some people that are
looking at it and just go like, oh great, another fucking retro platform
or like who cares? And I think that's like oftentimes that is a valid
perspective. I think we're we're getting overserved, yeah, those types of games.
But I think this one in particular, like that stuff feels deliberate enough
to where uh it works. Yeah. The way they marry it with like
you know, the layer effects on top of that graphical style that yeah,
never be possible on old machines totally, and and there's just like mechanical stuff
that you know comes from you know, Sprite Flicker and some of the other
you know, like they're hiding a lot of weird secrets in that game.
And it works like in the guise of things that were technical problems on s
or whatever. It's smart. I think what you said about it's subverting your
expectations applies also to the to the looking totally stuff. Yeah. Yeah,
soundtrack too, like music, it's layd enough to where it it sounds a
little more modern. Yeah, Like you start off going like, oh,
did they really just compose this whole thing with a square wave or whatever,
but then yeah, they start layering things in that, like you said,
yeah, much much more contemporary. Like I just hit an area that's got
music that has like kind of fake synth vocals in it just sound like really
eerie in a way. Nice. Yeah, Like it's really cool stuff.
Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a It is a wonderful game. Yeah.
I had a really good time with it. It seems really cool so
far. It's it's too bad they didn't get it out on all the where
heat didn't get it out on all the platforms at once, but probably has
something to do with their only being one primary developer. Yeah. Yeah,
it's just just PS four for now, yep. And I guess it's crossed
by with v so if you bought it on PS four, when they eventually
do roll out Vita, it'll just click in or something. It seems like
it would be a really good Vita game. Yeah, and so yeah,
so I started playing Ori, like that seems to be like, that's kind
of going to be the comparison. I think people like I wanted to finish
this because I started this and then Or came out while I was already playing
this, and I thought, well, I'm gonna finish this before I start
on another game that's in the similar space. Yeah, I don't. I
don't know that I like Ori. Really, I'm having a hard time.
Were you a meat boy guy? Yeah? I mean I didn't go nuts
for it. I didn't, you know, like I got a long way
through it, but I didn't. I wasn't like completing every secret secret world
along the way and doing all the super hard shit. So yeah, I
don't know, just like mechanically, like I think Or looks really nice,
but just mechanically, I'm not it's not clicking with me yet. That's understandable.
Like, I fucking love meat Boy, you know, I finished it
and everything, and I really enjoyed the stuff that Or asks you to do.
The the ridiculous chains of wall, jumps around obstacles without touching the ground
and right, stuff like that. Like it's just stylistically it's very different.
Yeah, it's like shooting at things, you know, Like like it's the
trappings are certainly similar, but it's it's not like it's more of a platformer,
whereas Acting Verge is much more well, I'm sure there's plenty of platforming
stuff in there, but it's largely based on the types of weapons you're getting
and shooting at enemies and killing them with different types of weapons and stuff,
whereas like or barely has a weapon, you know. Yeah, it's much
more about platforming around things. Yeah. Yeah, very different sensibilities. But
like I've mentioned in the quickly, look, I think it's cool that like
there's this very specific genre, the Metroidvania or whatever. It's like birthing these
like pretty divergent types of games at this point, you know, right,
Yeah, you know, I think a lot of people. I think that's
a that's a fantastic style. When those types of games are at their peak
like that, it's they're hard to beat. Yeah, you know, totally
for just compared to just like standard platformer, which where it doesn't have stakes
and doesn't have you know, like there's no aggressions. Yeah, yeah,
you know, I think when that style of game is done well, like
there's you know, it's it's one of the greatest genres out there, totally.
And I feel I feel like we went years and years after Symphony of
the Night, like you know, there were the handheld Castlevania, but beyond
that, like at least I was sitting there scratching my head going like why
is nobody else making these games? Like man? Yeah, then Shadow Complex
happened and that was like a good kind of like you know, light in
the Darkness or whatever for that genre. But then that came and went,
and they still weren't many others after that. So it feels like now we're
finally getting to a point where like the people that want to play those games
are clearly just saying fuck it and making them well yeah exactly. That's that's
the thing is I think that the thing that happens, like you saw that
stuff coming on the PC, you know, and and now that's more and
more of that stuff is making it to steam, and now more and more
of that stuff is also making it to consoles. So like that stuff is
now getting an audience that maybe it didn't get before. I think that's just
a factor of you know, the self publishing model become viable and just you
know, like this sort of thing finally working as a business. Uh,
you know, it's it's easier for those sorts of games to get out and
find an audience. Sure, you know, acting versions and just something you're
going to some guy's website to download. You know, it's fucking part of
the PS four spring sale and all you know, it's like it's got marketing
behind it. And and I'm sure like you know, just the PC releases
what he was aiming for initially, and yeah, I think of it,
and they wanted to bring it under their wing and they did. Yeah,
I think that's that's exactly what happened. But yeah, it's great, you
know the Microsoft let or you coming out day and date on PC and like
Sony's only holding this better. Who knows what the actual business reason is but
but but the PC of release of this will only trail a month or two
behind. Yeah, so it's kind of getting out there too as big an
audience as as possible. Yeah, I I recommend it. You know,
if you if you've ever liked that type of game, Uh, you know,
I think if you know, obviously, I think they're going to be
people that just don't click with that style, the visual style, or even
just like generally that style of game. And this is very much one of
those games. But damn, it's good. It's it's it was a lot
of fun. Glad it turned out as as well as it did. Yeah,
it's been a hell of a year for games so far, I think.
Yeah, I was just speaking from my own personal tastes finally getting there.
But like, I feel like the narrative that we somewhat created for ourselves
at the end of last year was like, I was a shitty year,
Like the game of the year is gonna be hard to get through, uh
and come up with a list of, you know, ten games, whereas
this year, like I've played like five games already, four or five games
that I could see putting on a top ten list. Yeah, like what
what would what's your what's your what gives a preview? What's what's like Dying
Light, Grow Home, Ori, blood Borne and now Acting Verge pending playing
more of that, Like I think those are all fantastic fucking games, Like
obviously don't appeal to everybody. I would probably say Acting Verge and and Grow
Home or probably the two for me that that on that list that Oh did
you actually play some Grown Yeah, game's pretty fucking great. But but yeah,
I mean there's a lot of stuff out there to the peels to a
lot of different people. Uh, to be you know, three months into
the year and say like I've played almost half a dozen really truly great games
already, Like that's pretty exciting. Yeah, because I'm looking at it and
going like, oh man, I had a field hard line, Like it's
been kind of a weird year for games. Yeah, we've we've been playing
slightly different gigs, I guess. So it's comforting though with all the delays.
Yeah, that's betting on so far this year totally. Also, most
most of that, most of those I rattled off not big ten pole games
either, you know, a lot of small stuff. There's anything I think
it's the games that are the ten poles that are in trouble, Like,
that's the stuff that you know, it's getting delayed and becoming out weird,
you know, like that's great. Yeah, that's the dicey stuff and just
kind of running the same treadmill. Yeah, over, I hold that a
lot of hope for the stuff that we that are unknowns, you know,
like acting for it, like we knew that was coming, but we didn't
really know it. To me, Yeah, I kind of deliberately didn't play
it before. You know, I had a couple of opportunities, Like last
year, right before three there was an event that I saw it and watch
someone walk around for a little bit more, and I looked at it and
said, that's probably gonna be all right. I don't want to see any
more of it, and then just kind of didn't didn't get near it.
So yeah, good times. Yeah for everyone. Did you play anything else?
What else is going on? Well, you know, there's been stuff
I've been messing around with. Uh Asteroids Outpost came out in her Access.
I think we I think we talked about that game when it got announced here
on this show. I can't remember. It seems like the sort of news
story we would pick up because because they took asteroids and turned it into a
survival like you know, survival game or something, mind the asteroids and build
up your I don't know what the fuck that game is going to be when
they're done with it. It's just such a we we recorded a quick look
that maybe people I want to look at because it's just I can't make fucking
heads or tails. Was at least functioning today as opposed to Friday, when
it kind of it wasn't. So we recorded the quick look Monday about one
pm. According to the Steam list of updates, they had already patched it
twice that day. Wow, so rapid rapid iteration of stuff. They're you
know, yanking out whole systems and going like, clearly this needs to rethink.
We're going to take out the stealing system, and we have a bounty
system where're working on, you know, like stuff like that. But it's
a multiplayer like sixty four player to a server game. You stake acclaim and
then you build a base there and you can mine asteroids, and I guess
theoretically you could go take asteroids from other players or you know, do something
like that, and you have an assault rifle to gun each other down with.
I guess, but I haven't been able to find other players. I
hit the map key and nothing happens. So yeah, I it's I don't
know what the fuck it is super early it is, it is super early.
Like I don't want to necessarily pass judgment on this game beyond like the
concept of the Asteroid's name appearing on this weird space survival game and like how
far away it is from actual Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe? Would you rather have
just had a new Asteroids though? Because what is you know, like,
what's that like? I mean some kind of like I don't know, you
know, that's like Superstartusts kind of did that exactly. And I don't necessarily
have a lot of love for that game, you know. It's yeah,
totally, like I don't. I don't think that there's a way to make
a game that is a solid homage to original Asteroids that people would necessarily want
to play in this day and age. What if it was vector graphics,
I mean, yeah, sure you could do stuff like that, or you
know, you could say, like, well, let's look at what pac
Man ceed X does for pac man, and how do we apply some of
those ideas to Asteroids. I'm not saying that there's zero way to come up
with a compelling Asteroids game, but I don't know, like what, like,
how did they get to this point looking at that thing? I don't
know that anybody knows. It's just like it's like the other shoe to the
tempest stuff that's been going on of just like what the fuck is a Tari?
They're published, They're clearly a publisher because they're listed as the publish exactly
like they're publishing this Asteroids game and you know, trying like sending seasoned assists
to Jeff mentor over t XK, like you know, they're they're definitely like
doing stuff with their old properties, but like, you know, what,
what what is it the right stuff? Yeah? I don't know. I
don't know. I guess, like what do you do if you're Atari in
this day and age? Anyway? Like that's just such a weird. So
who's developing this? I think they're not listed as having done anything else on
Steam, but I don't know what the backstory on the developer is. This
is a weird curiosity. Yeah, yeah, I can't I can't help but
follow it to a certain extent, which I guess is like, like I
was saying, like that's the benefit of them naming it asteroids is there would
be like another dime a dozen one of these fucking games. But now I'm
looking at it and going like what the fuck they knew what they were doing?
Why? You know? Which is that a good or a bad thing?
That's the value of those ips you can't resist? Sure, Yeah,
yeah, I guess and they know it. Uh yeah, yeah, so
iro that I played a little bit of Dirty Bomb, which is in some
kind of closed beta right now. Brink dudes, right, yeah, it's
a free to play. It's a free to play Brink. You know.
It's like that type of objective based game with like load out cards that you
have to like hope you get the right card that's got the right stuff on
it, and that's that stuff doesn't look so hot, So I hang on.
They keep billing that thing as a return to form for those guys,
would you know, from when they made like Sill stop Watch Mode, if
they made wolf Et and all that stuff, and they kind of the uh
huh, the pitches for for Dirty Bond that I keep hearing that was yeah,
but that was the that was Brink, right, I mean Brink was
also I don't know, those modes like that objective based thing. Yeah.
Yeah, like that Brink falls writing line with their past work. I think,
you know, does this have any of the mobility stuff of Brink,
the parkour or the sliding and vaulting and stuff like that. Doesn't I don't,
No. I watched the b roll of it and I didn't see any
I don't think so, Okay, it feels more just like you know,
right mouse button, left, mouse button on the shooting and that sort of
stuff. Like it's definitely iron sights and that sort of thing, but it's
objectives, you know. It's like, oh, go attack this objective and
now stop these guys from getting here, and everybody got tickets, you know,
or whatever it is. And then for a bunch of free to play
hooks. It's like it's it's like the concepts of Brink with a new graphical
style and then a bunch of free to play hooks thrown in along the way.
Like that's a super reductive way of looking at it. And I'm sure
that there's nuance there that I didn't get out of the few matches I played.
But that's that's my kind of initial impression, all right, is that
it's that kind of objective based team shooter. Are you floating on a garbage
trash island or are you trying to get to one? Sadly, I have
not seen a garbage trash island or anything any kind of future cities. It's
not the water world yeah in this game, so I don't know that they're
doing that aspect of it. But they've got character. It's gets class based,
so you know, it's like you want to play as sky Hammer and
he's got two abilities that I think it's sky Ham, right, I've been
making that up. I don't think I made that up because he leap out
of the sky with the hammer. No, you can call it smash the
grounds, like oh okay, so it's more of a figurative hammer. Yeah,
yeah, Okay, by hammer they mean missiles. Yeah, all right,
but you know he's got assault rifle pistol and you know, like like
they're at least on the default load out that I saw, and then they
have like multiple tiers of cards for the load out cards and you can earn
currency by packs of cars like this that element of it, and I don't
know, like I just keep looking at the thing going like that's I don't
maybe not my thing. All right, they got a great name. It
is a great name. Dirty bomb is a great name for dirty video is
a great name for a video game or anything. Yeah, totally, it's
a great name for like a drink. Yeah, you're first born, Yeah,
meat, little dirty bomb, dirty bomb shoemaker. Yep, that's ye,
coming soon into a No, never mind, let's move on. Jason,
has your Blood Born four five? Told me about burns in something like
that? Those are the bosses, right they called blood Point? Yes?
Yes? Uh yeah, Wait are the bosses called the blood Born? No?
No, no, man, that would be really fucking cheesy. So
I think, yeah, yeah, everything is opposed to all the other super
serious, fucking occult shit hats. So five bosses, Yeah, five bosses
game. Game is not grabbing me as much as you know, like a
slar Souls game. I think it might be a little bit of just souls
fatigue wasn't too terribly long ago, and this is definitely like a kind of
a leaner, meaner, you know, souls experience, uh, which that's
a positive thing. Going for it, I think, but it's the lack
of shield kind of more active combat stuff, Like it's intriguing and it takes
some getting used to, especially if you're used to using a shield. Does
it feel like a huge difference. It is a big Yeah, it definitely
is. Yea, yeah, I mean, well if you used a shield,
it's a huge difference kind of like if you mean it's a difference in
like you didn't like the Dark Souls games, but it will make you like
this. No, I don't think. No, not at all. Okay,
not at all, Yeah, not at all. You're really just kind
of replacing your defense with an offensive like evade if that makes any sense.
It doesn't like it doesn't. It doesn't gun sort of serve as a shield
kind of well yeah, yeah, small kind of way, so you can
parry things, you know, with the guns. It sort of fills the
same role. Yeah, but it's it is. It absolutely is the same
kind of game with relatively minor differences. Like if you hated Dark Souls,
I will stand by this, you will not like blood Borne. Yeah,
it's it's very much in that in that same vein. So what if I
like thinking about it, Well, what if you, if you, I
guess, like that's the thing is, I think about every one of these
games will come out. I don't think it's an it just like every one
of them fails to grab me in more or less the same way and right
around the same time. Yeah, yeah, I can see that in a
lot of ways. This this game is a little a little more lenient I
think, so a little more in certain aspects. But at the same time,
they've really try and force you to like learn that game to begin with
before it, you know, because it takes a while to get insight before
you can like start leveling up and everything like that. So they really focus
on learning the mechanics. Yeah, but I think after that it tends to
get a little bit easier. There's no real destriment to dying so much as
just losing your blood sharks. Yeah, I mean in the sense that they
took out the hollowed stuff. Yeah, so there's a few things that kind
of make it. There's some like just quality life improvements, I guess.
So I don't know, it still is KG with like here's how this system
works. So yeah, absolutely, like that is I mean, yeah,
that is core to that series and all the people out there, Like when
the Daily Embargo came up, that's said like, oh, it's the most
accessible one yet I was like, what are you talking. It's like,
no, I think you just know what to look for in these games better
because it's just as obscure. Do you think that that's something that they felt
very strongly about out of the gate with Demon Souls that was like a big
part of that game, or do you think that this is something they fell
into. It's hard to say. I don't know. I mean from what
from what I know about these games is that they could probably draw some kind
of asking Forge comparison is that they they subvert a lot of what people came
to expect from the third person. So, yeah, you're right about the
genre. You're right about the thus Lee I think would probably be really into
you, uh again, stub burding your expectation and not telling you about it.
