Castle Super Beast - CSB 011: Life Starts When The Player Camera Leaves The Balls

Episode Date: March 26, 2019

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps Sekiro is out and we've got thoughts. Bird Box narrowly crosses the finish line. Stadia Stadia's the Stadia. You can watch us record the podcast live on twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Outro: Sekiro Main Menu Samurai Shodown Terry Bogard in FEXL STADIA Persona 5 The Royal 2 Million DMC5 sold XBONE SAD Cadence of Hyrule Sony's State of Play Vampire The Masquerade 2 Halo MCC for PC Gearbox teases Bulletstorm or Duke Nukem  

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Again, that's podsurvey.com slash super. Thanks for your help. Thanks guys. So, something, something, something stadia. What is the stadia of your stadia? Boy, maybe if I use it as a verb, noun, and adjective, all will find out. What it is, don't hate all of you stadia right there because we're going to stadia up this stadia, stadia now.

What is it? Stadia. So I went to go see a stadia. Yeah. And I thought it was pretty all right, but it's stadia up, it's stadia up to the place. Oh, it over stadia. It's welcome. Okay.

Well, puns will always work. If you want to do it that way, you can just, you can just fucking should I stadia or should I get out of here? These puns are getting pretty stadia. Oh, it's like a multiple extra words are in there. It's a website. It's a website. It's a website.

It's a controller that connects to a website. It's just a website and they, you know what, to their credit, to Google's credit, they've done a good job obfuscating that they knew, they knew that if they said that you can connect to our website and stream the game, people are already walking out the door is swinging there. There are people listening to this podcast live that figured it out exactly, but probably maybe didn't come to the conclusion of the word. It's a website and they're going, oh, that's way worse than I am.

I'm locked in and I'm like, it's Matt Pat. Maybe he will tell us what it is and he was very excited, but he didn't say it was a website. I wanted to, I like just, you know, and that's what it is. It's like, you just got to say it's, it's a site. You log in, you know, and in some cases it's a site or an app. And if you have the fastest internet in the world, 200 gigs per hour and 20 gigs per hour and unlimited data caps and miraculously live in a location in which there are no network junctions in between you and Google servers, wherever they happen to put it that have issues,

then you too can enjoy popular games instantly on the website with maybe a couple hundred milliseconds of delay. Okay. So here's two things. One, as we know, some games, it lag matters more. Like two frames, three frames of lag matter more in certain types of games. And some games it matters like not at all. Exactly.

If you are playing into the breach persona, whatever, fuck off. Who cares? Ah, it feels a little whatever. Who cares? A little underwatery. Yeah. So also, also, if your reactions aren't honed to a razor sharp katana edge, like ours are. Well, so you should, I mean, you say that, but quite frankly, no, anytime I have top

players come over and they sit down and they grab the control and they go, no, get your switch TVs and I'm like, fuck. You're like, yeah, but all that to say that like rhythm games, action games, games that have features such as max acting or just framing. Games that have features such as real time gameplay are not going to do well with the idea of like now I will give them credit on one thing. I will also give the fact that the controller connects not to a device in your house that then transmits out, but instead connects directly via the internet to the server.

That probably shaves a frame off. Yeah, because that means you're one last layer of what you're seeing. So you're actually interacting with the, you're interacting with the server. You are King crimsoning your character and the results are coming later. Like that's smart because that that shaves something off. But when I hear things like they want to run entire fighting game tournaments off of the platform and that they were very serious about that claim, I very seriously chuckle from the very serious of my belly and heart because that makes no sense.

But here's here's the credit I give them and it's not directly to them, but it's actually to parsec after using the program parsec, which is a basically a discord for screen sharing. It works extraordinarily well. Like the lag in that was the the the feel of lag in that was extremely minimal. And I will say that like it is possible to do this like this tech exists. Yes, it does. The, in fact, like parsec, I'd say goes as far as to it literally is is advertising itself to fighting game players as a way of connecting and playing online by not actually going through

the game's infrastructure, but by doing desktop sharing. And you play locally on the person was it called the X X play, whatever the fucking shit was back in the day. Sure. Just fudge it. So yeah, basically, so you're playing a local match on your computer and someone else is seeing your desktop and like the the the the screen share is responsive enough that you can actually play a fighting game with it, right?

So that tech is what they're kind of pushing. I will say this on my channel right now. The woolly and Austin play PlayStation demo discs is done through parsec. It was remote recorded remotely by a magic and no one could tell the difference because that's how good it was. Now there were I even got people saying like, oh man, I hope Austin comes to town soon again. You guys should record more. That was fun.

It worked. Right. People have to smell Austin at all. People didn't even realize hey, Texas is fine. People didn't even realize. Yeah, sure. Texas. I'm talking to Austin here.

People didn't even realize that we were we were literally doing that from Texas to my house and just undoing the audio and post like no one even know caught it. So like the fact that that works so well makes me think, hey, streaming has come a long way since the days of me testing on live. It sure is. Now I have I have multiple questions for you. Well, what is the speed of your internet ball parkery? Like, but give me give me a fucking guesstimate here.

Oh, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. It's like it's probably not Fiverr, but it's like the highest thing before it's like it's like 210. Yeah. That's see that's good. Right. Oh, where do you live?

In Montreal. Yeah. You live in a major city. I live on an island. The second largest city in the province in the most populated province in the country that in which you live. Hotspot. So maybe like, I don't know, fourth largest city in the country.

There's a lot of people around the center of infrastructure. Yeah. Okay. What about, I don't know, our pal plague of gripes, yeah, who just barely got decent internet and lives literally like 30 miles from a mailbox or some shit. What about those people? Yeah. What does Stadia do when it interacts with the farm?

What does Stadia do when it interacts with the middle of open fields? We might not have given it the credence it deserved because like there were a lot of things you said. Well, he mentioned that this thing will chew up 20 gigabytes an hour of play. That is their estimate. So every year I am always surprised to discover that there are still people on Comcast. Well, there's portions of the United States that literally only have Comcast. And that's the only choice you're going to get and God damn it, that is some internet

privilege right there that I have to look at it that way. But it's so nuts to me that that's a thing. But it's like, if you've got no choice, you've got no choice. I'm thinking, I'm thinking that the reason why they're one, they want to hide the fact that it's a website, right? Yeah, you got that. You got that little tweet that shows you the guy letting go of Assassin's Creed, but the character keeps moving a little bit.

It was really smart of them to do all those demos with Assassin's Creed because that game already has input latency. So like you people go, oh, your character doesn't stop running the instant you let go of the stick. That's true. If you're on Comcast, I feel bad for you. That sucks to hear. Stay the fuck out of my fighting games.

Get out. So Max uses like some kind of super router that like blocks people from certain regions of the world. That's awesome. Like you just said it. You can you can actually just use your port forwarding settings to shut that. But he apparently it's it's for like specifically like fighting games and it's like, I want you to just fucking blanket annihilate any ping over a certain number.

Yeah. You don't have to set it to like three bars and up because it's like you just bars are not allowed. Three bars not allowed. Um, the the. So you saw you had that little that little tweet. You had the fact that they're obfuscating that it's a website. I think this stadia platform that Google is pushing, which is for those who haven't

heard of it, we jumped right in, but all announced their gaming platform stadia. And it appears that they're calling it a platform, even though it's clearly a service and and and and and I think that what this is going to probably do is work extremely well for audiences that don't give a fuck about like, I mean, mobile gamers and a lot of other people give a fuck about like, no, no, I mean console people that don't give a fuck about like, like there's a lot of people where weirdos were in the weird corner. I think that that perception we're trying to hear Max acts. I think that perception is like.

No, I think you and I are on a farther edge of that system. Like for example, I will obsess over my graphics settings on my fancy PC and you don't tend to do that. Right. And then there's a step below you, which is like a normal person, like an average person. Right. I think. I think the perception of people playing games and the game feeling off like off just

not quite right is larger than you think, aside from people who just don't have any real experience with console or PC stuff. Yeah. Underwater the underwatery, quote unquote, that's a feel that you can't shake. Yes. The underwateriness is something that like it's a it's it's a word that like new QA people will write in a bug, not knowing what the term should be. And you'd be like, hey, so that's called like, right?

Or late if you want to be if you want to go with that. Ultimately, I think there's a whole lot of people. I have I have a lot of cousins that don't give a fuck, right? And they play first person shooters. Sure. They're the ones marking out about the Halo Master Chief Collection. Absolutely. Right.

But they just don't give a fuck. I can't point out how fucking gonzo it is that people are marking out over the Master Chief Collection coming to PC when that thing was like the biggest disaster Xbox ever did for light years running. A lot of people like Halo one, two, three, reach, ODST. Yeah. But a lot of people like those games to work. That shit was a trash fire for the longest time. We'll see. Yeah.

But anyway, there's a whole lot of people that are that are unaffected by this because it doesn't it doesn't register in it as a point of concern. There's a whole lot of folks that would rather, depending on how this pricing point is structured, you know, sign up for the like I was waiting to hear a bullet point such as never buy a game again. I was. And I didn't see that listed because every dev would take a huge shit right there right in the stage. But I want to say that like if they are going to price it in as a subscription

Netflix type of thing, then you're going to get a whole lot of people, a lot of people that are like, well, fuck that, I'm just going to pay for renting games out on a service as opposed to purchasing them. So you saying that just triggered like a combination of two separate facts into my mind, which I have to ask a question because I don't know the answer, but I find it interesting. So this thing requires pretty much the fastest Internet you got, right? And the Internet data caps to support it, right? Or it'll it'll compress the video, right?

Now, how many of those people who don't give a shit about this stuff are going to be rocking the fastest Internet known to man? They're not. They're going to be rocking the Internet that's good enough for them and maybe a relative to look at their emails, which means they're going to have a not buffered experience, but like video streaming macro blocking is the ugliest visual artifact that exists. It's terrible. It feels like you're playing censorship. Yeah, there is or it or it feels like you're you're installing a fan sub, but your codec

wasn't right. Oh, can't keep up with what you're trying to remember when those motherfuckers switched to nine bit encoding. And I'm like, I don't care. I can't see the difference. All I know is that my persona anime looks like crap. Now, dude, I like when when when people stopped you, like when Divak stopped being a thing and we have to go into like X vid and all the other places and I was like, wait, what do we what are we doing?

And you got your fucking Vob sub. Oh, GGs. Anyway, the point. Aug Vorbis out of my house out of here. Matroska video. The listen. If you want to watch your anime, just download CCCP. It'll play everything ever every video format known to man.

It's a good codec. You don't need to worry about the rest. There is a guys, if there's stream issues, you got to refresh your stream. Not sure what to tell you. There are stream issues. You can listen to the audio. You can listen to the audio version of the podcast as well. Right now, this has nothing to do with what with me.

I click the study. The stream is going. Hey, well, there's nothing to have. And let me ask you a question. You have a really good internet, right? Yeah. So you should be able to stream completely without interruption and have no issues ever. Right.

Yeah, that's correct. Right. Oh, my God. That's hilarious. Let's throw another one. That is so funny. It reminds me. Live as we discussed the actual issue.

I remember. And here's the perfect part, right? Where, like, literally everyone right now is kind of going fix it. And I'm like, there's nothing to fix. There's nothing to fix. The internet just decided to go in. It is connected and running. And when it decides to fix itself, it will connect again.

It has nothing. It's not. I'm I'm glad we can bring. I'm glad we could bring fucking fiddle with the rabbit ears to fix the signal to video games. Yeah. I mean, the fact that the fact that I don't have to click anything and wait a little while and then in about 10 minutes, it'll be fine. And you'll be just commenting on whatever else we're talking about shows you there's

nothing to fix. So I have. It's just what it is. So study is cool. But there's a big problem with it that require like it's a bit. It's a it's a big it's a big fucking sounds like a runway woman. Obfuscated like portion. Okay.

This doesn't have anything to do with study. It doesn't have anything to do with you. It doesn't have anything to do with your setup. Right. Okay. I have a good internet home and I live in a big city and everything's great. And when I played after 14 more regularly, a couple of years ago, servers were located in Montreal.

I think they were even located like in an adjacent building to like the fucking idos building. Like I was like maybe 30 kilometers away from the servers. So my pain was fucking sick. Right. However, somewhere southwest of us, there is a data center run by a company called level three. Right.

Now level three. So the internet is not owned by the government. It's not owned by any particular one company. There's millions of fucking little nodes that are server, whatever's that pass the traffic. I think of them as like, I don't know, electrical stations, right? Too much juice. They blow up. So it turns out at certain times of the day on certain parts of the West coast with certain

internet service providers, uh-oh, everyone in FF 14 experiences crippling lag around, I don't know, seven to nine PM on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. Why is that? Well, that's because the level three node, the one that you have to route to to get to all, if you're on the West coast, is getting slammed by all of the regular ass prime time traffic. Can't do it. It just that, that one week link just can't do it.

And as a result, like 10, 20, 30, 40,000 players just up can't play within these certain times of the day, which of course is the times when everyone is on and everyone is playing because you'll have a shitty experience. We had a boss we couldn't beat for over a month because one of the people in our group, we'd load in and be like, yeah, my internet's been fine all day. It's good. We're good to go. We'd load in like the boss, it has disappeared from the arena, has completely desynced with

the world. Yeah. Oh, I'm dead. That sucks. Right? That sucks. Well, guess what? They got to put those fucking servers for this shit somewhere and the amount of juice

they're, they say that Google servers will have the ability to stream 20 gigabytes an hour to millions of people. One that's a lie. That is not true. There is no. How big is this fucking thing? 10 kilometers? What?

Fuck yourself. So it seems like Google heard us talking shit and they're just nuking Montreal and everyone's going, oh my God, we love you, Stadia. No. Guys, guys, guys, guys, even if it is my end, that my end equals the city's internet. Yeah. There's nothing with setup in this place to change it and make it work or perhaps there's nothing I can do or perhaps your ISPs internet.

If you want to be slightly more specific, what do you want me to tell you? Google encourage you talking shit. Now, now like Google's got what they want to put fiber out down in like Kansas City. I remember hearing about that, right? So let's say Kansas City has a fucking straight shot to their servers, right? Sure. What about the surrounding area of Kansas City? What about the town, those major city, like one state over that has like some fucking

bum fuck rural node in between them, that all the Kansas City traffic is going to go through that one, like two story building? It's like it's the infrastructure. So if we had already solved like our problem of not being like Korean or Japanese internet, that's correct. We could start having this discussion. Yeah. Let's have it.

But we're not there yet. Japanese. We got fucking cornfields to send data through Japanese and Korean internet is so good. It makes some of the games you play bad because the internet parts of those games were never even there. I want to say they were never even given netcode, but that doesn't really make any sense. But I think you understand what I mean. Like why would it lag?

Why would you ever connect to a human being that had anything less than 10 pay anything more than 10 paying? Yeah. But here's the thing as much as for all these issues and foibles, they throw out a price point that looks nice and affordable. That's it. It's got to have a price point that's nice and affordable that works. People will pay for things that work.

Yeah. If it doesn't work, but the Venn diagram of people that live in the city versus people that care about lag, there is overlap. And having bad internet doesn't mean you don't care about lag. And well, I mean, sometimes it's just your location. Yeah. Sometimes you just can't help it. But all that to say, I think they can find success if they stick to, one, games where

it doesn't matter and actually do some research into what that means, two, like if phones actually stream the shit like fast enough in a way and you're on Wi-Fi, you're not going to be fucking. Yeah. What do I said? It'll support 4G later. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm going to download 20 gigs on my phone. Data. Yeah. Shut up. So and your controller as well is going to fucking connect to each shit. So but all that to say that like if that dream is actually realized, there's a lot of people that are like, yeah, controller on my phone, let's play AAA games.

I don't know, man. So I went and did some census data digging on this. I think we're overestimating how much people care. I tend to. And when I say people, I really do mean like, you know how, think about all the game sales of a given game and think about how many of them picked it up from following reviews or following game news, right? Think about how many people check out what's coming out on a regular scheduled basis.

Miniscule portion of the audience. Versus the amount of people that just wander into an EB or just check out what's new on the digital store. FIFA's, for example. So there is enough sustainability in the numbers of those who just impulse Wi-Fi. So they want to cast the widest, shallowest net possible. And I think they know that that net goes wide and far. So it excludes us, but they can survive in the same way that mobile games have continued

doing being a thing for years now and are at a point that it's like, they don't need our attention to thrive. You can fucking candy crush your way to billions. So I want to use an example here, because I did census data digging on this because I was like, I need to know, one, this shit's only going to happen in Europe, Canada and some Europe, Canada and the US, right? Okay, so that makes sense for early limited launch, right? For a big service like this.

All right. Canada and the US don't have the same population density, obviously, and they don't have the same population distribution in rural and urban areas, right? Canada is about 80-20 for urban versus rural, right? US is about 50-50 population-wise, like about half the country is like on the coasts and about half the country is like everywhere else in the middle, right? But let's say 50-50, let's use the US as an example, that's the primary market, it's like three.

What do you guys up to? Like $3.30 million? You guys are big. They're a little above $3.30. Right? $3.37, I think. All right. Let's say half your population is your rural, right?

Let's just straight up remove those people from this entire discussion entirely because they're not going to be using this at a decent speed or rate or there's only one in it service provider and the fucking bandwidth caps are just not sustainable. Let's take a plague and gang just straight up out of the equation, right? Now let's look at people who live in a city and how many of those people have internet good enough? Let's say it's half, right? Let's be generous and say half of people who live in a city have really good internet,

right? You have already de facto eliminated 75% of the entire wide-ass net of people that could use this fucking thing, right? So now you're casting the shallow net only in the pools in which there is dank internet bait for people to feed on. I think it's crazy because how many of those people are not game purchasers now that would purchase games at a much cheaper rate? How many new people are you finding that would never have bought that game that are like,

I'll pay a service for you to play it, depending on whether they announced that or not, which they haven't? Yeah. So I feel like if we look back at the Wii and we look back at the success of the Wii and we look at game purchasing habits of the average person. So you talked about how like Nintendo likes to use the fucking blue ocean metaphor, right? But there's also the opposite metaphor, which is like the water is as red as it could, like it's just red water, there's a lot of blood here because everybody's chomping at the same

thing, right? Like your grandma bought a Wii because Wii sports, yeah, right? That was the shit. Swinging that bass to that baseball. That was dope, right? But your dedicated video game player person represents like a stupid proportion of actual total industry money. Like games more than movies have like this fucking thing where people like you and I

are spending fucking 10, 20 times as much on video games and video games shit as the average consumer. Like the mean, the median and the mode look all fucky when you look at it on a stat sheet, right? So the broad audience doesn't necessarily mean quite as much money unless you can get the whole broad audience. The Wii could have gotten everybody. All you needed was a fucking TV and 250 bucks.

This thing requires you to live in a certain place. It requires you to have a certain internet plan already, which honestly, if I know there's going to be die hard, this is the future, and they're going to upgrade their internet as well. And then they're going to have to mentally add that internet price to their fucking subscription thing. The final piece of the puzzle is the pricing scheme. We haven't seen it yet.

We don't know what it's going to be. Are you buying games? What are we talking about here? Because here's the thing is, is that if you're introducing Game Flix, and I mean, Netflix already expressed interest in doing this, from playing around with Bandersnatch, they want to go into further, more interactable content and then look into this world. If Google beats them to the prunch and actually brings this to the table, and it's not just Game Flix, it's like YouTube interaction where a viewer can stop being a viewer and join

the game. I saw an article in which they interviewed George Bunny Hub about that, and he was like, fuck that, I want that. But there's definitely going to be a real possibility that if they introduce something extremely competitive price-wise, that's all it takes. So the dirt cheap controller, so my last point to that I guess would be is that one of the reasons why the Wii was so successful is because it was new, and it was a type of new that people hadn't seen before, so it caught the blue ocean casual, whatever the

fuck you want to call it, right? This is telling you that you can play the games, the types of games you already play badly, and that doesn't feel like a very appealing pitch to most people. Like I'm not talking about the generalized public, I'm talking about anybody who plays games as a hobby or to a significant degree, like a couple hours a week even, hey you can play the same types of games you usually play anywhere, and they'll kind of run worse overall. Is that not exciting to you? I mean look man, like I said, Steph played all of P5 on the Vita TV connecting to my

PS4. Let me ask you a question. Would she have played that at all if you didn't have a PS Vita TV in the house and you were like yo P5 is the shit? If you did not exist. Would she have played P5? Yeah, that's right. Probably not.

