Castle Super Beast - CSB 064: Share Button Out, Shame Button In

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps FF7R First Impressions spoilercast at the end. The single greatest RPG Quality of Life feature ever made. You can watch us record the podcast live on twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Outro: Guilty Gear XX _Reload OST Pillars of the Underworld Saints Row 5 Is in Development, Reaffirms Volition Hotshot Racing Brings "Silky Smooth" 60fps Arcade Racing To Switch This Spring DualSense, the New Wireless Game Controller for PlayStation 5 Retro-Bit Is Launching an Alternative Dreamcast Controller in Late 2020 Pokemon Sword and Shield Players Who Intentionally Disconnect May Be Permanently Banned Valorant anti-cheat starts upon computer boot and runs all the time, even when you don't play the game Make a Nintendo Switch Pinball Cabinet With an Indie Peripheral Rumor: Resident Evil 4 remake in development at M-Two Streets of Rage 4 adds 12 playable pixel art characters, classic soundtracks

["Jump to the top of the world"] Hello. Hello. And hello to all of you, our fellow Quarantinos. Pizza roll, ah, fuck it. What's up? Quarantinos.

I have it still stuck in my head from Quentin Quarantino. Quentin Quarantino, yeah, that's exactly it. That's the thought, that's what I heard too. Ah, that's good stuff. How are you doing? Oh, hey, look, the mic quality is somehow better now. Yeah, it's the same, nothing's changed. But what if something did change?

Well, MP3 listeners don't know what we're talking about, so there's no need to worry about that. Oh, they're MP3s now? I thought they were WAV files. They were always MP3s, always. We gotta make sure that phones can download them within the week that it takes to listen to them. Can phones not, cannot WAV?

It's inefficient, it's a giant, stupid, uncompressed file. How do I not know this? Half the magic of what I do after editing is compression magic. It's crunching. Crunching, and keeping quality good. Crunch. So, what is, yeah, so even though for the live listeners there's some weirdness, there's like all tests have pointed to

Discord spitting out good quality and OBS spitting out good quality, so I think it was just hitting Twitch funny last time. It's quite possible. Or it's possible that Discord was crumbling under their new load. It's possible. Although, you know, Zoom is now the new Discord for the casual. Are you serious? Well, I knew, to me, and I think everyone listening to this,

for the most part, in terms of games, Discord came along and very easily replaced Zoom, right? Sorry, replaced Skype. Because Skype was just bad. Skype just has been bad forever. It was bad, but it was first. It probably wasn't first, but it was certainly early on and enough for people, right?

But it's been bad forever. And then, yeah, Slack was a work thing. But in terms of home users, like... You had Skype, which was garbage, and then it's like, did you want to send up, sign up for a vent account? Yeah. Or like a TeamSpeak or, you know, whatever. So then Discord came along and I was like, oh, that's way better.

You just kind of world with Discord from then on, you know? But Zoom, this thing that I had never heard of until quarantine, is taking over as the chat platform of choice for pretty much like anyone who doesn't need Discord. Oh, man. I'm on their website right now. Have you heard of it? And I have not heard of it until you just told me.

Okay. And I'm on their website, zoom.us. And I think it has the real seal of internet product quality, which is our customers love us. And just like a link of like random companies like Logitech, Dropbox, Nasdaq, whatever. And I'm like, it was made. It was made for boardroom calls, right?

It was made for boardroom calls. And then it got used as the official like families talking to each other app of the quarantine. And now anytime you're seeing like SNL from home, or like multiple like comedy shows and things like that, where people are all like just doing the multi-screen chat, they're all using Zoom. And it seems like for the most part,

the non-gaming world uses that for their communication. I'm hearing that it's possibly unsecure and at worst, possibly spyware. I wouldn't be surprised. I don't know how credible that information is, but it would not surprise me. You know what I would really love? I would love a Discord style service that's exactly the same

as Discord that isn't run by the people who write the error messages and startup messages for Discord. Hey, man, you have to let the gamer know that they're one of you and you're one of them. And we come from the same tribe. You get these loading jokes so you know this is for you. Have you ever seen the e-mail as a guy who got in touch with Discord tech support and like for like business use

and like the support messages they sent him? No. They were nightmarish. They were all written like, ooh, ooh, sorry about that, brother. We'll get our team of crack super ninjas right on that. Oh, jeez. Fix that fucky-wucky.

And it's like multiple e-mails of just like the whole thing. I was having some trouble setting something up the other day and I was looking and I remember when I was, I decided to just look through the official help on Microsoft's site for a second and I saw one of the options was just like, contact us, send an e-mail, or get on live chat with a gamer. And it was like, if you're having any issues

with your like with the games division or with Xbox division or you know, or Windows live stuff and it's all like basically like, we'll chat, we'll hook you up with a gamer who knows everything in and out and can totally, yeah, you know, it's crazy. No, I think that it's funny because again, we feel like there's a collective consciousness

that moves forward at a pace that is like snail's pace. It's a very snail's pace, right? But it's collective enough and it's packed in tightly enough that like, for example, we look at the meme faces in the Flying Punch Boom, the game there, and we go, oh god, we're past that. That's not around anymore, right?

That kind of thing happened and then everybody goes, ehhh, because you're just... Hey, shout outs to the devs on that game, being really good sports by the way. Yeah, they're going to listen to the podcast and we're like, don't you worry guys, those meme faces will fill your heart with joy when you play the game yourself.

I'm like, okay, well, I don't think so, but I appreciate the listen. I gave it a response, you know, I said, hey, just in case you might not be aware, some people kind of think these faces from Nine Gag Era are gone and not that funny anymore because they got overused, but you do you, I'ma check it out, you know, that's where I'm at.

But what I mean is that there are times when you're kind of like, yeah, no one's really, you know what I mean? Like saying that anymore or like unironically, I guess, like laughing at these things or you know, the whole like fucking no scope 360 headshot, you know, like smoke weed every day, fucking thug life, the compilations

are now like exclusively for the ironic flavoring of like your shit posts. What about Mysterio calling Spider-Man on the phone to tell him that he's gay, gay for Spider-Man? Wonderful. That's dated, but still relevant. Like some of them still pop. Still relevant.

What kind of dollars was it again? I don't recall. Well, in any case. You know, I just don't recall. In any case. With that chimney was my father, I believe. Something like that. Punisher bit.

Fappo. Yeah, that's the one, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't thought about that. Never underestimate a good onomatopoeia.

Haven't thought about Fappo in a minute. I miss Fappo. I miss Fappo. I really do. All this to say, I'm curious if you, do you know anybody in person in real life that is still sort of unironically that type of internet gamer power user that like is all about like the, the, the memes that we have kind of moved past. They're still amused by them.

So not only do I not know someone of that type, I know somebody who specifically grabbed ancient memes to test them out on their personal discord server versus their Facebook group that has like their aunts and uncles and discovered that Facebook loves ancient memes. Yes. Or discord is on the bleeding edge. Right. Right. Facebook.

Yeah. Well, Facebook has aged the fuck up because the, the Facebook era has like everyone's left it, you know, like it started as the college campus thing. It soon reached everybody and then eventually the youngest generations all collectively left it and left the old husks remaining. Yes. So. Right.

Like my mom uses Facebook. She finally got on Facebook like a year and a half ago. Yeah. And she'll, she'll message me on that and then she'll call and be like, why didn't you get my message? And it's like, because you're the only person who messages me on Facebook mom. Yeah. Yeah.

You're literally the only person. I still have a lot of friends that use messenger, but it does, it does fly all around the place. You know, one thing that's clear though is that like, if they never get the updated format, then they're still going to be like thinking that it's like, Oh, we're still using, um, whatever the fucking bottom, you know, bottom text, uh, uh, uh, bottom text beam format or like, uh, in, in, in, uh, white, white impact font, right? Yeah. Or even earlier, we're going to go away really or even earlier than that is the black frame,

like the motivational, the motivational poster frame. That's the earliest I really like, I can recall where that you'd have that text is in the format of a motivational poster, you know, uh, I feel like the demotivational posters, um, kind of in my brain, it's a, it's a straight through line from demotivational posters to just removing the border and just putting the, the, the, the, the text right on and creating an image macro, you know, you know, that this reminds me of, so how out of touch are my mom and dad who loved me very much and try their best. You know, last week I started, or maybe the week before I started playing persona five,

but I'm not putting the fods up on YouTube because I don't want to get the MCA claimed or whatever. Right. So I put up a 59 second little announcement says, Hey, this is why these videos aren't going to go up on YouTube. I got a call the next day, uh, from my mom asking if I was doing all right because she saw that I lost my job. And I went, oh, what?

And she said, Oh, cause your father showed me, uh, this clip where you were talking about how you're not going to have your YouTube channel anymore. Oh my God. Oh my God, dude. And I'm like, and she's like, you know, it's, it's getting a little tight, but if you ever need your, you know, you call us, you can come, you can come stay with her. You know, like the whole thing, like, okay, okay, okay, okay. Pat, you have to like be real.

She's been rehearsing this in her head for years for a, for a bit, right? Just as mine is anyone who does this job, your parents have been rehearsing the speech for years, which is, Hey, you know, uh, yeah, just, we're, you know, everybody goes through rough times. Some things just don't work out. The internet's a, it's a new place, you know, you never know. Yeah. So one very sweet, very much appreciated mom and dad.

But then I'm like, mom, the, the YouTube is just like, it's, it's the Twitch channel. And she goes, oh, right. The, the, the live one. And I go, yeah, mom, it's like subs and stuff. And she's like, uh-huh. And you know that, uh-huh. Uh-huh of just keep, just keep, you said words and we're going to keep the conversation going. And I re-explained how my job works.

And then I, I, I, he asked me to dad and I had a slightly easier time with dad. And they were like, Oh, okay. Well, thanks. You really, you know, it was a big relief. Uh, so you're doing okay then? Yes. Yes, mom. I'm doing okay.

Okay. I love you. Goodbye. Yeah. And then you hang up and you're like, I imparted zero information at all. Nothing retained. Like nothing went through like apps, like absolutely zero. Yeah.

Um, I'm down. So I've, I've managed to get it down from re-explaining my entire job every single time we meet and talk to once per three times. So every three times we talk, it is the re-explanation comes and it's always in the same way of like, so things are going well and it's like, yeah, and it's like, okay, so, uh, so the podcast is the one that's you, that's the one on, on like the radio show. And I'm like, yes, correct, except it's on the internet. It's the internet.

I'm at the same spot. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. And then on the channel, the channel is the one with the other boys that's like, yes,

yes, that's correct. So, but not the same boys. No, no, not the same boys. Correct. Okay. When you, so you put the, you put, so you put the channel on iTunes and then it's like not, no, no, you know, and then, and then of course, and then there's always the, the, the flavoring of just like, okay.

So cause she, cause she doesn't, she met Reggie once, but she doesn't remember him, right? Type of thing. Right. Right. Um, you know, so she's like, yeah, so I'm like, with this, with the ones you might not remember, you know, then there's made my old roommate and she's like, yes, yes. Right.

Right. And then you're doing the pod. You're doing the, the podcast. You're doing that with, uh, with Pat. It's like, yes. And he's like, the black one. No. No, no, mom.

The other one. Yeah. Okay. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right.

All right. Cool. So one thing here is that I was able to get the YouTube channel and the, um, the, uh, the podcast down and my parents understand those because I was able to go, it's like an old time radio show that we do live and you can download later if you miss it. And we do ads like a roll time radio show that they literally remember. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Uh, hey, did you want Johnson's coffee? Here you go. Right. So that one, that locked in. Yep. I was able to pretty much understand because I was able to describe it as, uh, YouTube just puts commercials on it.

But Twitch is where the whole thing falls apart. I've been trying to push the tip jar narrative, which I think is like the easiest one to go for. Right. It's like a telethon. It's not taking. It's like a telethon. Oh, telethon.

Right. Right now and you can call in and be like, Hey, uh, I support your cause, um, and your cause is, is, is not being homeless. Yes. And, and feeding that cat. So sure. That's your cause. He's got to get fat.

He's got to get big and fat. There's kind of fat right now. I love it. Um, I feel, um, yeah, for, um, for the people, you know, I feel like, um, yeah, you can get away with saying radio show, TV show, and then like, you can go like, there's the live show and then there's the, the replays where you choose if you want to go watch it again. You know, that's the best you can get at, but, but the problem is, of course, is like,

you're putting all this into the framework of like, um, at least in my mom's case, like she's missing the idea of the interface of browsing to what you want to watch and then selecting it in this way, you know, like she, she, it was a long afternoon, uh, getting my mom and dad to start using Netflix. That's exactly it. That's exactly it. Netflix. In my mom's case, it was like, she didn't want to sign up for Netflix because like there's

that choice, but you could also sign up for a different box that you have to get. It's like, um, uh, what is it called? Uh, it's that other Android, uh, not Android that, uh, yeah, that other Roku is a Roku. Exactly. Cause if you get the Roku, then the Roku gets access to these channels, including three ABN and three ABN is the three angels broadcast network. And that's the, uh, that's the, that's the Adventist TV station. So we want to watch that, you know, you just can't get away.

I mean, and to be fair, a shot, like, like my brother's been on that fucking station a couple of times doing, doing things on the, uh, for their programming. So, you know, I get it, but it certainly is like, like, yeah, but, but you don't, you get to choose when you want to watch the things, you know? And then I think I told you guys about the first time I told her to check out making a murderer when it first came out and she did. And then she called me basically like the next day being like, so I watched this thing and it's really good.

But how long is this show? How long is this movie? And I'm like, it's like 10 episodes and she said, because it hasn't stopped from the time I quit play. Oh man. And I'm like, what, what are you, oh no. She sat there and let the auto play role and didn't know how to back out of it. So she thought the same thing was 10 hours long.

That's, that's an introduction to digital and it kind of, I think it kind of spoiled her on that viewing experience. You know, and, and I mean, like, and the problem in a weird way is that like, but if there was no clicking play to start, then it would have just been, oh, TV goes on forever and I get up and walk away whenever I want. Pretty much. Right. So the reason I leave is actually help my dad sleep because he'll, he's a big like Star

Trek dork and he's one of those older guys that like the TV is on, dad goes to sleep. So he'll just, he'll just hit some random bullshit and like go to bed with like Picard talking in the background. Yeah. He's out in the light. Yeah. And it seems like they got rid of the, are you still there messages? But I feel like they would have saved her, you know, we're just like, Hey, are you still

watching? Because you've binged like four episodes in a row. Did you die? If you died, please keep your subscription open. There you go. I, yeah, it's, it really does take a lot of analogies to cement it in. But even when it's cemented, it doesn't dry. The cement doesn't dry.

You have to come back the next day and, and, and wipe off the stupid hearts that the kids drew in your shit and the, and the dicks that they drew, you know, so. To be fair, like our parents grew up in a time period in which radio and TV were like, you know, established basically right in their youth and basically nothing changed out. Like the biggest, craziest thing that happened for most of their lifetime was the VCR. Yeah. Yeah. Very obviously like, okay, I can tape it in her case, I'd say the like the six CD changer

in the car is fucking wild because that's kind of wild right now because like sitting in the car going shotgun with my mom's car means your feet are resting on gospel cassettes. This is what's happening. Yes. Your comfort doesn't matter. Deal with it. There's a mat and then there are gospel cassette tapes all over the floor and that's correct. The six CD changer meant that you could fit all of those cassettes onto like two of those

CDs and then like even have room for more and it was crazy, you know. So that was, that was her big revolution. I think that this, this particular situation is described perfectly in the situation that I encountered relatively recently in which I installed a new M2 SSD into my PC. I got a two terabyte like SSD so that I can put all my games on there yada, yada, right. Like install process during that install process. I was going through the buyouts and shit like that and was like, wait, do, do I have a motherfucking DVD drive and I opened up the front of the, the, the case I have an R4 case

so it looks like a fridge and it's totally flat and you open it up to get to the fans and yeah, there's a DVD drive in this fucking. You actually have one. You forgot. I, I added one and I added one in case of old games, a disastrous failure. Okay. I could use like a boot disk or whatever and I'm like, boot USB is there too. Yeah.

But I just like, I must, I went back into the order and I was like, yeah, for like $12, I decided to add a DVD drive just in case. There's, I've never used it. I forgot it was there. Yeah. I do not have one. I do not have one. And there are a couple of situations where I looked and I was like, damn, I wouldn't mind

popping in this old disc to see what's what, but those, the consoles are now the exclusive players of all discs. We're pretty much at that. Hey, has there ever been a piece of tech, like a modern thing that they took surprisingly well to, like that they understood way faster than you expected them to? One of my dad and one of my mom and dad got the cable box that was like the remote that used like menus and shit like that. Yeah.

Instantly, my dad had no problem. The Tivo shit they adapted to instantaneously because they were able to mentally connect the dots between this and a, a, what do you call it, a digital VCR basically. Okay. My dad, uh, was like undefeatable. Like I, I woke up one day and my dad was playing Wii bowling. Wow. And, and he was like bowling multiple perfect games.

Wow. Okay. Like he, it was, he was completely unstoppable and that was the only one he was any good at, but for whatever reason, he was completely disaster. Like I, I didn't want to play with him. He liked bowling enough that he took it to the level that he would, uh, fucking crush it. Yeah.

Okay. It took him like a morning. It took him like one morning when I was fucking asleep. That's pretty massive. Whatever the fuck. Um, for me, the only thing I can think of, uh, that actually like, uh, went over with no problems would be like, um, she got a, a Tom Tom. That's the, uh, what the fuck that is a GPS in the car.

Okay. Before the smartphone GPS age you were going with, and it, before the smartphone GPS age, before the age of GPS, like in the car itself, that you had, you, you bought a screen that was just a dedicated GPS device and it would sit on your dash and, uh, she got a GPS and I remember how she was able to just immediately adapt to it. And it was like, wait, what's happening here right now that is not applying in every other situation. You know, I don't know what it was, I can, I can straight up tell you a hundred percent

because, uh, my mom, my mom and dad also adapted to a GPS, no problem. And my mom, uh, adapted to machinery easily, but technology it is, is the longest day in the world. Right. Right. And it appears to be the keyboard. The keyboard has too many buttons and it's frightening. Hmm.

It's the same reason I could hand my mom a nest pad and she would play like for, you know, a bit until she was like, okay, I'm out of here. And if I hand her a controller, she'll like start to freak out. Um, no, I, in my case, it's not that it's definitely cause she's gotten past, she still hunts to peck to type, but it's not, but it's still a bit, but she's gotten comfortable enough and then she's still moving the mouse around a couple of times, you know, to reorient it before moving it towards the, the actual icon to click on. And then she still clicks it once when she needs to click it twice and it clicks the

browser twice when she needs to click it once, but, um, it's not the interface. It's definitely not that, you know, but there was just something about, uh, uh, that, uh, about those, about integrating the idea of GPS and finding your, where you're way home and whatnot, uh, that just clicked naturally, I guess, um, maybe, you know, I forget the name of, uh, the old guides they used to use. There's a something guide that people used to use, uh, to, to, no, no, no, no, no, when you're driving, you'd be, you'd pull out a, uh, a blank guide, a map, you pull out a map.

Yeah. We pull out a map, right? But there, and there was, there was a serial, and then there was, um, you could eventually there was printing out map quest. You know what I mean? There was that era. Um, the other thing that I can think of is like, cause my mom has tried to learn how to use a proper computer, maybe a dozen times over the past decade, and it always goes the

same way, which is, uh, she's the kind of person who learns by doing, and you'll explain, okay, this is the icon, this is this, you double click on this, and, uh, it'll go okay until a mistake is about to occur. And the mistake is always like terrifying. It's always, oh, I, I just delete this and you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. And then, and then they go, then they become like anxious for the rest of the process. Right, right, right, right.

Or it's like, well, what if I double click on this? Will it die? And the answer is probably not, but it could. Yeah. Uh, Thomas Guides. Thomas Guides, uh, were a series of Atlas maps that, uh, people used to use back in, way back in the day to get around, uh, is what they were called. But, um, I think that, I think the most damning thing that ever set my mom back in terms of

learning a computer is that, um, I was teaching her how to use something and I walked away to go to the bathroom and when I came back, the recycling bin was gone. Yeah. That's crazy. That's crazy. Yeah. And I'm like, mom, where did it go? She goes, where did what go?

And I went, oh my God, you have to get off this computer right now. Right. Right. Right. That's wild. Computer and the recycling bin, like how, what did you, what, yeah. We, um, no, in our case, the recycling bin was almost like, um, it was almost bad because accidental deletions were like a problem and like panic.

And then I'd be like, Oh no, no, no, no, it's fine. Check it out. It's over here. It's actually not gone forever. And then it was like, Oh, so you can just then delete with wants and a bet with abandoned just like, then there's no problem ever deleting and it's like, no, no, no, no, no. Some things delete forever. Some things delete forever, you know, but like, like just the idea, they won't go back

normal or that, you know, but the idea that the recycling bin was there was a bit of a weird one because it was like one, all mistakes can be undone and all deletions can be undeleted and like anything that like you lost while like browsing might still be in the recycling bin. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, like it was like, it was like, it was like, no, no, no, the recycling bin is not catching concepts. It's not, it's not catching closed.

