Speaker 1: Hey everybody, it's Friday. Welcome to BombCast Revengeance. I'm your
host Jan Ochoa on this lovely February twenty eighth, twenty
twenty five, Happy Rare Disease Day, Happy anniversary to my parents.
And speaking about parents, we've got our father figure. He's
the Internet's father figure, but also simultaneously the cool uncle
and your older cousin Jeff Grubb.
Speaker 2: Hi, you whipper snappers are looking really cool today.
Speaker 1: Tell me all about the latest POGs and Yu gi
oh's speaking about Yugi Oh. He's actually going to talk
about you later, So this introduction is proper sewn.
Speaker 3: Sean mcdoll, Hey, listeners, this is ASMR in both of
your ears, but stop that. And Jeff and I love
that I have this control.
Speaker 1: It's really really bothersome.
Speaker 2: The whole theme songs that's also affecting Jan only played
in my right ear, and it's it's only my right
ear now because I turned my headphones around. I'm getting
split audio for some it's insane. I'm sorry, I'm gonna
be in a bad mood for this podcasts.
Speaker 1: The split audio. I played split fiction with them, and
life hasn't been quite the same bless you. Uh, Nikki Grayson, Hey,
what's up anyway? So that's good? Huh? I turned on good.
I turned on Windows Sonic for headphones and it didn't
fix anything, but it does make it sound like you're
all in a different room. Oh that's good, it's okay,
Like is the room close? You remember when remember when
there was a YouTube trend of putting red Bones. It
was like you were listening to Redbone but in different places.
There was like one of my favorite YouTube videos was Redbone,
except you're standing outside of the party that you don't
want to go into, and it just led so many
filters applied to it that it sounded like it was
really high up in the mix and then really really
far away. So it was just like, it's really good.
What a week and it has been. It's Friday. It's
we've been streaming NonStop since. Yeah, what the fuck last day?
How that happened? Folks? If you missed a couple announcements
on Tuesday's podcast, we're doing some things. We've been cooking
up some things, cooking up some adjustments, and no one
be scared or alarmed. We are not taking anything away.
In fact, we may be perhaps adding too much. You're
giving you more. We're giving you more, and you don't
have to do anything but pleasantly sit there, maybe adjust
your seat. You you can put us on whatever program
you want to be watching or listening on, but we'll
be here for at least five to six hours a day.
And then also, if you haven't noticed, Gamess Mornings soon
to be renamed Will is starting now at nine am
Pacific twelve pm Eastern. So we have to change the
name because it won't be Mourning for Grub anymore. It
doesn't make sense noonish and that just isn't a good
word up at noon.
Speaker 3: Okay, Like no one's ever used that?
Speaker 1: I found it now? Uh have we ever used or
tossed around the breakfast grub anywhere? Oh no, that's really good,
it's really good. I mean still, it defeats the purpose
of naming a morning show.
Speaker 3: That's why we didn't for sure.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but I could just do that. You could
just do that, like I could just be you could
just have a show in the morning, yeah morning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, I was gonna say, because we already got
the art for that one.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, No, that will still be what
it's gonna be called yeah, and then we'll do breakfast
Grab occasionally. That'll be fun.
Speaker 1: I'm never gonna do that because I'm never gonna do
a show before game out. Uh, it's been a week, y'all.
How's everyone doing. I don't know how long this podcast
should go. We started a little bit later than it
says in asana, so I'm just gonna go till the
next asana.
Speaker 3: We also have the next show, so we have one.
Speaker 1: All right, that's us again.
Speaker 3: This is going until this could go for three hours
according to my calendar.
Speaker 1: All right, Oh you know what we should do? Okay,
we can. This was originally supposed to be a Monster
Hunter dedicated BCR, but we had to punt for scheduling
reasons and miscllaneous reasons because of how we're streaming now. Also,
a lot of the crew hasn't played a substantial amount
of it yet to properly do you a review cast.
What we should do is we should do a check
in on Fantasy critic at the end of the episode. No,
what ye need to do that? Why why do you
have I don't.
Speaker 3: Railing?
Speaker 1: I don't think Yeah, I just don't think that we
need to have like a follow up to kind of
anything that we did in the past. We should just
kind of close our eyes and move forward, Nikki. Every
new episode of a podcast is still linking back to
the old one. Not if you don't look at the title,
that's right. Just subscribe and leave. Subscribe and leave.
Speaker 2: If you don't listen to him, they don't mean anything.
I been doing him a bin band for like four years.
I turned on Mono and Windows.
Speaker 1: Did that work? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Everything?
Speaker 2: Windows will be Mono unless I remember to turn this off,
which I won't.
Speaker 1: Oh here, Oh I got you.
Speaker 3: Hey Google, I've got to bleep that.
Speaker 1: Oh no, she didn't. She didn't even reply. Everyone else
is okay, and anyone else have some grievances they want
to share some notes you want to write out loud.
It was eighty four degrees yesterday and then eighty seven
d before. It is February. We're so cooked, like it,
shit's it's over. We're just cooked.
Speaker 3: I see snow on the ground. Does that make you
feel better?
Speaker 1: What does it say? Turn off Mono audio? He made
a post it note? Now where are you going to
put it? So you remember? Oh that's a good question.
On my computer monitor? Put it on your phone, put
it answer, put it either on your phone or over
your own face on the screen. No, no, on the screen,
So you put it on his own that it's going
to help, so you.
Speaker 3: Can tell exactly how much Chepherd was listen to a sentence.
Speaker 2: I put it over myself on the spend and now
you'll see it perfectly. But it's also covering up the
pregnant sonic dot jpeg, so I can't have that.
Speaker 1: You can't, of course not. Okay, Yes, there's been a
lot of it's been a lot of work. I mentioned
this yesterday on Games Mornings soon to be renamed. But
I feel like my brain is forming the wrong kind
of wrinkles. Now what does that mean? Like you aren't
getting you aren't learn making the learnings that you feel
like you should be making.
Speaker 2: Age in the movie inside Out, when memories are created
and their different colors, like all of Jan's folds in
his brain.
Speaker 1: Right now, are being formed by rage and strength and
makes a lot of sense, which I live with. Jan.
Speaker 2: I know what's what you're dealing with. Uh, But listen,
they're not wrong, they're just different.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, a lot of mine are. I don't remember
the emotions, but it's like the Red Guy, the Nain,
Purple Guy, Polar h the Green one, and then my hawk.
You're a cop maya Hawk. Oh, maya haw Hawk. Yeah,
oh wow, I just that's an unfortunate name. Anyway, I
watched Inside Out on a plane, and I don't think
the back half of the movie. I don't remember if
I have if I had audio, or if I was
just reading the subtitles or not. Sure, wait, but I
just don't remember. She plays hockey in that one, and
she's kind of a she's kind of mean to her friends. Yes, okay,
so yeah, so I did see the entirety of the
of the and then she has a panic attack like
the cat in Puss and Boots.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where panic attacks were invented. Yes, yeah, just
that was the first time there was a panic attack
on the screen. And then they said we can do
that too, so.
Speaker 1: Through the like the glass ceiling is whatever? That yeah,
Posts and Boots to the last wish. Spoilers everyone, The
last wish was anxiety. Whoa yeah, and that flick. Sorry,
we'll talk about video games in a second. In that flick, right,
So there's Kitty Soft Paws and Puss and Boots and
then they have a dog. Is the you know the
pero perito? So is the is the implication that kitty
soft paws and Puss and Boots are a couple and
that that the dog is their kid or is the
dog friend coded? I think the dog is friend coded.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna Google image search all these things and not
give my opinion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you haven't seen Puss and Boots the last wish
that is great? I think I have.
Speaker 2: And I put on for my kids, and I was
watching someone and I was I remember thinking this is great,
and now I don't remember anything you said, so I
must not have been At.
Speaker 1: The end they become friends. But I can't tell if
it's a found family, Oh we're all equals, or if
the dog is supposed to be is kid coded? I
think it's found family with a dog a Hollywood movie. Okay,
family with the dog.
Speaker 2: Wow, the race wars are over, but the dog is like,
oh you're you're cute and kind of useful. Don't search
Puss in Boots by accident, everybody riste.
Speaker 4: Okay, if you can't tell, this is a video game
podcast on a Friday, so it doesn't count.
Speaker 1: I was punished with that knowledge that Jeff Grub just
bestowed on me. But I was also punished by Jeff
Grub to play the thing remastered. And let me tell you,
I've been picking it up rents runs fantastic on the
steam deck and Dan talked about it last Tuesday on
the podcast, and I think Mike has actually been streaming
it as well. When did we stray away from this
future of FPS as being like cool squad shooters? Yeah,
squad Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know you're right though, Like there was definitely
that period where we got a Republic Commando and I
never played ODST.