Yeah, so are neither of most of these people. But if they exist, they exist. I guess. Right. I feel like I'm going to blow up the spot now and say that she's like hey are you using your old mouse? And I'm like no, why? It's like I kind of want to try Apex.

Cool. And just like full on volition and wants to get in there and try and see what it's like and stuff. So I mean one way or another a sale is a sale is a sale. But what I mean is that that came from proximity to someone who is just dripping with video game juice. Yeah. Right.

And you dripping with your video game juices onto the floor are not going to be a fucking ambassador for laggy games. The existence of a functional, healthy and extremely profitable mobile market leads me to believe that my I would not call the mobile market healthy at all. Well, depends on what you okay depends on your definition of healthy. By healthy I mean there are people that are making tons of money. Yeah, but I'm making it in great ways. I consider a healthy market to be one in which you can make a product of value and sell it

and make a tidy sum. Yeah. Because the mobile market is boom bust. It's dice rolly lottery town. Yeah. But we're fucking we're squeezing whales here. Yeah. I know dude.

But that's that you know. But the point I'm getting at is that I previously years ago would have looked at that and went these games suck. The platform sucks. It's touchscreen only. All of this is their time wasters ultimately. But this is not going to last slash this is always going to just remain in a weird little corner and then fucking gacha and loot boxes and a million other things that come out come

a king.com just prove me infinite. So my my I'm not going to be so stupid as to think that like no but real games though. So didn't work then I don't think it ever had anything to do with real games. I always had I had the feeling that the mobile boom has to do with one really simple factor and that's the fact that the person already has the phone in their hand. They have the phone. It's in their hand. Stadia works on.

No matter. Yeah. But let me follow me. So they already had the the entrance whatever. So that means that the only barrier to them would for like a candy crush would be like what a dollar. Yeah. Or whatever.

That's a low ask. Right. That's low with Stadia. It's don't just have screen of choice whatever. Everyone has that already. It's also have a utility in your home that's good enough to support it. And I feel like you overestimate how many people have that utility in their home in general good enough to support it and would be like that narrows it so significantly.

I like I think there's a possibility. I'm not sure how likely it is. But I think there's a possibility. You're going to see a bunch of kids sitting in a McDonald's with their controllers and their phones on a thing connected to the McDonald's Wi-Fi trying to run some garbage ass. Dude, I have literally already seen that scenario except now they're running it through Stadia. Yeah.

Maybe. And I don't know. I feel you know what? You know what? Maybe I'm too cynical. Let's just hope that Stadia does just as well as on live PlayStation now and that that other one that happened that I don't even remember the name of. I think I think actually we might have completely separate goalposts here because I'm describing

a scenario in which they will make money and continue to exist and you're describing a scenario in which it will become so better and good and eventually worth it or I am. I am reacting directly to the specific fucking smart smelling claims made at the event. Yeah. Of this is the fucking future video games, man, no console future and like you're going to be like there was there was a fucking quote. I forget where it was, but it made me laugh so hard. I might have been I was like, oh my God, what are what are like?

What are YouTubers and Twitch streamers going to do because like you'll be like watching like somebody play a game and then you could just hit a button on your browser and then you're playing the game instead. Oh, they're fucked and I'm just like safe. Yeah. Create safe states and stuff. Oh yeah. Flush that happy horse shit, honestly, but but but but that's not but that's not the

point. The point is, is will it float? I think this thing, I'm coming at this in a binary place. I think will it float and I think there's enough. I think three or four years depending on the price point and that controller, oh dude, we'll see that controller is like the data is not all I like, but I believe if it comes in cheap, that'll do. When I saw that controller, I fucking blinked because like I'm like, I saw it and I saw

the silhouette like how they get away with this. Well, they're not getting they're not getting a steam controller and this is wild and it's in its homage. I mean, this is what a video game controller looks like now. I think that in two years, we will struggle to remember this thing's name the same way that there was on live and there's PlayStation now and there's a third one. There was a third one that I can't remember like that and maybe we'll remember it after a couple seconds because it was the Google one.

Price point will determine price point will determine, you know, I will say that on live and PlayStation now super fuck their price points is up really bad. Like they're bad. Yeah. Uh, if they come in at 15, that's not going to cut it. If they come in at 10, you're going to get some but Netflix jumped jumped it up. I don't know how cost effective that would be because if they're actually kicking out that much juice, there's like that's I mean, so the idea is, are these brand new dedicated

servers? Are these servers Google had anyway? You know, is it is it multi or are they what's the loss they're taking on on on on these things if I'm talking about pure bandwidth cost like sending the juice over the wires. Um, for what it's worth, the 20 gigs per the 20 gigs, gigs per hour stat applies to 4k 60 FPS. Yeah. Um, and apparently it does work on a 30 meg connection for people that have that quality

setting. Uh, a stable 30 meg connection, obviously. So right. It you can run it and you can play the mosaic pixel version of the game if you want. Yeah, if you like. So you know, my favorite thing. So we have a little, hey, hey guys, guys at home, you got me and Willie here have a little bit of experience with YouTube video compression.

That's Google video compression. And what 4k 60 actually means is not what you might think it means when you're talking about video streams for YouTube, for you, yes, for YouTube, but for all other things as well, because there's that hidden, hidden number that the one they don't want to tell you about the one that's hidden in the, in the fucking, how to make your upload to the fucking whatever that tells you about your bit rate, because I could put up a fucking 4k 60 video that looks like liquid piss. If I just, you know, put that bit rate to a thousand and that'll, that'll download real

fast. That'll download super fast. I will say that, yeah, not, uh, YouTube had its own system in place, Google came in and bought it and they didn't necessarily, uh, have the same things going for Google video when they did it, you know, but, um, yeah. This, uh, you, whatever, you'll get 4k 60 and a bit rate of three million, information incoming, you know, I mean, I mean, quite frankly, Netflix on its own was seen in a silly light.

And I remember when I was fucking doing QA on their, their disc loan service where you fucking get it, send the goddamn DVD to your house and send it back. Wow. At that. But they hung in there. Everything about Stadia is hilarious to me because like we announced it. What about this? We're not talking about that right now.

Yeah. And it's like, well, then shut the fuck up. The presentation was so, we're not telling you what it is, but here's everything about it that you're supposed to be impressed by. Listen, it was very much like, what are you doing? This shit's the future. How is it the future? We're not talking.

Yeah. It was very, it was a very, uh, we got a winner. Juice, juice, juice, juice, you know, a requiem for a dream. Just full on like sell the product, purchase the product, love the product. You are the product. The product is a lifestyle. Do not ask questions about the product. You need to consume and get excited for next product.

Yeah. It, well, that's a whole other topic we can get into. Oh yeah. I feel like we get into it every week because this shit is consumers, but eat the, eat the video game. And are we contributing? Yeah. That's my job.

Are we feeding into the hype for the game and then the game is out and then we, what's the next time? Let me get my shovel. Piggy's. Yeah. Yeah. Cause guess what? Devil may cry five and the next from soft game are out all right and the binging hours

have passed and now you're in the, let's talk about games we'd want to play on the Stadia. Hey. And now you're, now you're in the real hours where after you've binged it to the point of turning it off in a couple of days pass, you're in the real hours of sitting on your couch doing an activity, not playing devil may cry five or second row and going, oh yeah, I kind of don't want to do that right now. I'll get back to it later.

I'm kind of like sickened by my own behavior and think about all the buildup, think about all the excitement, all the hype trains, all the time that was spent and just think about whether or not that feels equivalent in the post release moment and then what the next purchase is going to be. Honestly, it's like, it's like eating a big, it's like getting excited for a big cake and then the cake is here and then you eat the whole cake and then you're like, and then as soon as you shit that out and you're feeling clean, you're like, oh man, I could go for an even bigger cake right now.

I mean, I will say that with these two out now, I got nothing I'm sitting on my hands about outside of a couple of new random announcements here and there that I'm going like, you know, but it really is like, it is asymmetrical first three months this year were fucking hot. Yeah, yeah, they were. They were. But like once you get off the train, you know, once the train pulls out of the station and it brings you to your destination, it's asymmetrical.

The buildup and then even even when the game is amazing, and it stays amazing forever afterwards, like that there's something about that like the buildup has enough people that like those who have no interest whatsoever are like, just gonna, I'm on board. I got money. What are we buying? What was happening? I like the feeling of new Devil Mayo Christ, that is that new I get in. Should I get right now?

I mean, I'm in, I'm in. It's a really weird phenomenon to kind of get used to. But yeah, it's it's part of what this is. I suppose, you get like a so there's there's a term people like to use was the honeymoon effect, which I'm going to assume was obviously about people getting married initially. Yep. And how like, you know, newlyweds and how fucking honeymoon phase, how just disgusting they are and how like they become the worst people in the world because they're so happy.

Right. People who buy games and watch movies are like that, too, especially if they've been waiting a long time. You'll see, people, I came out of episode one, Star Wars, the Phantom Menace as a fucking 12 year old or whatever the fuck I was going, holy shit, that was the coolest fucking lightsaber. Oh, wow, Star Wars. And then like a couple of weeks later, I went to see it again and was like, oh, shit. This episode sucks, man.

Try episode seven. Yeah. Or eight. Well, it keeps it's I mean, it's it's a universal thing, right? And it happens with video games, too. But here's the thing. It happens with games that are good and bad. So DMC five probably haven't been excited for a game like that in a long time, except

for I don't know, Resident Evil 2, which was like three weeks early. Um, boy, I love that game played it. Ah, like thrilled. And then now I'm back, I'm after the honeymoon period of no longer. My brain is no longer seeing like devil trigger memes everywhere, right? And I'm like, ah, that's a good game. But it could never have been the game in my mind. Oh, that's that's that's ridiculous.

Right. Uh, here's how satiated I am. Yeah. I don't want Devil May Cry six. Yeah. I we were taught. So fucking hot take. Fucking big spoilers.

We actually talk about that at the end of the LP in the last episode of like, I'm good. We really don't need another one now. This is exactly what I said. And this is there's not many franchises. Get this moment. Yeah. But you get this moment right here where you're like, yeah, no, we can stop. We can stop.

It is okay spiritually, emotionally, mechanically, mechanically, yes, for us to call it here. Now would I be excited and enjoy Devil May Cry six? Absolutely. I would. I mean, but my soul does not cry with burning tears. So when you make your thread that says, uh, here's what they should do for DMC six. I'm just not even clicking on that because I'm not, I have no, I'll pay attention when it happened.

I am not interested. So what you're saying is that you like DMC five a whole lot. Okay. And quite frankly, um, you know, it's more than just, it's like, it's the end of the sons of Saga. It's the, they, the specific line is, it is the end of the sons of Sparta storyline. Yeah. But it's like, it's like, now I'm okay with Devil May Cry dying before it was not okay.

Before it was sad and it was like, now it's a celebration bitches. Yeah. Right. Um, you know, when, when you, when you come to such a fuck, when you have such a celebration as a send off, you know, um, you know, I, like, I, even though we got five, like I still say like, like, you know, the end of MGS four had that moment of like, yeah, you can leave it here. You could leave it here.

And yes, revengeance is, I'm glad that I feel that's a, that's not even the same. But it's exactly. Right. You're just, you're departing so hard. It's like, it happens to be associated with this, but whatever. And then the other one I give it to is, is, uh, steel ball run is like, you know what, I mean, this is way in the future, but that, that's how good it is. You finish steel ball run and you're like, Jojo can wrap it up.

Jojo can stop right now. And then, and then it's like four testicles. All right. Let's get in. Sign me up. We got more stories. I thought I was done, but hell no. I wasn't.

Yeah. I think a few franchises have that moment and when it does, it's, it's nice. It's complete. Yeah. It feels like correct. MGS four had that, sorry, Metal Gear had that and then it lost that moment, which is like fucking tragic to me. And then it found it again with four and then it lost it again because they had it at the

end of Snake Eater. They had it at the end of Snake Eater and then Peace Walker came out and you were like, yeah. And then they did it again with four and like, ah, dude, finally. And then no, no, I don't need to know about Venom. I don't need it. Like you really don't bring in this. You like, you're like, who is this?

This is the boss. Who is she? She created Snake. Okay. Is she cool? She's the coolest. That's just cool. How cool is she?

Oh, oh, okay. Okay. Everything makes sense now. Got it. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Done.

And then even that weird ghost shit, I can kind of headcanon a couple of details and then you're saluting the grave and you're like, oh my God, I feel it. And then you got, you cut to the fucking the Ness intro or whatever office. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's right. And then you go, no, we're good. We understand.

And then you're like, there are a few lingering and then the timeline rolls, right? And you're like, done. And then you're like, okay, it wasn't really ghosts. It was like, it was just assholes with secret identity. Assholes. Yeah, exactly. I can live with that. Yeah.

And then, and then MGS4 starts off and it's like, no, it was ghosts. Internet ghosts. And then you're like, okay, oh, you got the hallway and everything. Okay. Good. Good. You're like, huh, done. And then they're like, no.

And you're like, we don't, we don't need it. We don't need it. I feel like, I feel like the Metal Gear Solid 5 is the longest footnote to a plot hole ever. And that, that's what I feel like that story is. Yeah. Like, but I know that I'm not as doubt on it as, as most people are because there are some contributions that I really dig. I had what might be the worst experience with that game that a human could have.

And that I did not get to play. Right. Right. So the entire time, like Liam had a blast with it and even he has gone, he's very disappointed in it. But like, he got to play it. Yeah. He got to enjoy it.

Right. I got to sit there going, oh man, I really hope something happens. Ocelots on the screen. Okay. You left. Dude, Ocelots in that game. He has, he does nothing. I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, there's, there's, there's individual, there's individual points

of parts of that game that I, that I think are really cool and aspects to it. And in the end, right, the, the double take on that ending makes me go fine. That was a interesting piece of information that we got. Fine. Yeah. Getting that extra bit. And I mean, you know, I think we can talk about it openly now. Big boss is a jerk.

Yeah. That's, that's the ending. Big boss is as bad as the, as the people who killed the boss. Yeah. And, and he becomes that way. He is, his legacy is built on a lie and he is the biggest hypocrite and the legacy in our heads of how amazing he is is only possible because it was a lie, because no one's that good.

Yeah. I can take that. Sure, that's fine. You fucking piece of shit hypocrite. But can you take that Jeep ride? Skull man, Skullface had so much potential that that Jeep ride is in like, if I made a list of like top 10 worst moments in video games of all time, that Jeep ride would be in there.

And Skullface had so much potential, so much. He was so evil in, in, in Ground Zeroes, Ground Zeroes, the, so, so, he was so evil that the nature of his evil made me uncomfortable that the audio tapes were being given to you as a reward. Right. Like, like, like, to the point where it's like, is this genuinely inappropriate? Like because he's so evil, like the layers of, you know that, you know the chart and it still remains like villains who you, who are arguably correct are the best.

Yeah. Because you can barely see the, the motivations that are arguably more justified than the heroes. Yeah. Right. Skullface is completely not that. No. Skullface is the most opposite end of the spectrum, but you're like, oh my God, this

fucker needs to go. Yeah. Um, and then nothing happened, dude. You ride that Jeep and like, I thought we were going to crest a hill and see anything and then you just, you just kind of ride into a little, but you know what, into a little base. You know what though? That cut mission, the war zone with all the soldiers and their names that you've rescued.

You mean the most expensive mission ever? Yes. Yes. The one where every soldier that you have on your team shows up and they're all individually doing their thing and you can recognize the names. The mission that still doesn't give the game a real ending. That is what blew me away the most is like, we're sitting there and we're watching. The, the fucking DVD that comes with the storyboard version of it, right?

And we're, we're going like, okay. And then it was fucked that you had to get a certain version of the game to see that. That was actually pretty fucked up. But wait, yeah. Okay. And then like, oh no, we accidentally shot the kid, but then the kid left and then we all just kind of left and it still felt like that wasn't the last mission. Like what?

Oh my God. That shit. Well, Devil May Cry is not that. No. It is not. Yeah. Oh, fuck. I mean, if we're going to get into Devil May Cry, we should put that later.

Yeah. So quite frankly. I don't even, you know what, I, here's my review of Devil May Cry 5. A game so good, I don't really need to talk about it. I mean, we, here's the honest truth is that like anything we can say in a spoiler cast, you're going to catch a saying in the LP. Yeah. You go look at that.

I'll have more to add upon completing all the extra difficulties and stuff. I completed Son of Sparta. It's good. Yeah. Fun. I didn't know about the little extra detail where when you, when you start New Game Plusing, you get these little fun little photos that the game takes when you kill something.

Why do you need to do that? I don't know. So that your expectations could be exceeded. Yeah. About what New Game Plus means. Fun little photos. You know, that's a cool little, little, little bit. But ultimately, yeah, man, you know, that's, you're going to catch most of that on, on,

on, on that LP. It's true. It's true. You know what I think is totally wild, that within one month of each other, two Japanese action games that heavily feature protagonists with robot left arms came out. Robot left arms are a thing. That's weird. Also we were just talking about Metal Gear Solid 5, in which that character also has

a robot arm. Yeah. No, stylish amputees. Yeah. We've been doing this for a while now. A lot of people have been like making like Nero comparisons to like a lot of things and it's kind of like, yeah, it's, it's, yeah, there's never been a shortage. The other thing is that the, the Sekiro and Devil May Cry 5.

Is it his left arm or his right arm? For Nero? I think it's his right. Yeah. It's his right. My bad. Um, Sekiro and, and Devil May Cry 5 both have, fuck you, you're going to die bosses as the first thing in the game that if you're good enough, you can totally beat.

Yeah. Now, now in Devil May Cry 5, I made that exact comparison last night because I was talking to a friend and she crushed the first boss. You need to know, you need to know, Ishina as the first boss fight in the game that you were supposed to lose to, can be defeated. Yeah. And here's the thing, right? Um, mechanically, if you're familiar with DMC, you can go into that and just do really

well. Yeah. Um, I got okay on my first, I got the, the, the shield down to like, I don't know, a third of its hell or whatever. Sekiro, you don't know what the game is yet, right? I think I, I think when I played Sekiro and I fought Genichiro in that tutorial, I think I was dead in under five seconds. Okay.

Well, I, I lasted actually, I lasted a little bit. He did a sweep that I didn't understand and I just got wrecked instantly. I lasted a little bit, but that's a thing where the game does not explain enough to you about the mechanics for you to, to have stand a shot on purpose because you're the, the, the more detailed explanation comes later. Yeah. Right. Um, if you were to re-approach that fight, uh, by starting a new game or whatever, you'd,

I'd say two hours of experience into the game. So you do way better. The best part about it is that here, here's a spoiler. It's been on the track. You fight that guy as a boss later. No, of course you do. He has the same moveset. Of course he does.

So I know how to beat him now. Yeah. If I were to go back and do it, like, I bet I could do it. I mean, especially on new game plus with all my health upgrades. Well, like, cause I just like, the thing that it took me a while to, to reach, uh, an understanding on was like, until the tutorial man explains to you about consecutive parries. I was kind of like, I'm trying to parry and get the blow, the death blow, but it's like, no, that's not always the case.

No, you need to get that posture down. And then sometimes I'm like, okay, well, if I'm parrying, then I'm going for another swing. Like, I thought parry was going to, um, deflect soul caliber the guy. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

And on big strikes against weaker enemies, it does. Yes. But against bigger enemies or just stronger enemies, like, shut up. No, I'm continuing. I'm going to go in and I did not catch that or really grasp the, like, I thought I was doing something wrong. Yeah. Right.

I thought I was getting close to just frame parries, but not on point. And it turns out as like, no, you were landing them, just do more, but his posture is not broken yet. So do more. Exactly. Exactly. And then once you get that part of it and then you also have the like, oh, shit, I can't get that one.