You know, Miyazaki, the main guy, has been out there saying
like, you know, he prefers that style of storytelling where it doesn't spell
everything out, you know, and it kind of leaves you in the dark,
like mechanically, mechanically, that's the thing for me. It's like storyline
like whatever. Yeah, like you know, pick a style, stick to
it like whatever. That makes total sense. So my my understanding of the
arc of Demon Souls. And I'm sure people write in and correct this,
but is that like people were importing it out of Japan, and I think
there was maybe an Asian release, like you know how they'll you'll get like
the non japan specific like Asian release that I think has English in it.
Yeah, English instructure. I think it not always it was something like that
where like you know, Demon Souls was a like an actual true sleeper hit
right, yeah, like or maybe even hit is I remember I Vinnie get
getting it right in the office and like and the rest of us going to
pay this for a few hours. Yeah, we could maybe do a quick
look at yeah, and the rest of us so I can watch that quickly.
Yeah, So I think this is how this works. And every other
rest of us is looking at it and go like what the fly are you
playing it? I can look at and just go like, yep, that's
from software. A bunch of games that you look at and go like nah,
right, So, which is a sad when they make mech games because
you look at him go mans look cool, but boy, I don't want
to play these games. Three Dot Game Heroes. Yeah, now that's a
game. That's a damn ass game. I might say that the rest of
the from Software catalog holds nothing for me. Let some of the early Armory
Courts stuff I get into, Yeah, more recent stuff, that's But to
answer your question, I don't know if it was. I can't answer the
chicken and egg part of that question because like Demon Souls came out and was
a sleeper thing, and you know, people very like rapidly exchange information online
trying to figure it out and stuff because there were no resources out there.
And I don't know if like the rest of the series just picked that up
and ran with it, or if that was their intention from the get go.
But based on what a lot of people say, we could go back
and look at like Kingsfield stuff like that and see the similarities and like the
seeds of because Kingsfield was total fucking nonsense. Yeah that's what I like.
I remember getting those games in the office when they were coming out and just
going like, what fuck man, who would want to play this clunky ass
shit? Right? Uh? Yeah, totally Like yeah, it's it's like
it's it's weird and funny to me that like From Software has become like this
revered developer after all these years of like cranking out shit. Yeah, like
I just look at it, like, man, what like totally in the
PlayStation one era, that name was just like you're synonymous with things I wanted
nothing to do with, Yeah, and whatever, Like, there are certain
games that they've done along the years that I think people have gravitated different some
of the mex stuff. Yeah, and like Otogi is really revered, right,
some stuff like this. Not to say that they haven't had games that
caught on before, but man, they caught on with real specific crowds and
in a lot of ways became like we're not that immediately distinguishable from the from
stuff that was awful, like their system. Yeah, I can see.
That's fascinating, you know. Yeah, like this one seems like kind of
the jumping off point where finally is sort of mainstream. Like I'm really curious
to see what the sales figures are like for this thing. There there are
enough PS fours out there that you know, it could sell quite well if
the audience is there. But yeah, like yes, to answer your questions,
in a very roundabout way, like, yeah, there are stats that
they don't explain at all their items. You get that, like, you
know, all the item descriptions, just like souls are like written in the
like the style of the characters speech, right, and it's a bunch of
lore based stuff that doesn't really tell you. It's real vague. It's not
like, hey man, this is plus ten to your ship. No,
no, no, it's it's well, you know, the stats stuff is
fairly well presented, but more like you just get a bunch of items and
you have no idea where to take them or what you do with them or
stat bonuses. They're like, you know, listening like in a letter format
is like what the fuck does it be mean? And this hand thing,
I have no idea. And so even when you understand the stats scaling from
souls, like I'm using a weapon now that has a B on arcane,
and yet I put three points into arcane yesterday and the weapon damage didn't change
at all. It didn't change. So it's like, I know how the
system works wired, what's going on here? I'm not. Yeah, there's
a few things I'm just not getting about the game, like the lack of
variety, I think, but in particular especially the weapon variety. You know,
like that stuff seems really kind of light and stripped down, and I
think maybe that might be a good reason for people to get onto this one.
It's not as overwhelming. Yeah, there are fewer options in the combat
here, so you kind of just fall into what they want you to do
more naturally. Sure, I heard somebody say that maybe it was Dark Souls
one or two, but one of those games had thirty nine weapons. But
yeah, that sounds totally believable. Absolutely seems like a lot. It depends
on what they are. If it's like eight of them are swords, then
yeah, a lot of those would be weight and stuff, then maybe they're
not that different. But especially what I'm saying, Yeah, the thing about
Dark Souls is a lot of the weapons, and even a lot of the
best weapons, you would never see unless you knew exactly what to do to
get them. Like sure, like the last time I played Dark Souls,
the sword I ended up using was you basically have to kill the first NPC
vendor you ever meet in the game, And if you didn't know to kill
that guy to get that sword, you probably would never do it, you
know, Yeah, because he sells you stuff. You know, it's if
I killed this guy, he won't be here to sell me things anymore.
But if you know he has that sword, you can go for it like
a lot of the Maybe he's two hundred. Maybe Bloodborne has thirty nine including
transformations. Thirty nine sounds high for what I've seen of blood Born, Oh
including transformations. Oh then they yes, that could be right. So if
it's like I thought, it was like more little more than a dozen or
something, Yeah, that sounds about right. I think they have an achievement
for getting all the weapons in the game, and they list them. But
I'm pretty deep in and I've got like eight or nine weapons now that sounds
yeah, pretty good, close to ten. I just recently got this mace
which has lightning power. Yeah. Do you know the dudes that actually puts
you in a sack and bring you down to that assholes? Dude, spend
some time down there. There's some really cool so I haven't been back there
since they stole me and put me there. Go for it, and I
got out of there as fast as I could. And there's there's a badass
mason there, so you don't switch up with the l one. It actually
coats your weapon and lightning so that the arcane actually really factors in it.
And now I'm kind of kicking myself in the ass because it's like I've been
putting everything into you know, skill the hand one and there's no specking.
So it's like, shit, I really want to use the space, but
it's it's a little too late. Yeah, you're kind of back to like
the you know, my first play through of Dark Souls one where you couldn't
respect my character build was a complete fucking joke at the end, Yes,
because because you're gonna end up rerolling at some point. But it sucks that
it's I'm like, you know, ten fifteen, maybe twenty hours into this
already and it's like, oh shit, I fucked up. Yeah what do
I do? Know? I know what you mean, but I have you
seen have you seen Ludwig's Holy Blade? Yeah? Just check that thing out.
Yeah, that's the thing that as the two handed sword. Like to
kind of go back to Jees's questions about the like the faster play style and
stuff like that thing, it's basically, you know, they've got the transforming
weapon thing. This thing is like a regular size sword and the sheath or
the scabbard or whatever on your back is just a bigger fucking blade for it.
Oh okay, so when you want to transform it, you just jammed
the sword into that and then pull it back around and now it's a great
sword. Like it's just an huge sword. But it's like a two hand
kerk camera. Let me tell you. I know, I know, but
but it is great. But the thing about it is that I never used
great swords and dark souls like. I was always a one hand and shield
type guy. The first thing I went for and d Solos two is that
that great story, right, So so like this game, since their shield
is not an option and I don't use the firearms that much. Like getting
into this thing and learning how to use a great sword properly, it's actually
super gratifying, you know. Just it's like, here's a totally different type
of weapon that I've never used and it's got it's also got insane thrust damage
on it. So it's made me. It's made me think about ways to
use the different movesets in different ways. You know. It's like, oh,
I want to be slashing all the time. I want to get a
thrust or two in there, because that's extra damage. Yeah, that's why
the like being able to switch you know, the styles like on the fly,
like in a combo, like a hitting R one then L one and
then like back to R one or something like that. Like in the case
of a Kurr Pink Kirkcammer, you do like an overhead swing with your sword
which is quick, and then you do on one well, so do an
overhead uh smash with your hammer, which is actually pretty quick, and then
it'll do it a huge thrust as well. So it's actually like a super
quick, effective, high damaging combo that you know works in a two handed
with Yeah, Kirk camera is fucking great. It looks pretty rights. It's
the best I'll give you that. It is. It is a fucking gravestone
on your back that you can turn into a big hammer. You just put
your sword in and it. Yeah, it's it's If you want to argue
for Kirkhammer as best new weapon of the year, I will back you on
that. It's in there. I can I can kind of identify with you
in terms of feeling a little bit of fatigue on this stuff. Like it
you know, it's a great game, Like I'm really enjoying playing through it.
I'm super deep in at this point, but uh, there's a little
element of kind of been there, done that with it. Maybe they're just
maybe it's just been so many of these games in a fairly short period of
time. It could be. It's a part of it is you know,
you mentioned, you know, killing that that vendor and getting that cool less
weapon like right away in the game, and I'm not seeing anything like that
in this. Like it's like there's less personality I think, and there's less
mystery less stuff to discover. Maybe yeah, a little bit of that,
or it's all super well hidden. That very well could be. I don't
know, Like I've seen a little bit. I was really curious to see
what those super hardcore Souls fan bases response to this was going to be.
And I feel like I've seen a fair amount of people saying like, yeah,
I powered through it as soon as it came out, and I don't
really want to play through it again immediately, Yeah, because because there are
so many fewer possibilities for how you play it and stuff like that, Like
it seems like it is streamlines. So maybe you could say it's more accessible
in that sense, like there's less there's a little bit less stuf to like
mess up on, or a little bit less room for variations. You're just
kind of going to do the thing they want you to do in terms of
the way you play it. But then that does limit like subsequent replays,
you know, yeah, quite a bit. Ultimately, I'm still to get
it. Yeah, Yeah, I'm gonna play it all the way through totally.
Yeah, We'll see how how much staying power it has. You messed
with Chalice dungeons at all, not as of yet. Like I generated the
one that we did in that quickly, yeah, which my understanding is that
thing is always identical for everybody, the first first one, that first one.
So and I've got enough to make a second Chalice now, I think,
okay, But yeah, I haven't messed with those two terribly much.
I pulled up a YouTube video over the weekend looking at that stuff, and
there seems to be an insane amount of depth in generating those random Chalice dungeons,
and I hope that that kind of fills that void of a variety.
Yeah, Like I found like a Reddit post that breaks down just this.
It was actually just a bunch of random seeds for the genera or the random
dungeons. You know, it's like put in this seed to get this weapon
and then this will be the boss at the end. So it seems like
there's a big like list of bosses that could show up in your dungeon,
and they kind of mix and match them in different ways and like they're so
they're basically lost an uncanny variance of all the weapons in the game, or
a bunch of the weapons, and you can find those weapons in different Chalice
dungeons. Okay, so that was the point of this post. It was
like, use this seed and that's how you get this weapon and get that
weapon. So there seems to be a decent amount of replay value there,
I hope. So I really do I beat the I beat the entirety of
that Chalice dungeon that we messed with on the quick look, it's like the
all three levels and like every level as a boss, and the last boss
is pretty tough. So would you get what'd you get? Nothing super notable
out of that? Actually what I got was another Chalice oh to generate another
dungeon with. So yeah, there is that stuff that it is maybe a
little bit grindy. But I finally got out of the city in that game
and the environment to start changing up a little bit, a little bit,
like they do some time of day stuff in that game that I wasn't expecting,
which I found that location based. I guess then like not necessarily there's
global stuff in there, like they've never done that in those games before,
And like the time was always static, you know, the world, the
world was really diverse and interesting, but everything was just kind of what it
was when you saw it. And like there's actual and there's some element of
time progressing in this game, which kind of helps make the world feel a
little bit more alive. Do these games have any sense? Like it was
just Demon Souls that had the whole like world status, like it's pure white
stuff has gone. So I mean, you know, if you want always
seem like an interesting concept. Yeah, but that was like like where all
these games are baffling. That thing in particular was a complete other layer of
fucking insane on top of that. Like even even when me and Vinnie,
when Vinnie watched me play through that game last year, and people had had
like five years to bang on that game and understand it. Like I still
felt like most people could barely explain how the world tendencies suff worked. And
also in a lot of cases, world tendency was based on what the entire
player base was doing, right, So once that dwindled, like that was
you know, you saw, like it was Atlas that published emails here,
right, they would issue press releases saying like, hey, we were going
to shut down the servers, but hey, instead we decided to make the
world tendency pure white. Yeah, it's like, hey, it's pure white
for the weekend, go nuts, but but you know, the next pee
weekend. Right, But even even when the player base was healthier, there
was only so much to you as an individual could do to influence the world
tendency because it was subject to everybody. So yeah, they've they've got rid
of stuff like that. So I guess in that sense, blood Borne is
a little bit less crazy for new players. But the you know, the
core loop of like die over and over and over, yeah, and keep
playing through the same part over and over and over until you beat it slowly
getting better and better. Yeah, like you feel yourself getting better. And
for people who find that rewarding, like that's still there. But if you
hate repeating the same thing and frustrating to you, yep, it's still preval
If the idea of playing through the same five to ten minutes stretch of level
against the same enemies like six or eight times in a row, right,
you know, as you bash your head against the boss over and over,
if that sounds deplorable, like you're not gonna be Yeah, it's a game
that requires patience, yes, patience in the extreme, yes, patience and
perseverance and repetition absolutely definitely. Yeah, but it's it's really good. It's
really well made. But yeah, I really am curious what they're going to
do after this, because you know, a lot a lot of people like
saw this as like after Dark Souls too, was kind of a relative disappointment.
A lot of people saw this as like, yeah, like, oh,
this is the Gamezak he's really been working on. This is going to
be the second coming of Souls. And that's exactly yea my conception going in.
And it's really good, but it you know, and it changes something
like it moves some knobs back and forth, but it doesn't like completely rewrite
the book or anything. So I don't know what they'll do. I mean,
it's only been four of these games, like you know, expecting a
full rewrite of the book when there's only been this many, you know,
like you talk about fatigue and stuff like that, but I think that's probably
a testament to the staying power and replayability of the previous games. Yeah,
yeah, because they stick with people, and you have people that are doing
all these different runs and just like playing it entirely different ways and covering new
shit. Uh, and it makes them feel like they have much longer legs
than the average game. You know, it's like compared to like not to
just fucking dog pile on it all the time. But like look at Battlefield
Hardline. You know, it's a campaign you can play in a couple of
days if you play it at all, and then the multiplayer is what it
is, and you there's no there's not that much to talk about there.
Yeah, you know, like no one's gonna go like, hey man,
I just uncovered this amazing new thing, you know, like you know,
the typical game is fully presented, every little bit rough you know, explained
for you know, for better or worse. So yeah, I mean,
you know, like the fatigue is a weird thing to think about. Without
these games, it's not like they're releasing more than one a year in most
cases, I think then rereleasing Dark Souls too, and this sort of stuff
like that's where it starts to get like, okay, you know, but
they probably need to do that, And I mean, right, say,
what you want about me is hockey. He is obviously a guy that can
think outside the box. Yeah, so I'd love to see him like take
yet another ninety degree terms. Oh that's what I mean, Like if he'll
make another like quote unquote Souls game after this, or if he will branch
off and do something that's super different though, yeah, like like when when
do they, like when do they pivot from this into something even crazier?
Like is there a way for them to do this again? Right and and
have people kind of fall in love with an entirely new thing that is still
attracting the same types of players. I guess, I don't know, like
that's that's maybe that's a weird thing to put on anyone, but well,
actually, to be fair, I mean it's probably a foregoing conclusion that there
will be like a Dar Souls three, because I think these games are just
keep getting bigger and bigger. But the question is like, will he keep
running that ship or you know, will he just kind of let this team
go with that idea? Yeah, and move on to something else? Right?
I don't know, but yeah, that game's games really good for sure?
I agree. Uh. Are you playing anything else? Uh? Played
a little bit of Tokei Din? Yeah, okay, do you like Monster
Hunter? Tell me that was pretty good. That was a pretty good fac
simile like a Japanese male voice actor. So this is straight up Monster Hunter
cross. Uh, Dynasty Warriors. So that's the same on megapor stuff.
Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, feeling we were gonna lose pregnant pause
after Cross. I was like, what's the other thing he's gonna say?
That might be great? And then you said Dynasty Warriors, and then I
almost threw up. So you played a little bit of this one of his
first release, uh, a couple of years ago, something like oh god,
straight up steals the Monster Hunter formula. Uh. So it's considerably more
fast paced. Let's just say it like when you describe it like that,
Yeah, it doesn't take all of the nuance and like skill out of the
combat and you just like go on these quests. Fucking this quest is mashed
the square button pretty much, but it addresses some things that people have issues
with and master under. You know, there's a lock on camera. Now
you can target specific body parts and you have to knock them off and like
purify them before you're able to actually do damage to the monster. So this
new version ad like pretty much doubled the amount of bosses and uh and enemies
over the previous over the previous Yeah, token is this a completely new game
or to like release with more stuff in it? So the Monster Hunter,
like sque games really like to just put out a core based game and then
like a year or two later, add an expansion of sorts where they just
add additional content. Not a true sequel by anything by any means. But
yeah, this is in the in the in the same vein so so it's
a continuation of the original story with a lot of the same characters, uh,
a lot of the same weapons. They added like three new weapons,
I think. But I'm not ready to sign off quite yet. I want
to play a little bit more before we do the quick look. But yeah,
we'll see how how that goes. If do do you think that like
it fills a certain void purely just by virtue of being on a console,
Like you know, Monster Hunter is purely handheld at this point. Yeah,
truly, And this is coming out on p S four N and Vita,
Cross Crossed, Save and Play. Like just like looking at what they do
with like the you know, the art design and like the scale of the
encounter is even from the little eyeflight of of Monster Hunter on a handheld,
like thinking about what they could do with that on a PC or a modern
console. It's like, monsters are fucking huge and you could just do some
really like bombastic stuff. Yeah, you know, you've got like a megaforce
involved. So yeah, like everything is a spectacle, you know, just
normal attacks, you know, all the all the enemies. So that's like
visually appealing. That's kind of fun. But yeah, it's it's still still
Monster Hunter, which which I love, Yeah, which I love, but
it doesn't have the things that I love. So I'm trying to come at
this at a different approach. See w what it goes. So it's not
necessarily like that. They even like streamlined it in a way that will make
it more appealing to people that don't necessarily like Monster Hunter. They took the
basic loop of Monster Hunter, like you start off in a village and get
the same kind of quest, same everything there, and then they kind of
sped up and changed up the combat a little bit. Are the areas all
numbered? Yeah? All right? Oh say boy understood, they're all segmented
like that? And yeah, all right, drew Yo Video Games? Yeah
got any Yeah she got Halo. Okay. I played some more Halo,
which one the Master Chief collection. I played it online and it kind of
worked. It kind of worked. Did a humongous patch. Do you know
if that's the patch that they were supposedly beta testing with people? I think
that is, yes, that patch. Yeah it worked. Yeah, I
was, you know, just matchmaking, waited for a minute and then got
back in. Do you have a posse? I've not actually tried it with
my my crew. I was just rolling solo for a while, and to
be fair, the solo stuff, which is what was working the best for
me back when it was still kind of worked. But I think the biggest
change that thing does is you no longer get into a match and then roll
into the next match with the same people. Really, they just dump you
right back to the beginning of the menu. Thought, wasn't that one of
the big excelling points was like, oh, you can get your party together.
Probably what's been screwing them up, But I mean that's Halo games have
been like that in the past. So all you have to do is just
hit you know, search again when you when you're done, and uh,
yeah, people are playing it. I don't think. I don't know if
a lot of people are playing it, but I matched fairly quickly, and
uh yeah, that's they've got it packed in with Xbox ones at this point?
Is that yeah I saw some cases that is that just across the board
now or I'm not sure. I was looking at it. I don't don't
ask me why or nothing. Oh you know, I to like go make
the virtual purchase of that fast and furious thing. So I found myself on
Xbox dot com and that was one of the things they were trying to push
on people, was like, hey, it comes with four Halo games,
and I'm like, yo, great, they might as well salvage something from
the investment they made and like say, hey, we got to pack in
now. Sure sure. I have not tried co op yet. Over over
the internet, just campaign co op, I mean, get you correct?
Yeah, and uh, I you know, I've gotten sporadic reports from people
saying like, oh, I'm still busted, but you know who knows.
Uh. In my experience, it has been a little better. Also have
been like, uh, let's see last week I dipped, I've been dipping
into Sonic stuff. Yes, I played. It's a fucking dark path.
Yeah, weird. Yeah, I don't know. I liked Freedom Planet.
It's an interesting games actually a decent game. Yeah, it's not totally Sonic.
It is very much Sonic conspired, sure, but it's got some different
things going for it. I don't know. Check out the quick click uh
and uh. I been playing a little puzzle and dragons on my telephone.
Yeah, alright, let's dish many stuff going. Are you? Are you
an avid player? Not anymore, like I hit a brick wall with that
as far as like the pay stuff. But yeah, So I had played
it months ago, maybe even like a year ago, because I heard about
like, oh, it's the biggest game in Japan everyone plays on the phones
now, And I looked at it and just did not get it at all.
But then a few months ago I started playing Monster Strike and kind of
got into that a little bit. I still don't really understand what's going on
there, but then I decided with the Nintendo News to get back into or
to give Puzzling Dragon another shot. And it's compared to Monster Strike, it's
a lot simpler. Sure is it just match three? It is? Well,
so it's that is the that is the the core of it. Yes,
it's not like The Jeweled Like you don't have to switch. You can
like take the piece and move it anywhere you want. And it's turn based,
so that uses up a turn and you can see above your enemies how
many turns you have left to move until they go. So like you could
potentially set up, like, you know, a five banger and then hit
it before the monster's turn. So it's a lot like setting up como combos
and stuff. I imagine that in high level play, and this is one
of those games that you could play just casually and then there are people that
go absolutely nuts and learn about a high level play. You could probably get
real good at setting up combos and stuff. I did start looking at guides
for this, just like Evolution guides. Do you check up my team?
Look who's on my team read it off. Wow, Wow, who's that?
Uh? Uh? Bat fucking Batman? What they had a crossover on
your Okay, I got Batman in my fuzzle and Dragons? Is this in
like core P and D. It's not like, yeah, like P and
D and like a DC Comics edition or anything like that. No, they
just yeah, they just throw it through a bunch of Batman characters. Like
Monster Strike, you have characters on your team and you level them up and
fuse them with other monsters that you gain by going through dungeons. Uh,
that stuff is still a little fuzzy to me. I don't really know how
that works. Like do you want to combine two people together? Uh?
Do you want to just like do you want to sell one? Do you
want to absorb the guy you just got for XP? Like? I still
don't really get that, but we can we can talk about that, Okay.
Typically you want to combine, yeah, to eventually get them stronger and
stronger. But what if I get one that's a higher level than my main
dude? Do I combine my main dude and the higher level guy? Eat
the fucking thing? Which one? Look at a guy? Show me,
show me the guys and we'll talk about it. Okay, sang on is
what is the Nintendo theme to win the thing announced? What's the actual name
of that? It's like Puzzling Dragons Mario Edition? Is that what it is?
Is that only on three DSA I think that's the case. Yeah,
so I mean for now, Yeah, I mean, who knows what will
happen? But uh well no, because the gung Ho owns Puzzling Dragons right
like DNA is not gonna be able to put out a game. Hey,
you know who knows weird business business. Anyway, the reason I ask is,
are you saying that that is just going to be a three DS game
of what you're describing, but with Mario characters seems as such? Yeah,
because maybe I should. But also maybe that's why I wanted to look at
it. Maybe I want to play that. But also Puzzling there's I think
Core Puzzling Dragons is also coming. Yeah. Yeah, Puzzling Dragons Z came
out on three DS in Japan. Are those not the same box? I
wanted? I thought those were contained in the same package. Maybe maybe they
are. Maybe maybe they're rereleasing that game in the States and adding Mario or
rereleasing that game and adding Mario to it. I think that might be the
case. There's there's a whole lot of number. I don't know, Okay,
I don't. I actually don't have the answer. I don't think that's
the case anymore. Like I'm looking at these web pages, like, I'm
not sure if you're saying it's matched three ish plus dungeon crawling plus Mario characters,
it's I mean, it's not really dungeon crawling. Yeah, you go
through it like a wave of enemies. Okay, Essentially, I don't know
if you're leveling up monsters and throwing them into stuff at some point, that
just sounds like there's gonna be a whole lot of Yoshis in this fucking game.
And I'm not sure if all in there are already eggs. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. It isn't Pokemon? Was it Pokemon Shuffle? Isn't that
just puzzling dragons? Also, I don't know. Yeah, I downloaded that.
That's like free now have a tough free for some reason, It's just
a match game, isn't it. I don't think. I don't. I
don't know. Match games are fun than dragons? Is good bread? Yeah?
All right, maybe just check it out. Maybe you want to match
a water type gem to fight a fire type monster. The hot tip right
there. Wow, I want to be the very best matching. I want
to be the very best of matching, I believe in. All Right,
Okay, I can put the two things together that that'll look the same and
they'll like chatter. Give me some points. I can do that, Jeff,
I wanted to know how that Fort's a fast and furious thing is alright.
I downloaded it but didn't actually play it. There are screenshots in it
that make it look hilarious, yeah, in that it has some fast and
furious characters. Story in it really lines of dialogue from the cast at that
movie, like on screen text or something. So okay. My fear was
that they think I could have been looking at the wrong screens. But yeahn't.
Yeah, because it's only you know, it's a free thing. I
mean, it will be ten bucks eventually. But my fear was, you
know, that's a free thing. So all they did was model the cars
from a movie and that's it. But it sounds like that they have created
above it. It sounds like this weird shit in there. So yeah,
all I know for sure is that I read that the achievement points flow fast
and furious out of that thing. Sure, yeah, why not. I
live my life two hundred and fifty points at a time. I don't really
care about fast furious, but I kind of wouldn't check that thing out.
Yeah, I mean whatever, like force rising, like it's a solid engine,
the driving is good, like you know, you just that in a
smaller form sounds okay. It's like a good way to check out for's the
horizon too, sure, and kind of see how it looks and out runs
and if you like playing it, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think
that could. Yeah, it seems like a good demo for that stuff.
If nothing else weird the movie tie and stuff. Depending on how you feel
about product placement and all that, you know, maybe I don't know,
I have I have or me a near undying love for the Fast and Furious
overrides my ikey feelings of product integration. So well, when it's free,
who cares? And yeah yeah if they're getting it away or if it's you
know, it's like the Burger King games were what five dollars a piece something
like that, like that's acceptable. I don't know, I've got I've got
a certain fondness for the really naked, just like blatant Dan Mac Global Gladiators
man, like advert games, Let's do this, Like is that is that
a valid term? Advert game? Yeah? But yeah, but the Cool
Spot was a dope game. I mean that was that was an actual video
game. What else was sour Patch kids? The game world? I heard?
I heard that was all right, I know method man like sour Patch
and you know he had some raps to bust the world gone south? About
said kids? Uh yeah, I don't. I'm trying to think, like,
what else has existed in that in that vein? Is that a genre?
Crash crash course hell discovered? Okay, fucking weird connect thing. That
thing is a nightmare, that's that Thing's a fucking hell escape checks quests checks
quest Ye, huge one. I would be in a favor of more stuff
like that. I mean, there's there's straight of McDonald land. There was
another one of those. There's Yo Anoid. You've got a product a shill
and make a game out of a little spot. Yeah but yeah, cool
Spot, makeup make a makeup game that's bad but good. Yeah, don't
don't just make a bad game. Yeah, make a game that's like fun
bad. Yeah, at least it's hilarious. Yes, badness, yes,
developers Brad's lane, but just foot down. Yeah, I've I've thrown down
the gallant issue, the challenge. I'm issuing a challenge to good makers of
products that need to be advertised. They're the ones that needed fun games.
Yo Annoid too. Yeah, why can't we get here? Why can't we
get to that point? It needs to re release of Yo Nooid one because
we keep avoiding it. Yeah? Yeah, well there's that. I read
some stuff about them. There were stuff about the Nooid that it went weird,
went bad. Yeah, I went real weird and they abandoned it as
a result. Yes, right, I don't think the Noid will ever come
back. You can go go read on Wikipedia about what happened with the Nooid.
But that's not I wasn't there. Oh it's not their fault. But
they can't go back to it after what happened, Okay, what I don't
remember. It was some there was some crime. Yeah, someone someone became
unhealthily obsessed with Annoid or like afraid of thenoid or something like a real PRIs.
Yes, yes, and I believe some real world crime, and I
believe there were there were, there were some people were hurt, if I'm
not mistaken. They dress up like the no nothing like that. Nothing.
They play rock paper scissors with pizzas at the end of the level like Yo
Nooid did. I don't, No, it's a shame. This is homework
for us if you want, well, I don't. I don't want to
speak out of term because I don't remember the specific chain of events. Yeah.
I just remember there was something fucked up about that was related to the
noise, and it made gave them cold feet when it came to Thennoid promotion.
Yes, I really, okay, I have to go look it up
now. That Yo Anoid game was just a game with Ninja's in it or
something when it came out in Japan, like they just wait really through.
Yeah, Capcom released that game in Japan and then they fucking put the nooid
in it. Incredible and fucking put pizzas in it. Just they just dokey
dokey panicked. Really yeah. Wow. To be fair, the noise seems
like something Japanese people would be into. I think, yeah, people people
of all ages nationalities want to avoid the noid equally probably pizzas universal. Well
that's food for thought. Now it's time for the news. Time for the
news. Hang on, Maybe I should Maybe I should learn this episode's lesson.
Time for the news, Time for the news, Time for the news.
It's okay, broadening my skill set here. Who was looking forward to
playing the Legend of Zelda on WEU this year? I fucking bad. Fuck
you don't blame me, man, give it to me. I started getting
really aggro. I'm sorry, don't get back to fucking work on it.
I'm sorry that I've escalated the situation. Jesus Christ, Brad, It's just
a water temple. Just finish it and put it out. Uh. Nintendo
has come out and said, effectively the upshot here is they're saying, don't
expect it this year. They didn't flat out say it, but they're saying
I think anyone really was expecting it. I can't how long has been since
they were talking about it. It's been it was last year. Three showed
that a little little bit. Yeah, they showed that bit at the Game
Awards right back, and then I guess it was I don't know. I
figured, like, typically if if they're showing actual footage of a game at
a certain point, it's safe to expect that like a year later, it'll
be out. No, remember the first time they showed like Twilight. Unless
you're saying the rules, If you're saying the rules don't apply to Zelda,
then that's a different story. I don't think they applied to Zelda. Yeah,
yeah, Like you know, the typical marking cycle is like, oh,
they're showing footage this holiday, it'll be out next time. They've goten
to a point where they were talking about the legend of Zelda just often enough
to where you were like, Okay, this is starting to ramp up a
little bit. It's coming together. But the quote is that they ever explicitly
said for sure that it was coming the right right, So yeah, yeah,
I know that they they hadn't said for sure. And then the quote
is that they are they are quote no longer making a twenty team release their
number one priority. Sure yeah, yeah, I mean, you know tech
all the time, you need obviously making good. But actually ag al Numa
got out there and uh and talked about some of the specifics in kind of
an interesting way where he was saying that, like, you know, because
you know, the whole thing is though it's more open, it's less linear,
like they're trying to broaden Zelda a little bit. But he says that
the team has discovered several new possibilities for the game that they haven't thought of
until they got into developing this somewhat new titles, just like walk in one
day and go, guys, what if we did a second quest? Because
that's exactly what happened. Okay, you know, as as the primary developer
on the Celtic game, I can confirm, Okay, great, it's exactly
what happened. I mean, like you know that from any other company,
I would almost treat that as just some like some marketing spiel, like not
so carefully disguised as like the kind of developers intermost thoughts about their products.
Sure, but coming from him, like I actually want to take it at
face value, it's like, oh, they maybe they really do have new
ideas that are just coming to light as they're making this game, and they
haven't necessarily made a lot of games in this style before, So that's what
I mean. Yeah, Like, like working in this slightly different framework for
his Elda game is like giving him a much creative inspiration or something that's certainly
the hope. Yeah, I mean, let's let's hope it's like something like
exciting and someone just didn't show up and go, guys, we really do
need fast travel in this game, when like, well, it's gonna take
it most implement like wolf fuck, yes, I got it. Yeah,
I don't know. Trying to find the best excerpt of his message to read.
Oh, you know what, I'm sorry. The other upshot of this
is that it's not going to be any three this year either. Yes,
that was the other thing. They said they won't show it at E three,
So that's that is pretty disappointing in the treehouse, I guess not damn
it. That's a shame. But if it's not coming out this year,
then not showing it at E three isn't the most catastrophic thing. Ever.
It's not like it'll be your last chance to see it before it's out.
But the thing I want to mention is he does he points out in this
message that he did say at the Game Awards that it would be out in
twenty five. Okay, all right, so they had they had gone on
record with that before, So this was a pretty significant change, but an
actual delay then Yeah, but he's so. In this message, he says,
in these last three months, as the team has experienced firsthand the freedom
of exploration that hasn't existed in any Zelda game to date, we've discovered several
new possibilities for this game as we have What if you could gather plants,
they said, like turn them in the potions? Maybe? I just I
hope it. I hope it's like something totally like actually world shattering and not
just something that's bit's been in every other open world game. That's what I
like. Oh wait, what if you could climb these watch towers and then
like kill the mobeling at the top and take it over, and then you
could like fast travel between the watchtowers. All Right, As we've worked turned
these possibilities into reality, new ideas have continued to spring forth, and it
now feels like we have the potential to create something that exceeds even my own
expectations. Cool, that's kind of the main upshot of the whole thing.
Should do that? Yeah, if it really is going to lead to that
much more interesting a game than by all means, take the time you need.
But you're right, you know, nothing at E three this year.
So Zelda is submerging for the foreseeable future. All right, media, blackout
sea bottom floor of the water Temple until they're done. Yep, pretty much.
You know. Obviously this has led to all kinds of speculation about like,
oh, they're going to pull a Twilight Princess and just move it to
n X console. I'm not saying I agree. I'm saying a lot of
people are saying that that's dumb, you know, because like I will,
okay, that's a huge logic leap, yes, because if you think about
like what they've said about their next platform. They've said, hey, we're
making one, we're thinking about it, right, we will have more news
next year, right. That doesn't mean it's shipping next year. Like,
they have plenty of time to get a Zelda game out before that thing comes
out. If they push it to that thing, then that's not twenty sixteen,
that's twenty seventeen. Totally eighteen, I don't know. Also, the
way of things these days is to put it out on the WU as normal,
and then when the new platform comes out totally you know, a couple
of years later, release a gussied up for and awesome and sell it again.
Yeah. Uh vr. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too
much for this game, but I'm having a hard time because I would really
like to love the Zelda game again. It's been a while, it's been
a Yes, what was the last one for you? I mean, uh,
you know the last three D S one obviously was great. Yeah,
prior to that, like, I'm not a big three D Zelda guy at
all, so I've been linked to the past. Was Wow, that is
a very long time, very long time since I was in love with this.
Yeah. Yeah, it was Docerina and wind Waker for me, or
the last two that really on the console that really hit home totally. So
God damn. I hope that they nail what they're going for with this.
Uh. And they're talking a big game. Yeah yeah, I mean,
let's hope that this comes together, you know, like the idea of them
taking this thing in new direction, like great, that's exactly what it needs.
Uh. So you just do you think Holiday twenty sixteen? Yeah,
Like, you can't launch this ELD the game not at a holiday, right,
I mean you could, but I you know, I don't think that
that makes sense. Yeah, flag Day, Flag Day? Why not flag
day? It's fair? Yeah? Why not? Sure? Why not?
Indeed? Uh, you know what game is coming out this year? And
I don't believe you. I don't think anything is. I'm really sure everything
got delayed. Okay, that's the last of it. Well, Microsoft says
Halo five is coming out October twenty seven. Okay, you're ready for that,
jo, I'll let you catch your breath. Yep. Does that work
out for you? Yeah, that'll work. Yeah. They kept doing all
these like countdowns for like Halo stuff, like they hunt the truth what was
a arg type? Yeah, But every time I kept seeing the countdown,
all I could think was like, what is that the count out of the
next fucking patch? Come on? Yeah? I don't know. I wonder
how many people feel burned by Halo at this point because of the Master Chief
collection. I don't think the people that are like, yeah, the people
that are like died in the woold, like whatever, who cares, they'll
happily get Halo five. But I just wonder if there are people out there
that are that are like a little bit like, yeah, man, fucking
Halo. They fucked me over the last time. I guess I could see
that, but like, I feel like the audience for the Master Chief collection
was is already the died in the wool. Yeah, Halo like at some
point of votique, they're they're there no matter what. I guess, like
they want Halo five more than anybody probably, right, Yeah, and multiplayer
Bay just seemed really fascinating. Yeah, people people seem to respond really positively
to that thing, especially after because they changed a lot of things about it.
But then again, they also changed a lot of things about Halo four,
and I kind of assumed that just meant like the the outcry about Halo
four made me assume that people just didn't want Halo to change, But this
makes it seem more like they just didn't like the way Halo four changed.
Yeah, because five is doing in some some different stuff and people seem to
really like it so far, so hopefully that stuff works out. Yeah,
Halo ford just felt like change. Halo five feels like modern change or like
intelligent change, like like like an act like a natural evolution. Yes.
Yeah, Well, the thing I kept hearing about four was like, oh,
they just tried to make a call of duty, like with a lot
of the stuff that they did in the UI, Like they definitely they put
stuff in there that modernized it in the like me too sort of way.
Yeah, I could see whereas it sounds like Halo five like has an identity
of its own. Yeah, what they're doing with it or so it seems.
Uh, they rolled this news out with a big live action trailer during
the season finale of Walking Dead, So really they are spinning up that marketing
machine nice and early for this What flavor of mountain dew will we get this
holiday for double XP for Halo or whatever it is? Spartan berry Okay,
yeah, sure, so I work fun grape. Yeah. But yeah they're
like, you know, birth like a birthday cake flavor for run birth thing.
Okay, sure, seven months before the game comes out. Seems pretty
early to be running like expensive TV spots. But I mean they don't have
a ton of other announced stuff to get out there and promote right now,
so and you know, like it probably makes sense for them and like,
hey, let's capitalize on this like television event where we can slide a message
into even if a lot of people probably DVR it and never see this shit.
I mean, I just I wonder what the marketing philosophy is where you
know, it's seven months before release, like, it seems like there's some
potential for people to see this and then forget Yeah, in the next four
or five months. I don't think they'll let up, though. I think
it'll be maybe you gotta remind him guess daily. Okay, Halo what go
to? Hey, guys, Halo dot com more information? Uh, we
should go see if anybody has that. I'm happy to someone squad on it
with pornography or whatever. Another nightmare bullshit, that's fine. I don't want
I'm I'm I'm only to by domains. If the joke is really good.
Okay, I'm gonna let some of my old ones go. That's fine because
the jokes aren't that good. That's fair. Much like Halo five, it's
time to move on, yea from that old stuff. Did you see the
screenshot of the store page for the Halo five beta floating around where it was
ten point two seven gigabytes? No, and this is coming out on ten
twenty seven. Oh. Do you think that was intentional? The hell of
a coincidence if not. But anyway, Halo five coming, I don't know.
You tell me it's the series that brought you. I love bees.
I think anything is possible. So it's also not the only Halo news of
the week, Double Halo. Let me introduce you to Halo Online being developed
by Saber Interactive. Who did They did that first anniversary thing for Halo one
sixty and then they did part of master Chief Collection, right, but a
lot of companies work on the Master Chief Collection. I'm not sure what they
did specifically. I think they did the Halo two anniverse. I think you're
right. I think you're right, And that sounds like that thing went well,
right, Yeah, the restoration the remastering of Halo two. Yeah,
it seems like the one played it online co op. Okay, So that
seems like the one thing I've seen nobody complain about in that package. Uh.
They and the Nava Systems are jointly developing Halo Online for the PC freed
by as a free to play online game like in this territory, now coming
out only in Russia. There we go. Yeah, there's the there's the
actual Yeah, there's there's the part of the matters. There we go.
Also, Hey, you know what, Yes, I would love to play
that in Russian. I would love to play just regardless Russian Halo. Yeah,
uh, I guess, I guess they've had Russian press in to play
this thing already. They're taking they're taking sign ups for a closed beta,
but out keys for it yet from the sounds of it, so it's about
to be in closed beta. It runs on Oh yeah, okay, I'm
fairly on foot it the one way or another. Someone in this office,
we'll get into this thing. They say that it runs on a heavily modified
version of the Halo three engine. Keep looking at Drew because I don't I
don't know anything about this. Suppose the good thing supposed little scale to low
end PCs. It's real weird. It's probably not meant for the United States,
probably not. Halo Online is set on a secret UNSC space installation called
Anvil. We're Spartan four soldiers trained together and more exercises to sharpen their battle
skills and test experimental technology. Sounds like the Call of Duty China thing.
Yeah, yeah, it sounds very very much. And that whole Anvil set
up, like the training on a cruiser thing is, is what the Spartan
ops stuff was in Halo four, right right, And that was really just
sort of a gussied up menu. Yeah. Uh, they any story or
a yeah, narrative justification for multiplayer, right, so that it could mean
virtually nothing. Yep, that's yep, that's fair. Microsoft's kind of sort
of kind of sort of address some questions. They wouldn't commit to it coming
out in any territories outside of Russia. They did say there are no plans
to bring it to the Xbox One. Uh, that's about it. Everything
else they kind of dodged the questions. Yeah, I mean it makes sense.
You've got this work that's already done in a lot of cases and might
not need a full game's worth of development to get up and running on the
PC. You've got territories where free to play is the way that people interact
with games, whether you like it or not. Uh, you know,
if you can leverage your pre existing shit for that market and get it out
there and make some money, I can't fault them for it. Yeah,
why not. I can't necessarily say that that will be a great game.
So I'm not sure that that Call of Duty Online is a particularly great game
in terms of just like how they monetize and that sort of thing. But
you know, sure like they have stuff. These places don't necessarily cotton to
console ownership. It makes sense. Yeah, it's hard to get too upset
about it. Also, like you said, it might potentially not be that
great, So it's not like they're withholding like this amazing new Halo product from
fans or something like that. Yeah, I think work. It gets weird
is when they do withhold it, like there is that sense of like,
well, what are they hiding. It's like, well, they're hiding a
business model that lets you play Halo for free and they want you to keep
paying sixty dollars for the game. Like it's not there's no mystery there.
It's not not rocket science. Uh yeah, well we'll endeavor to check that
out at some point where possible, Yeah, if we can. Yeah,
we should stop saying that out loud, because the more you say it,
the more likely they are to put fucking you know, region restrictions on it.
And hey, but their ways around that. Life finds a way.
It's all right, that has not stopped anyone before. All Right, a
couple of brief like public surface announcements of a sort this week, Jason,
you've probably heard about this already, but there's a game breaking bug and bloodborne
what maybe you didn't hear about this playing along, keep going take everything of
face value around here. But to Sony's credit, they got out there in
front of it, like as soon as they knew about it, they put
out They actually emailed like everybody on the press list saying like, hey,
could you please get this news to your readers. They were not trying to
cover it up. They in fact wanted to inform people that if you if
you engage in any of the multiplayer coopera or kind of invasion stuff in the
Forbidden Woods, which is the area that I just finished up, it will
cause a specific key that you need to progress in the main storyline to never
appear what Dudley suck. Yes, and there are people that have been hit
by this bug. That's how they found it. Hopefully they were invaders because
they're dick. That would be pretty great. Actually they are. They're trying
to fast track a patch. They say it'll be out this week sometime.
But you know, anybody who got hit by that bug, I think is
just scruded. Until then, like I was gonna say, yeah, like
I hope it's just like retroactively. I think it sounds like it'll be somewhere.
I think it sounds like it'll just fix it for anybody, even if
it already happened to them. But still, it's like, you know,
if you really bore down on that game, like you could have gotten to
that point in a couple of days after release, and then all of a
sudden you're sitting on your new game for a week, not able to continue
playing until that pass if you're not like, you know, reading the internet,
if you're trying to steer clear of like spoilers, Uh, like I
do you know? For the most part, I know this key, but
where is Yeah? Seriously, yeah, I'd be going nuts, especially in
those games, because they're, like we were saying earlier, there's so many
cases of like, oh I killed a boss, I got a key,
but I have no idea where to use it. I'm gonna run around every
available square inch of this game looking for the door that it goes to.
You. I have too much insight? Is it not trying up? I
do? I need less? What was the world dark? Right? So
before they before they got this news out, there's every possibility that people that
were affected could just be like running in circles going like, what am I
doing wrong? I have to be missing something. Hopefully they will get that
fixed as soon as they can. There's another patch coming out. I guess
GTA five's graphics got inadvertently downgraded. How does that inadvertently? I have no
idea, like, like, apparently the card damage, like the card deformation
has been gimped somehow or kind of like like you know, lessened in a
way. Uh, and then some other some other like much more your like
graphical effects I think, like parallax mapping or something like that. Like,
yeah, I thought the parallax mapp Yeah, you can tell right, parax
thing was a little bit. I knew you had an eye for detail.
Uh, well, somebody noticed it sounds like maybe the stuff had kind of
happened in the course of the heist, stuff getting patched in because they rolled
out like a five gig update for GTA five on. I'll bet that stuff
happens more than you think we perceive. You think there's just enough people playing
GTA that they noticed in that case, Yeah, huh. Do you think
the five gig patches because it's GTA five, think about it? Followed the
patches, yap is that high stuff working. It sounds like it's starting to
work. I had wanted to check it out. Maybe maybe you like do
a quick look or something with it. The week didn't rolled out, and
then everybody was just like, you can't play it, it doesn't work.
And I haven't gone back since then. It sounds like it might be starting
tone. I just want that parallax stuff again. Yeah, I want to
wait for that. Well, yeah, I'm not gonna play it again until
the patch. But they did, I mean rock Star did get out there
and say like, yeah, we have identified the issue. It will be
fixed in an un forthcoming patch. So that happened. Also, the PC
versions out like two weeks Yeah, finally actually coming out. It's like two
weeks away. I don't think they have time to delay it again. I
really want that. They put out some new screenshots last week and it looks
really fucking good. Plus I'm sure mods are going to be totally crazy ye
for that game. Anyway, that's your weekly update and patch news, Thank
you, Brad. There was an evolved patch. Yeah, I've pulled that
this morning. What is that? I don't know, Maybe I want to
uninstalled Evolved. It was like wait, oh, Evolve is still installed on
this machine. Weird. Yeah yeah, maybe but free maps that's problem.
Maybe that's oh you know, they're might even maps in there, who knows,
who knows. It's pretty light week in news from what I could tell.
The only other thing I saw is that the second half Broken Age got
announced for April twenty eight finally, Wow, which is a good what four
years So it's the Kickstarter Yeah, sure, I think it's been four years.
I mostly included that news just to you know, point out that,
hey, like they've kind of closed the loop on that, like that initial
era of Kickstarter being just like great new way forward for games funding. I
wonder how that, you know, like what's what's the post mortem and all
that stuff in terms of like if that worked out for them business wise,
and you know, I mean they were sort of the first people to give
that a shot. That's what I mean I'm about, and other companies probably
learned a lot of things from double find a hand. Yeah, but yeah,
I mean i'd love to hear there. I mean, aren't there.
They're like Kickstarter consultants out there, right, Yeah, people that can like
help people that will happily take your money and see you what you should do
and Kickstarter how to how to run a campaign successfully, like how to structure
your your tears and blah blah. People that will definitely guarantee to harass media
outlets about your Kickstarter if you pay them money. I don't know where else
going with that. Good to know and uh and that leads right into emails.
The first email, which is about this very subject Comcast Giant bomb dot
com. Send emails with that address. I will please do. Matt from
Saint Paul, Minnesota did yeah, and it was about Kickstarter games in light
of Broken Age. Oh, it's also coming to PS four and VTA that
day. Oh cool, the full thing was coming to those platforms. Oh
is it not out already? They were waiting or you know, I'm sure
they're finishing the port or whatever. But they were sure. Yeah, they
were waiting until the second half came out on PC and just dropping it all.
Are you like, do you feel like are you psyched? Broken Age?
Part two? Fucking love the first half Broken Age like it left off.
It left off in such a way that even god, how long has
it been a year and a half, nine years? I don't know,
like it feels remember when I played, Yeah, like, I can't remember
when I played the first half Broken Age, but the the twist or the
cliffhanger, like suck with me, Like I absolutely want to see the other
half of that story. I might in fact go back and play through the
first half again, it's not super long anyway. Matt writes in about this
kind of second era or second phase of the Kickstarter era slightly less Broken Age,
Baby, we will see the first really big generation of Kickstarter games.
Waste Land, two pillars of eternity. Broken Age Part two are finally starting
to hit, and for the most part, are really really good. However,
it seems like the Kickstarter bubble to Jam and Earl notwithstanding, has seemingly
burst. If you're not making a gross potato salad, you're probably not going
to make a huge chunk of money. So how do you see Kickstarter as
a system for releasing games? The games that came with a lot of hype
seemed to have lipped up to it. But even so, it looks like
that ship is sailed for the most part, So if you didn't get in
during that to your window, you're out of luck. He also wants to
know what's up with all the visual novels hitting Steam can't help you there.
Yeah, it's a self correcting sort of system. Ie, right, you
know, It's like it launched and it was this big new way, and
you know, Double Fine kind of kicked down the door and made a bunch
of money. Some other people came in made you know, similar similarly large.
Yeah, wastes of money. Wasteland and Pillars are good examples of games
that also made like three four million dollars or whatever. And then I think
everyone kind of started realizing what the potential pitfalls of that system were and everyone
got a little more wary about it. Yeah, Like I was surprised that
Ampletude made it through. Well that was a close shave. Yeah, Like
it was looking dicey there, and that's like that's a game that I look
at and like remember very fondly. Like before that Kickstarter launched, if you
had just walked up to me and said like, hey, they're gonna lauch
Apude Kickstarter, do you think they'll make it? I would have been like
yeah, because I know so many people that like revere the old Ampletude games,
yeah, or game rather sure Aude and frequency. But but it kind
of limped across the finish line to Jam and Earl like kind of barely made
it right exactly. And I think, like, you know, like the
I think what they were showing for to Jam and Earl looked looked dicey.
I don't necessarily look at that and go like, oh man, gotta have
it. Like I look at it and go like, I, you know,
the I don't know that I agree with the voicing them with the characters
and blah blah blah. So that was that was stuff about that stuff that
was not just necessarily like the bottom falling out of the kickstarter. But then
like but also like you know, the stuff like the spiritual successor to Mutant
League Football called Mutant Football League did not make it. It did not make
it on kicks. They're still making it. Yeah they're still doing it.
Yeah they're still they're still doing it. But uh yeah, like it did
not make its Kickstarter, like not by a lot. It's just one of
those things that, yeah, you know, I think that enough people have
kind of come back hat in hand saying hey, we're the people that made
this original game, we would like to make a new one that does not
have the name or you know, or in some cases does how would you
feel about funding it? Like I feel like that's an ikey or like like
that's not a guaranteed hit proposition. You know that it's not. It's just
it's one of those things. I think enough stuff has gotten out there that
I've given people pause that I think it's kind of it's made it way less
surefire than it didn't seemed like it was going to be when Double Fine was
like raking in all that extra month. When it works, it's like it
can make for like kind of one of the greatest like feel good stories.
Though, like like Pillars of Eternity. I looked at that and I was
like, Okay, I know what kind of game that is. I'm not
like dying to play it, but I'm glad they're making it for the people
to want it. Yeah, it'll probably come out and be fine, but
then the ideal Right, well, but but that one in particular has come
out and has been explosively successful, Like it's been the top seller on Steam
since it came out at like fifty bucks, right. But it's like,
especially when you look at the lineage of that one and it's like, oh,
these are the people that have made some of the like most beloved pcrpg's
of all time. Like they're getting to make another one that's awesome, Like
that should come back, you know, like some some of the other stuff
on Kickstarter maybe less of like a surefire bet than that. Yeah, Like
day Last Soul is on Kickstarter right now, kickstarting their new album really and
they only want like a hundred k or not have a record deal anymore?
Who who the fuck needs a record deal anymore? And also like who would
give you know, like like like to honestly, like you know, what
major label is gonna go like promotionally get behind Day Lost Soul at this point
that it's been like a decade plus since they put out like a studio album.
Yeah, you know, not to say that they've fallen off, Like
I think they've been doing great work in the later stages their career and and
and all that sort of stuff, but it's like, you know, yeah,
it's like they're getting out there and saying like, hey, we need
one hundred k to like handle recording and mixing a mastering for this thing.
Like we already like the the ideas in place, we already are going to
do this stuff. We just want to you know, and we'll take pre
orders and if you want to buy one of our extra pairs of shoes or
the MPC, we did it all, you know, like we can get
it. We can get you that stuff, and it's it's just sort of
a weird proposition. It's always weird to me when people that you look at
it and think like, well, these people should be totally established, why
would they ever need Kickstarter. I think music is one of those things where
the model has changed so much that like it's it's actually, if you think
about it, it's pretty clear why and act like that would would turn to
something like Kickstarter rather than go get some fucked deal from a label. Yeah,
like super Troopers two. They did that Indie Go Go campaign where they're
just you know, they raised like millions of dollars from people saying like,
well, we only get to make this movie if we get two million,
and hopefully we'll get more than that and we can make it better. Which
that's always like my least favorite thing on this stuff, when like every dollar
is going to go into it, so the more you give us, the
better we'll make it. It's like, Okay, well, what what's the
diminishing returns line there? For like, you know, what's the actual sweet
spot of money to make good versus maybe it doesn't matter because it's just people
pre ordering a movie. Movies are a weird one because they're so fucking expensive
that when they go out looking for that amount of money, like you know,
there is a whole other level of funding from like private investors that is
dependent on them getting that money. Yeah, because you know, like like
even in you know what is what's a shoe string budget? And in the
film these days, like even like five ten million dollars is a tiny ass
budget, right, I guess so ifference I used to a different a different
scale of production there. Yeah, often do you get secrets they are just
like go over budget, you mean, like just get way more than they
asked for. Well no, like well, like yeah, they need more.
I think that happens, like, well, I don't know, I
mean that probably quite a bit. Like Broken Age was definitely a case where
they like have been out there multiple times, like we've said, we put
way more instead of making a thing that was just like a fun few rooms
and haha, we brought this genre back that actually make it for reels and
then they put way more money into it. Yeah, you know, a
lot of a lot of kickstarter velfers don't necessarily give a ton of visibility into
their finances and stuff unless they've like, you know, flown the white flag
and said like, all right, this is not gonna happen. And here's
why, Jeff, did you put back in for the Pebble too? Fuck?
No, that one is baffling to me. Yeah, that one got
a ton of money, right, yeah, like that? Yes, that
was that one in particular looks like Apple Watch coming out, like a watch
that seems like way more capable of stuff than the original Pebble ever was.
Yeah, I don't forget Apple Watch, but yeah, I guess if you
know, you don't don't have a like the idea of like you know,
yeah, yeah, but the idea of the two subscar like two separate Pebble
kickstarters would both like go through the reef, Yeah, like the first one.
Sure, but you think the expectations for the second one would be tempered
a little bit. Yeah, I don't know. Man, it's a weird
time. Why it's like fuck watches? Also fuck time? Yep, I
got a phone look at that I don't know, Yeah, that Kickstarter will
keep going. Games with ideas that a lot of people want will get funded.
I guess it's just analogy. It just seems like, you know,
like the ideas, and I guess, like, you know, I haven't
looked in a long time, but you know, like how many like bedroom
developers with dreams of their own of making something original are making it through Kickstarter.
It seems like the purest concepts for Kickstarter. I've always been here's this
thing that I want to make, and you know, no one's making this,
and and we're gonna make it this whether it's industrial design stuff or whatever
it is. Uh. And it seems like games in particular have become the
realm of Hey, I'm the guy that made this old thing. I don't
own the ip to it anymore, But how about I make something that's a
slight spin on it and you give me a bunch of money to do it.
And like, on one hand, like that's kind of cool when it's
genres that haven't come back. In the other hand, it's like it just
it doesn't feel right. It really feels kind of messed up to me.
And I mean, as long as they're delivering the game people want. Yeah,
yeah, you're you're right. It's way, you're right, you're right.
You kind of have to go by feel most of the time. And
it's it's like people that are already theoretically connected that you know, you'd want
to think could get funding some other way, but I guess there's really no
other way to get funding for some of these ideas anymore. They're not they're
not as viable to be, not at the scale that of production that we're
talking about these days, like how much games actually cost to make. Now
everyone's so risking these days, like you know, funding people giving out funding
or not. They're not sitting there going like we want to make a point
and look at Venture game ey, Like you go like, you're not going
to Affinity Engine game shit man, right, Like you're not checked all.
You're not gonna go to an EA who just put out Battlefield Hardline, which
is practically a re skin of their last Battlefield game, Like, you know,
companies like that are not going to take big six million dollars bets on
whatever. Yeah, and even in the cases where it's not like some revered
creator like a Tim Schaefer or you know, all the new I don't know,
or a Citian or whoever. I feel like even in even in a
lot of the other cases of successful kickstarters, it's always like, oh,
well, we all worked at Buyaware and now we're doing this or that's true.
Yeah, there's like there was like the nine thousand different like ex irrational
kickstarters, Like I feel like not even all all those didn't even make it
exact. Just like there's so many out there vying for money. But but
like when you talk about like the people who are successful on kickstarter have like
prior connections or whatever, it's like, yeah, even when they don't have
that pedigree by name, right, they can still they still have their employment
history. They're like, oh, you know, we have triple A experience.
But I think that's that's totally you know that. I think that makes
sense. I think if you're a person looking to put in money on something
like that and pre order something, you want to know that these people have
done it before. Absolutely if they had the capability, yeah, like hey,
we like just getting up there going, hey we shipped a game before,
right, Like okay, all right, that's you've been through this crazy
process. Whether whether I know that how crazy it is or not that you
know, inherently makes you think that they're going to follow through on their idea.
What was that fucked up one from Dennis Dyak like he was trying to
make in like another Eternal game. It was like project Project and I kept
getting like taken down and like read oh that was so much more complicated though,
because like the Canadian government was involved, and there was like some weird
company names and had like the whole things. Like Dennis, it's not involved.
It's like, actually you kind of there was like some weird shell company
h that that stuff was super weird. I still have not ever contributed to
a Kickstarter really really yeah. I just I don't know, like there hasn't
been enough out there that it's just like yep, I firmly believe that this
is gonna take place. Well, we're we're in we're you know, we're
in an extra weird position of covering that stuff, you know. Yeah,
so yeah, I totally understand any any stuff that you guys have your eye
on from Kickstarter that's going. The last two I put in were for card
games like physical oh yeah, because you'll get like a physical Yeah, there
are people selling like machined really nice cubes out of it was a titanium or
something or tungsten or something like real heavytube. Just a sick ass cube,
but like get a one inch cube wow, made out of this material to
be like two pounds or just like pay more and get a big que.
Yeah. Literally that was the rewards, the size of it. You could
eventually get its like a three inch cube, but it was like fucking four
hundred bucks? Are they are? They all like seeing seed to like point
two microns of precision, like perfect right angles and it was like a real
weight to it. And yeah, and I was looking at it going like
yeah, man, fucking ass cube. Uh No, I don't know.
I ended up, you know, like I've backed a couple of those pinball
arcade kickstarters for the licensed stuff that was harder for them to get. I
did not h No, it was it was Terminator two. They did one
for Adams family. Yep, that was the most recent one, I think,
yeah, and then that's out now. And they did one other one
all the Elvira tables as well. Yeah did they? I don't know if
that was a kickstarter, though not every license table was a Kickstarter, but
Adams Family was, Terminator two was and there's one other one that I can't
think of, but there you go a couple of those. Amplitude and then
like the fucking Pebble Watch and fucking Max Tempkins were Wolf card games, which
I still have never played because it requires you to be around people. That
The last one, the last one I put in was for a solidaire.
How you're thinking, Mart, that's smart? Yeah, the air Airborne Commander.
The hoodie that zips up all the way over your head and then you
can look out of while it's zipped all the way up. What it just
turns into a ski mask? Basically, Yeah, they have does it like
Walmart and they're all driving through the strip mall and you decide you want to
knock off a bank. It's just like up and go do this. It
ended up fitting like fucking shit, This is just a really flimsy like the
first I put it on and ripped it like the pocket ripped. I put
my hands in the pockets and then I heard it go, well, fucking
gray, what an awesome garment. The two kickstarters that come to mind for
me are Amplitude and then you guys remember that game, The Flame and the
Flood. No, that game looks awesome. Still not out, I mean
I think it got fund to the Last Fall. Okay, it's not been
that long. But and then then they that was you know, that was
a situation of Triple A developers going indy. But that game looks super cool.
I came real close with a Shadow Run. Okay, like I guess
that's yeah, that's still happening, right, that's or that's in progress.
I mean this Shadow Run online, I think, which might be. But
I mean yeah, I mean they've released the full last game. Oh we'd
already wait shadow Run, yeah, Shadow Run returns right, Oh that was
ages ago. Yeah okay, yes, yes, I totally forgot about that.
I'm not talking about recently. Okay, all right, there's your Kickstarter
minute for the week. Thank you. I also back the evonline book.
Oh right, yes, have you played that history? But I keep looking
for like evonline sales. Dude, what do you do get like the core
game? This is right of Drews drew out a dude. We've been down
this road many times over the years, so you haven't played a yet.
Like a year ago, I played like the free trial. I get the
sense that Drew gets all the eve Online he needs without actually playing the game.
I would love to have time to play that game. Sure, I
would love to just sit down for ten hours. I would love the thing.
It's not just ten hours once in a while, right, No,
I think it's every day. Yep. Oh. I also backed the indie
Go Go for Dan Reicher. It's not about jose Canseco book, right,
yes, that other people right. He fucking never gave me the reward for
that, now what you think about it? I'm supposed to get a copy
of that book. Wait, you never got the book. You never got
crowdfunding. This shit's is fucking scam. Well, when you're dealing with two
bit fly by not operators like that kid, no shit buy or beware.
I was the first backer on that thing, caveat intour, motherfucker. The
other card game was Bring your Own Book, which I saw pas Oh right
cool, it was interesting with that. What was that? I forget the
name, but the kickstarter that Max was involved with that uh like, became
the most just just by dollar figure. The most successful kickstarter recently, Wow,
which I don't remember the name of the card game oh yes, it
was the Obil's card game. I forget I still forget the exploding kitten or
something like that. But then, but then everybody was looking at that going
like fucking, why does a card game need twelve million dollars? And then
they were like, look like we were manufacturing a physical item here, Yeah,
the costs only God, you know this, this this is not an
economy of scale, like like we have to pay for every set of this
way they have to fulfill all this ship Like most of this money is going
into making this product and sending it people who bought it. Uh, it's
a weird thing, but probably it's we're probably not going away. Like people
put money into it and then they don't necessarily understand the logistics of it,
but feel like they own a piece of it when they really don't. Like
so it just creates a lot of weird expectations all around. I feel like
I feel like more and more, just anecdotally reading online good discussions about Kickstarter,
more people have grasped the notion that they're not investing in something, they
are contributing to it or donating to it. Rather. Yeah, like more
more people seem wary of the fact that they they could blow up in their
face, and that's why the only they might not get what they paid for.
The only time that I I'm gonna go to Kickstarter and feel okay about
it is when it does end up feeling like I'm pre ordering something, when
I can look at it and go like, these guys, if this thing
funds, these guys will make this thing or follow through or from totally fine
with just giving these people money. Yeah, that's probably actually a smarter way
to go to it. It is, like is to be okay with losing
all of that money, but like that's if something looks like a sure enough
thing that I can go like, if this funds, the item will exist,
then that's when I feel all right about about doing it. I mean,
yeah, you know, like that email points out, I think the
gold rush is over and people have generally gotten a lot more savvy about what
they're going to throw money at. Also, what the fuck is with all
the goddamn jay novels or the visual novels? Nothing on that one? With
the floodgates opened on Steam and it's been a fucking nightmare ever since christ Just
today I started going through because every week we'd we'd get together and we'd you
know, check out the Steam release What the fuck's coming out? There?
Are like five movies and like the upcoming release list, like documentaries and ships,
films, films, actual films for about video games, or just no
random not at all. One was like published by a Devolver Digital, so
that I can see that tie in, though they do have a film division
those guys, right, Okay, but yeah, some of the other stuff,
I have no idea what the fuck is doing up there. Yeah,
maybe they're just testing stuff out. Steam's fucking weird, man, It is
like that. That's the like they redesigned their pages trying to be better about
recommending the right games to people instead of an unfiltered list of everything. Now
that they're unfiltered list of everything is so full of crazy shita. But all
the soundtracks and stuff budgeting, I feel like they still Yeah, they just
they have not solved the curation issue of Steam with any of the systems they've
put into place. Great, yeah, like they've added curators, They've made
it so you can filter much more aggressively filter the release lists. They try
to recommend games to you based on, you know, what you've bought.
What your friends are playing, What what you've what curators you followed, like
they try to build those algorithms. I just but for the longest time,
Steam was recom ending a game to me that actually you couldn't buy anymore.
It was a free to play a shooter called like Dizzle or some drizzle,
I don't know what the fuck. And it was in the process of shutting
down, so I would click through to it because it was like an arena.
It was like a first person shooters, like, oh, this,
actually it does look like something I might want to at least look at.
And it was like, oh, I can't even try it out because they
have removed it there in the process of removing it and shutting it down off
the store and stuff like, I can't actually play it. But every time
I logged into Steam, that was the first item right there. It's wait
for Project D to start showing up in those primo units, right, yeah,
yeah, all right. Next email from Matt and Baltimore, who has
never seen a Fast and Furious movie and wants to know which one to start
with. I mean, depends on how dedicated you want to be to that
ship. Oh, you don't really know until you get into it, right,
Yeah, I think you probably start with the fourth or fifth one to
get a feel on the modern the modern Fast and Furious. So are the
first three just like a novelty at this point. Know, Tokyo Drift is
probably the best movie of the bunch, but it's such a different thing that
ties in only in you know, It's like the things you get out of
knowing that movie in the later movies are like wink and nods, stuff that
you're psyched about because you know it and it's not necessarily well I haven't you
know, I'm the new one actually will factor in a little more heavily.
Just for the record, Tokyo Drift is set after all the other movies,
right, this will be the first coming movie, will be the first one
that takes place after the events of Tokyo Drift. You're the end of Fast
six catches up to the events of Tokyo Drift. Is this your Star Wars
prequels moment of like, oh, you should actually watch them in this order,
and like blah blah blah, No, no, the order upon which
they are released is the right order. So they actually they released they broke
these things up into episodes and they're selling them on the PlayStation network. That's
half the reason bucks for the full That's like the main reason I included this
email is because you found that the other day and we were just going,
like, what's the crazy? So in that thing they actually put Tokyo drift
at the end, which I you know, I don't know how they're packaging
these episodes up and if they're doing new narration or anything to contextualize this stuff,
or if they're just literally chopping the movies into thirty minute chunks, which
is fucking weird. And to be clearer, when you say episodes, they're
billing these as like TV episodes of The Fast and Furious. Yeah, I
don't know who the fuck thought that was a cool idea. So I like
that. You're you're you're downloading it on a system that lets you pause things
and come back to them later, like you don't need like breaking them up
into chunks like this. It actually serves no one. It's not well,
it makes it unless they did stuff to it, which I don't know.
Psychologically, it makes it a little easier to consume like one a day or
whatever. I guess, yeah, binge watching or whatever. Sure, sure,
I've never seen in those movies, and that damn near went and bought
that thing just to like be the guinea pig and try that out. Yeah,
and see it's actually so weird. But yeah, I mean I think
that, you know, I would watch them all. The four is a
little rough in spots, and I don't think two is a good movie at
all. So if you had to skip one of them, I would say,
skip too fast, too furious. There are characters that are introduced there,
but whatever, you'll fucking pick it up. Is that the one where
they lost most of the leads. Yeah, yeah, it's like Paul Walker
and like Tyrese and so they had eventually tied that kind of shard back into
the main ship once it became popular again. Yeah. Yeah, when they
winto the fourth one, it was like, okay, now all these people
are kind of together. Is the fourth one the one that just like blew
up unexpectedly? I think so. Yeah, it was like the biggest April
release in history or something like that. Might have been five, I don't
know, I don't know. And then Fast five is where like I think
that's the first one with the rock and then it's just fucking crazy from there.
I've seen stuff like that, like it's sort of popular for a while,
yeah, and then like after people have been you know, working on
getting it popular for a long time, it doesn't seem like it's going to
then it explodes. Yeah, all of a sudden, it's just like,
oh, by the way, this is like the biggest fucking film franchise in
films there who's been out there forever and then finally gets big, Like vind
Slot there talking about how this is gonna win Best Picture. I saw that.
I saw that quote. I don't know, fucking side. I don't
know. I don't think I'll see it like Opening Day or anything like that,
but I would like to see that movie. Uh yeah, I think
that you could. You could probably safely start with the fifth one and and
probably be okay. In in most cases, there will be some characters and
stuff that their origin stories are not properly laid out for you. They're the
events that touch off the new movie might not be super clear if you have
not seen Tokyo Drift and you know, like five and five on, I
guess four on maybe maybe like just watch them all, like some of them
will suck some parts of it, Like the first two are actually kind of
hard to watch now, Like the first Fast and the Furious movie is a
car is a movie about cars and racing them, racing. Yeah, it's
so, you know, it's like fucking Paul Walker is an undercover costs not
still about that, dude, There's fucking bank heists, fucking rocket law,
Like there's I assumed that at some point street racing it like it all came
always came back, always comes back to cars moving fast. But in terms
of just like, yeah, they're not infiltrating a fucking undercover ring of racers
anymore like they were in the first one. It's you know, it's so
just a full on action movie in which cars happened to occasionally factor into it.
But it's you know, they're just a fucking ragtag group of people that
know their hearts are in the right place and then sometimes they'll work outside the
law against their methods are questionable. Yeah, but you know, at the
end of the day, God damn it, they're Americans, all right.
Matt also wants to know if you have heard that McDonald's is starting to test
all day of breakfast. Yeah, yes, San Diego, You're thoughts it
there they should. That stuffs good. Yeah, absolutely all right. The
breakfast stuff is my favorite stuff that they serve, So I'll lay some hash
browns any time of day. Yeah, that's fair. It's a valid perspective.
I don't remember the last time I ate Adam McDonald's. I can tell
you it's been years and years. I said that there's there's two of them
done at the corner of like second of Mark. Yeah, like one on
either side. There are quite a few McDonald's around. Yeah, I think
I'm pretty sure Japan was the last time I had McDonald's. Really, if
that even counts. Oh you know what, Yeah, I think me too.
Yeah. A different Matt writes in did you guys find yourself not referring
to the people named Matt that you know as Matt Kessler and Pascal and Pascal
and Rory, And even thinking back to high school a game informer we had
like three or four mats and by their last name, Like it just occurred
to me the other day. It's like, even thinking back to childhood,
I've never called a Matt and Matt I don't know why. Anyway, that's
a great name. That's that's the fucking name. I don't know. Uh
this Matt writes in about speed running, specifically about the acting Verge Quick Look
when we were looking at that speed run mode. Yeah, I don't know.
We actually looked at it, didn't play it, but you were talking
about how it how it works. Yeah. He wrote in to clarify some
stuff, because it sounds like he's kind of in that scene and understood what
they were talking about there. Hey duds have been a long time fan in
site, but a shame of ly only became a subscriber last year. I
really appreciate the content you folks put out, etc. Thank you. This
emails directed towards Jeff Brad. While watching the Quick Look for Axiom Verge,
Jef and Brad were discussing the speed run mode, which touts to remove quote
all elements of randomness. Yeah, and the two seem to be somewhat unsure
of what that may entail. I thought I could maybe help in this area.
In regards to speed running. Some elements of randomness may include the following
enemy drops as you mentioned, the starting location for enemies, the patrol in
a room, floating up and down, etc. The sequence in which bosses
use their available attacks or move throughout the room, and the amount of damage
a weapon deals per shot if that value is variable. I'm sure. Obviously
I don't represent axiom vergi in anyway, nor do I claim to have researched
it's speed run mode, but in a general speed run scenario, these would
be some of the more common elements of randomness that you might expect to find
altered for a speed run game mode. Okay, so I didn't even think
about that, Like like an enemy that goes up and down, like whether
it's up or down when you come onto the screen might have like a huge
effect on the route you take or something. I guess I would always think
that that would be either the first time you walk into a room, it's
going to be totally set where they're going to start every time, no matter
what, or that everything is running on a clock and it would be based
on how fast when you get in that room. That's possible, you know,
some some games might handle different. Maybe just maybe some gameslip flip a
coin for that stuff. I like that they're actually adding an internal clock as
well. Yeah, so it'll just start and stop whenever it needs to.
You don't have to worry about like hitting some other button over on the side
of your desktop or so that that was one area where this game beats the
pants off of Ori, because RI has a three hour speed run achievement.
But I don't think there's anything in the game to help you like time it,
or know how you're doing or any of that stuff, whereas this game
facilitates it very directly, and that's cool. Let's see. Mark from Edinburgh
wants to know about SSDs and consoles. Games have advanced any million different ways
over the past decade, but load times still cripple otherwise great games. As
an avid PC gamer, I have become accustomed to the more palatable load times
you can get with SSDs, so much so in fact, that it's the
primary reasons stopping me from buying any of the new consoles. What do you
think the odds are Sony and Microsoft eventually releasing new versions of their consoles which
contain SSDs. It's gonna be expensive, it's gonna happen. But that's also
not the bottleneck. It's you know, it's it's the it's not stuff reading
off the drive, it's stuff like reading into memory like that. It seems
like there are multiple bottlenecks in that process, right, yep, that seems
to be the case. I mean, you know, like like Digital Foundry
has been really good about benchmarking sds and PS fours and stuff because it can,
and I think people have put them in Xbox ones as well. Yeah,
and like it. It does provide a boost, but not like you
see on the PC. Like there's like it's a few say it's seconds shaved
off here and there, but it's not like for the premium you're paying for
the same amount of storage, like not remotely worth it. Yeah, Like
the hybrid drive that I ended up going with for the PS four ended up
seeming like the sweet spot for that stuff, right, But that's not going
to make Burn's load times like palatable. It'll shave a couple of seconds off
and that's great, but yeah, I saw they did a test with Baltibourn
specifically, and like you know, in some cases they got eight or ten
seconds off, but that's still you're still talking thirty plus seconds, Like it's
not it's not like it's not going to replicate what you're getting on a PC.
It seemed like in some cases, maybe even like on the Xbox One,
because you can just plug in external storage. That actually the USB like
a USB three drive might have actually been faster than replacing the internal drive than
an Xbox one. That's what some of the benchmarks were showing. Yeah,
and also, yeah, SSDs are just fucking expensive. Yeah for these say,
like the dollars to gigabytes ratio is fucking horrible. There. At some
point it's like if you're if those are the expenses that you're thinking about,
and like, yeah, just build a PC. Yeah, well it's gonna
fully take advantage of that stuff. Sounds like this guy's way ahead of you
on that. Yeah, so I guess he's all good. Uh, how
about another email. I still put games on my SSD most of the time.
Really, I couldn't tell you why I have stopped for it, but
stopped doing it. It's just always like I still have this weird thought of
like, oh, the SSD's limited space, right, yeah, and kind
of I don't know. I've got such a good download speeds at home where
I can kind of just flip back and forth, if you know. Yeah,
so it's getting a little full, but I've got one. Yeah,
SSD just dedicated to games. Really it's great. But I put Dying Light
on the SSD. You when I installed that, and that was that was
nice? Yeah? Yeah, I can see that I have dcs not nice
text of a lot of that SSD. I'm sure, I'm sure. I
think. I think DODA is the only thing I've got on on my SSD
at this point, which is fucking huge. At this point, I checked
that thing. This thing is somewhere between like twenty five and thirty gig.
Now what it's one map? You got me, man, it's a fucking
trillion skin. Yeah, there's like every every outfit, every every hat in
the entire game has to be in the install. It's a lot of hats.
There's a lot of hats. Another gig of hats coming your way,
unless another gig of gig of hats, I guess, oh god, please
all over my head. Uh, unless it's cashing replays locally, and I
don't think it is. I think it just hats. But anyway, here's
here's an interesting email from Zach. Maybe you should uninstalled DODA and get that
space back. Nah, I think all of the space you'd get back across
the board in International five is coming up soon. I'm gonna be I gonna
be ready. I gotta be on my game. Yeah, you can invite
it. Yep. Uh, you gotta be on the game to wait in
line for the secret shop and drink beers while people played doda. That's fair.
I heard they're setting up a lot of the International five with like scenes
from International three. Oh see, you'll have to watch that beforehand, you
see. Okay, you'll need to I'll have to go back. Zach writes
in about something that has been bothering him for quite some time. Maxima a
sliver. I know almost nothing about how video games are made. All I
know is that something I saw on that seventies show has been bothering me forever.
And then Earth, why is this show so terrible? Can you enlighten
me on this? Uh? In an early episode set in seventy six or
seventy seven, Kelso is playing Pong and becomes bored by it, saying the
game is too easy. This leads him and Red to make the game harder
by somehow messing with the electronics of the game and somehow making the end game
paddles or bumpers smaller. Is this even possible or is it just the writers
wanting to reference Pong as another seventies mainstay. Without really knowing what they were
talking about, I wonder, so sure, I mean, anything's possible,
right, I mean if you got in there and fucked with it enough,
like, yes, you could make a Pong that has shorter paddles, I
guess. So. I mean the thing about Pong is that it's all analog
circuitry. It's not actual ROM chips and stuff. So is it really things
that are There's no like micro controllers at all, and so like when it
comes to like Mame or something like that, all you can do assimulate the
circuits, right, and try to simulate them as accurately as possible, So
it's a it's a simulation instead of an emulation, right, And I have
to imagine that only extends to a like a pretty small number of the earliest
video games, right, like even getting into like White Pac Man and Space
Maders and stuff. Yeah, there's actual programs code running on micro processors definitely
that you can't fiddle with by hand. But yeah, I mean, if
you were some electrical engineer and could look at a pong board and know exactly
what the fuck you're looking at, I'm sure eventually you could reshape it to
do what you want to do. I'm sure Kelso is not that Red might
be, though you don't think so. No, I don't know. I
haven't watched enough of that show to say can you fly? Kelso? They
did like an extended bit like a they had him do like a bunch of
Claire Spotker lines. Yeah. Really, I think there was one episode of
that or was the show that he was on, that was just like came
out in the backyard and just like doing it and like not rev not acknowledged.
I'm pretty sure that exists. Wow, that's okay. If that seventy
show did that, then that's more self awareness than I ever would have given
them credit for. I'm sure it was a fluke. It's not the can
you fly specifically guess the no no no, and then like him shooting my
gun. Yeah, okay, remember I remember hearing about that, but never
actually saw it. Sure, so maybe someone just made it up and now
I'm passing it along. Maybe pass it on. Okay, I think you're
passing it on to a significant number of people right now. Remember when kurtwood
Smith did the thing from RoboCop on that seventy show that was cool. Everyone
listening to this podcast says, yeah, I remember that Cassie in Charlotte,
North Carolina write soon about Ori and originality or regality. Yeah, she even
Ori I and all caps fantastic. Let's see, she says. This week,
I played through ri in the Blind Forest a couple of times and loved
it. While it's definitely one of my favorite games of the fast few the
past few years, nothing in it felt truly original. I appreciate that the
designers paid direct homage to their influences, not hiding the fact that this game
is heavily inspired by Metroid, Zelda, meat Boy, et cetera. This
got me thinking about original concepts in modern games, or the lack thereof the
Last time I remember feeling like I was seeing something truly new was the artistic
concept behind the angels in Bayonetta one. Finding a holy original game is near
impossible these days, but when was the last time you, guys, felt
like you were experiencing something new in a video game, be at gameplay,
art, story, music, or whatever. Grohome felt kind of fresh to
me. The way that the buttons map to the hands and the way you
pick stuff up like it's probably not the first time that's ever been done in
a game. But yeah, there was something tactile about the climbing and the
picking stuff up in that game that tick and has the buttons mapped to the
hands, you know, I know, but you don't use it to manipulate
things. I manipulate Paul's face. Sure, that's fair. That's the first
thing that springs to mind. Uh. I think there's some of the stuff
in Fezz, you know, yeah, kind of stands out. Yeah,
that's fair. It's kind of a head scratching question. Octo Dad, I
know that. Yeah, controlling separate limbs is nothing completely new. Yeah,
I don't know. I might say that like the like the games, like
the check Out, how crazy this is to control and that's part of the
fun. Like Surgeon Simulator taps into some of that same type stuff. Yeah,
I guess. So I don't know which came first. I actually don't
Doctor Dad might have come first in that specific case. You look exceptionally pensive
over there. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, everything is a remix.
I was gonna say. I mean, the sperm is pretty much ponk.
Yeah. There you go back and forth, bouncing severed heads back and
forth and you just use crafting to make your paddle longer. In the case
of Mary though, man, they just they just nailed yeah, hoping to
do and that's that's way more important. It's not a knock against that game.
It's like they just you know, they're not doing it they original,
They're just executing what they're doing extremely well. But I mean that's kind of
really hard, Yeah, for sure. But it isn't that the old adage
about stories, like there are no new stories, you know, just like
new ways of telling the old stories. So I don't know, that's not
necessarily a bad thing. Yeah, I think it's It's one of the things
that I as games get older and the people that play them age alongside them
and stuff like are the people that make them do as well? Like you
know, the the number of things that are from older games that are continuing
to make their way into newer games, like just the way they're getting respaun
uh, whether it's overtly or covertly, Like it's yeah, it's a little
weird. It's a little it's like in one In some ways, it's exciting.
In some ways it's a little disheartening. Yeah, I continue to be
impressed by metal Gear Okay, yeah, yeah, even though you're playing three.
Huh. I'm trying to think back on my time with three right now.
That's a good time. It's been a long time, dude. We
should have you played metal Gear Acid. That's definitely a fresh take on the
metal Gear. That's a card battler. Get Matt Rory in there. He
is metal Gear Acid. Man, isn't it isn't Two isn't too a lot
better than one? The second one? Yeah? I think it is.
Yeah, I think it's two is all crazy kneon cell shading. Yeah,
Like the art style of two is a fucking nuts the first the first as
it just looks like a metal Gear game. Asset two is like all psychedelic
and weird. Let's see Ethan from Mississippi writes in and says, I was
wondering what you guys think about Sony possibly buying from Software after the recent IT
hit Bloodborne from has developed Sony exclusives already, and this purchase would be a
big future investment in expanding Japanese PS four sales that guarantees are going to see
a shipload more Souls games. Yeah, I don't like that idea at all
that. No, I don't like that. If I was Sony, maybe,
sure, I don't know. I think that. You know, Sony
is already in position to do business with from on an exclusive basis. They're
they're obviously capable of locking up those exclusives. Yeah, it's like you don't
necessarily need to buy them to do that. That's not Yeah, but also,
what are they gonna do put it out an Xbox One? Yeah,
perish the thought. I don't know. You know, there's a lot of
fans of Souls out there on other platforms, especially PC, like PC has
proven repeatedly to be the place to play those games. Yeah, it's like
the kind of the process I keep seeing out there over and over again in
comment threads around the internet, is blood Borne coverage is posted, someone posts,
looks cool, I'll wait for the PC version. Someone responds, it's
not. You realize it's not coming there, right, and then people going
like what yeah, or somebody like desperately citing that like Amazon France listing for
a PC version or whatever. Right, Yeah, yeah, yeah blood Borne
probably not maybe, Yeah, I mean anything's highly yeah, sure, yes,
yes, anything could happen. It doesn't seem like there's a reason for
Sony to put a Sony published game onto the PC, very very specific example
of Demon Souls already existing. You know, yeah, I feel like that
that specific example repeating is pretty likely here. I don't think. I don't
think like if Sony has enough money to throw around to start buying developers,
I don't necessarily think from is the one. No, yeah, probably not.
They make great games that are very popular with certain people, but they're
not like huge system sellers. Like a Souls game is probably never gonna be
a ten or fifteen million unit seller. Yeah, I wouldn't think so,
but you know, stranger things have happened. Yeah, maybe they own Naughty
Dog, right, yes, yeah, for quite a while since pret mid
PS two. I mean they played Way of the Warrior and said, man,
these guys. One of these days we got to get these guys in
here and they got something. Was it mid PS two era? Would they
bought them? I don't remember. Maybe it was even before Jack and Daxter.
I forget, who knows? Uh uh, Sorry, my simple note
app is really freaking out Jesse and South Bend Ben to Indiana writing in about
that Zelda for WEU you know. I'm sorry. Uh he he was floating
the exact scenario I mentioned earlier of the game coming out on the n X.
Oh yeah, and I already already covered that ground. Yep, Sorry,
Jesse. At least I said your name. Uh. Let's see Jeremy
from New York. As a burning question, what was on Vinnie's head?
Wait? Wait, Jason, this was everything. I think this was just
before your time here. I have a question which has plagued me for the
last year, and you asked for more emails, Brad, so you deserve
to have to read this now. Yes, I made my own bed.
During a mailbag just before last year's E three, Vinnie opened a package off
screen and put whatever was inside onto his head. People made remarks about it
being an HR issue and that the viewers were not allowed to know what it
was yet. Well, the time has come. The moment of triumph is
near, and I can taste sweet victory. So please, if there is
any bit of humanity left in this organization, please us with an answer.
What was in that box? It was the E three stands. Yeah,
I was just gonna say, I thought I remember watching that actually before.
I thought that was fairly apparent in retrospect, was Vinny here when we got
the E three stand Yes, I believe specifically I remember that mail day.
Remember were you here? I was not here. Okay, you just saw
it, Okay, believe it or not. I was a fan of the
site before. Okay, Okay, I specifically remember him dangling the junk of
Michaelangelo's David over his head or something. Yeah, I think that's when I
meant when whoever was? I thought it was me? But whoever made that
comment about hr I think it was the the sculptured dong in the shot,
all right, I was referring to. It was the E three standis we
had to say for those ye for the E three thing. Oh you know.
The other reason to put this in here was see if there was anything
you had to say about E three. Yet, as far as our plans
there, it's the trade show that happens every year. We intend to go
covery and we have a meeting this week to look at potential locations. Yeah,
yes, yes, the Standy committee will be reconvening. I'm sure we
have. We have a goal this year to get a room that is less
roomy from the audio perspective. Yeah, less echo, a little less echo.
Yeah. All the air conditioning was so good in that room though.
Yeah, So we're I mean, we're we're looking at areas that should hopefully
meet that need as well. I hope. It's just those high ceilings make
it very comfortable. Sure, and you know, like the other locations we're
looking at were less likely to be invited to be in a rap video.
Yeah. I was going to mention there was that's not forget. But yeah,
we're you know, we're gonna talk over the press conferences again that people
seem to like that last year. I'm gonna do that. Yeah that was
fun. Yeah, I was, I was. I had some misgivings going
in. I was like, man, we haven't we haven't not gone to
press conferences in years and years, Like it feels like we're skipping out on
something important, but it's so much nicer. But then it turned out like,
hey, instead of running from venue to venue for twelve straight hours,
yeah, like you guys haven't even worse than we do. Like what if
we sit in this room instead with climb and control and a meal like a
lunch brought in, you guys have the right Yeah, and yeah, and
also generate hours and hours of content as opposed to getting not much of anything
out of being there. It was the right move all around. Yeah,
I think that, you know. The thing was there is a certain amount
of like face time type of stuff of seeing people from companies and shaking their
hand and going like hello, yes we are here. Yeah, just representing
the audience. Yeah, yeah, being there, you know. But also
like those press conferences, no one has time to fucking sit around and talk.
Yeah, Like you know, you might catch somebody on the way out
and go like, hey, nice press conference, or they you you didn't
fall over on stage, good going, dude, right or whatever, But
why did you have laying on there that? Yeah? Yeah, seriously got
a brand to represent here. Coleman from Austin, Texas says that he has
lost his faith in humanity and here's why. After watching the quick look you
guys did on Blood Born, I was compelled to try the game out.
I didn't want to make the full commitment to a purchase, so I decided
to rent it from a local red box. After reserving the only copy available
in town, fifteen minutes from my apartment, I made the lengthy drive to
pick up the game after a long week of finals, I knew that sitting
down with my PlayStation and a copy of Blood Born could relieve some stress.
That's right, relieve stress with a from software title. After picking the game
up and making the drive back home, I plopped down into my chair and
opened the disc case. What I found was not a copy of the game,
but instead a crudely photocopied black and white image of the disk cut out
of a piece of paper. Redbox was more than happy to issue a refund
and offer an additional rental on the house, but I can't help but feel
it's like someone got away with theft. I just wanted to relay the story
to you guys and hopes that the thief is listening to this right now and
feels guilty about being a tool. I mostly put this email in because I
will post the photo that he enclosed as the first comment on this podcast.
I disagree with his assessment that they photocopied it crudely, like they photocopied it
and meticulously cut it into a perfect disc shaped circle and cut out the little
hole in the middle. Why and put it in the case? Barcodes on
the disc and they can return it that way. Yeah. Yeah, so
they probably stole a credit card or you'd like to thank they were, Well,
no, they could, they could even well I'm sure that they could
use their own stuff. But then you would know that the previous person who
read it is probably your culp because isn't it isn't I've never used red box,
but it isn't the process just like if the game never comes back,
they just charge you for the game. Yes, so if they've got your
credit card number, you're not getting away with shit. Yeah, I suppose,
and you wouldn't ever bring it back with an empty sleeve in it.
You would just eat the cost and go, well, fuck it. So
I didn't know. I didn't realize the barcode part, like, is that
how they Yeah, the machine scans the barcode on the disc. I seem
so I haven't done it. Okay, well, okay, you haven't stolen
anything. Yeah, okay, this is less absurd and more like conniving now
ye knowing that this was actually like used to defeat the machine. Yeah,
but one would assume that this is like a stolen credit card. Say where
you're you're pren card and doing it that way. I just I just laughed
out loud at this photocopy of the blood Borne Blu ray disc, like it's
like very carefully cut into this perfect disc check too. It's really ridiculous.
Yeah, I wonder if they don't like charging the full price the game like
a discount because it's like used or whatever. I bet they charge you.
I BET's one of those things where they will happily charge you the like daily
fee or whatever for some chunk of time and then eventually you go eventually make
it all right, now you have to pay an eighty five dollars restocking fee
or you know, yeah, criminals, It's always one step ahead, Yeah,
skimmers man, Yeah, I guess so. Dan from Rhode Island has
a two part question. One, what do you think the chances are Sony
making a successor to the Vida too? Regardless of the chances of it happening,
what do you think Sony could do to make it a success? Is
that even possible? I don't know. I think chances are pretty low.
Yeah. I love the ship out of my Vida. Yeah, it's like
a second device, you know. I mean I don't go to it first
for games, but you know, it's a good companion thing too. Yeah,
but I think they like they really rallied after that thing had been out
a year or two and found another good use for it, because it was
clear when it came out that they just expected to keep making games for it,
like they did the PSP and then that didn't work out so well.
But but the crossby cross play and and like remote play and stuff like that.
Yeah, that's all overally cool. Yeah, I mean like it works
well. I think if they put out another console and want to meet those
needs at some point, a tablet with a controller tethered to it serves a
lot of the remote play absolutely needs. Yeah, Like I've seen, you
know, people on my Twitter feed will post photos of like experiah Yeah.
Yeah, it's just like the remote plays for a second. Right, It's
just like, oh, I'm watching Walking Dead or whatever on TV while I
play this on PS four and it's a picture of not of a Vita,
but of their tablet and APS four controller. Yeah, and I think that's
what they're specific tablet. It's not it's not a oh okay, but I
turned it on my Vida that that new like sixty frames for a second.
Yeah, yeah, is that good? Over the home network yeah, wow,
really yeah, I was super impressed. So I haven't verified this personally,
but it seems to add up. I saw a thread on Neo gaff
yesterday about the Wi Fi on the Vita. You know, there's that setting
in the Vita settings. It's it's phrased something like, uh like use Wi
Fi in low power mode or something like that. Yeah, Like it makes
it sound like what you're turning on is the ability to continue using the Wi
Fi while the Vitas like in sleep or whatever, or like background downloads.
Yeah, Okay, what that option actually means is that you're putting the Wi
Fi chip into a low power transmit mode to save battery. Right, So
you're actually getting shittier for Wi Fi by turning on this option that you think
is supposed to enhance your Wifie. So the reason this came to light was
because of the sixty frames per second that came about in the in the new
firmware. I've always gotten really really bad one. Yeah yeah, I've always
had totally uh. And this whole thread was just full of people going like,
yeah, fucking of course that's what I thought that meant, because everybody
thinks that. So yeah, apparently turning that off actually will help with the
sixty frames where remote play and such like that. That new firmware is pretty
good. It seems like that I was using the suspended Zoom every time I
fucking turned the PS four on. Now those like light bulb like, hey
man, you can find friends on Facebook. Hey did you know you have
power options? Oh, you just go in and mark all those market and
go to notifications and market like. I've done that with the one at my
desk like three times now, and they came in waves for me. You're
right, there were a bunch of them and they came in like three waves,
so I had to wait for them all and then do that. That
went away. But the let's suspend zoom in my like you know, week
long experience so far is better than on the Xbox. It works really fucking
well. I don't like where they moved. I don't like them moving the
store icon. Yeah, they shouldn't have moved the store, shoving the store
down right in the middle of your row of games, and they also like
and then today with the Spotify stuff launching, they forced the music thing to
the front of everyone's library. That stuff's terrible. I just I don't think
they should fuck with that stuff. I think that's a really shitty yu.
I have the little TV thing that drops down to like Netflix and Amazon and
stuff. That thing, that thing floats to the top of my recent games
like every couple weeks without even without and without me ever using. I think
that that stuff specifically is fucking terrible. So it was one of the things
like I actually that's how I watched the Hall of Fame ceremony for wrestling over
the weekend, was on the PS four and you just to remember, like
you, I have to go in there, move past all these bullshit things
you haven't downloaded, and get down to the one you did and launch it.
Like the idea that like that's all right there being promoted, it's just
fucking lame. Yeah, it's a lame way to present that. That stuff
is absolutely not ideal. But Suspender Zoom really good. Bloodborne takes a long
time to get into from a cold boot so good. It's like less than
thirty seconds for turning on the controller to literally being running around in the game.
It's pretty awesome. I might try that. I'm afraid to, like
lease my savors. It's worked absolutely without a problem. For me all weekend.
Next email comes from this person did not give their name. I'm sorry,
it's Nick. It's in their email address. Okay, take that Nick.
What Saints Row can do next? It's really so simple. I like
that. We don't get these often. It's just like once a month still,
somebody is sending in their idea for what Saints Row should do next.
If the game picks up from the illustrated credits of Saints Are afore, the
Saints are jumping around through time, just fucking with things for fun and profit.
But as expected, they can't be trusted with the power in their hands,
and they abuse their time travel device and ultimately break time. Not time
paradox type stuff, but a singularity collapse style event that causes all time to
try to exist in their current moment. So instead of a city map split
into the standard industrial, shopping and suburbs districts, you get a city where
uptown is medieval castles and dragons, downtown is future neon lights, and across
the bridge is Ato era Japan. Then the Big Bat is al Capone,
who comes in to take the city for himself, and the Saints get to
face off against the legendary nineteen twenties gangster ideal. Also, Capone is probably
some sort of literal hulking monster, and actually always had been, but history
just downplayed that part. That's true. Also, they can probably squeeze in
a labor dispute joke where the boss comes in and goes, hey, where's
Jimmy and everybody just shrugs it off, or fest two on the nose.
The story could focus on how the city has been flooded with the escaped subjects
from some offshore genetic manipulation experiments. There rampage a ground, the city being
everything from giant rats to fire spewing dragons to sentient pile of eggs somewhere around
one hundred and fifty at all. But rather than just getting them down,
Kinsey or someone comes up with a way to capture these creatures and handled spherical
devices. So the game is the boss running around the city capturing these creatures
and calling them out to fight other creatures. And it's Pokemon. It's just
Pokemon. They should just fucking mate sakes, throw a Pokemon parody. It's
Pokemon with a button dedicated to kicking Pokemon in the dick. I can't know
why I can't. I can't find fault with that. It seems like a
reasonable set of ideas, the one that I came to relatively recently. I
think, what is the time travel results in multiple versions of the Saints existing,
and that you are. You are a different gang that has to go
out and fight these Saints. So we're a different set of Saints, Saints
against themselves. Yeah, and so you are. So it's like a rebooted
Saints posse. So you get a reboot of Saints Row in which the bad
guys are the guys from pre reboot sat guys you played. Yeah already interesting
Okay, Uh, they did a little bit of that and ford didn't they
like you were like going back and fighting like Dreadlock. Yeah kind of thing.