Speaker 1: I assume there's something like a.
Speaker 2: Little okay, a little bit uh and yeah, I think
at that point what I said to Mike, Mike Naughty
the and Night, who's also furnished with this, is that
was in that period on PS two where graphic fidelity
was increasing, but it wasn't increasing so much that it
took all the oxygen out.
Speaker 1: Of the room for other ideas.
Speaker 2: So developers are like, yeah, sure, you're making the game
look cool on this PS two, that's awesome, but we
still have plenty of time to think about like what
AI be and a bunch of other features and have
them doing like cool things that represent that they are
thinking on their own and having their own feelings, and
there was space for that. And then over time, as
game as like, the publishers looked at like, Okay, well
you don't have a certain amount of budget, and it's
all going to be taken by making the best looking
game possible because that's what is going to sell these things. Eventually,
we're just gonna have to start cutting some stuff off,
and it became a liability to make interesting like NPC
characters that you work with. Obviously there are exceptions to that, sure,
and I think you would not if a thing game
was being made today, you would not assume that it
would be it would work the way that this one does,
which is much more interesting than a lot of other games.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you and you and Dan alluded to this
last Tuesday, but the AI companions are actually pretty useful
when they're not freaking out, Like, yes, they actually do
assist you in helping kind of like calm the situation
a bit, or at least taking care of the things
situation that pops up occasionally, and it just fun reminded
me of Socom, mostly because of like you know the
squad aspect and how much you do kind of rely
on it, and you could kind of just brute force
your way in moments of the thing, but then it
is you're handicapping your experience because you really need to
rely on the squad, even if they are freaking out
on the portions where they are annoying. And I just
wish that perhaps we had that we lived in that
alternate future where we did rely on a squad more,
because I fondly remember the Socom days, even though I
was a child screaming into a microphone. But Republic Commander
Greb I had always wanted to get into that game.
And I guess an offshoot of this potential future kind
of is like the mass Effect game where you do
have your squad of three. Sure you know your Kingdom
Hearts games where it's you, Sura Donald and Goofy. That's
kind of an offshoot of this as well. Okay, oh yeah,
it was a misclick.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure it was maybe the first time but
after that, but.
Speaker 1: I'm pleasantly surprised. Though grew up like this was a
fun this this has been a fun punishment because of
I'm just stuck thinking of like, wow, this was this
must have been insane on the PS two. Yeah, like
a lot of these experiences, and there's there's even some
tense parts for me playing this in twenty twenty five
and I'm playing it on a Steam deck and it's
like I'm experiencing a little bit of choice paralysis or
like there's some tense moments where it's like I don't
want to do this, I don't work Okay, Okay. It's
cool and it's great that it manages to do that
and create that tension, given that it still looks like
a PS two game but you know, nice and shiny. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it's definitely from that era where you felt
like anything was going to be possible with games. I
think there were a lot of like false starts of like, hey,
this is what game is going to be like in
the future, and that includes stuff like has nothing to
do with squads, like Shadow of the Colossus.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, man, things are.
Speaker 2: Going to be artistic and expressive and that's the future
of games, and it just absolutely wasn't. They've really backed
away from that in a lot of ways. But for
this game, it's like, yeah, it's it is a lot
of ideas, and they still kind of do the thing
that they say on the box, which is make a
good representation of the feelings you get from watching the thing,
and that is making you know, everything feel flinty and cold,
obviously Antarctica. You get to visit a lot of the
set pieces from the movie. You get to see like
sort of them after what happened in the movie happened,
so you get to kind of like deal with the
ramifications of that, and all of that is it pieces
together in a surprisingly solid way, Like you.
Speaker 1: Just in that moment.
Speaker 2: It was probably very easy for people to overlook this
game because at that time, movie licensed games still had
a well earned bad reputation, and on top of that,
this is a movie atation or a movie or a
video game sequel for a franchise that had not been
around for a long time at that point, So.
Speaker 1: It's like, why are you even doing this? This is
so weird? Yeah, do y'all think this bit of conversation
is trying to It's like, especially the video games can't
be anything. Aspect of it kind of has me like,
is that because people are accustomed to a period of
time where a licensed video game could do something cool
and interesting as made by a company who had enough
money at least to get a license like the Thing,
to then go out and try something. Do you think
that people are then now still looking because they have
been taught by the market to expect video game experiences
to only good video game experiences to only come from
larger studios and larger publishers, that they are not looking
at smaller teams who are actively doing weird shit. Do
you think that that's just like or I think the
answer the question that I'm asking is yes, But I
guess the question that I'm actually asking is what is
the work or how do you do the work required
to get people to expand their horizons and the past
like the eas and the two K's and the Microsoft's
and the Sony's for games that do a comp which
is not I don't mean to like take away from
anything that the Thing did, but like to these experiences
that are new and different do exist, right, They just
don't exist out of these triple A or double A
even studios that people are expecting them to. What do
you think the work has that has to be done?
Speaker 3: Is that's kind of That's kind of been the question
of the week in some ways where people are wondering
how do we get people looking at smaller experiences As
people are starting to I think slowly feel a little
more burned out by sure, a lot of games feeling
the same because bringing it back to what we were
talking about at topless topic, we have moves or from
an ideas oriented come up with this unique idea, figure
out how to make it work technically, figure out the
graphics later. The graphics aren't as big of a deal
because it's a PS two game, it's on CRT's noticeable,
But now we all have these insane four K TVs
and every little pixel is displaying insane amount detail that
you just can't ignore that stuff anymore. We have shifted
so hard into the direction of we need to make
a good looking game first, rather than come up with
that idea first and then figure everything out later. I
think it's something that you know, nobody's figured out yet.
I think it's an interesting thing to discuss, because how
do we get people looking at say Steam next Fest,
where there are all these ideas coming out and all
these random, wacky ideas that are really cool. I think
part of it is because a lot that happens on
PC and consoles is just so much harder to get
an idea out there because of how licensing works and
how publishing works on there, whereas with Steam it's so
much easier to just sign up for an account, put
your game out there, or even do something even smaller
than that on your own website or on ish dot
io or something like that. Acting is a good point
to bring up, though, Nick Kid.
Speaker 2: Yeah I'm crazy. Oh sorry, go ahead, jam Well, I
was going to say that.
Speaker 1: What I get. It's so infuriated when I see these
takes online saying that like gaming is done, gaming is boring,
Gaming is the same and hasn't changed. And you look
at those people putting those takes out on the internet,
and they're primarily just a console player. And I'm not
taking away from that perspective. If that's the only thing
you're playing, sure, but indie games still do exist on
those platforms. I don't believe that they are necessarily looking
for them or even open to those other experiences. And Sean,
you brought up Steam next fest. I thought skin Deep
was fantastic, So yeah, yeah, that's that's the exact thing
that I've been thinking about especially in the wake of
it this week skin Deep. We played it on Wednesday,
question Mark and that's at the Steam Next Fest. It's
but it's from a team of Blendo Games, and it
is an immersive sim built in the Doom three engine
like in Tech three, which is incredible. It looks really good.
It is it is an HD like it looks really good,
but like it is doing a bunch of shit, because
the last thing that is worried about is what the
video game looks like from a technical perspective, right. That
isn't to say that it doesn't look good or doesn't
have like aesthetic design or or whatever. Like it looks
great and is also a very narrow ex experience that
knows what it wants to do to you and knows
what it wants you to do to it. I think
this is also so deeply the fault of the platform holder,
because there is literally no reason that Microsoft or Sony
is not kicking these small studios and extra fifteen thousand
dollars to be like, okay, can you just do just
kick out a build of this game that runs on
the Xbox and we will do our own Next Fest
equivalent and we'll put it in the summer, and we
could maybe call it the Summer of Arcade or something,
and it's kind of a bunch of smaller video game
experiences that you can kind of taste and sample get
a little amuse boosh of a video game. And then
because you look, you open the store on any of
these things and it's like, hey, did you know that
FIFA is real? Yeah, I've heard of FIFA. You can
give us ninety dollars for FIFA right now. It's like yeah,
like sorry, Nick, go ahead, finish. No, No, that's it, Like, yeah,
I know FIFA exists. Everybody knows FIFA exists. Your job,
I think is platform as the platform holder, is to
be like, hey, what if you play to anything else
actually really really good.
Speaker 3: They're saying FIFA. Steam Nextfast is saying FEARFA and exactly
there's I am j Dall. Yeah, but it's like Silent
Hill Soccer or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds fucking incredible.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was gonna say like, I opened up the
PlayStation Store for the first time in a while earlier
this week, and I was just served. It felt like
I was being served nothing but ads for games that
I have no interest in, and it just wasn't servicing
anything super new that was also coming out or hyping
that out. It was just like, hey, here's NBA two K,
here's WW two K. I'm like, ah, I to PlayStation.