Just hold it. You can do, do a couple blocks in and then take another stab at it. It's almost like counter breakers. Yeah. Right. In killer instinct. And like, and then you get the, you get enough in there and they're like, now you get the crumple and then you open it.

It is kind of crazy going from DMC five to Sekiro because DMC five is about options. What do you want to do? You have like a hundred fucking things you can do at any given second in Devil May Cry five with any of the characters, right? When you're playing Sekiro, what do you want to do? Well, you can hit them or parry them or maybe throw an Ingestar at them. So you better fucking learn how to do those things. What you don't want to do is wait for them to come at you because older soul games wanted

you to do that. Yeah, dude. This game does not want you to do that. I had somebody write in last night or the night before when I was streaming it because they had watched you play it for hours and then they came over and watched me play it for hours and saw that we were both playing it in the 100% opposite manner from each other. You were hyper aggressive and just in the enemy's face all the time. But then when things would like go bad, you would back off when you should have been pressing

the advantage. Yeah. And I was standing there going, I'm going to parry every single fucking thing that comes at me. Yeah. Until I would get greedy. Yeah. When I shouldn't have.

Right. Like when I saw that, I'm like, I really need to go in more. And I did. And sure enough, I had more success because when you're just fucking in there, they have a more limited amount of things they can do. So you early on in the game, you fight a giant ogre thing and that thing is, to me so far, that's your soul's boss and that is one and possibly done or at least for a while. You're not going to have to deal with that anymore because that guy is going to take

big long predictable swings and then you have to sidestep around them and take one or two hits and back off. So what they, so I'm pretty much done with the game. I have the final bosses to go through and then I'm done. So the game, you're supposed to be learning this because the game really doesn't tell you much. Right. There's essentially three types of enemies, right?

They're like, and I mean posture wise, right? There's dudes that you are going to run up to and you are going to blow their shit open by rushing them down and they're fucked. So let's say a lot of the animal type enemies, archers, whatever, right? Then you have guys that boy, it's tough to get a hit on these guys because they're going to stop everything coming their way. But they're going to attack you so much that if you're like clanging off everything, you're going to be able to get just like a stab in there and you kill them instantly off a deflect.

And then there's the guys who are fucking big and tough guys who regenerate their posture. It appears immediately, no matter how much you deflect them. So you're going to have to go to the sides and chip away at them and chip away at them and chip away at them. Or if you've got big balls, Mikiri counter, you should Mikiri counter everything. Jump over sweeps, stomp on their heads and do the big thing, right? Like there are guys that I'm like, I'm doing all that. And it's like because they're at full health, it's just not going enough.

You need to hit those fuckers. And so I hit, I hit a couple of walls, right? In my first stab at the game and the mentality switch between that and then coming back in the next time and thinking about it, right? Was one where I had to step away from the game to realize, motherfucker, you don't have a stamina bar. No, you can just go and go and go and go and go and move and move and move and move. There's nothing stopping you, right?

Hard reads are hard reads and they punish you, but get the fuck out if you need to get the fuck out. Get the fuck in if you need to get the fuck in. And what would happen is I was trained to in these moments of I'm like a couple swings away from getting you, but you're also, but I took a hit, a trade and now I'm one hit from death. So I'm scared. So I'm going to back off in souls fashion.

And now they're going to regenerate the posture and all that's gone. Oh, I just wasted, I lost the whole minute, the whole thing and that's the end of the fight. Right? Every time that's what happened. And so what I came into the second session was in those moments of fear, go in, right? And I remembered what Bloodborne was trying to teach, which was like, no, go in. Yeah.

No, go in. I know you're scared. Go in. In the end, in Bloodborne, you didn't have to do that. No, which is sometimes you really shouldn't have, but it rewarded you for doing it. Yeah. Right. And, but that's why the lesson didn't take as hard.

And I think this time around, they made that Bloodborne lesson mandatory. Yes. Because it was when I said, I have no life left, but I have to stay in. So let's take that. I managed to succeed. Let's take a really good example, which is Grandma Butterfly, Lady Butterfly, but everybody calls her Grandma now. That's where I stopped.

So she is, man, she's a great boss. Like she's awesome. She has all sorts of bullshit. She fucks with your camera in a way that I think is fair by doing the jump, jump, jump up above you. Because that's the point. To obviously get your bullshit. That's the point of her movement.

Isn't it great? Um, I was having the hardest time reading her bullshit until I was like, no, no, no, I'm just going to go in on her every second, every single second that she's in front of me. I'm going to go in as hard as I possibly can and it helps. But now she, but then what you start realizing if you keep swinging though is that she has, she has like frame data. Yeah.

Right. Folks that beat yours. Yes. And, uh, after two or three, she's going to do a jab. Yeah. And then you got to learn, okay, which, so this move I could deflect, but because of its aim, can I actually side, side step it and stab her. Exactly.

And this is, there's a piece of data that is not in the game, but it is in the PDF that we were given because thanks to Activision gave us a review copies and it is the data on dude, what is the relation to, from of health to posture regeneration, which is not in the game, but it is in that PDF. And it is, if they're at full health, they have 100% posture regeneration because of course they do. Yes. If they're at 75% and up, but 75 to 99, it's 66% at, uh, sorry, no, 75% to 100 is full

regeneration. 50 to 75 is 66% 50 and under is they only regenerate 33% of their posture, which is why that's such a turning point for most bosses. And then if you get them at 25% or lower, they can't regenerate posture at all ever, which is why the fight is over. Once you get them down that low, uh, one key, you want to talk about one super key fact from that PDF as well that is not, uh, so far given in game, uh, is the relation, uh, of consecutive parry attempts over time and, uh, basically what ends up happening

on your inputs, every, you can spam parry if someone's swinging at you, right? And the game will give you that first window and even that second one, every consecutive attempt to parry something in a row that doesn't connect reduces the parry window further and further until you have the strictest possible. So by, by, I saw in some videos, even in the, there was a guy from facts for life going through the game, um, and people were like archers, we're gonna like aim at them, right? And people would stand there mashing L one in order to like, okay, maybe, but like you're actually making it less likely to succeed.

Yeah. So, so whatever that, let's say you have five for it. It's like, let's say like six. It's generous. It's no, it's way more, it's like 15. It's big, right? It is, it is, it is a massive, generous thing to start with. And let's say each time you click it, it halves, so you go 15, then you go, uh, like seven,

then you go three, and then, and then like maybe three is the lowest it'll go. Right. And it's like, when you mash, you're making it harder. Don't mash. Yeah. Unless you're fighting that one enemy that wants you to mash. There's one enemy that it's like, he attacks you so fast that the only way to parry it is to mash the button.

Kickfucker? What's that? Kickfucker? No. No, it's a, it's a centipede giraffe. Okay. Um, yeah. So it's a claw asshole.

It's a guy with claws. So when you, when you, when you kind of catch that, you realize again, the game will not it's, yes, it's hard. It's very hard. Um, yeah, let's, let's take a second. The game is way harder than the soul series. It is very hard. It is.

It is as hard as Ninja Gaiden was when it came out on the Xbox. Um, it feels like you are going to spend most of the game with three mistakes being allowed. Yeah. Three. Three. I have, I have the maxed out health bar. I get three mistakes unless I heal.

There you go. Uh, two, depending on the enemy, occasionally you get two mistakes. Yeah. One brings you just within death and then that's it. And occasionally one mistake, if it's a throw, yeah, uh, fuck man. That lunge from the ogre is bonkers. So what I had a jumping eventually was my saving grace. Yeah.

So it's like what I found is like when I see a throw, I hit circle and I hold circle and then I just run straight back as far as I can go. Yeah. Because there's nothing to stop me from running that far away. Yeah. I lost positional advantage. I don't care. Throws do like 90% of your life most of the time.

Now the best part about all of this is all these mechanics we're describing, right? All these things you're doing while you're doing them. It's the most stylish fucking cool looking experience. So I want to the swords fighting and clashing and the dodging and the jumping and the every fight when you're doing the mechanics as intended is a cinematic fight. So I want to point out there are hidden mechanics to the presentation of this that you may or may not have seen. So I'm going to use the guinichirou ishina boss fight, which is about a third of the

way through the game. It's the guy on top of the tower. It's the guy you fight in the tutorial. You see that fight in the trailer. So I feel very confident in talking about it, right? He has one of the longest strings in the game that you cannot stop. He's going to hit you. If he dives in with like a sweep going from like left to right, he is going to start like

whirling his sword in front of you and just clang, clang, clang, jumping out. He's going to go hard on you. I feel like it's 12 hits, right? If you get all the way to the end and you're not busted and you managed to deflect that last hit at all, both characters get flown back into like what are essentially like kata stances and it resets the fight to different positions. So it's clang, clang, clang. And then you hit that final hit and you both fly back in your, your like ready stance.

And it's a unique stance for both characters. And then he's pushed a distance away and you are essentially reset to the start of the round. Right. Right. And then you're crashing your posture on both characters is very hot. Yeah. And that happens with a shit ton of bosses.

That even happens with some of the non-human bosses in which they will strike you and you parry it and then the camera frames them in the cool pose after the move they hit you with. It's so cool. It's very stylish. It feels incredible when you do the hard counter to things and they like fucking, they're now facing the wrong direction because that's the thing, right? It's the same with feeling of like, you know, a blood board like shot to the face, front

stab, right? Perfect parry. In this case, it's like that big lunging sweep and then you jump off their head and Frankensteiner stab them or my, my like, it's so simple, but you see it very early in the game. Like it's one of the first things you do is that you, you perfect parry a generic enemy and their arm flows way back and you just stab them in their chest through their armpit. Right. Like just this quick, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, get fucked. I, and then, and then there's the moments of like, okay, I purchased jump deflect. Therefore, in this grandma fight, there's moments of me like I've got my ninja star, I'm shooting it at her when she's up there and whatnot. And then there's moments where she's got hers, her shit coming at me and I'm jumping towards her and deflecting them in the air to come down with a swing.

Like there's this, like these moments of just, I'm fucking ninja. Doing the game as intended feels and looks incredible, man, it's, um, but boy, does it beat your ass. It's, it's beaten my ass harder than any game in like two years. And it's compensating for the fact that you have no stamina and a jump button and a grapple away button. Yeah. Such, uh, uh, you have the most tools for cowarding out than you've ever had.

I'm losing this fight. Hold on. I'm going to grapple up to the top of this tower, sip, get back down there. You can coward out better and harder than any other game out there and from, from soft. I feel like the reason why they move the item slot to the D pad is to tell you, no fucking stop. Right. Right.

It's not a button. Yeah. You are not to be using this kind of time of action. Do not. This is the time I tried to sip my gourd when I was like in a proper fight and the enemy was anything other than 15 feet plus away from me. I got stabbed for it. Now the, now the, and the tensioness of this game is really high as well.

Oh yeah. Big tension used to be tension now straight up used to be tension. Now the one thing that I'm, I'm not, I like, it's, it's not a complaint because I can tell that I'm, there's something I don't know. Yeah. But what I feel is that in that tensioness, I'm expecting stealth game mechanics to, to, to have a certain flow to them. Right.

In, in Metal Gear, in Tenshu, in Assassin's Creed, in any game where you, you're sneaking about, right. There's a way to approach it in thief even whatever you were, there's a way to approach a given scenario where you enter like a fortress and you see the guard posts, you know where they go. I'm going to, I'm going to stealth these fuckers. You know where the hiding points are and you know where the like the open bad spots are. Yeah.

Right. And there's two guys facing each other. The big open field there. And you've got the pull ability with the, the broken, broken dishes or whatever. Yeah. What I'm having a hard time with is I usually go into that expecting that type of scenario, expecting there to be an optimized line of stealth. Yeah.

Where if you do this properly, you can crush this whole counter and no one will find you. That doesn't exist in this game. It doesn't. It's straight up one. There is one spot in the game. You can't European extreme this. There is one area in the castle where you get to a bonfire and then you sneak forward and there's a guy walking in a certain direction.

There's another guy. And you can take out like half the room and then as soon as you do that, you go into the next room and you stealth kill a guy, but there's a much tougher guy facing him and two people in the adjoining hallway that are going to come in and there's not much you can do to stop them. So a lot of, so some people in the chat are saying it totally does. It totally does. Right.

But I, in the places I've, I've played so far, I would love to see because I just feel I'm like, I've encountered areas where it feels like a no alert playthrough is almost not possible. Yes. Right. Now there are areas in which a minimal alert playthrough is totally possible. There's an area called the gun fort where you can take out a bunch of archers or rifle men or whatever, like somewhat stealthily, uh, you could, I think you can get almost

everybody in there except for like two guys, but then you're going to have to fight those guys. Um, like there's a lot of areas that are just like, no, the, the stealth portion of this is for you to like initiate the encounter, eat away at the edges. Yes. Yes. Exactly. And if you, and initiate the encounter, uh, by reducing it by picking a target, but

other after that you're drawing aggro and fighting a group. So what I tended to do is there is an encounter that is very early that represents this very well. And it's the encounter immediately after the chained ogre. There is a mini boss, general enemy in the middle of an open courtyard flanked by archers flanked by flanked by this, this, this motherfucker with a pot that is just the worst, which is the worst mother, by the way, there are three of those in the entire game. They are really rare.

Uh, there's like a bunch of sword dudes around as like, okay, what can I actually do? I can stealth up to the right. I can stab the pot guy. I can drop down further to the right and stab one or two of the guys around the back. And then, um, everyone's pissed off. All right. Well, if you retreat far enough, they will reset and then you can take out the rest. But what I usually try and do is get the ranged assholes and you can ease in and out from

to take out those two. And when I mean get them, I mean, okay, I stealth one or two and then I'm just going to sprint right to the others and just kill them instantly right. And then leave. Yes. And then maybe on attempt two, I will get the rest of the melee units, but not the boss. Yes, exactly. And now the boss is completely by themselves and I can remove an entire life bar from them

with a stealth attack. And, and, and here's the thing. The fact that death blows put you into an invulnerable state mean you can avoid bullets and bullshit. If you time it nicely, um, there, it is, the game would be impossible if death blows did not make you invincible. That would be actually, you know, so successfully, I've managed to find these encounters where you ease through by taking out the edges and then running away and then coming back, right?

And reengaging. Another good example is, um, uh, there is the, uh, uh, the first like spear enemy, uh, in the past. Oh yeah. The Shinobi Hunter and that area where it's like, you can take out the first guy that shows up by the bridge. You can take out the archer by the grass. You can get one of those two on the side, but they're going to spot you.

Yeah. Right. And at that point you, you can either continue the fight or run away. Now running away yields you a reset chance and then you can come back in and, you know, stealth another person, but it just, uh, my, my whole thing is just that when you're running away from multiple alerts, that's not what every other stealth game wants you to do. No. So I'm really, in fact, it feels pretty clunky.

Yeah. So I'm really weirded out by that being intended here. I don't think it is. I don't think it is either. I think they actually intend you to just go all in and fight and fight everybody. And it's like, I get that. But when there's, when there are more than two enemies, the ability to deflect any of them becomes almost impossible.

Like there are too many swings coming at you. So that's why I just, the only thing I want to know is like, do you actually intend there to be, uh, is there a God-like stealth only run possible or is it really stealth at the beginning and then take it all off and handle the ads around the 30% mark? You get an ability that dramatically improves your stealth and it is called blood smoke. And basically you stab somebody and that spray of, of, of blood that comes out of your throat, you turn that into smoke and anyone whom it touches within like a pretty decent radius around, it basically re-stealths you.

It like resets that or enemies are really close will go, whoa, oh, there's smoke in my eyes. And you can stealth them. Okay. Okay. And like there's a, there's a, there's a fight near the very end of the game where there is a big tough elite with four guys that are good, good ass normal enemies looking at him.

Yeah. And he's got his back to you. Yeah. And they have your, and then there are two archers, but there are seven people in here. That's a shit ton of dudes to fight. Yeah. But if you stealth one of them and do the blood smoke, you can stealth a second and do the blood smoke and then stealth the big guy and do the blood smoke.

And then you're almost drawn spirit emblems, but you have removed more than half of the combat shit in this room. Okay. Right. So, so it's actually coming down to a matter of you will get to do this, but mechanically you have to get there first. Yeah. Right.

That makes more sense. And you will get to do it for a little bit because it takes a resource. That makes sense because right now multiple of these, these forts rooms are like, I have to run away or like fight everybody, but you can't still. So I would, I would like to have the, I would like to point out that the past segment, despite it being shown to you as an alternate path is very, very like now that I've beaten, now that I've pretty much beaten the game, that thing is, is intended to be pick away at it as you will.

As you go. Because the, the, well you fought Juzo, right? The drunkard. Yes. His, the run to him is so outrageous. Yeah. It is, it is the, it is the toughest thing in the whole game. So that's a perfect example of a room where you're not, you're, you can't get by that

first. There's like eight guys right next to you when you start that and you will have to go through them. So what I was able to do towards the end of my second stream was split past them and there's actually enough distance that they don't follow you over to Juzo. Yeah. Problem is, is then when you want to run from the guys in Juzo's arena, the only place to run back to is the area that you left everybody alive in.

Yeah. Or behind the house, but ultimate, but you know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, chat, we are aware of the fact that the state of play is happening. We are aware. It's just unfortunate timing, but we're recording a podcast. We're not going to double stream it while we're recording the podcast. If there's any news that's worth talking about, we'll talk about it live as we're going on. Yeah.

If anything's super dope, we'll talk, we'll talk about it. But it doesn't make sense for us to turn this episode into like a double live watching of them. But right now it's Sekiro time. Exactly. But yeah, no. Just now we're not doing that. And Lady Butterfly are like, because have you thought, have you gotten to the other,

to the other boss that like the other first boss quote unquote in the present? Yes. Yeah. It's the, it's what's this? Okay. Well, he's the asshole on the horse. Yeah. He is way easier than Lady Butterfly.

He was way, way, way, way easier. Yeah. One shot at him. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, and so there's a minor mechanical detail, but you get a, you get an item from Lady Butterfly. Are they reading the chat?

Because I don't care anymore. Yeah. We don't care anymore, motherfuckers. Go on. We see you. There's an item you get for beating Lady Butterfly that gives you an upgrade to your character. It was, I beat Lady Butterfly pretty much as soon as I could. I beat the horse guy and then I went immediately to beat Lady Butterfly.

It was like four or five hours before I was able to use that upgrade item. Interesting. Because, and then I'm like, oh wait, is Lady Butterfly an equivalent difficulty to the thing I had to beat to unlock this upgrade? Yeah, actually. Okay. Okay. Game's great.

It's, I got tilted after that first like wall because I didn't, the unlearning, everybody's wall on this is different, which is fascinating. The unlearning was, was not, it took a while for that to kick in, man. Like Shinobi Hunter was tough, but he didn't like, he didn't crush me the way he crushed you. Yeah. And same thing with the chain ogre, like I didn't have that much of a trouble. But the first general I fought was like an hour, like that first guy.

After the dogs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, what, you know, like, and it's depend, I had a really goofy thing where whenever I would get nervous, I would start to play it like Bloodborne and start to try and dodge everything. And that would, that blows you to fuck.

Oh, they're super undodgeable things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Almost everything tracks you completely. Yeah. Hitboxes are lies sometimes because jumping feels like a get out of jail free card in

any other souls game. Imagine a jump button in a souls game. Holy shit, dude. Right. Wow. But in this game, hitboxes are lies where a dude can do a lunging stab that is nowhere near you in the air, but you still get hit by it. You know, you are supposed to.

Because rock, paper, scissors. You are supposed to dodge that left or right or step on that blade. Not a jump. That is your goddamn solution. Yeah. They actually make like, if there was an invisible sphere, you could see a hit, like a hitbox. You would see the area above your head turn red. So there's a gun enemy that you fight that taught me about the way jumps and grabs work

in this game. So I'm going to assume everybody at home knows what I'm talking about when I use hitboxes. They're the box, the invisible box that touches you from the enemy that grabs you, right? So enemy crabs have like a eight foot tall vertical hitbox on the strike. That ogre grab was pure lies. If the if the hitbox or if the visible part of the enemy is touching your toe when you're in the air, you're getting zoomed back down to the floor for the grab. I was under the ogre's armpit one time and teleported back into his hands.