It's not a big scoop to just scoop up everything so you can find it later. If you open up a window and then you close it, the closed window does not go to the recycling bin. You know, it was, I forget what, I forget what the term is. There's some like three letter term that, that means that the error is between the user and the keyboard. Pebcac. What's that?

Pebcac. Peb? Problem. Exists between keyboard and user. Yeah. Cause it's like, what does that mean? Oh. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, um, between, um, um, you, uh, keyboard and chair.

Between. Chair and keyboard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pebcac. Yeah, there it is. Problem exists between keyboard and chair or chair and keyboard, whichever. Um, yeah. That, that one, that one's, that one's, that's old IT language for, uh, for all you new kids

out there. There's an era of kid that is listening to this that never heard that one. Uh, and, and you can't, and like, so this is the weird part cause this is, this is accuracy because like the, the inclination to go, I've never heard pep-cac, that's a boomer talk. And it's like, actually we're, we're discussing the real boomer talk right now. This is straight up millennial talk, you know, it's the in-between, it's, it's before your time, but it's, it's later than zoomers, but it's later than the boomers we're describing can understand, you know, but, uh, you know what I actually think is really, really internet

about, uh, about boomers and millennials, uh, the, the real, the real, uh, boomer gang still keeps calling everything the young people do millennial stuff, even though that generation is like 25 to 40 now. Even though they're homo guys because they, they said it for long enough that they just thought that millennial meant the youth. Yes. Anything younger than me. That's correct.

Guys, we're old enough to start dunking on the youth. Yeah. Hey, uh, this one's gonna, this one's gonna, uh, uh, break the, uh, it's gonna break the, the, the, the listening of the MP3 file a little bit, but I have a question that I, I'm generally curious to see what the live users are, uh, thinking right now. Ask away. Live users, live listeners, um, and, and listeners in general, uh, let, I'm curious. Do files on your computer display their extension type?

Oh, do you have, I do, of course yours do, uh, do you have dot txt at the end of your text files and do you have, you know, um, dot zip at the end of your zip files? I'm seeing an overwhelming yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. Just overwhelming. I didn't do that manually.

Right? Really? Yeah. When you do windows, windows installations, it hides associations with known file types, uh, extensions for known file types and you have to go in and turn those on. So like, I'm just, I'm curious to know how many, like, are we at an age where like you, people have used their first computer that just didn't have those extensions on and they just got used to that.

Because that's when we're, that's a whole other, that's a whole other thing that's going to be happening at some point, right? If they're interested in, in hiding file types from people and then there's, they're definitely going to be enough people that are like, well, I never turned it on. You have to dig for that. You have to go into your folder options and turn that option on specifically. It seems insane to not have it. Oh, people are saying that, uh, uh, windows 10 might have it on by default.

Uh, I check it out. I've installed, um, I've installed windows 10 home. I've installed windows 10 pro, uh, and like in both pro and home, it was off by default. It was hidden by default rather. It does not. Yeah. Yeah. It's a weird, it's a weird one, right?

It's a weird one. They definitely want you to not see those file types. Yeah. It is totally not, uh, on by default. Yeah. Weird. I don't ever remember doing that. I guess I must have done that day one of installing windows 10, uh, because I was going to go

make something and I wanted to turn a JPEG into whatever. Oh, yeah. If you're doing any form of, um, of like, you know, editing work or like rendering work or like, you know, if you, if you have anything from Adobe installed on your system, you know, you're going to need your extensions. You're going to need, like, you know, it's. It seems ridiculous to like use it on just that level where you're like, this is my document and this is my video and that's my song and that's it.

You know, uh, I've just been hit with a wave of, huh, Patrick, the computer's running so much slower. Install another one of your games on there and I'm like, dad, my Bonsie buddy told me that the computer is running slower buddy is right there and it is like, it is strangling the computer. Hey, you don't talk shit about the Bonsie buddy. I can't get over it. I know I've told that story before.

I know I've told it like 10 times, but it's just like, it's, it was so outrageous. He's so mad. I'm still mad about it. Years, years. He is helpful. Shit. The Bonsie buddy is helpful. He would never lie to me.

Oh my God, man, that era, the era of fascination with transparency on your desktop where a little paperclip or a little purple gorilla or any other thing could be, uh, yeah, could just sit there and fucking suck the life out of your system. The same era. My dad also, uh, my dad also did this thing where we had our consoles hooked up through a VCR into the TV, which is a slightly more complex setup. And he would actively dissuade us from learning how to do it because if we knew how to do it, we would figure out that in fact there is no difference between putting it in our

TV and the big TV in the living room. And that is, there is in fact no danger to that TV at all. Right. Right. Right. So if you can't use these games on that big TV, you'll break it. Mm hmm. Man.

It's like, uh-huh. Uh-huh. What I wouldn't do for a fucking snopes back then, you know, just that was such a, it was such an impossible to crush rumor that parents would share that must have come off of TV. It must have come off of a dumb TV report one day or like a weird, like fucking episode of, uh, Ricky Lake or something because like it was so omnipresent. You couldn't get around it. Those parents believe in that, you know, either that or they didn't want the kids using their

big TV. Okay. I got a question for you. Did you get into that space and that time of internet cursor customization? Yes. Yes. Where you put a little mega man for your cursor and he's running when it's loading and he stands still when he's, when you're not doing anything and when he's doing a big, big load,

he's jumping. Did you get into that era of turning your fucking desktop cursor at all times into the Starcraft cursor? I got into that twice. Um, come on, talk to me. So one was in 97, I want to say, um, and it continued into the Starcraft era and at which point my dad was like, fucking stop that. And I was like, okay.

And then I got into it again, uh, when it looked like everyone was going to have to jump to windows eight. Okay. And I started to look into the mechanics of customizing the desktop. Yes. To kill the Metro view. Oh, oh, that's, you're talking late in the game. I became so frustrated with that process that I was, I said to myself, I am just going to

hold off for as long as humanly possible because this shit is actually a mass of pain in the ass. Yeah, dude. Uh, okay. By the era of Metro, that's way late in the game. That's like the last 10 years. That was, that was a response to a problem. Mm hmm.

No, I'm talking late nineties, early aughts, right? Here's what we were doing. Not even early aughts, to be honest, it was really late nineties specifically. We were getting those cursors out, video game cursors, replacing your main ones. Uh, you know, we were getting some, in some cases, the sprites from games were just terrible because you couldn't tell where the fucking top was because again, the Mega Man cursor, it was just a little dot that was like, this is your actual click point, you know, but fuck it.

You're changing your desktop icons to be matching so that if Mega Man is the cursor, then all the folders on your desktop are all the robot masters. That sucks. Okay. We're going in, right? And then you're seeing other people that are customized and hard where they're going to that level and I actually, I did this once and I didn't like it, but there's a level where you're, you're customized in your folders, you're customized in your cursor, right?

And here's what you got to do. You got to have your custom desktop to match all of those things. Of course you do. That desktop wallpaper needs to have a dedicated space for where, um, um, um, oh god, uh, fucking, uh, Winamp, Winamp minimized, minimized Winamp as a small little bar needs to be in a set space and like the edge of that corner has graphics flaying out of it that integrate into the skin and make it look like it's a part of the desktop. So you got to have your Winamp.

This is too far. You got to have your Winamp corner and the desktop and your Winamp are like synergetic. You know what I mean? People fucking go in and with their Winamp skins and when your Winamp skin would work with your desktop skin, you were ballin. Fuck I miss Winamp, which is stupid because like I could just go get it. Still fucking works people like dude, it kicks the llama's ass, man. People would really whips the llama's ass and it was baby's first minimalism.

Do you remember getting Winamp version three and just being like fuck this and just going right back to fuck this, fuck this new shit. We go back. It was so awful. Small little bar of text. We want it to scroll and look kind of cool and then we want because like at the time like all the power the power setups, the power user setups were all like God, what do you even call it?

It's like like a sci-fi kind of HUD feeling where it's like, oh, yo, my desktop is actually a web page that's displaying my cooling, my right. It's displaying like my CPU usage and it has a little Google search bar at the bottom. That's crazy. And I remember being like, how'd you get that Google search bar on your desktop? What the fuck? And it's like, yeah, the active desktop exactly, right? And there was this whole fucking just era of we're getting next level desktop tech but

we're still using Winamp and like you got to have your desktop look almost like a car dashboard was a lot of them where you'd have all these dials and accelerometers and shit like that. It was fucking, it was a whole to do. But I want to say minimized Winamp in the corner was like baby's first minimalism. You got to learn that you don't need this giant screen with the play button and fast forward and all that shit. All you need is the scrolling text of the song and then you're like one, two, three,

four, five, uh, interact buttons. I feel like Winamp was the preview of most of our lives to come because it was a program that you loved using and then it updated and you were excited because all the updates were like more stable or whatever. And then you just desperately wanted to slam that button that says fuck, go back. And that was the, that was the first time I felt that feeling, which was then followed up by the dig.com redesign, okay, front page redesign, which was then followed by new grounds is two redesigns, which was followed by every single redesign YouTube ever did.

My number one worst of all time is still untouched. To me, the number one worst of all time is the slow progression of whatever the fuck Windows media player is now. Oh man, Windows media player classic is so good that it's still the, it's in like saying you, it's still the fucking media player of choice for your anime. There's nothing. I'm not using VLC. Dude, there's nothing on the level of this because like Windows media player and every

shittier version as time went on, like for every redesign you just described at the end of the day, it would be awful. And in many cases, you just use it minus like when emperor, you'd go back or whatever, right? Windows media player, you just stop using it. It loads up and it's like trying to scan my library and it's not got a play. Just die. And I'm like, stop, just go die forever. It's crazy.

Cause you pop it up. Yeah. When you, you get your first day and anytime you get a new computer now and you start, you make the mistake of trying to open any kind of audio visual file. And then it opens up with a bunch of options and it starts scanning and it starts asking you if you want to connect and do a bunch of shit. And it's trying to find you two album covers and you're just like, fucking go away forever. It's the absolute worst player and it's like, you're not even worth like going through all

that shit to then get it just like to a very quiet, basic version of itself, right? Like iTunes, for example, I got to use it as part of the publishing process, but it's so hefty in a lot of ways that I really don't like and you have to click through a lot of shit when you're just like, okay, like there's a bare bones minimum version of this that like I have to use here, but fuck, I hate all the rest of this. Windows media player, you just don't even want to look at it as soon as it opens immediately disassociate all files with that and get your favorite player of choice and use that instead. A lot of people out there have feelings about what players to use, you know, VLC is awful,

VLC is great, Windows media classic is awful, VLC and MPC at when whatever the fuck you use, whatever the fuck you use, get away from Windows media player. Yeah. Yeah. I even remember it going from eight to nine and being like, oh, this is cool. And then it went from nine to 10, I was like, oh, no. And then everything past that was just a trash fire. I want to say, like, I remember the last time it was discussed at the very least, it was

like, VLC is handy for a lot of people because it has built-in codecs and it just works. You just click the thing. Just works 99% of the time. Done and done, right? I mean, it, you know, and in many cases, like there's a, there's a, there's a fucking, webm's don't work on iOS, but VLC allows them to play, for example. So like they're shit like that where I'm like, that's fucking impressive. But I just remember that there was a not insignificant number of people that would, they came out

when it, when I think last time it was talked about on the friendcast, it was like talked about for watching anime. And there was a lot of people that say it ruins anime and it makes it worse and it plays it badly and fuck VLC. And I never quite looked into it. So I didn't quite, I didn't go to find out what the problems were there, but some people were very anti-VLC. But I like VLC.

Yeah, I do too. But I like it. How could they not like it? I like it. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not 100% sure what is, what is, what it does that, that, that was the problem, but for some reason anime was, was, was, you know, an issue. I, I tend to fucking go to VLC over and over and over for the sole fact that I can scroll up to 200% volume.

Yeah. Over what my PC is actually outputting. Yeah. It's supposed at maximum. You can, you can over gain. I like that. I love it. I huge love it.

In any case, what, what did you do this week? I played FF seven. Cool. So did I. I play it. Well, sorry, I played the FF seven R. Cool. So did I.

There's two discussions that we'll have about this. Yeah. The discussion is one, what we're going to talk about now. And the second discussion is what we'll talk about at the dead ass end of the podcast. Okay. So we're going to have a pseudo, because I mean, obviously neither of us are done, but we're actually pretty close to each other in progression. Yeah.

So you want to just talk about it all at the end. Yeah. All right. So let's put it all aside from, well, I do want to say it's really good. It's great. It's really good and the music is great. Yeah. And I'm very enjoying the gameplay and it is very high quality.

And I love the extra characterization on the characters in particular. I'm so glad to see Barrett get to have way more time to be insane. I think it's better contained altogether. But it is split into two parts. So, um, hashtag sponsor. Ah, of course. Of course. Yeah.

Oh man, the embargo on that thing is so insane. The embargo on the FF seven codes that we got were like, um, make sure to mention every 20 minutes that this is a sponsored video. And I'm like, wow, hold on a second every 20. I'm like, I'm going to, I'm going to write an email. Hey, man, if I put it in the title, do I really have to say it every 20 minutes? And he's like, no, I'm like, okay, because thank Christ. Yeah, that's, that's doing an eight hour stream here.

That'd be incredibly awkward. Um, fucking mid boss fight. Holy shit. Oh my God, this is a sponsored video. Yeah. Okay. So we'll talk about that later then. Uh, we'll do that at the end, um, but, uh, let's see.

What else did I do with my week? Not much. Hmm. Yeah, that's, that was a big check of it. Um, I tried the heroes, uh, legendary heroes trails in the sky games. Um, and discovered that, uh, I am not allowed to play them with my OCD because those games have too many characters to talk to and they update too often and I can't make any progress.

So, and the whole thing makes me stressed out. So, um, I told you about how my files in persona were so, so long because I would go and talk to everybody and they would change constantly and, uh, you were able to selectively more or less ignore that part. Yeah. This time around, no good, no bueno. So here's the difference, right? In persona, there's a relatively clear distinction between people who you talk to

that matter and people who you talk to that don't matter and are just flavor text in legend of heroes trails in the sky. There is no distinction. Okay. Everyone could matter. Maybe if you talk to them at the exact right time. Also, isn't there a grid of conversations that can be filled out? I don't know about that one.

That might be in the later games. Okay. But it's like, I was like, Hey, how much missable stuff is there? And I'm like, I discover it's like, well, there's this entire bookside quest in which you need to talk to 35 different NPCs, each at specific quest chains in the main story. And if you don't talk to them on that exactly specific quest chain, you can't finish this because they won't give you the chapter for the books.

And it's like, ah, ah, just, just. No, can't do it. Can't do it. It's OCD nine. It's, uh, it's the absolute worst. Interesting. Unfortunate. That's pretty much it for me.

I mean, I didn't watch anything, uh, all that much other than, uh, does, uh, series isn't this the start? Isn't this the step where you'd usually just like look up a guide? Yeah. And then, and then you ask people about that on Twitter and they're like, Oh, but talking to everyone's part of why these games are so great. And I'm like, Oh, but I don't want to do that. So I'm just going to not.

Damn. What about the game itself? Didn't get far enough to actually play it. Wow, 45 minutes in the first town talking to every NPC before the very first step of the quest and was like, I am so bored by this. Okay. I hate everything these NPCs is saying. I just want to start on the main quest, but I can't until I talk to all of them.

Okay. So you didn't really try the game then. Like you didn't, you didn't get to the game game. I don't know how to even, I don't know whether or not to answer that question. Yes or no. Cause there's, there's a, there's a, there's a video game past the NPCs. Apparently that you, you didn't. Okay.

All right. All right. Having OCD is not fun on occasion. Sometimes it's very helpful. Oftentimes it is not very helpful. Man. Oh well, but that's pretty much it for me. If you want to see, Hey, I'm streaming FF seven remake.

It's a hashtag sponsored stream. Thanks for the early code square and X got say this every 20 minutes. Uh, you can check that out over at twitch.tv slash Pat stares at schedule for this week's really simple show up at three PM Eastern. I'll be playing FF seven starting tomorrow. Probably beat it this week. Um, so I've just, I've discussed this a couple of times with men, but like we're talking about Chivo horse and we're talking about how, uh, like there's

different levels of it and how we, you know, used to work with a guy who would literally divide his time into achievements per hour to determine whether or not it was worth playing the game. And then he, then he also talked about how like his own brother is someone who would like actively only care about the completion bar. And if a game with easy enough achievements or with achievements that he cared about, uh, had a DLC campaign that would show that like you had to spend extra so that that bar would, uh, actually go to a hundred percent.

He would just dodge the game entirely. And it's like, okay, now we've moved on from like whatever the fuck we used to call this to full on your compulsions are ruining your game, your gaming experience. Yeah, that's a, that's a whole step of crazy past where I'm at, or maybe it's a different target in both cases, that doesn't even have anything to do with playing the game in both cases. I would describe it as like a game that you might otherwise enjoy is locked behind a cage of your own making, you know, and in his case, I'm like, I mean, I

guess, you know, you're working in like an aspect of it, which is like, Hey, he doesn't want to buy that extra DLC, but the idea that you could like not still enjoy the game without that is, you know, anyway, um, it's a very, very unfortunate state to be in, especially if the person is like, Damn, I really love this game. Put this achieve these achievements though, you know, I don't, I don't know. Um, I don't know. I put, I put, uh, there's the significant differentiator on that is that for these folks, the, the game, like the game almost doesn't even matter.

It's literally about the achievement and in that part, I would actually liken it more to almost like gambling and like the dopamine release of seeing like the number be complete at a hundred percent, which I understand that desire. But for me, it's like, for whatever reason, when I miss something in a game, like I miss it and like, you know, in older RPGs, you'd like walk down their own corridor and they'd be like, well, you can never go back there again. And you can see the chest off in the distance. Like that feeling is so intense in me that it causes these behaviors, uh, to

make sure that that never happens, right? Speaking of, which can occasionally just kill games entirely. And speaking of that feeling, how great is FF seven? The instant you start walking down a path that's the wrong someone goes, I don't think there's anything this way. And you're like, thank you. Fuck. Thank you for telling me that I should go down and we'll get there.

We'll get there. There's such quality of life. Um, so anyway, uh, the, the idea of, um, you know, the, the, the idea of you potentially like liking the game, of course, is where a lot of that, that, that, you know, like the, the damn, that's a shame comes from, um, if it was a game that was just never going to be your style anyway, then it is what it is, you know, but, you know, I've had, I've had moments of, of like, you know, catching a recommend here and there and then kind of scoping out the situation

and being like told that, like, you know, like, oh, this has really good. For example, yeah, there was a game that, uh, I got recommended by a couple of people, um, that I was told, like, you know, this has really good writing and characterization and has an interesting plot. And, uh, you know, you'd probably really like it. Um, and it was called, uh, I want to say it was called wonderful every day. And, um, and I was like, oh, there's a lot of things that, you know, possibly could be, uh, uh, interesting.

But when I looked it up and then you just go to that image search and I kind of, I just got hit with what you see there. And this is visual novel with multiple roots. Yes. And I kind of, I'm like, this isn't my flavor. This is not my flavor. Um, this is your flavor. This is not my flavor.

You might've mispegged me on this one. Uh, look at those, those anime girls. You know, big eyes that it just, it is, it is huge. And you're on, it is full on ignorant judging a book by its cover. Oh my God. But I'm judging the fuck out of the book and I'm not. It's like the three identical big ass, eyed anime girl standing next to each other and I can't tell the difference between any of them.

Two of them even have the same hair color. Yeah. I'm looking at that exact screenshot. And, uh, that's totally your thing. Wally. So I'm like, listen, it's judging a book by its cover and, you know, it is what it is, but, um, Oh, it's the winner of best story in the 2010 MOA game awards.

I just, uh, I'm going to have to dodge. I'm going to have to dodge on it, you know, and that's, that's okay. I'm okay with that. But it's wonderful every day. I'm, I'm, I'm okay with that. That's fine. Um, yeah. And so that's a full on like there might have been, there might be some stuff in

there that's, that's interesting, but like, I definitely feel like, um, there's sometimes you just can, you can gauge, you can gauge it's the, it's the, you know, the bar where you're peeking around, you're like, this is my favorite bar. Come check it out. And then the guy's looking at it and then someone stumbles and stumbles out drunkenly and says, whatever you need them to say. And then you're like, oh, yeah, you know, um, there's the steam has become a hilarious place cause I'll hit my cue and it'll be like, oh, this cool little

indie game. It's like a rip off a bomber man. And then it'll be like, and anime impregnation simulator now with extra DLC. And you're like, uh, why is this in my queue? Is this because I keep hitting next in queue with that blocking games? There is nothing wrong with this aesthetic. It's just not to my tastes, you know, that's, that's the important distinctor.

So yeah, there's examples like that. There's examples like that. You know, I mean, fuck, we were just talking about, um, I, the Somnium files the other day, right? Yeah. And I remember like, when I, yeah, you go to look that up, you're just like, oh, this just, this goes hard in that paint. It looks like a really high end virtues less reward.

And if you liked that, that's great. And if you did not like that, oh boy. Oh boy. See, I love, I loved 999. I thought that was fucking great. You know, I was super on board with that. Um, but then again, you know, that is an anime via an art style that is just not the same as what we were just describing.