You know what games I play? Yeah, they know what
games play and they also like, no one needs you're
not discovering FIFA. Yeah you know, you know, if you're
going to buy FIFA, you have either already gone to
the store to buy it. Obviously, I know that's not
how it works, but like you've already made the active
decision to go get FIFA, or you already know. All
I have to do is type in the AFC into
the fucking box and it will give me the fucking
game that I want.
Speaker 3: That's the exact feeling I have anytime I see an
ad on you know, on YouTube or on my TV
or whatever for Walmart or McDonald's or anything. It's not
a new item or new service. It's just hey, remember
that we exist. Yeah, dog, you're down the street. I
have a giant sign. I know you exist. You don't
have to advertise to me. I think to play Devil's
Advocate for a second here. We also have a unique
perspective on this though, as people who play next to
everything that we can, and so that's definitely why the
consoles are still doing that to extent where sure it
does seem silly when it's like the Sports gamely year,
because yeah, everyone kind of knows exist, but when the
new Call of Duty is out, they do try to
get that in front of as many eyes as possible
because that's still overwhelmingly what the general audience wants, and
so they see that as a way to get notified
when the new thing that is the thing that they
like is out. So I think it's serving a different
audience over there on consoles a little bit, but I
do still feel the pain that it would be cool
if we could get more experiences like like, I think
the game that sort of exemplifies what we're talking about
here was last year's out of Mouthwashing where everyone was
raving about it. It looked like a PS one game
parentheses positive because it was very intentional, and that's the
kind of thing where if you know, someone just played
Silent Hill to remake Hey, that would have been a
great thing to just put up on PSNS recommended sections
right there. So I think absolutely like Nikki was saying
we could have these platform holders doing our job of
getting these smaller and more unique experiences out up there
for people and point them in front of people.
Speaker 1: Well, it's also.
Speaker 2: Oh sorry, yeah, yeah, I was just gonna say real
quick that there is hope here. It's just not maybe
the best hope that we could hope for, and that
is you know, this stuff is happening in some places
like roadblocks, where people are yeah, you know, he's gonna
to do the exact same thing grand Theft Auto six
they're planning to do that, and they're like, well, once
we can get it into our thing and we can
get a cut of everything, we're happy to let people
experiment up until that point where experimentation scares the hell
out of us. But if we can get some kids
in college to do it for us, oh that's good money.
Speaker 1: Let's trust a bunch of nineteen year olds with everything. Yeah,
I mean it's worked out, really worked out so far.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, to be fair, you have a point
there though, because when I listen to parents who are
into gaming talk about what their kids are into, they
do talk about how their kid found basically this game
within row Blocks, within Minecraft, within these things that we
think of as just know another game, but no, now
they are kind of stores. They are their own storefront
within a game.
Speaker 2: So I mean, if you if you see the roadblocks UI,
it's just like looking at like a YouTube where it's
like just yes, how many people are playing, like like
like how many views it have or whatever it is? Yes,
And so that's kind of like, uh, like the temporal
pincer movement that has happening is on the top end,
it's these giant corporations that have these platforms that they're
building to service up stuff that is made by the community.
And then on the bottom side, it is Steam offering
an open platform so that people basically the same thing
can happen just in not inside of one video game.
And that's when corporations get interested in in new ideas.
It is when they don't have to come up with them,
but they can still capitalize on them, right, And that's
where a lot of the trouble comes from, because there
is that space in between.
Speaker 1: The reason we keep talking about the middle.
Speaker 2: Space being so deprived of content and new ideas and
stuff worth paying attention to, it's because that's where you
own all the risk and it's so expensive to like
compete and get noticed that a lot of times taking
chances isn't worth it.
Speaker 1: So I don't think there is a solution to that.
Speaker 2: I think what's going to happen is both this temporal
pincer movement's gonna work and it's gonna gobble everything up
and kind of just meet in the middle.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I just think it's so frustrating to me, and
especially like obviously I've been thinking about and talking about
this in the wake of the Warner Brothers stuff from
earlier this week. But everyone is so dead set on
making zero money instead of some money that they would
rather let stuff die and fall by the wayside make
yeah or yeah, they would either they would either make
zero money or lose money instead of make some money
because making some money would be slightly more difficult then
make you c company, Yes, even though they've already put money,
they've already whatever.
Speaker 2: Well, no one wants to be the like the producer
on the project that didn't make as much money as
the guy over.
Speaker 1: The last thing, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So it's like everyone doesn't want to take ownership of that,
and so they get scared.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's like you don't have opportunities to make
more money if you don't lose a little money on
the way or make less money sometimes. Right, Like, the
whole reason movies work is that sometimes you make small
movies that get critical acclaim so that you can then
get people to make big movies that make money to
then feed the movies that make the critical acclaim to
then feed the fucking circle. Right, And it just doesn't
make any sense to me. I understand why, But it
is so nuts to me that I have watched six
hours of NBA content this week and I have not
seen a single commercial for the video game AVOWT. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean they don't believe that people.
Speaker 2: They don't believe that people that they can convince people
to buy these video games anymore. Like, I definitely was
like been paying thinking about Super Bowl commercials for the
last ten years and how we haven't really had, for
the most part, any traditional video game commercials on the
Super Bowl, and like that's the biggest audience in the world.
They're like, yeah, but it's too wide of an audience,
too much money. We need to be hyper focusing on
the people that we kind of already have on the border.
I'm about to purchase our thing, and we can reach
them elsewhere.
Speaker 3: Jeff, I feel like this is the kind of thing
you would be knowledgeable about or pay attention to. Do
you think that marketing is kind of dying in focus
groups right now?
Speaker 2: Well, I think a lot of things are dying in
focus groups. But yeah, yeah, I think.
Speaker 3: But I feel like there used to be an age
where these developers and you know, the publishers I suppose especially,
would kind of just put out a marketing campaign that
maybe it was weird, maybe it was wild, maybe the
game was weird and wild, maybe it wasn't, but they
would try something and they would just put it out there.
Sometimes it hits, sometimes it doesn't. I feel like now
they're so worried about is this going to hair not that? Well,
we can't spend the millionaires right right.
Speaker 1: You need to be proven right before you actually do it.
Speaker 2: And the reality is you can't know ttil you do it,
because people will always tell you they want something and
they don't want something, and then it'll go out in
the world and they'll have a different opinion. But we
know this over and over again, and people will say
one thing and then the data will show the exact opposite,
so you just can't know through focus groups.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 1: I have two things. One I'm trying to remember. I'm
literally trying to remember a video game commercial after the
Jason PlayStation commercial. Do you remember that one the Jay
the PlayStation commercial where all of the PlayStation characters were
in that bar. It was like solid there and Ratos
was in there, and they were in there, you know.
Speaker 2: I think the character was called Michael.
Speaker 1: Of course, Michael talking to Michael Vanatti at the gamer bar. Yeah.
And then I and then in that conversation, I just
remember that Xbox commercial where the Titan from Titan Fall
was in that office building. And then I can't I
and to the point I bring these up because it
was like where those tacky as fucked, Like yeah, absolutely,
but also they were trying to sell you on the
idea exactly what we're trying to sell you on the
idea of like this is a place where you go
to do a thing that you cannot do in any
other medium, right, and they don't have the confidence or
courage to do that anymore.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, just like we're realizing with all
of our problems and what we're describing here is just
like a changing landscape that feels like a problem probably
is a problem in.
Speaker 1: A lot of ways.
Speaker 2: But it does go back to the Internet happened, right,
The Internet happened and it made it so. It's like
publishing magazines is a bad idea, putting ads in magazines
is a bad idea, rather than just we have all
this data that tells us how to reach the exact
person who's most likely to spend money on us, and
now because we have that data, we should just make
a game for that person exactly, cut out all the
shit they say they don't want. And we have this
information because the Internet has enabled us to track people
data in a way that the human race never had
access to before, and so and so this has empowered us,
and really what it did is lock us down to
like certain ideas are allowed to have a chance to
go into the market and others if they cannot be
proven before they are but born out gets get killed
in the crib. And it's and all that across the
board politics, Everything does go back to, oh, we are
not good at the Internet yet as a species.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I do think another part of it, though, what
Nicky was getting out there though, is that a platform
used to be a place where you could say I
do this, this and this, and I played this, this
and this, and that's how you could have ads like
the PlayStation Michael ad, where you could have all these
characters who you're like, these are my pals. These are
like at the end of a hard day, I come
back home and I see I see Credos, I see Lightning,
I see these characters who I want to sit down with,
go on to adventure with, and you know, this is
why I hang out with at the end of the day.