Yeah. Don't don't jump them. Or if you are going to jump, jump away. Well, so that PDF says jumps work. Yes. Don't do that. Not recommended. Yeah.

So the other thing about the game is that I was worried about, I was worried about the length and I was worried about the, let's call it, spent a lot of time in the Sheena Castle, dude, like that, that castle and the, the outskirts, like that, I don't know what to call it other than a tile set, right? Of snowy mountainous. I'm not there yet. I don't know. No, no, no.

Sheena outskirts is what I'm talking about. Oh, beginning. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's snowy and it's, it's feudal Japan and like later, if you beat the horse guy, then you can look up and see the castle there, right? There's a lot of the game that's in that look, right? And it's, it's all at the beginning.

Guess what? That's feudal Japan, right? And it's, it's all at the beginning. Like you spend like, I don't know, eight hours in that. And I'm like, oh man, I really hope that it's like, no, the, you get, once you walk through the front door of that castle, you are literally given a sculptor's idol and there's a path in front of you and there's a path to your left and there's a path to your right. And they all go to different places and they all look different.

And the other thing about the game is that it is considerably longer than I anticipated. And there's a really, really, really easy way to tell how far you are in the game, like to a percentile point. And that is, there are 40 prayer beads. So I think, I think you can pick up six off the floor, right? Like, I got my defense to 11 and my attack went from one to two. I love that the attack value is like, and that is bullshit. It's hilarious.

But yet it is twice as big of a number than one. Yeah, except it did. That's not actually. All right. I have an attack value right now of 12. I'll be able to hit 13 before the end of the game. And there are 40 beads and the vast, vast, vast majority of those beads are going to come off badasses, including a bunch of badasses that are optional, that are well, I'd say

like a half or more. You don't actually have to fight them. You just actually run by them. Really should, though, but also including optional guys that don't give you beads. They give you other shit, which is going to be, I'm going to take a few minutes to talk about the worst part of the game by far. And it is the item divine confetti. Divine confetti is the worst thing ever.

So I picked up, I picked up one and then I went to a place where I was supposed, where I like was basically told to use it. Yeah. By the game. Yes. And then I failed. Yes, you did. And then that was the end of my shot.

Yep. That is easily the worst thing in the game. There are five of those dudes around that are, they work differently than everything else in the game. They are completely unique encounters. I assume there's going to be a vendor of divine confetti. And if there isn't, I don't know what to say. So because the fact that limited attempts so are allowed makes no sense.

So I know everything about this. And so I will complain about it to you and you will learn a few things and maybe your complaint will change. Divine confetti is rare. How rare? Not that rare. But the reason why we're talking about it is because basically you have to fight some fucking ghosts and you are going to do like, I want to say 10% of your normal damage to

them. If you're not, if your sword is an on flaming holy fire, but the problem is the ghosts are totally different. You be shaman. The ghosts are completely unique enemies that have different rules than the other enemies, including a stat that will just kill you. Yeah, they got curse. That when you get to them, you don't know how to actually deal with that and you don't

actually even have the item that removes it. They slow down the arena. Like everything about it is to fucking like you get into the fight and you're like, I don't know what's happening. Mechanics are gone. Right. And then you're like, okay, well, first of all, do you want to actually kill these things? Well, you don't even need one divine confetti.

You need two at least at least because they got two health bars and it takes a while. Right. There's a type of them that you might actually want to get have three. So this gives a situation like, okay, I got, I got two more defined confetti. I'm going to attack the headless. I'm going to give it a shot. All right. I'm dead in two seconds.

All right. I'm going to resurrect. All right. I'm dead again. Okay. Well, now I can't fight the headless again for another couple of hours because I don't have any divine confetti. You wasted two.

It sucks. Yeah. It sucks. There are dudes in the castle that have them on the drop table. So they can drop them, but it's rare and farming them for it is miserable. But it exists about 90% of the way through the game. You will get an item that allows vendors to sell it. Yeah.

Okay. Great. Now, but that sucks how far that in is blah. That sucks how far in that is. But the fact that you can get to a point where you're, I can put that problem away until the credits roll. So the problem with it, I'm fine with that is that these, these guys drop unique super good shit.

Yeah. Of course they do. They, so you, but if you told me that you would never take another shot at it, the first one that you encountered is the best one to kill in the entire game because he drops a version of the Buddha's attack sugar that is just a infinite use item that costs spirit emblems instead of a consumable item. Okay. So you now just get the ability to give yourself power within for a couple of emblems.

It's insanely good. Problem is what happened in my game is I got to the point where I could finally pie divine confetti and then went back and within about an hour killed every single headless in the game and got all of them all at once. And it was not, there was no progression to it. It was just like, now that I can finally run enough attempts, I can go and get them. And then I went and got them. Okay.

Because when, if you attempt them when you, the reward is not worth it at the 90% mark. It still is, but it's like, boy, I wish I had this earlier, but my ability to actually do that earlier was incredibly limited. Like now that I've beaten, more or less beaten a bunch of them and I know how they work, yeah, I could probably do it at that point in the game because I learned how to fight them, but you don't get the chance to learn how to fight them because they wipe you and then you're, you're fucking, because it sucks, it genuinely sucks. Well now knowing this, now I'm just going to scum it in the sense of I'm going to just

watch any video about how, you know what I mean? Like find out exactly how to deal with the fucking terror. Yeah. Find out exactly like, I'm just, I tell you right now, you know, I'm just going to, you get to the castle and then you go to the dungeon and in the dungeon, you can kill some guys there and every single guy there drops the consumable item that lets you remove terror. Okay. Because I'm just done.

Yeah. Cause I'm just like, I'm not, I'm, if I don't get a chance to learn this fight, then that's it. That is the worst part. There, there's a different type of ghost, which is actually a lot easier to figure out because they don't do that slow shit, but it's the same problem. They actually usually require three confettis because they teleport a lot and it's like, I'm, I'm picking up every item in the, okay.

So at the time that you encounter the first headless, you, I, I ran the math on this. You can have a total of six confetti. You can get five, I think, from the, the flashback and you get one from the area in front of it. Six tries on some enemies. Yeah. On regular fucking enemies in some cases. So this thing is busted.

What do you get? You get three attempts. What, what, what actually happened? I would go in, get blown open so hard that I'm like, well, any attempt that I do now will be wasted and then didn't even attempt it again until like 15 hours later. I think it's, it's putting the black knight enemies as like try and fight them, but then it, oh, it's terrible. It is easily the worst part about the game.

The worst. Like, yeah, I, it, it, like you shouldn't punish learning attempts, you know, any boss that crushes you super hard in something like you should still be able to attempt it and claw your way up to victory. So even if it costs you all your experience and your fucking money and whatever, if you just want to naked run it and, and slowly but surely learn that boss, you should be able to. So the funniest thing is that they already knew that lesson because there is an equivalent

of that earlier in the game with Lady Butterfly. Halfway through the fight, she pops her, her fucking illusions. Yeah. And if you want to just remove that phase of the boss, if I just use a consumable, use a consumable snap seed, yeah, and they're gone. Guess what? You're going to find six of those in the first 30 hours of the game and then alongside the item that will let you buy Divine Confetti will allow you to buy snap seeds after the

point of which there are literally no enemies in the game that will ever use any illusions on you ever again, right? So if you have somehow not beaten Lady Butterfly by that point, you could buy these and then go back. But now, now the thing is, is of course, is the process of actually trying to figure out how to beat these fucking ghosties is going to drag and rot the shit out of the world. I had a situation go on where it's like, I just gave up.

I'm I like, I'm just like, I don't care about any of you enough. Oh, really? Well, the problem is, is that unless you have an NPC questline, you have to move forward. There is absolutely no downside to dragon rotting the whole planet. They will never die. The only thing that will happen is that their quests will become stalled if they're sick. They don't. They will.

Dude, it is in the reviewer guide. They will never die. That changes a lot. They'll get sick and you won't be able to get the unique like so take Sculptor, right? Sculptor. By the way, I that changes a whole lot. Sculptor has to get sick. Yes.

It is actually unavoidable. It is. So one, I mean, she tie like a couple to he's the first one to go and it's like a special cut scene. Even if you even if you even if you if you progress past a certain point without dying, he still gets it. Yeah. If you if you beat the memory.

Yeah. Without without with zero deaths. Yeah. He'll still get it. Yeah. Right. There's a mechanic where you can give him booze and you'll get like extra dialogue and you'll learn more about him.

Right. And he can't do that if he's sick, right? And there's ending conditions where you have to eavesdrop on people and talk to people in certain orders, you know, stuff like that, that, OK, well, you won't be able to do those if they're sick. But if if you need to progress, dude, if you need to progress a quest line like that here, everybody, progress the quest line and then let him all get sick again. I got manipulated into panicking that I would lose NPCs.

That's the point. I'm dying hard. At some point, even even if I didn't tell you that, you would have realized that there'd be a character that you didn't care about that you left sick for a really long time. Like, oh, they're they're fine. They're totally never going to die. Um, I kind of like now I'm like, should they die? I don't know.

I really don't know. Should there be a punishment for for loss? There is a punishment. And that's the fact that your unseen aid percentage is clearly yeah. And that's not much of a punishment. However, I don't think I thought about unseen aid in the entire game once other than the times that the letters flashed up on my screen. Since you can put your money in the bank and buy a bank, I mean, convert them into item

souls. Yeah. Then yeah, you take a minimal loss on that because that's the other thing is, oh, you walk in around with big purses, go buy some fucking bags and you protect you take a ten coin loss. It's a good idea. It's a good idea. It's actually a fantastic idea.

It's great. It's great. Um, you just really fucked that whole thing up for me by basically making me not panic about that. And also it also the game just straight up lies to you about what causes dragon rot. Okay. Like it's straight up lies. It says using the power of resurrection is what causes dragon rot.

If you die every time it still kicks in, the way that it works is every time you, every time you die ever of any type, resurrection or not, it builds up some kind of invisible number in the background of the game. And when you die for real and respawn, it caches that number in, right? So I had a situation in which like, I didn't die for a long time, like really die. Yeah. Like once, two people instantly sick. Right.

Of course. And like if you never resurrect, you're not spent, you're not, you're cashing it out every time. So it's, so they'll get sick. It's pretty quick. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

So there you go. There you go. Um, it is, it is a mechanic to make you feel bad. Yeah. But because it has no teeth, everyone's going to figure that out eventually. Okay. Also the, the, the, the items you get to cure them are actually more plentiful than I expected. I mean, I saw a vendor selling one.

Yeah. Every unique vendor will sell you one. Okay. And then you pick up extras along the way. Um, there's so much weird stuff like that thing. I feel like it's a misstep, like a genuine misstep. I think the headless is a big misstep. I think that's the worst part of the game.

Um, but then on the other hand, it's like some of the best bosses from soft has ever made are in this game. See, including bosses, and I'm going to be really careful about how I say this, bosses that their encounter lies to you. Okay. I put my controller down at one point that I really shouldn't have put my controller down. So my advice to you is that those both boss health bars, they will often lie.

So you be careful, although I did hear that hubris kicked in in your case, lady, lady butterfly. I heard that. Where she has a life bar and you kill it, hubris kicked in you, you kill that life bar. And then she goes, nah, I had a second life bar and you were too busy feeling yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, uh, the other thing I'm thinking about with those headless ghosts is like, why not

just fucking upload your save and download it? I mean, that can't obviously be the intended. No. That's the like way to do it. But fuck you. Yeah. I know, right? Because fuck you.

Well, what I'm going to do is I want to learn before I go into new game pluses by like 300 divine confetti's because fuck having to learn those things over again. This is where I would. This is where I wish I could fucking summon a sign, have someone drop some and then just fix the game. Yeah. So it's not, it's not a from software game without bizarre mechanical issues of this nature where it's like, it doesn't quite gel.

That being said, after going through every area, this is the, somebody said in my chat yesterday and they were, they really nailed it. This is the tidiest from software game where, okay, Dark Souls one falls apart after Anor Londo, right? Like every area after you get to Anor Londo is worse than the one before it. Oh, tidiest in terms of zone progression. Yeah. And then Dark Souls two is kind of a mess.

Dark Souls three has some problems in terms of what zones are placed where Sekiro has like basically once you hit the, the, the 30% through the game, you get to, you get to Dark Souls to it and just go, go in a long direction all the way to the end of a zone and you know, something like that, right? All of those zones are good and they're all appropriately difficult depending. And they have a, there's a little trick that I won't spoil for you where they make the area just a little bit harder if you go there later and they're, they're all good. I did them in a weird order and they were all fantastic and then you get to the final

couple areas and they're great and there's a cool, like, I don't know how to put it. There's a really cool, like gauntlet sequence near the end of the game that ends with something really cool and the bosses are universally good. I cannot think of one boss in the game that is bad. I can only think of maybe two bosses that were a little easier than they might have should have been compared to the shit that was around them. Like that happens where you like, you, it was like the hardest thing in the universe to get to the, the boss and then you're like, the regular enemy that I fought to come in

here was actually tougher than you. Right. I mean, there is the thing where it's like, Hey, that mini boss that with a name and two, and two stab points. Yeah. Grunt now. Right. And that's like, how, so how far are you in the game?

Uh, I'm, like I said, I got up to grandma and then I, and then I beat, I beat the writer. Did you? Um, so I went down a little stairway and I saw like, I'm like, Oh, look, it's the Shinobi Hunter again, but you only got one point. It's another one. And I was like, Oh, so let me ask you, did you find the pagoda in the memory? Oh, three story pagoda. Okay.

Yeah. So there's, there's, there's, yeah, there's, there's stuff. There's a thing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So in the memory, there's a three story pagoda and there is a man there and he is wearing purple and that is the hardest thing in the memory.

And you'll notice that when you fight him, he actually only has one life bar because you'll be seeing much, much, much more of him later. And when that started, and basically they take the black nights, that is your black night, by the way, they take the black nights and remember at the end of Dark Souls one, they threw them all at you at the very end. They just start mixing these guys in and it's like, are, you can't be serious. And the game's like, no, we're very serious. Right.

Okay. Yeah. And you will learn to treat this boss like a normal enemy. Yeah. Okay. And it's, it's, it defies belief. Like near the end of the game is like, okay, well, here's, here's three of them and they're around and there's two of those guys over there.

And like, these are all encounters that were identified to you as bosses when you encountered them. And now they're just walking around. Capra Demon. Yeah. But Capra Demon and his fucking friends. It's wild. I've never seen a game do the palette.

You know, I don't know what to call it, like enemy reuse like that. So aggressively, because I remember, I'm looking at is that you can't be serious. Like you like, I remember, I remember huffing it from, from the Shinobi Hunter and panning the camera back and seeing him on my ass, the exact speed. Yeah, he's coming. I was like, oh, oh, shit. I made zero distance from him because he said, nah, you go learn today. Like you get to, yeah, yeah, you get to a point where you see, okay, let's say Shinobi

Hunter. Okay. Lance user for people don't know. Okay. Lance user. Okay. Great. Wow.

Wow. This guy's tough. But you learn it, right? And you just barely eke out that win. And then later you, you see a Lance user and you're like, does this motherfucker actually have this? He totally has the same moves. Oh my God.

Yeah. But he's only got one health bar. So he's a little easier. And then later you're like, oh, thank God. It's just a Lance user. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Right. So if it's him, then purple man or the game has an equivalent of the black Katana skeleton who's for my will not ruin for you because it is fucking dumb. And I could not believe that that shit was in the game. Feels like, um, feels like they wanted a game that would basically like fuck you up if you came in going, yeah, souls, it does. Right. So the other thing is that people who aren't familiar with souls are coming in and getting

fucked up because yeah, a game that's not my, my humans. Exactly. Exactly. It's, it's, and that's what I was going to say is what if you're not, uh, yeah, souls, what if you're, yeah, tension. So you know, there's been a blowback to this and it's the same blowback that happens like the Dark Souls games aren't that hard. They're just unfair.

Sorry. No, they're not unfair. They're punishing, right? This game isn't actually all that punishing. It's quite kind with its death penalty, but it's hard. It is as hard as people are telling you. It is reflex and pressure intensive to the up your ass. Like it is the hardest game I have played in years, uh, beating, beating, beating certain

enemies requires reacting to the startup of their animation. Uh, in some cases, the startup of their animation is very slow. In some cases, it's near instantaneous, uh, like the fucking general man, Tenzin. Yeah. And after the ogre guy, yeah, he's got a dashing uppercut that is, it might as well be, um, K dash doing. So you want to know the, I know it's the one where he rolls, right? It might as well be K dash doing his super with no freestream.

It's the one where he rolls and does like an uppercut. Yeah. Guess what? He only does that when the sword is to his left side. Okay. So that's your hint. That's your hint. Did you figure that out?

No. No. Eat the hit. You're on that. You have to watch for a glint of light off their sword. And if you're not hitting that button, the instant you see that light, you are dead. You are dead on the spot and it's like, man, man, yeah. And so what happens is, is eventually I acclimated and then they give you a gauntlet of the game.

They give you like a, an existing area and they're like, we have now populated this with the toughest badasses in the whole game and dude, you fucking, you are animating your way through them. The fact that like you, that fighting grandma, she calls in her ghosts and then you can. The fight will continue with the ghosts also. Yes. And you can run in circles if you don't want to use that snap seat and then they'll eventually pop and come flying at you.

And then you can just dodge that shit. But guess what? What? They don't all pop. Nope. Some of them hang around. And if you use the snap seat anyway, guess what? Sometimes it's in a radius around your body.

So you're still going to deal like they're like, no, it's not free. It's never free. Nothing is free. Everything costs something. Yeah. You know, like there's no get out of jail. It's this thing where earlier in the game, I'm like, okay, they can't pass it. Like I'm, I'm triggering like 10 guys at once, right?

And I'm doing the thing where I'm jumping around and I'll grapple here so that the faster one will run over to me and I'll kill him. And you know, stuff like that. I'm like, this can't be intended after getting through the game. That is intended. You are intended to abuse your superior movement to single people off in huge groups because you will fight groups that are so large that if you attempt to block, you will just die. Because it's a wall of sword coming at you.

Exactly. And in some cases shield and arrow and tiny person. Yeah. I will say that like I've been ignoring a lot of the runs to bosses, but it like in favor of killing things on the way each time. But like once and now that I know I can just sprint past and there is an ability that everyone should get. In fact, you know what?

Let me just give you a piece of advice. Passive abilities in Sekiro are better than active abilities in there. Did you get, uh, there's a quest from a guy that will give you an extra skill tree says, go kill some rats. Go kill some rats. You get a third skill tree, right? Two things on that skill tree. Increase posture damage to enemies when you deflect something and increase damages to

enemies after you deflect something so your hits will do more posture. That's better than life and posture. Yeah. Those are the two best moves in the entire game and everyone should get them. That's single. That's single. That is literally the most important. Right.

Like the third best move in the game is the one when when you death blow somebody, you get some of your health back. Okay. That move becomes totally indispensable because you are like fighting to the brink of death only to kill someone to have enough life to jump away and heal. Okay. How about that? Interesting.

Um, game's great. Yep. Let's take a quick order from our sponsors. Let's do that. This week, the podcast is sponsored by Chegg. Whether you need to submit text, whether you need textbook solutions or expert Q and A, there's no better tool to help you ace your class than Chegg's study. If you need expert help right away, simply use Chegg studies app to quickly snap a picture

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Hey, Chegg, what up, man? Coming out the barbecue. He's like, nah, man. I'm studying. Yeah. You need me help? Yeah. Okay.

So lots of stuff happened this week. Obviously, Sekiro is big talk about. I'm very excited to talk to you more about some of it later as you progress. Yeah. It's, oh, by the way, though, one last thing to say about Sekiro. You know that goddamn from software bingo card. They just can't help themselves. Are you ready for Blight Town 4?

Oh, come on. Come on. Seriously? Wow. They can't. They can't. It must be required by law. Wow.

This is Miyazaki? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Hey, you know what? Miyazaki did an interview. He designed one character in the game.