You know, there's, there's, there's, I don't know what I would call it, like a 3D anime art style. Yeah, it's, I don't know. I don't know, but there's different, you know, there's different anime art, there's different art styles, there's different art styles, you know, but, uh, okay. So that's, that's pretty much you just gave that a shot and then all of it was on the, on the back end.

So that's correct. Um, no worries. We will, I'm going to just pass this down to bulls. Cause my week is over now that FF sevens kicked to the end of the podcast. Okay. Um, but in any, in any case, you can check out Pat stairs at. That's correct. Yep.

That's a Twitter. That's a, that's a YouTube. That's a Twitch. Uh, cool. Okay. So yeah, same here. So, you know, uh, tagging FF seven for the end. Um, so that topic aside, uh, one thing I'd like to talk about is I reached, uh,

Zen in black Mesa. Okay. And it is really pretty. And it feels like you're walking through a screensaver. It feels, have you seen a lot of the new Zen or any of it? I have. It looks like you're walking through Pandora in avatar. There are floating, beautiful jellyfish things that fly that float around you.

You know, if there's any time you see the mystical night forest kind of magic, you know that, you know, that kind of screensaver. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Where the sky is just a nebula and, uh, lots of little fireflies and alien plants are just growing. So Willie, I'm going to send you a screenshot right now. Sure.

Uh, this is a screenshot of a PC gamer article that compares Zen. It's pretty much all you really need to know because everything you're describing is hilarious to me because I played Zen back in 1998 and. Oh my God. That was noticeable as like the ugliest piece of shit level in the entire game. Wow. It was absolutely what Zen used to look like. That's crazy.

That's terrible. It dude, it was so bad. Oh man, it's a bunch of floating bad flat texture problems. I mean, it's admittedly shit stated, you know, it is what it is. Here's an, wait, message. What the, that's the wrong. I, oh, I, man, this fucking, it's so awful when like links are so long on Google image search.

Okay. Well, I mean, the news is a really, here's a good one for you. The news and is fish flying through the sky and it's underwater at the same time. Yeah. Okay. The old Zen is really just nothing like floating rocks and on a sky box. So it was so bad. And also it played like shit.

Um, and the devs came out afterwards and were like, oh yeah, we, we banged that out in like a second. It's going to haunt us forever. Yeah. Um, so that's why when Black Mesa was being made, there was the point where you go through the teleporter to Zen, uh, at like Black Mesa 0.98, like whatever it was right before the 1.0 launch, it was the whole game up until the teleporter. And when that came out, everyone went, Black Mesa is done because no one wants

to play the Zen right. So the Zen levels were pretty much completely remade from scratch by the mod team for Black Mesa. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I saw. And, uh, I saw that they, um, the, the, they give, they give themselves a couple of, um, cameo things through, um, some messages.

You see some suits of like dead explorers with name tags of like the guys who made the news and, and, uh, there's some, there's some cool things where like the lab is teleporting you, um, resources with like little notes attached. Like there's one that, you know, well, there's at least one from Mary Curie. Um, but yeah, so the news then is like, you look at the sky and the sky is, it's nebula, it's space nebulas while simultaneously being underwater, right? And then there's all kinds of just amazing, beautiful, flowy, screensaver world, screensaver world, right?

And you're still jumping from platform to platform, but then you get to like the brush and the jungle and you get to the underwater and then you get through these little, oh my God. You know, and then you get to these, through these little caves and it's just gorgeous. It's beautiful. You know, it sounds like what you're describing is like the, um, the fuck. I forget the name of it.

The Coral Highlands, the Coral Highlands, sure, sure. Where it's like, it's, it looks underwater, but it's not underwater, but it looks underwater. And, uh, yeah, you just kind of, you know, you go through a lot of like, like nighttime kind of like, oh, here comes the, um, the boom pups and the, the headcrabs in their, in their natural habitat, you know, and the spitters and all that. And you're running on leaves and there's giant lily pads that sink.

If you stand on them for too long, you know, and it's just a completely different flavor from the, the hard lab that we were in. And then the, and then the, what, New Mexico desert, I guess. Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's great. It's great. The other thing about it, of course, is I've been in it for about like five hours now and I got, we're about half, you know, I feel like someone said you're about halfway through because we got, we, you know, we, uh, we got through it.

We fought a boss in it and then it's still going. You know, I thought the end of that boss would be like the wrap up, but it turns out there's more to it. So like, nah, you see the final boss. You'll know, you'll know in a second, you'll be like, Oh, it's, Oh, it's that guy. Okay. Well, in any case, um, you know, it was, uh, yeah, it was pretty wild. And here's a question.

Did the old, um, did old Zen give you the air dash at the same time? No. Oh, not that I remember. Oh, okay. I'm, uh, I remember there being maybe a double jump, but it sucked to use my memory on this is, is, is bad because I actually, like the last time I played this was in like 1998. Okay.

Well, in, uh, Black Mesa, you get the double jump, but it was a long jump. Okay. It was a long jump. It wasn't an air dash. So now what we, now you have jump and then air dash, megaman style. In any direction. Oh, that's a lot of fucking nicer. It's fucking great.

It's fucking great because like there is like a couple, like you go through the game using it, you go through the, uh, through the levels, using it to platform and whatnot. And then you get to this boss where the game gives you reminders. It's like, by the way, remember, use this dash to get around really quickly. And then you fight a boss that moves fast enough that you have to use it to navigate and that big four legged super, the giant head crab. Exactly.

Mama crab. Yeah. Yeah. You got to use it. You know, so, uh, I danced, we danced. We had a good time and, um, I, yeah, I really, whatever the fuck it was before, man, this, this thing is great. The news then is fantastic.

It's also really that's, yeah, that's great to know. It's also, it's also got these cool moments of, um, going into like the, um, they, they have, uh, what should we call it, uh, like, like human stations set up, like, um, uh, air sealed, like little field camps, air field. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Vacuum sealed camps. And like inside of those camps, it's all fucked up and like, uh, head

crabbed dudes that are wearing the heavesuit are coming at you and they're much more resilient because they're wearing your suit. That's very new. Yeah. So you got to deal with Zombo's wearing fucking, uh, uh, your, the suit and you're hearing the beeping of their life support systems and, uh, Oh, that is, that's great. I like it.

It's great. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's definitely goes really, really horary in those moments. Um, hell yeah. Good stuff.

It's good stuff. I'll, uh, I feel like I can't be too far from the full on wrap up, but I know Zen's the end or just, uh, we're, I guess we're Zen has, uh, Zen has four levels. Okay. We're about to find out the, uh, the political situation. I think, or at the very least get a better understanding of what's happening with these, uh, you know, Oh, the Vortigaunts.

Is that what they are? Yeah. The guys who shoot lightning at you. So yeah, yeah, we'll find out soon. They're cool. Uh, so there's that and then. Uh, uh, uh, uh, oh boy, oh boy, I am very excited to talk about Dokapon Kingdom because I'm seeing some weird memory coming out of what are

you on the outside? What are you, what are you seeing on the outside? Because before we go inside, I'm curious to know seeing Reggie trying to keep the piece is that you sacrificing things to corn. Okay. Uh, that is a hilarious interpretation of events because Reggie trying to keep the piece quote unquote involves him using a bailet. Okay.

And I think I described what could happen in the game before when you start losing you, you have, yes, he fucking caches it in. And becomes the Satan and, um, man, right? When you like, like there's still a dedicated, uh, there's still randomness on your, on your side in the sense that like he still has to be able to roll and able to punish you, uh, in such harsh ways, but he becomes the bowser, right? On the board, but there's tons of things that are bowsering on the board anyway. And this whole game, every time I thought it was full of shit, it holds my beer and

then goes another layer deeper. It reaches into like extra, extra chambers. It has extra chambers of shit to pull deep feces out of and fling it at you. Um, like it's so, it's so crazy to see like a game where you can be, it's not just like the, because the positions haven't changed, the positions changed a little bit, right? There's been like a lot of, there's been some, some back and forths. I was in first and then I went and things bounce back around and so on.

But, um, it really just, it is impossible to play this game without developing full on hatred for everyone you're playing with. It's, it's, it can't be done. It is designed like it is, it is, it is completely impossible. I don't think it can be done. And, and, um, that was already reaching its peak. And that was at a level that is, uh, uh, it's shocking. But what happened was, uh, someone wrote in, uh, during a session and basically

dropped a donation and said, this is for the creation of the blood pool. The blood pool. I heard about this and I'm like, what, what's the, what are you talking about? And they're like, this is to incentivize the winner to win harder. The winner will collect this from the blood pool and everyone immediately like the light bulb appeared and then shattered and like the desire to see people unmade. You mentioned this last week.

How's the blood pool going? The blood pool is going very, very, uh, did I mention it last week? Okay. Then in that case, okay. Then the, yeah, the blood pool is going further and harder than ever expected. Um, you know, shits real numbers are high. Um, the peace pool is still there as well, but it is, it is, it is definitely not going to usurp the blood pool, peace pools for the losers, blood pools for

the winner and everyone, everyone wants the blood pool to be, um, an absolute point of pain for anyone who doesn't get it. At what point is the blood pool hit like an amount where you guys just start slapping controllers out of each other's hands and throwing Roman candles at each other now, now the answer is now immediately. Okay. Because, because it's like, yeah, you're like, no, fuck this, fuck you. Fuck all of this shit.

I'm winning. I don't care. I'm winning and it only gets worse and it only gets worse. Um, man, I don't know what to say. It is, it is, I've like, there's never been, there's never been an LP like this. There's never, and the fact that there's so much, but people just keep saying, Oh, what you got coming. There's so much more.

There's so much more and there's so much bulls like every single misstep you feel it in your bones. It rattles you to the core, right? When you take us, when you, you get a choice, cause there's so much dice rolling where you're like, I did my best, but the dice failed me, right? But there's moments where you're like, if I go left or right, I don't know what the result will be and that will be my fault. And literally there got to, there was a, and we're just going to assume

something bad is going to happen. There is a point that we, that we got past where like Reggie and I are having like fucking, like you talk about like, uh, uh, uh, four D chess. And it's like, nah, this is not like it, it goes to like eight dimensions of like out thinking what your next step is going to be while I'm putting this down here and like I'm option selecting cause like we're both trying to get back to a, an objective with a certain number of things. And like there's just, oh God, there's so many plays and I'm literally

like trying to create a, a fucking Yomi layer, layer eight to get past what he's about to do and, and men's in the middle trying to create chaos. And I just, yeah, there's nothing like it. There's absolutely nothing like, uh, where this game is going right now. And, um, we are all getting really good at pinpointing our individual anxieties and fears and doubts and using them against each other to get further in the board. Tempers are flaring.

People are getting heated. Shit is getting real. Like, like straight up. And I think you said, like you said, there's money on the line. So it's like, like it's getting dirty. It's getting very, very dirty. And I've never, I've never seen anything like it. It's insane that this game does not exist in a modern, uh, form.

I was taking a look at that while you were talking and there was a Nintendo DS version, single player only. And that's, uh, pretty much the last one. There is no room for hate games anymore. This is a hate game. It's quite possible that the devs all killed each other during like a testing run of like a 360 version. The game hatred does not have an ounce of the hate this game has

in it, the irony, of course, coming to switch soon. The game's banned. How the fuck? Ah, whatever. Dokopan Kingdom, the salt party story mode LP continues on woolly versus as does black Mesa as does Kotor. Um, boy, that game knows how to have you land on a new planet when you have no idea what you're in for.

And like, you're just kind of like, okay, whatever new planet, who this? And then they put a fucking hook line into you. Um, do you, do you remember Mandalore? Of course I do. So I land on this fucking planet and they're like, nah, go there though. And I'm like, okay. And then they're like, Hey, do you want to meet Mandalore? And I'm like, sure.

And I would love to meet me. And then I'm like, Oh, one line of dialogue in and then we stop right there. You know, so Kotor is, is fucking bopping as well. So that's Kotor to black Mesa, Dokopan Kingdom. And of course other things, you know, get into fighting games, continues and, uh, other, other, you know, there, there definitely will be a return to like table lords and shit soon, but the desire to

play Dokopan, uh, feverishly is, is that not table lords and spirit? It really is. Cause it is a board game at the same time as a salt party. It is table lords and spirit. You are correct. Uh, remember we talk about like, um, all weekend risk games? 100% this, this is what it's about. The end of that session at one in the morning was like, motherfucker,

like we're literally like, we're brainstorming. Like we just going to do a sleepover, like, yeah, let's all get in our pajamas, do a, might just do a PJ sleepover salt party because nobody wants to stop playing nobody. Oh, hey, I can still hear you. I'm just getting some juice, by the way. No one wants to stop playing this thing. So right now, you know, like I'm workshopping the idea of doing an

all night like session, just to crank some hours into this thing. Cause we always want more. We always want one more turn. Um, of course, uh, you know, gotta make sure that like we don't disturb a punch mom who is, you know, gotta find a rest while this is going on. So, um, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're working out the details and trying to figure out how to make it happen. But, uh, it seems likely if only because we always walk away from this going,

God damn it, I'm down for more, which is, you know, I suppose a good thing. I suppose a good thing. Yeah. Until, and here's the moment, right? Until someone gets salty enough that they're like, I don't want to do this anymore. And then you force them to play until the end. You force them. The possibility of that scenario is non-zero.

That's one of my favorite ways to term something. It's like, what's the likelihood of this more than zero, which is too high. You know, yep. Yep. Um, I mean, the discussion of the, of the, the PJs was hell, that was version two of it because that was that of me, like, uh, bring it. I brought that idea, but the first time at the end of a session, I was like, okay, we have to stop now because our bodies are failing us, but there will be a time.

Cause that, cause what happened was like, we got to the end of a save and it was like, it did a little, a little summary of the week. And then Reggie like started, we were talking and then Reggie put the controller down to his right and I looked over and I noticed and I'm like, oh, oh, you rest in your hands there. Oh, that's a nice little presumption was putting down of the controller before anything has been said or agreed upon. So I just got to let him know.

I'm like, you listen up one of these days, you're going to put that controller down and I'd be like, oh, you just, uh, you just stretching your fingers out. You just, you just getting a little bit of, you know, you just go wiping your hands off a little bit. I'm pretty sure you got to pick that back up because we are not leaving until I am satisfied with the progress made today because we are like, it's just, you know, and that's where it's at. He's like, yeah, okay, you know, word, okay, you know, we can do it.

So we'll see, we'll see where it goes. But, uh, yeah, that's where we're at on it. Um, if you enjoy, if you enjoy any, any of, if you enjoy the suffering, then, uh, I think you're going to enjoy where we're going with this. So, um, yeah, uh, that's, that's pretty much it. Waiting for the point where you start poisoning each other's drinks so that you have to shit your ass and then you, they can fuck up your turn while you're shitting your ass.

So you can't really fuck up other people's turns because if you walk around with the, with your own controller, then no one else can control your game. You know, so that's what it is. Also, also, um, um, currently we're at the point where, well, right now the, the, the, the mantra is, uh, blood, salt and honor, but that last one is questionable. We'll see where it, we'll see where it go because it's gonna, you're going to get to the 95th percentile and it will become clear that there is

some kind of unconscionable backstab that can be taken. And I've, I've just in my, you ever like just be talking and then, uh, of genius thought appears in your mind. I just remembered what the absolute most salt murder inducing infuriating thing anyone could ever do in a competitive game is, and that is when number three realizes that they'll never be able to beat number one, but they can drag number two down to the bottom and make sure that number two doesn't win.

So what you just described is another wording of the exact same thing that I have, which is, um, there is tactical two V ones to avoid, uh, a change in position, for example, number one wants to aid number three and making sure that number two does not get to number one, right? But then when two does become third place and then number two and number one are still teaming up against three, just because just cause holy shit. I see our good old friend, Mothman draws in the chat. Hey, Mothman pointing out that the immortal flames are always fucking up my

wins as adders. This is a massive problem in team games that have three teams in which once one team starts to lose, instead of both teams starting to fight the winner, they invariably fight themselves for second place. Wow. It's infuriating. Wow. It's the worst ever.

Wow. Yeah. So that the spirit of that is alive and well. And as I said, we are all identifying like weaknesses, chinks in the armor, you know, complete, uh, and, and, and, and applying pressure to crack and pry them open to get at the guts, you know, it's, um, it's a very, it's a very revealing. It's a very revealing journey. Um, you know, and, and, and it's interesting because Reggie has this aura of, of calm

and, you know, lawful good as, as he was, he was described, you know, of a very, just a very level headed individual. Um, but we get to see what the truth is about that. And we get, and, uh, chances are if you're hearing the French come out, then you know, the filters are off and you know that the armor is down when the return of the native, when the French, when the French comes out, yeah, the armor is down critical impact. Okay.

Well, anyway, um, so that's going on. That's woolly versus on Twitch, woolly versus on YouTube and woolly wools on Twitter. Do we got some news this week or perhaps we do actually a sponsor. We got some news. We don't have a sponsor. Oh no. This, this, this week, the podcast, tell you what, I've been having a lot.

I've been having a lot of fun with the, uh, the embargo requirements. You know, this hashtag sponsored by Square Enix by, uh, sneaking those in right in the filthiest, most disgusting parts of the stream. Like when me and Paige are arguing over whose like excretions are the most disgusting, it's like, remember this conversation, hashtag sponsored by Square Enix. Wow. Yeah.

That's what they wanted. Are you, are you like opening the lid and getting in there for analysis? Mm hmm. No, in fact, that conversation didn't happen. I just thought of something gross, but okay. Cause I was about to say that is leaps and bounds further than, uh, I thought you were capable of. No, no, no, no, no.

Okay. No, no, no, no. It's, it's, it's an analogy. It's a metaphor. All right. So it's a, so people take pictures, dude. We taught, you know, I, you know, you know what I do? You know what I do though though?

Yeah, do, do. Ha, ha, ha. Um, you ever weigh your, you ever like have a, no, I don't weigh it. I don't weigh it. Like stomach, I don't, I don't hit the, I don't, I do not hit the scale afterwards. Oh, and you hit the scale. Don't hit the scale. No.

And then afterwards you hit the scale again and you're like, wow. No. Wow. That is impressive. I'm very impressed. Yeah. Be sure to make a, um, be sure to make a nice little side by side, you know, between yours and hers and need to, and then you send that out to your sponsors.

And then you go, Hey, can you guess who the poo? Can you guess which one of us was playing FF seven before this photo was taken? You can. This week, there is some news. There's a couple. Did they hit me with some news? Well, um, you might have heard, I suppose we can start with the big, uh, yes. Let's start with the big.

The rumors, the rumors have it that M two is already working on Resident Evil four remake. Is this where I pretend to be surprised? Yes, it is. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. That's crazy. I can't believe the honey.

It's time for your 4pm Resident Evil remake. Yeah, honey. Um, I had, I had heard rumors of this a while ago, but then playing RE three is like overtly like, Oh, these, this is all test shit. This is all gameplay test stuff. There's even some retconning in there. It's also really short, right? Before possible.

Mm hmm. Um, from what I can tell, cash RE three was given less resources than RE two was. Yeah, as it is, uh, not a spinoff, but not as important. And, um, I have a sneaking suspicion that RE four would be given as many resources as it demands. Yep. Seems legit. Um, I will say not a one year turnaround and not a one year turnaround.

It's, it's being slated for 20, uh, what, 22, 2022. Yeah. Whereas this was probably a year and a half for RE three. Um, I think a lot of people's immediate response to this news is. Why? Right. Um, but after playing two and three, like I can see, I can see, um, I can see how they would do this.

It is essentially like a, it's almost like a, just a, a slow, but sure timeline correction of the franchise. Yeah. Except that they skipped the first one. Yeah. Well, the first one, honestly, the first one in its state of like a GameCube game with the only make, actually fits perfectly with this thing. Um, what, of course, you know, uh, uh, yeah, there's always the, there's always

a desire to see like other games that need fixing harder readdress as we discussed last week, right? CVX, I thought, you know, like fucking dino crisis could be brought back. You could do a million little things here and there. Yeah, they're, they're, uh, but the cash money. Hey, hey, I have a, I have a spoiler for people. I hear a lot of rumors. I have not had anyone say the word CVX to me in like two years.

Ari for so like, like after Ari two, you want to, you're racing to four as the most popular thing in the franchise. Like, you know, like if anything, if they could have jumped to four and skipped three on the way, I imagine they would have. If it wouldn't have been super weird to do so, I imagine they would have chosen to jump right to four because the money you make off of that lets you do whatever the fuck you want. You know what I bet it actually is.

I bet that's actually totally what happened. But then they started working on three as well in the meanwhile, because four was so far away. I cannot possibly imagine that four just started development. I, if I had to guess, would say that all of these games probably started at the same time. I mean, like, you know, you just, just think, you just think about it like from a business point of view.

You have shining star favorites in a list and then, you know, a chronological order requires you to work your way towards it, but you know that this is what you want to hit and you know that this is going to do gangbusters. Like you're just, you know what I mean? Like you can't fucking wait to get to it. Can we get a RE512 then? Please. Wonder.