What would an ad like that look like nowadays, where
cycles are so long, where we are so focused about
like the sequel that kind of looks like the last game,
and also this our game over there, and the game
that our other team is making, like a PS five
ad had that it would be like Astro Aloy Krados and.
Speaker 1: Blood Borne Hunter in there.
Speaker 2: Freak got the blood Borne fans, and then they would
still wouldn't make anything with Bloodborne.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just feel like we're so far removed from
that era, and it's kind of a bummer, not just
to be like nostalgic and like old people talking about
how good gaming used to be back in the day
and everything like that, but it is a bummer that
the state of the industry right now has sort of
moved us away from that time.
Speaker 1: I don't even that's the other thing, right, Like, I
think the platform war, the console war stuff is trite
and shitty and stupid and is like not valuable. But
the one thing I will give it, there was and
not I don't. I really don't want to like be like, oh,
like actually it's when people care about brand, but like
there was enough people gave enough of a shit to
be like, well, I am passionate about the things that
I am engaging with now, am I doing it in
a way that is like safe and normal and regular
and like makes me not seem like I'm a species.
Speaker 2: Same it's the great at tribalism.
Speaker 1: Yes, I really really did at it, and I do
think that there is a fine line between like tribalism
for the sake of oh, I actually really fucking like
this thing and I really want to just tell you
about it and leaning into that and being like, yeah, actually,
it is really cool that we are the place where.
Speaker 2: You're feeling part of the story, right, Like, all sits
together by telling each other stories.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: The story of the United States government existing just a story,
and we all agreed on it for a while, and
it was okay for a little bit, Yeah, for a
little bit. But it's like, yeah, so when you can
tell yourself that I am part of this story of
this brand. As cheesy as it sounds like, it was
a powerful the factor in making you feel part of something,
which made the whole thing feel more important. And they
absolutely have lost that luster. Not entirely, but they have
lost it to a you know, Nintendo's being able to
maintain it more than others, and Sony definitely still has
it to a certain degree, but they are they're willingly
selling off some parts of that to have these these
broader appeals or try to reach the wider audience, and
it feels like it's kind of lost its way a
little bit.
Speaker 1: The Nintendo part is really weird though, because it's like there,
Nintendo used to be the alternative and that was the
thing that was defining for it, but now it isn't
even that, Like Nintendo was just Nintendo, which doesn't mean
anything if it's not in conversation with something else, it
just isn't the It's just not the other thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I'm too old to have that perspective,
right for me thing when I was a kid, like to.
Speaker 1: Me, it's Disney, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to be fair though, you know, Nintendo was the
thing for like a generation and a half, but it
was your defining general I think about.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly was my eleven year old generation. All right.
I've been kind of like marinating on this thought for
a hot minute now ever since Sniky you brought up
the Hollywood example and then grub talking about risk and reward,
and I can't help but think of two actors in
particular from the Marvel universe. I think of Chris Evans,
who kind of made his bread and butter playing Captain
America and unfortunately has not reached the most success he's
been in films. He's been in a bunch of movies.
I can't say I've seen all of them, nor do
I have interest in them, And maybe his cachet for
other roles is kind of, I don't want to say
run dry, but my confidence in Chris Evans has kind
of like dwindled a little bit. Now. The other side
of that is Sebastian Stan. Sebastian Stan is cleaning up
and a big presence in this current movie award season,
and he's taking on a bunch of roles he's but
he's also still maintaining that he is Bucky in the
Marvel universe. And I think what I'm getting at is
that it feels like these big companies are just trying
to stick to the safe bets and not just trying
to ride the wave of that big name, that big
hit that brought them to the table, and completely ignoring
the possibility, like you said, Nikki, of making money where
you can do these smaller things. You can't have these
other joint projects that will bring you success if you
let them, Like and I and I'm in two. When
did Ironman one come out two thousand and eight, I think, y, yeah,
that was fucking stupid. At the time, the idea that
someone somewhere was like, we'll make a movie about iron
Man and we'll put Robert Downey jun in. It was
fucking dumb. And I was like, that's a great idea,
And that's how you know it's stupid, because but it
was like there was there was literally no reason for
them to do that. That was a hail Mary. And
it then birthed the most like, the most profitable film
franchise in the history of the of the format. So
instead of being like to your point, Jane, instead of
being like, Okay, well what if we tried a different
thing that shouldn't work and then see they're like, well,
we'll make fifty five of these, and then we'll just
keep making them. We'll keep fucking that chicken until it
keeps going. Like, I don't know what the fuck to
tell you.
Speaker 2: No one knows what happens when you fuck the chicken enough,
but you're gonna got it control.
Speaker 1: There is currently a song that I suggests everyone check out.
It's called mo Chicken speaking about punishment.
Speaker 3: Yang the Thing Remaster pretty good, Huns.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny when your dude is freaking out and
his little parks are going. It's great. Also, Hey, remake
more PS two games? Treasure Trove over there? Where the
fuck is dark Cloud one? And Where's the fun is
dark Cloud? Too? Where's Amazing Island?
Speaker 3: HD?
Speaker 1: Amazing It was on the game Cube, but they should
make Amazing Island ideas. Wow, I remember saying that. I
remember the cover art. Is this a game that kids
really liked?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: I liked it. Not a lot of us did, but
I liked it. Now, could I tell you a single
fucking I think it was Pokemon adjacent. I think you
could make them. I think you could combine the lizards.
That sounds right, yeah, okay, But speaking about punishments, Sean,
it looks like you're wrapping up a punishment here. You
have been checking out Warrior World.
Speaker 3: That's right, yeah, so, uh, Warrial World on the game
cub not Warrial Land is the punishment that Mike assigned
to me, uh when he got first place in Bowser's
Hurry Uh a few weeks back. And so I I've
been chipping away at it. I think I talked about
this somewhere, but it's been my like while I'm preheating
the oven for dinner game where I just play one
level because the levels are like twenty miss to half
an hour, so I'll like preheat the oven, play at
the level, put the pizza in, come back and finish
the level. That's how I've been playing this game. It's
been kind of fun.
Speaker 1: I've been playing our game rules.
Speaker 3: I've been playing out of CRT back there on the Wii.
I just sit down in front of it. Like I
did when I was a kid. It's been a fun
time because it does a really good job of translating
warrial lands mechanics into three D. It is much more
puzzle platformer, is much more beat them up. It's weird
and it's kind of bs in a lot of ways,
but it's a warrior game, so it can get away
with that. Every time I'm like, this is a bad mechanic.
If I fall off the ledge, I'm in an underworld
and I need to like fight my way out until
I find a spring that puts back back on the left.
Speaker 1: Dumb in a good way.
Speaker 3: It's dumb and I hate it, but it's warrior, so
he can get away with it.
Speaker 1: How many other characters can get away with it?
Speaker 3: Not tif why oh.
Speaker 1: Brother, whatever she wants.
Speaker 3: It's weirdly sonics gotten away with No, he's right, He's
right if the game is weirdly Super Mario three D
Land before three D Land, where you you actually are
required to do x amount of these to finish every level.
You go, you ground, pound, you butt stop these doors
on the floor that takes you to another mini puzzle
level that is perspective based. You have to like rotate
the camera to see certain elements of the puzzle because
they were like, hey, this this ship's in three D.
Now we can do this. And you have to like
solve the puzzle in order to get a mcguffin to
then complete the level. This game is weird in the
most wonderful way. I'm having a great time with Like
I said, there's some bs in it, but I think
in general, I'm having a lot of fun, and uh yeah,
I'm right. At the end of it, I had to
just basically do the final boss fight, I think. So
that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Now, just let you fight.
Speaker 3: Is horseshit, i'd imagine, because some of them.
Speaker 1: It's just horseship. Like there's one where pirate asshole. It
fucking sucks three cups. It does cup shuffle with the boss.
You have to like keep your eye on it and
then like hid it.
Speaker 3: But here's here's the thing. I'm gonna spoil this game
for you, Jet because you don't care. That's fine. The
cup shuffle and it's You're like, this is the right cup,
lift it up. Nothing, I'm like, what the hell, and
then you keep shuffling, keep shuffling. It took me like
ten tries before finally the game gave me a hint
because that time his feet poked out from the battle cup.
This motherfucker was like, you know, up in the cup
like holding on and you have to like hit him
again to the cup. Wow, Gay, it's bullshit. I kind
of love it.
Speaker 1: It's great.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 1: I was just looking to see because I remember that
I had played it a while ago, and in my
brain it was like, oh it was last year. It
was three calendar years ago. This week is wow. When
I watched funk A who is now Larry and play
it when I was in a fan bite, that game
is great, Like, I really really like it. I'm bummed
I didn't. I think it would have been unbelievably influential
if I played it as a child.
Speaker 3: To me, it's the game I always saw. I was
able to play it when you go to kmart and
they had the booklet of like Nintendo Summer Yes two
thousand and two. I would always see Warrio World in it.
I'm like, this looks kind of neat. I just never
played it, but now I have, so Yeah, La Mike
for recommending that one.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have my treasure assance here. Pretty soon.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna play this. I'm going to play Cent and
Punishment all they like. I'm gonna play their three D games.
Speaker 3: Treasure just makes good games, Yep, just a good developer.
Speaker 1: I was looking at their is it right that they
haven't released anything since twenty fourteen, basically defunct?
Speaker 3: Basically what's left is a support studio from and stuff.
Speaker 1: So exactly, we're we're going to talk about a card
game in just a second that you've also been playing.
You've also been playing Shot. But I don't want to
alarm anyone. Okay, this is this is like and Jan
says that I am good. You know you can just
say stuff. No, I need to breakfast at all. We
work on a podcast where you need to present what
you're talking about.
Speaker 3: What.
Speaker 5: Oh no, he hasn't showed up to any of these
quiet quitting Oh well, you know, I just know I
didn't want.
Speaker 3: To ship unlessn't tech pod. Let's go, hey, well check this,
I got this picnic basket.
Speaker 1: Storage five open five. Don't thanks.
Speaker 2: You're so heated about their better internet than you are.
Speaker 3: Doing yourself this time.
Speaker 1: Okay, anyway, I took myself out on on like a
little little wellness excursion, right, just like, uh, I needed
to not have any screen time because my eyes were burning.
Perhaps they would be helped if I had Gunner optics
glasses that were in my prescription or something that's a callback, folks. Anyway,
the Gunners, they totally were. I thought, oh, you know,
let's let's go spend some time with some paper books.
Let's let's go to a bookstore. And unfortunately, where I live,
there aren't a lot of independent retailer bookstores. So I
went to a Barnes and Noblay, and uh, I resisted
the temptation, folks, but I was almost persuaded by myself
to finally jump in and buy a magic deck Magic
the Gather, not just magic.
Speaker 3: Card tricks magician.
Speaker 1: Okay, I am alarmed, but but don't be alarmed because
I did not purchase anything because I thought, like, well,
you know, I saw the news coming out.
Speaker 3: Of Magic on that file Fantasy Avatar.
Speaker 1: The Avatar one is what I have my eyes on.
And if they also do an Avatar Blue People one, the.
Speaker 3: Nikki You're too hot.
Speaker 1: Hi, So so yeah, I just want to put that
out there that I feel like the magic bug that
is taking over the video game media industry is maybe
seeping its way back here. I know Matthew Rory played
a lot of mcg arena, and I don't know shit
about actually playing the game. Yeah, should just play the
video game. Yeah, just do that because I like physical stuff,
and like this is an excuse to like, oh, you
play Badge, I'll go over to your house or you
couple over here type of deal. I'm sorry that.
Speaker 2: I am the kind kind of guy that if, like,
you know, everything, If I was like a very different
kind of like single, rich person, I would have that
minimalist style apartment. And I know that's disgusting. I know
it is, but I, in my heart of hearts that's
what I am. I would have no physical stuff and
then it would all be like where's the ponds and pants?
And then you'd open one drawer and fifty things would
fall out and probably kill you.
Speaker 1: Speaking about minimal has anyone seen that Sigma BF camera?
It looks only I only use Alpha Tama camera. Of
course Nikki would know. Thank you, Nikki. I believe it's
an obsumely expensive camera that is like stupid minimal. We
should get backlart. I let us expense to yeah too. Yeah,
plug Inna. I had to hay just to let everybody know.
For the listeners at home, my camera got too hot
and overheated, so I had to go into my room
and go get a uh fan Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: Ship.
Speaker 1: It's all right, directly, I'm no problem next to me.
If anyone shares with Brad, make sure you tell him
this is because we love him so much.
Speaker 3: Awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like no doy folks like we love We listen
to it podcast, enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah, I worked with
the man for how many fuck you? Of course I
love the uh Sean cards, but I can play cards
in a digital way. Yes, about Yu gi Oh Early
Days collection.
Speaker 3: That's right. This is the game that I've been playing
on my Steam deck for the past couple of weeks
for a review, and it just came out yesterday. I
believe this is a very interesting collection because I'll try
to keep this brief for Jeff Rubb in particular, because
I know the young people on call know this. You
yio interesting series. Everyone knows as the card game. It
did not start as a card game. It was just
a very popular manga. Maybe Nikki needs to know about
this as well. It was all about well, I'm.
Speaker 1: Pretty sure that it was actually a way that they
determined whether or not you went to hell in ancient Egypt.
Speaker 3: Non tired, but I mean you yo for shoot in
life like this world Earth is not a shoot this podcast.
Speaker 1: Where actually it was about a guy who was just
deeply fucked up. He just was fucked up. In the manga,
he he burns a guy alive to death in the
diner for kind of no reason. Yeah, okay, mister Yo
burned a man alive.
Speaker 3: Corrects from the top. Let's try card is ow. Yugyo
started as a manga about Yeah, this kid who like
partners up with some ancient Egyptian pharaoh spirit that to
punish like bad people basically or people.
Speaker 1: He get people very critically. It's people that he says
that he's like, so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're gonna play Russian Roulette. Anyways, what happened is
there was an arc of the manga that was about
the card game, which is what we know Yugo as.
Now that took off, Now that's all Yuyo is, But
that was not always the case. And so Yugyo Early
Days collection collects all the Game Boy and all the
Game Boy Advance games and what's interesting why brought up
that little history lesson u Gail is because in the
early days, uh Yu Gio was not defined and so
it could be kind of anything they wanted to, and
so it was still mostly about the card games, baller
stuff too. And so what happens when you have this
card game that's in a fictional story that doesn't exist
in the real life, no rules, You can make it
into anything you want. So when you take this manga,
entern it into video games, because that's what you do
when a manga takes off. There's no fucking rules. They
just made that ship up. So in this selection, real question,
go ahead, je, go ahead?
Speaker 1: Is this why Yugi is constantly cheating in the anime
because he doesn't know the rules to his own game?
Speaker 3: Yes, because the rules of the game basically did not
exist when the anime started. That's why it wasn't until
later seasons a year where they actually.
Speaker 1: Did you play I. So I was really amps about
this collection until I found out that Forbidden Memories wasn't
in it. Yes, Forbidden Memories is the PlayStation one game
which came out almost It was perfectly timed for when
the for when the anime came out and they were like,
great news. It's the fucker from TV and he's got
a PlayStation one game. And I was like, Mom, please,
please please, I gotta get I gotta get my hands
on this CD's on TV.
Speaker 6: He's on TV.
Speaker 1: I gotta get this CD ROM. So Mom gives me
this fucking CD ROM. And to Sean's point, the rule
completely different. It's like all of the cards have some
of the card art is recognizable and it's the same,
and then some of the cards are just completely different
guys that have never been seen before. But then it's
all of the like the types are not actually like
light dark, like whatever. They're actually the symbols yes, which
is like unbelievably confusing. The math doesn't always math correctly.
It just doesn't make any sense. So it is unbelievably
cool to me that Konami was like, oh, yeah, we'll
just release these GBA and GV Advance or Gameway game
Way Advance games the specific.
Speaker 3: Game Nick he was talking about it on this collection.
But the games that were like that, that were on
the game Boy where they just made up the rules
are in this collection. And that's why it's wacky. Like
I mentioned, to Jeff last night. There's one in here
that is about Capsule Monsters. That's just Fire Emblem. It's
just a Fire Emblem game where the monsters from you
Geo have different attack patterns on a grid. It's weird,
and that's kind of neat. And what's even neater about
that that never came to the US. I think it's five.
I want to get this right, four or five games.
I forget exactly how we're lower fifty dollars. Well, no, no, no, no,
we're localizing into English for the first time out of
the fourteen in the collection. Oh okay, that's plus plus
additional versions. There's like some Pokemon ram Lose stuff going
on with a couple of them. But yeah, it's like
the first, second, third game, and then you have Capsule
Monsters I think, and then one other are localized in
English for the first time. The games themselves as well
as the manuals. There's manuals for everything. There's boxes that
were scanned in which is kind of neat and why
I like is the emulation of each of these kind
of cool. There's like a really nice LCD filter that's
like a chromatic aberration on every single pixel. So it's
like really detailed. You can, like for the original game
Boy games, you get that PI Sup Green or Jeff,
you can get game Boy Light Blue, game Boy Pocket
Gray Scale, and like one more. I think it's really cool. Yeah,
the presentation is fantastic. And you have the weird, wacky
games that make no sense, as well as the GBA
games that were more like simulators, as well as a
couple that were like the Pokemon TCGRPG on game Boy.
So it's a very interesting collection. I think that I
think is presented very well too. I only gripe and
I would never bring this up with any other game really,
but because a collection of games, it is fifty bucks
even digitally. Yeah, physically it's a little easier as small
because you know it's it's a Yugo game. You get
some cards with it, like a couple of promos with
so that makes up for a little bit. But fifty
bucks digitally is kind of price for even if it's
fourteen something games. Uh, game Boy, game Boy Advance games,
a lot of them which are kind of just bad
to play. That's a bad expensive I feel this is.
Speaker 1: When we gread on a curve a little bit, right,
it's right. So it's like, really need the money, Yeah.
Speaker 2: We want you to do more stuff like this. If
this you're gonna try to get away with this. Hopefully
we can just smack you on the wrist a little
bit and be like, hey, there should be cheaper. There
should be cheaper, and you'll take that to heart and
still keep doing this. Instead of just being like, well, fine,
it's too much, we won't do it anymore, someone will
try to like, yeah, it's like when they stally suggest
to Konami, maybe be.
Speaker 1: A little bit more reasonable next time. Yeah. It's like
when they ask you to round up your perch to
help or something if you're at home. Never fucking do that.
Speaker 3: Do not do it.
Speaker 1: It's a scam.
Speaker 3: You don't do that.
Speaker 1: It just makes the amount of money that the company
has to declare on their own taxes go down. You're
not helping anybody when you do that. Don't do it.
Speaker 3: We stop.
Speaker 1: You have betrayed me, they have. Don't do it.
Speaker 3: Never round up multiple people in chado ass does have
dungeon dice monsters. It sure does. As both of the
dungeon dice monsters and uh board travel or whatever it's called.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. I love Dungeon Dicemo. That was the best
little mini arc. That was when I didn't understand how
TV worked, and then all of a sudden they were like,
actually he's playing a different game yep, and it was like,
huh for how long? And in my head it was
it felt like they he was playing it for eight months. Yeah.
He was the Dungeon Dice Monsters arc and it was
probably six episodes. Yeah, and then they became best friends
twelve and then they became best friends. Douce delv Doue Delvin. Yeah, Douce.
I like Douce more because it's like dogs with you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Anyways, it is you go an early days collection.
I can sell it, maybe wait till it goes out
of like forty or even thirty.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, like the Space Spot I'm trying to figure out.
I agree. I think fifty dollars is too many dollars
for game Boy Advance and game Boy games. But I'm
also kind of I've come around on the I think
museums should cost more money, okay idea, and I think
that like sometimes I think it is good to overpay
for museum type experiences because then to the point that
Grub was making earlier. It incentivizes people to make more
stuff like it. But then also you do have to
take a step back and be like, well, it is
game Boy Advance and game Boy Wrong. Yeah, so yeah,
don't maybe yeah, just wait, yeah, it'll go on sale.
I have on the rundown here another you gi oh entry,
Men's you gi oh Yeah, Men's.
Speaker 2: No what this is just the u GIO for men
And it's well what that really is, It's just what
we call it in the community. That is, I've been
playing more PG A two or two K twenty five.
Speaker 3: You could have given me a million guesses. I'm not
sure I've.
Speaker 1: Actually this is this is hitting for me.
Speaker 2: I don't know how like fans of this series or
of golf games feel, but this one's working for me.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: They just streamed a long streamlined a lot, made the
swing feel really good and feel like you can actually
get it right, which I've struggled with because I'm bad
at games. So this one's made it easier for me.
So I've liked that a lot. But really I kind
of just was doing that as a joke so I
can just have one last chance. But hey, I am
trying to stream Monster Hunter to my steam deck and
I cannot get it to work no matter what I do.
I can do you use like the steamlink app that
you could download from the Discovery Store to get that
to like show that the picture because otherwise the black screen.
But in that case, I can't get the inputs to work.
Speaker 1: So you need.
Speaker 2: Optional but I like to have them. Yeah, So if
anyone has any recommendations for how to get that to work,
let me know.
Speaker 1: I don't know for sure.
Speaker 2: I'm doing wrong. It's driving me crazy. Parsek Yeah, I
mean parsec on my steam deck. I haven't tried that.
Speaker 1: I just said what Sean said speaking about Monster Hunter
Monster Hunter wilds Sean, you've also been playing this. What
do you think of the game?
Speaker 3: What do you think of the game.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's my thing. I've been Okay, yes, yes, my
I don't think it's an issue with the game, but
I think I decided to restart a new character, sure
just for poops and giggles, because you didn't want.
Speaker 3: To spend ten bucks or whatever your appearance.
Speaker 1: And I think I might have to restart the game
again because I don't like how my dude looks right now.
Speaker 3: And by the way, that controversy quote unquote on GM
this point that wasn't the review period. Just reviewers don't
pay attention like that was always there.
Speaker 2: Just want to be multiple viewers saying that they didn't
they wasn't in the review and I'm like, okay, it
must not.
Speaker 3: No, No, it was right there. It was just a
menu option that like people reviewers can't read so hard.
The games journalists are bad. Yeah, that's the real that's
really don't worry. I know everybody.
Speaker 1: That's why none of us are employed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well well half of us are anyways.
Speaker 2: Champing is what they tried to do to you grew
up last time, Like thanks, but I feel like they
could say what they're feelings are.
Speaker 1: Again, my experience with Months or Hunter, even restarting it,
and you know, knowing the whole rigamarole and the whole format,
especially the early hours of the game, it is incredibly easy.
It is almost too easy to a fault. But I
don't take an issue with that, and I will one
hundred percent understand veteran Monster Hunter players will totally take
an issue with that because your mount in this game,
your your chocobo lizard. Dude, makes this game obscenely easy
in such a way that I don't believe Monster Hunter
Rise did because Monster Hunter Rise you still had to
actively control your mount to get from point A to
point B when you when the monster decides to switch
locations here, I believe Jesse Norris highlighted in chat earlier
this week, it is kind of just like ubering to
your next location, and.
Speaker 3: You don't even have to press at buns. It just goes.
Speaker 1: It just goes, and you can slow it down, you
can sprint sprint, and I still don't have any issue
with that. I don't have a problem that this game
feels even easier. If anything, it is easier to turn
my brain off and just swing away at the monsters.
I kind of want that too. And and that's the thing,
Like I have engaged with the story for ten plus
hours in my like original save file, and let me
tell you, none of that information has necessarily stuck other
than like, great, right, I'm going to this village now,
and then like we were on a boat and we
save this kid, and now we brought this kid back here, Uh,
what's the deal? And now we're setting up another camp whatever.
I don't I don't care. Let me just cook my meat.
Speaker 3: Because like cooking meat.
Speaker 1: Because if anything, like the open world side of it
has just made it so much easier to like just
re engage into and get back into a hunt. And
it doesn't matter for me now that the hunts have
become so much shorter and so much easier to do,
and the thing is like doing using the focus system.
It feels absolutely broken, but I do not mind it
because of how excruciating it felt doing old hunts in
Monster Hunter world and again.
Speaker 3: Engaging Yeah yeah and again like it's fun. It just
feels good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it feels good, and it's like locked then
literally it is a soft lock on to gather monster
parts as well, because I did not personally have a
fun time re engaging in a hunt the same hunt
that was a little bit challenging just to get one
specific monster part that I believe may just be RNG sometimes.
But here with the focus mode and the wound system
of like, all right, the part I need is generally
around its head. I'm just gonna swing at its head repeatedly.
All right, cool, it has a wound there, I'm gonna
exploit that wound and go after it. And it just
made hunting more fun. I still haven't really checked it out,
and we'll check it out later today if you're watching
live some multiplayer hunts and so I can't speak to
how that is either more cumbersome less cumbersome. If anything.
What I want from Monster Hunter now bring back that
that like that insect bug zip line system that we
had in Monster Hunter Rise, because that just made the
verticality in the game so much more fun to just like,
all right, there's a bug here, I'm gonna zip up
to it and then like swing down on this monster. Right, Yeah,
I understand, and I'm operating under the understanding that, like
all right, Capcom knows that they have tuned this game
in such a way to let everyone in. And we've
seen that because earlier today one point three million concurrent
players on Steam alone, to quadruple the number of people
who are playing the video game from your peak for
the last one you made is nut is nuts. But
it does sound like I don't like these games because
when I press a button in a video game, I
want something to happen. Old, yeah, old fixed it.
Speaker 3: Nikki. What weapon do you usually is?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 1: I tried the insect grave when I was playing World.
Speaker 3: Do with you and Dan saying like, I'm gonna do
the thing that looks cool, ignore the fact that it's
the most insanely complicated thing.
Speaker 1: In the world.
Speaker 3: That tell you the.
Speaker 1: Whole game is like, hey, do you want to do
cool ship or hold a sword? And I'm like, I'd
prefer to do cool ship. I mean, I tried to
pick the cool ship and then the game fucking sucks.
Speaker 3: They want to do this, you're right, and Dan was
write that No, they should never recommend. They should be like,
is this your first monster harner? Oh, okay, this third
of the menu you can't access this go away, But instead.
Speaker 1: They me do the whole thing, and I was like,
I'm having a miserable time no, because I don't know
what I'm supposed to be doing and none of it
feels good.
Speaker 3: The way a weapon looks is kind of the way
it plays. And with insect glave, do you think like
using a pogo stick to fight a wrathlo sounds like
it would be fun in real life. No, that's how
it's gonna feel in the game.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Sorry, yeah, now you gotta have a gun sword
And that also felt bad. How do you fuck that?
Speaker 3: Up you if you do go back to Masser Hunter. Yeah,
check out like the dual blades or like the charge blade,
something like that. If it looks like it would be
fastest swing, it would probably feel a lot too.
Speaker 1: Boring, Like you can't you can't just be like, here's
the biggest lizard you've ever seen in your life.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The only thing that you're allowed to use is two knives.
Sometimes you need two knives, Nikki.
Speaker 3: How do you feel about dark souls?
Speaker 1: I didn't like them until Eldinry.
Speaker 3: Okay, that explains a lot. Okay, anyways, Jan, did you
have more otherwise? Ask you some stuff?
Speaker 1: Please ask away. I do. I'm only ever playing using
the hammer, though, sure I do want experiment to use
other weapons, but I just love that thing.
Speaker 3: What is your experience with Monster Hunter?
Speaker 1: Poked around a little bit with the Wei games, but
didn't get really into it until World.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, you're in maybe a similar boat than me,
maybe a little more experience. I got really into four
Ultimate on the three DS with friends, and then played
through like the main campaign of a World, and then
I played what the demo or beta or whatever for Rise.
So I don't have a ton of experience with Monster
Hunter either I'm somewhere, like, you know, sort of in
the middle. I've played them before, but I'm not new
to the series either, or sorry, I'm not experiencing series either.
But what a lot of what you're saying is echoing
how I felt playing through this. You know, me and
Jeff were talking to our bike Christian last night about it,
and he's super in the Monster Hunter has been for
a very long time, and he feels the same way
as well. Where the game does feel pretty easy in general, Jane,
you said, what the most you've gotten on, say, if
I was ten hours ish? Yeah, yeah, okay, and the
main quest line, or at least until you roll credits,
because the actually sort of can you the quote main quest?
After that, it's like twenty hours, so you got like
halfway ish. Presumably the difficulty gets better towards the end,
you know, as you expected to in a video game
like this, But in general I also think that once
you get over the halfway point gets more in the
realm of why I would want to be If you
are going to make the game, you're going to change
so much about the game to intentionally make it easier
to get into which also changes the difficulty. Because that's
my problem here is I think the word friction has
been thrown around a lot in regards to this game.
They've removed friction from the game, and that's to get
people in. And some people have been saying in the
review period that they removed to my said the friction,
and people are miss misunderstanding that as oh what, they
made the game accessible, and you're saying that's a bad thing, Well,
that that sucks and you suck, and I want to say,
I want to say that I think a better term
to use is something more along lines of tension. There's
a lack of tension in the game because some of
the changes just break the game. I think the Sacred
your bird mount chocobo thing breaks the game, and I like,
really like stretched it to see how far this could happen.
It's semi invincible, like if a monster uses a range attach,
it can still knock you off the Sacred. But generally speaking,
like for example, if you get knocked down, rather than
get up and run away, it's easier, Sorry, it's it's
better to call the Sacred in to pick you up
off the ground. It's way quicker, and then you are
also you have eye frames while the bird's doing that,
and you're semi invincible because the bird runs away and
your Palako distract. So that's one of those things where
sure the Sacred feels good to pilot around, and it's
cool that you can bring your satchel in on that
thing in order to have more supplies and quickly restocking
everything while going back to camp. But they also made
it so it takes away from some of the game.
You don't have to worry about looking at the monster
and saying, am I in danger? I need to like
be the correct distance away, I need to dodge at
the right time. A lot of that is taken away.
And I know you could intentionally not choose the game
like that, but they want you to play the game
like that. It's just like there is there is a
literal like danger meter in the upper left hand corner.
And Monster Hunter has always been about looking at the
monsters and seeing when they're about to strike, learning their
learning how they work, literally learning how a monster works.
It makes you feel like a hunter. Same with the tracking.
You know, you had to track the monster down before
and now now only are there the glow flies from
world just leading you there. Your Sacred is by default
on autopilot and just takes you there. Like one of
you was saying, sorry, you just automatically go there and
you don't have to press anything, and that I think
that's going a bit too far in taking away from
what makes Master Hunter Monster Hunter.
Speaker 1: Do you think there is space for them to remove
some of the abilities of the bird for more difficult
because I know that in this game they add more
lizards that are more difficult from older from older games.
Do you think that in some of those hunts that
they will remove some of the functionality of the kill
the birds? Yeah, your lizard, your bird gets killed.
Speaker 2: It's so and it's kind of like they they strip
some of this away and then they're yeah, where they
take flood away.
Speaker 3: Yes, they would have to because because those were all good.
That's kind of the only way they can fix that
at this point, because Yeah, like I said, the Sacred
is such a big part of the game that they
want you to use, and it kind of breaks the game,
as do similar parts of it.
Speaker 2: My guess here is this game is going to continue
to be this game, even with the DLC, with the expansions,
it will continue to be this game. They will find
ways to sort of reintroduce difficulty, absolutely, but they will
I think oscillate in the other direction with the next game,
where it's like, Okay, we have a new foundation and
we'll build up on top of this and new ways
for things to feel to bring back that tension, because
I what you described, like the expectation of what a
Monster Hunter game should be is what always sounded appealing
to me. Paying attention to the monster, learning it, applying
that knowledge to the next hunt, and knowing what you
need to succeed that sounded fantastic, sounds like a really
strong loop, and taking away from that does sound like
a taking away from Monster Hunter situations. So I think
they will be very happy with this game performing well
and then have the confidence to be like, well with
the next game. Now that we have captured all these
people into the Monster Hunter orbit, we can give them
more next time, or they could do.
Speaker 3: Just real quick. They could do what they did with
the switch, where they like alternate between having a more
mainstream on the consoles more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the number of people who told me that this
is this is the Monster Hunter, that's for beginners, this
is the Monster Hunter for beginners this is but this
is the first time and they're like, oh, here's all
this stuff. I don't like because it removes the it
removes the tension to Sean to your point, and I'm like, well,
that's the part I didn't really like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's the part where I say, and look,
I know how gate keeping this is going to sound.
It's okay if you don't like Monster Hunter.
Speaker 1: And that's the other part. I've gotten this far without
killing one of these lizards, and I think I'm gonna
keep going not killing these lizards. I have three questions
for you, Sean.
Speaker 3: Yes, what's a giant dinosaur lizard thing?
Speaker 2: Incorrect? That is a rock Star punched fruit punch with
tequila and orange shoe cure Nike Fresh Line Citrus about this?
Speaker 3: And I want it so bad because I love those
Rockstar punched What's a what's the uh that is the
one that is kind of like a Pina Claude I think,
or is that their one?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's going to be a rock Star Focus orange
pineapple with white rum something called velvet fulleranium, which I
couldn't tell if that's real.
Speaker 1: Or from the video game or not. What are the
first La la bina no no no. Then in the
description rock Star Focus orange Pineapple.
Speaker 3: Rock Star Focus the drink, Jeff, what's a rock Star?
Speaker 1: It is?
Speaker 2: Okay from it is the rock Star brand energy joint.
Speaker 3: Correct, these are mixed beverages.
Speaker 1: Because throw me up. I didn't know Rockstar did that. Yes,
because last week I went to the Rocks the Monster
Hunter Wild's launch party at the NRG Castle in downtown
Los Angeles, sponsored by Spectrum the Internet. Yes, they're They're
a hype house that content high houses called the n
r G Castle and it's sponsored by rock Slar. And
I went in there because they emailed me and they
said do you want to come?