You want to take a wild guess of what character he designed? Emma? No. He designed one weirdo that's wildly out of place with the rest of the game, and it's that pot motherfucker. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Who's just like, interesting. I want some skills, and I live in this pot, and it's like, all right. Well, that's the one. It's him. It's him. Okay. All right. Yeah.

I don't think we, I mean, we're talking all, everything we're talking about is early game stuff. Very early. I've dodged. Like, anything that we've discussed here, you can probably, you'll scrape up against in the first three, four hours. Okay. I thought the fight with Genichiro at the top of the tower was going to be like 60% through

the game. And then it's like, you haven't even gotten started, man, and I'm like, yeah, I like that feeling. Yeah. So in other words, don't worry about the, about the spoilers. Don't worry about it. We're talking real early stuff. Cool.

There's a bunch of crazy shit in that game. Making one suspicious reference to an old from software game that I'm like, which is going to make the theory people go crazy. Oh boy. Don't say moonlight nothing. No. Okay. Um, so, uh, one thing I did this week besides, uh, Sekiro, and obviously, uh, Devil May Crying

uh, was I watched Bird Box on Netflix. It's funny that you watched a movie about people not looking at things. What else is related to that? Nothing. Cause it's vision and you looked at it. That's that's all I got here, man. Jesus Christ. Uh, anyway, so, yeah, um, I watched Bird Box and, um, that is one of those movies where,

you know, you just kind of jump in cold, lest you hear about it, uh, probably more. You're going to get out of it. Cause you know, that's why I haven't watched it. Cause the first thing I heard about it was a lot and then who's, who did that? The internet. That sucks. The first thing I ever saw about Bird Box, so you know how your phone will occasionally be like, um, uh, you'll open up the Google, uh, sorry, you'll open up Chrome.

It'll be like, it listed like articles. I'm trusting you to not actually say or whatever. Right. And no, no, no, don't worry about it. And the very first thing I saw was Netflix's Bird Box. See the hidden concept art they threw away before cutting those scenes from the movie. So that, and I'm like, huh, what is a bird? What?

And I clicked on it and I saw what the thing was supposed to look like. The thing that you never see in the movie because they cut it because it looks awful. And I went, well, the movie is actually ruined for me now. So like it is ruined. So, uh, I'm going to, I'm going to talk in circles around Bird Box. Um, here's what I'll say. If you, if you are interested in seeing this, um, I think you should still go in as cold as possible.

So yeah. Tap out. I'm going to talk in circles around it. Yeah, you can. Yeah, it can be done, but it's a movie that benefits from you knowing as little about it as possible. Yeah. Um, so this is your warning about how to feel about movies like that.

And if you don't, and if you don't, and if you don't necessarily care, then listen in, uh, you can probably still watch it after this, but yeah, that's, that's what I'm going to do. All right. So, um, do people care that you guys are debating it amongst yourself? The fact that some people do or don't is what I'm reason enough for me to talk about. Some people are going to care. Some people are not going to care.

Yeah. Why take the chance? All right. Let's be polite. Be courteous. So it's so funny that you said that because that is overwhelmingly the impression that the movie gives off, right? This is a movie that lives in the space of, um, all you know about it is the picture of

you got, you got, uh, Sandra Bullock in a boat and she's got a blindfold on and like, that's a bad idea. And then there's post-apocalyptic genre. Yeah. And that's it. Um, and it's got a weird title. Yes. So the movie, now that I've go, haven't gone through it, uh, here's what it is.

It feels like, uh, it's just like all those things I compare to like your, your, your, your, um, there's a type of movie now where there is an invisible threat that you can kind of basically surmise a lot about that's, that's causing a problem for the characters and such. And it feels a lot like this script was way worse when it told you more and someone came along and cleaned it up by removing those parts. So literally, I'm telling you, I can tell you right now, the script was more or less the same.

They just were going to put a scene in, in which somebody saw it and that, you know, and, and the camera saw it and they had what it was supposed to look like. And Sandra Bullock couldn't keep from laughing while recording the scene because the thing was so fucking stupid looking. And they're like, just cut the fucking scene just and they cut the scene and that's what they did. They just cut the scene out. So what you're left with, however, is still enough impressions, including like, you're

left with impressions, including, uh, uh, uh, uh, like other in-world characters, interpretations. Yeah. And it's not consistent and it's, you know, it's vague, but it's still, but just that enough gives off the vibe, oh, that would have been dumb. Yeah. Oh, you, you, someone, someone came in at the last second and looked at the script and went, no, take it, take it out, no, no. And while we're at it, let's start cutting other things, right?

And they started changing details and making saves, right? You know what? And you can feel where the saves were made because what's left is the residue of stupid. The residue of stupid is there, but you're like, but there's no holes here. There's no fate. There's no flaw with the plot. It's still airtight. Yeah.

But the residue of dumb, you're sitting there and you're like, there was stupid here. I know it. There was stupid here, but it's gone now. Yes. And, but the taste of stupid remains. The person who did that rewrite to get rid of the stupid earned their money because they made it go from laughable to fine, but, oh, so you know what that person did? This is my head cannon.

That person was like, man, I'm a big fan of M night and they watched the happening and they got to that part where Mark Wahlberg's looking at the trees and going, Oh, no. And they're like, we can't have this in our fucking movie. We cannot have this fucking scene in our movie. The first place your brain goes. Right. That's definitely the first because that's like one of the worst movie. That's one of the worst moments in film of all time is the is the happening nonsense.

And it's like it's this idyllic shot of like a bunch of trees blowing in the wind and like it's and Mark Wahlberg's like, oh, what is it? Right. Yeah. Someone definitely went. Oh my God. Someone went. What if we didn't like fucking put the clown shoes on?

Oh, man. And tried something else. Now here is the problem, right? In the fact that this movie, what it what's left is functional. It works and it's fine because they they they fucking hacked at it to get here. Take all the crappy parts out. What you're left with is while you would say it's direct comparison would be something such as an M. like Shyamalan movie.

Yeah. What's a way better comparison is a quiet place. Yeah. That's what I thought you were going to say. A way better comparison. Right. And here's where you break down these kinds of movies because ultimately you have, like I said, post-apocalyptic setting.

You want to learn about what caused that to happen. What caused the fall. Yeah. And you want to see how your character survived. Now what's interesting in a lot of those cases is what caused the fall and the answer is shut up. Yeah. I don't know.

So it's just a problem now. So to so right off the bat, right? Quiet place. Good. Why? Because characters are competent. What moves the story forward is just how overwhelmingly threatening the problem is. This is a really big problem, man.

This is a big, big problem. Bird box bad. Why? Because what moves the story forward is people being stupid as opposed to the threat being that overwhelmingly. It's like, listen, dangerous. There is an obvious, if very annoying solution to the world of bird box that no one appears to actually take very seriously.

There is a way to remove that threat from your life, permanently, that nobody wants to entertain. And here now, here's the tap-out point because you claim you don't care. No, I don't give a shit. Here's the tap-out point. I read the synopsis and watched a bunch of clips. So here's where I'm going to just go right into it. So here's your double layer of. Yeah, here's your double.

Get out of here for a second. Yeah. So the movie challenges exactly that thought of like, okay, if seeing them as the problem just don't see them anymore. It is a creature that if you look at it, you will die. Okay. So that's a problem. Now, when it comes down to it, your climax is more or less creatures going, fucking look

at me. No, look at me, dummy. And then they're like, no, we're not going to do it. We're not going to do it. And then they're like, oh, we're just, we're so scared. We're so scared that we got to get out of here. We got to get out here because they're really yelling at us really loud. They're very upset that we won't look at them.

But what is their option if you don't look? And the movie says nothing. So then why not casually go for a stroll with your head down like, just close your eyes. Nothing is stopping it. You look at me. No. So like a human being's natural human beings, I won't a human being's natural fear response is to close their eyes.

Now is that a good response? Probably not actually, but close your eyes. So it is a threat that you have. You can give yourself invincibility from. So with your own body. So right, your tier two threat comes in the form of assholes that are out there just trying to fucking people who are losing it, right? Well, actually, no, it's your it's your like, your crazies and your that are like converts

that are trying to fucking get you, right? The people who roam the badlands, hasten the end of the world and so on and so forth, right? And the problem there is you're like, OK, so what's the link between why certain people react this way and some people and certain people don't? And the answer could have been elaborated on, but it was trimmed. Yeah. And because it was bad. So what you're left with is because they're crazy.

And as we all know, fucking mental illness, just whatever. I don't know, man, that's that's weak in that it's like it's not very satisfying because you don't have to think about it, right? The whole thing about like, why does it work here but not there? You go, well, they're crazy. That's why it doesn't work. And you're like, OK, or this thing makes some people crazy at random. Your brain, your brain.

No, no, no. It specifically talks about mental illness. Oh, are you silent? Like, yeah. No, people that are locked up are totally fine and crazy because it's and so what are you supposed to do? Right. And your brain is trained to think of, well, they're crazy, therefore, they don't make

rational sense. Therefore, I don't have to think about the realm of crazy or why and why. And like the first instinct you would think is that like, oh, maybe this would actually work. Maybe there's a hint here about so Steph's guess was people that are already suicidal are the ones who become that. Yeah. And you go, oh, because there's a link there dragging your garbage out.

It's it's a link there. And it's like, you don't change your feelings. Yeah. So that would make sense. But it's like, no, it doesn't even go there. It just says crazy people. The end. That's not very satisfying, right?

I'm not satisfiable. Yeah. Terrible. So so and then ultimately, like I said, you have that it's the level of competence that the characters in a quiet place display with mastery over their world, right? Because of the limitations place. In fact, there's there's an instance in quiet place in which one character's mastery over the world is so excellent that they accidentally solve the problem via something they were

doing prior. The people in quiet place are so good at what they're doing that they make what is me screaming in the theater at how bad a decision it is to bring the noisiest possible thing into the into the world. Yeah. And then they're like, no, we had a plan, right? So looking at it here, I'm just like, these people are not being brought forward into this plot and trouble is not occurring based on, like, again, the threat actually being

that from the problem. No, they're causing their own problems causing their own problems and people being stupid and people being typical, like, survival, band together archetypes, where someone's got to be the one that cracks. Someone's got to be too nice and freak out. Someone's got you got to have all those types of people. It's just going through those and you're like, well, then so stupidity makes the movie move forward.

Right? You should have you seen the mist? No. So the new mist, it's got the guy played the punisher in it. The new punisher? The new punisher? No, the old one. Uh, forget his name.

Dolph Lundgren? No, no, no. The new... Thomas Jane? Yeah, it is. It's Thomas Jane's main character. And, um, the thing about the mist that's so fascinating is that you have a main, you have a main character who is watching other people become horror movie problems and is

like going, no, stop, no, no, no, no, no, it's like, you're doing that shit. Like, he's not saying like you're acting like you're in a horror movie, but it's like everyone's starting to do that shit and make bad decisions. And the main character's like, no, stop, no, stop making bad decisions. Can we all just fucking hold on for a second? Yeah, yeah. Like, you see, there's even points where it's like, hey, every group has to have the selfish asshole.

Every zombie apocalypse has the selfish asshole. You know it. I got bit, but I'm going to hide it even though I see it. You recognize the problem, right? And like in the moment that occurs where like selfish asshole goes too far, like it happens and then the the only difference here is you're just going to shrug it off as opposed to confronting it and going, hold on, we need to stop everything and find out what that was. Why'd you just do that, right?

Were anyone in a survival scenario with half a brain cell would stop stop everything and explain what just happened, but we shrug it off because the movie has to move forward. So anyway, all that happens and then you eventually, you know, you get to your ending and I mean, you read the synopsis, so I'm sure you're aware, but like, it's really about emotions, but like, here's the thing is like, you're ending where it's like you're trying to make it to a safe place to go and fucking full spoilers. Guess what? They make it to the safe place and it's a fucking school for the blind and everybody's

there. Obviously solve the problem. Yeah, but guess what? You could have just made it that with a lot of security, but instead you made it have volumetric lighting, God raise and soft heaven music because this is more than just a safe place. This is a sanctuary. You've made it to heaven.

Also using visual metaphors in that context doesn't actually make any sense at all. Yeah, like it's so just like, yeah, like it's overwhelmingly paradise has been found when it's really clearly not that and all you had to really do was just make it like somewhat believable as a secure place for you to end up in, but they wanted that feeling to be over the top. Jesus, come on. Is that a photo of the threat? Yeah.

Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Boy, did they make the right call. Holy shit. That's that it's even dumber than what in the ideas you get because you get some ideas in the actual thing and they're not great. In fact, they make the whole thing a fucking joke. Holy fuck.

I guess you're going to have to Google that one. I guess you're going to have to Google bird box cut content, you know, and look for your pictures. It was an Instagram photo. Oh, man, OK, I'm going to put a nice warning up top for everybody. So that going into this segment, you'll at least you'll at least have a time stamp to know when to stop talking. We'll stop talking about this, but that is unbelievably stupid.

So the interview is, I don't know if you guys can hear me, hold on, let me sit down. The interview goes that they're supposed to film a scene with Sandra Bullock where she gets like a glimpse of it and like when Sandra would get a glimpse of it, she would lose her shit and start laughing super hard like 10 times in a row. And that's why they cut it. They didn't. So like if Sandra Bullock was like an idiot or didn't realize that it was the stupidest looking thing ever, that would be in the movie.

You mean not in the shot because obviously she doesn't look at it in the shot. Well, whatever. She would see it on the set or whatever. And she's like, I can't this fucking dumb is hilarious. But she yet she soldiered on. She would have had no problem being right. So she was able to like look at that and not burst in a laughing that be in the movie. That's a sign.

You know what? Like that's a sign of someone who's acting that knows they're going to be in something bad and doesn't care at that point, because if you're telling me she's like didn't have a problem, it's you know, you want something. That's some wild shit on this note, by the way, gang, go look up what the original predator was supposed to look like. OK, it was supposed to be super tall and lanky and have like a weird detached head. Last thing I'm going to say on it is like her character is supposed to be one that's

very disaffected with her condition. And because that's the way she sees it and that condition is being pregnant. And she's very much just like in denial and such. And they make a good they established that nice and early through just basic conversation at which point the TV is on and like the world is ending and people are running and burning cars are in circles and it's in Russia and everyone and she's like, ah, whatever anyway, like they literally literally just don't worry about it. I really don't even care at all.

Right. And you're like, hmm, OK. But anyway, and so they established that she doesn't she doesn't have a fucking she's not she's she's not able to properly comprehend the fact that she's going to have a baby or whatever. And you're like, OK, established. And then they double it down by having them when they're in the fucking ultrasound and she's cracking jokes and just like and and it all like every moment of like you could

have left it alone. Yeah. But then you triple down and then you quadruple down and then you get to a point where literally the children in the movie are named boy and girl because this person just couldn't care less about. Yeah, that's not a thing that has ever happened to a human being ever. It's just so beyond the pale. Really?

It's a story about emotions, not necessarily about the plot. So so this is like this is a train wreck that has been shaved and shaved and shaved until it fit back on the track until it and then it arrived and you get to the credits and you go, you know what? That was a movie. You know, you gotta give it to you. That movie did happen. I did watch it.

You have to give it up. You have to give it up to the fact that you're like, you got there. You managed to get there. And any time it was about to go bad, it said missing film reel and then it cut back to being fine. King Crimson passed the dumb shit and it worked. You know, it's pretty fascinating in that context. Very interesting.

You can feel it aggressively, but someone came in and I can't think of a single movie like that other than this. Yeah, yeah, because we know what bad movies are now. Everyone knows what a bad movie is and bad movies don't come out by accident. No, they know they're fucking bad before they come out guys. Yeah. And like, again, you whoever you want to find that, that whether it's an associate producer or whoever the fuck director, you know what I mean?

Like whoever it was on that final rewrite, who went this needs to go. You need to get this out of the fucking movie. That's that's a soldier. Yeah. That's a soldier right there. Um, you need to get this, this fucking, you need to get this makeup artist out of my fucking face and get this character designer to get out of here. Um, yeah.

So if you want to watch Bird Box, um, it's cool, I guess. Yeah. But if you haven't watched Quiet Place, go watch that instead. Yeah. It's bizarre how analog, analogous those are. It really is. Right. And again, you want to go to the happening side of things, but it's no, it's so much

more. I go to the happening side of things because of the nature, the nature of the threat is incredibly similar. Yeah. But the best part because fucking Quiet Place, man, like in it, you know, Quiet Place has the intro, like the introduction to Quiet Place takes a character from Bird Box and puts them in the world of Quiet Place and then shows you what happens to people that are from the wrong world.

Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Are you too stupid to survive the apocalypse? That's it. I guess you're too stupid to survive the apocalypse. That's it. So it's, it's, it's like, and it's a localized, direct threat to you. If you are too stupid, then you will die.

It also shows like, okay, the world's pretty fucked up by the time we start the movie in Quiet Place. Here's a really good reason why I got so fucked up because you don't get to make many mistakes. Yes. You really don't get to make many mistakes at all. Yes. One, maybe two. And there is also, this is the other bit too, like Quiet Place, by the time you get through

to it, it makes a couple of decisions, it even swerves, right? And you understand the nature of the threat enough to believe the rest of the movie. And in this case, you get, and in the case of Bird Box, the threat, you get the feeling that it is unexplained because further elaboration would make it the dumbest, most laughable thing ever in terms of its origin, not just what it looks like or what's going on, but literally where or what it taps into or where it comes from or whatever it fucking is. That on its own, you get the overwhelming feeling it would be laughable, and thus that that too is cut, and it tries to go back to that Ridley Scott place of don't show the

monster and it will live in that. It's this thing where, I mean, I guess this we can finish this off, but look at Bird Box and look at Quiet Place in which we're talking about sight versus sound, right? The threat in Quiet Place don't make noise. The threat in Bird Box is don't look, right? The problem is, is that one of these is received and the other is generated by the protagonist, right? Creating noise is unavoidable, right?

You can't never make noise. That's not a concept that can exist, right? But the protagonist's life is noise. But they can try and the removal of this aspect of their lives informs the story, right? So you get situations where like, oh, I dropped a thing. What drama now? Because a normal thing happened that anyone could do, right? Something unavoidable.

There's kids in the story and the kids aren't perfect, so mistakes happen, right? So it informed and it just goes, right? With Quiet Place you go, well, shouldn't all the blind people just be completely fine? They are. So, oh, but the monster's never gonna do anything to you and you can't even initiate the interaction. All you have to do is put that blindfold on and not take it off and you're set for life. So Final Panic Run is Sandra Bullock running with the kids and then things are chasing and the noises are yelling and whatnot and then because she's sprinting and panicking,

she trips and falls and gets knocked out and it's like, damn, you were stupid to do that. You could have just walked. And then she luckily, due to emotion, manages to fix the situation and get the kids back and find themselves back on the path. And then the noises start again and then they just start hofing it again and you're like, it's been established that the camera dramatically cuts to the bushes rustling and the dust kicking up into the air and it seems like it's gonna do something to you, but it's not, but it's actively not and never going to.

In fact, the entire premise of this film is based upon the one rule that is as long as you don't allow it to hurt you. It's not going to hurt you. There's no, yeah, whereas like, hey, guess what? You make noises when you're fucking asleep and I bet you that's tough, man. And I bet you that rewriter, that script revision, that person caught that and just went, I can't fucking help you. There's no, I don't know how to fix this.

That's too, that's just way too locked in. You know what should have been the ending of that movie where she's running and then she realizes that that's stupid. And then they just walk to the location and they go, everything's going to be fine or you just everyone on the world who has died is stupid, but or you just thumb your eyes out. Well, I'm sure there's a less dramatic version of that. Yeah, sure.

But that's why it's like the real actual problem is the crazies who are coming to pull your blindfolds off. But quite frankly, whatever. And all right, boy, what if what if it's such an obvious rule like, hey, Japanese ghost, Asian ghost, you know, hey, how do they track you your breath? The breath is the soul of life. You stop breathing. They can't see you.