I wonder. Cause I don't know if you, how familiar you are with RE5's trailers. But the first RE5 trailer is a very different game from the second RE5 trailer. I mean, the first, you're talking about the one that was sent around to, uh, the black delegation as the murder of Africa dot AVI. That's right. Yes. That would be the one.

Then yes, but that, that game was also probably a single player game and probably had dodge moves. And then later it became a co-op game that did not have dodge moves. Hmm. If you, if you remember, I probably sent you the trailer a million years ago and it was like, look, Chris is ducking underneath machetes. It's like the God hand system. And can we get that game, but please with, with Cheva being like a important

character that hangs out with you, but like, isn't playable so that it can, it can play like a, like a better game. Come on. Come on. I'd like to see, I'd like to see how far it can go. It'd be curious to see how far they take it before they come to a natural stopping point. My goal is to see a game that's called resident evil six remake and it features

literally zero from that game. Like, like it is in a completely different location with different characters and a totally different story. Well, it would, how it would be wild if like the correction then leads in a completely new direction, certainly, that would be, yeah, why not be insane. As long as it stays consistent with seven, which would be easy, which would be easy. So yeah, this is the rumor coming in from VGC report right now.

And, um, yeah, that came in from a lot of places. This is just the most, uh, legitimate of them, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's but this is, this has been coming in from places for a while. Uh, while many origin other resident evil news is also hilarious. I was going to say that, uh, in terms of staff, uh, many original resident evil four staff remain at Capcom. Their involvement, uh, is unclear, but one person with knowledge of development is apparently being directed by a newcomer to the resident evil series.

Mm hmm. I would like to see the first trailer for that game to have a stinger that is the equivalent of with consulting by tango game works. Or Shinji Mikami, something to just say that, hey, it's in good hands. Hey, he came over to the office and looked at it and said, yeah, that looks cool. Right. Cause that would make a lot of people feel a lot better.

At the very least he had that Kimia conversation in the bar and just went, Hey man, it's your thing. What's the other news? Uh, resident evil eight village village. Willie, the timing on last week's conversation couldn't have been more perfect. V I L L a.k.a. nine. Hey, and by nine, you mean eight.

Yeah. Oh, hey, you know what? I mean, I, I'm glad they found another listen. I'm glad they found another, another way to work, uh, the Roman numerals into the title. Yeah. So that's what would hold on. What, uh, nine would be, I asked, right?

Yeah. So it'd be like six. Resident evil six. Dude, that'd be super good. That'd be super good and dumb. That would be super good. Oh no. And you just highlight the I X.

So here's the question. Is it going to be resident evil six or is it going to be resident evil castle? Because the fact that we, we went on and on and on about village. And then they said, and all that shit, you know, we're making a game with the title. Yeah. Um, so, uh, again, the werewolf rumors are back. Um, and, uh, witches. Oh, please hold on a moment.

I need to hit the door. Oh, oh, okay. Then goodbye. Hey there, everybody. Uh, hey, did you weigh yourself? I didn't weigh myself. No, um, I, how are you going to know how fat that rip? I didn't go to the bathroom.

I had to answer the door and then at the same time get a call. Uh, from an accountant. So I'm like, Hey, this is all happening at the same time. That's actually pretty convenient on the same. Well, I mean, yeah, it's pretty convenient for everyone, but us, well, you know, whatever that took zero time in the MP3. Damn, but I, I live, I was petting the cat though. Most of the life happens.

So, oh, he's looking at me. He's soft. Oh, I love him. So village is the name and that's a good promise because it sounds as if they're basically taking the conversation we had and going, yeah, we know, uh, the first area where wolves and witches and I'm going to assume, uh, so they, the, the, the rumor stuff talks about how it's like based on RE4 3.5, which is the hook man shit and demo, right?

Uh, and in the hook man shit, you were infested with a virus that made you see magic, but it wasn't magic. Okay. It was, it was a virus and RE7 already fucked around with that with like, ooh, is this person magic? And the answer is no, you're just sick. You're just sick. So that's probably like the werewolves are probably going to be real, right?

But like the witch that they're talking about, probably just, uh, you know, a magic virus lady. Hmm. It's going to be Ethan again, Ethan and Chris, I guess what hanging out. What that does is it gives, um, time before they have the, before they go back to the remake line. Pretty much. Yeah, makes sense.

Uh, so yeah, her resident evil is fucking popping that that that franchise is going, it's certainly going. It's popping. Ah, apparently. And, uh, yeah, so what else have we got? We got some news about, um, Valorant. If you've, uh, oh yeah, caught what's going on there. The news is watch streams get code, but not really Valorant anti-cheat, uh, starts

up on computer boot, runs at kernel level and runs all the time, even when you're not playing the game and is essentially only removable by uninstalling the game. Uh, you cannot have, you cannot have it. And, uh, you cannot have one or not the other. So, uh, pretty fucking extreme steps to, uh, anti-cheat. Now, from what we see here at the very least, according to, um, what has been dug up over at our Reddit slash Valorant and over at, um, Reddit slash

PC gaming, uh, some folks are reporting that the kernel anti-cheat driver vgk.sys starts when your computer turns on. To turn it off, you either need to change the name of the driver file so it won't load on restart or you can uninstall the driver and it'll be reinstalled back again when you open the game. Um, so it runs at ring zero of the windows kernel, which means it always has the same rights as an administrator or more technically, uh, from the moment you boot and, um, for comparison, battle eye and anti-easy, uh, an easy

anti-cheat, uh, both load when you're opening the game and they unload when you've closed it. So it just seems like, uh, uh, Valorant is going extra fucking hard on this. And they have confirmed at riot that they are, uh, this is, this is intended behavior. So, so this is, and this is what it's supposed to do. This is what they want. So of course, uh, anything that's running at kernel fucking level comes

with a lot of concerns. One, a lot of, a lot of built in suspicion. Uh, off the jump is the idea that you are putting in riots, hands, the security of your system. Yes. So we, you know, this is, um, last time we talked about that old street fighter root kit, you know, uh, this time around, we're looking at one that is put, it is the potential to, uh, result in root kit exists, providing that like someone

finds a way through, uh, riots security, which is not impossible. It, you know what I mean? Uh, but they're, but this is this. So doing this for anti-cheat purposes, it's like there's a, there's always the possibility that it gets compromised and that someone finds a way to use it and fucking hit your computer at a, at a above administrator level. Or that the program is in fact doing that already due to ill intentions by the developer.

So then you want to go down the second road of, of, of possibility, which is, uh, yes, the idea that, uh, 10 cent is, uh, massively funding things that riot is doing and that 10 cent itself might in fact be the one who has access to, uh, you know, what's going on. Um, yeah, yeah. In a, in a, in a, in a nightmarish scenario, it is straight up, uh, there is a 10 set root kit on your computer when you pop this game open, uh, which means there's a Chinese government root kit on in a, in a best case scenario.

It is simply what it states. It is just an anti-cheat, but that anti-cheat is still being installed by a fallible company that can make mistakes, which leads to other near duels using it as a, as a gateway into your system. So, so whether it's them themselves or someone else that can use it, it's going way too far and risking your system security in order to, to, to, uh, uh, secure anti-cheat. On the one hand, I can understand why you would want an insanely

and aggressive anti-cheat because CS go and over a terrible, you know, they do their best and it's, you know, it's a constant, it's a constant fight. Uh, on the other hand, man, fuck this. Yeah, it's, it's, it's overkill and you just kind of have to question whether or not that's what you want to install on your computer. People are going to need some kind of virtual machine, ver, verifiable proof or something. I was going to say, I was going to say a retro machine fucking get a

valorant computer that you don't care about, you know, what, I don't know. The other thing is like most people, most users do not care. Yeah. There's always the option of letting them know that this is ridiculous and, uh, trying to get them to stop it. Yes. I like that route. It's tough to do so when they have this massive built-in thing going on where

people are just going to, like, it's already very popular and it's not even out. Yeah, it is. It is people like Counter-Strike, but you know, uh, I think if you are on the side of folks that, cause there's always the very clear just, yeah, fuck that, I'm out. Right. There's, there's the simple deal breaker, uh, which many people are like, yeah, I

was thinking about it. I wasn't too sure. Fuck that. That sounds terrible. Right. Um, and then there's those who are like, damn it, I still do enjoy. I want, I want to know about this. I still want to play and whatnot.

In which case I would say, uh, tell Riot to fucking stop, tell them to stop. You don't got to do it this way. It doesn't got to be like this. You can do this in other ways. This is way too much. Cheating is a problem. It is. It is not a problem that should be solved by introducing potentially way larger

problems. Wow. So I just took a look at Twitch just for funsies and the top three streamers streaming Valorant are at 133, 80 and 78 K views. Yeah, makes sense. New game, hot shit. That's pretty high even for new game and hot. Oh dude, look at what apex was on, on launch.

It was not a hundred and thirty three K. It was higher than league than, um, uh, it was higher than, uh, Fortnite for the first, for the first couple nights. And people were tracking and making comparisons. Maybe. Yeah, it was, it was super, it was super hot. Anything, anything new is, that's crazy. How do I get those numbers?

Well, yeah, time to install a root kit. I, I guess, I guess that is the way. Yeah. Uh, well, what you got to do. Uh, is yes, exactly. So the, the, the idea here is that, um, at the very minute, like in the same thread that's bringing this to light, there's one of the suggestions is that allow people to uninstall it if they wish, do not, do not, uh, put it in, in this, in such a

draconian method and, um, yes. And then of course there's the 10 cent concerns as well. So, uh, for, for definite, there's definitely like, here's, this is one of those things where you're like, look, if people are on the fence, this pushes you off the fucking fence. You know, if you were on the other side of the fence, then you're looking for ways to, to, to fix this problem and, or get them to do something about it. Cause this sucks.

This is a really huge bummer to attach to something that, um, folks were, are folks that are, are excited for, but already have that weird taste in your mouth. Cause you're like, oh man, but the 10 cent thing. Well, woolly, get ready for this feeling to have a slightly sharper point on it. When League of Fighters has the exact same thing on it. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Maybe if the stink is loud enough and smelly enough, it'll waft into their noses and they'll fucking stop. I think, I think the genius thing about them rolling out the Twitch drop thing for Valorant right now is that people who going, Hey man, I don't know about this are being actively drowned out by the phrase Gib Valorant. Hey, Gib Valorant, please. Power, power ad for Stadia right here. You don't want to install root kit games on your computer.

We'll do it for you. No risk to your own system. Just play it off on all one of our farms. No problem. If only. How's Stadia doing? They just announced a free stuff. Oh yeah.

That's what successful things do. Right. Free stuff. Come get it. Any of you guys interested in free stuff from Stadia, man? I told you the other day about how I got a temporary pro subscription for two months for like a trial thing. And I was like, hi, might crack this thing open and put it on my Chromecast

and see what the laws are like. And I just see fucking, I installed the app on my phone and I started looking and I'm like, I fuck this. I can't even be bothered for the bit. It's a whole, it's not even worth it for the bit. Anyway, yes, I'm how talking about Valorant problems and has led to dunking on Stadia, but you know, that's the way the world works. So this is, this is bad.

And we hope that it becomes not bad, not as bad, but it's bad. Please don't do this. Please follow other examples of games that have effective anti-cheat that don't hit you at the fucking kernel level. I'd rather play with some cheaters straight out. So CSGO is rife, rife with filth. I assume so. I'm not actually familiar, but I assume.

Man, there is always that arms race, though, isn't there? Right? Between cheating and not between cheating, defeating the anti-cheat. Yeah. Well, cheating will always win because they'll, they'll, because you have to put out the system and then they have to crack it and then you have to crack their crack and then you, you play that game.

But the first move is played by the game. So, uh, anyone who reverse engineers that is, you know, just got to spend the time to pretty much get there is what it sounds like. Just a matter of time. The cheaters, the cheat creators, you know what they are, Russians, they're hungry. Oh, they want it more. Do you know why? Cause they're not just hungry, like figuratively, they're literally hungry.

They need food and the only way they know how to make money is to create cheats. Okay. They just want it more. Are they hungry and Russian? Possibly. Possibly Brazilian. Whatever happened to Dark Alex? Dark Alex still?

Oh, I don't know. Cracking shit. I don't know. Yeah, I have no idea who makes cheats. I don't know. I have no clue. Uh, what, uh, yeah, whatever happens, we'll, we'll, we'll follow and see if there's updates, but yesh.

Ooh, bad start. Seems so hard to launch something big, a big, a big launch to launch a big new IP these days without, without, without, without, without, without, without, without, without, without, without, without, without, without, without, without, without, without, without, at least stumbling slightly over the tip of your sack. Yeah, that's the usual. That anthem was a great launch though, wasn't it? Well,

other stuff going down. Um, do you see that treat that, uh, streets of rage for trailer? I did. I think it's a little weird that only the new characters get to be retro and it doesn't retrofy the whole background, but yeah. Wait, is that what it was? Are you sure? Yeah, dude.

I, yeah, dude. Oh, you mean not that you mean, you mean the stages? Yeah. Oh, because then, because they're new stages. Yeah. So they didn't, they didn't make the stages twice. No. Yeah.

The characters, there's, there's, oh, there's, it's 12 pixel, 12 playable pixel art characters. So it all, I think the new characters also, right? Are included in that, um, but yeah, you're still playing in the world of the, of the new backgrounds, which I mean, I, I, I get it, but that's still a pretty cool feature. Yeah, totally. Um, 12 returning streets of rage characters, unlockable and playable in their original pixel versions with move sets and abilities unique to their respective games, bringing the game's total, total playable roster up to 17.

That's pretty good. Uh, you can also switch the background music out between streets of rage one and reshoots of rage two style. You should probably put on streets of rage two style. If you're just saying, if you're from one, you can call in cops. If you're from three, you can sprint and roll. So they're all in their specific groups. Yes.

All right. That's rad. That's a really cool, uh, really cool piece of fan service. And, um, all my fucking head is twitching. I don't like this from put everywhere in your hell, your, your headphones and the, the skin above your ear, like around your temple just starts throbbing and twitching. It's gross. Not really.

No. Oh, yeah. I mean, when I played the demo for four, I think it was pretty cool. I thought it was rad. I really liked, uh, what was going on there. I understand that the, um, you know, you can't ever go too, too crazy with the combat system because then you depart from the purity of streets of rage. But, uh, yeah, that's, that's a, that's a cool move.

I think that's pretty rad. And, uh, you know, I just, I'm not, I didn't grow up with streets of rage. So I don't, I don't have the, the, the big, uh, big nostalgic glasses for it. But I think this looks pretty cool. You love streets of rage. No. You talk about go straight all the time. I like streets of rage too.

You never stopped talking about goes, go straight. Yeah. That track dude, we've had this discussion like four times. That track is way better than the streets of rage series. Okay. It's so much better than the games that it's in. Like those games are good, but go straight is like incredible. You're thinking of Liam, man.

Liam was the one who loves the rage, but I also thought you love streets of rage. Of course I know. Of course I know. He loves, I like go straight. Okay. I thought you both, uh, liked streets of rage. I do like streets of rage, but it's mainly the music. Got it.

Well, that is the story and that brings the story to a conclusion. The, good. The next story is about the dual sense. Pardon? The dual sense. I don't want the fuck that. I don't want the fuck that is. What is the dual sense is the new controller for the PlayStation five.

Oh, that's right. They unveiled the new controller called the dual sense. It'll, it'll, it'll touch you. It looks like Haiti or or Echo from Overwatch. No, it looks like the Connor mark 5000 or whatever the fuck it was. I mean, it can also in Detroit, it could look like that too. I think it looks more like Haiti. You don't know what Haiti is.

I have no idea. Yeah. I'm going to send you a picture of Haiti. Like the country. No, not Haiti, Haiti. It's a bit. I mean, with my accent, I pronounce both of those identically. All right.

Go to Google. I'm hitting good image search. I'm doing that. Type in H A Y D E E. Press enter. Oh, it's that robot with the titties. Titty ass robot. Yeah.

The Titty ass robot. That's Haiti. Yeah, it looks like that's what it looks like. Did you see the GIF? I'm looking at the trailer and it's just like a super thick Titty ass robot. Yeah. It's, it's, it's bursting. Is there a game here or is it just.

You can go into the mod workshop to see the muscle mod or the BBW. Mod. I'm good. Okay. Well, that's Haiti. All right. And that's the PS five controller. It looks, it has a, it has a white, white kind of trim on top.

It's got the, the lights. The sensor bar is now facing the player as opposed to forward away from the player. It looks like they have flattened out the shape a little bit on turn in terms of like the bottom of the controller where the Looks more like an Xbox pad. They have basically put a microphone into the controller as well. So now it's not just a speaker, but you can talk back to it. Yeah.

So now we're going back to those days of her, or plugging it, plugging in your Xbox one with the connect for the first time and just jumping online in some game and then hearing a bunch of bullshit and being like, Oh, fucking God. Now I got to hear everyone's babies crying and everyone's stupid music playing. Like there's a bunch of people that a bunch of people don't talk while they play, but they just have background music playing and that's it.

And you're just like, fucking anyway, so mute everything and mute everything and mute everybody forever. Broke what? I don't need to get a you can't tell me what to tell. You shut that fucking baby. You don't you don't pay my sob. No, you know what the greatest is? Well, have you play?

Have you seen that video of a guy playing mafia three on stream as mother is there? And his mother's like, hey, go to the fucking bathroom. No, he's like, no, no, no, no, yeah. Yeah. And she's like, I can hear you smell you shitting yourself. Go to the bathroom. Go take a shit.

No. Oh, you haven't seen. Oh, God, I'm not going to watch that now. So don't even bother. Yeah, you are. Someone's going to hear that and just go. Oh, this is what they were talking about. It's already on the subreddit.

You don't need to send it. I'm not going to watch it now. I'm sending doesn't matter. Someone is going to hear this and go. Here's what they were talking about right now. Already made the post on the subreddit right now. They've already made the post. Do you hear?

I'm not. Let's see what I can get going with this. This TV phone I have. Not interested. But yeah, it's a guy just shitting his pants while playing mafia. And his and his mom's just like, go to your bathroom and just constant like, no, no, yeah.

Oh, that's the one. Fuck. That's the best. I want that to be my daily life on PlayStation five. Okay. Well, anyway, the DualSense controller, I legitimately missed the nightmare of completely open comms. You miss it.

Like you want to go back to those days. It was a it was a riot every day. Except for when it was the worst shit ever. No, no, when it was the worst shit ever, it was the best. Like my first time it was the like after I bought Ki and I jumped on like that and I was like, fuck everything like the bunch of games where I'm like, you're just hearing people's bullshit.

Oh, man. Because you play hit me, dude, you're hearing fighting games and people like just talking what they're saying while both things have a fucking room mic and room speaker on as if that's what video games need to be, you know, like fucking stop. Dude, I used to play fucking battlefield and hold everything about that comms and it was like that it was the dankest

nightmare pit that's ever been created headset for your team. If you want to have your shit on, give the options. We don't need room mics and room speakers for open fucking comms. No, you don't get it. It's part of the aesthetic. I was called every name that existed and many that don't and it was it was it was lit, man.

It was lit before lit existed. I was talking to oh, yeah, on the on the level clear podcast. They were talking about how the the the call the the call of duty battle royale game. What was it called again? Call a modern warfare. Yeah, well, the the current one is not called modern warfare. The current one is it is literally called modern warfare.

Sorry, there's a there's a game that I think has a name that is not that war zone. Thank you very much war zone. Yeah, war zones a mode, but like you download it and it's literally call of duty modern warfare and it's like it's fucking so confusing. The title of the game isn't war zone. The title of the game is war zone.

I read an article about it when we were talking about this on the podcast. I'm loading up the battle net launcher right now. It is listed. Oh my god, this is call of duty war zone is the title of the video game. Okay, look at what I'm going to send you a picture of how confusing this is and you can understand my confusion.

This is what's underneath my list of games. And this is the title of the game on its own page. It is literally called call of duty modern warfare in the list of games. It uses the same launcher. Yeah, and then but on the the Blizzard title page it says call of duty war zone. What the actual fuck is that?

That is awesome. All right. Well, in any case, the point I'm talking about is based on war zone. Apparently in war zone it has you can choose between like it has a pink system and then it has the team speak, right? Um, but if you choose to use the ping system, the characters in game say out loud the things they're saying when you ping,

which means if someone is nearby, they will hear the character say someone's been here, gone over ammo over here. Great. But if you're using your mic, that obviously doesn't happen. So that means that pinging is automatically inferior to using a real microphone because the players that are enemies can hear you with one of them and not the other. Yeah.

So it's a shittier situation where things should be even, but they're not. I should point out that apex was like this as well. And apex is in game chat. I believe you could hear people via proximity. You could hear people via proximity and halo as well. Didn't. Didn't.

It's using out of game chat that gives you the advantage, like discord or team speaker event. But didn't in, no, in apex, when you say stuff to your team, it's not being broadcast to other players in the world. If an enemy is nearby, they're not going to hear your character say anything. Oh, that's funny because I totally thought they could. I guess I'm no, they can't otherwise because then it would

be stupid, right? Because I remember playing halo and you could totally sneak up on people and hear them talk in proximity. Okay. Well, that's not apex. And in war zone, apparently one form of communication is completely open to all players on the map. And the other is not.