There was. There was some stuff like that, sure, way more
dramatic though, to the point where like, let's just full on restyling and
everything, styling of every single character. Yeah, yeah, okay, and
make it totally super serious and then you're just like murdering these fucking goofballs,
Like what the fuck is wrong with people? Sure? I wonder how close
we are That probably weighs off. They just shipped got out of the Hill,
got out of Hill? Or? Brian writes sound about bland video game
covers. When will we see the end of the bland video game cover streak?
Look at Destiny, Dark Souls too, Bloodborne, BioShock, Infinite,
DMC, Devin mccry, and many others. Always a dude with a weapon
looking down. I'm tired of it. When can we kill this trend and
make game game cover art exciting again? It's because when those games, when
you see those games games with box art, are the games that are on
shelves physically in stores, Yeah, and those are geared toward the masses buying
them. So you're saying the masses have no taste. I say they have
an average of all of their tastes, okay, And that's why you see
the most common denominator of box like some fucking designed by committee Like well,
we find people respond to a solo individual if they found they found the aggregate,
the generic aggregate of the entire taste and everyone in the entire market.
I'm sure there is a mass amount of market research and branding bullshit that goes
into like these, Yes, exactly, like the same stuff that magazine covers
probably go through. Yeah, exactly what you posters. Yeah, they'll steal
funts, other schemes and everything that that doesn't mean that you can't find that
situation deplorable. Oh, I have a soft spot for a really nice,
elegant box art and there's not much of it out. Yeah, you're right,
but at some point, like you need to extend that out where belongs
and find all of society deplorable. We all now you're talking. We should
talk later, Yeah, and how we can withdraw from it. Yeah,
I'm the guy that went out there and found a super high rise scan of
the eco box art back in the day and printed it out at my friends
he worked at the Japanese aren't he worked at like a print shopping. Yeah,
And I printed the right scale ye color glossy and put it in my
case. He used to make custom yeah art, like you did a Dark
Siders one. Yeah, Look, it's cool. It's cool when they go
the extra mile, like Aspect was it three that had the reversible that had
fimshap on the back so you could reverse your thing. That's sounds cool,
but it never happens. But also, like you know, boxes themselves are
kind of becoming less and less a thing. The wrestling games were doing it
for a while in this really like kind of messed up. Well, I
don't know, like maybe it's actually smart the way they did it, where
it was like the person on the cover is the most marketable, mainstream person,
so it's just John Cena, and then like the person that people who
buy video games actually like is on the inside. So you can flip it
around and go like, all right, now I got the guy that they
should they should be pushing this guy on. So who was that? Typically
I don't I don't don't remember who who was? Yeah, I can't say
about that game, Yeah, like Seampunk on the inside or someone. And
then they finally upgraded him to being on the main cover one year, I
think. So I don't know, I don't remember that guy's gone. Yeah,
see where it got him completely going. What do you think he was
doing last night? I mean his wife was wrestling. Oh she still in
I thought she got out too, No, yeah I did for a little
while. I think she was out injured or she could she was out because
they got married and she was out on Honeymoy. Also, everything I've heard
about Vince McMahon made it makes it sound like if he was out, like
she would also be out just out of spite or something. You know,
at some point, isn't it more spiteful to keep her in and have her
lose all the time in really degrading ways? God, that's terrible. She
actually won last night. Spent half the ground all right, half the time
on the ground. But you know, sure? Yeah? Uh. Tristan
wrote in an email, I wanted to know if we ever change links name
in video games. I changed to Zelda a couple of times. Yeah.
I use default names whenever possible that they're not my characters to name same here
they if they've went to the trouble of giving them a name, I'm going
to stick. I prefer games that give the character's name yes to being forced
and it forced to come up with my own. Sometimes I will just enter
something completely stupid, or I will just I actually like it when they have
random name generators like I don't. I don't like picking names for characters.
Can ask a question, Yeah, okay, what's the origin of don Sandwich?
I don't know. I just had to type some fucking garbage in my
Wow character thing, and that's what came out. I decided don't want to
play a lady all right? And yeah, I don't know. The question
has haunted me for the last decade. It's just something now I know there
was no answer there. It's something that pooped out through my fingers when it
came time to name a Wow character and it never got used anywhere else.
And that's okay. I didn't think to ask you back into Lego four.
Yeah, so here we are. Uh okay, let's uh whittle this down
to the last couple of the emails. How about Alex and Indio? Who
wants to know what gaming related purchases do you, guys regret most? Maybe
something you bought as a child because you might now get tax right offs.
Ps. Dan's big head was annoying as fuck while I tried to watch Wrestle
Media. What a heel keep telling you, guys, Strider the Jaesis,
Yeah that you've finished in an hour or whatever? That was. Money was
hard to come by at that. What was that like an eighty dollar game?
Game? That took It took me quite some time to get to a
point where I could buy that game. And then I bought it, brought
it home and finished it. I was so fucking pissed. I have judgment
for the p S three you know the camera. Yes, that was into
wow a little while. Yeah that's a rough one. Yeah. A friend
of mine like totally sold me on. He's like, check this shit,
ut'st VR stuff wasn't Yeah, that was like some early AAR type thing.
Rights show up on the table. All right, man, if they if
they really support this. They expanded the card count and everything. Yeah,
this could be great. And bought it and I still have some of the
booster packs, you know, unopened states. That's rough. I can't have
been cheap. No, it was like eighty bucks. Yeah. I bought
Star Wars Galaxies wow. Before. That's also a rough one. Realizing what
an MMO was? Shit, I have to pay what? Nope? Wow?
Did you really played it? Not even your three month I think I
installed it. Man, that sucks. Oh well, say Levy Keith's just
to know about video games at the library. Hey, fellows, I'm a
librarian at a county library, and like other libraries around the country, we
are considering adding video games to our collection. Was the only gamer among the
librarian ranks. The responsibility for selecting which games to add will almost certainly fall
to me. My question is this, broker the guy game done? What?
My question is this, Since my budget will be low and high circulation
numbers are a priority, should I focus on a smaller collection of pricier current
gen games or a larger quantity of cheaper last generation games? Obviously the Yeah,
the last generation games. Yeah. I think at this point in time,
the three sixty PS three era is probably the safest bet. They're probably
pretty cheap, and also history has sort of borne out, which are the
game Yeah, So there's all that. There's also the most number of people
are likely to still have those systems available. Yeah, if you go too
far back install base yeah, yeah, more people eligible to play them,
like easier to get the games cheaper. Definitely don't get the current and stuff.
No, no, no, yeah, I think you know, like
the people that haven't upgraded new consoles are going to be the people that are
more price sensitive, that would tend to appreciate a library lending things out like
that, so you might get more use out of it that way. Yeah.
Yeah, I think let's say we're solidly in the PS three three sixty
camp. I think it would be rad if at this point you know you
have to not let people check shit out, but I think it would be
rad if you just said, like, all right, we're going to hook
up old ass video game systems here at the library, and if you want
to come by and play the games, you can. I think I've heard
of some libraries having that. Really, that's super cool, I think,
and you know, checkout system for just playing suff you know, maybe hey,
if you have this system at home, you can check out the game.
Sure, but just like a couple of stations set up right there,
Yeah, put on some headphones and go yeah, yeah, yeah, that'd
be cool. I don't know, I don't maybe bring your own headphones,
well sure, yeah, sure, Hey, it's the library. Can make
sure everybody stays quiet. I just don't want communal headphones happening. Yeah that's
fair. I don't know these ones that we're wearing. There's a lot of
email headphones in this building. I just hope everybody washes their ears on a
regular basis. What why would you watch yours next email from? How about
last email? Let's say this is the last email. You're gone, soft
man, I got nuts. Okay, there's more where that came. You
do? What do you want to do. Man, this is your show.
Okay, this is your show, show starring Brad. If you want
to say, hey, we're killing the news segment, I'll be like,
all right, I don't know, Mary, it's your show. I got
your back. Hey we're killing the news segment. Whatever? Man, cool
and hey the podcast is canceled. All right, I'm starting a new podcast,
Brad. I think you should host it. Fuck never escape. Uh.
Two Drew Curiosities is the name of this email. Okay, comes and
from Jerry. Hey, guys, I have two questions about Drew related curiosities.
One. All right, I can answer these for you. I know
Drew worked in the games industry before joining Giant Bombs, specifically at Backbone Entertainment.
I'm curious what he did at the studio. Was it related to the
video work he does now, or was he actually on the development side he
was the CFO. I'll now pause for you to answer. Okay, No,
I was a for a while. I was an art intern, and
then I got hired full time as a contract artist. It was just a
lot of like especially as an intern, It's just a lot of like intern
type tasks, like I did back up for a lot of games like,
oh, this game's done, we need to put all the data that we
ever generated onto disks and then put him in a folder. What kind of
discs? Uh? DVDs just burning DVDs? No, like crazy industrial tape
backup. But yeah. Eventually, when I got hired on, I was
doing things like open up this scene like a Maya file of a level of
rock Band unplugged for the PSP, and then check all the lighting because we
had this big Excel spreadsheet of what all the lighting was supposed to look like
for every level. Go through all this or like go through the WEE version
of DJ or what was it Death Junior? We called it DJ Death Junior
two. If there are any models out of place, not tate where they
are, that kind of stuff. And then for let's see street Fighter HD
remix. No, I love this part. I would receive the PSD files
from oudon who art Yeah, who did all the art? Yeah in in
Japan. Uh. They would send them to me, and then they would
still have like the artists notes on the PSDs, like different layers, like
oh, we need to take this part in like the hit box you know.
Sometimes the hit box layer would be turned on. So basically just clean
them all up, export uh like bitmap files, just a final sprite,
a final sprite, and import that back into the game for testing purposes.
Oh that sounds awesome. And a few more things like I made some greats
for g I Joe ds uh, just like bits and bobs for Earth for
everything, like some uh gameplay capture for marketing materials. Uh achievement. So
yeah, goddamn it. I was more fascinated by this than anything else.
You did. Achievement icons? What game achievement icons for Sonics Ultimate Genesis collect
did you just have you just have like do you have artistic cart blanche to
just make the icons whatever you wanted? Kind of yeah, that sounds great.
Yeah, I mean I submitted them, and you know it wasn't just
me going like yep, bounds good ship it sure. Uh this was a
picture of my face. You get this one if you beat streets Ridge too.
But you know, like I had a Genesis, so I knew a
lot of those those games, so I kind of knew what that's fun?
What would what would fly? Is it? That sounds like it's kind of
menial, you know, like making achievement icons a sort of grunt labor in
a sense, but you can still get creative with it, Yeah, and
have some fun. Yeah that sounds that sounds really fun. Question too.
It occurred to me the other day that I don't think I've ever heard Drew
utter a single swear word. I've been listening to him since he joined JA
Bomb, and I can't think of a single occurrence of blue language from him?
What makes him so eff and polite? Is there a particular reason he
doesn't swear? Or is it just never enter his mind? Uh? It's
I do it so that I forced myself to be more eloquent. That's a
good reason. Yeah, good answer. Good say that he doesn't. I've
heard a couple, but not on air. Not a sounds like bullshit to
me. I don't look down on people that that do is. Yeah,
force myself to be more like the rest of us are working plenty of blue
around here. D Well, you know, keep mind like you know,
like we spent a decade very much not yeah or thereabouts, that's for sure,
five to ten years very much not working in that hotile. That's really
hard to remember now, Okay, now I remember it. Yeah, it
took it that long. Apparently John Madden curses like a sailor really yeah,
and can somehow just turn it off for the the air. I could see
that. Yeah, he seems like a cantank or his old sort. Yeah
to me, yes, I got I never really had a problem. So
actually, since we kind of started this site and started swearing like crazy,
it has made me slightly worse at not swearing. Yeah. I have to
catch myself sometimes in some situations, but uh yeah, I can typically turn
it on and off pretty well. It's something that I would ideally like to
cut down on. But old habits, yeah, man, floodgates are open.
Yeah, I guess. So I suppose people talk? Are they talk?
Do you want to be that eighty year old dude? Now you probably
do? Yeah, just just letting it fly totally. Yeah, all right,
that's yes, fun, just run with it. The I wanna be
the fucking weird old man that the kids kind of like because he's always cursing.
Sure, old people aren't supposed to curse, but that one does.
Yeh, he's so drunk. All right, we should should have a long,
deep conversation later. Yeah, you give me another forty years or something
like that. I'm gonna get way back into drinking. Okay, like this
is the calm before the storm, all right, where like I'm not really
drinking at all, and you really just like just ride it all the way
down at the end. Yeah, no holds barred for sure. All Right,
I can't wait. Sounds like a good way to spend your twilight years.
BombCast. A Giant bomb dot com is the email address for the email
section where the emails go and then are read on the air. Uh.
And that's it for this week's edition of the Giant BombCast. What is happening
this week? I bought a dumb scooter? Yes, oh yeah, yeah,
like that one of those ragious scooters but for big people. Okay.
I was a little drunk, was outside talking to some neighbors, uh during
WrestleMania, and they were talking about how we commute to work, and I'm
like, you know, I was thinking about getting one of those dumb little
scooters but they look ridiculous, and he's like, I have one. They
do look ridiculous. Do you want to buy it? So I handed the
just right there on the spot. Yeah, weird ass transaction. I went
up to his department and I bought myself a little yellow scooter. I'm never
gonna cha. Chason Scooter time coming soon to the website. Probably should bring
it in and we should just film ourselves riding them around San Francisco. Really
you want to do that. It's just like, you know, harbingers of
the coming upoplasture, Like it's dressed up like the Grim Reaper, and ride
a fucking scooter around and say your apps sucks to everyone we you encounter,
they'll take you more seriously because you're on a scooter. Yeah exactly. I've
got some Google glass that you can wear. Okay, yeah, yeah,
all right, yeah, fucking Grim Reaper wearing Google glass. By the time
you hear the startup is doom. Well they all are. Yeah, that's
just how that goes. By the time you hear this, the PlayStation Home
stream may have commenced or may have ended. I'm not sure. Yeah,
we're gonna be looking at the final day of PlayStation Home but yes, that's
that's today. Will this be archived? I don't know, really good question.
I have no idea. Was it archived? It already happened as of
now. I think generally speaking, we archive everything we want to archive.
Yeah, which is most things and stuff. We should just start answering no
every time, wait out of you Nope, uh yeah, not watch it
live, you never know it's right. But yeah, PlayStation we're cutting out
all the good stuff. PlayStation Home shutting down today. Yeah, hope hopefully
we were there to see it out. Yeah. Hopefully it didn't like fuck
up and go down early or who knows. I have it on good authority
that we've got some breathing room. Yeah, if we need it. Stream
that did a quick run through of PlayStation Home a couple of weeks ago,
just to make sure it still functional and all that other stuff. Make sure
your packman machine is still there. I had to replace that, had to
put the pack once there again was Home is gone to shit? So I
think I have. I think what actually happened is I have changed PSN accounts
since the last time I loaded up Home, all right, so it might
still be in that other version of my Home. I'm not sure. Well,
the stream should be something well, I mean, it's going to be
a visual chat room with us trying to decide exactly how far we want to
go when it comes to fucking with people that really care about PlayStation Home that
are probably very distraught. Yeah, there's thing is shutting down. Answer is,
we don't want to go that far at all because it's kind of a
fucked up thing to do. Probably, even if I think PlayStation Home is
a hilarious joke, and the idea that people would be into it is sort
of like nuts nuts to me. Yeah, you're right, you know,
no need to just trump in to stomp in there and fuck with their ship.
That's fair. It's already getting shut down. What more can I do?
Yeah, they've already done enough. Any other content come in site?
You guys wanted, not that we were ready to talk about. Okay,
we I think are gonna try to do a giant I'm unplugged. Oh yes,
yes, it's on the calendar. Okay, apparently he was ready to
talk about it. It's on You're right, you're right, I did see
it there. That's that's us saying that we're gonna do it. That's yes,
we've made that commitment already. Yeah. Wait, wait, if something
is on the calendar, that's an actual commitment that we're gonna do it,
like legally binding. Weird. Okay, alright, So we had to rethink
a lot of this, yeah, exactly, yea six months ago. Yes,
I put that on there the day the story broke about home shutting down.
Just you just picked twelve o'clock. I just picked twelve pm because well
that's what Dame we're doing. Why not? Now, you could change that
whenever you want, Okay, it's fine, all right, Well, stay
tuned to the website for any other stuff that might be popping off this week.
Uh and in the meantime, we'll be back next week with another edition
of the Giant Bodcast.