Right. What does that mean? That puts the onus of hiddenness on the character, right? In a quiet place, sound, whatever, right? But in in in Bird Box, they put it all in the monster. It's in the monster. Can't monsters allowed to do anything? It's ridiculous.

It truly subscribes to the to the David Cage School of Film in that. Polygons means more emotions. Emotions are the key and beat you over the head with with character, quote unquote, development. Like everything's in service to the character's emotional journey. Yeah, safety is heaven and threats are hell. Yeah. And like visually, they're overwhelmingly so. And the actual problem could be solved with a little bit of common sense.

But it's more important that movies make it seem scarier than it is. So you know what? I'm going to boil it down even further, right? And it's like, OK, you have a threat and a horror. Also, the crazies don't don't can't trust the crazies. Asylum's fucking zombie farms. So you have a horror film and the horror film has some kind of tweak, right? It's zombies, it's whatever.

The viewer will say, well, just don't blank, right? You need to have a comeback to that every single time you need like. So zombie movies just don't go outside. Dude, we need to eat eventually. Fine, right? Problem solved. That's a realistic thing. You need food. Yeah, you can't just not eat. You'll die. Yeah, right? Crawl up into a fucking watch tower and just stay there forever

until you got to go get your food, but live in a high tower. OK, but then you're dead, essentially the high tower. So OK, also, they will physically pile up underneath you until they knock it over. Yeah. So how many bodies will that take? How many time you got? Yeah, it'll happen eventually, right? Hey, just don't make noise. OK, that's that's difficult.

That's the answer to that. And then they double down on that and going, not only is that not that not only is that difficult, in some cases, it's actually impossible. Yeah, right? Yeah, just don't look. Well, there's bad people sometimes. Well, what about the rest of the time? Yeah, yeah, I mean, I don't know if you read about the car. I saw a bit of the car.

And I'm like, why are they driving? That's my question is, why are they driving? Because we got to go get food. But we can just paint the windows black and use the GPS, right? So possibly the worst idea ever. When is the last time Google Maps has accurately brought you up to the front door? Of a building with a parking lot, never off the road, following. Also, Google Maps doesn't show you, I don't know, other cars in the street.

Like, well, that's the that's the that's the actual obstacles. Yeah, right. And then at some point when the things are around, lots of shaking and rattling, lots of noises, big panic. Why are you panicking? Panic. I mean, granted, it's pretty it's pretty scary that there's like a fucking monster or something. Shaking. Shadows. Shaking.

Shadows. Better than ever. That movie needed somebody who was like blind. And I was like, I don't know what the fuck you people's problem is. I don't even know what the fuck you're talking about. It seems like everybody's gone nuts. Effectively. And then they just leave and then they see them at the end of the movie. And they're like, what are you talking about? Everything's fine. Yeah, I don't know. I don't even know what you sounds like all you see.

People made this shit up. Thank God, near-automata came out first and made blindfolds cool. Anyway, all right. All right, I think you're wildly overestimating the power of bird box. What happened? Let's get into the news. But hey, news. Yeah. Oh, hey, I mean, we talked about what we played. So we did for more of Sekiro.

Just a little bit more of Sekiro. You can check out me at twitch.tv slash angriest pat. I'm going to be beating three out of the games for final bosses tomorrow. At 8 p.m., every ending has a different final boss, cool, which is super rad. That's great. Yeah. And if you are interested in my Sekiro runs and so on and so forth,

you can tune in over at Wully versus on Twitch. Also on YouTube, continuing with Wonderful 101 and DMC Five and Joe Joe's Bizarre Adventure 7th Stand user and all that fun stuff. This week, I'm going to be at PAX. So tomorrow I'm I'm cancelling or not cancelling, but there's no fighting games tomorrow. I'm just going to do more Sekiro. Had to push it for whatever, guests and such reasons.

Also, I wanted to get more time in on that before leaving. And then I'm going to be gone to PAX for the rest of the week after that. So yeah, I'll let you know what's going on. I'll see you try to get some hands on with some fun stuff. And that's all over at Wully versus. So let's see here. A couple of things happened. It's the news. Yeah.

Apparently that PlayStation thing was a shit show. Yeah. But some people in the chat were yelling about NAK 2, NAK 3. What? And some people said. I don't believe them. So well, someone said something else. Dade's gone or I don't know. Anyway, yeah, NAK 3. All right.

Anyway. So quite a few things happened. We should probably get through them quickly, hopefully. Talked about the study of that. Talked about Stadia. I'm going to say Stadia. Whatever, man, it's dumb. So Apple's like, hey, man, did anything happen at the Apple conference?

Yeah, they're like, hey, man, do you want to pay a subscription for video games? And everyone's like, what video games? And they were like, shut up. Did they do Game Flix? Yeah, they're doing it. So they're doing it. They call it their Apple devices or whatever. It'll it'll yeah.

But it's going to be like regular games. Like, you know, like it's shit that Apple already. So both Apple and Google are getting into this. Yeah, but different times. The Game Flix and they're like, you want to pay like a couple of bucks a month to play all the video games Apple has to offer. And I'm like, no, chat saying, but Platinum logo, though. Yeah, this is the Grand Blue Fantasy or whatever thing.

That's the their side games is all up in that fucking all up in that mobile. But it's like, oh, man. Yeah, that's that's what I got for that. All right, well, story. Anyway, so we can just get right into the fact that Persona five, the royal has been announced. P5 are still no actual explanation. It's it's a re-release with more stuff.

It's it's a good golden, but a good guess is that this is exactly that. Yeah, P5 golden. And it seems like there is the return of the FemSe. So I thought that too. But then the dialogue she has is talking about how the Phantom Thieves suck ass. So she's probably actually maybe Persona five, Marie. Maybe she's just lying. No, she's a poochie.

Maybe she's no, maybe she's just making it out of Persona five, the poochie. No, you're going to get to date Ryuji or Yusuke. No, she's got the school uniform. Yeah, they all do. Almost every character in the game wears that uniform. What if it's FemSe? No, it's I really wish it would. You don't know. Yeah, I do. It might not be set self or disappointment as you play Persona five,

the royal poochie, but you don't know. You don't know it could be. Yeah, but I'd be glad to be wrong as well. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. Also, announcing further announcement, go fuck yourself, Atlas. Go, go, go fuck yourself. This shit is awful.

We'll tell you what it really is on the 24th of April. Right. I really hope it's FemSe. Yeah, that would be a dream. That would be the shit. And then we can see how crazy people get when you can date the politician. I know. That's not what I was going to say. Oh, man. No, no, no, no, no, no, man.

I was going to say, no, date gets smoked. And then where is that? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. That is mom. OK, no, for real, though, for real, though, I hope you remember because when we talked on the podcast, when Persona 5 came out, I talked about how like, dude, if you were playing as a girl, people would be losing

their minds over the fucking temperance link. They would be going. Who's that Becky, man? OK, what does Becky even become? What? No, whatever. Let's let. Yeah, what? Let's say Becky and Kamashita's personalities were reversed. Yeah. And Becky was the evil one. Yeah. And you, as a female 16 year old student,

we're getting your volleyball coach. Yeah. People would have gone not curious because however progressive people want to see it, how I want to see him or whatever. Like that South Park shit about nice is on point. People would freak out. And I want to see it, Femme C, and I want to see her date. The fucking get smoked 12 year old and the and the teacher and her doctor and the politician and see people go crazy.

The reverse version of Becky is in the game and it's called literally the first arc. Yeah. It's called the Kamashita arc. Like it's there. Like I yeah, I I'm so curious because like a lot of people were like, oh, man, oh, that's cool. You did your teacher. And I'm like, I think that's a really fun S-link, but it's also super dark.

You could and people are like, why is it dark? I'm like, just switch. Just switch it. You can think about it. You could date Ken. Yeah. Yeah. And if I remember correctly, other characters like and you're like, no, no, no, it's cool. And they were like, teach the boy. Yeah, train him.

Well, you know what the real crazy thing is, is they're going to add they're going to add an S-link. They're going to change one of the S-links. And instead of the gun store guy selling guns, he's actually going to sell cocaine. Oh, well, wow. Yeah, scrape that one off the shelves and what you're going to no, they would never do that. That's that is gross.

It is out of my mind, races with what some of those S-links become. I'm never going to call them confidants. S-link comes first. But yeah, my mind races with what that becomes. And because there's even like even just like the interactions of Sojiro are going to be weirder because Sojiro will be like awkward. Like there's there's a part where you're talking to Sojiro around Valentine's Day when you cheated on all your girlfriends.

And he's like, you know what, back in my day, I yeah, I yeah. And this time around, he's going to be like, I don't know, you're not pregnant, are you? Take that shit upstairs. Get away from keep it away from the war. No, you know what? We're not being fair. We're not being fair because the Valentine's Day link would not be, you know, back in my day, you'd be like, you know, I know it's it's really weird

because, you know, you're living under my house because, you know, and it's like we're family. But, you know, I just want to say, you know, I could be your and then everyone's going to go and a couple of people are going to go. Yeah, dude, I so. So it's funny because we make fun of persona and we make fun of Atlas because there's a bunch of shit that you're just like Japan, right? All you have to do is just alter that perspective just a little and you get a clearer view of just like how like, huh, maybe that isn't as

like, I think it's all hilarious. And I want to see it's fucked up shit all to the nines, but like people are going to get fucking mad. So did you leave this coat hanger on my bed? I don't you kids, I don't need kids nowadays. I don't know what you solve your own problems to keep it out of my house. Keep it out of my cafe. No, you don't want to be so drawn keeping the baby.

You can't stop. Oh, God. And then you have an S link with the baby. Oh, boy. Well, anyway, you want to have a fucking wild ass persona game back in my day. We solve things the simple way. You want to have a fucking wild ass persona game. Persona six, you play as a female main character.

And the first thing that happens is you get pregnant and it's a fucking. It's the moon arcana. And you and every month of the game, you get more pregnant. And then on the ninth month, where you get to unlock the final dungeon, it turns into the death arcana. OK, hopefully the fool, but here's the problem. Running around Tartarus in the third semester. Yeah, is not.

Yeah, work out. And you're all pregnant shit and your outfits. It's like a fucking maternity thing and you're trying to keep it hidden at school. No. And your party is like, I don't think you should be doing that. And you and all the dating options are still there for real. Yeah, all they're all there. And your romance options range from the one guy who's like,

let's just pretend this isn't happening to the father, to the the the weird guy from the comic book store, who's just all about it. I mean, look, like I just from a gameplay perspective, your MC has too much physical action. I just looked down into the chat and saw a guy in all lower case. Please move on. That's the correct answer. Yeah, I know.

I know it's like they want to tackle social issues. I want to see it get really fucking dark and grimy and complicated in a way that I find to be like outrageous. Because I'm like, you know, we talked about the Futaba S Lake that's all fucked up, right? You know what? Fuck it. Just fuck the whole game up. I want this game to be like there's a poisonous to my sense of self.

There's a there's a fucking dungeon where you're fighting at a dam and there's a crack and you have to you have to defeat the boss before the dam cracks and the water breaks. Yeah, the water and floods the world. Yeah. And yeah. And you have to complete the missions before you have to complete every one of your missions before your monthly ultrasound or else the baby will turn demonet. Oh, man.

How could you get two personas as well? Yeah. OK. All right, turns out you're playing as the baby the whole time. Did you play Assassin's Creed, too? Yeah. Do you remember the mission where you play as a sperm? Yep. I do. That's one of the weirdest missions in a game ever. And the game tries to ignore that it happened like it never comes up ever again.

And no character ever says like, was I just playing as my ancestors nut? Hey, man, your baby will now take a mortal blow for you. Oh, my God. OK, there's people that don't know what I'm talking about. So I'm going to elaborate on that in Assassin's Creed, too. You play a mission as an one of your ancestors and it follows the male character to a rendezvous with a female character and then the male character leaves, but the perspective of the animus stays with the female character,

which means you were playing as the protozoa or the sperm azoid or whatever. And you're like, wait, what? And that I don't even know what the animus is at that point. The memory doesn't have to be a memory anymore. It doesn't have to be anything. It can just, yeah, it stops following individual cells. It stops. It stops. It falls apart. What is a person? Right? Oh, God, are we doing this?

No, but I'm saying the animus forces the question of what a person is at that point in time based on where the camera goes. Oh, so you're going to drag the animus down to the rally and be like, take a look at this shit. Pro life, pro choice. Who cares? Look at this data. I got it. I got some news for I got this magic coffin that'll tell you all the answers right there.

The camera follows and it's staying. Oh, boy. Life begins where the camera. It was. Yeah. Life begins when the camera is on. When the camera switches, whenever the camera switches from one protagonist to another, that's when life begins. Oh, I hate this.

Ubisoft solved it. Done and done. That's the abster go we wanted. Perfect. It's awful. It's going to be poochy and I'm going to be pissed. Hey, it's a game with Royale in the title. Yeah, that's not a Royale. That's so when people started like that was an easy Photoshop

to make of like Persona 5, the battle Royale. Yeah. And I was like, this looks really real, really fast. And people are talking about Persona 5, the Royale. I'm like, are you? No, OK, it's it's a it's an RPG. I really do wish it had been Persona 5, the rumble. But hey, well, here's the other. The other thought is that people have been asking for the return of Femme C

for so long and they did it with PQ2. Yeah. So she's back in Canon. She she counts. So that's why there's a possibility they might be leaning into what I really, really hope it's the Femme C because that that game would be that games different for a lot of reasons with the Femme C. In fact, the the start of the story can change very dramatically.

Yeah. And then it's like, you can shove Yukiko all down my throat as much as you want in in in fucking MC mode, yeah, because that's not going to happen in this mode. Yeah. And that shit like sucks. So I want to see what the alternate take on that is, you know, I guess it would be like, well, whatever. Anyway, well, that being said, I look back on P3P. Did you play as the MC of the Femme C?

No. And that's why I was going to what I was going to get at here with P4 of R is that I don't have the ability to replay P5. I don't have the time for it. Right. It's not going to happen. But I really want to watch just the check it out. Yeah. So the thing is, is I played P3P with the Femme C. Yukiko, you carry. I whatever. She's dumbed it.

But like a lot of those social, a lot of the social links changed, like very dramatically, right? I mean, some of them are romanceable, some of them are not. There was a really good S link with a tennis player that was just your pal, right? But then there were some other stuff in there that you were like, huh, it's a weird change, right? One, Ken is obviously the biggest one.

Yeah. Or it goes from Ken, your shit kid to Ken. I really think your boy shorts are hot and everyone around you is like, right? Shinji. Shinji changes very significantly to the point where it even alters the ending for real. And like in a way that I'm like, that's fairly significant. Yeah. But the weirdest one. Did you do the magician S link with Kenji in Persona 3?

He was your regular ass classmate. You just hung out with. I probably not all the way. So his thing was that he was hot for teacher. Yeah. And your the MC was like. Kenji, you're fucking stupid. And and that was that, right? And then you just kind of had for you was unconfident and stuff like that.

Well, if you're playing as the fem see, he's like, he's hot for teacher. And that thing changes to like, dude, she's into it. And your character is like, I don't know, man. He's like, no, no, it's great. And I'm like. Ha, X to doubt. Huh. And I'm like, and now I look at like the stuff that's in P five. And I look at like a female main character and I'm like, oh, I can't wait

to see what fucking shit's in there. Yeah. Yeah. That should be fucking wild. It should. It should. I'm I'm I'm excited for that possibility. Just to show the day you get and he's like, no. That'd be perfect. Only only if only if like, it's like, I don't know what he's a weirdo. I don't know what he fucking wants or he wants to fuck a canvas. Yeah, stack up all these sweaters on like that, that fucking.

That model of, you know, I look at that model of and I look back on that like whole storyline and it's tone deaf. Well, considering the storyline that happens immediately before it's really it's very weird. It's really weird because you're also coming at it with the look. You're coming at it for the fan service. It's like she just went through some shit. What are you doing?

Because because we leave her alone. Because Ryuji's like, oh, the chem sheet is so evil. That chem sheet is so evil. I can't believe he would try and take advantage of his students. OK, and we need to get this guy to tell us what we do. You're going to get naked, bitch. And it's like, wait, hold on, Ryuji, calm down. Yeah, yeah, it is very totally like, can we just give her a breather?

Can we just back off? The anime is not very good at it either, by the way. Can we leave her alone for a minute? So and her friends in the hospital and gets like the big kill on the Kamishita boss in the anime. And as she's giving her speech about how evil he is that like take advantage of his students, like the camera is like crawling inside of her asshole.

It's like because she's got the new outfit, dude. It's the same. It's it's the thing that we kept talking about about Persona 5 and it's the problem of Persona 5. The theme of Persona 5 is to fight the establishment and it's made by people who are saying how good the establishment is. Like, it's a problem. It like it's like and stuff.

And like, you know, and there and she's going to get Morgana fucking fawned and fiending all hard for the rest of the game. And, you know, and so on. But the fact that, yeah, it's the one, two of that part coming right after Kamishita was like, wow. The other thing about Ann that kind of bugs me a little bit and it's like Ann's really normal, like as a character. Like she's really, really normal.

And I was wondering, like, what are they? What is her? What is her? Oh, I know what her special weird thing is. She's she's the one white person. She's a western like she's the one person that's not from here. And she has real blonde hair. That's the cork. How exotic. And I'm like, that's the cork.

Like what you what you I'm shrugging. Like, like, like, OK, fine. I guess. Like she's she's half, right? Yeah, she's a halfoo. Yeah. But they don't treat her like a halfoo. Right. She's the wall. She's like, oh, you speak English, right? No. Like, um.

What was it? Yeah, I don't know. Whatever. Yeah. Like, imagine if you fall, I was going to say, yes, imagine if you come in, you get out of you, get out of Kamishita's palace. And then the first thing they're like, hey, we should celebrate by going to the hot springs. What are you guys? Let's peek on them. Let's fucking let's get it. Let's do it.

I took a bunch of photos. Yeah. And you're like, hey, and where you been? Oh, I just got back from the hospital. I was visiting. Oh, that's cool. She's she's, you know, she's having trouble getting through the physical rehab. That's cool. We're going to the hot springs. Want to come? And she's like, I don't know, man. I'm I'm feeling a little self-conscious right now.

Ah, the the the. Don't worry. I brought all you skays here. Sorry, yo skays here. And he brought bathing suits. Yeah, that that healthy, healthy spring water will get it all out of your system. Oh, yeah, it's like all the stress. Yeah. Fucking weird.

And. Quick, quick, quick. By the way, I did get some. I had people write in on my Twitter and explain a long history of like, hey, what's the deal with the cocaine versus the we have letters? The oh, yeah, we do. OK, they're not the information I got was not encouraging. Yeah, is what I have to say.

Yeah, we have lots of letters about it. We'll get into that. OK. Don't they cry five early sales? Two million. First, they said shipped, but then they said so like a few days later and was like, yeah, that's great. Yeah, not in a million sales, not in a million years, dude. I get like a tingle when I refight that fight

and it's the tone is almost the same. And it's like it's just that it's the one thumb in the eye. That and Dante, I got. Anyway, yeah, there I got that photo where V is drinking on the reality straight up drinking the slur. You know what? Somebody found somebody found another one, by the way. There's another DMC, a little, little like elbow in the ribs. There's a bunch of them.

Well, the one that I'm thinking of is so well in DMC five, Dante is at his lowest point, right? After getting beaten by Eurasian, right? And he's all covered in blood and shit. So his hair is kind of dark. Where is he? He's being cradled by a bunch of ugly. Oh, the statue. Yeah.

And it's totally the same pose. And it's minus the the hand pointing down. But that's Dante at his lowest point. And it's like, OK, I mean, that's a stretch. Yeah, it is. But fuck him. It's more of a it's yeah, that's that's that's ridiculous. It's definitely more of a pose homage than it is anything else in a state million years.

You got to. But yeah, he's definitely it's definitely there. I love it. Good for Devil May Cry. Big sales. Good for tuna and everybody else, too. I'm sure other people worked hard on that game, too, I guess. So this one kind of snuck by, but it looks like there's going to be a discless X bone coming out. This is a mockup product picture that we're looking at here.