Speaker 2: And I said, yeah, the Anarchy Castle absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1: So then I had to see in it a really
long line outside and then I fay finally let me
in and it was packed.
Speaker 2: And then you'll know the you'll know Artemis, the TikTok
Foul singer boy. Excuse me, Yes, I had that HBO
show about sports agents.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, and they hit it from the back from
It's always Sonny in Philadelphia.
Speaker 2: Anyway, the first thing I thought about he was there
and he put on the most sexless performance about for
songs that are about fucking in a club.
Speaker 1: I've ever heard in my whole life. Kind of impressive.
Just zero fucking riz none whatsoever up there on that stage.
And then I had none of these drinks because my
body is a temple. I had two vodka sodas.
Speaker 2: And you don't need to drink a rock star, you
are a rock star.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you so much. Where were we may
They offered to let me play the video game while
I was there, but it was honestly one of the world, Like,
you couldn't have paid me money if they were, like,
we'll give you twenty dollars right now to go play
Monster Hunter Wild's Wow, the loudest party you've ever been
to in the whole world, with the worst people you've
ever been around are also here. I would not have
done it, and I didn't anyway, Thanks for the invite, Capcom.
Thanks Capcom.
Speaker 3: So anyways, the other side of what I wanted to
bring up here today is, look, I know it may
have sounded like we were just dunking on the game,
just saying bad things about it, but though we were
kind of just getting those out of the way because
the game in general is very fun. Like Jen was
alluding to, once you find the that feels good to play,
it is very fun to play. I still have a
great time with my charge blade. You know, building those
stacks is a lot of fun. The feel of Yeah,
the focus mode allows you to just aim your attacks,
which I think is very good. That's a good idea.
I love that it allows you to. Yeah, it allows
you to easily like chop off the tail or whatever
instead of like trying to like wine up your slice
while it's like jumping from above or whatever. Yeah. I
think in general the game feels very good to play.
The characters are awesome. I actually care about these characters.
Even the story is a little nonsense, like, yeah, it's
a great crew, and you want to hang out with them,
kind of want to see what adventures they'll go on next.
I had a blast with that. I think this game
is very good. Nicki Racing from giant bomb dot com.
Speaker 1: You over hand raised, Hey, Nicki Raisin giant bomb dot Com.
Two questions, Yes, one is the does the food look
as good as it did in the last.
Speaker 6: One depends on what your graphics sayings are. I'll talk
about that in a second. Okay, Okay, that was not
an expected answer, but I appreciate it. Number two, when
you eat that food, is it lizard?
Speaker 3: No, it is ration, So I guess it could be
a wizard, but I'm pretty sure it's just like killing
to eat them. No, you just wear their skin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's just you just kind of throw away.
So that's your sustenance.
Speaker 3: And and you know, Nikky, do you kill a spider
once in your house?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I eat that.
Speaker 3: He is a temple. I get it. I get it. Okay,
I alluded to it. Hey, this game kind of runs
like butt. It doesn't run well anywhere. The consoles are better,
but the consoles are really just running a lower resolution
to get there. That's the experience I have my PC
PC version. Hey, I would like to reminderone, don't throw
around digital digital foundry videos for your like console or bs.
Don't do it to like push your own opinion. They
put the facts out there, and the people over there
they do a very good job at that, and they
do a very good job of detecting like two frame drops.
I not everyone's going to feel the same way. My
thirty sixty TI I kind of have to run at
high sayings because weirdly, it looks not great. Otherwise I
did that fourteen forty p DSS performance it hovered in
the fifties, not great. I kind of just got over it,
you know, it'd stuttered a little bit here and there whatever,
but generally I found it playable, at least on a
so so computer, So I thought it was okay, you
lower that resolution. It'll be fine if you're very sensitive
to performance, though, Like out looks like they're saying, though,
maybe hold off until it gets some patches or something,
because it does kind of look like just a PS
four game. It's weird that a PS four game runs
this way, but ori E engine maybe wasn't designed for
this kind of stuff, like we saw with Drans Dogma two.
Speaker 1: So yeah, all right, folks, that was the video games
for the rest of this week. If you're watching, I
want to talk about a Vowed. You didn't put it
on the list. I didn't get the lists the same
list the list. Can we talk about a Vowed? Yeah,
talk about a VOW real quick? Okay. That game's really
fucking good. There are so there. It is so rare
for me to play a video game. I alluded to
it on Twitter. Someone gave me a document in the
video game, and then I immediately forgot about it, and
then a plot event happens in the game, and then
after the plot event happens, I looked at the document
and was like, oh, I could have stopped the big
plot event from happening. And I was like, oh shit,
because I didn't read the thing. There are so many
choices in that game. There is no morality system in it.
I was talking with John and Michael Hyam about this
on on vgb's yesterday, But this game obviously doesn't have
morality system, and I think that the beautiful thing about
that is that like video games that have a morality
system kind of fall apart from me narratively because it
doesn't make any sense. Yeah, because the morality system should
be the is the player like you. You are the
arbiter of whether or not you feel good about the
decisions that you're making or not, and the job of
the video game is to present you with the choices
and then let you live with the consequences, either through
gameplay or through your own actions. Like when I realized
that I had fucked up so unbelievably bad because the
game was like, hey, you should read this note, and
I said, what if I went over here? I went
over can I get this bounty? And said, oh yeah,
oo god cave and there's a lizard in there. Really
really good.
Speaker 3: I like it.
Speaker 1: It is constantly making me re reevaluate the ways that
I view the world. I was deeply on the side
of the voice in my head, and then they started
saying some crazy shit in the last like an hour
and a half of gameplay, and I'm like, I don't
know what the fuck you're talking, Like this is an
insane tape. Like I used to be on your side,
and now I'm like, I don't know. And the idea
that I'm only probably a third of the way through
the game and there's still more shit for me to go,
Like I have no idea where it's going to go
or what the next steps are and the ways that
I move through the world and the ways that I
communicate with people. I don't know what that is going
to pan out too. And it's really exciting to me,
and I haven't played a game that has made me
feel like that in a really really long time. That's
my avowed minute, Thank you very much. I think this
game is going to its constantly getting reassessed.
Speaker 2: It feels like I think the early reviews, the first
reviews were a lot of people coming in and expecting
to be that Obsidian game and they're just kind of
doing a slightly different thing. I think they're making a
first person Diablo with some Obsidian flavor in there, and
it really works. You know, you're not going on sidually
generate a raids or something like that, but it's like
just like it just it's an action RPG is what
it is, and uh, it feels really good to play.
And then I think everything they sort of provide to
provide around that support going out there and doing fun
action RPG stuff is all. It all like folds back
in on itself to make make you want to do
the next thing. And so yeah, just a really kind
of I think an immaculately designed video.
Speaker 1: They let you sell your dead body to a woman
who revives dead bodies to work as farm hands. You
walk up to you do a quest for her where
you have to kill one of the ones that's gone
rogue and locked themselves in a farm, and then she goes, hey,
you look like you have a pretty good body. Would
you let me buy it? When you die. And then
you can be like, no, that's fucking crazier. You can
be like, yeah, fucking I don't care I'm dead. And
then she's like, sick, here's this necklace that I put
on my dead bodies when I need to find them.
And then that necklace lets you. That necklace lets you
pull your own dead body out of the ground to
fight for you as like an extra little companion. And
then she gives you a down payment on your body.
She just gives you cash. She's like, here's some of
the money up front, and then when you die, I'll
get I'll give you or your next of kin the
rest and the like. That's delight Like, that's delightful. So
it's a it's a really really really really really good
video I.
Speaker 3: Love hearing how you and Grub talk about this game.
I can't wait to play it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good.
Speaker 2: I think it's just if you're gonna go and if
you like video games, I think you'll like this pretty much.
Speaker 1: Like this is a game ass video game. Yep, good
way to put it all, right, speak about video games.
That's it for video games. We're not going to talk
about it anymore. We're gonna play one in a little bit. Uh, folks,
thank you so much for joining us. This week has
been a lovely week of podcasts and content. Will see
you next week for another episode bomb Cast. They been Nikki,
he's been Sean, he's been grubbed, I've been Janny. You
at home have been doing great.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: If you've been watching live and hanging out. If you're
watching games fun, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: Thanks stout men JUGI.
Speaker 1: Oh you're watching live, stay tuned. If you're not watching
live and you're listening, hey, thanks for listening. Come on, Oh,
I'm sorry. I didn't need to do that. Oh whoa,
whoa grub grub grub, I got in on that action.
All right, all right, all right, we'll see you next time.