Hey everybody, it's Tuesday. Holy smokes, it's Tuesday, March the fifth,
twenty twenty four. Welcome to the Giant BombCast, Episode eight hundred and
thirty. I'm your host, Jana Chova joining me co captain of the ship.
He is the ultimate hype man, more so than Harvey Javier Bardemn any
type of movie. Jeff Grubb. I had a bad dream this weekend.
Fantastic master of the bad dream, King of nightmares, Jeff Backlar. That
is true. What a perfect description of my presence and aura. Thank you
for having me, Jan o'cholla. I'd love to have you, just like
I love having our special guest, Russ Rushtick. Welcome to the podcast.
I just kissed, but I realized not everyone is watching videos, so maybe
they might have missed it. Right now, you orally heard the kiss,
and that's all that matters if you, if you're normally an audio listener to
the podcast, I behoove you to just watch the first couple of minutes of
the BombCast at least to feel the presence of that gentle kiss that Russ blewis.
Yeah, yeah, wow. You could build a whole career off those
little little pecks. On the cheeks. Let me tell you, Okay,
what about like a nice kiss on the forehead. How do you like do
I just got to like go up to my camera a bit and then like
smooth when you kiss. Kissing someone on the forehead is more like a parental
to a child thing. I don't believe you can really get away in the
sort of like social constructs that we've created. I didn't accidentally kiss co a
colleague on the forehead once because I was very tired at a show and we
were like in the side hug to say goodbye, and I just reflexively went
in for a forehead kiss without controlling my body. No, it wasn't good.
I'm still deeply, deeply ashamed of it to this day. So yeah,
they didn't say they never said anything. They were fine. Their therapist,
Yes, absolutely, do you what do you do there? You think
they just like reprised instantly. No, No, that like the receiving end
of the four. I guess. I feel like if that happened to me,
were like someone in an acquaintance whatever kissed me on the I would just
instantly do my best to forget it. I would just like men and go
So you know, forget, I don't know. Yeah, I would hope
it was like that was clearly the most platonic forehead kiss I've ever received.
I hope it came across that way. Yeah, okay, but I know
that this pains you to think about Jeff Grubb. Yeah, was there like
an audible like smooch sound afterwards? No? I think it was a like
oppressing up the lips on forehead, like where hair meets like skin, and
there was no smacking. You didn't saya at the end of it. I
hope I didn't. No, mw a h. I love not a visible
like comic book moir symbol coming out of my face. Now, I'm finding
a lot of the kisses on the cheek that I've been giving lately are just
like cheek touches with the sound of a kiss. Yeah them. Yeah.
I definitely offended people in Iceland when I did not understand how to do that.
It was like the offending folks, I'm offending. It was a bunch
of Europeans and they were just like, you're not gonna do the cheekiss thing
like I'm from Ohio, I don't understand. I'm sorry. We can trade
sausage you would like. But that's the only thing I too. We can
chess bump. I'll chest bump the hell out of you, slam the ship
out of our elbows together, exactly. I love the good forearm like with
someone you feel like a home run hitter, you know. Sure? Uh
if I could be so selfish to like, uh front load this podcast with
something that's happening to me that I just have to turn into content. I
haven't really talked that much about it. I think you all know about this.
I know Frushtick doesn't know about it just yet. No, no,
no, I'm still a couple of years about that camera right yeah, yeah,
no, none of that. This is way worse, folks. Next
week, my wow, I I gotta say it. I just have to
come out and say it. I just have to say it. Just say
it. One thing. I've pulled the band aid right off. Okay,
I'm gonna take a deep breath. Guys. Next week, my parents are
moving in with me. Yeah wow, oh buddy, oh friend, let
me see. Oh that's right. Let's all take a collective sidhe for you,
my everybody. Raymond ar has been done. Okay, now you did
say moving in with you. You did not say they are staying with you.
Well, well, well I knew what I read with you. Yeah,
but there's a difference, right, staying was like, oh, yeah,
we're staying with you. Yeah, it could be a month that we're
here. Moving in implies there's some permanent Okay, so let me then then
let me, for the sake of everybody, let me walk that back a
couple of steps. They are not. This is a temporary situation. How
temporary though, Like I think if it's if it is upwards of let's say,
if it is more than three months, I think that is moving in
with you. Oh fucking christ, it could be that long. Listen,
anyone who's a fielder, anybody who is even remotely or tangentially uh h related
to the to the housing market. You have to reach out and pull all
the favors you can pull. They will if you if you actually put that
call out, they will get calls NonStop. I like it, like I'm
gonna look at a I want to see how much a Kia Carnival minivan costs,
and I like, put put my name into something. And I've been
getting calls and NonStop for the last two weeks. Like people that like that
are sellned cars and houses are bananas right now. So if you put that
out there, they will get harassed by realtors, which maybe is what you
want. Well yeah again, they they're looking, here's the thing. They
have sold my childhood home. It was my home not there's no uh,
and they're just like, you know, uh in limbo. Now did they
did they know that once they sold the home the only option would be to
move in with you. I love that You're like proposing a situation where they
were like, wait a minute to check now what we've done solved this place?
They were out on the street we were gonna do. We did not
pick this through. Uh. You know. Look they they had asked me
like many many many months ago, and we talked about it and look,
I'm there, I'm there, I'm there a sign like I gotta like do
the right thing. And you also, I assume they're going to be staying
in that nice guest spot that you got going on there, right, yeah,
like that's the house place I can handle them. Yeah that's right.
Yeah, yeah, the whole room over there totally like, uh, they
they will be okay, it'll be fine. I don't know how long it's
gonna be for, and everyone's like, oh, you know, there's there's
a lot of advantages to having that, and you seem very charitable with your
assessment of the situation, and it's just there's a lot of positives if you
ignore everything that is happening. It's great if you if you just sleep the
whole time, Like I mean, if you have a sibling, right,
you have a brother, Yeah, I have a brother who lives about twenty
minutes. And was there a drawing straw situation? Yeah? Or was it
never a question? I I I think like in terms of the comfort and
the space, it was not really a question. So I want to make
it clear I have lived my life and way that there is no question that
my parents will not be moving. Yeah get out. Yeah, there's no
scenario where there's no like I got I have three three brothers and a sister
h and I basically like shuffled myself to the back of that and then like
all these great options over there. So I am recording this in a closet.
You can literally see that I'm recording this in a closet. So if
there's any indication that there's no extra space. This is it. I just
want this pod from a kitchen, and you know I don't want to go
back to the kitchen. Look, I just want everyone to know it's entirely
possible that during a dump truck a man in his underwear could show up in
my head. That's great. I mean that's a promised segment, is but
that is Yeah, he is a retired man who thinks he's hilarious, and
I just I mean, it's working for Dan, so yeah, god damn
it, it'll be interesting. And I introduced the daddy verse arc to I
just need to put this down the tru real It's how I deal with it,
right, Like you guys understand, like I'm doing this so that like
in some weird way, I'm not shouldering the brunt of this weight, if
that makes sense. We're not going to help you at all with this,
but good luck. Now I need emotional support. My first trip would be
to the bank to take out a mortgage to prevent this from happening. That
would be my number one priority. It's not for lack of like they want
to find a place, I know, but what are they looking for?
They looking for like a smaller household they look at for a condominium, like
why they want to Probably they want to go. They want to stay like
in the in the town they're in in Central Jersey, and they want to
just be around there, and they want to, you know, move to
like a fifty five and up kind of joint. I did actually hear there's
an opening right next to you, Jeff, So did you? Yeah,
that might be more convenient, I think from a proximity standpoint. What a
cool neat idea. I'll throw that into the hat now, Jeff, what
if they like living with you too much? Yeah? What if you're too
cool? You shut your fuck mouth? Okay? Can you put fart smell
in the events to ensure this doesn't go long? Dude, I'm gonna have
to try real harder than that. Yeah, see that. It would almost
certainly bother you more than them, because old people can't smell anymore, right,
old people they don't care. Yeah, Honestly, it's going to be
like weeks of me explaining how my TV works, and it's going to be
like, hey, can you just like, wh look, maybe get some
babysitting out of it. That's what I'm cautiously optimistic about. That's the problem.
Now your kid is too old at this point for it to really payoff.
It's like, you can leave it. You can leave him, right,
you can leave dude, who were you, dan Riker? No,
you can't leave someone who's under ten alone by themselves for like the night.
Yeah, not for the night, that's true, or at least like come
home late at like two am and just hope they put themselves to bed.
Like, now, how old was Kevin? He was fine? Yeah,
he was fine. He was nine. And they did that totally on purpose.
No, harmy did work out. He did put people in jail.
I don't have it worked out in the long run for Kevin, you know,
thinking about it, maybe his brother, but not him. No,
No, it didn't work out for his brother at all. You were up
to date on the home Home Alone universe. He stays a cop in that
same town. Oh shit, yeah, big cop energy, that haircut alone.
Yeah, I mean the name's literally buzz Yeah. So anyway, that's
my current arc, thoughts and prayers and all that can. I'm gonna switch
gears real quick. I just got a question for jan Jam. We got
packs coming up real soon. What's your plan for listen? Back when I'm
not leaving you out for any particular reason. Jan, what's your what's your
plan for getting a haircut? Oh? You are we talking about like,
uh a gimmicked haircut at the show? You No? Like No, just
like straight up normal dude life haircut. Like because I'm like, the last
couple times we had a live show, live show, I got a haircut
right before, and I didn't always love it. A couple of times I
did and I have it. I'm this is like new to me. I
had not cut my hair for ten years last before like this recent spat of
haircuts, So I'm like, right now, I feel like I kind of
got a Orson Wells and Citizen Kane day like a little bit. I like
it just touched. I didn't choose that and I didn't try to do it.
It just is happening today. And even if I'm like, oh,
I kind of like it, it's there's no guarantee it'll do it tomorrow.
So I'm like, I should maybe just go get a haircut so I can
guarantee a certain look. But also I don't really know if I want to
get a haircut, I'm gonna channel in barber. Jan here. I'm going
to tune myself with him and just think about Pokemon cards and our two Corgi's
and then grub. I'm gonna say, just trim up the sides in the
back. Don't do clippers, just have him do scissors, because then,
okay, you'll get the look of like, oh, I've been having a
clip trim recently? Or is his hair coming in fine? Paul'st haircut?
Okay, that's a good you know what I'll do. I'll do it at
the airport again, to get another airport haircut. There's nothing funny about that.
That's a normal thing to do. No, I think it's the airport
haircut? Do you do that? Was that? A real person is a
duty free if you get at the airport. I mean I paid no duty
as far as I'm aware. It was real. I mean, listen,
are you suggesting that it was just a random mand sitting at the airport?
Yes? There, it's a whole thing. It's a whole They had a
chair in a mirror. What else do you need? You know, it's
easy to get a chair through TSA. You'd be surprised. You could also
just sit at one of those shoe shine things, and no one's going to
ask any questions, so this will maybe take what I was at. I
you know, it works out because it's like I like to get the airport
early, and then I'm like, well, wanted to hell? Did I
get here early? Now I can get a haircut, So if I'm feeling
it in the moment, I'll do exactly what you said, Jane. I
think my problem has been the clippers. Good plan. Okay, audio listeners.
I took my hat off and then my hair kind of just suddenly bounced.
I'd like to remind everyone that I shaved my when was Pax West or
September? Yeah, okay, my hair is fully grown back at this point.
Yeah, really really has. That's pretty impressive. Thank you, thank
you. It shouts out to jeans. But I don't know what to do
because like I could go back to the pump, the slick back pomp that
I've been doing. People have said try a mullet, and then when I
looked at my partner and said mullet, she instantly shot that down and then
hated the idea. Now can I like it for you? Man? Jan?
I think I think if you showed up at home one day with a
mullet. She would be mad for about thirty minutes, and then I think
you'd be fine because you're gonna you look good when we when the tam cut
it into a mullet in the shower at a hotel room, which is a
normal thing that people do. Uh, that looked good on you. I
think you can pull it off. I will say that I have been,
for the first time in my life considering a mullet. It's back. It
also not only that, jan a mullet is like fixable, Like it's not
like you can do a mullet and then you're stuck like that, Like you
can absolutely adjust the mullet, get rid of the mullet, you know,
and make it something totally different, please, I mean straight up as you
just had it a second ago. Looks basically like a final fantasy protagonist.
And that's kind of working for me too. God, there was there was
a moment in my life when my dentist did my hair once and then my
yes, and she did it in such a way where I became anime.
Noqaribification needed on the dentist haircut. What the fun russ verstick balloon? I
didn't touch anything I talking about. Russ. You did that and there's gone,
and there's gone. There was fifteen balloons around you. What is going
on? I don't know what's happening, Russ Frushtick. Welcome to the podcast.
What you got going on? Before we get going with the rest of
the pod, let's listen, man, what's happening? Well, for people
that don't know, I work at a lovely website called polygon dot com,
which is great and we have fun there. We talked about video games and
entertainment, as I'm sure you guys do quite some, quite a bit.
I also have a podcast that I do with some lovely friends, Justin there's
the fucking balloons again. Okay, I'm not going to say anything that the
balls fly, you know. I also have a lovely podcast called The Besties
that I do with Justin McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Chris Plant and myself,
and we've been doing it almost as long as the Giant BombCast. Not quite
but very very close. There's no way that's true. It is, yes,
yes, it really is true. I think we're at eleven years now,
right around eleven years Oh my god. Actually I would not have guessed
that which is Penmen, which because it's had, like you guys have had
like five different arcs, You've had five different back of arcs. Yeah,
we started. We started as weekly, and then we went to like once
a month, and then we were just doing a Game of the Year episode,
and then we came back as weekly as part of like a Spotify arc,
and then we went available to everyone, and now we're Spotify Money.
We are weekly, and we do bonus episodes on Patreon as well. So
that's kind of the run of the show at the moment. I love it.
We have fun. I like your podcast. It's very good. I
can't believe they still let people talk about video games on the internet. Thank
you, Jeff. I did just get a photo. It was the first
time I've ever had this happen. I'm sure it's happened to you guys quite
a bit where something that I'm directly associated with was tattooed on someone. Oh
wow, that's great. Wait was it New York Draft? It was New
York Draft. Hell yeah. If anything was going to get a tattoo from
you, I'm telling you so. I was really proud to see that for
my good buddy, my good local buddy getting represented represented your buddy from the
hood. That's right. But now it warmed my heart and love the best
These fans out there, including Jeffrey grub people interview were one to New York
Drafts. Go listen to the show. Listen to it like go back six
years and you might find a r episode. We love to have you Russ
love love love, love the besties love hearing your your lovely voice. And
you know, I feel just in such a good mood after you opening the
pod with that little smooch. It feel I feel great? Does feel nice?
Wow? There was There was a lot of listeners. You're missing out,
missing out. Give me your foreheads listeners come out. No, no,
no, no, no, no, no no no. We're still
social distancing with forehead kisses. Just with me. Uh. I don't know
why. I now have a mental image of that person you're giving a forehead
kiss being Mike Minatti. It's not I'll tell you who it was. They
were. They were again, they've never said anything. I think that they're
completely fine with it. But I'll tell you guys afterwards. On video games,
Oh man, video games, huh yeah, all right, it was
Tommy tell Rico wasn't it You kissed him on the forehead listen, and he's
got a nice little world records he deserves. Yea. His mom was very
proud of that forehead, just like I'm very proud of you, Jeff Grab
for beating like a Dragon. Well I beat that game. It was.
I started again over the weekend after putting it down a little bit to do
some other things, and I was about fifty hours in. I'm like,
I'll probably be able to get through this by like fifty five. I beat
it at like sixty seven hours, so and that was. The inding just
keeps going. There's like two different endings because by the end of the game
you're playing is two different set of the two different crews. I really like
it. The ending is very good in terms of giving these characters a great
like that they set it up with a bunch of different characters interacted with one
another with great stakes, and then a lot of stuff gets put to the
side for a very long time. A lot of it does get brought up
in the middle, but a lot of it gets put to the side.
And yet by the end, even though you've been playing for sixty five hours
and they're wrap it back around to this, You're like, I never forgot
about these things. I'm glad they're paying it off. And that stuff really
worked for me. The curious stuff was even as someone who's not played a
lot of these games, has only dabbled up to this point, and really
that's might even be overstating it. I haven't really played a lot of Yakuza
and and like a dragon games, uh, And so to kind of come
in here and like understand the importance of Kuru from a distance, I actually
felt like I got a lot out of this ending and seeing like why people
like this character so much and they do treat him as important, and there's
there's characters just sitting around watching him do his thing and just being like he's
incredible, and I'm like, yeah, he is, uh, but it
is about Costuga for me. Kasuga is I mean, I think it's like
one into Jesus Christ in Costuga Ichibond, Like, seriously, he is like
the nicest character ever created and that is his superpower and they never forget it
and they always put it front and center, and he knows it kind of,
but he's he's very like restrained about it. It's it's not he's not
in your face nice. He's just always gonna do the nice thing. And
he always turns every enemy into a friend because he can't even imagine that you
would be his enemy. And it's so it's so nice to have a character
like that and spend time with a character like that. And I know that's
probably pretty common for people who enjoy like shown in animes and stuff. I've
only watched a handful of those. My understanding is that suffs pretty common and
that kind of storytelling. For me, having a character like that, it
was just it was refreshing coming from so many things that are so cynical.
So I really responded to that. I will say I was pretty frustrated with
the final boss fight because I was spending a lot of time with one of
the crews, with the Cosuga crew, and I was leveling them up.
I was going through I was grinding. There's several points in this game where
you're gonna have to grind to level up, even if I think you've spent
some extra money to get the level up packs, which you can, and
I had one of those because it was included in the I think the review
code I got. Even if you use that you're still going to spend some
time grinding at multiple points throughout the game, and I was good. I'm
like, no, I'm definitely over leveled, even for the final boss.
So I beat this final boss and it's like, well, no, we
got to swap over to the other crew and beat the other final boss and
I was just under leveled for that. And you go through this series of
fights and this you know tower you have to climb and you get up there,
and it's like there was no easy way to go to leave and go
grind, at least as far as I could tell, Like, you can't.
I couldn't. I couldn't as far as I could tell, could not
quick travel to somewhere else to go grind and then come back. So I
ended up using a couple more packs to level up the character after struggling for
about two and a half hours on this final boss fight. So that that's
sullied things a little bit for me, sure, But other than that,
even where when I was grinding, I was mostly enjoying that because the combat
is so good. It's I really like all the synergies they start off with,
you know, these characters doing cool things in a good turn based system,
and then they just keep adding layers on top of that, where now
that you're better friends, this character is gonna come over and help you by
when you would knock someone down, they're gonna come and knock hit them while
they're down. And then later it's like, well, now you're even better
friends. So if you stand next to them before you initiate the attack,
they will run in with you together in tech at the same time. And
then the other character that you're going good for with, once that character's down
the enemy's down, then they'll come in and they'll do an attack, and
then sometimes another character will come in on top of that, so it's like
it keeps layering on top of one another. Some more cool stuff happens,
and you're doing much more damage as long as you're using these synergies really well.
And so I liked grinding for the most part, up until that very
last boss fight where it felt like there was no easy way to go do
that so that I could effectively accomplish that. But that said, as someone
who is not, you know, like God got for most JRPGs, I
was pretty happy with this experience. I like it a lot. I'm glad
I saw it through. I was gonna ask you, Greb for this isn't
normally a grub style game, I believe, But do you think was the
game respectful of your time? Given that you spent like sixty hours in other
than like the last boss grinding you were talking about, You know, it
walks the line a little bit. I think. For I think it's gonna
your mileage is going to vary depending on what you're running from the game at
any particular time. I think that it must have been mostly respectful, or
else I would have given up on it. You know, part of that's
going to be sunk cost. I got to about fifty hours like that,
forty five fifty hours before I felt any sort of like, oh am,
I like done with this game. And then by that point I could see
the end and I'm like, I should just see it through. But when
I was seeing it through, I was still enjoying myself. I think that
for some people that grinding is going to be unacceptable just flat out. For
some people that's just like, no, I'm never going to enjoy that.
I want to feel like I have done most of what the main story is
asked of me. Asked of me, I should be appropriately leveled to see
this game through, and I think that's fair. I think that should be
the expectation of most role playing games. I get the suspicion. My suspicion
here is that the reason it does work this way in this game is because
they do want you to buy those level packs so that you can level up
the characters, and you spend a couple of ten extra dollars, and so
that's that's not great. I think that's a kind of a thing that like
really does in the game a little bit. Now, it doesn't ruin,
It didn't ruin the experience for me. But when I see that sort of
thing and I start thinking, like, are they manipulating me to get more
money out of me? That is just not something I want to be thinking
about for most games. So I think on that side of things clearly a
negative. I would warn people against that. But hey, go play on
PC, use chet engine. Get around it like this. You bought the
game, you own it, do what you want with it. Another great
Steam game. Yeah, oh yes, I played the entirety on steam Deck
and it was clearly Yeah, it runs really well on Steam Deck. Yeah,
you have to like adjust a little bit of the visuals. I was
using the FSR two, which is like DSS, so the image is a
little soft every once in a while. I did not care. It was
funny. Yeah, I would certainly echo as someone who is also dabbled in
the Kuza Slash Like a Dragon series, I would echo that this is the
first time that I've felt personally attached to one of the games in a like
a big way. I think Eachubon is why that is. Yeah, I
think here you in the other games that I played, were You is like
the main character. He's so straight and such like a traditional like hero,
and they obviously use the side characters as like a way to make things fun
and silly and goofy around him. But because you have Ichibon kind of doing
both roles, there's never really a moment where you're playing as him where you
aren't getting some aspect of levity or warmth, whereas like Curio you kind of
have to work for it. So that was like, I'm still very early
in the new likeco Dragon, but that's what grabbed me immediately, was like,
oh, I want to hang out with this dude for as long as
possible. Same. He rides the line of like being not too much of
a dumb ass where he's unbearable, right, He definitely has his moments where
he is a complete and utter dumb ass. But they pick and choose those
and they deploy them usually for comedic effect, occasionally for the romance story.
And that you know, that has a pretty satisfying ending there that also does
not let him off the hook for being a dumb ass. That stuff is
great too, you know, I love dumb ass actors. That stuff is
my cat nip where I'm like, oh, man, I relate to these
guys making bone headed decisions and stuff like that, and everyone around them kind
of giving them slack and stuff. I appreciate that, and so uh yeah,
and each bond is accussove is just one percent that through and through if
people are mentioning the optional dungeons. And that is how I had one crew
over leveled when I was like, oh, you have to be a certain
level to get through, like the you go to a mission and sometimes they'll
warn you you want to be this level and you want to have this amount
of armor or weapons in gear, and like I just googled it, like
what's the easy, easiest way to level up and get money, and everyone's
like, use these do these optional dungeons which are just procedurally generated dungeon crawl
things. You go through them, you rescue some people, you fight a
bunch of bosses, or you fight a bunch of just like you know,
enemy cruise and then bosses, and it's you know, it does feel still
like filler. I know people are like, yes, you could do that
instead of pain for it. So obviously they do give you an option to
avoid pain. They don't throw that in your face though. They don't make
it like there is a part of the game where you have to do one
of those, but they don't like say, hey, you should definitely be
doing that if you want to avoid this stuff. And when I did get
to that lost boss fight, I could not just easily zap over there do
that stuff to avoid a situation where it's like, I think I might have
to load an earlier save if I want to do that, and that was
just not gonna happen. Lovely Lovely Sticking on the JRPG train, Jeff grab
It says, you've also been playing Final Fantasy seven Rebirth, and this is
one of those games I think is absolutely going to devastate me. Yeah,
I feel like a star broken person. That's so dramatic. What are you
talking about, Because because, Jeff, there's too much in this game.
There's a lot in the game. This is one of those games where it
quickly for me at least, becomes very overwhelming with how much there is in
here. And it's like a dune too, where it's like, you know,
there wasn't a lot for you to fudge around and stretch out, but
you're stretching everything out. Huh, We're just gonna make this far cry for
a little bit, huh. I do feel I felt overwhelmed in the four
hours that I played on on upf on Friday. It was and that was
not only just barely getting to some of the side things that people are talking
about. I did do Queen's Blood, I did one chocobo race, you
know, I did things here and there, but even like the combat,
Like the combat was like, oh, this is clearly very cool. But
I'm like trying to like progress things and keep things going for the viewers,
and so I'm like not taking my time to fully understand the nuances of the
combat. And so I would get to the next thing, it's like,
well, here's something new, and I'm like, oh, okay, now
I got to manage that and this. So I felt overwhelmed coming out of
that. And yet it's like it's all very well made and I was enjoying
myself and it feels like a very confident game at the very least. So,
Jim, where are you at and how are you feeling about it?
So I've still tried to mainline everything and skip all of the side quests,
which I know will anger a lot of people because some of the fun,
goofy stuff lives in those side quests. My understanding is like there's parts of
the game that it's going to force you to engage a lot of these side
quests, right, yeah, definitely. But there's moments where I'll be playing
this game in the living room and then my partner who will stop working and
actually stare at the screen and be like, wait, so why are they
upset with each other? What's going on? Who are these two girls?
Why are you looking at that girl? I'm like, well, you know,
respectfully, of course, you know, shouts out to Tifa, But
I think they've done such a good job at the characterization in this game where
it is grabbing my partner's attention, who normally just doesn't doesn't quite care when
she when I'm playing a game in her vicinity unless it's like poker and she's
scared for my well being. But I think even the characterization is so strong
where it's pulling her in and she's just listening tangentially off to the side,
and I think that is the thing that's like pushing me through and pulling me
through with this game. Not that I'm not enjoying my time, but like
I'm purposely only going for the mainline quest because I just want to know more
about what is going to happen, and to reiterate the shot happy with it,
yeah, and to reiterate to folks at home. I have no prior
experience playing the original Final Fantasy seven other than knowing through Osmosis the big story
beats of who Sep Froth is Earth, et cetera. But man, that
combat in this game, I I'm doing the thing grub where I'm just running
to enemies in the open world because I'm just having such a good time in
it, and it did a thing where I don't normally do and I actually
bumped up the difficulty because I just want to fight more. Oh that's cool.
I got to the big I got to the big first, like open
world boss dang Ye makes yeah, yeah, the snake. I got to
the snake. Yeah. It seemed like a skill check. And that's where
I'm That's where I'm at. I haven't gone back to someone to beat like
a dragon. So now my plan is, Okay, I got some more
free time. I'm gonna get in there. I don't know, like tips.
Should I just go on in the open world and level up or should
I just slip beat my head against it? Okay, so this is my
pro tip. I'm a little bit further than that. It's okay. I
think I'm at chapter six. I won't give spoilers beyond that, but probably
like fifteen hours into the game, I've been playing on easy and my attitude
is what Easy lets you do is a basically ignore potions. You'll still take
damage, You'll still at times take a lot of damage and like risk going
down, but more or less with your healing spelled stuff like that, you
can basically sustain your characters, but you're not constantly juggling all these different resources,
which made me a little overwhelming pleasant as someone that was trying to like
just experience the story more or less. The other benefit it does not force
you, at least early on where I am to do all these size the
side things that like allow you to be a high enough level if I this
guy because I'm playing uneasy, it's easier, so you can like experience more
of the content more quickly. I think the game is balanced with the idea
that you are doing every one of the side things in that first area,
which is like forty five side things based on the number of dots on that
map. Holy smoke, you could spend twenty hours in that first area and
do a lot of that stuff. I do not find ninety percent of that
stuff very compelling as gameplay, Like I think it's arguably even worse than what
FARKREI does, which at least farkray like I don't know, has a little
more meat on the bone. There are some side quests that have like narrative
beats, but a lot of that stuff is like go to this tower and
flip a switch and you're done, and that's like, why is that even
there? And that's my general attitude about the overall the experience I've had so
far. I think narratively, I'm really interested when they do cut scenes hotly
cow it's amazing, just like screenshots. World design, like the art design
is through the roof gorgeous, But there is a ton of filler that I'm
experiencing it, and that stuff bums me out a lot because I got shit
to do. Yes, I'd like I have heard this both ways. I've
heard people that are that are doing everything and enjoying it and feel like none
of it's filler, and then I've heard a lot of people describe it as
padding and filler. And what do you guys think is the difference there for
people? I mean, I'm like, when you describe there like going to
a thing and flip and a switch, no story is there even Like is
there whimsy? Like is there whimsy that you get as part of it?
Not to that, not to that side quest, there's no like, yeah,
there's not even talking Chadley. I think might show up briefly if you
consider Chadley whimsy I do. I think it depends on the person and how
much they're like in love with this world. I'm sure there are people that
like to spend more time in the final Fantasy world. I like File Fantasy
seven. I played it originally, and I loved remake, But Remake I
think was a much more like Targeted Strike, where there is side stuff,
but the only side stuff that's there is narratively driven side stuff, and you
beat that game and it's like thirty hours long, thirty five, which is
pretty short for a fun fantasy game. And this, my understanding, is
like double that. And a lot of the reason it's double is because of
all this extra side stuff. I think that's probably not been putting me off
the game, but I think exhausting me is what you said, Russ.
Where in remake everything felt more digestible in terms of like I can take care
of all the side quests in this area before I move on to the next.
Here it's like a huge list full of dots across the map and everything
where like, okay, well you know, I've I've got I've got enough
chocobos. I never ride the chokabos. It's cool that I see the movement
abilities here, but I'm just gonna I'm just gonna move along. But some
of them, like at least the handful of ones that I have wound up
doing. I have enjoyed and just given like a little bit more background to
some of the characters. And I think the trap that I'm falling into,
and folks that maybe a beat Final Fantasy seven Rebirth or further in than I
am, please tell me if I am worrying too much about the social links
in this game, because I am quickly falling into the trap of like,
well, I'm gonna save before I talked to any one of my party members
just in case, because I need I need Red thirteen to really really like
me. I have that as well. Yeah, I've definitely had that concern.
Yeah, Sean sent me over to excite. I played with Shawn and
TAM's kind of my guides on Friday, and Shawn's like, go talk to
Tifa real quick. And it was my first thing where it's like there was
a timer there and I was like, I did not notice the timer until
it was like right about to expire because it was my first time seeing it.
So I'm like looking at all the options like, oh, how can
I get this just right? And so like it picked the thing there where
She's like basically like screw you. I hate Yeah, exactly basically go to
hell Tifa the next thing. I know, I'm like going on a date
with Arth instead or something so and not that like that's a complaint, but
it was I felt like, Oh, how much is that going to matter
later on? I've been told by Sean and Mike, who played a lot
of this game, beat this game, that there's definitely like things later where
you are building up towards that and your decisions matter. I don't know how
much like conscious manipulation of like the results I can like actually enact on my
first play through unless I want to be sitting there with a guide and I
don't want to be doing that, So maybe I might have been overthinking it
already. I'm sure the overarching beats will not change, like the big beats
will not change, because they have to make another game after this and it
needs to make sense. But yeah, there's probably like moments later on where
it matters a lot. I just want to go on a date with Barrett
to Golden Saucer, reasonable, you know what I'm gonna talk about? Star
Wars Dark Forces Remastered. I like Dark Forces a lot. It was a
game that I would I don't think I ever actually beat it at the time,
but it was like that didn't matter. It was like, man,
this is a cool Doom clone with Star Wars stuff, and those are two
things. I like the whole bunch in the nineteen nineties and I still like
it a whole bunch today. Dark Forces is just really cool. I always
thought it was cool, and this remaster does everything right to ensure that that
experience is intact and feels as you know, friendly as possible. And I'm
just gonna say modern it. No, it's still that game from the nineties.
It's still a Doom clone. Like it's not even like, oh,
this is in the first person shooter genre. This is still when it was
called Doom Clone, and they don't try to change anything about that aspect of
it. It's like it's still going to feel that way. But it's got
all the quality of life stuff, and you can turn off the head bob
and there's some other accessibility options in there, and then they have like you
know, updated FMV sequences where they would have sort of you know, this
is a LucasArts game. I believe they had a similar art style to like
what they did with The Dig and some other LucasArts like adventure games. That's
how they did the storytelling, and that stuff always looked really cool. They've
updated it here, and while I don't I think I prefer the original still
the way the originals look the like low versions, where like the Darth Vader's
helmet has some blue tint in it because they only had so many colors,
and now in the modern version it is you know, it's no, it
looks like no, that's just a black helmet. It looks like Darth Vader.
They still mostly keep it intact, and it didn't bother me as much
as I thought it would, the new art, the new updated art,
But beyond that, I'm just it's just a fun game. That's that's still
like if you never played it, if you have any affinity for those Doom
games, that era of Doom, and you like Star Wars, this game
still is a good time and I recommend it. It runs great on the
Switch. I've been mostly playing it on Steam Deck and it's great there.
Of course, you know, works on PC and all that stuff, but
it's it's great, a great controller game. I think they were originally really
stiff for PlayStation. Even so, it's always kind of worked that way,
and it still does today. So yeah, I really enjoyed it. There
is a really good Digital Foundry video about that game and particular talking about like
what the original was capable of doing that Doom couldn't one of the things.
Oh, Doom couldn't do rooms on top of each other. You couldn't have
a room on a room in Doom because of the way the tech worked.
So there's some really interesting like even though it was considered like a Doom clone,
it was built in a different engine that allowed them to do a lot
of very different things. They also showed that PlayStation version, which is pretty
dog shit, but it's prett impressive that they pulled it off. I guess.
So you couldn't have like a second floor. Yeah, you couldn't have
like an elevator that led up to a floor that was like on top of
the floor, right if you remember that, you would go into an elevator
and then it would like you would walk forward, right forward. You couldn't
go back into a room like overlapping one another. And this happened in the
first level. Like there's like elevators will take you up to a room and
you'll look down at enemies down on the first floor, right and shoot them
and stuff like that. Yeah, they were just showing off at that point.
Yes, it was. Yeah, that Digital Founder video is very yeahs
even if you're like you're not into this game, that's worth watching. No,
that's terrible. That's terrible. Jam whatever that was. That was terrible.
This is still bad. This is not a dash Root dar one.
This this is Kyle Catarn, which he would go on to be in the
Star Wars Dark Forces. What did you just say? What? What Kyle
Catarn? These are Star Wars people. These are Star Wars Jedi Jedi Outcasts.
Yeah, Mike, you want to write in chat? So yes,
he always makes me do this, like okay, Star Wars Dark Forces two
Jedi Knight, and then Star Wars Dark Forces three, Jedi Knight two Jedi
Outcast. What and then about that's a different guy. Yeah. Star Wars
Dark Forces four, uh, Jedi Night three, Jedi Outcast two, Jedi
Academy. Yeah. So yeah, it's a bad series, and it's it's
different than the uh a good dash rend Our game, which was Shadow the
Empire for the N sixty four. Yeah, wampa stop, that's right.
It's a good code call back there these are. This is the same developer
that did the System Chock remake, right, Oh yeah, Nike Studios,
Yes, Night Dive Studios. They do a ton of these. They did
that. What was that game that Mike made a big deal about in the
Game of the Year last year. Yeah, what a weird that's a great
game. Yea. They did like the Tarrok remasters recently that are very good.
So yeah, they've got a lot of that, a lot of that
stuff figured out, and every time they do one of these, they really
do give it a lot of love. And I think Night Dive is one
that was recently. They weren't acquired by Embracer. I think they were inquired
by Atari actually an Atari more stuff like this that that Night Dive does.
So hopefully they're able to do that and Atari doesn't beef it. Jandy,
I'm going to talk now. There you go, Bud, you did it?
You did it? Okay, I overcame my robot sickness. What do
you think it was? What do you have the ghosts and the machine get
there? What do you think the internet has been garbo at my apartment lately?
Like, hey, yeah, we know you work from home and we
know that you signed up for the good Internet just because of that specific reason.
What if we just stopped working occasionally? That is pretty much every ISP's
like slogan now, like we know you work from home and we hate you,
yeah, and we know you have no other option because yeah, you
want, you're gonna go get what DSP. Good luck with that, Yes,
LuSE I want to know what DSP is. That's actually I think it's
a bad YouTuber. Yeah, just like us, I do. Okay,
I do have a question about Star Wars games. There's a in my Discord
community of beef against me for dismissing Star Wars Battlefront the early games, because
I was just like, yeah, no, those were Star Wars Battlefront and
baffront to They're good games, but like you know, they were like eights.
They were fine for the time and they never went moved on. But
like the children are like, no, those are the best Star Wars games
bar none that nothing comes close. And I'll be like, how do you
all remember it? Do you remember it as being like the most important Star
Wars games or do you remember it just being like, yo, those were
good games. I think it's just a generational thing. My attitude is is
just a general just they were good games. They were fine games, but
not like life changing. Like I like Shadows of the Empire way more than
those games, even though I acknowledged that as a game it's not better,
it's probably worse, but I have that like affinity. It was like the
first second and sixty four game I ever played. Although if they did a
triple a remake of that game Shadow Empire, that would hit real nice es.
Actually it's great. I mean the things you do not super fun,
but but on on paper it sounds awesome. You steal the jet pack from
Boba fet Yeah, you ride on a speeder bike through through moss Isley,
Yeah, whatever, some java's for no reason. Star Wars nerds, I
only played Rogue Squadron on games that was good, and I was like,
honestly, that game made me give a ship for a little bit about Star
Wars, Like I was like, this feels important. I'm doing the your
big wedge Antilles mark is what you are exactly that, That's what I want
on my tombstone, and I fucking I don't know, Like I just fell
in love with that ship for for a really long time. But Rogue Squadron
like defined my GameCube experience in the beginning there for sure, going to say
is infamous. Uh and and really they push the boundaries. I don't think
those games necessarily can hold up today. Maybe they can. Maybe there's no
way to know. Yeah, I don't know, but I remember you could
play as a car, which is pretty cool, fly around as a cary.
I liked the Rogue Squadron for the N sixty four because if you put
in a code the Factor five, the developer was such at such mastery of
the sixty four that they had space left over on the cartridge to do a
full voiceover director's commentary for every level. Yeah that's sick. Yeah, that
was. It was wild. I'm like one of the first times I've ever
seen that in a game. I mean, obviously Valve does them a lot,
but not very common yep. And it was like, especially on a
cartridge game for the N sixty four back then, It's like, yeah,
that was wild showing off. They were they always were him And then they
went on to develop the Hulu app for Nintendo Switch. Well the people,
not not Factor five themselves. I was gonna say, I think it may
be a generational thing because I remember those two first Battlefront games very very fondly,
and then I was a very big Mercenaries head because I was a child
when that came out. Sure, yeah, I thought that game was suck
as hell. I remember like a bunch of friends and I just coming over
and just dusting out the good old multi tap and then just having a ball
of a time with those hours Battlefront games. Mercenary is the same developer.
It's pandemic, right, yeah, yeah, oh yeah, no, I
love Mercenaries games were great. I love you by that Battlefront collection coming out
here pretty soon a couple of weeks. So well, I'm gonna go back,
and I keep telling everybody that yells at me about this, I will
give it a fair shot. Let's see, see like an HD re release
basically, yeah right, I think you know, you could hope for the
best. I read a headline. I didn't even look into it. It's
like, oh, it's missing some key feature or something like that. But
I think it's spilled starst here. Yeah right. They couldn't get the rights
to Dard for some reason. He got it. It's like he's got his
own representation, and so they couldn't get him. It's like, yeah,
they're gonna put Lord Helmet in their march manning you can't. Yeah. Well,
speaking about old games, I for some reason decided to check out a
very hot game, super duper hot. I checked out StarCraft two. What
the fuck is going on? Yeah? What is happening? You're like the
youngest person I know what is Like? What are you doing? I?
Uh so, my experience with StarCraft two is watching Brad Shoemaker and uh Norman
Chan play that a lot on this website. And uh I never had the
means because I didn't have PC back in the day. And someone in the
Giant Bomb discord linked me ado of I guess like the StarCraft Championships or eight
Championship game that had happened, and I was like, wow, that looks
great. And I've also been playing Unicorn Overlord, which is very RTS light.
That's a very fat demo, folks. If you are looking for something
to play to bide your time, download that demo because that is like I've
seen people spend like six eight hours in that Chit shouts out the generous demos
two podcast points for you. But the StarCraft too. I don't know if
y'all have kept up to date with it at all. It's free to play
now. Oh I didn't know that, which I didn't realize either even the
campaign. The campaign. Yeah, wow. So I downloaded that and then
quickly realized this is one of those things that I will never ever go pro
in. I will never Yeah, you'll realize that. Well, you know,
I'll never be competitive because after watching that video of tournament play and then
me going through the tatorial and bumbling around having to move the camera with the
mouse. Uh, I will never get my ap ms there. But yeah,
what are your APMs? Like you like like four or five? I
don't fucking know. I'm just like, oh, I'll just drag this over
these guys. These guys have big guns. We should we should do.
We could do a scrub league for StarCraft two if you want, I'll play
you some matches in that. What is your what is your familiarity with StarCraft
two? Then I played StarCraft one with my friends, split screen on star
on Nintendo sixty four. All right, with four megabyte expansion pack. There
we go, same, there we go. Wow, I don't think we
finished that. I don't think we finished that. I got them plugged before
he finished it. So we should do team games. We should do two
v two against the community. Maybe maybe we can ask Brad and Norm that
would be fun. I don't know if they've they've been. I'm sure Brad
may check out on Doda here and there, but like I don't know if
he's gone back to StarCraft two, probably not for a while. That'd be
fun, challenging. We should do a formal challenge right now, all right,
like it, I'll get the the glove out and smack them in the
face with it. There we go. There it could happen. But hey,
that game runs incredibly well, especially if you have a modern PC.
You don't say a lot of weird things. For me personally, just going
to an arts for I don't want to say the first time, but in
a while, I guess where I'm used. The last arts I probably played
was Halo Wars two, and that was with the controller. Uh so it
feels very odd to say. It's like, wow, you have such precise
control with the mouse and keyboard. It turns out maybe they shouldn't make those
for the count. Okay, well, what what race did you play?
I've played Terran Okay, yeah, that's the first campaign, right is Terran?
Now you are you going through? You're going through campaign. You're not
like doing multiplayer missions or campaign's fun. Like, I really liked playing the
campaign. They do some like really good progression stuff. Narratively, it's interesting.
Visually it's really cool. So yeah, I mean, I I've never
I don't think I've ever played multiplayer in any StarCraft game, but I've always
enjoyed the campaign. Yeah, And I maybe sat in on the campaign for
like maybe two hours, and then I was just stuck thinking, what how
come they stop doing StarCraft because of Doda's, because of MOBA's But I don't
know. I think I go back to me And I was thinking of this
with Unicorn Overlord, where I think I'd enjoy the setting more if it was
not a fantasy setting. And I think that has been one of my problems
with DODA is like I just don't fucking care about these dudes with swords.
Give them a laser sword or a sand worm or something. I get the
sense that new owner of StarCraft, Phil Spencer, wants to bring back StarCraft
with sometime in the next ten years, but a lot of people that are
responsible for StarCraft who have left Blizzard and they started up like three different studios
to make rts's like there are that's literally happening right now. They got a
bunch of funding because they're hey, we used to work in Blizzards. So
people like, here's a bunch of money, go make a game. And
they're all, well, we're gonna make a StarCraft two or StarCraft successor.
So there's gonna be a little bit of a chance to see what that genre
could do here in the next couple of years. And it's really not just
them, there's people inspired by that as well that are definitely gonna make that.
When we talked, someone on the GB couch GB at Night was making
a StarCraft like so they worked on StarCraft, so yeah, they know it
happened. I played a StarCraft successor. It was called StarCraft Ghost. Yeah,
oh did you really play Ghosts? I actually did play. It's amazing
on GameCube. That's amazy. Three fucking two thousand and seven maybe, And
yeah, they had a playable demo of StarCraft Ghost. It did not feel
great. Sure for those that are not aware or not very old. StarCraft
Ghost was a canceled StarCraft project that was basically splinter Cell in the StarCraft universe,
and you played as a Ghost, which is like a you know,
elite, like a Spec Ops kind of character. Yeah, and uh yeah
conceptually interesting. Not again, didn't feel great when I played it. Maybe
that's why I got canceled. But I'd like to see them do more stuff
with that series. Like, I think there's other directions that aren't RTS that
they could take it in. We've seen Riot take you know, the League
series into all sorts of different directions. So yeah, I've heard people play
that. That original Prey too, that was like, oh yeah, you
were like a space bounty hunter or something like that. Yeah. I don't
know if it was ever played. I certainly never played it, but I
do remember seeing the demo. Maybe that's what it was. It was a
really impressive demo, right, that's what it was. But yeah, I
don't know if it ever got to playable state. I remember Ghost was like
the thing that I was like, oh, this is an RTS, I'll
want I'll play that, you know. I remember being like peaked over that.
But yeah, and that was it too. Detached from a time when
Blizzard was making a lot of different kinds of games. Like, yeah,
obviously they had their their successes with Warcraft and StarCraft at the time, but
before, like a couple of years before that, they were making like the
Lost Vikings or three Vikings Lost Vikings on rock and roll racing. So it's
like, yeah, it made sense for them to be like, well,
yeah, we can make other kinds of games with these very popular things.
And then I think they realized it's like, man, well we're just gonna
focus on what works. I mean, they have made other kinds of games.
You know, They've made Hearthstone and they made Diabolo, like you know,
they have like six or seven genres that they touch on. Yeah they
don't. Yeah, they don't make Blackthorn anymore though, right exactly. Yeah.
The dangerous thing that this got me thinking of, Hey, what if
I just devote all my time to and get super into after that little taste
of StarCraft two is like, what if I just get super into Warhammer just
because I like these weird dudes in space. That's the thing. I like
the painting aspect of it, that that part is appealing to me. It's
doing some crafts you started like nodding your head, no, and just like
you looked upset. There's it's like you're if you become a war war hammer
guy, you have to become a war hammer guy, like you have to
go all in, like there's no half asking that that is showing up to
meets on the weekend to put all your little soldier guys on the table and
showing them off and getting into the lower and all that stuff and listen.
I'm happy for you if that's where your life is headed, but I do
think we will lose you at some point. Okay, okay, I just
wanted a quick pulse check there. This is a saying goodbye, is what
that is. I'm turning into a robot because I'm just plugging myself into the
machine. That's right, Yes, the Emperor God. We should play that
co op game again, that Hammer. Yeah, I want to check in
on that again. Oh yeah, the Organs in that game. Fan.
Yeah. I was on my walk the other day, like I want to
listen to that track, and I had to find it and listen to it
on my walk. It was a pretty epic walk. Jan. Something that
you all may lose me to is Balatro And we know this. We finally
had a successful run say it was. It was based off of a just
beefing the crap out of two pairs and then just rolling with that, and
then just every other joker just swapping them out, trying to sell them,
just to support these two pair. And let me tell you, I beat
the last final boss antie with like maybe a million, and then I was
like, I'm hot shit now I'm gonna keep going in endless mode and immediately
got stopped by the next one. It's really humbling. Yeah, I love
I uh found myself in a really like sometimes you get that really hot shoe,
you know what I mean, where you're just sort of like, oh
my god, all these polychrome jokers, I just like everything like makes sense.
It's really playing into all my my full house bullshit, and then you
just hit a wall in such a depressing feeling, that deflating way. It's
tough. I've not I've still not done it. I've still not done the
run, and I will one day. I'll get there. So you way,
it really helps when you pay a lot of attention to the organization of
the jokers. Yeah, so that helped when I was like I'm putting the
X multiplier or not the plus multipliers. The plus multiplayer just adds to your
multiplayer. The X multiplayer multiplies your multipliers, so it's like that makes them
it adds up much quicker. So you put that over the side, especially
if you have something that's going to cause everything to fire again, and you
put that over the sites, you get the multiplayer twice multiplier. Excuse me.
The thing I've noticed is like, oh, steel cards are very important
because you've got a bunch of those in your hand, and then you have
something that does fire. Everything that's happening in your hand again, no matter
what you play is going to be a huge point getter. So yeah,
I still have only won the one time, but I put it down pretty
quickly after that to try to get some of these other games out of the
way. But it's something I could spend all my time with. I do
think about Bilotchro a lot still, I do, like I just want to,
I just want to, like I just want to like a casino.
No no, no, no, no no no no. I don't want
to. I don't want and I just want to get I don't want to
with me, no, see that, like and again we'll talk about that
story too in the news spot, but like, I don't get that vibe
from this game. I understand a little bit how that association is drawn,
but yeah, I just there's something about how kind of like there's just all
the right bells and whistles that fire off. There's something about it that just
feels like very like saccharine and sort of sweet about it that I just want
to like be up in all the music and the sounds and everything. I
just it's a very comforting gameplay experience for like reasons other than like you know,
number go up right, Like I mean at the big part, like
it does do all the dopamine stuff, but I think it's just well designed.
Beyond that, it feels lovingly crafted. Yeah, that makes it.
It makes it feel better than just like, oh, this is something that
is you know, excreting my mic the sack of my brain that creates dopamine
in a really rough way. It's like, now this is doing it in
such a way that feels like art, and that's nice. Ye make up
more jokers. I just want to like create joker cards. Did you see
the joker card that I do and Cone made of Mike as kwan Chi.
It's very good. It's really pretty so nice. Yeah. Wait, so
the jokers they don't obey like Pemdas at all. It's left right, it's
just left right, left right. Yes, so keep that that. It
makes a big difference, It really does, all right. I got absolutely
boned one run because I found a joker that turns all the cards and it
considers them face cards. And then the boss blind I had for that run
was basically all face cards are debuffed, so all of my cards were debuffed.
It was great, And that was like the sixth and sixth round and
was like, all right, that can happen up and then just got pushed
off the mountain straight. It's great. Good the confidence that you accumulate in
that game and just how quickly that rug can get pulled from. Talk about
that, you're just like losing on the seventh ante, the eighth ante.
It's rough. You're walking in and you're like, what's up, bitches,
I'm gonna skip all these blinds. Let's go eighty thousand. I got that
like every hand for like the last seven hands. No, I'll get that
on high cards. Yeah, high card. Yeah, it's just a man.
Some of those bosses man, fuck that. Yeah, it's a it's
a drawing cards face down that bones me all the time. That is like
I don't have confidence that I'm like I'm gonna get through this. I'm just
gonna I'm just gonna play these cards face down and it's like a high card.
Oh okay, cool, all right, fantastic, Jeff grub last game
we have here, no games week specifically, Uh, you have been playing
a game that I think is exciting you and it's exciting me, and I
feel it through the internet here. You hope it's the game that I think.
I don't have the rundown in front of me, but I hope it's
the game that I'm thinking of. It's almost certainly not. It is Expeditions,
a mud runner game. It is a game that was not it.
It was damn it. I was actually hoping maybe in the end. I'm
a big fan of spin Tires, which is what this series was originally called
when it was like made by some little developer in Eurasia somewhere I don't honestly
don't know, and they like like it was all about, hey, this
tire is messing up some mud. Look at the mud deformation technology, and
I got I was like, yeah, I like that. I want to
play this, And then it got turned into more of a game with mud
Runner and then snow Runner from Saber Interactive when they took over the franchise,
and now they have this new one that they is like, you know,
mud Runner and snow Runner are very much like, here is a little town
and you need to go around sort of fixing up this bridge. So go
get the wood over there, go get the stone over there, drive it
over this bridge. We're going to fix this bridge. And now that you
get to this other side of town, so you could do the similar kinds
of quest over there. And it was like there's a lot of cool stuff
to that. And still Runner really got it right in terms of making it
feel like a good game where it's like everything was progressing in a satisfying way.
This is like an even more gamified version of it, where it's like
it is these smaller expeditions and it's much more bite sized. Seems like it
might be more ideal for multiplayer, but I'm early on and it is still
very much that that game underneath where I am in the second Tatorial mission and
I'm driving my truck over to this this the area where I'm supposed to go
to like trigger the next tatorial block of text, and I see something over
the side. I'm like, oh, I think that's a new truck part
I could unlock if I go over there. So I'm driving this like really
underpowered exploratory vehicle down and it immediately tips, and the game like doesn't it
wasn't supposed to tip. I wasn't supposed to go down there yet, and
the game is like, doesn't do anything. It's just like, yeah,
you tipped, Like I deal with that now, And so I like,
I have to switch to my other truck and you can recover the vehicles.
You could do all these things, but I never when I play these games,
I tend to want to live with my mistakes because that's much more satisfying.
So I go get in another truck, I drive it over there,
I get the winch out, I winch the truck back up out of this
ravine that it fell down, get it upright again. And that whole process
is kind of like the satisfying part for me of this game, where it's
like you are gonna take risks, You're gonna take these big trucks over these
hills and you're gonna make dumb mistakes and you're gonna tip and look like an
idiot, and now you've got to figure out how to solve that. And
it's not about you know, going fast, and it's just about big lumbering
machines moving over stone at about four miles per hour. And then while in
loud, you look behind you and you went through some mud and you could
see the tracks there and it looks just so realistic and satisfying, and this
game's really good at all that stuff. I am curious, being pretty early
on how I'm gonna feel about the sort of mission structure of this game.
It's not about like going fixing up a little town. It's like, no,
you got to go from this point and take this bespoke device that is
a radio tower, had set it up over there, and it's more about
like just going from point A to point B. I'm curious to see how
that works. I really have no read on that quite yet, but I
am thinking that I will make Jan, maybe you and Dan get in there
with me and play around some this multiplayer so I can force you guys to
see what it's like and have a good time. So Yeah, I love
mud. Let me roll around it in it, let me drive around in
it. I'll be down a topper set in the Super Mario Brothers movie.
Mud is both clean and dirty at the same time. So yes, that's
on the box art of this time. An. That was a great hitch,
I want to say, because I had zero interest in it before and
now you described it. It sounds a lot like Death Stranding, and I'm
kind of into it. Yes. When I first saw Death Stranding, I
was like, they are making one of those games. So when I played
Death Stranding and I was like, I would lose some packages. Yes,
oh my god, I'm so excited. I'm gonna go track down those packages
and stuff like that, and the packages would actually disappear. So I was
like, I kind of wish this game was even more rough on players than
it is. But yes, it is definitely a Strand game adjacent. Yeah,
that's awesome. I'm definitely into that. Can It's worth checking out at
the very least. Can you call the stream of jan Muddy Buddies? Well,
now I have to oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, let's get
let's get dirty grub. Jeff. Question for you, do you think you
would enjoy living in the cars universe. If you were just like a pickup
truck just rolling driving through the mud, it's you know, I when I
was a kid, I was not like you know how some kids are like
obsessed with cars and trucks and stuff like that. I was not. But
I do find my stuff more these days, maybe because these games. When
I see like a big truck, I'm like, that's a big truck.
Cool. So you're like maybe more so now than ever. Well, is
there any interesting, like any of like the trucking simulator games at all or
is it just like is it just like this style from this dev this is?
This definitely fits my style the most because it is all about, like,
I like physics systems. That's the biggest thing for me in games is
physics simulations. That is right exactly, And now that's what it like paying
for your mistakes because you messed around with the physics simulation and now you have
to like leverage what the physics are capable of to solve this problem you created
for yourself. I like that. And now obviously a driving simulator is gonna
have that stuff. But that's more about staying on the straight and narrow and
not getting into messy situations in the first place. Here, it's very much
about like listen, the goal is right up that hill, and sure you
could take this game's got some cool stuff to like path out your your your
things a little a little bit like Breath of the Wild, where it's like
take your drone, look around and you're gonna find the path. And it's
like, well, that path goes way over there, and I only have
so much fuel and it looks like it looks like a somewhat rough path.
So I'm gonna have to use four wheel drive and that uses a little bit
more fuel, and you can like lower your tire pressure to get more traction.
That uses that much more fuel. And I'm like, I know that's
the safe way, but I'm gonna use a lot of fuel. Why don't
I just try to go up this way that has like one up there,
and I can winch to that and sort of drag myself up. And you
get it in your head like I can use the physics to solve this problem,
and of course you just make it worse for yourself, and so then
you have to actually go get another truck, go the safe way, pull
that other car up with the wench to rescue this situation. I love all
that stuff and that's not happening in an American truck simulator, right, Just
there's a fine line, Grub, I just don't want you to turn it
into like one of these motherfuckers like these wheel like no, these like mad
max fucking losers who like drive around town with their gigantic like fifty eight inch
wheels and then bullshit and like they're just negative attitude, and I just don't
want you to there's a fine line, like you can be a truck PERV
as you clearly are. Yes, I think I am, and I think
the way that if it were to manifest in you know irl, I would
get one of those like two thousand dollars Chinese mini trucks. Oh yeah,
yeah, I know those not that much bigger than a golf cart. But
ye got a like a flatbed back there. Sure, yeah, let's do
it. Yeah, let's do it. Let's vinyl wrap one, Yeah,
let's do it. Key trucks is that they are? I'm like, I
do think about that pretty frequently because it's like about twice a year I find
myself renting a truck from Lows and it's like most of that stuff could be
done with one of these things. And I bet I could get my money's
worth out of that thing. You feel like, are like six hundred bucks?
Right, Like how much could they be? I think, you know,
I think they got up to about two thousand dollars. Okay, so
yeah cool? Oh yeah, right now a giant bomb one. Yeah,
let's get a logo on there. I'll drive around the city just with like
the bomb logo on. That'll be tell us this is a good idea.
Yeah, well, around the city with a bomb logo probably not the best
idea. So Okayrancisco though, so things are just like off the way all
right, but no, it's good to have this vetted. Thank you.
Russ's very important. What was your game? What was the game you were
talking? Yeah, this is very important, and I'm sure you guys have
talked about it before, but I'm going to reiterate that this is the best
multiplayer game that I've played over the last five years. Okay, it's called
Hell Divers two. Yeah. Yeah, now that I got like a dragon
out of the way, it is the big part of that was to spend
a lot more time in Hell Divers two enjoy a lot unbelievable. I have
not felt the drive to play multiplayer and I can't even remember the last time
I've like felt this push. It is such a cooperative, intense, funny,
silly goofy experience to like work together with a bunch of other folks trying
to like blast away bugs and collect samples and rush out at the last second
as like the entire evac point gets overrun. They've done such an amazing job.
I'm so impressed by the studio, which is obviously like was not expecting
the like enormous success that this thing was making their game. Yeah, because
it's hell Divers won from a slightly different perspective and a lot of the fewatures
are the same, and it's like we're just making the thing we like to
make right. And it blew up, and it blew up, and you
know, it was for two weeks pretty unplayable from a like access standpoint,
which is obviously a drag, but you know, props to them. They
have really gone all out to try to make that right. And I would
even add, like as a game, it is structurally like could be way
greedier than it is, Like they really are very generous with the amount of
content you're getting for the forty dollars. Even though there are battle passes and
things like that, they're constantly giving you the real money currency in the game
just by playing, so for people that are really dedicated can earn enough to
buy battle passes and buy new cosmetics. And yeah, I like, every
time I play that game, I have an amazing, like shareable experience that
I don't normally have when I play multiplayer games. Yeah, I mean,
it's it's simpitly the kind of thing where it lives in a similar space to
me as as the games where it's like it's about the physics. The game
has a deep physics system, but it's all about like you're the the consequences
of your actions are non negotiable. They will happen. There's no like sometimes
like you have the eye frames here or something like that. No, you're
gonna pay for everything you do if you don't do it the right way,
and that I think people are realizing that rules. It's very much in the
vein of you know, it's it's not a from software game, but it
has similar sort of vibes of we are making our thing, and you have
to, like you have to kind of agree to be like a part of
what's gonna happen here. We're not gonna meet you halfway, you meet us
halfway. And I think people are welcoming that. Yeah, I think it
walks the line. You know. I worry that someone might hear that and
think it's like an Arma two level sim and it's certainly not that. But
do you have to be very intentional with what you're doing. And I think
they own the fact that people are gonna fuck up and you know, kill
their teammates and stuff like that using airstrikes. I mean, they've been making
this sort of game forever. Even before Hell Divers. They were making the
Magic a series which is all about like accidentally team killing your buddies, So
they know how funny and silly it can be, and they just kind of
leaned into it. The other thing I would say is, unlike a lot
of multiplayer games, you can really have a great time with someone that's just
starting out paired with someone that's been playing for thirty hours. There are unlocks
that you get from leveling up and spending currency and stuff like that, but
really, like there's a lot of early stuff that you get that will make
you able to contribute in these later maps, and it's not like you need
anything to really like help out the rest of the team. You can just
like, oh, I'm going to call in these like anti tank rockets that
normally you know you might pick something else if you were a higher level,
but here you've got a low level option. And so I think they've just
designed a game that is incredibly friendly for people just jumping in and having a
good time with their friends, which is again pretty rare these days. Have
you been queuing up with any randoms at all? For us, I've done
both. I've definitely played with people I know. I've played with other members
of the Besties. I've played with other friends, and I've been playing with
randoms and the randoms. I'm genuinely I'm usually pretty impressed because I think people
know that, like the end goal was more or less the same for everyone.
There was a stretch there where I know that a lot of people found
out about the game, and there were like xp like hacks, more or
less like people were running the same mission over and over again. So a
lot of new players ended up like a very high level and We're trying to
like queue in in those random cues, and you'd end up with people that
didn't know what the hell they were doing. And that's not the most fun
with randoms. It's fine if it's a buddy and you're on Discord, but
it's not the most fun with randoms. But here it felt like just a
real like you know, once you're playing with people that really know it,
total command over the situation, even if it's people that aren't on MIC,
like a lot of people aren't on MIC, and it's like fine, which
I really appreciated. So yeah, that's the thing that has me encouraged is
that I've heard a lot of people have good experiences not being on MIKE.
And I'm like getting into the night and now I'm like, I do want
to play a game. And I look over at the PC and my eye
was at the PC all day. I think I'm just going to stick to
the Steam Deck And now I got the game. I heard the game runs
pretty okay on there, and if it doesn't, I you know, I
got the I'll get the roger it does. I've played on Steam Deck as
much as I played on Gaming PC, and that's music to my ear,
I'm gonna be playing a lot more of it that way, you'll probably have
to run into like a forty FPS for but he turned down the visuals and
it runs very smoothly at forty so it's totally playable. Okay, that's awesome.
I had a very positive experience before we go to break here playing with
a Raindo, and I just wound up sticking with this dude for maybe a
good good couple of missions. He was on Mike, he would still ping,
but the only everything he said on Mike was hell, yeah, brother,
just in different different tones. Yeah, I mean, I was Dan
from Fargo. I had a very similar circumstance where it was a guy that
like could have been named Brooklyn with like a deep Brooklyn accent, and he
was like on our squad and he was just like dropping, like hey,
get out of here. It was so amazing, and it was like exactly
what I wanted from like a random experience with players online. It's been it's
been dynamite. I'm there's been leaks about what they're doing in the future,
and I'm like so so pumped about how that game grows. The first game
had mechs in it, and obviously they're saying like Mexico coming soon. So
yep, I'm down, Yeah for sure. Oh I can't wait to step
on one of my teammates. Uh huh, god, yep, I believe
we you know, we played that Hell Divers one and like just kind of
in that moment, I'm like, this is such a cool idea. I
hope Hell Divers two works out, and to see it just live up and
beyond expectations, it's has been so nice. It's been so cool to see.
It's also funny that it's built in an engine that like no one has
touched in five years, and people are like, oh, that's a bad
engine, but honestly, this is an entire team that knows that engine backwards
and forwards and can pull off the insane visuals that are in this game.
And man, I mean again, it's it's not been the smoothest of launches,
but now that they seem to have it kind of mostly worked out,
it's been totally amazing. The atmosphere of an automaton planet where where you know,
with explosions and trees blowing up and uh, the fog of war happening,
and they're they're glowing red eyes and lasers Terminator game. Anyone has ever
by far By a country mile? Yeah? Have have y'all seen that video
circulating where someone pointed out that this game reminds them exactly of playing through middle
Gear Solid five. Yeah, that shit was crazy like the one to one.
Yeah, animations, Yeah, the animations are very close. I think
they're going to be leaning into the stealth mechanics more in hell divers as time
goes by. They've already been some data leaks about suppressed weapons, so I
could even see them like doing like full on stealth steal missions. Yeah,
it could be really awesome. This this is how I finally get so Calm
to or so comb five whatever we're at with so Cammon, he's always so
selfish. He's just like, this is how I do Espresso so calm,
Like that's me. Two things I talk about all the time Espresso com somehow
gamble on a crane game, Espresso so com speaking about betting and stuff.
Jeff Grubb did something very mean to me when we jumped on Discord at first,
and then he had his virtual camera be coin pusher Casino. That was
this motherfucker tells me. Oh, it's out now, Jared, And then
you know what came about early access? You know what I wound up doing
in between when my audio. Maybe that's why maybe I should have download games
while I'm streaming a podcast. Coin Pusher it's out now. Goddamn? Is
this really a game based on the coin Pusher minigame? At the game of
course? What do you mean? Okay, let's just okay, we're gonna
go to break soon, but let's just see this. Yeah, okay,
great, coins get pushed by a thing. Hey, it's physics. It's
scary fun though, Jeff, look at this, Look got my radical.
Great, you're like inside the push machine. How what a wonderful life?
And this what just does have any that the pachinko sort of pegs, so
like the coins just flopping down like a big stupid like the pegs. I
like the pegs battle. Oh yeah, that was the first That was the
first level. So this one's peg is that DL scene? Yeah, you
gotta pay for the pegs. I'm sure there's an audience for this, but
this is the saddest thing I've ever seen. You're looking at the audience,
I like halfway there with your rust. I mean people make fun of me
about pimball. The fuck at here, It's just there's just something, it's
primal, and by that I mean it's probably evil. If you are such
a physics perv, what are you doing and not being obsessed with pinball?
Oh no, I like pinball a lot. Maybe they don't like spears.
Pimba seems expensive and then I'll got the hookup like you do. I'm just
saying, like you can go play it for when when I'm presented with the
option, I do play pinball? Okay, fair? Then we can how
long time take to fucking do anything in this game? You know at the
time of physics, the time of like, hey, coins can only move
so far. This is on it fell down there, We go, okay,
and then what happens when one falls down, Well, you gotta get
him down to the second tray there and then something has to fall down those
coins. The number goes up and number and then you beat the level when
you were enough money found. You sound very skeptical, Russ frush Stick.
I'm staring at this gameplay, which I can't even like. It's just like
a shelf that's moving back and forth. Is there going to be like an
epic moment where like a ton of COIs fall and I'm going to be like
converted it happened every time, then it would like it would not be working
on the part of your brain that only gets happy when it happens one out
of a hundred times. But yes, that is what's going to happen.
Frushtick. I'm sorry, Russ. Do you not enjoy watching paint dry?
This is like if you were playing Angry Birds, if you could only push
the bird like a meter, that's like it just like e scluted down on
the ground and you have to do that six hundred times for the birds to
eventually reach the pigs. Think of this as like it's almost turn based now
right. I mean I'm going to take a turn playing something else nice?
Yeah, all right, okay, uh, we're gonna pull Jeff Grub away
from pushing coins and get them to do the news right after this break.
Shit. I said this during the break, but I'm going to say it
again. I got an email from an old Airbnb host asking if I wanted
to go in on their place and kind of do a pseudo time share.
I'm not about it, and I don't think about Airbnb anymore. Russ,
I feel like you feel the same way. Yeah, I think I'm totally
done. And that was like a big Airbnb person for a while. You
were the first. Yeah, that was my first thought. That's where I
would go. It's like, oh, i'm traveling somewhere, I'm gonna look
at Airbnb's. And even as recent as like last summer, I was still
doing it, but I started having really miserable experiences. I had one in
particular, let's hear it, let's hear what. You couldn't have been as
bad as the one that we had. I don't know, man, Oh
remember the hair? Remember the hair? Oh yeah, that was terrifying.
Yeah yeah, Jeff and I stayed at one with a gaggle. It wasn't
just us on a romantic date, sadly, and yeah, there was like
terrifying art on the walls and there was a yeah no, this was far
worse than that, because that at least was clean. Yeah. So this
was upstate New York and we showed up and it was like a split situation
where there was like a little house and like a furnished barn, like one
of those barns that's like decked out and like, you know, nice,
like you can live in this barn. It's not like a barn barn.
And we showed up and I was with my party. Sorry how many people.
It's me, my wife and my son. That's it. Okay,
okay, And again not a huge space. But this was at a time
when we were really trying to sleep train him, and so our intention was
we were gonna put him in the house and use the baby monitor and my
wife and I would sleep in the barn. And we got into the house.
There was no heat in the house, totally heat off, and this
is like, you know, it wasn't no heat kind of time of year.
And then we go and we noticed there's no towels in the bathroom,
none, and no bags of no garbage bags in any of the garbage bags.
Okay, so we're like, okay, this is weird, but that's
fine. I'm going to message the owner. And the owner was very apologetic.
It's like, oh, I don't know what happened. We started using
a different cleaning person. Yeah, we'll like reimburse you if you want to
like go grab stuff, which at this point, I like don't super want
to like drive into town it's late at night. Sure, so we get
my kids settled. The heat is able to be turned on remotely, I
guess. So we get my kids settled. He's asleep, and my wife
and I go to like get set up in the barn area. And again
the barn is like nice and it's you know, got that like kind of
loll bean vibe to it. And we go up. There's like a lofted
bed area and we go up and there's no sheets on the bed. And
at this point it's like ten thirty at night, and I'm messaging the guy
being like, hey, there's no sheets on the bed, and he's like,
oh, there might be in the other house. So I go into
the other house and my kid again is still sleeping, so we're trying to
like not wake him up, hunting around for sheets. We find sheets.
We go back, We put the sheets back on the bed, and I
go to use the bathroom. And here, my friends, was the breaking
point, because in the bathroom was the largest dump I have ever seen in
my entire life, fully unflushed and like dried, there a ghost everything Before
that, I was like, I can manage this. I can manage this.
And that was like No, that is the ultimate disrespect, Like,
what the what the hell happened? So apparently what happened was he had the
owner had just switched cleaning people, and I guess the new clean according to
him, the new cleaning person, which I I kind of believe this because
he was very highly rated, as I only went to highly rated people,
and he did seem genuinely shocked and horrified. Okay, Okay, I just
I just love it, like we used a different cleaning service and they just
didn't understand this sun. It's one of those poop and cleaning services started left
the poop in just to get rid of the poop, take the dirt away.
Okay, got I gotta go. So all this is pretty bad.
It's now very late at night, and I'm messaging Airbnb to not only get
a refund, but figure out where we're going to stay. And at this
point they I spend an hour with their customer service where they're really fighting me.
They're like, well, you know, it's so at this point,
I can't leave because my son is asleep, it's the middle of the night,
and we don't have a place to stay, so we need to stay
somewhere. We're going to slay on couches or whatever we're going to do in
the poop house. But I need them to a refund me for the night
and find a new place for me to stay. And it as an hour
of me fighting with them. It was like an awful, truly awful customer
service experience that eventually I did get the refund. They did say, okay,
we'll give you twenty percent more of what you spent to stay somewhere else.
But what I sort of landed on was with the kid, I just
cannot take the risk anymore that when I show up at a place it's not
going to be Again, my standards are not I don't need a fucking five
star experience. I need no shit in the toilet and sheets on towel.
I'm a simple man, and I just I can't take the risk of like
blowing up a trip. So again, I have a trip coming up in
a month. You know, a buddy of mine is staying in Airbnb.
He's like, hey, you want to go, we can get like a
big one and we'll go splits. I was like, I'm sorry, I'm
gonna find like a hotel and just stay there because I can't show up and
just risk that it's going to be a disaster. Yeah, I mean that
experience is for the I do think that experience is pretty atypical, right,
I agree with you, but I but I've definitely had experience other experiences that
weren't as bad as that, but bad enough that it's like, for the
amount I'm paying, which is equal to a hotel, I'd rather just fucking
stay at a hotel and know what I'm getting. For the most part,
I'm mostly okay with Airbnb. I think the part of it that's really starting
to rub me the wrong way is the same thing like with Uber, where
like the sort of the honeymoon period is over and now it's the the experience
is like you, like you said, you are rolling the dice in a
lot of way and you're just getting a lot of disingenuous reviews that like something
is inherently wrong with the review thing. Like you know, I've been to
Vermont a couple times in the last six months, and like I had one
that was phenomenal and then one that was like just as highly rated but like
light years away from where what the other one was. And there's this inconsistency
that I just think is like broken. I think what happened My guess of
what happened was for the first five or even ten years of Airbnb, however
long it's been around, they had people that were genuinely going and putting their
places up for Airbnb. It's a place that they normally live in or like
it's their guest house. Yeah, and then uh, oh, we're going
to be away this weekend or whatever. And so they really were like pot
committed to making sure it was a good experience. And I think what has
happened is a bunch of you know, financial organizations have gone out and bought
a bunch of homes over the pandemic when the prices skyrocketed, and now they're
just selling it out. And those companies will never ever give a shit about
an Airbnb. They're just gonna do the bare minimum to get you in and
out and paid. I did. Actually, as we were talking about this,
remember one other AIRBNBA experience I had it in San Francisco. I got
back to my door one night, it was about eleven o'clock at night and
there was an eviction notice on the door. Oh. We've had some moments
with that company over the years I think I'm done. Yeah, oh god,
I just remember a host reaching out to me afterwards, because you know,
when you leave a review, you have that message that is only to
the host. Yeah, you get posted. I just kindly said, like,
hey man, your water your water kettle had molded in it just heads
up, like I'm not gonna blast you for that or whatever, because that's
probably something that only gets cleaned out occasionally. This host sends me an email
afterwards saying like how dare I tell them how to run their Airbnb and like
proceeds to give me a bad dog. I'm just letting you know. So
no one that would actually get super mad at it gets like up set with
you or some shit. So anyways, the mentality I was in when I
like, so I had to decide do I want to review the ship house?
Yeah? And I was like my default is normally yes, I'm going
to be very honest. But what I didn't want to have happen is like
this guy to like come back at me. So I just didn't review it
at all. I didn't do a positive obviously, but like, yeah,
I didn't want that anxiety of like wondering what this guy would possibly do.
So what a great system we have. It's just really shitty and like again,
the prices these days, with the like add on fees and everything that
they throw at you trying to make Airbnb a profitable company. Just stay at
a fucking hotel if you can. I know it's not always an option,
but if you're able to, you know, definitely a more consistent bet.
Yeah. Remember hotels, Yeah, yep, occasionally turns out we actually need
them. Yeah. I missed the little soaps, Jeff Greb You know what
I also miss what's that? The news? I actually don't miss the news.
The news has been just poop. News has been rough. The news
has been poop house. The news has been driving this give the news a
bad review. Nintendo switch emulator u Zuo will fold and have to pay two
point four million dollars to Nintendo to settle a lawsuit that Nintendo brought against it.
Nintendo recently filed that lawsuit against the developers of Uzuo, a prominent Nintendo
switch emulator, accusing them of enabling piracy on a large scale. Now,
it appears that the developers of u Zoo have agreed to cease their activities and
comply with Nintendo's demands, including paying two point four million dollars in damages.
Tropic Ka's, the LLC responsible for developing Uzu and Citra, the emulator for
three DS that'll become relevant here in a moment, have announced this agreement.
Basically, they're handing over like the Uzu website over to Nintendo. They're promising
to take everything down off get hub. The stuff is already happened, they
can't distribute it anymore. Basically, they are wiping it from the internet as
much as as possible, from the official source of the thing, and they
will have to cease development on it as well. So if like a new
game comes out and it doesn't run well on Uzoo, well that's just not
going to get updated, at least not by the people at Tropic K's this
As part of this, the people who developed uzub were also responsible for Citra.
They are taking Citra offline as well, so the three DS emulator for
a platform that has been deprecated and is no longer supported by Nintendo, including
taking down the e shop. I believe that is no longer available as well.
Basically the same exact fate as Uzu. This lawsuit was announced last week,
and it was the idea for Nintendo was you are violating DMCA by showing
people how to bypass our encryption. It wasn't necessarily that the emulator itself is
illegal. It is how you are taught about it and walking people through ways
to enable piracy. And there's been some evidence that the people responsible for Zu
did a lot of these things. For example, they had a Patreon maybe
already kind of toeing the line of that's not a great idea. What's especially
not a great idea is apparently behind this Patreon paywall, they had specific fixes
to get copyrighted games running on u Zoo that you could only get if you
went to the Patreon. And it's that kind of stuff that it's like,
as soon as people started hearing that, oh oh brother, you fed up,
and now everyone's gonna have to pay because these things will not be available
anymore. Two things here first one. First one, hello you zoo.
Pretty good. Number two, don't fucking open up a bond store and be
like you can smoke weed in all this, Yeah, just put your weed
in here. Yeah, put all your weed in there, and then put
a lighter to it and then smoke all of it out. Of this thing
that's really only for weed, but we should be saying it's for tobacco.
I mean, there is reu Jinx, which is another switch emulator that has
sort of dodged this so far because they've been very buttoned up on this stuff.
They don't they don't say this stuff out loud, at least not frequently,
not too often, not into such a degree that Tropic Hayes did with
its Patreon And obviously they're trying to get people sign up with their patreons,
so they were being a little cavalier, but Nintendo came for them in the
end. You know, what does this mean for long term? You know,
the results for emulation things like that. You know, people are still
going to keep working on this stuff. It's very much a hobby for a
lot of people. But it does seem like it will probably have a somewhat
short term cooling effect on the kinds of work that has done on emulators for
Nintendo hardware, which has traditionally been the most popular thing to emulate. Yeah,
it does seem like. One of the things that came up in the
story was Nintendo claiming that because you Uzu's primary purpose was to circumvent the encryption
that is in Nintendo device or I guess switch devices specifically, and then CETR
to a lesser extent. That's what was like the line. And again everything
you mentioned about the Patreon certainly relevant as well. So it does to me
what that tells me is like I think earlier consoles where like encryption was like
either zero or very very limited. I kind of makes me think, like
that's not something people are going to chase. It does make me wonder what
it means for the future, where like I think a lot of these companies
are gonna look to their consoles and make sure there's that layer of protection and
whether that affords them the ability to go after YouTubers just purely talking about like
how to emulate or not even how to just like, hey, this device
emulates GameCube games, or this device and emulates PS five games really well.
Is that it enough to go after someone in the future. And that's I
think the scary scenario in this. Yeah. So, I mean the one
of the results here is that they're not going to court, right, Yeah,
So the DMCA rules about bypassing encryption are once again not going to be
put to the test. So we will not have known precedent to be able
to know what would happen if someone were to take a particular case to court
going forward, which has been the situation we've been in for years now,
which has mostly been enabled both sides to coexist and to a certain extent.
Now, obviously there's always pushback from Nintendo or some of these other companies here
and there, but Nintendo usually threatens with cease and desist because they will have
the power of like, we could take you to court and we could settle
this, and we could create this precedent, and everyone else is like,
well, we don't really know what will happen, so what can we get
what can we get away with? And it seems like we're going to keep
We will likely return to that equilibrium here pretty soon, but at the very
least, like Nintendo being able to quickly put like to shut this down and
shut it down hard is definitely going to scare off some people from even attempting
this going forward. So I have a money question. So the company they
had an LLC, the COLC yeah made user so effectively we have to imagine
they don't have two point five million dollars lying around can the LLC just go
bankrupt and the people kind of like just scatter to the wind at that point,
I think that that's the idea of an LLC, Right, Yeah,
there you go. Yeah, they probably do have quite a bit. They
were making about thirty thousand dollars a month from their Patreon, OK, so
they probably do have a decent amount of money in the bank. Probably still
not two point four million dollars though, So yeah, that's probably what happens
here. They fold, they bankrupt, they disband, and the limited liability
protects the individuals up to a certain point here, right, Yeah. Yeah,
it really feels like if you're making amulators, this needs to be a
personal passion project kind of thing. If you're looking to make money on it,
you're probably gonna get hit. And you do have to know where to
draw the line. Yeah, you were talking about some of those older consoles
and like they didn't have necessarily encryption, but they do have copyrighted things inside
of them, which is the stuff that has always been protected. So a
bios and a PS one still copyrighted to this day. You know, the
patent, the patent on a PS one is up after twenty years. You
could do whatever you want with Like you could make your own PS one now
if you want, But the bios is copyrighted, like they own the code
to that, and that is going to last for decades longer. So when
they make a PS one emulator, they say, hey, we don't know
where you can get a bios have you? Have you heard of the website
Google? And that's all they'll say. And and that's the layer of protection
there, and that has mostly been where everyone's like, Okay, we're fine
with this. You built this emulator in a clean room, that's legal,
that's been protected. Then that is legally protected. There is precedent protect emulators.
But any of this copyrighted material and this new, the new or untested
DMCA encryption stuff is still questionable. And in this case, it was just
usually telling people how to bypass the encryption, telling them and like that's where
you see like YouTubers and stuff. There's still some questions there, and I
think there's definitely gonna be times where Nintendo's going to be more bullish on that
stuff and potentially going after YouTubers and stuff like that. So yeah, this
is not ideal, all right. EA had a bunch of layoffs last week.
So we last week we talked about the PlayStation layoffs. EA quickly followed
that up. They cut about six hundred and seventy jobs, five percent of
their global workforce. My understanding is that is not the extent of it,
because some people went into consultation periods because certain countries can only you can only
cut so many jobs immediately, so that that number is probably going to grow
over the next six months or so. Yeah, not great. They shut
down Ridgeline Games, which is one of the studios that was working on Battlefield.
They canceled that Star Wars first person shooter that was being worked on at
Respawn. The team there was not laid off, but they are being either
reassigned to other projects at Respawn or even other projects inside of EA, because
basically what happens there was a budget to make that game, and they're not
going to replace that budget to work on something else. That budget just went
away. And then the sort of argument here from EA is we are looking
at spending less on making games that are other people's IP and we are going
to work on our own IP. And what I've heard out of EA is
they they saw how much money they saved from not paying FIFA, and they
want to replicate that across all of their games as much as they can,
which is a silly thing because you know you can only that was a special
case. But whatever, they're like, Hey, we like saving money,
we want to save more money, and so they're gonna, Hey, they're
gonna keep making that Star Wars Jedi game because the first two did well.
They're gonna make that third one. But they're not gonna make that first person
shooter. They're gonna still make the tactic strategy game that they're working on with
the bit Reactor, which is an external studio that's already contracted. That seems
like something that they probably like, oh, that's a moderate budget to begin
with, so they probably feel good about that one. But when it comes
to other games in the future, it seems like they're gonna focus on things
they own, which is a bit of a whiplash from the sentiment last year
when these companies and this includes EA, we're saying, hey, ips non
ips are way more valuable. They're worth the price because getting a game,
making a new game and making it into a hit is very expensive and risking.
So we're trying to avoid that as much as possible, And now they've
shifted very quickly to be and like we love saving money so that we're going
to make our own IP, which is just so crazy because the time in
between those two very different and opposing statements were made was not like a development
cycle. It was like it was literally a couple months. Yes, so
like what the fuck I mean, you know, yeah, we have another
story I think, yeah about Warner Brothers. Then we'll get to here in
a little bit where it just at a certain point, it feels like these
companies are and the executives of these companies are just saying the thing in the
moment that they think investors want to hear. And obviously that's probably what's happening
most of the time, and right now the win was shifting towards me.
Hey, the big win that we just recently had was we didn't pay one
hundred million dollars this year to FIFA for the FIFA name, and we're going
to that's the new story for EA, is how we're going to save money
by making our own IP. It's just crazy, though, because like that's
not the example you put forward, because football soccer is not IP, like
people get that this is basically a FIFA game. They get it, but
you can't do that with like an actual IP like a Star Wars or whatever
that gets people in the door. So like, yeah, I'm sure they'll
do titan Fall games, but like, what are the other big EA ips
that they can start pulling out of the closet. That's gonna like crush short
of like starting from scratch. Well, I guess that takes a game of
his next story. The new game from titan Falls directories are probably set in
the same universe. This comes from Giant Bomb reporter Jeff Grubb. Hi,
everybody, what I heard on this one is this is not titan Fall three,
but they are making another game in the titan Fall universe. I don't
necessarily know what that means, but when I asked, they're like, not
like a you know, a new titan Fall with a full single player and
multiplayer suite and all that stuff. And so again, what exactly that means
some sort of offshoot I don't know. Yeah, apparently it will have mechs
in it. Yes, Titans, it's gonna have the Titans in it.
Now I think a lot of people are well, yeah, okay, you're
not gonna make the Star Wars first person shooter. Some make a titan Fall
three, but even that's like they're not ready and willing to do that,
at least not full whole hog. So yeah, I don't know. They
are busy trying to rescue Battlefield in a lot of way, a lot of
ways. So I guess that's some of the answer here. But really I
think, I mean, Russ, you put that question forth. I don't
think there really is an answer there. I think it only goes so far
as we save money on FIFA. That was great, Let's do more of
that, And they haven't really thought about what that looks like beyond that.
Yeah, I mean they've got need for Speed obviously, they've got Madden,
They've got titan Fall, Battlefield, the Sims sim Yeah, the Sims fib
is gonna come out, and zombies. It's basically yeah, they're doing skate
for right. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I want I want them
to. I want more studios to have more control over their destiny, which
does mean not necessarily being reliant on like Disney, like giving you the nod
to make your thing. But I also realized that like for every like creative
game that's starting from scratch, it doesn't always end well. I think if
the example that popped in my head was Shadows of Ameler or whatever that was
called Mortals Bavium. Oh yeah, that's another one. Say it's like that's
okay, but like you just forget those games existed and and you know,
it's because it's really hard to start from scratch, whether it's a good game
or not. So this is widely held that this was the opinion of most
executives across the industry just last year. That is a huge uphill battle,
Yeah, to get a new ip off the ground. And so it's not
it's not even worth it. It's worth it's worth paying the blood money to
Disney or whatever. It's also it reminds me of how insane it is that
Apex Legends A was a success and b didn't mention Titan Fall anywhere in the
branding, like really super interesting and I want to know, like why that
even happened, But yep, it's it's it's bizarre now. I mean,
we talked about these studios mean to have the free reign. Everyone respond was
super into that Star Wars first person shooter. They loved it. It was
Everyone that I've talked to you about it says it was amazing. Right now,
it was already an amazing game, and they are they are broken hearted
that they're not going to get to put it out. It is completely brutal,
especially after some similar stuff happened with Titanfall Legends, which was going to
be the titan Fall three, that stuff that that was getting to a point
where it was amazing. They had really good ideas for that, but no,
this Star Wars First Verson Shooter was already amazing. So just it just
stinks. How long do you think until Respawn leadership starts considering other options?
Yeah, well, I mean the questions like when it when, because they
already went through this with Activision Obvious and then they went over to EA and
right. So that's that's interesting because if you actually look at the credit list
of people who are at Respond for a bunch of these games, many of
them have already let their stock vest and they have moved on and started their
own studios. Yeah, so that like, while you know, there's a
lot of institutional talent and knowledge at Respond, still that is worth paying attention
to. It's worth giving that studio respect to this day, and there are
a lot of people there that have been there for a very long time and
make Respond what it is. There are also many many key senior developers who
have started their own studios. I think up to like three or four at
this point, and I think like, you're like, hey, where's God,
what's the leader of Respond that moved on a nice and charge of battlefield?
Either way, Like he's like overseeing battlefield now he's probably spread pretty thin
and like can only pay so much attention to Respond. So it does feel
like Respond earned their keep and earned the right to do whatever they want,
and now they're getting kicked around again. It's a sad story. I think,
Vince you're talking about Vince Empella, thank you appreciate it. Mit sure
that that Star Wars strategy game from EA is still in the works despite the
mass layoffs. So yeah, they're still making that. It seems like that's
because a bit Reactor already being a contracted studio. Other news from e A.
E A is confident that Dragon h Dreadwolf will release this year. This
is another thing that I heard where people are like, hey, so what
does EA have happening? This year. This is an owned ip. This
is a game that they were thinking could even come out last year. She's
going to hit my microphone, got moved, got moved to this year.
But now it does seem like so far it's still sticking to releasing later this
year, and I believe that they've even said that they're going to show it
off this summer at some point. It's crazy that it's been like this quiet.
It's like the Metro Prime fur equivalent of this quiet for this long,
and the idea that it would come out this year with like basically no preamble
is pretty wild. It's not unheard of, but it doesn't happen too often,
right. I think if they if they have like a reintroduction this summer
that gives them a solid three four five months to make stuff, you know,
make waves with that, and then they launch it in November, that
sound that seems plausible. Sure, but you know, to be fair,
this could move again. This does happen, but right now, internally it
sounds like they're pretty confident it will come out this year. And that's like
if they get a win with Dragon Age and BioWare sort of bounces back,
that solves quite a few problems for the massive games can kind of revive itself
and that's theirs, and yeah, that's theirs. And BioWare's definitely has been
an expensive studio for them recently where you know, a lot of people work
there and that's why, like I think there was layoffs last year that affected
BioWare to a great degree. So if they can get a win here that
like it's like, okay, the EA game side exports is kind of taking
care of itself, like and then these are two separate things now. And
if BioWare can kind of stand up and stand next to Respawn once again,
I think i EA will be in a much better situation and it'll temporarily validate
the argument of like, oh we do have original IP like it's all good,
Like I mean, you know, yeah, I mean they do.
They have a decent They have a probably a deeper bench than Activision does quite
honestly from a damp overall IP. It's just a question of like sticking the
landing and releasing good stuff right right, And they only have you know,
opportunity costs. They only have so many studios to actually make these things in
which one is going to be actually worth the squeeze there. It's it's a
big question. Balatro. We talked about this a little bit at least round
referenced removed from several digital stores due to mistaken ratings change. The popular poker
based roguelike game Bilatro has been unexpectedly removed from several digital storefronts due to a
sudden change in its age rating from three plus to eighteen plus. Publisher play
Stack asserts that the game does not promote gambling and believes the rating decision is
unfounded. The change is because ratings agencies are like, now, this is
this is like gambling. This is despite previous assurances from ratings boards that the
game's content was appropriate for the previous lower rating, The rating was changed anyhow
without warning. This means it is not available on many digital stores that do
not allow games just across the board that are eighteen plus. It is still
available on Steam, though, because they let anything on that story. You
might as well pull clubhouse games off the h at that point, it's crazy
to me. Yeah, so like, what like what are the gambling adjacent
things? It uses the word anti, it uses blind, It has chips,
and it has deca cards and a dollar sign a dollar sign, right,
yes, but it's like all of those things are abstracted versions of gambling
terminology at worst. I think, look, it's obviously like a very surface
level, uh you know, very shallow assessment of like what am I looking
at here? Right in the same way that like, yes, when I
first started playing this game, did my wife ask me if I was gambling?
I said, no, I'm not, I'm not gambling. Okay,
please respect my time here, but yeah, and right away, like I
just think like such a little amount of effort is needed to like investigate this,
to realize what it is. It's depressing. It is very depressing,
and I don't think mistaken needs to be in quotes because it is mistakenly an
eighteen plus in the eyes of this rating. So I'm gonna I'm gonna throw
in another curveball and say it's ridiculous to me that this would get hit and
Goshapon wouldn't. Yeah, that's why I was gonna bring up, like,
there's so many gotcha's coming out from that we'd never even hear of outside of
this is big solitaire fucking coming in seeing a poker game and saying not on
my watch, Well, don't they announced like Pocket Jockey is coming out on
the switch soon, and like are they gonna flag that because it has cards
in it as well? I mean and horse racing, horse gambling, right,
yeah, probably know any of the yaquis a games right because they have
straight up I think those are em rated already, so we're probably good on
them. Yeah. Yeah, I wonder because this says eighteen plus and I
wonder if, like I thought that we went into like seventeen plus, maybe
eighteen pluses is higher than that. I'm not sure if this is actually how
it breaks down, but yeah, as it stands, I believe the game
is still not on many digital stories throughout Europe, so it is going to
have huge financial ramifications for this game that was by all accounts doing very very
very well. I mean like thirty thousand concurrence on Steam or something. Yeah,
I think mister uh thunk is going to be fine. I think this
this sheds more light on the game in a in a way that they're come
a little bit of a strikes in and I can't buy right, So yeah,
you know, call me a DJ and gambler all you want, you
know, Moving on here, Gravity Rush two Remastered is coming to PS five
and PC, according to some reports. According to leaks from a user named
Orange on the team Alua Gravity Rush discord server, which is where I get
all my news, Gravity Rush two Remastered is reportedly in development for release on
PS five and PC. The news suggests that fans can anticipate official announcements in
May, with the game currently undergoing play testing. Uh, this is cool.
I kind of I kind of wish this would include a Gravity Rush one
as well, because I never played that. I played on beta. Baby
so good and there's no reason to think that you couldn't get that to work
with you know, motion controls on a modern controller or whatever. I think
there was a I think there was a console version of Gravity Rush. There
was a PS four vers that's right, Okay, yeah, so yeah,
so yeah, that's I wish both was happening, but not gonna complain more
Gravity Rush. That's cool. There is a Gravity Rush like anime happening.
Maybe it already did happen. It's not good crazy like you know, listen,
if it encourages Sony more stuff with these like other franchises, I'll take
it. But I think this is a good sign that like Sony at least
has has a memory of these games that aren't you know, Ghost of Sushima,
Uncharted Last of Us and Got a War. Yeah. I mean,
well, as their development cycles keep getting longer and longer, they need to
fill in these gaps and intended to learn that lesson, and they've been doing
all these re releases of their stuff. So I think it makes total sense
that Sony would do the same thing. Yep, and and and they have.
They closed London Studios, they closed Japan Studios. These are teams where
well, you know, London Studios was taking kind of long time making VR
games and stuff like that. They were, but but Japan's News was the
company that would put out smaller games, would partner with other developers, and
they made interesting stuff. Yeah. They made Bloodborn, did they not?
Or they were part of the Bloodborn process. They were part of the Bloodborn
process absolutely, So where does that leave Bloodborn? Yeah? It's uh,
I mean you can kind of see why why maybe something doesn't happen with that
because that important part of the cog of the in the machine is gone now,
and so it's like someone holds the keys to that to making that process,
you know, take place and now they're not there. Yeah, clearly
these games are taking longer and longer, so they need some solution. Getting
a lot more remasters and remakes and re releases is one thing. I just
hope that leads to them also being able to experiment with new versions in like
Gravity Rush as well. Warner Brothers wants to shift away from volatile Triple A
console games and lean into free to play and mobile. During a Morgan Stanley
speaking event, Warner Brothers Discovery gaming boss JB. Perett outlined the company's gaming
strategy, focusing on more live service, mobile and free to play games to
reduce volatility and generate consistent revenue. They plan to leverage core franchises like Mortal
Kombat, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, and DC across different gaming platforms.
Perett emphasized the importance of owning IP and studios for long term success,
and teased upcoming mobile free to play games and such as Harry Potter, Quiddage
game and a Wonder Woman title. Okay, so just real quick. Warner
Brothers last year had the number one best selling video game in the United States,
and I believe in the world with Harry Potter Now, to be fair
to them, that doesn't mean it was the number one new grossing game.
Stuff like Fortnite, and these live service games almost certainly made more. Minecraft
probably made more. So I get it if you are someone just looking at
the numbers. But they did put out a live service game recently called Suicide
Squad. Yeah, and that he explicitly pointed to that as an example of
one of the problems. And I don't get how you come to the conclusion
that more live service is the answer. Well, I know, yeah,
yeah, I would say in that scenario, we're talking about a live service
game that was also incredibly expensive. How long was it development? Nine years?
Nine years basically nine years like seven years it's working directly on that game,
but nine years since the game before that. I'm not saying you can
fart out free to play mobile games, but compared to the money that you
spend producing Suicide Squad, it's as close to as fart as you're going to
get. And so when you are just looking at the raw numbers, which
unfortunately in a capitalist society, at a capitalist company like Warner Brothers, that
is what they're looking at to make sure their shareholders are getting what they need.
That's what they want is an easy, relatively quick bock to make money
on the ip that they have. So it does not shock me in the
least that they're not going after the elden rings of the world as much as
I want them to, because there's a much quote safer route in spending a
few or a less amount of money on a shitty product that is free that
might return a bunch because people are addicted to goshupon unlocks or whatever. Yeah.
And the tough news for them when it comes to that, though,
is the mobile gaming landscape very stagnant. Yeah, very rigid, very kind
of locked down. There are a handful of games that always make all the
money. A couple come along here or there, and it's not like the
Harry Potter, you know, Pokemon Go Clone did anything god like that.
They've tried these things before, not maybe not WB explicitly, but some things
similar to us have happened and they make no dentt So I mean they can
make. The good news is they can make ten of these for every one
triple A game that they were making, and maybe one of those does take
off and pay for the rest. So that seems to be the strategy here,
but it is tough to hear when it's like, man, the company
that made the best selling game last year is like, we can't do that
anymore. Yeah, that's where we're at with with how big and expensive these
games are getting risky. I do want to also add that I think it's
important to note that although the free of the live service aspects of Suicide Squad
were incredibly bad, that game is also incredibly bad without them. So now
I think I think it's okay. I had an okay time with it.
Shooting's all right. It's maybe the worst tutorial experience I've ever had in my
entire life. I've played a lot of games. It's not a good game.
It's not a good game. It kills me because there was so much
talent at that studio and people clearly spent seriously years and years and years working
on that project and spent a lot of time, and there's good stuff in
there, like visually aesthetically speaking. But I think it's not just Warner Brothers
wanting to do live service that tanked that game. There's a lot wrong with
it. Yeah, I think it's not knowing what it is is clearly the
biggest issue. But I think that that kind of comes back to we do
have to serve all these masters, including the live service master here, yah,
wonder Woman coming up in this. I mean, I think I was
under the assumption that Wonder Woman would be a Triple A game like any Triple
A game, like any other I cannot imagine live service free to play wonder
Woman game working. I don't know if that's what they're saying or not.
Yeah, does that look like are you just like going around town throwing the
lass of truth? No, we can't take. We can't take like you
know, executive Sea level Deck present there at event. Yes, so that's
number one. Number two. Is there also this like assumption that because it's
Warner Brothers, they like automatically own the IP. Isn't there still like a
transactional thing that has to happen? Because I know what you mean, because
I remember I wrote a story once about it. Hey, this company bought
this other company and so now they'll be able to get its services for free.
And then they're like, no, that's not how it works. I
like right like Twitch, like Twitch Amazon, right like that. It's it's
kind of almost like that in a way. Where it's like she does I
think they own the IP and that was it means they're not paying like Disney
licensing right show, but they I think it's stacked up in such a way
that for the most part, no, they are using the IP they own.
So it would be like Disney making a Mickey Mouse thing because it is.
It is not a one to one with like EA being like oh ips
are scary and expensive, like no, no, no, we don't want
to do that. Uh, and then one of the like, oh,
it's just this, they're right next door. We just we just you know,
opened the door and there's you know, a batman right like you know.
Yeah, I think that they for the most part, we consider that
owned IP and and therefore saving a significant amount of money. I do want
to answer Jan's question of what a Wonder Woman game looks like. It looks
like Prince of Persia. That's the that's the Wonder Woman game I would want
to play. I hope so or like that game that came out like ten
years ago that was it's it's made by the Mordor team, right, so
at least people that I think that's right. Yeah, that sounds right.
So yeah, what is it the thing they copyrighted the like way. I
think it does have the Nemesis system. Yes, I think it is a
part of that game. A lot of people eat Wonder Woman. Uh.
The other thing they mentioned it is like, so, okay, so they
had the most popular best selling game last year with Harry Potter, and they're
like, and the next Harry Potter is going to be a live service game
where you live, work, build, and then and then maybe play in
a game in a game where with other people in a social online world.
And I don't know how much space there is left in the world for that
kind of game. I don't know, man. I was thinking about it
and playing Enthrouded, and I was like, why has a Triple A Studio
not totally crushed this? And I think that's what that is, is like
like or you look at the Power World numbers, like that's what we're talking
about. But with an actual ip that people clearly want to show out money
for, I think it would do pretty fucking well. There's definitely a potential
there for sure. I mean people do like these kinds of games. Yeah,
but yeah, and at the end of the day, though, it's
they are going to be communing with like there's going to be more power worlds.
Oh yeah, no doubt YEA. It's not a guaranteed success, but
it surprises me that more big studios haven't attempted to tackle the survival model.
Yes, that's a good point. We will get more of those before we
get fewer of them. EA Sports College real real quick. Yeah, I
just need to get this evil out of my head. Hell divers too.
But Harry Potter, all right, moving on to the next story. Yeah,
I mean it's called magica. They made it already, let's play it.
EA Sports College Football twenty five signs ten thousand athletes, but not the
most famous. QB. Arch Manning, a quarterback for the Texas Longhorns and
a member of the Manning football dynasty, reportedly declined to sign a name,
image and likeness agreement with EA Sports College Football twenty five. They were offering
six hundred dollars per players. Arch Manning is going to get a lot more
money than that. I think he already has has several deals worth millions of
dollars, So why can't they offer Arch like a separate thing. They might
still do that, but you know, you start doing that for one and
you got the next quarterbacks like, well, you know, I'm almost as
famous as arch Manning, so I'm going to not sign. I think that
their strategy here is to see how many they can get at six hundred,
because that is already h six million dollars, right, ten thousand at six
hundred dollars, that's already six million dollars, and so that's already like you're
in the hole to start with this game. I think they're trying to keep
costs down as much as possible. So what they'll do is, hey,
Texas QB twelve, and it will be like back in the old days,
right, and then you'll go online and someone will make them and and you'll
be able to download that roster and that that's how that'll work. Yeah,
So getting ten thousand athletes though, that's pretty impressive that they were actually able
to make that happen. I think it answered the question. I'm like,
is six hundred dollars going to be enough? I bet it still wasn't enough.
You ask a kid, do you want to be in a video game?
Yeah, they're probably going to say I wonder how they facilitated this,
Like did they They're just like there's like a I think there's an intermediary company
that said they would handle this for them or something like that. That's like
like this was a big logistical night. Yeah, it's like a class action
lawsuit in reverse. A bunch of sheet take a pultry amount of money.
Uh yeah, exactly. Yeah, right, you service this like you're gonna
get like five percent and that's gonna add up pretty quickly for a small company.
So yeah, hey, that's uh interesting. There's eleven thousand basically athletes.
I means there's about a thousand kids that have not signed this and you
know that's that's that's their right, and uh, I think many of them
probably will be the most famous ones that can get bigger NIL deals. Yeah,
Luigi's Matched two HD and Paper Mario remake news could be coming this week.
There's anticipation for updates on these games because this Sunday is March tenth,
which, as we all know, is Mario Day, and reliable leaker Pairo
has hinted at the possibility of updates for both games this week. Nintendo would
probably do it during the week before the weekend, but uh yeah, those
are two Mario related games. We'll probably get updates on that. I'm looking
forward to these. I'm ready to play a thousand year Door again. Are
they going to come out before after the Zeld the remakes? Man, I
probably before, But man, I don't know what they're doing over Nintendo.
If those I know what they're doing, could we get through this year and
don't don't come out? I know what they're doing, and it's actually pretty
smart because if the switch is indeed delayed to whenever twenty twenty five, they
now have games they can put out. So yeah, that's definitely what they've
Yes, they have several games like that. There's a Fire Emblem remake that
has been sitting finished for more than a year, it seems like closer to
eighteen months at this point. For a very long time, it's just been
straight up finished and they will drop it, you know, on a rainy
day. It seems like now the rainy day is here with the delay of
switch to Yeah, I just I really hope Matrid Prime four comes out for
your for your sake, yes from us, I want that for you,
Greb. Yeah, yeah, I got Pialatro for a dollar in Fantasy Critic
four. Oh man, we'll have to unpack that a little later. But
I've been finding a couple upsetting little limitations in our little fantasy critic thing.
Believe Sean him. Yeah, I gotta my commissioner. He's not my commissioner.
Wow, Sean, take his money away, give it to me,
and then other another not possible event. Another confirmed event this week will be
an Xbox Partner preview event that is happening tomorrow, March sixth, with companies
like Capcom, Nexon, and EA. It'll feature games like Tales of Kenzera
Zao, which is a very interesting looking game, Knitsugami Path of the Goddess,
which is that Capcom action game that looks very cool, as well the
First Berserker Kazan. I'm not sure what that is, but there's a lot
of games that should be in here, though. It's gonna be thirty minutes.
Begins at ten am Pacific time one pm Eastern. I'm looking and I'm
looking forward. Maybe this is where we finally get some spoon Heaven. Sorry
a hollow night Silk song. No now way, listen. The last time
we saw it was at an Xbox event. That's not here though, grub
Yeah, it's too big for here, huh. Yeah, it's too big
for you, like they would announce it when like Microsoft is ready to semi
ready to drop, like their Handheld. I think if because, like when
it was at that Xbox event, it was part of that every game here
comes out in the next twelve months, and that was a lie for about
half of the games in that show, including Silk Song. But at one
point they expected that game to be out last year, so that would have
been the middle of last year, and we have not heard about it since
then. So I think that hey, if we get to this summer and
there's a big showcase that they that they can be in, I think maybe
they can end up there and watch it later this year. If it comes
out this year, it could still take forever. These The thing with these
indie games that have a huge sort of anticipation for them is I think every
developer gets to a point where they're like, we got to make this perfect,
and they take all the time they need, especially since their first three
early games keep selling and can fund this because they only they have relatively small
studios, so that could easily happen. Beyond that, I don't know what
else to expect from the show. I'm ready to see more Path of the
Goddess though. That's interesting. Definitely. All right, that does it for
the news Chan, I'm handing the show back over to you. I'm gonna
take it, and I'm gonna say we need to close our eyes for a
hot second and then we'll open our eyes to some fresh, fresh emails.
Close yours now, folks. Oh wow, my eyes are opened and I
see in front of me freshly printed out emails from you, the folks at
home. Hmm, emails I used to print out, I did. I
remember one of the Beast casts that Vinnie had in the s F studio in
the East Coast's we were visiting, and then I was like, holy shit,
you print out a lot of paper each podcast. Vinnie, like we
could consolidate some space Big Dog double space BODCASTA giant bomb dot com is the
email address to send your email to. The first email comes from Jacob from
Kansas. Jacob writes in and says, hello, Bombadier's I've recently been playing
through BioShock for the first time ever in twenty nine and was pleasantly shocked and
surprised at the would you kindly reveal I was glad to have somehow avoided anything
story related to this game after all these years. So I ask, has
there been a game that shocked you with a twist that you somehow managed to
not spoil years after it came out. Thanks for all that you do,
you each get five podcast points. The fuck h Jacob from Kansas, sent
from my iPhone. I just learned who Sepro's mommy is on Friday, so
that was fun. Same. I didn't know that. That's just wild to
me because well, I screwed up a little bit before playing Rebirth and like
did more research than I probably should have regarding the first game because I wanted
to be like up on it. But I guess it didn't occur to me
that that was like a spoiler. Yeah, necessarily, No, it's not
really that much of a spoiler. And now, to be fair, I
also don't know when everyone's asking me, Jeff, you know the twist later
in this game, and I don't know if we did. So, yes,
I have no idea what they're referring to. This is a tough email
to answer without spoiling something else, right, I mean you can say the
game and people who know will know. Yeah, there you go. Yeah,
I think the Well, it's funny they brought a BioShock because I think
I do think that kind of exists in a weird vacuum of games that,
like the has not really been spoiled for people, Like that's a fairly substantial
thing. I think it's hard for that to be spoiled because there's no one
sentence. Oh, you have to like exactly whatever, exactly, you have
to really explain it, right, like even now we're not we're not.
It's like, how would you explain? How would you spoil the prestige?
That's sure thing to summarize. Sure, sure you could. But trying to
think of another game that had a twist like that so related. I loved
BioShock one and two never got around to Infinite and okay, yeah, that's
the common reaction I here, but I don't know what happens in Infinite.
I think that's okay. I think, yeah, it's okay to not know.
I mean, I don't think there's like spoilers for that, because there
are. Yeah, I mean like it's like a pretty major, not frustrating,
not far I'm not gonna spoil it here, but not far off from
what happens in BioShock one regarding like who certain people are and why they're important
and blah blah blah blah, like relatively easy to spoil if you wanted to
know. It was. It's been very fun to listen to a more civilized
age Austin Star Wars podcast because when the writer strike happened, they're like,
well, we're not gonna talk about TV's and movies, so what do he
wants to talk about? In the community voted for Knights of the Knights of
the Old Republic, and two of the members of the podcast had not played
it before, so they tried to play it without doing the big spoiler.
And it was always hilarious because they're like, all right, I'm gonna look
up something on Wikipedia, which is a fandom property, by the way,
everybody check that out, and as be like, no, don't, because
every Wikipedia article about Knights the Old Republic opens with that spoiler. For some
reason, it could be the most minor character in the world. It could
be talking about one of the cards from the card game, and yet for
some reason, they'll still tell you the big spoiler from that game. So
just don't look up anything. I don't. It was funny to hear rob
zat me try to dodge that, and then also to hear Robs act me
and be like, I have a theory, like say it out loud and
that be exactly what was happening. I don't know the twist. Yeah,
I don't know either. That's good. I've never played the game, but
I do know the twist, So okay, it's still it's a good game.
You guys should if you guys want to play that, someone should remake
that game. Shit, really need do you know anything? I know that
Sony wants nothing to do with it by that much, even though they announced
it. Okay. Next email comes from Matt from Murphreesboro, Tennessee. Hey,
guys, what's the largest list you can complete to one hundred percent?
For example, every major sports team in city, every world capital, every
country, every vampire survivor's weapon and combo item. Just curious. I think
mine might be every word to triumph by the Wu Tang clan. It's a
useful skill that I know one day we'll prove itself. Hell yeah, you'll
be in some weird trivial situation and that'll come in super handy and you'll be
set. So this was before really mobile phones were a thing. But I
remember being in a very boring meeting early in my career and I took the
opportunity to see if I could remember all one hundred and fifty one Pokemon in
order. And I was able to do it at the time. I can't
do it anymore. O, my god. The biggest list for me.
This changes stuff. I could name every country in Europe back when you go,
Oslavia was a country. Now not anymore. I couldn't do every country
in the world. No way, I have the world, and that's like
thirty countries back then. So Greb, do you think if you could name
every individual item at a subway? Uh? These days no, because they
changed up the menu to have like that whole like wild like oh, here's
a one called the end zone or whatever instead of just a fucking ham sandwich.
Maybe at Jimmy John's I worked there more recently. Okay, grub,
do you think you could do all profess like the four professional sports? I
think if you give me enough time. I have a really bad memory,
but I think if you gave me time and let me sit there and like
rack my brain, I probably could do all four professional sports. I NBA
because I like fucking Pelicans a team in Oklahoma, Yeah, Oklahoma Thunder.
So if I get through, if I could start there and get those out
of the way, maybe I could do it. Do you think Dan car
list every member of the nWo. That's too much of like a dubious thing.
I feel like there's too much controversy, right, Like I remember that's
when I watched wrestling, and I feel like there would be alliances for like
half an episode. Yeah, you know of raw and you'd be like,
wait, w's Nitro whatever? And you'd be like, wait a minute,
that guy's in the nWo. Anthing. He just did the sign? Does
that mean he's in it? Like what's happening? Ripped a Virgil? But
that was my memory of Virgil. It's like Virgil's here, yeah in THEWOL
Yeah all right, Okaya, Oh god, this one has a weird second
part of the email. Maybe we'll skip. Hey, Yang, where are
your hands when they're not on your phone whilst driving? I'm half past seven
three o'clock kind of dude. It's a good combination of relaxed and prepared.
Any who ever thought about Tifa having her feet in your mouth oh, keep
me anonymous for this one. Jan, I'm not brave enough to admit this.
That's probably for the best. Yeah, it was Tarantino. Everyone a
big fan of the pod. Thanks Quinn qt. I. I'm a big
left elbow resting on the window, sure guy, with almost like with like
three digits, three digits holding on No, on nine. I'm holding on
nine and then I switched from like one to six a lot with my right
hand. Yeah, that's pretty similar to what I do. I'm a I'm
a left hand six o'clock, right hand on the prindle prindle drive a manual,
No, I don't, but I do the same thing. I rest
my hand on though the shift. I don't know why. Oh, I
remember gear shifts sometimes for whatever reason, I'll be right hand on eleven o'clock
though, I don't know why. Oh, prindle wow together, what's I
I don't think there's I know it's they're just adding a valve to make it
okay, okay, yeah, okay, uh, that's neat. Good for
you, Jen, That's what I'm here for. I think pretty standard.
Ten and two, well, ten and two? What are you a cop?
You? Sometimes I'll let go and do like an arm rest on the
right side. But I like having control over the situation. Yes, are
you wrapping your thumbs around the wheel or are they kind of like straight?
Oh? Uh, wrapped, I guess wrapped. Okay. I feel like
I have more like immediate control with one hand at six because I can quickly
yeah, exactly exactly one side of the other, whereas ten and two is
like if I'm just trying to keep going straight to like rip the wheel.
I've got an active imagination. Yeah, I mean when you're playing Marvel snap
like you have to be. And also on your answers are like left the
knee, right knee right, like right, I'm busy fighting. Yeah,
okay, all right, learning a lot nothing about TIFA though, No worries,
guys. No, yeah, let's give for that part. You got
you got? You got one a newer card. Do you have like the
smart uh, like a cruise control that can like steer on the highway for
you? I do yeah, hda h. How comfortable are you with that?
Because I don't know how. I'll only really use it if I am
just really exhausted in it and only temporarily. I don't. I don't I
like it. It works it works surprisingly well. I'll do it at night
when I'm like alone on the road sometimes too, but it works really well.
It'll also, you know, it'll get upset if you don't have a
hand on the wheel. You'll be like, what are you doing? I'm
just a robot, Like, don't trust me with everything, you know,
look like I don't know. I'll here's here's the situation that happened to me.
I spilled something in that situation and I put on HDA okay, and
I like was able to like do a thing real quick and I felt okay
about it. It wasn't a lot of cars on the road, and like
it's very good. It is. It is. It is surprisingly uh like
accurate and uh it slows down, it speeds up. You can have a
changed lanes if you want, Like it does really really good you know,
uh whatever you know auto driving. But yeah, you know, I don't
prefer it though. I like being in control for sure. Sure I feel
like that makes you more sleepy or it enable you to get sleepier. Like
I'll do it when i'm like if I come up from hockey real late to
night and I want to like stretch out in a way that I like need
to be able to not be driving, Like I'll just do that with like
one hand on the wheel and sort of like really get you know, comfortable
in the driver's seat. Uh yeah, you know. Look, I don't
know how it is where y'all live, but do you all have like the
self driving cabs? I think it's still that's a pretty much exclusive thing.
Some guys tried to steal one. I think it was in La someone to
try to just swipe one of the self driving cars. Not the best idea
because of all the cameras, sensors and trackers, but just just rip off
everything. Every single pedestrian I see whenever we all collectively see one crossing the
street will always give it a dirty look. And I've seen so many old
people flip off the self drive wo I love the idea of a geriatric person
being like, this is how we'll get back at the robot. I mean
that was the reaction of the Google Glass Like whenever I saw a Google Glass
person, I didn't flip them off, but I kind of wanted to,
and I probably would. At least they'd see you. At least it's the
persons that's not Yeah, yeah, straight call them glassholes back then, right,
Oh, I like that. The youth of San Francisco have taken to
vandalizing the self driving cars, and I'm all with that. I can't get
mad at that, you know, yea, put a mark get a marker
and just write your name. There's a lot of cone throwing happening, yeah,
self driving cars, and they'll freak out. Good fun, innocent,
good fun. They'll freak out. They would freak out. Huh. Okay,
now when anyone's in there for sure, just when it's like empty,
I guess okay, two more email back to the steering wheel. Anyone do
the old dad arm behind the head rest of the passenger seat more and more?
Yeah? Yeah, why is that? Why? After forty is that
position comfortable? It's like, I just it's like my body just remembered I
have muscles in my back, and I'm like, I just want to act
to beat those a little bit there, you know. Now I'm stuck that
way. Yeah, I gotta make a left turn before my arm can be
freaked up again here related I'll do that. When backing up, I'll do
the tw you know, and cool twist. I never do the twist time
I do the twist because because the camera and I have my mirror set up
right. But now like you did mention this, Jan, I'm like,
I want to see how I feel about the twist, and it felt it
felt bad? Yeah, I feel bad. Yeah I did feel two points
more attractive doing it though now you do look manly when you do it.
Absolutely that masculinity is just going to pass me by him Like that move is
iconic car chase backup movie scenery, which is just going to be gone right,
like it's it everyone just like, hold on, I'll let this come
yet so I can't pull over well. Next email comes from Ritchie, sent
from their iPhone high Bomb casters. I was recently playing a Hell Divers too
quick play mission with two guys who knew each other, but I was randomly
matched with. We were mike chatting about mission objectives and things were going well.
Then about twenty minutes in they start talking to each other about their friend
is going to have a threesome with a couple of dudes they know. Then
back to casual Mike chat and we get the mission done. Have you ever
heard too much while online gaming? Cheers? Oh yeah, Richie said,
for my iPhone, I mean back back when I used to like allow public
voices to you know, pass through into my ears, which I haven't done
in like fifteen years because I'm not a psychopath. I remember the worst.
The worst stuff was Rainbow six Vegas. Oh, like I have like the
absolute worst memories, so much so that like I forget how this came together,
but I remember talking about it and then while it was while I was
a seene and then like I got interviewed for All Things Considered over it,
Like I was talking about how I think like no one realized that, like
playing games online is fucked up, like the things you hear, and like
someone not from NPR heard it and I and then it turned into like a
story. But like that was the worst I remember back then. Just you
just hear like you would hear like genuine cries for help, like you would
hear like people like it wasn't always the person on the mic, it was
the it was like the shit going on in the background. Yeah, you
know, you'd hear people like dogs barking, babies crying like you know,
breaking glass, and you're just like the fuck kind of situation is happening where
you are? Where you're also simultaneously playing a video game. I don't understand.
I was playing yesterday and I did shout out, has anyone seen the
penis Rock? And my wife in the background laughed at me, and that
was I think a little distracting to everyone else on the call. But otherwise
the penis rock is, by the way, what people call one of the
resources rocks in Hell divers too once you get out. Yeah, Chuck Tasky
in the chat just linked this story. It's from February twenty second of twenty
ten. Wow, Jesus, oh my god, Oh my god. I
kind of want to use the goxler to like set up a whole bunch of
uh audio things like babies crying, like people in the background, the the
the chirp of a smoke detector going off, and just go on line to
see if I can get anyone to comment on anything, and then just then
once they say something, have really wild shit that I can make happen in
the back. I do like wind bags approach of just linking it to a
folder in it picking randomly which sound effect, so like yeah, you can
either just be applause or just booing and you're just keeping on it. I
have heard so many dabs being pulled in my history of gaming, and I'm
just like, really, just mute. I don't need to hear it.
It sounds like you're making tea, but I know it's going on, and
it doesn't bring me joy. The annoying one is just overhearing someone's music playing
or watching show, and like the gating is all over the place, All
right, Final email today it is about creeps? Is Kingdom Hearts only for
creeps? I just started Rebirth and the way the characters animate, the way
the dialogue is written, even the voices are ripped right from Kingdom Hearts.
I'm pretty sure that first shopkeeper they make you talk to is Geppetto. Is
Disney really? What makes Kingdom Hearts a creep game? Is Disney for creeps?
No judgment, just looking for your expertise. Wutai clan ain't nothing to
fuck with Joe and Michigan, Jan did you write this? No? This
is from Joe and Michigan. I'm one of the freaks who's dan Ogoa from
Michigan. I've maintained that Final Fantasy Rebirth is the best Kingdom Hearts game.
Just just wait till Barrett like becomes the most powerful wizard in all Final Fantasy
and then like Tifa goes huck. Maybe that's why they're wasting so much of
my time. The truth comes out. Blue Hearts does love wasting time,
that's for sure. The answer is yes, yeah, we're just yeah,
Like, let's just get straight to it, is Disney. What really makes
Kingdom Hearts a creep game? Yes, that duck's not wearing any pants.
That's creep right there. Yeah, you go to you party with Winnie the
Pooh. There's nothing to fight there. You're just there to hang out with
Pooh Bear and get some honey, get some sweet honey. Yeah, if
they could, they do make you do a bunch of random, dumb mini
games and Kingdom Hearts, just like they'll make you do here in Final Fantasy
seven Rebirth. Just you know, just just put on the ears, buy
a popcorn bucket, think of Mike Manatti and I and you will have fun.
It'll be great. It'll be great. Uh. That was the emails,
folks. You can send your emails to BombCast the Giant bomb dot com.
I know we're done with the shout outs, but hey, special shouts
out to Tyler for beating cancer. Shout out to you, big dog.
Hell yeah, absolutely, Russ, thank you so much for being on the
show. I know it's a long time and I know you said at the
tippy top ofy of the show. But if anyone tuned dinner for whatever reason,
decided to go straight to the emails, where can folks find you on
the internet? What's happening, what's popping? Well, you get head on
over to polygons dot com. We're very proud of the website that we've created
there. I also have a podcast called The Besties, which is not as
long as this podcast. I'm saying, if you want an alternative that's a
little bit short, a compliment, a complimentary show, it is they paired
nicely together. It's like a fine wine and a good stinky cheese. And
I want to tell you which one is which mm hm, of course geese.
We got a bunch of stuff popping off this week, more specifically,
Grub you are going to engage in a race against Dan Reicherd, Mike Manatti
and Turbo Shan. You're going to be doing the Mario Kart Grand Prix Grand
Prix. Can we tell Mike I sent them a calendar inviting count accounts,
that counts. Yeah, yeah, Mario Mario Kart Grand Prix, Grand Prix.
The name made more sense when we were gonna do several Grand Prixx.
Now we're just gonna do all of Mario Kart eight Deluxe. But that's ninety
six tracks and I looked that's about it might take about five hours. Yeah,
later that day, grub just letting you know, listen, it might
be a two parter, right, we'll fit it in. I think it
makes more sense just sit see it through. I'm looking forward to it.
But also, you know what else we got going on this week? Jents
is a new season of Blight Club. Yeah, Super Dan sixty four Dan
of Steel, where Dan Reichert will be downing on the Blue and Red donning
on a cape to fly through a bunch of rings and discover how amazing the
game. Maybe perhaps did he did he did he send you any of that
stuff that he said? Oh yeah, you can long or short? What
do you do for the wig? Oh? Long? Oh? So so
for people who don't know, like, uh, you know, it's also
become like this, like uh, I don't know what the opposite of like
good cosplay is whatever that is, Like, that's what this is, cosplay,
all right, And like for me watching the first episode to see like
the big reveal is such a treat. Uh, what a magnificent thing this
is turned into. I'm very excited to see what Danny boy is going to
be forced to. Uh, Dawn, So Dan send me some files spoilers
for folks. Dan has already seen the costume. Uh yeah, because we
knew what the game was this time, so we figured it'd be fine.
Yeah. Dan sent me over some assets and uh, the only thing I
said back to him was cinema. And you'll have to wait till Wednesday,
which is tomorrow. So tomorrow, easy, easy, wait, folks.
Short weaight, yep, Jeff, Jeff anything else popping off on the website
this week. We'll fit some other stuff in, but we'll see. Those
are the big things. Those are the big things. And you are the
big thing at home. And because you got a big heart, got a
big hearts what you're doing listening to this podcast for such a long time.
I love you. I hope you have. I'm gonna not forehead kiss you.
I'm gonna put an arm on your shoulder and nod solemnly and say thank
you, and we'll be back for another episode of the Giant BombCast next Tuesday.
Until then, I don't know, Go play some Queen's Blood. Don't
be mean to Chadley. Chadley's completely fine. Stop bulling Chadley or keep bulling
Chadley. I don't know,