What's the name of this thing? The Xbox One S X, a.k.a. X bones. Nope. It's the Xbox stand alone disc system. So it's the X bone sad. Well, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Wait, what are you talking about? When Xbox, when this got announced,

it was like it was announced that it's the Xbox One S. All digital, all digital. Yes, all digital. That's it. So it's the X bone sad. Come on. Come on. They have to know it's on purpose. You know, all digital.

That was it, not standalone disc system. I made that up in my mind right there on the mockup. They're leaning into them. They're leaning into it. It's the X bone sad. They're leaning in. Come on. OK, well, anyway, this is kind of like, you know, that that that Canadian.

We that was sold at Farmer. Or the. What was the other thing, the 2DS and such and so on? Yeah, man, this is no discs. Yeah, sure. Why not? This will serve a bunch of people. You probably a little cheaper. Exactly. Yeah.

I'm my my my PC has had no disc slot for years. Follow New Vegas was the last game I put on a disc into that into my computer. There you go. That was a long time ago. I don't actually remember the last time I put a disc in. Oh, I've only put one disc into my PlayStation. And that was the demo thing that came with the VR. Yes, I put the VR disc into my PlayStation, into my PlayStation.

Maybe like MKX. Yes, you did put MKX in. I remember that's about it. I was there when you did it. And I remember marking that it was weird putting that in putting a disc into a console was an odd thing in my mind at that time. And then I realized how odd that thought was as well. Well, that's because we're that we're here now.

Yeah, collectors only for me. If I want to collect it, then I'll buy the physical. Otherwise, I'm good. Shelf space is at a premium. So, yeah, that's that's that's the thing that'll happen. And quite frankly, she have a couple of bucks off of that. It's a good idea. Then why does it make X bones?

Sad. I mean, why do we cry X bone? So we talked about Master Chief Collection. Yeah, that's happening. Yeah, fucking. How about this? You want to do you want to go back to the the brief discussion we had about this? I'll go back to any discussion.

Vampire, the masquerade bloodlines to straight up just announced the GDC. So, you know what is so there you have it. So you know what the most interesting thing about this game, about this news is one, good for it. Two, it's like the top selling game on Steam. I was not aware that this game, this fucked up game had the reputation. That it like I knew people. You really didn't think this was going to happen.

Well, no, I mean, nobody really thought those are going to happen. Maybe another masquerade game, but definitely not like bloodlines with the two, you know. But like, yeah, no, this game's reputation is for real. And well, I knew the game had a good reputation, but I guess I didn't know it was broadly known. I always figured it was relatively niche, but it's always been like every time it comes up. Like, look at the chat right now, right? Yeah, everybody mad at me. Like everyone's excitement.

No, no, because because when the name came up and I was like, oh, yeah, they're going back in. Yeah, right. And everyone the reaction everyone has of excitement. Yeah, they know about that. Yeah. And that's why it's what's like, why, you know, yeah, why not? Like worse shit gets put out all the time. All the time. Why?

Why wouldn't you try it with better, you know? And the masquerades are really cool fantasy setting. The original Harley Quinn. That that ponytail, the ponytail look. So, yeah, that's that's like the business one better. That's just me. Weird weird. GDC is not exactly a new game announcement place.

Yeah, I get the feeling that it was announced there because a lot of game developers would have also been like, oh, yeah, more ideas to steal. Perhaps weird, weird. But cool. Yeah, good for everyone. Especially vampires. Yeah, I don't know what to make of it. But Gearbox is like, here's a picture of Duke Nukem.

And here's what is possibly more bullet storm stuff. Yeah. We don't know. I don't know if you saw, but the Gearbox Twitter was like, there's going to be a Borderlands announcement at PAX. Oh, what is it? And then the trademark leaked out that it's the first game remastered. OK, and it's like.

Fuck off. So what's this picture of Duke Nukem and some bullshit? OK, it's probably just a bullet storm re-release with Duke Nukem inside it. I mean, Duke Nukem came out as DLC for Bullet Storm. I didn't know that. So that was a thing. Oh, it's probably just bulls. This might be something else.

So people are looking at this going, this is either more bullet storm or more Duke. And we don't know. Randy, no, both storms, Brad, though, that's a good game. We'll find out soon. As Jennifer Hale yelling at Steve Bloom, that she'll kill his dick, which is. That's awesome. A really good like she she goes, get the fuck away from me or I'll kill your dick. And then Steve Bloom goes, you'll kill my dick.

It's the greatest line reads by either of them ever. That's great. Yeah, so I mean, obviously we touched on it, but like, you know, Sony announced that they're going to be doing their own direct and it sucks. So state of play, which is a fun, like not pun, but play on words for PlayStation is their Nintendo direct. And between that and inside Xbox, E threes got a lot less every year going now that it ever has.

Yeah, that's right. Except for the year when it was literally not interesting. But the airplane hangar year was pretty bad. E for all. No, for all. That was another one. But anyway, the idea here is that, yeah. Now, now every major console has its own show.

So save the big, the big megatons for that. I saw some news trickling out of this. But the only news that I thought was actually interesting is apparently Sony. I have a source for this right now, but apparently Sony is not allowing the sale of digital games via retail anymore. As in they can't people can't sell codes. Yeah, really, like digital only games, I believe. So, you know, you'd be able to get like some places sold codes and they'd

like, you know, you could get like a braid code at your local store or something. Apparently, they're not going to. But that seems like minor. But it's also like, but like, but why? I don't know. In some cases, it let you get shit ahead of time, depending on your region. You know, I know that like, like places like Lick Sang and stuff. Sometimes when you buy it, they'd send it to your code and be like, oh, well,

it's out over here. Apparently they they showed Jax and Mortal Kombat. Yeah, sure. He's cool. You see Kotal Kahn's reveal trailer. I did not. Kotal Kahn has a reveal trailer, which is three minutes of Kotal Kahn getting his ass beat by Jackie Briggs.

And literally he gets like two moves out and it just shows off all her moves instead, but it's called the Kotal Kahn reveal trailer. I don't understand. Saibot got a cool reveal trailer. Well, are you talking about the actual trailer or the accidental slide in the middle of that presentation? I mean, the trailer that came out. Yeah, he has a wishbone remix.

Yes, his fatality. Yeah. What he doesn't have is a cool voice because they turned his voice into this. Yeah, it's quite terrible. It's awful. It's literally just evil. It's the worst that can have Saibot mother with me disappointed. Like it's your it's a guy doing that.

Yeah. And it's bad. It just please just make it nothing. Please just make it nothing. So that happened. Other fighting game news while there's for those who are paying attention, which is none of you, Terry Bogard is coming out this week alongside Sharon in Fexal.

So if you remember Sharon, she's the sniper girl from Street Fighter EX and she's got a cool redesign and she's got the trademark pant leg. And she does her gun stuff. So that's Sharon and then Terry's there to Terry's there to he's Terry. You guys know who Terry Bogard. Terry Bogard looks better in Fexal than he does in King of Fighters 14.

Well, of course he does. Like he looks better in this game than he does in his actual game and yikes, you know. But yeah, he does everything you'd expect. He's has got all the voices. He's got big old combos of crack shoots and power waves and bun knuckles and overshoot geysers, Buster Wolfs. Yeah, it's a bit rough when you're the guest gets more love than the original.

But that's not becoming uncommon these days. I mean, it's the way things are in a lot of cases. Like, do you see how much work in Negan got? Tekken is crushing it. Where everyone in there in Tekken is the best form they've ever been. There was a gif walking and I'm sorry, a little video coming and going around of like Negan wearing like hipster glasses and like a pink shirt with like a little fucked up, gotcha angel like floating around his head.

Just doing his intro coach is like, hope you got your shit in pants on. And it's like, man, Tekken's the worst. Like we need to delete video games because now we can start talking about the new footage of Samurai showdown that came out today because a whole lot of a whole lot of gingeros there came out. So we got IGN took a look at it. Some other places took a look at it.

There's some footage of Eli Joe beating the SNK devs, which is real fun. Samurai showdown is back and it's doing its thing. And the gameplay is bonkers because there are moments when people go into PAL mode. Did you play Samurai showdown at all? A little. Did you ever do you know in the mechanics? Are you familiar with that works?

Yeah, because I keep going. Heart attacks are fucking devastating, right? Hardest tax ever. Yeah, like a heavy line getting hit with a heavy on a counter hit is like 20% of your fucking life. And the game slows down like it's it's brutal. And and what ends up happening? Is that a dog says the chat?

Oh, you're unfamiliar with Galford. That's Poppy. Yeah, Galford and Poppy are staples. He's go Poppy. He's the best. And no, I am not mispronouncing that, you know, just like Nakaruru and Mamaha. But so the whole Samurai showdown damage thing has been

taken to the fucking nth degree, because now there are PAL modes where did you activate and lands attacks that do. 80 shut up. OK, all right. That's that's I'm going to find some something. Tell me about what you've because we I don't know how much you know about summer show in a moment. Very little.

I know that I barely know anything about Samurai showdown and I saw Genjuro in a thing and I went, oh, cool. That's Genjuro. And then you went, how the fuck do you not know who fucking Galford is, but you know who Genjuro is. Genjuro is like a weirdo. He's not even like a fucking main character. Galford's there.

He's got Poppy. Yeah, that is a weird. That's I didn't know who Nakaruru was, but I knew who Genjuro was. OK, so you found the you found it. So we're going to look at the parts of the high fight. I'm still going to tell you to shut up. Shout out to the high fight.

High fights a great Twitter, great clips. Yeah, so unfortunately, the full screen there kind of hides for the window. Let me look. But if you look at this fucking, I will see the clip. Show me the clip. If you look at this, I can look at it. I'll react.

We are seeing the Genjuro getting hit with Galford's attack. Shut up. And his entire life bar, or at least 80% of it, melts instantaneously after hitting one of those POWs, which appears to be one of those mechanics that both characters. That's a comeback.

It's a comeback mechanic. But POW has always been there. And then the POW counter slash like that is like fucking, like what are we even looking at? Right? Is this even a fighting game anymore? Oh my god, I just saw that one hard attack at 40% of how Maru's life.

Yeah, we're looking at how Maru and Genjuro as well. And just like one big, oh my god. Right? So that's eating, getting hit with a counter hit. Counter hit heavies and samurai showdown are brutal. Who needs combos? Yeah. No, actually.

No one. Yeah, this is not about that. This is about making the right decisions. I like that. So maybe I'll get into this. And there you go. Bam. That's that.

Yeah, yeah. Samurai showdown damage. This will be exciting to watch. Just nonsense. This will be exciting to watch at Evo, for real. Like the life bar doesn't mean anything. It might as well be like hearts. What is the likelihood of like multiple pro players

getting up and be like, this game is bullshit. Like after some of that during Evo, just getting fucking one shot at essentially after carrying a match. I don't know. Do you remember Bushido Blade? I do. There you go.

That game is not bullshit. That's like we've been here before a long time ago. Bushido Blade was never at Evo. No, it wasn't. Much less the main stage. Oh my god, dude. If the finals just throws their controls, it's like, this game's bullshit.

Sucks. Just like salts off the stage. Don't get counter hit. Oh my goodness. I'll tell you what though, there was an announcement this week that counter hit my heart. Oh no. For real damage.

Is that good or bad? Good damage. OK, good damage. The best possible fucking damage. All right, let's hear it. Crypt of the Necro Dancer cross Zelda equals cadence of Hyrule. I'll tell you what, this is a pretty goddamn good surprise.

This is awesome. This is the best. This is happiness for everyone. So cool. So we're getting like already, we're seeing Crypt of the Necro Dancer wandering around Hyrule and like the sprites are better than they've ever been. Yeah, the game looks really good.

It looks really pretty and the animation is really nice. It's 2D, but like, it looks like I would have been a sequel, right? This would have been Crypt of the Necro Dancer too. Yeah. In terms of just like how the sprite quality has stepped it up. But then it just fucking shows you Link and Zelda joining in and Nintendo literally just making

Crypt of the Necro Dancers game mechanics apply to like Zelda, which and it's like, you know, Link to the Past style Zelda, which works perfectly for this type of game. Let me ask you a question. What's the name of the character? Like, what's her title in the Crypt of the Necro Dancer? Cadence.

No, no, she's the. Oh, her name is Cadence. Her name is Cadence. OK, Cadence is now a Zelda character. Yes. Cool. Done. Just like she's great.

Yeah, so good. Her yeah, her name is Cadence. That's that's that's what that's what they're going. Oh, I get it. Oh, it's like ha ha. Oh, Zelda. I got it. What?

I had a I had a moment in my brain. I mean, there's there's Cadence of Hyrule because the girl she's from. I get it. See. So anyway, I'm so smart, guys. That's super awesome. And the fact that Nintendo teamed up

with an indie or an indie and gave them the the Zelda like nineties. No, I hate that term. Come on, you've heard it before. Yeah, I have. OK. And I make that face every time. All right. Well, the fact that Nintendo handed over

the keys to their to their fucking Porsche. Genuinely, I'm like big move for Nintendo. They have trust issues. So cut to a million indie developers on Twitter. Hey, hey, hey. Yeah, yeah, like Cognac, like fucking Conjac, the guy from Iconoclast is like, give me Metroid. Give it to me.

Dude, dude, come on. Now I'll make like 10. I have so much like I'll make like 10. People like indie developers are like, what? Wait, wait. This shit is up for grabs. Because Zelda is number two in terms of like, don't fuck it up. That will we will never give you these.

Right. But the keys to the but even then they've let other people fuck with Mario like they gave Mario to Ubisoft. Yeah. But you can. So like you want to Ubisoft, you can drive the Jag. Yeah. Right. That's fine.

And other people like, can I please? Can I can I please drive the like the Metroid bus? They're like, no. It's between loaning the keys to like your business partner and your buddy and the babysitters like that you're hiring to watch your kids. It's super different. You know what? You've done really good work taking care of these kids.

I'll let you perform surgery on me. I don't know. It's nuts, right? You've tossed them the fucking keys. Like that's great. So anyway, yeah, what else is up for rent? You know, what franchises are you not touching that someone will do miracles for Sonic Mania proved that this is this is fine.

We can do this. Good people who grew up on this shit. Guess what? They know what they're talking about. They've got love for it. They'll often oftentimes more than the people who made it in the first place. Yes. And you know what else?

They can possibly make the thing that the fans like them would want to buy. Yeah. Like, I mean, there's there's a bunch of stuff that happened in those old Sonic games that I'm going to assume is accidental that Christian Whitehead and those guys fucking broke down into a science. Who gets F zero? No one who could be trusted. They'll never let anyone touch F zero.

Who can be trusted? The wipeout people. They're gone. That's that. Yeah, keep up. Let's go. My brain did that already. There.

Who can be like, no, this is gone. They don't exist anymore. Um, the yeah, who is left that makes that shit? Oh, what about the guys who made that those those games that ran at 60 FPS on the Wii that made like futuristic racing games? Fast racing, Neo. Yeah. Shinnon.

Yeah. Yeah. See, yeah, this sucks. I mean, if the answer is always platinum, the question becomes less interesting. So if if, hey, Nintendo people. I would really like it if you guys could trip yourselves down to Australia to talk to the Team Cherry guys about Metroid. I think that would be really cool.

If you did that, Australia is not even that far and there's only three of them. You barely have to pay them anything. Just give them, hey, um. Hmm. I mean, I don't want like Metroid souls and they could they could they could do they shit considering Cherry is awesome at the thing they did. And the thing they did is a little bit Metroid ish in terms of how the map works. But there's a whole lot of not Metroid.

Oh, yeah. But like my point is they're extraordinarily talented. Yeah. Yeah, I would I mean, maybe they I guess they maybe they can give Samus a melee attack like she always should have had. Um, that's not my first thought of like someone that would come along and like fucking push the envelope in some crazy way with the franchise. But then again, hey, Team Ninja took it.

So, you know, um, yeah, I would say exactly. Yeah, give Team Cherry Castlevania instead or so. Well, that's not there. But you know what I mean? Yeah, I know. Yeah, like it's it's Konami. That's a whole other fucking Konami doesn't even give themselves their own projects. It but this is interesting, right?

This creates a lot of buzz. A lot of people going, oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck. The pop has been topped, right? What shut up? I don't know. One of the smallest indies got one of the got the biggest next to Mario. That's, you know, and that has a lot to do with how uniquely like awesome the idea of the game, the gameplay is like, I think they I think they kind of

looked at it and went like, this is super different. And like, you can experiment in this space. So it was because, you know what I mean? It's not like doing what other is not doing what we've already done in a different way, which kind of Team Cherry is that this is what the fuck is Crypt of the Necro dancer on like anything you've ever played. Oh, we can we can play with that. So I look at this and I want to say big congrats to everybody who were on the

on the Crypt of the Necro dancer gang that is now working on a Zelda title. I would be terrified because if this game is anything less than pretty good, yeah, their name is kind of dirt forever as the people who made that bad Zelda game. You know, like that's, there's a list. Do they want to be at the top of the bad list? Oh, we beat out the CD eyes. Who gets Kirby? How gets Kirby?

Why? Because they never fucked it up. Yeah, they never fucked it up. They so what are you talking about? They make a Kirby game every couple of years. For what fucking reason? There's no dearth of Kirby. There's no way like we're fine.

I don't even give a shit about Kirby. And I think that's silly. Like that franchise continues on healthily and unabated. The state of affairs has never been more pleasant. It is fine. Yeah, but Zelda games take a long time to come out. They sure do and I can only imagine the pressure. Like, hey, you want to talk about pressure?

Think about trying to follow up fucking. What's that game called this? Zelda one that we played Breath of the Wild. Follow that shit up. Yeah. I don't I don't even know what the fuck they could do. I don't like I don't know. I was like, you got to reinvent the wheel again.

You can't know. You literally can't. You can't. They talked about how they can't. How this is then do you just go back to tradition? No, this is the new form of Zelda, but they'll have to vary it up a degree. But this is the way Zelda is now.

Space, this dark world. Oh, shit, we've done that. Well, if they were smart, they'd go super weird like they did with Majora's Mask, which is how they got around that problem with Ocarina. Because Breath of the Wild is absolutely the Ocarina of its time. What open world settings appropriate to the fantasy world

to have we not visited? You make a new one. Desert, snow. No, just make a new forest and have it be weird. We've done it. Go to Morrowind. Fuck it. Have a weird place with mushroom trees and shit.

And it's all weird, completely fictional, weird world. Yeah, Namak. Yeah, video game. Yeah, go. Yeah, go to Namak, Namak. Yeah. Slashed the the the the fucking the middle realm have like have like and you know how you you know how you vary it up.

So because like how many times like you can't relearn metal conducts electricity. You already know that, right? Yeah. Make a bunch of weird alien bullshit. Yeah. That interacts in ways that makes no sense. Bath-mo-dads.

Yeah, yeah. You put the bath-mo-dad in your ass, you can fly. And then modern day. Oh, modern day. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so there's that. Can't believe bath-mo-dad's a real fucking word. That's outrageous.

Well, I mean, it's not a real word. But it's a word that appears in Star Fox Adventures. They love to kill themselves for you. Anyway, so yeah, that's cool stuff. That's really, really exciting. And I'm happy about that. Let's take some letters. Hey, we got some letters.

If you want to send a letter about probably usually video games and stuff, but like whatever, we had a cool one about somebody naming their kids in a fucked up way last week. Yeah, we got some fun other people talking. Everyone I've talked to about that story, by the way, has got has got has got the fucking same reaction of like, what are they fucking stupid? Like every single person.

Yeah. But if you want to send an email, you can send it to CastleSuperBeastMail at gmail.com. That's CastleSuperBeastMail at gmail.com. I almost forgot what the email was there for a second. Don't fuck it up. I almost fucked it up. But you didn't.