And it seems so ridiculous. It's a play solo. But it seems so stupid that you would have like a ping feature, which, you know, apex kind of introduced, which is like fucking amazing for not needing likes in this way. But it seems like such a massive oversight to make that problem exist with it, you know. Like, why wouldn't you just make both of them?

Yeah, I guess I'm in this place where it's like, I don't, I genuinely, I have played a decent amount of battle royale stuff. Oh, wait. People are pointing out that pings give visual indicators and are thus more advantageous than. Pings give pings give visual indicators. Yeah.

So, so in order to balance it, it's made so that there's a sound associated. This is this is from a discussion that was had on the level clear podcast with the folks that were playing war zone and bringing up that issue. So it's a trade off. You either get a visual ping or you get like a sneaky talky chatty one.

I'm totally baffled by the desire of people to play battle royale games in teams. I legitimately don't understand. I had a lot of fun playing playing 3v3 3 team apex. Yeah, I had I had tons of fun with that. And then I stopped. And then I was like, I would rather play solo. Oh, I did some solo.

And that's why that's why I stopped playing apex. I did some solo queuing and I preferred it with the teams. Same thing for, you know, solo queuing in any of those games, honestly, like it's like I remember solo queuing in Overwatch was just nightmarish. No, yeah, totally. But solo queuing in apex was like nowhere near as good. And, you know, I remember getting paired up with two

angry Brazilian men that were yelling at me. Oh, yeah, no, that was that was my experience. But then pairing up with is that every time I would queue up in apex, I would get like the worst teammates ever. And all I can think of is like, why can't I just play this by myself? OK, so it's the it's the entire team based concept that you're bothered by. OK, well, and also it was annoying because I won a bunch of games in apex, but I never won any in like say PUBG.

And it's like, I don't count the apex wins as wins, unless I was the person doing the best on that team. Yeah, that's stupid. You play with your friends and you have fun. End of story. Like it's fun to play with friends. That's it. I there's no there's not much not much further.

We need to go into that. But anyway, the controller, when I look at the dual sense, the thing that I fucking immediately see is when you rotate the controller and see like how the R2 and L2 are triggered, right? They're set in such a way that it's exactly like the current PS4 controller, where R2 and L2 are the surface like stabilizers that the controller rests on, which means that same problem of putting the controller down and accidentally hitting a button.

Or if you're watching a movie or and you accidentally fast forward it. And you're just like, oh, it'll never go away. It's built into the whole that sucks. I hate that. I want to go back to the days where the R trigger and L trigger didn't go past the base of the controller. You're never going to go back to that because people want gun triggers. Yeah, then like I'm looking at the Xbox controller now

and the way that the triggers are recessed and there's like a lip underneath them that the controller sits on. That's better. Like if you can maybe if there's a way to, you know, like I'd have to I'd have to go back and look at my other controllers right now to kind of see how many do that and how many don't. But definitely that only started with the PS4 and up as far as the Sony controllers go. I just I would even if there was like a like a way to rest it upright

so that the buttons were facing you or something. I just hate when you hit it and the triggers hit. But beyond that, they're not going too wild with the controller. No more boomerangs, obviously. Why the fuck would you? And it looks like the share button has been replaced with a content button. So same shit. They're acting like it's different, but it's still a non video game button.

I I I got in a discussion with mom on Twitter and it was basically like, I hate the fucking share button so much. And the response was like, well, what do you mean? Don't you ever want to share anything on, you know, Twitter or YouTube? Or don't you, you know, want to take a screenshot? And the answer is no, I'll use my capture card to do that. And because I use that controller on PC regularly, where it is transformed into the select button 99 times out of 100,

I never got used to using it as the share. OK, but you see, we are big content creator power users, though. So we have that capture card set up. However, well, if I didn't have a capture card, I wouldn't want to share anything. Here's where I'm at. I would occasionally want to have the ability to take a screenshot or a clip if something happens. Of course, you know, Xbox record that.

But why not just put that on the fucking PlayStation menu? Press the PS button and then you just have a quick screenshot or capture thing right in there. Is it so vital to be able to take a screenshot instantly? Is that is that like so important? It's so dumb. It's a waste of a button that could be a gameplay button on the controller. So those of you are saying not everyone has a capture card.

Of course, not everyone has a capture card, but no one cares about anyone's screenshots or clips either. You do because it's yours. Like if I made a cool screenshot, I would care about it. But like who gives a fuck? I think all system level features should exist on the system button. There's a system level menu button that exists to bring in system features. Every other button on the controller should be gameplay oriented

because you want to have gameplay options as a priority. They should go back to that being select button or back or whatever the fuck they want to call it. And if you want to take a screenshot, just hit the PlayStation button and like move the d-pad down twice. It's just it's simple. I think it's stupid to say why would you ever share or take a screenshot? That's dumb. But I think there's no reason that it's not the first item on the PlayStation menu

that pops up if you just hit the fucking PS button. Guys, I'm not saying remove the screenshot functionality. I'm saying is it so important that it needs a dedicated button on the controller in which a better button could go there instead? One that is shared on all the other consoles like the Switch and the Xbox? Yeah, you see asking the question as a yes, no sets yourself up for failure. What you need to do is, like I said, describe the better scenario, which is... Wow, everyone is really upset.

Here's the better scenario is there is already a button. It's there. We could just use that button to do what we need. You know what I would even do? I would go a step further. How about this? Check it out, right? Select button is still a gameplay button we can use, right?

Press the PS button, hold it, bring it up, take your screenshot, or record your last couple of 15 minutes of video, right? Double tap for an instant screenshot on the double tap PS button. Pop up, instant screenshot done. Now you have all the functions you needed. You have the same ease of use. You have the same instant... Picture being taken, but it's on the system button

and not taking the space of a gameplay button. And now we have more room for gameplay functions. It's that simple. Like as someone who's done a ton of fucking, you know, like, whatever, you know, it's just... This is a... It's like, no, we need a special extra button that's like a bomb that you hit that covers the screen with the goddamn share menu, or you can switch it to easy screenshot mode in which you hit it and then a beep happens and you're like, what the fuck was that beep?

Yeah, the current state of things with the share button is awful. And I really wish it could be a gameplay button, but this is where we're at. So now, whatever, it's a content button and it's the same thing, you know? It's the... The same button just has probably... Yeah, exactly. And you know, there's a discussion was had, right? There was definitely a point in the last gen where they kind of, you know, Xbox got together

with all the hardware manufacturers had their respective meetings where they realized they're like, hey, look, sharing content is a big part of this gen. This is a really important direction to go in, making it easy for people to advertise and push our stuff out there by having its shares on social media. It's super important that Nintendo put a fucking screenshot button on their console. Yeah, and guess what? Right. It's in a place that you're unlikely to hit by accident because they still have their start

and select buttons on it. The last people in the world that you would ever expect to get rid of the select button got rid of the select button, but not really because there's still a plus and minus, you know? So I would like to point something out. A lot of people are like, why is the select button so important? And it's really not in the grand scheme of things. But I'm going to hold up in my hands three controllers, right? I have an Xbox pad.

I have a Switch Pro pad. I have a PlayStation 4 pad, which I usually use on the PC, in which all of them, the left most tiny button near the analog stick, is the select or back or minus button. The only one it's not on is the PS4 actual use case on its console, in which that becomes a trap button for screenshots or videos. Yeah. Xbox back button is still a back button. It is there.

When you want to do screenshots, you don't have to have that dedicated thing. So all that to say that the recognition that social media is extraordinarily important has been you know, clearly pushed. But I really do see no purpose as to why they can't go the route I just described, you know? And the only one I can think of, because they clearly must have talked about it, is that the dedicated button pushes the importance of the feature. You're... That's pretty much it.

It tells you... It told people, hey, everybody, it's really important that you can share these moments and people got into that. Putting a screenshot and video recording on a double tap of the PS button adds the function for those who would like it, but putting it on a dedicated button where select should be encourages you to do it and pushes you to do it when you might not otherwise do so. It is an omnipresent reminder that you can share content that you're playing. Unless the publisher decides you can't.

Unless they decide you can't, in which case it'll say this is blocked. Which makes the whole, like the fact that sharing can be blocked at all invalidates the whole concept in my mind. Touchpad definitely... Like it's so stupid. Touchpad definitely has become select in a lot of cases, de facto. For lack of having a select button, it kind of goes to that and you've got that. I think it would be rad to have both, you know?

I like the idea of... In many cases, touchpad is going to pull up the map. It's going to maybe pull you, give you your weapon wheel or whatever kind of gestures or little touch sensitive options you're going to use. But we would be better in a world with more button, with another button there. So anyway, beyond that, I saw a lot of color redesigns for the controller that are really fun. A lot of people are customizing the... Yeah, none of which were official, but it gives you hope that they might actually do

they might play with it so that the white becomes a bunch of different colors and you can mix and match them. But here's the thing. I like the white, personally. Yeah, I think it looks very nice. I dig the Haiti aesthetic, you know? The white on black with some blue trim, it looks very clean, looks very robotic. I don't mind it.

And I also can't wait to see what other color combinations we can get. But it can lead to some potentially really fun mixtures because, you know, in a lot of cases, the colors on a controller are sort of like, you know, it's one color or a texture kind of thing. And here you can have some fun, like the Dio colors. There's some people photoshopping, you know, you got your Avas. You got Ebony and Ivory. We've seen some fun photoshops, you know?

And then the black, all black with the blue trim looks great too. So, yeah. I like the blue they use for that kind of stuff. The deep blue. Yeah, I agree. It's a nice deep blue. Hey, I got people in the chat mentioning like, yeah, until your white controller becomes all grimy. I've had a lot of white controllers.

I've never seen them get grimy. How gross are you? I've seen it. It depends on the texture of the controller. I mean, like, visibly discolored. So, I have the white 360, or rather, the white X-Bone controllers I have are still fine. They have the right texture for it. Those are totally fine.

The early 360 controllers, if you go back and look at them, they're starting to discolor. Yeah, dude, they're like 15 years old now. They're definitely, some of them are like, oh, look at that, you know? But the black ones hold up better. And yeah, I wash my hands daily. You should wash your hands more than daily. You should clean your controllers, gross people. I remember my PS2 controllers where the matte texture would become glossy just from gripping

the controller for so long. Like, you've used it so much that, like, the handles have now glossed down. You've changed the texture with your grip. Yeah, it's a thing. It's a thing. I feel like saying something controversial. I'll just finish my thought and say, whatever direction we go with, I'm glad that we're past the gray controller.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, I totally agree. I think that if you enjoy the share button, you are stupid. I think I just gave a pretty convincing argument for a superior configuration. Yes, you did. You very much did. So, you know, and I saw some people going, but I show it to my friends. Your friends are stupid.

Your friends are even stupider than you. Because, Woolly, I swear to God, if you came to me and were like, yo, check out this cool thing that happened in a game I was playing, and it was like a screenshot, I would send back a message going like, what are you fucking stupid? I don't care. And you would have been like, you're right. That was stupid to do.

You don't say. I do. I do say. Feels good in my chest. Shut it off. Yeah, feels good. Yeah. And you know, my favorite part is the number one

responses. Pat, that's your job, Moron. And it's like, it's funny that you mentioned that during a podcast that you're listening to right now that has not one game play screenshot in it at all, which means that me and Woolly's voices and personalities are the true draw. The truest value. I have used the share feature to share my Tetris 99 victories.

I have used the share feature to share my clip Virgil's downfall on Twitter, which do you remember that? I do. I recently used the Nintendo, what do you call it? I don't even know what it's called, share feature. You're lucky you didn't tweet it. I was about to blow your ass out. I put up a photo that I made of the animal crossing.

And people saw it and you all missed your chance to tell me that that was stupid that I did that because it turns out that I created a content that you enjoyed. Did you retweet that, that Virgil's downfall? I don't know, man. That's ancient. Because if you did, then then fuck yourself. Then I was taking pity on your poor share button use. You know what I also used it for?

And trying to support you. So here's what I did. I actually used it for Samurai Showdown to review match footage to get better at SamShow. After a long set, I would record the set and then go back and watch it. That was actually... You know what I feel bad for right now? I feel bad for the people listening to just the audio version because they can't see me trying not to break out into a big shit-aiding smile.

Or I'm like... They can hear it. I can hear it. I can absolutely hear it. There's a tone. There's a tone. But yeah, this is where we're at on the controller. What a terrible feature.

This is where we are at. That's the correct noise. Boy, I sure hate the share button so much. You know, for real though, my specific gripe isn't even against the usability of it. It's against the share button specifically because Xbox and Switch have similar features. They're out of the way. Switch hides its button in a place where you don't accidentally hit it and you actually still have your select button.

So it's way better. It's... Whatever the Switch version is, is much better than the share button. It's parallel to the most important button on the controller on the PS4. Yeah. It is mirrored. The least important button is mirrored with the most important button. You know what?

The content button would be really good if I could make it so that it's on... If hitting it does nothing. That would be the best thing about it. Giving people options is nice. Yeah. Well, anyway. So, speaking of bannings and of cheaters, it turns out that in Pokemon Sword and Shield, when you are playing ranked that if you rage quit, you don't take the loss.

Oh, come on. Come on. Come on. How many times? It's every... Turns out. So, with that rampantly spreading across the ranked community, yeah, once people discover that it works and tell other people...

All losses negated. All wins negated. Because fuck that. All you got to do is right before it registers the win, you simply put the switch to sleep and then it cuts all communications. Single button. Hold the button. You didn't lose.

You didn't lose. It's like nothing happened. So, the news is that Game Freak has announced that they're going to be addressing this. And what they're going to be doing is... I guess, yeah, they're going to patch the game to try to detect whenever this happens. And if you rage quit, there is a high likelihood you'll be permanently banned. Good. Great.

Yep. Super. Yep. So... It won't work. It's a pretty... One rage quit equals a permaband is a pretty extreme... It went from the worst case scenario to the highest...

Oh, it's never one rage quit. It's always like a bunch within a threshold. In case it was your bad connection. Yeah, if you display a pattern of rage quitting, of quitting it... So, it's like or being a dirty red bar. If you only suddenly turn red right before the matches end, then yeah, you can fucking go. You can fucking go. Yeah, so you are banned from all online features.

Good. So, you can still play the single-player game. It would be pretty crazy if you booted it up and they're like, nah, you don't get to play this game at all. Fuck your system. You cheated yourself. You learned nothing. But no, it bars you from raid battles and from anything.

I think rage quitters should have their consoles. It doesn't matter what you're about to say. You can just go further. Why don't you? Rage quitters should be drug out into the street and shot. Yeah, but first they have to watch their switch be shot. First, before the shooting of the switch, their ranking goes to the bottom of the list. Oh, good.

So, they slowly see their points drain until their name goes all the way to the bottom. And then they take a picture of it, and then they smash your switch, and then they double tap you in the cranium. Damn, that's crazy. That's good. That's good. So, I just have this fantasy of people cheating in an online tournament in Counter Strike, and they get caught cheating, and then somebody just jumps in through their window

and starts hitting them with a bat and starts screaming like, Stop cheating, stop cheating. They take your name. They drag you all the way to the bottom of the leaderboard, so you have no ranking points. Then they force you at gunpoint to use the share button to share your shitty ranking to everyone online, everyone on your social media has to see how bad you are at the bottom of the ranking. But not even at zero, but at one or two, so that it's a believable number. It's almost like, oh, no, you played and you were this shitty.

So, it's not even a zero. It's just way, way down, an embarrassingly high number. And then after forcing you to use the share button, then you break the switch, and then you double tap them in the back of the head, and then you call it a day. Yeah, and it's live. And that's the last thing that ever happens. Put that on ESPN.

The last communication they ever have with anyone in this life is sharing their garbage ranking online to everybody. Yeah, you know what? I'm going to be okay with the share button on one condition, right? If by turning on the share button, it unlocks the shame. The shame button! In which every time you want to share something cool, you have to share a screenshot of a loss or a game over screen. Shame button.

Now we're going places. Now we're getting there. Suddenly, suddenly, we're fixing this feature. Suddenly, we're improving it. It's encouraged. You hit that shame button. Good old shame button. Xbox, shame me.

And it goes, doodoo! And it takes your screenshot, and then it sends it to everybody. And then it sends it in, like, even with your parents, where it's like, I don't understand what's happening in this game. All I see are lines and circles. But I should feel bad, I guess, oh my god. And it's just like, well, you know, and then you just have a nice little guide video that's like, hey there, parents, your son is playing a video game.

In this video game, the goal is to do this, but your son was incapable of doing that. Here's a video of them failing horribly at a thing that this many people are able to do better. 600,000 people are able to do better than your son. So it's got to have that thing where you know how it's recording for the past half hour. Sony should invest in a feature that is able to analyze the last 15 minutes and figure out on game over if the game over was embarrassing. And be like, you get a game over and then a thing comes up and it goes like, we have, Sony has detected that your last 10 minutes of Fortnite footage was

embarrassing to the extreme. Would you like to share this? And it's got two options and it's yes. And the second one is yes. Fuck that. And you try and back out and it goes, we have now posted this shame to your Twitter. You fuck, like, like you die and rate this feature. You die and it gives you the game over screen.

And then there's a little thing in the corner that just says Uploading. Posting to social medias. Share complete. And then I, yeah. Xbox, step on me. Yes. Yes. This controller is now superior.

We can absolutely, we can take it to the future. Content is content after all. The content button does not discriminate. You can, you can get a free month of PlayStation plus if you upload a shame, a shame vid that is popular. Did you sit down in front of your PlayStation camera with no pants on and your balls hanging out? It scans you with the, the, the, the, the Xbox scans you with the connect and it realized that your skeleton has your balls in frame at this exact moment.

It takes that screenshot, sends it out, lawns, sends it out right there. The moment you're midstand, midstand, your balls have been screenshotted and uploaded to all your social medias. Do you get banned? Probably. You know what it is? It's, you go to share something and it's like the camera has detected that your penis is very small.

Would you like to add this? Would you like to add this data to your screenshot? It's like you can share this super sick victory, but it has to be baked in with a screenshot of your very, very small penis. Yeah. And it's like one of those like, like it's not explicit. It's like one of those 3D wire frames on like those dick pill commercials that it's like, but like the before and it's got like a little sad face on it with like a down pointing arrow.

It's like, Hey dude, did you sign the Eula? Because the Eula takes a picture of your dick. Why'd you, why'd you sign the Eula? If you, if you agreed to the terms, then you knew that it was going to take a screenshot of your penis and attach it to every cool thing you do content wise. And then it goes, Hey, do you want to pay 99 cents to turn this shame button into a share button? One use only. Your penis is too small to use the share feature.

Nah, come on. Hey, come on. I was in the pool. Shrinkage. You know, I mean, shit, man. Face detection is pretty advanced. I think the computers can no longer be fooled with shrinkage. Even accounting for shrinkage.

You're below the threshold. And then it uses the wireframe to show you the cutoff. Like it must be at least this big. And then you see the wireframe of what you could have. And then the computer, this is like, Listen, man, I was going to shame you, but that doesn't look normal. You should get that checked out. You're like, Oh, damn.

It doesn't know how to recognize my third testicle. Meanwhile, 10 cents is just rubbing their arms like getting that dick data. Oh, man. Getting that dick data. Like that dude peeking from behind the tree. Oh, boy. Somebody at Chad asked, how does this work for women? It would determine just how much bigger one boob is than the other.

Yeah. Down to the millimeter. Once again, you have to stand up and sit down at some point in front of your console. It would detect how flat that ass is. And it would just be like, would you like to post this Bristol board screenshot alongside your cool moment? Shit's flat. No.

Hey, man, fair is fair. It is concave. Indeed. All right. I don't want to hear this. All right. Well, anyway, I think we've made an excellent case for why the share button sucks and how it can be improved.

Speaking of improving controllers. Yeah. There's a company called retro bit. And they are making an improved Dreamcast controller. It's coming out this year. So this is the perfect. I saw that improved Dreamcast controller and I burst out. This is the perfect segue.

So the retro bit, the retro bit alternative Dreamcast controller is what right now it's just a blue. It's kind of like a blueprint. And what they're showing is it's got the same shape. They're improving. They're adding a better stick and a better D pad. They're dropping the triggers down to be repositioned so that they're more like bumpers. And they're putting six buttons on the face. So that makes a lot more sense for all the fighting games that you can play on Dreamcast.

Yeah. Okay. Here's here's the thing. Here's why I burst out laughing. It's the same horrible shape. Yeah. I remember you guys would never, never, ever let it go. Like it is the worst shape for a controller ever.

And they decided we're going to improve it. We're going to improve the sticks. We're going to move the triggers. We're going to add more buttons. But it's still going to be this horrible monstrosity of this horrible shape. I think with this fucking square controller. I think with better parts and the adjustments made, I'm excited to use this on my Dreamcast.

Of course you are. You never hated the Dreamcast controller. You learned to live with your Dreamcast controller shame. I would say that the shape is probably the least offensive of the problems with the controller. I much prefer, of course, the modern controllers we have, but like the stick and the buttons being four and not six and the triggers are way worse issues than the shape of the controller. I'll say this much, as someone who is willing to put up with it,

I definitely will be grabbing these. I mean, these will obviously be improvements, but it's still going to be like pick it up and go, this thing needs a shame button for itself. And unless we forget, there's still that PlayStation converter as well. So, you know, can always use that. But yeah, I don't mind. I don't mind. This is a very welcome product, and I hope to see more ETA late 2020.

I'm just going to hit that like button so that I remember about this later on. From Retrobit Gaming. Looks like they're the ones that also put out the like N64 controllers for PC, the SNES controllers for PC, and the GameCube controllers for PC as well. All right, so they have a lot of practice on this shit. Basically, they make legacy controllers for PC. So, good shit, good shit. Why use legacy controllers instead of good controllers?

The arc of the controller has been that of total progress. I mean, listen, you know, you know the answer to this already, but it's like, for people that have been playing Melee for years, you know, like and playing Smash for years, I get it. It's like it's just, it's in the bones at this point. You know, I understand. Most importantly, I would single-handedly fund, if possible, on Kickstarter, or to these people or directly or whatever the fuck it would take. A Xbox classic to USB converter that can handle all of the inputs of the Steel Battalion controller.

If I could convert that into... Well, that's its own beast. If I can convert the Steel Battalion controller into something that I can plug into my computer and then play games that are actually working and dedicated to using it, then I would fucking... Like emulated Steel Battalion. Someone was saying, I heard someone post and say that there's people got it working with like other games with some heavy modding, but I didn't look into it, so I'm not sure where that's at. That would require some doing.

But it feels like such potential wasted to not be able to plug that into a computer and just go crazy. Because at the bare minimum, you would be able to use something like Joy-To-Key to map every keyboard function and then create the type of movement you wanted in whatever insane game. So yeah, so yeah, we will see. You know what? Elite Dangerous, Steel Battalion plus VR. Yeah, that would be pretty rad. Apparently, it is actually possible.

Oh, really? I think that's what I was being told. Someone figured it out. More information is required. I just realized there is one thing I unequivocally love about the PlayStation's share button. I love it. And that is when I start playing a game and the intro cutscene starts or like a cut or like a big spoilery cutscene starts, right, and I'm recording it or streaming it and the message comes up,

goes PlayStation has blocked capture of this scene and I'm like, oh, that's nice. Oh, that's good. Uh-huh, you're gonna, oh, look at you, ah, it's cute, like the smugness is good on that. Well, clearly, you're using the PlayStation share feature to play Player Persona 5, aren't you? Obviously. Otherwise, blocked content wouldn't be able to be displayed. So, I'm going to go ahead and do that. Obviously, otherwise, blocked content wouldn't be able to be displayed.

Reminds me when like the PS3 would tell you, hey, you can't run this DVD or Blu-ray with HDCP on and I'm like, dude, tell me about that again. Yeah, exactly. So, I used to have that like every once in a while to like, oh yeah, I gotta turn this on to watch this or that or whatever the fuck and God bless the fucking stripper splitter, you know, because it was a third birthday is actually where the problem arose. Couldn't do third birthday without it. Yeah.

Third birthday, the Vita TV, fucking HDCPs and you can't remove it. The only time I ever actually used it for work, you know, for real purposes was the Black Flag machinima video because that was recorded and came out before the PlayStation 4 update that allowed you to turn off HDCP and other people who were doing their Black Flag videos, a lot of them were back to pointing cameras at their televisions and our video looked like a real video because fuck that shit. It was an extra crazy moment because Sony had explicitly said, oh yeah, we're going to remove this.

It's just not out yet. Fuckin' bullshit. Right. Saints Row 5 in development. Yay, those are good. Volition has been at it and there's a Saints Row, the third remaster being done by Spirit. That game is good. Game's done by Spiritsoft, but they will reveal Saints Row 5 this year.

That's all we know. Seems like they're taking their time. I wonder if it has time travel because they really fucked that universe up. I mean, isn't that the whole point, though, that there's no limits to what we can do with Saints Row? Yeah, so that's pretty cool. That's going down. Oh yeah.

Okay. Well, there's two other quick things here. One, we're talking about controllers and peripherals and whatnot. There's one more peripheral-based story, but it is someone is making a switch pinball accessory that you can, so you plug this into the USB-C slot on your switch and then you can hook up your switch to play vertically and you can play a couple of different pinball games with it and it's fucking cool. Like, it actually seems to work really well.

You strip the Joy-Cons off and then you can basically play a far east pinball, seems to be the people that are making this. And if you're a big fan of pinball games, it's perfect for the format and the screen size. I love pinball games. I think that's super cool and it adds basically a button to the left and right at the bottom side and then it adds two buttons to the underside if you were holding your switch with pinball orientation. Very cool.

That's super weird. But I mean, that's probably the best accessory type of thing you're going to get for pinball in years outside of doing something ridiculous with your monitor that rotates or anything like that. The switch without Joy-Cons on it is perfect for docking into a controller setup like this. So yeah, you just put it sideways and then you plug it in and then you can play your fucking pinball games, dude. What a rad accessory. What a rad accessory.

I wish I had a pinball machine. Yeah. I'd kill for some Black Knight 2000. Oh yeah, I've got... That's... When I went to Galloping... Try and get one of those. When I went to Galloping Ghost and I was like, do you guys have Black Knight 2000?

And the dude just looked at me like, what the fuck is this baby's first pinball outing? Of course we have Black Knight. Yeah, of course we got Black Knight 2000. Stupid question is that. It was like, yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Not only... It's a stupid question, but it's also like the only question that matters kind of thing.

In a way. In a way. So, uh, that's going down. What? Breaking news. I couldn't understand... I couldn't understand why everyone was yelling NASCAR. So then I googled the word NASCAR.

And then I... Oh, I didn't see this. This happened one hour ago. Uh, breaking news. Breaking news. Hey, hold on. Before you have a breaking news, I have a different breaking news about NASCAR. Did you know that when you're riding around in a NASCAR car that cars are loud

and it's difficult to hear what people are saying when they're driving? It's true. Well, what happens when cars aren't loud? I am scrolling violently for footage. I'm scrolling... Oh, you want footage? Violently for footage on this. Where is it?

Come on. Someone will send it to you, buddy. Somebody will send it to you. Yo, full-throated? Okay, here we go. No, no, no one's... No one's got the footage. All right, we'll take you from CBC Sports.

NASCAR star Kyle Larson suspended without pay after using racial slur during virtual race. Kyle Larson was competing in the live iRacing event on Sunday night. The racial slur was heard during a microphone check with his spotter. He was suspended indefinitely by NASCAR without pay by Chip Ganassi racing on Monday for using a slur on the live stream. He said there's no excuse for the comment. NASCAR ordered Larson, who was half Japanese, to complete a sensitivity training course before he's eligible for reinstatement.

So I'm on the NBC News website and I've discovered a slightly more incredible piece of context. So, yes, one, he was talking to his spotter, right? Who's a white guy? And he goes, you can't hear me? And then just blurts out the hard R. His fellow drivers in the chat were stunned with one instantly saying, quote, Kyle, you're talking to everybody, bud. Wally, what are you playing?

The audio, apparently. Do not play news footage or ESPN footage into this podcast. It's not ESPN footage. It's a fucking clip off of YouTube. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Can I, hold on. I can say it, but I can't play it.

Actually, on Twitch, you can't say it and people have been banned for it, so you don't want to. Y'all are going to want to be careful around Dokapon then because that got heated. Also, this is just saying that for months now, when things escalate between Reggie and I, it goes where it goes. That has been a thing. So whatever. All right. Well, I'm just warning you, regardless of race or context, you can totally still get banned for

dropping along the street. In this case, I heard the reactions more than I heard the actual thing, but interesting. Can we get a, can you, can you, can you, is this, is this fertile ground for you to make a new rolling start video? I think the age of rolling start is past. There is an NPC that pops up in Dokapon Kingdom. He's a, he's a mole and he's got a drill and he drills to make your towns more valuable. His name is Mitch Digger.

I swear to God, his name is Mitch Digger. That's that. Come on. All right. It's, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's, you know, you got to be, you got to be careful. You got to be careful with these, with these characters in these games. You know, I think I called him a niche bigger. Yeah.

Yeah. So in any case, um, wow. Okay. So that's what's happening in NASCAR. You know, last week we got a rage quit and then a dude lost a sponsor as a result of it. Uh, it turns out, it turns out, it turns out cars are loud that, uh, NASCAR will continue to be in the news, uh, reset the clock. You know, I gotta say, that's two, I am shocked. That is, that's right there, that NASCAR drivers would throw tantrums and drop the hard R.

I am sure yet. Are you really? I'm so, I'm not that shocked. I was being facetious. Damn. I thought it was pure like the world of Ricky Bobby. It was, it was not, I thought it was like the world of Ricky Bobby. You know, we learned so much from Talladega nights.

I should rewatch that again. Don't you put that evil on me, Ricky Bobby. All right. Well, now's the twist in the turn, actually more like it was a left turn followed by a left turn followed by a left turn. Hey, we're back to where we started. It's crazy. Speaking of racing. Last story of the week here is going to go to Hot Shots Racing is a 60 FPS arcade racing on the switch.

So there's this game called Hot Shots Racing that is a hot-shot racing. Hot Shots Racing that for a second I was like, is that 90s arcade racer? Is it finally happening? And then upon closer inspection, it is not 90s arcade racer. It is a low poly high frame rate racing game. So, yeah, it looks like games that the user in reboot plays. It looks like a high frame rate version kind of like in between like Need for Speed 3 and like VFX or like Stunt Tracks. Looks like an episode of Race Wars waiting to happen.

Yeah, it does. It does look like an episode of Race Wars. Yeah, Pursuit Modes. Fuck yeah. The original Need for Speed Hot Pursuit. It looks cool. I like the low poly cars. The 60 FPS definitely kind of makes you go like, whoa, it's my brain is seeing old, but I'm getting like, you know, new feel. Yeah, it's a strange moment when you look at the trailer for it.

But yeah, Hot Shots, Hot Shots Racing is what it's called. And it just really reminds me about the tragedy of 90s arcade racer, you know. Which to this day is still listed on the Nicalis website as coming soon. Fucking whatever. And the other tragedy of Drift Stage, which, you know. Like, I miss Drift Stage. Like why are nostalgic racing games cursed? Why?

Because racing games are cursed in general. But these ones in particular, these throwbacks that happen to, you know, I care, I don't care that much about many racing games. There's a lot that go by that I'm, you know. But the ones that hit that era that I'm super all in for, shit goes bad. Shit goes bad. You know, seems like those two games in particular, Drift Stage and 90s arcade racer are just like. Man, remember R4? Oh, that was a great game.

Remember Burnout? I remember Burnout. Remember the Crash Breakers? I do. Take some questions. Take some questions. All right. Let's send emails and then we'll be talking about FS7 a little bit.

If you've got a question, you can send it into CastleSuperBeastMail at gmail.com. That's CastleSuperBeastMail at gmail.com. Let me get some water. I'm just going to, I'm going to leave it running. Let me just get some water. Can I get some water? No. No, I will not get some water.

I'm going to get some water. You get some water. I am going to stand up though. Wait, no. Oh, geez. Okay, no. I didn't think he was going to leave. I thought he was going to keep it going.

All right, then we'll just take, I'll hit the break button. I thought he was going to keep talking for a second, but now he's gone. So now we're hitting the button, guys. Okay. There we are. Sorry about that long delay. I had to pet my cat and then I had to go pee and then I saw Peach Saliva and had to give her a smooch. Okay.

I worked out. Yes. I got my water. I'm glad. Let's take some, let's take some letters. Okay, let's do it. Okay. So that one coming in from Alec, excuse me, Frank says,

Dear Castle play at 1.25 speed cast. High bodily fluid disaster speculators. Holy since he mentioned toying before. What's to to what's what do to do to make sure each setup has all the DLC or unlockable characters? I assume multiple setups means buying each DLC item for each setup. But what about stuff that's only unlocked via story modes, the time investment for that seems insane. Sure does. So what is the secret?

Well, quite frankly, sorry, what is happening? What do you mean? Why are we in emote only mode? Oh, I put them all in emote only mode because they were all starting to talk about FF7's ending. Seriously? Oh, yeah. And Mothman was like, I'll put you in emote mode if you guys don't behave. And I'm like, I'll put them in emote mode.

Fuck them. No control, no self control. Yeah. All right. In the box. Anyway, so to answer the question, the there is no there is no fucking quick and easy here. What to do is pray, pray that the game has a quick unlock feature like shovel night showdown does where you just put a code in for an unlock or pray that there is a memory card duplicate duplication ability or a save ability that you can unlock shit with or something because in most cases nowadays on modern consoles with profiles, you're just unlocking them all manually. And part of being a to means you're going in and sitting down and you're seeing people grinding out at each setup to get characters.

This is not an uncommon sight and smash. This is not an uncommon sight back in the day with Street Fighter. This is not an uncommon sight with any games where you just you got to go through a bunch of matches to get everybody like you sit down and you fucking do it. You know, it's it's exactly sounds like shit, dude. It sounds like it sucks ass. It totally does. And that's part of being a to part of being a to you got to go set. You got to you got to you got to go sit down at every fucking setup and just unlock everything. And I think I think being a to sounds like shit except for when you get to go.

I think my friend one. Yeah. And you think you think that's it's bad. Imagine the setups where you got to get Jill and Schumagorath from Ultimate Marvel three because they're DLC only from Marvel three regular edition. Are they not delisted in currently they are and they were at the time. Yeah. Yeah. Sick. So these are like time sensitive specific characters that that came from the roster of the last game and the update to this game doesn't automatically include them because fucking whatever it's it's it's a purchase that's separate.

So yeah, you just get these weird things of popping the disk in in modern context and getting, you know, characters missing for that bullshit. Awesome. Not on the disk of either game. Download only, you know. It sucks. That's the question. That's the answer. It sucks.

Great. Got one coming in here from brass fist. That's a cool name says dearer sea lion slayer and naked shit explainer. Recently I had the immense joy of purchasing doom eternal. No spoilers. And it's been an utter blast to play. I reached a point in the game yesterday where I was having civic serious difficulty with a new set of enemies and I looked at strategy up. Q 45 minutes of me resetting all my keys training for the new layout and behold I can now switch between half my arsenal by plinking a few keys and can melt most enemies in an instant.

It was a big labor and required a lot of thinking but it was enjoyable to upgrade me the player as opposed to grinding for better loot in the game. However, this is to seemingly destroy the challenge of the game at my current difficulty. Are there examples where you learn techniques that trivialize the challenge without upgrading or grinding skills? Love y'all. Stay healthy from brass fist. One of the really good examples that ties in FF seven is you play the darts game, right? Yeah. So I was showing off and people at home can can live can see this is that there's an easy way to win at those games that give you really

shaky aim and particularly there's a specific type of shaky aim that is given to you in a lot of games, particularly the dark games in which the game the reticle has a lot of inertia. It wants to pull back to center. So you have to keep your analog stick like dead center, right? Super super stable. And the trick is really simple is that instead of using one thumb, use your thumb and your index finger. Push it with your thumb, but you keep the index finger on it so that it maintains its exact position. Oh, that's cool. Okay.

Doing that trivializes all of those types of games. Oh, wow. I got a six dart leaderboard thing. So I was able to get it, but I got seven, but I was able to use that thing and got it on it on my first try. Whereas I knew a friend of mine was like, it took me an hour, but I finally beat wedges score. And I'm like, haha. Cool. Add the thumb.

So he's basically pinching it with the top index finger in the bottom thumb in order to top index fingers on the top and bought and the thumbs on the bottom. And that gives you way more control because you're so much stronger and more precise than the things own resistance. So you're holding the thumb stick like a nipple. Basically. Well, I'm kind of you're tweaking it like a nipple. I wouldn't say that you're using your that's not using your your thumb and index finger. No, yeah, you did it. And yeah, to answer the question, I think that's rad.

I'm a big fan of that. I think I love that. That's what you did. I like games where you have to get better experience wise as opposed to the the actual, you know, grinding sort of route. And, you know, there's a couple of games like that were like, like I said, I think a hell blade is one where you get all your moves right away. You just got to learn to learn learn the combat system in and out. I dig that. I dig that.

Very cool. We'll see how do maternal goes for me. It's good. Mm hmm. You play with a controller. Because it works just fine on controller. Yeah, I played 2016 on ps4. So then you'll be then you'll be playing eternal on ps4 as well.

We got one coming in from Seth. He says, Dear Pat upon an Woolworth gearing up to play some ff7r and it got me thinking about my experience with the original. Final Fantasy 7 was my first JRPG and my experience playing with such a dialogue heavy game with no voice acting. Naturally, as I played, I began having voices in my head for each character when I read their dialogue. Cloud sounded like a deeper, cooler version of my several year seven year old self. Barrett was Mr. T and so forth. Upon seeing Sephiroth for the first time, his silver long hair reminded me of Raiden from the first MK movie. So in my head, he sounded like Christopher Lambert.

Oh man. That's awesome. That's crazy. As these characters would develop their own voices later in the works, the old voices in my head will eventually be replaced. But to this day, when I revisit ff7, I still give Sephiroth a deep raspy rattle of Christopher Lambert from Mortal Kombat. What voices have you created in your head? I think for ff7 as a really good example, mine were all pretty close to what they eventually ended up going with with one glaring, sorry, two giant glaring exceptions.

For whatever reason, for red, I always interpreted him as barking and growling like Scooby-Doo. And the party just could understand him. Okay, okay. And I sure as ff thought that Kate's, Kate's sheet hit, whatever the ff, Kate's death, had like a whimsical voice, but I did not expect him to have like an Irish Brogue near unintelligible accent that Advent Children gave him. Not to be like old man-ish, you know, like more of just like a cute little animal kind of sound. I think the voice acting in the new seven is perfect, especially Arith, in that she sounds like, hi, I'm so sweet, okay, later I'll bite your penis, like just like the kind of pretend princess that's actually horribly, horribly evil.

So yeah, there's some good ones, definitely. We'll definitely get further to seven. But I think, to me, Samus' voice is just ripply. Oh, hey, hey, you want to know what I think Samus' voice sounds like? Do go on. I'm going to do an impression. Are you ready? I'm ready.

Okay, here's my impression of what I think Samus' voice does and should sound like. Can you do it without saying the word baby? I can, I can. Okay, is everybody ready? All right, here we go. Starting now. Gotcha. Wasn't that a good impression?

Gotcha. I think I did an admirable job. What about the Master Chief, though? John talks? I mean, Master Chief's spoken his first appearance on screen ever. So, I mean, he sounds like Master Chief. Sounds like John Halo. Link is Viral forever.

Forever. Yeah. I'm going to go ahead and, yeah, I say, like, I just imagine ripply. I just imagine ripply. Yeah. They should have got Sigourney Weaver. Sigourney Weaver and Samus would have been incredible. It would have been incredible.

But not change any of the dialogue. Like, have Sigourney Weaver read the other M lines? Hmm. Oh, that would be so bad. Oh, man. We got one coming in from Fugov. Fugov says, do you guys get the money if I download the podcast? I haven't missed a single cast, but I don't know how monetization works with this crap.

It's pretty simple. It's like there's ads on the podcast. So if you download it and listen to the audio version, then it makes the number go big. And when the number go big, then they go, hey, big number, listen to ad, therefore, good. Yes, that's pretty much it. That's it. Listen to the audio, people go, yeah. And that's it.

Just make sure to download it from an official source. They like when the number go up. And you can make the number go up on, you know, switcher, switcher, stitcher. That's a totally different thing. See that? Stitcher, iTunes, the SoundCloud, literally CastleSuperbeast.com, the Libsyn page, Spotify. There's a million different locations you can go for it. So yeah, you just do it there.

You just do it there. And then it's good. Joe says, dear CastleSuperbeast, long time e-mailer, first time correction e-mailer. A couple of weeks ago, you mentioned the roguelike, super giant, Hades, and will erase everyone's progress when it hits version 1.0. I mentioned how a friend, in fact, kind of how to a friend, blah. Afterwards, I mentioned to a friend how this kind of killed my desire to keep playing it. And I was surprised to learn that they're not doing that. There's no big save reset planned.

Everyone's going to keep their progress. Looks like I was mistaken. That's good. That's good news. Good thing it's the first time. Save, saved. And lastly, we'll take this one here. And then we can definitely spin it into...

Getting on that FF7 shit. Yeah. So one coming in here, a call from Heartless Spade says, Aerith is a creep. Dave here. You know, like, what am I going to read? I read the name, and then I get another name, and then who knows. Dear CastleSupervirus, in the spirit of FF7 remake coming out,

I want to share the observation of Aerith. In Crisis Core, she got a date by cashing in a favor. They go on a date where Zack doesn't show much romantic interest, but then goes extra when Zack disappears. Now, our all-knowing perspective aside, from her view, he basically ghosted her. Then she proceeds to send 89 letters over four years in an era where emails exist. Then in the OG game, when you're going on the Barrett date,

it seems like you're trying to get rid of her. She just tags along. You tell her you don't need her help, but now I'm coming with. She shows you her way and tells you, go home, and now I'm going too. Seems she can't take a hint. Where's Steven? You try to sneak out of her house, so she won't follow, and she's standing next to the exit saying,

where are you going without me? Does she have a stalker personality? And don't forget that on top of her local playground, she's like, wow, you look just like my old boyfriend. Hot. Let's do it. Well, there's definitely... Clouds like, and Clouds like, uh...

There's definitely the same hand of God that grabs Yukari and pushes her towards you in P3, is wind in the sails of Aerith. The SS Aerith is being blown forward over all fucking waters. The problem with that has always been that I don't know anybody who ever liked Aerith more than Tifa. Oh, they're out there. I'm sure they exist.

But like my long-term experience, both with the old and the new, was like, yes, I get it. You're very pure. You're very sweet. Get out of my face. I want to go get drunk at the bar with Tifa and her Tiffos. Yeah, so if you add the context of Crisis Core to the situation, then it definitely makes it seem different from... Your brain autocompletes and says, oh, couple, right?

When you're just playing the source material, you go, yeah, this guy was before and they were a thing. They were an item. But if you're going to go with the... If you're going to go with what you see based on the compilation series, expansion games and expansion lore. I forget who brought it up. It might have been Paige or it might have been somebody in the chat,

but like the way Aerith acts now is like she's one of those chicks that's like, ooh, I just love a man in uniform. Like, just like a military lady, like just crazy about the uniform. Like, ooh, that soldier look with the purple. And the mom's basically just like, oh, another one, huh? We're doing this again, are we? Ha, look at that.

Really gets my life stream going. Well, anyway, that is a funny interpretation of it, especially given the emails, the letters afterwards. Yeah, that does get a little bit creepy if you frame it that way. Yeah, it's just, what's canon and what's not? Is your brain's ghost relationship that they had canon? If so, then it's fine. But if they didn't have the kind of relationship you would assume

would allow for that many letters to be appropriate, then it starts to get like, ooh, that's dicey. That's dicey. Anyway, so with that, we're going to wrap it up here. Go check out our channels. Yeah, do that. You got Woolly versus, like I said, we got the stuff going. It's firing on all cylinders right now.

I'm really happy. All three games we're playing through are really great, and people are enjoying them for completely different reasons. Black Mesa, Dukapon Kingdom, and Kotor 2. I guarantee you're going to like at least one of those three, if not all of them. So give it a gander over on Woolly versus on YouTube. Baton passed.

The passing of the baton. Uh-huh. Hold on. What is? I thought you just sent me a message. It was someone else. So we're talking about FF7 now? Do you want to plug your shit?

Yeah, I guess. It's Pat Starr's at. Okay. All right, so we're going to be discussing the Final Fantasy 7 remake up until Aerith's house. Pretty much. So that's everything up. Nothing after that.

Everything before that. And we're going to start discussing this in five seconds. Four, three, two, one. Okay, so now we're in spoiler talk. FF7 remake. All right, so for my own purposes, I'm really glad that I put the chat in an emote mode long ago. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, good call because you can't, you can't trust one guy. You can never trust one guy. One guy is the worst. Um, obviously the game is incredible. It's fantastic. So far, at least. It's quadruple.

What can you, what will you do? The additions that I've encountered so far have all nailed it. Uh-huh. Uh, everything to do with going to hang out with Jesse's mom was incredible. Uh, Jesse is the thirstiest bitch that has ever lived. Jesse's mom has got it going on. And then you find out that Jesse's a theater kid and you're like, uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Um, clouds, constant new dialogue options are bang on and hilarious. I started to squeal with laughter at wedge telling him like, oh, come on, bro. And the cloud just jumping off going like, I'm not your bro. Yeah. It's like, like he is such a petulant, weird asshole. Cloud's character has never come through more clear than in this game. And like I'm constantly laughing to the point of near tears. I've talked a lot about, um, what can you do to make a version of this character that

will like not shatter everyone's childhood brain versions of the character, but just leave you with a guy that people kind of like, yeah, or like, yeah. Okay. I like that guy. And so far, I think they're nailing it. I really do feel, um, his like stubbornness to, to be social. Like at like, he wants to be cool. And aloof.

And aloof. Exactly. And to him being cool means doing the cool thing, but it also means saying the cool thing. And it also means not high fiving when someone holds their hand out to you. It is a, it is a. So that is a woolly. The high five is a whole thread. Like, like, it's a whole journey.

You've only seen a piece of it. It's so like straight up like, dude, are you, are you don't leave me hanging? You know, and he's like, no, cool guys leave you hanging. I think the one that got me the best is when the old lady is like, assuming you have the skills to pay the bills and he like insta blurts out in like this annoyed tone. Like, I've got skills. Like, yeah, it is the picture perfect encapsulation of the imitation of cool. Yeah.

And to be instead of actually being cool and think about someone that hot going through life, right? You have to imagine like he's definitely thinking that he's can do more than he's capable of in a social context. I is is dead on with her adorable girl next door. Perfect in every way. Everything. Everyone's laying it on thick, but you can believe it because you're cloud.

Yeah. Everyone is smearing it on smearing it with the fucking pulp, but you're cloud so you you can believe it going out of their way fully insane. Okay. So well, so to keep talking about cloud a little bit. Okay. You want to say, okay. No, I was just going to say that like with the with the so far, you know, the character,

the characterization where it's like, clearly, he clearly you're on a journey of softening him up, right? Yeah. Clearly you're on a journey of getting him to be more, you know, like part of the gang and wanting to go along and like, you know, the fucking sitting at the bar while avalanche is is celebrating is like, oh, yeah. Time to go asshole, you know, like avalanche, excuse me, it's celebrating and you're just like fucking now you get to feel it, right?

But there's definitely that little stubborn under under belly that is always into the just like, no, I'm cool. I don't mind whatever. I'm the coolest one here. I don't care. That's how cool I am. And and the thing is we would always do that making fun of like cloud in these and in before this game came out a hundred percent.

But now you're seeing that tone in evidence, evidenced in the game and it's perfect. And because of that, you know how you would interpret in the past where he just like put his hand on his head and look down and just be like, oh, you know, now you're getting those moments like full scenes as full scenes. Exactly. So Eric fucking throws some dumb joke on you goes, oh, God, you're killing me, you know, or Jesse's like hanging off of him and he's like, Jesus, you're fucking desperate, aren't you?

No promises or not going to happen. No promises. Yeah. So if you if you go not going to happen, Jesse's like, too strong. Okay. I guess I'll have to switch up my approach then. Oh, that's good. I like that.

Yeah. So yeah, there's so that's great about cloud. What I like about Aerith so far is that like exactly the whole like, you don't need to protect me. I can do my own thing. Right. She says a lot of that in battle. She's really sarcastic and flippant.

But she's also like she's sarcastic and flippant while somehow still being naive and earnest. You can definitely tell that like there's a moment where the naivete is an act, you know, and so she's climbing the ladder and she's like, I can do this on my own, whatever. And then he's like, oh, yeah, okay. And then the ladder cracks and falls underneath her and she goes, shit. There's a perfect line read about like 25 minutes from where you are right now, Willie, in what you're doing side quests for people in that little some area. And she she says that like, see, you're starting to, you're starting to get the hang of this.

People are liking you more. And he goes, it's a job's a job. I mean, I did it for the money. Like some people must do it for fun, I guess. And she goes, hi, I'm some people and just stares at him and he just stares back. And it's like, yes, that is snippy, snippy, snippy. But like the sarcasm is always like sugary sweet. That's interesting because one cloud is definitely the hero of pay me more than ever before.

We used to talk about Link being the hero of pain. You shake down children. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like she was much, just like, you can hear it in her voice that she's like, OK, so, we're good for the money. Don't worry. I hope you don't mind the exposure part of this that we got to go through first though.

Sorry. You know, and like, it's a bit more, and he's just like, jammed job job. They do a job of making her like sympathetic and adorable and sweet and all these nice things, but also as being the one member of the team that might not be down for hardcore terrorism. Hmm. And here's the problem is if you're going off of the that old Tifa, can you do me a solid can you do me a solid cloud?

Right? Yeah, you're going off of that thing. We're just like, come on in. Come on, get in. Get roped up in fucking eco terrorism. What are you signing up for? And then you're seeing that she herself exactly is like, I don't know, right? And we really need to blow them up, guys.

And the reason why that's especially a breath of fresh air in this in this context is, you know, you were always fucking terrorists, right? But here you get to follow through and see like the massive explosion where the bomb should not have been that big. And then as it kills a bunch of I thought we were going to see like a steel beam through like a baby carriage. Yeah. Well, you walk through the town afterwards.

Yeah. All right. And then the town is fucked. The town is completely fucked, right? And of course, it's not they're doing it's pure Shinra, right? But yeah, you approach a while and like at first you as you get out of the area, you're not fully in the city yet, but you kind of see if things are fucked up. And then everyone goes, Oh shit, what?

That's not right. And like the realness kicks in, right? And then long thread of like, dude, we got to fix the bomb. I can't do this again. Well, not even that. Just I'm talking about in this pure moment where they get out of the fucking reactor. Oh, yeah. And then they're all like, Oh my God, what the fuck is this isn't right?

And then Barrett goes, Hey, hey, no, I'm the one that's going to carry your load, you know? And then you want to get rid of that fucking pizza, then follow me, you know, he picks it up, right? He takes, he sees that moment of like actual reflection and goes, no, no, no, no, no, I'm here to pump you up. This is it. We're doing the right thing. And it's totally like, absolutely how you take a moment of like, what the fuck are we

doing? And you turn it into like, yeah, okay, yeah, totally. And they all get motivated, right? And it's like, okay, what was Barrett's deal in the original? The thing with Barrett is, is that unlike almost everybody in the team, he is a true believer. True believer. Yeah.

In the cause. Such a true believer that this group is actually a splinter group of real avalanches that got kicked out for being too extreme. Yeah. So now you get to see that fanaticism coming out and picking them up from moments of doubt, right? And dude, think about every fucking terrorism group where you, you can imagine that happening, right?

The one absolutely charismatic, pulling it through a character can convince the others that are like, uh, I don't know. And then, and then it's like, nah, fuck those doubts and fears. Don't worry, man. I'll shoulder all your doubts, all your insecurities. It's on me, you know, and then they're like, okay, and then they get pumped and they're like, yes. Right.

And then Jesse continues to have her doubts because she knows that she's doing the, she's building it. Right. Cloud in the moment, right off the bat goes, what's done is done. It's like you fucked it up. You can't unfuck it. Right. And he's still just like, I don't, I don't care either way.

But very much is just like, uh, it's, it happened and this is where we're at. And like goes for the, like the ethically dubious, you know, response, but he's just like, Hey, man, I'm a merc. That is what it is. You know, and like right off the bat, that's where he is. He's at the point of like, I don't care what the job I'm doing is, right? Uh, there's a, there's a weird little hidden story detail about that, about the job that me and my chat were kept talking about.

And that is the job was for 2000 Gil, right? 2000 Gil. Dude, what is that? Nothing. That's the price of like a single arm band. It's a fucking, uh, uh, bulletproof vest and a bracelet. It's either 20 or $200, right? It's not 2000.

It's not $2,000. So like, it's nothing. You are charging cheap for your eco terrors. Crazy nothing. It's crazy. Nothing. Right. Especially considering the money that you can get from the upper plate, but, uh, uh,

so you get, you get that thing, right? And, and, and so, but I want to say that like if the cloud, if cloud is the viewer is the player and we're, and we're journeying together, he says that what's done is done. We walk into the streets, you get to see how bad it is. You get to hear how bad it is. And then you get to the train station and he goes train station still intact. And then you see people under the bridge and then it just fucking collapses on them. Like cloud stops and watches like a bunch of people just die and you go, oh my God,

this is what the fuck is this done, man, you know, what's done is done. And it's, and it's interesting because now you get to just, you know, you're judging these characters not based on what they did, but based on what they think they did and how they feel about it. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's very, yeah, it's very, very interesting to see. And then right after that, you get your first brand new piece of content, which is an early Sephiroth, uh, flashback, which I think has done really well because the streets start

to turn into Nibelheim. Yeah. Uh, and you get to argue with Sephiroth. You see that alleyway. I'm like, that alleyway is a little too well lit for me to not go down. It sure is. And they're like, oh, we're going back down that alleyway. Um, there is two types of, there are three types of content in Final Fantasy seven remastered.

There is old shit. So maybe it's expanded, but it's like Maco reactor eight. It's what we're doing. You know, bombing run, right? Then there's what I would call remix stuff. So falling, uh, through the church, you get to see a little vision from not cloud who talks to him, right? Or, um, certain Nibelheim flashbacks where you like cloud has the conversation with his

mom about older women, earlier in the game, every, every, uh, every color, sat or desaturation moment that live with texts, you know, the not cloud stuff has been turned into just like a radio noise and it's kind of like little zips and bips and signals. And, um, it's interesting because it's more visual and it keeps, it feels more like these like, you know, I'm the zack headache moments kind of thing, but the text gives you more to chew on in each context. And then there's the third one, which is brand new shit. Yep.

Like new, uh, number one with a bullet is your ghosts. Yep. Number two with a somehow even bigger bullet is flashbacks to things that haven't happened. Mm hmm. Uh, Sephiroth, I'm walking right up at that first meeting with flower girl and just straight up doing the like, we're walking through this moment and I'm telling you what's happening and you're like, wait, what? And then we cut back to playing through it through it.

And I'm like, okay, why are you giving me end of Eva vibes from that moment? There is. Yeah. Okay. So I'm really, so early on, one of the things that really weirded me out was that they say, cloud for the macro reactor five, you're off the team and I'm like, what? Yeah. Yeah.

That's wrong. Yeah. Like that's explicit. It's not like a chain. Like that's incorrect. And then we go through a long cutscene in which ghosts injure Jesse's leg and force. She's off and clouds on and the ghosts correct the otherwise incorrect timeline that is cloud is off the team for the second bomb.

And then we go to the church in which you fight and beat Reno, which is wrong. Yeah. And then ghosts physically drag you into the back so that you can drop barrels or chandeliers on them. And then physically protect Eryth from falling down because she's and in the beginning, remember when she's being surrounded by them, right? So they're like, what are they attacking her? No, not really.

But they're, no, what they're doing, they're corralling her out. They're sheepdog corralling her into being wherever she is and making and make sure that she can't move. Push her from the alley into the street until cloud shows up. Exactly. Meet cloud, hand off a flower. Yes. Now push her back into the alley.

Yes. Yes. Exactly. Oh, somewhere halfway through my first stream when that Jesse or second stream when that Jesse thing happened, I took a dead stare at my camera and said, how do you guys feel about those Ava movies? And then I didn't look at my chat for 20 minutes. Right.

Right. Right. And kept playing. Yeah. But the one that got the rebuild one that made me very convinced of what is actually going on is that when Aerith and cloud touch for the first time, you see a vision of her death. It's like 10 frames.

Did you? But you see. You caught it? You see Holy falling into the water. I didn't catch that. Oh, you didn't? I didn't catch that. So when they meet in the church, he touches like her hand or whatever.

You see her kneeling, then you see water and then you see a green materia falling into the water. Okay. Okay. Like, period. Okay. And that can't be a flashback, but I mean, you didn't even have to fucking a telegraph it that hard because I think Sefi doing the shoulder tap was clear enough.

Well, the other thing I went, he walks back and passed her making reference to a future that hasn't happened yet. Well, I can check the first conversation you have a step in the game. Yeah. Uh, has a really had a really confusing line that I didn't quite understand and, uh, cloud looks at him and goes, you can't be here. You're dead. Yeah, I killed you.

Yeah. And cloud says, of course you did. It's the high. It was the height of our life together. And it's like, cause he doesn't die in Nibelheim. He dies at the end of Advent Children. And do you remember what the last thing he says before he dies at the end of Advent Children was?

What? He says, I'll never be a memory. That's true. He does say that. So there, this is a sequel. This is assuredly a sequel or very literally a remake. It is, um, it is, it is, it is taking the opportunity to give you all the feelings you would get from retell, from remaking a story like this and revisiting it while, and then also going,

we have the liberty to, uh, to coat something new on top of it. So you still get the nostalgia. The nostalgia value is still very much intact, but there's a little bit of something else for you right here. It's your, it's your rebuild. I was overcome with the feeling of calling it like 7.77. You cannot remake. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Yeah. And it, it's all, it's always possible it's not a sequel and these are like visions of a different time or a different universe or a, you know, or the live stream goes to different

places, you know, any particular. But here's the thing though, Pat. Okay. Now that this is potentially what's up and I find that to be very interesting because it's not taking away from the, again, from the nostalgia trip, right? But it's not taking away from the, uh, elaboration on things that needed elaborating, um, whatever is new has a, there's always the risk that it might not be good. So you don't know where that's going, right?

But this is one game and there are more to come. So I've been asked over and over by friends of mine who are like playing it, but they're not as far as I am. Yeah. And they're like, Hey, and so I feel like an insane person. I almost everybody in my discord that I was talking to last night has never played the original. So they can't tell what stuff is new.

A bunch of kids. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh, 24, 25, 26. Okay. Right. And, uh, or didn't have a PlayStation and they're like, Oh, I don't know what's new.

This, this seems pretty crazy. And I'm slight. I'm like, what, what do you think they're going to do for the second and third remake? Do you think they'll be accurate? And I'm like, exactly, exactly, exactly. Like, I, cause like the answer I want to give them is fuck, no, it's not going to be accurate. It's probably going to be completely different. I don't think it, I don't know.

You'll hit up similar locations and certain events will occur, but the direction this shit is on is like, cause you know, it's the kind of thing where, you know, like a timeline stuff where you see a minor change early and that starts to expand, ripple and ripple and ripple and ripple. And then we get the snowball effect. A hundred percent. Right. Exactly.

I mean, it depends cause they are, they have their plan for now and we're looking at what's going on. I fully expect us to see the rest of this trip through those games continue to one hundred percent deliver on the nostalgia, one hundred percent, but also be out of order and different and expand, just go in, in wilder, more different places. And here is my call out. Right. I don't know if we do this, but it would be fucking fascinating if the last game or the

last half of the last game is just new shit, new shit, new shit, new shit, new shit. That would be so interesting. So I've got a, I've got a, I've got a notepad file on my PC on my desktop and the notepad file is called predictions.txt and I'm updating it every stream and I'm not like changing it. I'm going first stream, second stream, third stream. Yeah. Right.

Cause you know what? You do your scatter shot guesses. So that's your fun, but, but here's the thing though. So Sephiroth's behavior is really weird and time liney. So is Aerith's doesn't Sephiroth tell you to help the people. He literally says you have to leave Midgar. You have to survive, save the planet. Save the planet.

Yeah. And it's like stick with Evelynch basically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sephiroth tells you to save the planet.

And Aerith, you got to her house, right? Yeah. There's a line where Cloud snaps at her and goes stop acting like you know me and she, and she waves it off and through the sequence that you're about to do. She is desperate to do anything she can to spend as much time with Cloud as possible and slow him down. Did you walk to the church door? Yeah.

Okay. So you got that line. But remind me, when you land in the bed of flowers, you get up and you walk to the church door where Reno comes in and you get a special line there. Oh, I did not get that. At that time. Okay. So you get up from the bed of flowers and she goes, gee, I guess I got all this time

to help tend these flowers. What should I do? You know, or whatever. And then you start walking away from her instead of talking to her right away. And as you walk through the pews, she goes, oh, I'll just be here all on my lonesome with so much time and nothing to do. And she just trails off and then like you will keep walking and then you hit the door where other cloud is supposed to be.

You hit the door where Zach would be leaning up on the door and you get a voice from behind the door with some question mark, question mark. And it just goes, hey, stick around. We got time. You got nowhere to be. Yeah. Okay. So literally behind the door, he tells you, hey, man, we got nowhere to be.

Stick around from where he's fucking leaning. There's a there's a bit a little further in that, that, that feeds this question. Pure Easter egg. So you know, you know, in the original when you were in sector seven or you're going to sector seven and you're hanging out on the playground and Tifa rolls by in the whore wagon. And that's how you. And then you go, what, what the fuck?

Why is she going to, right? And then you chase after her. And you don't have to get back to sector seven, right? And you go, no, I have to go and find Tifa, right? And you run into Tifa right away. In this one, cloud, you actually talk to her and cloud's about to go back to sector seven. And Eryth is like, no, you have to follow her. You have to go to Walmart.

And wait, don't you, don't you, you follow her and you don't know why she's going. And then later on you find out she's undercover. Yes. But here, like in the original, Eryth tried to like send you off to sector seven and keep her with you and ignore Tifa. And here you're about to leave and she goes, no, no, no, you have to go after Tifa. Don't you care about her? Okay.

You have to go into Walmart. Now here's the problem with this though, right? The idea that Sephiroth and Eryth know what's going on and they're acting as the Ray Ayyanami of this, of this world. The problem with that is that the ghosts themselves, I'm going to call them the reunion ghosts because fuck off. What do you look at them? Right?

They're, they're, I'm going to, I think they're called, I think they're literally called enigmatic spirits. And you're right. Cause you fight, you fight the enigmatic spirit. It's true. The enigmatic spirits are, um, even, I, I, some, somebody might chat, terms them as the anti retcon ghosts. Stop it.

Stop it. Hit Jesse in the knee. Listen, uh, they are also corralling and forcing Eryth to do things and she doesn't understand them. Right? Yep. So they physically pull you into a different room out of your control. They block Reno and his goons from grabbing her while you're up on the roof.

You know, like that's the thing. So, so even if she is no, even if she's more aware than cloud is of something and even if fucking Sephiroth is more aware of the cloud is of something, uh, they are also playing her and she's like not, you know what I mean? She's being, she's at their mercy. She's, is what I'm saying. She's at their whims. There is one other thing that I remembered.

I was going to bring up another thing too. Go ahead. Uh, when, when you're leaving the church, yeah, you, Eryth points out that you can see the wall. Yeah. And she says, you know, I've never felt like leaving the wall. I'm too afraid to go outside into the world. There's so much to do here.

There's so much I can do here. And also I tend to fuck everything up. I'm like, that is not like that character at all. That is weird. That sounds like she's afraid to leave and go out into the wider world. Did she have lines about, about wanting to get the fuck out in the, in the original original? No.

Okay. It was just, it would, that, that doesn't fit with that personality at all. Um, so about, about our, our retcon ghosts, I think the most important thing about our retcon ghosts is that they give us a fight with them in which you show that they can be killed. And they're physical when they want to be, are physical acting in a physical manner. You can stagger the shit out of them. Yes.

Yeah. Which means that they are not an impenetrable hyper god force. No. They are a mystical push force, right? But they can be resisted and they will waste your time dying. In an area while they get with the job done, when they're doing whatever they have to do, right? Uh, yeah.

So here's the other bit. Now, uh, you go up to your fucking apartment and they're like, by the way, check on that neighbor to the right. And then you go to the neighbor to the right and you're like, what the fuck this early? Right. And you get a fucking, uh, you got a, you got a fucking a Genova clone. Little Sephiroth freak out little, little, little Sefi clone freak. And you're like, what this early?

And then you're like, this guy are sick. Um, and, and, uh, I forgot the number on his shoulder. It was, uh, the guy, I think that guy was like four or maybe nine. Yeah. I think, I think it was nine or something like that. But yeah, it's a shit ton of them. So, you know, but, but like I was like really, I was like, hmm, here right now, you know, and then, and then the first thing I thought when I saw that is like, okay, so reunion

theory off the jump is your next door neighbor is put in place to sit next to you. Just naturally end up in the same location. It's going to happen. Stand users are drawn together. I've run into another one as well by this point and they, it's just like, it, it does feel very much like stand users. It's like, yeah. How did that?

How did I happen to happen to run into this 49 49? That's it. Yeah. Reunion theory. Right. That's it. It's just, it's, it's, it's doing it. It's doing it.

So, um, uh, so you get all that right now, all this new shit aside, there's still a couple of old things that are like, um, fun and we're talking about, and then there's, then there's the expanded shit, as you said, right? It's not brand new shit. It's just expanded and it could have been there. I think the funniest one of those is that the, um, in the Macco reactor five assault, uh, the, the artificial sun room was one screen in FF seven. It was one screen in which you climbed up a lot.

You ran down to the left and then you climbed up a ladder and went into a vent. Now it's the longest dungeon I've played so far. It's like an hour and a half. I took longer because I, I, I retraced my steps to get all the secrets. Yeah. Right. Uh, okay. So, uh, I'm going to talk about a little bit more about that specifically in a second.

Uh, I wanted to address the fucking dweeb in the room that is rush. Is he not the biggest fucking loser you've ever seen? So Roche is awesome. He's such a fucking tart. So here's the thing. Here's the thing about Roche. I look at him and I go, man, there's something with the soldier program that makes you go crazy.

Like, like every single person that comes out of that program is mentally unstable. Like his weird way of talking on the bike is already just like, uh, what do you, like are you going for, uh, uh, like I'm a weird, like he's going for like, I'm a street hog guy. I'm a motorcycle guy, but I'm also like a pop, not pop. What's the word? Um, like fucking prissy high society. I can tell you exactly what Roche is.

Roche is, it's the one problem I have with the game and that is the game totally occasionally does feel, it's still good, but it feels like actual like Naruto filler. Like that guy is a anime villain of the week in a filler episode and he does not matter and he will never return. And you know, the, the guy I thought you were going to talk about was Chad Lee. No, not easily. Chad Lee is hilariously, bizarrely inserted. Chad Lee is the weirdest thing ever.

It's nothing. What a strange fits. Nothing. He is a creature. Chad Lee is a creature. I don't know what the fuck is going on with Chad Lee. Uh, I get nefarious vibes though. He scares me.

He has a VR machine, man. Chad Lee scares the shit out of him. You know what Chad Lee is? He looks like an NPC out of the Yakuza series. Hmm. Is that a butterfly on his shoulder? No, it's a, it's a fucking bandana. He's tied to be bizarre.

Okay. Okay. So there's that. There's, um, uh, God, what's his name, uh, the fucking, the kid you got to save? Not Johnny. Yeah, Johnny. Johnny. Johnny.

Yeah. Okay. It is Johnny. Yeah. There's Johnny who's just big old fucking idiot and he walks into the back and then on the way into the back, he's like, oh, it must have been Jesse. She must have, and you're just like, ah, the worst, the worst, it's Phantom Thieves all over again.

Yeah. And you get a, you get a really good moment where it's like, it shows off that's like implicitly like cloud has not been back for a while, Tifa is not used to his new personality. And what better way to show that than the fact that cloud was willing to just murder this guy for nothing. For the betterment of the gang that he doesn't even really care about. So he goes straight to, he's a talker, right? Which is the same, same as big in the beginning of the game when he's like, um, uh, what's

done is done. Whatever. People died. Daddy cried. Inky, picky, punky, you know, and then he goes, he's a talker. And then Tifa's like, Hey, hey, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, right? And we've seen that type of moment happen in, in various fiction before where, you know, like the dark soldier is willing to off the person who is not really in the, you know,

doesn't really need to be killed, but it's just a potential threat. Leave no traces, right? And then Tifa, thankfully goes cloud, you're scaring me. Yeah. Dude, what the fuck, man? You're freaking me out, dude. What happened? What are you?

What happened to you? You know? And then Klaus like, I was in soldier, I was soldier though. You know what else I really love now that we're talking about that because we have so much more dialogue with cloud, particularly dialogue with cloud and Tifa. We have gotten a much more natural extension of, so cloud, what was it like in soldier? It was tough. Hey, hey, you, you traded power for, what was it?

Traded power. Time on the clock. Life. Time on the clock. Time on the clock. Because of this genetic degradation. You knew that, right? Yeah.

I knew that. And Tifa's like, what the fuck? And Roche is like, ah, soldier, huh? What class first? I guess that's why I don't know who you are. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

That's why. Well, he's almost like, yeah, sure you are. You know, whatever. Yeah. They, they, they changed one scene later. So, you know, a cloud and Arith talking on the playground and they're talking about Zach, but they don't actually say Zach. Sure.

In the original, it was, oh, you look just like my first boyfriend. And there was like that flash that denotes clouds being insane. On this one, he actually gets to ask her, her, his name. Oh. And it's got to a, a, a shot of her mouth saying the word. Oh. But there's no sound and it's got the filter on it. Like, like the original moment.

Yeah. And cloud starts to have a panic attack. Yeah. The subject has changed. Yeah. And it's like, okay, well, I'm, I'm, I'm almost there. So. Yeah.

And I'm like, cause it was, it was hilarious. Cause I'm like, wouldn't cloud start to really lose his mind if he actually heard the name. Yeah. Absolutely. And 10 seconds later that happened. And I'm like, oh, perfect. That's perfect. He would start to lose his shit if he heard the name even once.

Because remember that when he actually sees, so that's the thing about the, about the flashback voices now are the, the, the other cloud voices is that the representation of them is actually you see the hand on the shoulder and you see the, the, the, the, he's talking to him in the, in the, of the void, but then he's, and his cloud, he's talking to himself. Of course. Of course he's talking to himself. Right. So, you know, he, who else would he be talking to?

That's what cloud inserts into his brain is he inserts himself right there. You know, this is really fascinating because clouds are protagonist and FF seven was a story with one of the most unreliable narrators ever to almost any game story I can think of. And now we're adding like a whole sub layer of now we can't, we can't trust cloud, but we also can't trust like the story itself. You can trust the ghosts. Yes.

You can trust the ghost. The retcon ghosts know what are, what's what. That's what you can trust. Okay. So the other thing I want to talk about is are the retcon ghosts going to push out reds rocket? We're too far from there. That's, that's late.

It's in the game. That's late. It's in the game. That's going to be late. Fuck it. Hojo. Turn on the cameras. Should I be filming this or?

Yeah, man. Start filming it. Yeah, that's good. It's my fetish. Um, that's science. I mean, ha. So, so, so, uh, the, um, yes. Okay.

So there's a couple of things about this game in general, right? Quadruple. Quadruple. Money out. Money is ridiculous. Well, maybe cause it flip flops between quadruple a and a like the textures in like the slums are hilarious. Dude, I was, but I was about to say the slums are so like well crafted as far as just junk

strewn about it into a landscape has to be a bug. It has to be a texture bug. The slums are like, like there's moments where textures pop. Certainly. Uh, I caught one, but it wasn't in the slums. I caught, I caught a texture pop in, um, around the seventh heaven. I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking like the door to your apartment looks like a PS one game.

Okay. Like it's hilarious. But like, uh, walking through the fucking back church, uh, area with, with Aerith, it's fucking immaculate garbage garbage. Oh yeah. Garbage has never looked this beautiful. There's the, there's the, there's a moment in the town where the kids are playing around this like flipped over car and the undercarriage has all this like vine growth in it.

And it's like, Jesus. So it's crazy. Um, and then at the same time, as soon as you start walking and interacting with people on the overworld and as soon as you start talking to characters and they talk back to you, you feel the FF 15, FF 15 comes out hard, right? Yeah. Anyone who's not a main character is a non main character. Uh, you, when you even like, even talking to shop keeps and talking to like Tifa on,

on the, on the, the overworld though, it does a kind of camera cut that is like, wherever the world is, I'm going to put the conversation cam right here and I'm going to lean in and do this kind of animation as I'm talking and that's an FF 15 thing. You feel it. Yeah. Right. Um, it's like, no, you're going to use the default rigging for conversations. So the animation and camera team are going to go work on the Mako reactor five walk in.

Right. Yes. Yes. Uh, so the other side quest bitches are going to, you're going to use the default shot reverse shot bullshit. So apparently, uh, in 14, this started to become a thing and then 15 has a bunch of this. But the idea of, uh, overchats of chatter of the city where you don't walk up to every NPC and talk to them, they just speak and they have lives that they're living, right?

Ambient dialogue. So I didn't get to experience that much. Um, and I know that there's ambient dialogue yet 15 has it, but I feel like this game goes above and beyond with the amount. Oh, there's so much that's covering like the whole left side of my screen. It's insane. Right. And it literally, it completely replaces RPG, run up to person and talk to them to see

what they say dialogue, because Cloud's not talking to strangers who the fuck is running through a town talking to everybody in a crowd. No one nonsense, right? So it's a Yakuza has been doing it forever where you have ambient crowd dialogue and you just have text boxes pop up and you can start, you can slow down to listen to a conversation that's interesting to you, right? And then occasionally when someone does talk to you specifically, you press the triangle button to get that line directed at you and it's a whole different setup, but everything

of the chatter of the city is just background because yeah, like that, that those days are gone. Yeah. The quality of life that comes from running into the elevator to leave that fucking sunlight area and Barrett's like, Hey, didn't you see some material you wanted to go pick up? I'm like, yes, I did. It's every time. When you have every single time I've gone down the wrong path like, I don't think there's

all that much down here. This doesn't look like the right way to go. Arith, yes, perfect. Arith, literally, you get to a fork in the road and you're like, which one's hard progress, right? You turn left and Arith is like, yeah, this actually, this area is incomplete, leads to a dead end. That's, that's, that's the one I'm literally saying.

So good. Okay. And then all, and then again, and in just in case that's not enough for you, here's the other thing you get. You're looking at the fork in the road, you turn left, the compass at the top of the screen rotates, you turn right, the goal is on the right path. Yeah. So the next trigger point is down there.

So you know immediately, oh fuck, yeah, we're going left. It's, it's so nice to not have to worry about that, you know, there are moments where you're like, hmm, what if I try to leave right now instead of waiting? What if I try to, you know, what if I say this instead of that? What if I do this option? You can explore those things. And there's definitely like a couple of places where you can fuck around with that. But for the most part, the worry of being forced into critical path without getting

everything you looked for is alleviated because the game is telling you, haven't we been on this elevator before? Hey, Cloud, you know where you're going, right? Like I completely agree. Uh, the lights on the stairway, the lights in the subway, the lights on the trains. If it's blue, you're moving forward. If it's red, you're going back, you know, and then of course you stop, you stop and you see materia far in the distance.

And you're like, okay, how do I get there? And then one of those is really far in the distance. Yeah, like, yeah, the sun, the artificial sun one, like that purple one. Holy shit. And it took a second and I'm like, stop, look at the map. Okay. Now retrace and look physically at the platforms and what leads to where. And then you're like, if this all, it's like the game is helpful at that.

I love that. And it's the best. Hey, how about you finish the side quest? You just want to return to the guy who gave it to you and instantly turn it in. Teleport, teleport to hand in your side quest. Yeah, thank you. The quality of life wants to do that is through the roof. And here, here, I have one feature.

I have one feature that to me is, well, how about this, right? The, the background chatter with the NPCs when you have a certain party member with you, if you got T for the go, hey, T for how's it going? Oh, what's up, right? Number one with a bullet. Number one with a bullet. You want to talk about your OCD savers. Okay.

I got one for you. This is from now on. If you're, if your game doesn't do this, fuck your game. All right. The clock that is in the bottom left corner of the screen when you pause the game is your save clock. It ticks as you play. You save, you pause, you walk away, it ticks.

It does what it does. Back in the day when you finished playing a game, you turned the system off and walk away from it. Who cares? Nowadays, you turn a game on, you leave it, you walk away, you go eat dinner, you come back, you suspend it, you do whatever. After I want to say about two minutes of in-game time of not touching the controller, the fucking save clock stops.

Oh, that's nice. So your numbers for game completion are real, are real because it knows you're not playing anymore. That's really the best fucking feature in the world. That's really good. It's amazing. I can't believe we've never gotten this. I can't believe we've come this far into video games and we hold over the

clock running in the background shit from the days of turning the console off. And we've never updated that shit. Go, go to your copy of FF7, pause it, watch that clock, walk away, come back to it, use the bathroom and come back to it. It will turn gray and fucking pause for you because it knows you're not playing anymore. But if you're using the menus and upgrading your materia and doing shit, just moving the menu around, it resumes the clock.

Unbelievable quality of life. I wouldn't have thought that you'd be so into that kind of feature. I hate inflated times from leaving my save gone. I hate that. You know what I hate more? I hate times that are way under what they actually are or that where you're playing and you play, it took you like four days and your completion time is like eight hours and you're like, what?

How is that even possible? What weren't you, what weren't you counting? Like I was playing, you know, like or the steam game that you open up and then you use, then you walk away from and then you close it and then it says, you've been playing this game for 15 days. And you're like, oops. What? That's a problem that's never happened to anyone other than crazy people.

You know, uh, like I, I, yeah, I feel, um, well, okay. No, we're, we're, I can give you a real world example of that is, uh, I'm playing Legend of Bumbo and I really enjoy it. But Bumbo, uh, you cannot pause in the middle of a run, uh, you cannot stop and resume in the, uh, you know, so if you quit, it's done. So when I want to run, but I want to go do shit and come back to it. I just got to leave it running. Um, anyway, the clock stops when you stop playing, man.

Amazing. Game's good. Excited to play more of game. Absolutely. Uh, I can, I can already, uh, taste what I would, I can see why what is going to occur in this game as being controversial. Yeah. Because it's not departure.

It's, it, it's explicitly not what people signed up for. That's a really good way of putting it. Yeah. Yeah. It is like whatever it happens to be, it's going to be like, no, you thought you were getting this, but instead you're getting this and whether or not you even would have possibly liked what that would have been. The fact is, is most people came here for a very specific reason.

Yes. They came here to relive it and that's it. They came, uh, personally, I find this new route way more interesting. It's a fun surprise. Uh, unless it's bad, unless it's bad, it's a fun surprise. So, you know, and, uh, yeah. And I mean, I would, I would even go as far as to say that like, uh, you're, there's going to be people that definitely don't like it just on the

premise because it's like, you know, you're, it's called certainly remake. I waited 24, 23 years for this and it's not even what you told me it was. And I hated every single piece of expanded content. Yeah. I've seen people like that that are just like, I can't stand everything. I can't stand this, this expansion of the store. I just want to see the stuff. I, I know, and it's like, well, then that game would be really short.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, there are, there's definitely fans out there that absolutely are not down with anything besides the core game itself. And like, as of right now, I have greatly enjoyed the expanded narrative. I'm curious. I am, I, they have, they have, they have piqued my interest and I want to know where you're going with this.

Uh, motherfucker, am I correct in when rush holds up his sword and it gleams in the light that that's not the enhanced sword? Uh, enhanced sword specifically being, uh, one of clouds blades that you pick up the one with the, um, no, it's not, it's Zach's. The one that he's holding rush. Yeah. That's, yeah. That's the, that's the blade they give to soldier second class before

Angel gives him the buster sword. Yeah. It's, it's straight up Zach sword. He's hold. Yeah. Okay. Right. Right.

Okay. Cause I'm like that sword, isn't that? Well, yeah. Okay. That's what it was. Right. Okay. Thanks, baby.

Um, orange juice just arrived. Oh, goodie me. Thank you, darling. I guess, uh, yeah. So there's all that just, uh, that we talked about pretty much. Yeah. It's, it seems fine. I think I had one other thing.

Um, I'm sure we'll have more to say next week. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

They're just, um, I like, I like expecting a hard left turn. I like the doubts that Amazon, that Amazon, I like the doubts that, uh, Avalanche, uh, shows when, uh, you know, there, that, that increase. I like the fact that they're more like, okay, doing the right thing. Yeah. You know, right. I like that, um, everyone fucking hates them. Everyone in your immediate surroundings is like assholes.

No more bombings, no more fucking bombings. You jerks. And then on the train, right. You're getting fucking, uh, middle Shinra, middle management. That dude is the bravest. I love that guy. Have we seen, I forget if the trailers show us, Reeve. Yeah.

Okay. He looks good. Okay. Middle management man, middle manager becomes a character and he's standing up and he has recurring moments. And you see him, he stands up for the company to bear it. Yes. Who is the scariest man in the world twice.

And he's in the, he's in the world with his subordinates. Like, okay, when I move up, you guys are moving up too. Yeah. And then he's got his wife and his kid and you're following Shinra, middle management man throughout the story. And I, and I'm like, yeah, man, I'm down for this. I love that guy. It's great.

It's great. Um, anyway, yeah, there's, there's, there's, there's a lot more to go on. But there's, there's plenty to talk about next week. I foresee, I mean, if we're doing retcon ghosts, shit, I foresee a scenario in which something goes off to the point where it can't be fixed. So like someone dies, that's not supposed to, or someone lives, that's not supposed to. I have my suspicions on that second one. Um, and for like a ghost cataclysm to occur, you know?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Cause I remember at first there was, all that shit's happening and you're going like, Oh, we're just expanding with whatever is happening in, in, uh, clouds head. And then it's like, no, this is not in clouds head. No, no, no, this is new. This is, this is, this is new. And when, and when Tifa wakes you up and goes, Oh my God, cloud, it's, it's horrible.

Look, and the whole town is overrun. And you're just like, Oh, this is not real. This is in his head. He's going to wake up. I thought, yeah, I thought it was a dream. He's going to wake up. This is insane. This is way too impactful of a moment.

And then it's like, nah, that's totally real. You're, what the fuck do you mean that's real? And everyone's just in bed, not sleeping through this ghost apocalypse. That's crazy. All right. Um, we don't, we don't, we definitely don't have to do the, uh, the, the, well, depending on where you get to and where I get to, we'll, we'll, we'll see how to address future episodes, discussions.

Mothman says something hilarious in the chat, which is something I actually thought about, which was, what if it's all a dream from his coma trip into the life stream in the wheelchair? Yeah, of course I, that's totally what I thought about that. I like, wouldn't that be bananas? I didn't think about it as the wheelchair coma. I thought about it as within life stream. Shit.

Time fuckery. Yeah. I thought it, to me, I'm like, what if it's within the stream, you know, because there's an element of principers, uh, almost to this where it's like, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what happens. That's not what happened. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm very excited. All right. And that's it for us. I guess that's, uh, that's a fine, that's a fine video game for a fine podcast. Wop, wop. Uh, okay. Well, how many, what's your hour count that, by the way? Right now.

Uh, I streamed it four, uh, seven, six, six. So minus an hour and a half of stream times, let's say 15. Okay. Yeah. Maybe 15 to 20. Okay. Yeah. I'm at, I'm at 13.

So yeah, that's, that's fucking accurate clocks. Thank God. All right. Um, we will leave it there, folks. Uh, have a good one. Take care. And, uh, y'all have a good week. Yeah.