Yeah, I didn't. That's good. All right. So yeah, we can just we can just start out with, I mean, we got a couple talking about drugs in Japan. What's the deal with Japan? And I got some some good insights from some friends as well about like articles that were just there's an article that was

like, like once a once a drug user forever, a drug user, you know, and that kind of like idea and whatnot. I'll read one that came in of the many from we'll read one from Mickey. Hey, Mickey, what up? Mickey, foreign crook says, Hey, dudes, interesting background for the whole peer tacky and kitty porn hoarding, motherfucker, Kenshin author situation, TLDR, majority of JP society, the

majority of JP society's response to these crimes, drugs, very bad drug user demon, Lollicon bad, but my manga though. Drug laws in Japan existed from the 30s, but weren't very strict. You can import as long as you had records of doing so. Drug laws became very strict past World War Two. Criminalizing the use of most drugs. This is due to have the influence from the US. Japan, as you can see through history of the endless nobunaga

versus a catchy drama remakes, the Hono Jino Ken thing still loves the Bushido ways, which is now washed down to the honor system. Sure it is. See it everywhere. Protecting things is super important. You got a mammary that honor your senpai honor the law, the whole culture of helping each other and having healthy

community is good and all, but it has problems. Japanese people tend to be easily influenced by laws and rules. Now for the whole Lollicon stuff, it gets a little dark. The culture is very lenient towards sexualization of underage children. Take a look at AKB, for example. I assume that's like AKB 48. Yeah, by the way, I want to point out this is the same letter

I was referring to earlier on in the podcast. Oh, yeah, you picked out the same one that spoke to me as well, because it goes into significant death with specific examples. The first hit, the first smash hit, heavy rotation features a ton of children under 18 in lingerie pillow fighting and kissing. The media would say that the oldest is 22, but the youngest

is 12. Wow. As a selling point. When I was in a play at the age of 17, I saw fans by their favorite idols. Yeah, this is someone who is from Japan. Yeah. When I was in a play at the age of 17, I saw fans by their

favorite idols like 15 years old. Skippy dresses as gifts and the parents would laugh it off. Oh, it's harmless fun. Boys are idolized and sexualized as well. Infamous Johnny's entertainment and their wonder hit boy band, Sexy Zone, where the members debuted at the fresh age of 14.6. This is a big selling point.

That's the average age of the total band was 14.6. This was a big selling point for the band as well. Look how young they are. Hints of this culture are seen throughout history. One would be Genji Monogatari, an 11th century novel in which the protagonist peeps a bath, sees a 10 year old and thinks, this girl's going to be pretty when she grows up. There's also Senkoku era onwards in which Daimyo's would

have young, young, too young. I don't want to think about it, boyfriends. And another fine example of how Buddhist priests satisfy themselves with their disciples. The culture is ingrained in society and sometimes it's difficult to realize how much of a problem it is. Drugs, on the other hand, were easily acceptable as evil because they would damage the community.

Damages the community and the social order, so it is bad. Sorry, this is a long email. Hope it gives some context from Mickey Fourncrook. Yeah. So basically, yes, we have a separate law for cannabis because the country has a history of using hemp for sandals and clothing. People used it recreationally all the time, but it was

criminally and is criminalized and demonized, sadly. So the long and short of it is as it is as simple as it appears. It is a long standing cultural thing. It's like, oh, it's it's not that bad. Don't worry about it. It's like, yeah, the I mean, there's I can read another two that I pulled out.

But the short of it is really that it the idea that it harm society is a huge part of why it stuck around. Why it showed up was because of America. And the other thing is that if that phrase specifically sounds a little weird, because it's got the hidden inference that certain other things don't harm society. Well, I guess that's just cultural or whatever. Yeah, the the Kenshin technicality that people were

bringing up is about how the books he owned were like lingerie shots that were technically legal until a few years ago. Yeah. So they only became legal through like without it without a grandfathering law. Yeah. And that's why there are boxes upon boxes of them and such.

Yeah. I mean, harm society, like you can talk about the literal harming of children that is being what, you know, hey, listen, that's a much more clear and direct line of society being harmed, in my opinion. But it comes down to the fact that you're looking at like rules that are in place that have been around forever.

And even if they were to start changing, like another nature of the differences in our cultures is that change takes infinitely longer there than it does here for things like that. Yep. So it's the it's the one two combo, you know, three actually, it's so I would like to say I'll take a I'd like to I guess I'll sum up my thoughts on this

situation because that email and I got other people talking. It was all pretty much the same thing. Now that one was easily the most detailed. It's like, listen, you go down to fucking Europe or whatever, and they're baffled by cry. No, fucking Canada, right? That's like you showed a teddy on TV.

Who cares? The Americans, they all go crazy, right? You can't show the teddy on the TV. It'll it'll damage the kids. I do. I think that's ridiculous. Totally. Uh, but then the Americans, you know, they got the

violent TV like I won't you ever watch those those like the bones or whatever the fuck those things show at 8 p.m. And there's like horrible gore on the TV and you're like, wow, well, you just fucking, wow, you gore up that body. No problem. It's all cultural differences.

Who were we to judge? No, wait, that's bullshit. The blood can this is easy to judge the blood can cover the nipples. I am in no way going to advocate some kind of fucking more morally relativistic fucking cultural stance. Are some cultures different? Yeah, totally.

Are some of those differences funny and a little weird? Yeah, totally. Is this one backwards and fucked up? Absolutely. It's a shame. There's not a whole lot I can do, which is kind of, you know, like, what am I going to do? Go out there and be like, you guys should feel bad about

that shit. And then we don't know what you're saying. Crazy tiny ginger. I mean, it would be one thing if like both punishments were draconian, right? Or Japanese legal system is a wild trip of draconian nonsense. Or both were a slap on the wrist. If you guys want to, hey, if you guys at home are

unfamiliar, Phoenix Wright is a social indictment of the Japanese legal system. The shit that happens in Phoenix Wright is cartoony, but it is also a lot closer to reality than you would expect. If you want to find out some shit, go look up what the deal is with Phoenix Wright is and the Japanese legal system and how the context in which those games were made. Yeah.

The number one thing, you know how it's weird how the dumbass old judge is the one who decides 99% conviction rate? Well, it's because there's no jury trials. They're all judge trials. In Japan, the judge, the judge decides everything. Yeah. Yeah.

And the fact that you're in front of the judge means you're probably guilty. Owner, yeah, the idea, I remember like what the laws in China as well, they were comparing how there's a, what's it? There's the saving face. Yeah. Saving face.

It's very important. Right. And saving face comes in all shapes and sizes. Saving face in a corporate sense means stepping and taking, stepping down when you take the... Take the hit, man. Take the hit for your team. Yeah.

And in a criminal sense, it means the onus is on you. You, if you're here, the process has brought you here. You may now... Sometimes you have to take the hit for the system. Sometime you are now saving face for society. Which is like, to my brain, it's like, fuck that, I'm just gonna sign it. I'm not gonna want to do it.

Yeah, but that's, that's, that's where it's the same idea kicks in. Yeah, I was talking to people about this in my, in my Twitch, like subscriber discord, and I'm like, let's Wikipedia some stuff. And I found out something really wild, which is that the Japanese police can hold you in for a period of 23 days without a phone call or the ability to talk to your

lawyer. And they may interrogate you or interview you the entire time. Patriot Act. What? Like, doesn't that do the same thing? I don't, I'm not familiar. Can't America do the same thing to you?

No, you need your lawyer. I thought... You get arrested by a police officer, you ask for your lawyer, you get your lawyer. I thought after 9-Eleven they had a... Oh, there was all sorts of shit with that. They could, now you could be detained for like a crazy long amount of time.

Well, everybody can get disappeared to a fucking place if their government wants them to. Okay. I'm talking about, hey, did you get picked up for shoplifting 23 days without your lawyer? Okay. I, I, I was incorrectly like under the impression that like post 9-Eleven in America, there was a few changes

made in which you could be detained for a particularly long period of time that you couldn't be detained for in the past. Oh, I'm not super familiar with that. I'm not a lawyer. Maybe it depends on the state. It probably depends on the charge, honestly. Could be.

And where they pick you up. Could be. Because they don't pick you up out in the United States. They're like, there's all sorts of weird and international bullshit. Okay. But I don't know enough about that to speak on it. What I do know is...

The answer is I don't know. It's not that I'm saying it's that way. The answer is I honestly have no idea. Like, maybe that's what I was told. I, I, I don't know if it's true or not. Let's, let's remind the audience that we are Canadian. Canadian as fuck! Like, this is kind of what I heard.

I don't know it's true. I don't know how true this is. Almost all the legal stuff. Not informed. I will hear about from the America is from the Wikipedia. So then why did I assume I'm, I'm put, I'm, I'm literally asking you for answer for information. I'm literally asking the world to tell me what the answer is.

Calm down, guys. Everybody come down. All right. Um, so, uh, that's that topic. That topic is shake your head and, uh, and wag your finger where you can, I guess, but there's not a whole lot that can actually be done. Uh, okay.

So Canada did do something about that. Actually, they instituted that tourism law that said, Hey, if you leave the country to go do shit in a different country where it's legal there, but it's definitely not legal here. And we find out we will slam you. Hmm. They caught a bunch of people coming back from, uh, from Thailand and whatnot saying, Hey, idiot, you're really

stupid to tell everybody where you were going and why you were going there. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. And you get, and they get fucked here. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. Cause they had a problem of people traveling out to Thailand

to do the shit they're not supposed to do and come back here and then come back and be like, ha, ha, ha, ha, vacation picks from Thailand. And they're like, they're like, no, no, no, how about that? No, you don't know you do not. How do you prove it though? Well, usually the type of people who do this give you enough proof themselves.

Well, that's, that's, that's, I imagine, I imagine you have to like have, you have to escape reasonable doubt. Yeah. Right? Well, the people who get picked up on that, I imagine it's a slam dunk. Hey, I'm going to Thailand. Why?

Our Kelly concert. Yeah. Yeah. Our Kelly concert. All right. Is that what we're calling it now? Oh. Hey, CSB, I've been enjoying your joint playthrough of

DNC five a lot. Big fan of the series. I've learned a lot about all games, all the games watching guys play through them. In a recent video, I watched Pat go through all the moves on ballerog. I've been playing the game myself, but seeing this made me realize probably less than half of the moves I'd been using

less than half of the moves available on brawl brawl ballerog. There's still a lot I have left to learn. Given I've already beaten it and replaying it got me thinking what are some other games you know that have very deep move or ability lists that players might beat the entire game without ever discovering? Thanks for the great podcast.

I had a friend of mine in high school that beat Final Fantasy Tactics without knowing you could switch tabs on the skill screen. So they only bought active skills the entire game and did not know that there was a movement tab and a support tab and a reactive tab and they beat the game. Yeah. And I was like, what are you fucking stupid?

And they were like, I guess I am. I'd say God Hand is absolutely up on top of that list. There's too much in there to actually even learn on your first go. Your first go through God Hand is not going to scrape the surface of all the shit. And by that extension, everything that that team went on to continue making are all games that have more than you

can learn on your first playthrough. I mean, like at some point speedrunners discovered in the Resident Evil games that enemies do actually detect you with sound, not just liquors. And I'm talking the old shit, but like zombies are using sound detection. And so one of the things speedrunners do is they glitch out the running animation by spamming square so that your

character's feet don't actually hit the floor. They just slide and enemies are somewhat unaware because you're not making any noise. Yeah, it's wild. I mean, you know, any definitely cry game you can get through without buying all the moves, right? So that's that's the starting example. How about?

Yeah. Dare, dear hair and egg. I'm the egg one. I've never been one to swing my big dick energy around claiming to be God like at video games. I feel like I need this kind of disclaimer anytime I say that I don't feel like Sekiro is the hardest from soft game. My first entry into Soulsborne types was Bloodborne.

I was wondering if you guys think this influenced my opinion on the game's difficulty, considering the deflect system falls closer to Bloodborne than Souls. Bonus question. Do you think the general consensus is that the game is tough and the absence of a get good mentality makes the game more or less approachable for newcomers? OK, well, there is absolutely get good mentality.

Get good has expanded to all life. I'm going to super disagree with this. I'm also going to disagree and just say you have good reflexes and are good at the thing the game wants you to do. And most people are not good at the thing the game wants you to do and must learn it. I think this is the I don't think it's impenetrable for newcomers, but I think it's the most impenetrable of the set.

I think it beats you to fuck down and Souls had a lot of character shit you could do and a lot of exploratory shit that you could do that you could figure out a way to bullshit motherfuckers. Hey, this guy's weak to fire. Now I got fire. Hey, this guy's weak to get in stab. Yes, stabbed him. Sekiro's like, get in there and fucking fight. Just do it, which is actually what other action games ask you to do.

Yeah, right. But the but like other action games allow you to take hits. Yeah, usually, right. So it's it's funny because this will reward your normal action game instincts, except. Oh, I'm dead. Can't keep doing. Wow, I'm. Wow, I died real fast. Yeah. And if you would like evidence, you can refer to the

sequence of four tweets in which. Oh, man, that things the person says. Oh, man, new from soft game. Can't wait to jump in there. Just picked it up. You guys are crying. The game's too hard. You're all babies. I'm the best.

What do you mean? This game doesn't have a difficulty. Why? What kind of game has no difficulty setting? Easy newcomers. You know, I'm returning this. I don't think I'm feeling it. It's I don't think it's the game for me. So, you know, fucking amazing.

That's that's how it goes. Zach says long time is listener with their woolly Coon and Pat Chan. You know, what up? I don't mind I find myself mimicking actions. I've seen games in everyday life. Sometimes if there's a door that isn't latched, I always push it open with my forearm like Faith and Mirror's Edge.

Yeah, I know exactly what you're actually. Yeah, no, I know exactly what you mean. I think I actually started to do that right after I played that game. Even Stranger is one I've been doing even longer. When I take a long pull from soda, I make a fake mistake. I without fail make a noise that Rio Rio Hazuki makes when you get a soda in the vending machine in Shenmue. I do things like this out of habit without thinking.

And some people probably think I'm crazy. But have you guys ever find yourself doing something similar out of habit without realizing until it's too late? What's this guy's name again? Zach Zach, you're not crazy. You're a huge fucking dork, but you're not crazy. And yeah, I've totally done stupid shit like this. And usually when no one's around and I just like it in my heart, I'm like,

yeah, I'm cool. Yeah, yeah. And then I'm like, I'm not cool. I've talked about it a couple of times, but like when there's a door with a full bar to open on the board that you press or it's a beep to to let you in the door, I I'm going to fucking chariot tackle the shit out of it from time to time and just go crush with my shoulder as I press through, because that's a fun thing to do.

Sometimes that happens. Sometimes you see something cool and you want to do it and be cool. And that's totally fine. Yeah, just don't botch it when people are watching because. Then you'll get embarrassed. Uh, and. Let's take one in from. Michael, a.k.a. voice of Balrog.

Hey, man, what up? Thanks for giving my ready to shout out. Hey, Pat, well, I hope you guys are doing well. Saw some comments on the YouTube saying you put it at them to the fan. Yeah, I read it. There's a mod that that rolls his shit in awesome. Glad you enjoyed them. Thanks for the round about Lee sending some people to my twitch.

Don't know if you don't remember, but a couple of years ago, you guys actually saved another project I was involved in. Really? Nello. I did all the casting and session direction, wrote half the script. And I'm several of the voice roles. The super best friends hype train single handedly funded our Kickstarter and made the game possible. That is a small world.

Again, I wanted to drop a note and say thank you. You guys are helping people supporting working actors and developers with your podcast and videos. If you ever want me to record some high-pass shit, just say the word. Hey, that's really kind of you earned it several times over in my book. Balrog. See you in the fire. How Balrog.

So, you know, it's glad to know that we retain our. Well, our title of, you know, savior of video games. That's awesome. Yeah. That's super fun. We are the best. Thanks, man. Three, two, one.

So something about Dante's perception of Balrog that he doesn't care that Balrog is talking. It doesn't bother him. Yeah. I mean, he cares about the others, but I think it's because in the in the novel, he tells him to shut up. Yeah. Well, it didn't work.

Ignite the flare. Probably because, like, the countdown is actually genuinely useful. Yes. True. He actually needs to know when it's cool. That's like, oh, it's gonna, you're gonna wear off and Balrog's like, yeah, man, I'm running low here. I'm tired.

I'm tired. Fist me into those lizards. Speaking of tired. Yeah. I'm tired. You're tired? Yeah. I'm tired.

Yeah. It's late. If you want to hit me up on Twitter at angriestpat with your terrible ideas for female main character social links, fucking, I'm all ears that stupid shit. Tell you, man, you get to wear the hat. And that's it. Then you know how, like, the third line of dialogue is always the weird one. Yeah.

And it's like, smoke this. Yeah. You run into the mom. Your kid calls me mommy, too. And she's like, yeah. As long as you keep him off drugs. Society is saved. Yeah.

Yeah. She's like, you know what? He can smoke that as long as he ain't smoking anything else. And then it's like, oh, yeah. And you all take a photo and it's all wholesome and shit. And you're like, what am I playing here? What is it? Turned out ruin was just coke all along.

Oh, man. Ruin for society was just drugs. I can't believe it. Yeah. I want to play a drug dealer in a persona. It's got I do. It's not like I want like there is no like, mm, like, like you don't need. Okay.

Hey, you want, you want. Hey, you know what? You know, the drug thing is perfect. Do you want the ultimate cognitive dissonance in the fucking universe? It's the Yakuza series. The Yakuza series is nonstop criminal nonsense. Yeah. It is, it is infinite.

Yeah. How some parts of it are awful and evil and bad. And then other parts of it are fine. So let me give you an example from Yakuza zero, right? This is a really, really pointing example because it's fucking weird. You know, there's always the Yakuza boss who's like, I'm the money guy. Ah, you know, I still, I steal the money, right? No, but sure.

Okay. Well, there's the tough guy. There's the crazy guy. And then there's the guy who's like, whatever, I'm out there making dollars. I'm selling passports. You know, that guy, right? So you meet up with him and he's like, Hey, Kiryu, you look like you're getting your ass kicked.

Why don't you turn yourself in and come hang out with me? And he's like in a club and he's dancing with this lady, right? And Kiryu's like, nah, man. And he goes to leave and then you hear a gunshot and he just shot that lady dead. No reason. And he's like, you really should come with me. And Kiryu's like, no, man. And then leaves.

And then later on in the game, that guy takes his shirt off and guess what? He was ripped the whole time. And you know what? He does have a heart of gold and he is a Yakuza for the right reasons. And you beat him up and you're like, you know what? That guy's all right. And you're like, wait, what? Wait, hold, wait, wait.

What? Wait, seriously? And then as you're doing that, the game just keeps going. He becomes a bro. No, he's still an evil. But you know, he's evil that you can respect. And you're like, OK. Yeah, you know, he's got his value.

Wow. You go, will he? Wow. Go watch that shit after we are done. It is like, holy shit. And those games are great. But every single time you play the Yakuza series, remember the director is very good friends with dudes in the Yakuza.

Wow. And he didn't start out that way. They became friends with him after he showed people how the Yakuza really were in Yakuza one. You know, they're, you know. Yeah. The real story. The real story.

You know, it's not, you know, there's crime. Yeah. But the real guys, they're, you know, in here, it's all about family, you know. See, because that's what's about, man. Bruto and the crew are not only gang stars. That's right. They're out to stop the drugs. That's right.

And that's why that story makes sense. That's like, they're out to clean up the streets with their thuggery. And finally Friday, and we're going to get rid of those drugs because drugs are bad. Is that why so many people like part five the best in Japan? Because it's about getting rid of the drugs. That S link with that drug dealer that you're describing in a persona game. It's right off the, right off the heels of Futaba's rank 10. Yeah.

You get to rank two with the drug dealer and then like they just get blown away. You know what it is? Rank 10 with the thing is like, listen, we're really good friends. I need you to kill me. And then you drown them in a bathtub for society. And then it's, and then that's it. That's their spirit lives on in you and society's percentage goes. Listen, I know we go on a lot about this because the last couple of weeks, it is endlessly

fascinating how these things like, you know what it is? You know, like the happy music that plays on rank 10. And then the music finally peaks when the last bubble pops. Oh man. You know what this shit is? It's magnets. It's magnets pointing the wrong way. Cause they're about to touch and you're going to like, wait, what happened?

No. And then they go the other way. We'll see you next week. Next week everybody. See you. Bye. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh.