Castle Super Beast - CSB 132: Kai Leng The Hedgehog

Episode Date: August 25, 2021

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Look what's going on! Hello. Hey! Good afternoon. Hi there. How are you? I'm fine. I'm great.

How are you? I'm good. I'm fine. I'm fine. How are you? I'm fine. How are you? I'm fine.

I'm fine. I'm fine. How are you? I'm fine. How are you? I'm fine. Well, then, I guess we're done. We're done.

What do you mean? It's just a little bit of a play. I don't know how many people know about the band. But I think it's a pretty good idea. Hey! Good afternoon. Hi there. How are you and everyone?

I'm doing okay. I'm a little under-slept, but I'm managing. I mean, that's par for the course. Honestly. It's a little more than usual, because of my own volition, but just making a hard read, I said, you know what? Just in case. Just in case.

Let me start and finish Ava 3 plus 1 last night. So I started it at like 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. and finished it at like 6. Wait, is it like three hours long? It's two in a bit. Wow, that's okay. So I just wanted to make sure, you know, in case anything came up. But I understand that nothing will come up. That's right.

Okay. This podcast's long-standing Evangelion fan has not seen the new movie. Okay. Well, then we'll get into that. Never the fuck that happens then. Here's hoping. Do you want to hear any, like, outside, you know, just casuals? Is it good?

Is it a good movie? Better than last movie. Well, that might be the easiest compliment you could ever make about this film. Better than last movie. I've said it before about 3.3, which is like, I appreciate somebody making a movie about how much he hates the people watching the movie right up until the point where it becomes a bad movie. So this is taking what 3.3 gave you and, you know, just giving it some closure.

It's got some good closure, but I don't want to say too much else. I do still, like, and this is something that I think we were talking about 3.3, and we'll keep it on the surface and move off, but, like, a lot of those 3.3 designs are not my favorites. No. No. I'm not a huge fan of the way a lot of those characters look in that movie. I got a question for you.

You remember the end of 3.3 where they did the next time on whatever? Is any of that shit even in this movie? Oh, I didn't. Because none of the two stuff was in 3. I didn't go back to check. I did recaps, but I didn't go back to check the next time on stuff. But that being said, like, taking everything that I disliked about the third movie and, you know, using that as a, like, well, this is a basis.

This is a setting. This is what's going on. As a whole, yeah, I thought this has some pretty good stuff in it. Because, like, the negatives are negatives that are holdovers from the last movie. And the secondary negatives are just, like, questions that I have that might have answers that I didn't pick up on. You know? Yeah.

I'll let you know in three weeks. Yeah. I did watch it late, and I did, you know, have to perk up with some caffeine. But there were some stuff that I was like, I didn't, I don't know why that happened. But okay. So, you know, the experience you're describing is why I have not seen it yet. Because before every single new piece of Evangelion media comes out, I rewatch all of the existing pieces of Evangelion media, which has become a longer and longer process over time that

can be occasionally hamstrung by certain things. Okay. Do you enjoy that process? I love that process. Oh, okay. All right. As long as you enjoy it. As long as you enjoy it.

I've rewatched the 26th episode run, like, every two years since I was, like, 11? Wait, no. In 90s and 12? And every time there's some detail that I'm like, oh, cool. I realize personally that, like, there's two ways you can watch the rebuilds, you know, like one way is when you're watching it for the first time is to just watch it as a movie and see what happens and then think about it later. And then the second way is to watch it and with every moment go, but what does Hideaki

mean? Yeah, I know. I'm not super fond of that, honestly. It's not a great way to watch. I'll take that away at the end when it's all percolating in the head. What was meant to be? I think probably the best example is for whatever reason, it was on my third rewatch when I was like 17 or something, where I finally figured out what the deal with that dude's

hand was because for whatever reason, I didn't fully grasp what was happening when it was shown on screen. Okay. And I'm like, oh, oh, cool. Well, yeah, then we'll get back to that, you know, when the time comes. Really great music, really, really fun listening. Okay, well, besides the conclusion. Aside from that movie of this lifelong franchise.

Oh, do you feel like Anno's done with Eva? I think I definitely feel that. That's what he said last time. I know, I know, but I actually, I actually feel like closure this time, yeah, definitely. But who knows? And up until more, more razors, until he wants the torture himself. Coffee needs to be sold. Yeah.

Well, anyway, that that aside, and, you know, speaking of music, it is my pleasure and delight to inform everybody within airshot that two mellows, memories of Tokyo Toe Future has officially dropped. Oh, it's finally out. It is out as of last fucking night. And I highly, highly, highly encourage everybody go take a peep to the sequel to Memories of Tokyo Toe and listen to what mellow the God has cooked up for us this time. I'm going to go listen to that album.

You should do that. And before you ask anything about it and the previous album and how it feels, I'm going to let you know right off the bat, I need another 10 listens of it for it to really get in to tell you how I how I feel. But OK, so I'm going to ask you an inverted negative question. OK. Did you feel listening to it? Ew, smelly.

I did not feel you smelly. Did you listen to it and say, oh, man, I am wasting my time with this bad music? I did not think I was wasting my time with this bad music. All right, good enough. The anti review is complete. There you go. I will continue to go check it out. Yeah, yeah.

I'm going to need to let it let it percolate in the soul for a bit. But it's a fucking hot one. It's super great. You just said you couldn't talk about it. So it's super great. It's super great. It's super great. It's super duper.

No, I think the discussion you probably don't want to have until you've listened to it 100 times is whether or not it's better or worse than that's exactly what I mean. That's exactly what I mean. There's no question that it's a fucking banger, you know, track after track. But what I really mean is, yeah, the comparison is is like it needs to it needs to sit and percolate in the soul a little bit. That being said, if I can go go peep that shit, support too mellow. And yeah, and perk up your ears.

And you might hear a familiar voice for a second if you are eagle eared, if that makes any sense. You know, well, now we can't take anything you say about the album, like a face value. I know you've been compromised, compromised, vested interest. Just just perk up. Oh, my goodness. Perk up and listen.

Listen to the album. And maybe you might find something, you know. Anyway, I'm exhausted. I don't even know why the dog let me sleep in today. Isn't that I mean, I don't even set an alarm anymore, by the way. I just the dog will tell me when it's time to wake up because he needs to piss. And for one, for literally the first day in like 60 days, he let me sleep in and let me and now I'm tired.

I don't understand. Um, you when you say let you like it almost sounds like it's a conscious decision. Yeah, no, it is. OK, he knows what he's doing. OK, but he absolutely knows what he's doing, letting you off the hook. So aside from a movie you can't talk about and an album you can't talk about, what did you do? Well, uh, I mean.

No, it's I definitely know that the album is fantastic. But what's perfect is as I'm about to be gone for a while, there will be ample opportunity to listen to it in different settings, which is what I often like to do, you know, like such an aeroplane and field. Yeah, exactly. Walking about, you know, doing doing work, transit. These are all different environments to listen to an album you enjoy in. And, you know, some of them have different feelings,

depending on what's going on around you. I can definitely say that the optimal activity. To be participating in while listening to this album would be skating and graffiti. Yeah, obviously. Perhaps even spraying a cop on their back on the ground, you know, you know, I don't think that's what you should be doing while listening to this particular album in this particular time

specifically over your next three weeks. Perhaps not. Perhaps not. That seems like it could become more of an incident than you are bargaining for. Yeah, but but that's that's the that's the that's the activity that you feel you should be doing, you know. I think and I'm sure there's other people that will agree with me, but it's not the optimal way to listen to an album. But it is definitely the best way to listen to an album over and over

and over and over, which is to turn off in game audio and blast the volume while you hit some nightmare grind in game of your choice and go, listen, if I had to grind all this stupid crap in 14 over three days by itself, I would kill myself. But what if there was a nice album in the background to take my mind off of it? I mean, it's either that or you hit the streets, you start skating around. Yeah, you know, you you attack

or you skate around the cop after spraying some shit and then they chase you. And then you remember that as long as you're skating at full speed and you boost, you can't get shot. And then you skate away at full speed and you're here in Jetset, Jetset, Jetset and then a bullet pierces your chest from the back. I was about to say, this is very much seems. I was boosting. I had full boost, though.

Yeah. No, don't do that. Just the smooth sounds. I'm going to tell you guys right now, guide you to the afterlife rollerblading and messing with the police. You want your headphones off. So you can have full situational awareness of oncoming traffic as you make your escape. It'd be a good idea. Anyway, so that that aside, well,

I can tell you what I did. We booted up some fighting games and took a look at what was going on. Get the fuck out of here. Really? I know, right? So shut up, or that's crazy. Oro and Akira are out. They came out at the same time.

Yeah. Well, that's cool. So Oro is pretty much what you would like to see of him in this game. He's, you know, got all the bells and whistles he had in the past and some improvements. He's got a lot of throwback combos and things that work. He's got new utility. Overall, I can see him being a pretty good character because like his Tengu Stone is really good, you know, like his ability to just like mix you up.

His double jump is there. They've nerfed the double jump. It's not like a full second hop. It's more of like a levitation. Yeah, but he's in Street Fighter V. Exactly. Exactly. It's still a really good thing to have anything that stops your air momentum.

I saw I saw people doing like stupid Oro shit that looked like really similar to stupid Third Strike Oro shit. And I'm like, but he's doing it in Street Fighter V. Yeah. Yeah. That's that doesn't seem like the kind of bullshit that that game systems would allow. You can still do like his medium punch launcher into the kicks and then law relaunch kick kick uppercut, you know, and then when you if you've got your

like grab active, you could do the grab at the end of the uppercut, things like that. So yeah, he's he's cool. The turtle is great for the animations. It's fun to see him like toss it up and catch it, you know, as a use of his second hand to still be restricted in one in one way. So that's fun. Mm hmm. And Akira is so cool, so cool, so, so cool.

But oh, man, her limbs are stubby. Oh, no, she doesn't reach very far and it feels like you're going to have to work really hard to be good with her. I it's it's such an interesting thing because when you think about three fighter characters specifically, you want your character to be deformed compared to a regular person because the length of like their legs is so important. Yeah. And just so she's really she's really like everything she's doing is cool,

but you're like, man, like her walk speed is good. But like, yeah, she has this issue whiffs a lot of buttons and I feel like you have to the fun version of the character you want to play is the one that has the launcher and the one that calls in Daigo, right? This is the rival schools version of the character you want to play, but it feels as if you're if you pick that, you're going to have a hard time with like anyone who's zoning you out really effectively with like fireballs and things like that.

So like you'd probably have to pick her other skill, which is not the launcher, you know, to get the most out of the character. So, you know, I guess I feel like, but I'm not, you know, but I'm not a hundred percent sure like I'm just going on the initial like taking a look at it. I but I haven't seen what top players are doing. So maybe they've figured out some shit that like I, you know, and they're making it all work, but yeah, just that my initial feeling from a quick little sash was that her stubby limbs felt like every time I wanted to like whiff

punish something or just press a button in neutral and kind of do things. You're like, oh, man, it's you got to really walk in there. You got to get a lot closer, you know? It's I just want. Oh, like I just want to rival schools game. That's all I really want to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, of course, you know, that's definitely.

But I definitely like, I feel as if when I see when I see like the nonsense that like characters like Abigail can do with at his size with his tire and all that shit, I kind of look at it and I go like, man, like what is what is she to do in the circumstance like that? You know, I guess just walk fast and and use frame traps like she she feels she feels like the kind of character that's like, you know, a bit of a fey long style, like move quickly, frame trap your opponent, blow them up with your, your, your, you know, faster buttons as opposed to like reach.

But in any case that that that's how it is for now. But yeah, we'll have to we'll have to see where she goes more rival schools in any way, shape or form, please, please, please, please, please. Preferably in the form of rival schools. Yeah, that being said, I don't know. I feel like Capcom's fighting game division is like their their part that has the highest peaks and the lowest valleys from year to year. It's like we released three or four.

Wow, nothing for five years. Yeah, it used to be more consistent when it was their like primary focus and then it has not been their primary focus for a long time now. You know, so yeah. The other thing, of course, was checking out. So Luke isn't out, right? Not out yet. Okay.

So he'd be like probably the last one to come out. Exactly. Um, not sure when, but I that's this is the reason why I kind of got blindsided by biking is because I when I see a new character get announced for anything. Street Fighter five has conditioned me to just be like, OK, cool. Don't think about it for months. It'll show up eventually. Right.

And it turned out was like what two days and then she was out and I was like, oh, fuck. Ah, so I had to swerve the schedule a bit and yeah, took a look at what was going on with that. And I got to say, yeah, like they really they put the full character in. They took away a couple things, but you know, most of it's all there. You're just playing like version of the character that has no air dashes, you know, that has no Roman cancels.

But Samurai showdown tells you that you're not allowed to do air dashes. It's not allowed. You can't do it, but she still has air shit. She's got, you know, the Ozon sent in the button, the cannon and you can still do a lot. You know, and she's yeah, it's a great conversion of the character. She's pretty cool. She's obviously for her style of play.

It fits extremely well into a game where everyone has a parry. You know, right? Everyone has a deflection guard. Her guard point stuff makes a lot more sense in that context. It does. It does. And she gets the default parry in addition to her special one. You know, the funniest thing is disarming her and then watching

her catch a blade with one hand. It's like it makes no fucking sense, but don't think about it. I guess like she's got really strong fingers. Well, there's a panel I saw from grappler backie where a dude catches a blade with one hand as well and he just between the thumb that's an index. Well, I don't even want the idea that you would be like, I don't know how someone would do that and then say, well, in grappler

backie, I saw. Yeah, I've seen a lot of things in grappler backie. I've seen a guy with 4,000 bones or whatever the fuck is going on with that shit. Yeah, no grappler backie. Needs to read an anatomy book and then throw it out and burn it. Fuck that extra muscles that don't exist mean you're more powerful. We know this.

I don't. The guy that like vomits the grenade is just like it's comparatively tame to something else, but I look at it and I'm like, you can't. You can't eat a grenade. Now, to be fair, I also do mix it up with Ken Ganashira a couple times because that's the other super buff fight dudes thing. But yeah, anyway, all that to say that she's she's pretty dope

and they had a couple of little like nice, nice detail flourishes like when you do her story mode, the there's a narrator that did that like, you know, explains everyone's prologue and epilogue. And in this case, the prologue and epilogue he gives for her is the exact same as the poem that's read in her intro and outro in Rev two. Oh, OK. So if you remember in an excerpt when Baikin intros and outros

she walks through a field and like a poem is being recited in the background and it's an it's an only I I totally remember. Okay, well, it's anyway, it's a it's a it's a cool little thing is they they they throw back to that with her. Her rival battle is unfortunately brand versus brand. So it's her versus how Maru as opposed to the more obvious and clear pick, Darley, which is, hey, you're a tough bitch. Let's fight, you know, why is that the obvious pick?

Is it because it's the characters that you like? No, it's because they're they're they're the same archetype. This the energy is pretty close. But the the there's a little bit of dialogue super wrong. It's because you like them. Okay, they're not both tough bitch characters that like they they have lines and shit that's that sound pretty similar at times. They have a, you know, a big aggro vibe as opposed to she should

be playing against Ukyo because they're both disabled. Um, and he's like, do you think my what's he got? He's got the the old he's got the anime mom disease, right? He's got what's it called? What is the the cough you die? It's a burglosis. Yeah, he's got the tuberculosis. She only got the one arm.

Yeah. Anyway, um, so, uh, but regardless, the, uh, there's just no way to be objective when I like when one really likes things. I can't say anything in an objective way. It's just it's over. I mean, that's literally the case with everyone. Yeah.

So, but like I'm I literally just anyway, fuck it. Literally fuck it. Stop talking. Um, no, no, you have to keep talking. Okay, it's going to be really awkward. Okay, so stop talking. So, so, uh, I mean, who's, who's got similar energy? Nakaruru.

Okay. There you go. That's, that's the one it should be angry revenge or angry tough samurai girl and, uh, uh, he may try and princess. There it is. Bam. Done. Totally.

Excellent. Okay. Actually, I actually, I would probably say it should be how Maru because they're both samurai in the samurai, like the base samurai of their game. I mean, if she would, if it was Genjiro, it would be a better fit because it would be like the angry part of it would be there.

It's got red hair as well. But here's pink. But here's the thing. Bikin's pretty happy in Sam's show. She smiles a lot. She doesn't have to deal with Angie. Well, she doesn't have to deal with all the fuck, the fuck freaks and more important than that.

She's in Japan. Oh yeah, that exists. Yeah. So in one part of the ending, she's sitting at a tea house just listening to some random dudes just drinking tea and talking shit and being, you know, in old Japan and she's like, yeah, yeah. So she's, she's walking around the her country that she's on a revenge quest because it was fucking destroyed.

You know, so it's like, okay. Then yeah, I guess she'd be smiling. Sure. You know, otherwise, otherwise she's still tough, but like, you know, you're just kind of, you're seeing her being a lot more like, yeah, you know, so I, you can take that as your headcanon if you'd like. Um, I will.

But that's a, that's a good inclusion. Um, she's dope. And, uh, yeah, and I also got like, it's cool to hear. I like when like, you kind of go, uh, to a game where there's like a guest character and they're like, you know what, we're just going to give her a brand new theme song. They didn't put. Oh yeah.

Yeah. It wasn't Roku Mon. It wasn't, um, uh, um, you know, a solitary life. It was just a brand new song and, um, it was a fucking banger. It's great. It's, it's a super good, like samurai feeling, you know, but like, you know, power or fucking metal and rock shit going on and you're like, yeah, no, that's a biking theme.

You know, interesting. Excuse me. Momentary life, not solitary life. Yeah. It was, uh, it was like, okay, uh, I'm down with that. I have no complaints, you know. Um, so that's, that's cool. It's there.

Is there any attempts to be like she fell through a portal or is it just like Vikings here? Yeah. No, she just, you know, she's, she won't, she wound up in a distant land, whatever. Did Soulcalibur have like an in-universe reason for like Darth Vader? Um, wasn't it just, wasn't it all portals? It was all portals.

I feel like it was portals. It was all portals in the, yeah. And like in Hayashi's case, it was time travel. And then like, um, Witcher hates the portals. I think it was always. Yeah. That one, that one was a slam dunk though. That, that like Geralt notably hates portals.

Yeah. I think, I think that's the explanation for every one of those and at CO and to be past each other on the way through. I, I forgot that he was in Soulcalibur and like both in Soulcalibur and in Monster Hunter crossovers. It's literally like almost the first thing he says upon entering the shot, which is, I fucking hate portals because in Monster Hunter, he just falls out of the fucking sky at the same thing.

Okay. So which do you prefer? Do you prefer a dumb portal opens up and the character you love falls through it going, why am I here? What is this land? Or do you prefer Spartan 313? I'm a character in universe that just happens to look exactly like the one you know.

I'm going to say, um, most of the time, I'll prefer the portal because it's just more honest. Um, there's, uh, attempts at integration can be very awkward. Like now that, now that the near quest line in 14 is over, right? And fully done, like it was not integrated all that well. Into 14's existing stuff. It might have actually integrated better if there was just a big portal, which is weird because there was just a big portal.

Okay. Was, but like the, the, the story outside of that game is about things crashing together though, right? Like there's other examples in lore of like realities, like smushing. Oh yeah. There's 14 different dimensions and then there's extraterrestrials. You can do all sorts of stupid shit. Yeah.

Okay. Cause yeah, it's, it's, I mean, not many people go for that, that kind of like portal-less version of a guest character where it's like, no, no, no, they just literally happened to live in this universe or in this world. They're just, they just, they have, they're, they're here now, but it was always Spartan 313, the dead or alive character. Yeah.

I think so. I might be getting that wrong. Man, that, that one was fucking stupid. It's just, there's a, that should have been a portal, man. There's a halo here, you know, but yeah. It was, she was fun to play as, but at the end of the day, it's you're playing a fighting game and look, it's a, it's a master chief, you know, like the effect ends up being pretty much the

same anyways, but yeah, you just, you don't think too hard about it. I think, I think Akuma's is probably my favorite version of I was here the whole time. Yeah. That is the, that is the best one. That is the best one. It's like, not only was I here the whole time, I was integral

to the plot. And you're like, what? And then Akuma tells you to shut up. Yeah, so the high school that Asuka is going to with her friend is right down the fucking block from the rival schools high because it's right there. Akuma and Sakura exist in the same worlds and they also exist in the rival school worlds and they're all the same

Japan and that's what it was. So what a lot of people didn't know is that in the background of Street Fighter 4, Jin Kazama was fighting a global world war in order to unleash the power of some kind of ice dragon. It was just, just out of frame. You just, it was just, it was just one, you just turn your head on the India stage.

Oh man, there's fucking mischievous soldiers everywhere. Or maybe whenever people are like getting into their world saving plots, they're just, they're, it's not really that big of a deal. It's just their own local area that's in danger and no one, nothing is really global and everyone is just over exaggerating all the time, you know? I think, like, could you imagine if Mortal Kombat and SF

finally did that crossover after all these decades and they have to try and explain why nobody on the Street Fighter roster was ever called to the Earth Realm tournament? Yeah, we just picked other people. What? Yeah, we just, we were looking down the list and it's like, it's like the Olympics. They don't always pick the best pros.

They pick the amateurs on the circuit that are pretty good. Like I just had a brain thought which was, oh, well, most of the Street Fighter cast are unwilling to kill people. And then I'm like, but then all the villains and Akuma and all them gangs would have been shoo-ins for the tournament. Yes, but no. Akuma would have loved to chop the Goros head off. Yeah.

Well, I think it's going to be portals for the foreseeable future. That's what the, hooray. Yeah. And that's what that's what lets all your super robot wars and shit happen is just, you know, like, just, yeah, realities, whatever. Don't worry about it. You were called for a purpose.

Do the thing. Reminds me. I don't know if it's counted as news, but do you just see the breaking fucking Magic the Cathering news? I did not. They're, they're going to start printing new cards as a crossover between Street Fighter and Fortnite for Magic the Gathering sets and they're going to be entered into like the standard

wrote like the standard play rotation. So you can't ignore it. It's there and Lord of the Rings get out of here. Oh my God. The magic nerds are very upset. Does magic usually have like guest cards that are? No. Okay.

Well, oh, Fortnite. We'll talk about you later. Yeah. Well, you know, that's pretty much that's pretty much it. I mean, a lot of a lot of my time otherwise was just getting getting ready and getting busy. So if you would, however, like to tune in to some cool video games, you can check out the Wally versus channel.

We got currently going Kuzanoha Raido. Excuse me. Raido Kuzanoha versus the Solas army. Why do I always say it backwards? It's because that's how the series was introduced to me. Shmoop. God. Pat used to buy weebs introduced it to me that way.

And when I first heard it, that's what all that's what my friends would call it. So then I just got used to saying he was probably playing it in Japanese. He probably was playing it in Japanese. Yeah. Okay. That that would make it.

So yeah, just weeb time. But that's why if you're wondering why I say the last name first is because that's how the game was literally introduced to me for a while. How you liking it, by the way? I really, really, really like it a lot. It's a whole lot of fun. It's pretty cool with the character so far.

I love the extreme kinako of every character that shows up extreme kinakones. And yeah, the battle system, you know, has a couple of things that like I'm sure gets moved over in the second game. But it has this exact same thing going on with its combat that Yakuza one to Yakuza two does where they just make it so that like blocking and dodging are more responsive. Hmm.

Like pretty much that's the main change between both those series and then you play the second one. You're like, oh man. Oh, thank goodness. It to those of you, by the way, wondering what the term kinako means. Well, he is referring to the longstanding artist kinako who draws most of the SMT stuff and loves thick black eyeliner on

everybody. And very pale pale characters. A absurdly so everyone has to look kind of powdered undead. Yeah, a little bit. Uh, so that's that's a lot of fun, as well as seeing like, hey, is that fucking Rasputin showing up out of nowhere? Yes, it is. I'm going to say maybe it is chilling.

Just part of the story. There's a there's a real energy of fuck it, whatever. Yeah. Going on with that game. Well, considering considering the the cameos that are all that are appear in SMT in general. As a whole, like it, it's not surprising, but it is like, well, okay.

If I could stomach Stephen Hawking and make sense of that, then sure. Rasputin fucking left. He McAvalid himself in Russia. He went to World Heroes jet and then he wound up in Japan. Yeah, he just, yeah, you just showed up. Hey, it's me. I'm mad.

I'm a magic Russian man. My dick is huge. It's all and it's always fun to kind of see the classic demons and go through the compendium and I'm showing Reggie, you know, some of them as you go and you're like, oh, shit. Yeah, it's you, you know, so. Yeah, just overall fucking solid solid ass PS2.

So I really like that guy. Yeah, we're about I think we're about like halfway through it at this point. So not super long. Wow. That's way faster through it than I would have expected. It's it's it's moving, you know. But oh, so you mentioned that stuff's going to keep going up

during your honeymoon on the woolly versus, but you weren't super clear the last time I spoke to you about what those plans actually were. Well, what is going to be going up on the woolly versus? Well, I mean, there's still more. There's still more of of that and disco Elysium to put out. Um, I was so I made plans to try and record an LP. I don't think it's going to happen.

Um, oh, yeah, it's it's going to take longer than I thought and it might not come to fruition in the time between now and then, unfortunately, I wanted to surprise everybody with something cool, but can you type what it is to me and discord so I know what it is? No, I'll just say it. I mean, it's it's fine. Oh, OK.

I was going to try and do a sequel LP and get ourselves some Jet Set Radio Future on the channel in perfect timing with the two mellow album drop the album and we're going to pull it all together and have a little fucking, you know, grind and spray fest. Um, but it's a much while we were able to do the first game in one sitting, it's a much longer game. It's a little bit harder to get what you wanted to say.

What? Oh, spray and grind fest. Is that what you wanted to say? Hey, we spray it and we grind in. I that's what we do. That's what you do. Um, Jesus Lord, all right. Anyways, so that was my intention and I it's it's

unfortunately just it's a much longer, bigger game than I remembered and it's nowhere and it's much longer than the original and so yeah, I don't think that's going to be able to happen before I leave, but it'll definitely happen when I get back. So bummer, but that's what that's what the plan was. Yeah. Cause it's like what, what fucking better time, you know,

what better time than with such a good album to like what better time than now? I'll tell you three weeks from now. That's a better time. I suppose so. Cause that's the time it'll happen. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, so yeah, you can tune in though for all that, that, that fun stuff over on woolly versus and, um, you know, fighting games as well. We got those things dropping and, uh, yeah, we're going to take that break. I'll, I'm going to disappear for a couple of weeks. I'm going to get hitched and I'm going to enjoy it and then I'll be back to you guys in late September.

That's the plan. Hooray. Well, I hope you enjoy your time off. Thank you. How about you not having to worry about this crap? Yeah. There was all these people. There was a since, since, uh, since it rarely ever happens,

you know, like punch bomb was like, so like, are you going to do the podcast during the thing? And I was like, like, fuck no. Cause she's like, oh, I guess you use a path expecting it because I've done it on vacation before, you know, we've done it in Japan. Exactly. Both of us have done it in Japan, for example.

Yeah, you know, but, um, and it's, you know, admittedly you have to like sit you like when your time zones are different and you have to sit and coordinate the whole thing. It's, it's trickier than it sounds, but I kind of go like, well, I'll just, you know, so I'll take a moment and update people on what's going on and, but in this particular case, I'm just like, yeah, no, fuck that. Fuck it.

Let life happen. I don't mind. I'll just stream an extra fucking day a week. Cause this makes no fucking difference to me. Let life happen. So yeah, how about you? Well, I want to talk about 12 minutes for a couple reasons. One, I beat it in a single sitting.

Two, it's not 12 minutes long. Okay. So that's that. That game's title is a lie. It is not 12 minutes long. Also the time period. Of this game is really weird in that it is the fourth time loop mystery game I have played in very recent times.

I like you. I was talking about forgotten city recently, which I beat a bunch. That game's great. That is a time loop mystery. 12 minutes is a time loop mystery. Okay. Um, now I remember the initial reveal for this looking

really cool just because of the camera perspective. Yeah, the camera perspective is nice. I really like the game's presentation. Um, it's top view visually top view. And I want to say, um, Ocarina of time, um, three point perspective, because the center of the screen is the vanishing point for all the walls. So everything is always creating a, like all the walls

are doing perfect diagonals to the center of the screen. It's, it looks nice and it's clean and there are like, it's your apartment and it's not a particularly big apartment. So like you get real used to the inside of that apartment quite quickly. Um, it is very, it is much more of a classic style adventure game than the other ones that you and I have played. Okay.

Um, it wants you to do specific things in a specific order and use this specific item on this specific thing to go forward and for a large proportion of those solutions, there is a. Necessariness to a trial and error. Like you are not going to be able to intuit what people are going to do in scenes when you fuck with them. There's some that are obvious.

Like if you drug this person, they'll fall asleep, right? But you can't quite understand how that'll play out in the future. So you are meant to poke at it and see what happens and then take your clues and go forward. Um, playing through 12 minutes, uh, and seeing people talk about 12 minutes is fascinating because I had a very different experience with it than many, which is, um, many people are

put off by the game's almost absurdly dark content. Hmm. Like it is, it is you do bad things in that game and it plays it real straight and real ugly. Okay. And, um, it feels like miserable in the same way like some David Cage games can feel like miserable, right? In that the characters are being subjected to misery for the

purpose of emotions and you're watching or doing it. And what I discovered is that I have made, I've changed some opinions and I've gotten caught like being kind of a hypocrite on some opinions, like on sequels or whatever. But there's one opinion that I kept all these years later. Do you remember our argument as to whether or not time ethics exists? I do remember the argument happening.

I don't remember the contents of the argument, but I do remember the discussion. My, my, my opinion on that was that there is no such thing as time ethics because if you change it, whatever, it didn't happen. What I discovered playing 12 minutes is that I have totally internalized that and feel nothing or even a curious glee in doing horrible, horrible bad things that will go away in a second or two because of a time loop.

But will they go away or will they continue on their own path? They will in fact go away. So, uh, the rules are pretty simple. If you get beat up or killed, you loop after 12 minutes, you loop. If you try and leave the room, you loop, right? Um, and, um, I don't know why, but I kept thinking that horribly murdering your not your wife with a knife was going to unlock

something. Um, so I only was able to figure this out later when I was looking over clips in the chat where clip it like like bit after bit after bit after bit, I've screwed up the loop. I didn't get the order of operations right. And so like I either horribly slit my own throat or stabbed the wife to death and try and figure out something and everyone

in the chat is like screaming, just walk out the door. Like, like just walk out the door. I see. Like you screwed it up. Oh, and so I'm sitting there with like dead wife on the floor and the blood pools real nice, like seeing if like something will trigger if you eat your dessert at the table with your dead wife there.

And no, nothing happened. Um, but like the game want the game not understands its own tone. So it has prepared you for this. So attempt one of killing the wife, your character is real shaky and doesn't want to do it, but then you make him do it and they stab the wife and it's very upsetting. And then the second one is more confident and the third one

more confident still until you get like four or five wife kills in and he just goes, Hey, honey, and just like a side slash on the throat and it takes like one second. Um, okay. But there's no, so I had a more violent experience than many others because like I tortured the guy. I killed my wife. I killed myself about a dozen times, etc.

And did you think about one eventually, eventually finding like the right path through. Um, there's no way to get through that game without doing some of those horrible things. Like you absolutely must kill and torture a couple people in a really violent graphic way. Otherwise you can't escape and then otherwise you can't figure out the details that you'd need to know.

And then the ending is like viciously depressing. And it's just, it's just like a feel bad game that none of the feel bads hit me because of the time loop thing. So most people get sick of the mechanic because it keeps asking you to try out new horrible things. Or as me, I like the mechanic, but I didn't get any of the emotional impact off of anything because the mechanic took away my internal responsibility.

So I feel like it almost can't work. Either the mechanics miserable because it makes you feel bad or you don't feel anything and then you don't feel anything. Um, on top of that, I don't think like you may remember this was like, um, shown off as like, dude, James McAvoy and Daisy Ridley and Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. True, true, true. They did do that.

Yeah. And I don't think that they needed to have those actors because they do a fine job, but the game's not like traumatic enough that it would have made like much of a difference. You could have easily had like some good voice actors and it would have done absolutely the same job. Well, someone called him like they're like Willem Defoe is a great actor and he's a, and he's good as this guy, but he

doesn't have a, how do I put this? He doesn't have a moment where he starts to fucking go. I'm fucking acting. Like he doesn't know there's no diehard man. Yeah, so it's just like, okay. Um, it's, it's a weird game. And if I had to make like one genuine complaint that isn't about like how mean it's, it's, it's fucking content is and how you

have to keep repeating it. It's that the solutions like your puzzle solutions, which are you almost always finding out new information to skip parts of it are inscrutable. Like you're going to have to trial and error your way through them. Like it's not a puzzle game in that like, what if I did this and then I did this? It's so the picture you're painting for me right now is of a

game where the only way through some of the challenges is to do horrible things and in other cases, you just open the door. But when it's horrible things and otherwise you're stuck in a time loop, then you have a character that like does horrible things to get out of the time loop and then the escaping of this pro of this trap requires committing to the timeline bad things that have been done. Therefore, there's always a bad path, but there was no choice in

the matter. Well, so that no, there's like, like I can't go. Yeah, I understand that. Don't don't elaborate. No, no, for sure. But I'm like, if you made a game that was like there's a, you have to do five Willy Pete scenes in a row. Otherwise you can't leave the time loop and then you get out

like you did them now live in this world and it's like, well, what the fuck are you supposed to feel about that? So now people are correctly pointing out that killing your wife is actually never a progression point. Okay, there's a small spoiler for you. Okay. You never have to kill your wife once, but you do have to do other bad things to your wife or let your wife get horribly

electrocuted or whatever, just to find shit out that's going on. So there's no, there's no way to tell which bad actions will get you more and which horrible nightmare actions will just lead to a dead end. So what you're saying is played on the honeymoon. Yeah, cool. Yeah, that'd be a great honeymoon game.

Um, the other thing, and I don't know if I should count it against it, but I will is that, uh, and people can back me up on this, it's true. I, I verbalized this. Um, I took about four hours to beat that game and was able to correctly deduce 90% of the game's plot, including the big twist within the first hour. Was this by use of a scattershot plot good?

No. Okay. It was, it was the worst. So I was talking to Page about this and there's two ways that you can guess a, a plot really one is you have paid really close attention and you've put together disparate details and then reached a conclusion like the Sherlock Holmes method, right?

It's like, Hey, that guy said he was in the bar and then someone said that the bar is where they said, and you know, you just put together the clues and get there, which is the way a mystery is supposed to be guessed if you're able to guess it, right? That's the good way. The bad way is where you are able to deduce a plot because of its structure.

So for example, watching a law and order episode when they catch the purpose, the, when they catch the criminal within 12 minutes of the beginning of the law and order episode, you immediately go, they're going to throw out the evidence because of some clerical error by the police and then the rest of the plot is going to be McCoy arguing with judges about how to get a new crime in and sure enough, that happens. You didn't guess that from the clues.

You guessed it based off of the structure, right? The structure of the way the game parcels out details to you makes it really clear to me anyway where it's going to go and it's not me picking the clues out. It's you told me about this at this point in the story, which means this has to relate to this even though I have no proof and therefore this and that and this and this and that and sure enough, it ends up unintentionally showing its

head. I know what you mean. Yeah. Okay. Right. Like, you know, if you're watching a murder mystery and the camera made a show of pointing out that somebody was carrying a gun or even someone or even like a room full of people

reacting to something and then it shows you one person sipping their drink and looking away, you know, like sure. Yeah. And you're like, oh, that's that's the guy. Yeah, right here. Yeah. So he didn't give you any clues. They just structurally accidentally told you what it was.

So I don't know. I'm torn on it. I had a good time with it, but I don't think it's that good. Okay. Like kind of thing. Now, the other way to do it, which is which is the third route you didn't explain is the try and try and try as you might. You literally don't have enough information to figure this out

because we did not tell you everything there was to know. You know, alternatively, we lied. We lied slash like you could not have known there was another character you've never met with a history. What you're saying is this is the Japanese mystery method of this guy was here the whole time. You didn't see him.

You couldn't. You couldn't have possibly not just not just not just Japan though, like there's there's there's there's more than a couple shit examples of that. I'm thinking I'm thinking about when I say they lie, I'm thinking of 13 sentinels where like the cake just lies to you about certain things in order to keep its mystery going. There's that and then you can also do it really well like

other recent games, but in any case though, but there's there's like the there's there's good examples of like we know you're trying to figure this out and we've made it deliberately impossible. In fact, in Danganronpa, because the whole series is about figuring out what happened on the crime scene, you know, there are there are moments where it's like, oh, you cannot possibly solve this crime.

You don't have the information, but you're it's like sit here and rack your brain though for a while until it's like, Nope, can't solve it. I'm just thinking of of heavy rain right now actually where they just explicitly lie to you to make sure that. You can't guess it because if if they didn't lie to you, you would guess it right away. Anyway, oh my goodness.

So good. Yeah, 12 12 minutes. Don't know. Okay, like I had fun, but I probably wouldn't tell people it's great. I would. And I also and this is an older game. I talked about playing prey a bunch last week.

I beat it. I beat prey 2017. Did you beat it before and I did not. Okay. So before I only got like maybe two, three hours in and now I went through the whole like 25 hour thing. It's stellar. It's absolutely stellar.

It's my favorite immersive sim, which is a term you fucking freaks. I only like it's easier to talk about the things I didn't like because it's so stellar. Like the level design is a plus and the the skill set and interaction with the game world is absolutely excellent. The only real issues I have is that enemies respawn constantly and they're on a I don't want to call it.

I'm sure you've encountered this where, you know, like you're walking around a game world and enemies don't respawn and no matter how long you take, they won't respawn until you fucking do something. Walk past the checkpoint and trigger it. You walk past the checkpoint, you complete a quest or whatever and then they respawn in prey. It genuinely feels like every world state or quest completion

responds some enemy somewhere, which makes it so that like you'll like exhaustively clear out a zone only to return 25 minutes later and there's dudes walking around again and you're like fuck. God damn it. You can never sprint with confidence when you're back tracking and never and on top of that, the actual enemies that you're dealing with are not that interesting.

They're called the Typhon and the mimics, which I've talked about at length are fantastic as chairs and bottles, but all the other enemies are. I'm a shadow tentacle phantom man or I'm a shadow tentacle floating thing or I'm a shadow box that holds turrets and they're all just kind of like visually uninteresting. So as a connoisseur of the survival horror genre and as someone who I would consider a resident evil expert.

How do you feel about like the best way to clear zones and still have threats present? Do you like the idea of I cleared all the zombos? I know the ones that are down or still down, but when I when I trigger this puzzle, the liquor shows up. Okay, so this is a this is like a. This is actually really complicated question, but what's the most fun version of this?

Do you want to run back through the hall of the police station with confidence or do you want to be on your toes? The most fun version ever is reasonable ones. And I literally just looked over and saw somebody in the chat say it perfectly, which is never respond the same enemies. Okay, so in resident evil one you do the mansion and the mansion is 85 90% populated not remake by the way. Yeah, I'm talking about already one all the way back in the

day. You deal with the zombies, maybe some dogs, right? You go to the guard house and the guard house is its own separate section that has zombies, but also has the plant and has some sharks, whatever. You come back to the house and now most zombies are gone. There's a couple left, but they've been replaced by hunters and more importantly, the trip to the guard house is like a

definitive like act moving forward. You completely left the mansion. You've been gone in the mansion for a while. And now you've come back maybe an hour or two later and the enemy layout is different. So going through the mansion as that portion of the game as Act one. When you when you've cleared it, you've cleared it and you've

cleared it. And coming back to it. No, suddenly there's something new and if you didn't get the enemies before the new ones will have replaced that. Okay, right? So when you played remake to there's a part where you get to go to the sewers and go back to the police station. And in that case, zombies have not been zombies have been

shuffled and also liquors have been put in new locations and that's nice. In prey. The issue is the game's space is very large and you're dealing with mimic three types of phantoms, but they're visually very similar. So mimic phantom weaver and then the box floating ones are techno path and telepath.

So you're really only dealing with four enemy types total. Right? There's some variation in between them, but it's it's four. And so you'll clear out the lobby and then you'll head to psychotronics and then you'll head to the guts and then you head to the arboretum and you'll get back to the lobby and there are more phantoms and then you'll leave the lobby to go back to the arboretum to hit crew quarters and get

back to the lobby and now there's two more phantoms and a weaver and that lobby repopulated like 10 times. Okay. In my game. So and the issue is, is that like in a reasonable game, there's act one, act two, act three, act four, right? It's they're very definitive in prey. You're doing neuro mod division, lobby, psychotronics,

hardware labs, guts, arboretum, crew quarters, power plant, power supply, shuttle bay, life support, power plant, water treatment, like there are 15 disparate zones and so they're and you can go to them in any order, which is great. But it means that there is not a really obvious shift point to repopulate the old areas. Okay. Okay.

So it's open-ended and that that creates part of that issue because what you're describing an RE one is yes, that is an optimal design decision where you design backtracking as progress. You make the path back in through where you went actually is new progress. There's new challenges, new enemies and things like that. Yeah.

I know, I know that like, I mean, it was, it was ultimately fine, but like in Batman, I, you know, like how when you come back to the main hub room of whatever zone you're in, there's going to be a new group of enemies going like, oh, this time around, Joker says, do this, you know. And that's fine because the difference is, is that in your immersive somewhere, your horror game, what you're dealing with is that every single enemy encounter costs.

It costs ammunition. It costs health. It costs time. It costs something. So like hardware labs is a really good example. You go to hardware labs as like the second area in the game and then you can go back there to enter into hidden room and then you can go back there a third time to open the airlock

and then go around the station. You can go back a fourth time to do a satellite. So I went back there maybe four or five times every single time I went back in a hardware labs, there were new enemies. Every single time I went back in a hardware labs, I had something new to fight comparatively for some reason. I went back in a psychotronics a couple of times and only found new enemies there once.

Okay. And I ran into this issue where it's like, I have dealt with this enemy phantom specifically. It's the most common enemy type in this spot like six times. Okay. And what am I doing? I'm stunning it with a spell and then shotgunning it once and it's dead and the issue I think is that in prey, you're

scrounging constantly. You're picking up banana peels and apples and ammo and every little piece of bits and piece to manufacture for crafting or ammunition. And when I beat the game, I beat the game with like over a hundred shotgun rounds, hundreds of pistol rounds, like over a thousand stun gun rounds, over a thousand beam rounds. And I ended up manufacturing 222 neuro mods, which are the

level up currency. Just manufactured them by the hundreds and was drowning in resources. And if those guys were not respawning, I would have been doubled triple drowning in those resources. So they made a game that like incentivizes you to scrounge with the knowledge that most players aren't going to scrounge that hard and they need to put enemies in the world to use up

that ammunition or use up the reason to go scrounging. Right. But the the the math is off. So like if you ask me like what would I would prefer, I would prefer there to be no respawning enemies and one tenth of all available materials so that like the most interest, the most interesting part of a survival horror game is the math equation in a hallway where you go, do I want to use two shotgun rounds

to put this down so that I never have to worry about this hallway again? And in prey, you have all the shotgun rounds in the world and it's not a question. You're going to put it down, but it's also probably going to come back later. There's a response. How many times are you going to have to run around this corner?

Right. Right. And it's it's frustrating like it's this fantastic game with all these incredible systems touching each other and melding the really interesting ways and all these cool little interactions that I'm like, I wish you could just tone it down like all of it. I wish I could just I wish I could make the enemies all five

times as strong and put two in every zone. Yeah, right. Like just keep the keep the experience novel while with the challenge. Yeah. Right. And increasing the difficulty doesn't look like it would fix it.

It just means that you have to scrounge even harder. Like I cannot possibly see a situation in which I would actually have to start sneaking around and avoiding confrontation instead of dealing with it because like it just the math doesn't really work out. It says a lot that at the end of the game, I had so many materials left over that I put I bought all the level ups for sprint speed and stamina and jump height just so that I could

run by encounters. Yeah, I think honestly and you can probably you can take a look at the way players behave in examples like Souls games where it doesn't matter what the difficulty of the enemy is if it's the same enemy in the same place doing the same thing. I'm going to find a way around it when I'm doing my ninth or 10th run around this corner. Yeah, exactly.

You know, that whole game becomes memorize the whole thing and then just completely have no encounter here whatsoever. Even if it is a hard thing to fight, you know, it also it also has an issue where once you learn to manufacture the level up Neuromods sneaking around enemies is a terrible idea anyway because you use enemy parts to build more level ups. Okay, so there's literally never any incentive by contrast. I'm going to be playing Moon Crash on Wednesday, which is the

prey DLC that's a roguelike and it's a roguelike that has the zapping system in it. So it is the same type of first person perspective scrounging game. But the thing is that I'll give you like characters with specific skill sets that it'll be like hey take this guy and get out with the escape pod and then round two is pick a new character and escape a different way because the prisoner

escaped on the escape pod and the wrench that the prisoner picked up outside the starting location is now gone. So you show the same it up and left with it and the enemies that that guy killed are dead. You show the same seed. Yeah, okay, and you have to do it with five characters in a row. So I'm very interested in checking that out because it

seems like by changing the format just a little bit. It basically solves my problem because now there's no responding enemies because there's too many enemies to deal with but the cut the fifth person out is going to have a really hard time. Yep. Yeah, okay. Interesting.

That's smart. Yeah, pray is an absolutely excellent game. It's easily my favorite of arcane stuff. They did dishonored. They did the dishonored games and they're putting out death loop. And it even has a hidden morality system like I've complained about dishonored chaos system for hours because I think giving

you an assassin game where they tell you not to use eight out of ten tools because they're lethal is a stupid fucking idea and pray it constantly gives you nice little situations that would tickle your moral thing but like characters will talk shit at you but like nothing happens. There's a really good one where you find out that there's a shuttle that's going to earth and I'm reading an email about a shuttle is going to earth and make the security are freaking

out because they don't know if mimics were on board before it left. And if it gets to earth it's all over you know it's a pretty typical like situation and they're talking about how they don't know if they should blow the shuttle up because you know that's that wrong or what have you and then I'm reading the email and I finished reading the email and I look over the computer next to it and there's a countdown or there's a real

countdown that's at like three minutes and two seconds counting down of ships arrival to Seattle and then you there's a big fat button that says blow it up or not. I blew that fucker up and nobody talked to me on the radio to tell me that I did a good thing or a bad thing. I just said yeah fuck him. And like it does play into like what I would term as the game's post ending.

But it's it's literally a report card. It's not like you've been locked out of ending A or B. It's literally like characters talking to you like well you did that and that was pretty fucked up. Okay it's it's yeah it's I love it's a little hidden morality system and looking at so they're making death loop now just the are they making time. What's that they're making death loop they're making death

loop which is a what is that time loop. It's a time loop and what console is it available on every PlayStation. Huh. Perhaps we should walk through the mechanics again and introduce gamers to death loop. Have you heard about death loop gamers. What is it about this game that just keeps fucking I don't

know. I don't know what it is but it just keep pushing. Holy fuck they won't stop. They're pushing every single event but have you seen death loop though. Have you seen it. It's really it's really wild but the only thing I want to talk about death loop is that death loop is way more like

dishonored and they have fully given up on like nonlethal morality shenanigans. Okay. Where it's like every single video of that game is fucking tear ass through it and kill everybody you need to kill to do it. I think I think one of the dishonored designers was was like had a hard on for like morality through play or something

like that which sounds great on design but like just suck shit to play. Did you ever play Deus Ex one Willie like the original. Yeah. That you're you remember your brother though a little bit not much. Oh no. Okay.

So you're terrorists take over the Statue of Liberty and your brother's like you should try and do this nonlethally right and if you kill a bunch of the terrorists he admonishes you and he's like listen man you should really you shouldn't have done that it was bad to do and like that's literally the only time anyone tells you like what to do ever in that game for morality and then you find out that the reason why he told you not to is because he is secretly part of that

terrorist organization and didn't want you killing his buddies. Okay. And it's like oh the only part of the game reaching down its big finger and go no no no was not the game. It was a character's ulterior motives plot. Yeah. Okay great.

As as I've played more and more games of like the seventh gen I'm like man there was like an insane hard on for morality systems in that era or choose like or in or choose between stealth and guns blazing. Yeah it was it was like the most omnipresent thing. It's like okay how how fun is stealth am I crawling at the speed of fucking molasses through this entire map will they see me on sound will they see me on site will it be

light based is it a worse game to play if I'm playing it stealthy. It reminds me of infamous you remember infamous one lightning man and the the evil playthrough was more fun but I like I look at that I'm like did you guys just make a game where you got to split half of the powers across a certain way so that people would play the game twice and thus be less likely to sell it as a used game like that's that's what it says to me well replay value is replay value.

Yeah but it always felt so much like we want to put just enough replay value that we're tripling or tripling the play time so that they don't sell it. I mean but you could you could ascribe that that motivation to anything that adds multiple playthroughs. I totally could you're right but I don't know it just felt like I felt like that the last thing I want to talk about is like I'm continuing to go through Mass Effect 3 which is

really good honestly I'm very surprised but I want to talk about. A head cannon that I have in my mind. Because I ran into a character called Kai Lang which you may have seen dank memes about at some point. But Kai Lang feels more than anything I've ever felt in a game as it is an argument between like a designer and a writer about their cool OC.

I've never seen this character before. Are you looking it up are you looking at him right now. Yeah he looks he looks like Nightwing. He looks like he doesn't belong in Mass Effect. So Kai Lang is a book character from the Mass Effect novels which are shit by the way and they got way shitter after drew a carpition left and like somebody sent me like somebody sent me a really fun passage about him bugging somebody's

house and then stealing their cereal. Um which he is he is basically built up as like the the incredible mega anti fucking shepherd that is the greatest at everything and he's always like a ninja and he's so he's such a cool assassin and he's incredible. Oh wow cool. I just saw Kai in quotations pussy Lang. I don't know what that means.

Piss stream Sam piss Virgil just and it's it's kind of wild because the character shows up and attacks you and there's a there's a scene right and the guy is fully cyborg ninja out doesn't look like a Mass Effect character like straight up holds a samurai sword behind his back and Naruto runs around. I can see it. I see it does does like magic to space shit that other people don't do and every time somebody talks about him they're like

oh my god that is that's oh my god. Geez I shot him twice in the leg once and he just came back pissed off. He's so my god. Oh Kai Lang's the fucking shit but like everything that he does in the game is pathetic. So like so what is essentially a person dying of cancer sneaks up on him and like beats him up and like he tries to

crash your car and like fails and like every single time you encounter him he does all this crazy space Naruto shit and loses and and then you go talk to people who are like man that assassin was so nuts. Holy shit you should have seen him when you couldn't see him and it's like two guys are fighting yeah okay writing this game okay somebody is like desperate to get their fucking cool OC that they love as the Virgil or the Vegeta of this

game and he's so hot and they're getting to be in charge of the writing sounds way more like a Vegeta and someone who hates him is getting to write scenarios in which they get bitched out and lose and it's it's wild I've never encountered it. That's I mean that's that is a yeah like an interesting split like just design wise that's I think that's the kind of the thing those like design wise if it wasn't such a complete

departure you might be able to like sell the the the the bit if the game doesn't respect the character does that mean so does the do the books respect the character. All the books love the character okay he's so cool okay so let me let me paint a picture of the the introduction to this character to really like I apparently is a recurring sub boss so he's your rival but I've only seen them the once but though the first time you encounter him is like so

legitimately embarrassing that I cannot believe it where he's trying to kill a politician and you run up on him with your with your guys and say 3v1 these are bad odds and he goes no now it's fun and does a little smirk with his Troy Baker because he's Troy Baker and then then a character God then a character who is literally in hospital dying of like lizard cancer or whatever who's across town who calls you and tells you he can't fight because he's hiding in a store is just there

and has snuck up on him and like basically beats him in a hand-to-hand fight and then later before they die goes that dude should be embarrassed that a terminally ill person was able to sneak up on him and beat on him like that it is a direct line of dialogue they should be embarrassed but he's cool a shame they should be ashamed sorry that's and it's like what is going on how is this possibly being built up as a threat but look at his cool visor it's it's oh boy that's

weird that's an era it's so weird okay that game is weird parts of that game are like super rushed and parts of that game are absolutely pristine and you really get the feeling very strongly because Bioware's writing method at the time before this was the writer would write the basic plot outline and then they would have all the leads come in and they would just shoot the shit and figure out what they wanted to do that stopped happening for three specifically the ending was

written with the director and just the new writer they just banged out a new ending in a week and just brought it out okay but it also feels like cuz I know all the stupid crap about the ending and then I'm encountering like the same themes that the ending deals with being dealt with by a better writer okay and then I know that the ending is coming and I'm like oh this this was totally written by different people like the games narrative is like fractured I'm starting

to understand why people are like talked about like ignoring the ending because it is it is genuinely like Game of Thrones like somebody is like swooping in to ruin it at the last second like like off the rails that it was it was heading towards right okay and it's it's it's weird that's a weird game yeah I don't know for some reason I just I'm just thinking about like you get the impression of a character like that and I remember the first time I think I saw a meal in

Halo reach and I was like oh I really hope he's not that and then he super wasn't and you're like thank God you know that it didn't just go down that road but but if if it's a character coming from the books and it has its own separate thing and it's it's if it's a Dash Rendar or a star killer you know what I mean then you're like yeah like somebody's probably got a vested interest in making protagonist material that they could use to like expand on if it if it picks up and everyone

likes them enough you know also I gotta I want to talk about a more general thing with cool villain which I think I think is really important okay and I'm going to tie it back to metal gear okay right there is a real danger it's a it's a fine line to walk if you make a character that is super cool and has 100 powers and can do everything and they get beat by your main character who can't do any of that stuff they stop being cool right so fortune you never beat fortune ever you fight

her and you lose every time so fortune gets to have her cool moment where she does it for real the final antagonist of almost every metal gear game is some person that's good at punching and kicking and shooting a gun like your guy right mm-hmm like Psycho Mantis you cheat to beat Psycho Mantis you out of universe cheat to beat Psycho Mantis so his stuff maintains but if you're looking at a character like High Leng who has a samurai sword has better biotic powers than you is

more accurate with a gun than you can do crazy flips that the main character can't do has a whole team of lady ninjas with him and then loses to white third person yeah he's got a whole team of lady ninjas they're evil oh he's got some evil harem ninjas yeah it's yeah don't worry about it right and he loses to seventh generation cover shooter shoot man mm-hmm right even in cutscenes he's all that stupid shit looks try hard like there's no way around it you have to either create a

situation where the your character cheats or uses an ingenious solution but if if Virgil lost to lady in a straight fight fight yeah Virgil would no longer be cool because he has every advantage in the world so I don't think all the rules of the character archetype apply but there's a similarity here that works if you look at Raiden's journey but like Raiden starts garbage and then ends up being that guy and you're like oh shit I'm rooting for you because I saw where you

started so now you get to be edgy samurai kid dude and we're all here for it you know yeah um yeah yeah fair enough you can't like like and I guess I guess like when when I trounced Kaling in this first encounter it's not because I discovered a weakness with his visor or what I just beat him right like I'm thinking about Metal Gear saw I'm thinking about Revengeance right and it's like Sundowners really tough but then you find out that his his uh his place call it his shield actually has

a weakness when you cut around it or Mistral is really tough but oh if you go for the little dudes it's like or you know like there's a in universe like oh I figured out the trick behind them now I just beat him I just beat him because he sucks I just shot him with my gun yeah they they just punched him a couple times apparently he will be sending me a scrub quote email later in the game oh wow like like a fuck you I'm coming back like

yeah no fuck you I yeah I'm yeah you didn't win you may have won but but like I'm I'm the shit look at my look at my ninja girls though and oh my god I've never heard of this character once or seen a picture of him I'm surprised he's not played up for like it it it is it is a pity of fucking because I'm playing nothing personal my chat is like is like mad fans like everybody in the chat when I'm playing it is like crazy about this and like universal hatred wow like like no

one no one is going like no he's cool but like zero absolutely nothing actual nothing personal kid yeah yeah okay I can I can send you the fucking goddamn let me see if I can find who sent this to me is it okay the thought brought a grim smile to Lang's face as he took a long slow look around he was equipped with 12 wireless bugs each of which had enough power to broadcast a signal for two weeks and they were so small that only as electronic sweep would reveal their presence would

they conduct such a sweep it was possible Anderson was employed by the council blah blah blah blah blah working with the speed and certainty of the experienced operative that he was he placed the pickups and locations when taken together would provide complete coverage of the apartment then having placed a wireless tap under the calm console he was done or should have been done but Lang was something of an adrenaline junkie and enjoyed being where he was that's why

he checked the cupboards located some cereal and had breakfast before putting everything back exactly as it had been it was his apartment now meaning a place where everything that happened would be known to him and the Cerberus the thought pleased him and Lang was still smiling as he left it's so cringe oh they printed fan fiction oh no they printed fan fiction oh no no no no no no no no that's bad that's not good don't do that

oh God and that's your virtual kai leg the hedgehog yeah 100% 100% 100% haha oh fuck like like I can literally see in my mind's eye a photo of Kai Lang being like shepherd you didn't win and I'm not mad and I'm going to go home and have sex with my

girlfriend show you how not mad I am with like fucking shadow the hedgehog fucking hair spikes on the back of him Jesus fuck yeah okay okay I there's just wait wait people are saying he does that am I wait no there's no no way there's just like God that that's the that that special character cameo aura of like when I when you're when anything exists and you're looking at it and you're

like they want that person to get a spin off that character they're looking at as something that is a potential route towards more money and like there's just the way the light hits them you know the way the world reacts to them in any movie in any fucking franchise we're just like like oh you're setting it up we can see it and it's like yeah of course he comes from the books you know like there's just oh that feeling it's it's really weird because before I had started playing

Mass Effect 3 I knew that there was a character named Kai Lang but nothing else and then as I'm playing it people are like getting excited like getting hate excited you know the the emotion I'm talking about sure and then I'm just watching it and I was like what what is this who why just he he's bringing down the vibe of every encounter that's incredible that's incredible and that is also the fact that it's like there's book tie-ins that are garbage and this is like the integration

into the third that's also the Mass Effect the Mass Effect book stuff has like a whole like different series of problems I don't know if you remember that they put out like an apology for one of them I did not do you okay so they put out an apology for the last Mass Effect book to come out who was written by some new guy and you played Mass Effect one right yes yeah you did so like that book had quarians hanging out in casual piecemeal clothing and a Krogan getting shot in his

heart and dying and just like non-stop like did you even look at it dude like what are you like what wait was that the first out was that the first instance of the mass coming off with the tally shit because that's like no no no okay all right all right all right but it's it's just like what yeah what it was the fuck it was a no yes no I was gonna say that like you like this is a completely separate topic from all the shit that

we were talking about with the game a couple weeks ago but it's just yet another example of like all the problems of the mid-auts triple a game all of them I else I also discovered that the game was I was talking to people in my chat like Mass Effect 3 the game that had like an entire generation of build up was actually developed in 14 months oh my god coach or two the better example would actually be Dragon Age 2 which was built in one year but like 14

months is exactly Cotor 2 again yeah wow like I you know there's the you know these little nitpick things in a game that you're like oh that's annoying but it's not so bad and then before you know it it's like a huge huge problem so in Mass Effect 3 the quest tracker is a little less descriptive and you're like oh that's not so bad I mean it's not the end of the world and then you find out that 85% of side quests in Mass Effect 3 are fetch quests where

you go somewhere and pick up an item and bring it back to somebody but the quest tracker doesn't tell you where the person is and doesn't tell you if you have the item oh so so I'm looking I'm looking at like 20 requests for items after I've scraped like most of the the the game world for items and going I don't know if I have that I get and I don't know where this character is so every time I go back to the Citadel I have to make the entire route to see what every

NPC you can talk to so I'm looking at a guide for like what order to do missions in and it has like five Citadel trips total so that you can just maximize like the trip around and it's like fuck okay yeah that's all the that is absolutely 14 month problems I didn't fuck my absolute favorite mistake I'm going to call it a mistake you have major missions in Mass Effect 3 that kick the act forward right and you have everything else right some are multiplayer maps that have been

converted into single player maps some are side missions some are really fantastic big side missions some are side missions that you have to do before a certain amount of time or else they'll fail and you'll get like a bad outcome right the main the main missions that move the story forward are called priority they're literally stuff like priority Sir Keshe priority to Chanka so if I wasn't playing this on stream I would look at that and go oh those are timed I have

to do those right away okay where in fact the priority missions are all the last thing because they're main missions yeah but it literally says priority yes it's like that's the wrong word yeah yeah yeah yeah like just all these little short oh man Bioware is so fucked good game though so far right up until that it's weird playing a game like this like wow I'm having fun and there's the WrestleMania sign covered in shit way over there and I'm

getting closer to it every day oh man I'm just looking at Kylang poses now oh yeah right I'm looking at these poses and I'm just he's got the fucking arm out in the arm back and the full like oh he's doing it he's the fucking I also encountered I also encountered a bug they kept in for the release of some really glad where if you wear a certain helmet and turn helmets off your characters eyes grow to five times their normal size that's

great so I have bug eyed freak shepherd in every cost in every cut scene now okay and I and I'm not going to turn it off it's great it's great oh man this dude's absolutely got a Sharon again under that fucking visor just the worst and isn't he just the worst and he's got the glowing biotic hand thing yeah all right this man this is the one oh I found it I found the pose where he's got like the fucking samurai sword all the way behind him and he's like in a down crouched here

I said to you I think it might be the one I was looking at yeah that's the one he's got one hand down Jesus shit absolutely absolutely he's he's fucking he's going full anime on that well if you want to see more mass effect and me complaining about Ky Leng you can go ahead and check me out over twitch.tv slash pairs that space that that twitch.tv slash pet fuck you'll get there what Pat stares at there we go

there we go after watching Charlie and Yanners botched the name for so many attempts yeah there it is go away people listening to the audio version of this podcast if you type in Ky Leng K I K A I space L E N G and just scroll you will see it you will see what we are talking about go on yeah I'll be playing mass effect and and no more heroes and moon crash this week that's what I'm gonna be doing okay all right well now would be an ideal time to take a bath take

a piss yeah yeah so let's do that and we will be right back already that'll lead us right back in to our sponsors I love our sponsors Willie this week the podcast is sponsored by food the concept of food coming to you very quickly doordash I okay I was about to say that seems like an incredibly unspecific sponsor but then you hit doordash I'm like oh I love doordash getting food to you this is this is what it is I say hey I'm hungry and lazy

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that's join honey.com slash super bees thanks honey thanks honey all right I fucking can't believe there are people the fucking skip the ad sequence that shit is a blast to do every week so I guess there's a couple places we can start a couple of different stories start all over and I guarantee you there's some shit that I've I've missed because I'm hearing stuff's

coming in and happening hot hot off the presses as we go but why not have Blizzard news that hit me like 20 minutes ago well well first things first why not why not go to space for a minute and all right since we're in space now let's go to space and let's let's let's see how we feel about the Netflix cowboy bebop I'll tell you what I see the screenshots I'm like okay yeah I'm going to set all expectations to zero I'm just going to set expectations to zero and maybe they will have

learned from the live action death note maybe not I don't know and I'm just going to I'll see we'll see we'll see what happens what I'm sure we've talked about it but what is the music situation if it's anything besides the existing score that Yoko Kano has fucking blessed us with I don't even see the point okay all right if Yoko is around and she's making new music that's cool that's good she's working on it okay good apparently that's good so all right the set

looks bad that's my first that's my first feeling I think the costumes are fine yeah they're fine I think the costume is good John chose actually really good choice he's older than Spike but Spike is already looks older than his intended anime age yeah so yeah no problem you know when you like it's not the Jota row 15 year old thing but he's like supposed to be like in his mid 20s and you know it's like yeah that does fly but he definitely seems older yeah fan fan jet look

look good I'm looks good though that was probably going to be pretty easy as a casting decision no Ed no Ed Ed's a fucking weirdo so that's gonna be tough yeah I don't know but it's also like it's it's the fourth member of the bunch you know them well you know what's I just pretend there's no Ed like I'm just thinking like I mean you see a shot of of Spike in the church so you know they're gonna at least cover what I'm going to call I guess the plot in big air quotes of cowboy

B pop at bare minimum we're gonna get Ballad of Fallen Angels I think there are like four out of 26 episodes that concern the plot in that in that program what I want to know is is vicious gonna have a big dumb bird on his shoulder yeah he and it's gonna be CG and it's gonna be voiced by Willem Defoe the whole fucking hell yeah so I'm just thinking about like my favorite episode of cowboy B Bop that will absolutely not be in this show which is Mushroom Zamba that will not

be in the show absolute a hundred percent nor will nor will be a whole hello gentlemen twice in the attic yeah you know what they're going to adapt and I'm gonna cringe my way through it as it's my most hated B Bop episode the one with the little kid that's like an evil old man oh yeah yeah yeah they might they might have to shit out of that I you know I I'm gonna I imagine we'll get it'd be smart to like start with or keep some energy from like straight-og strut we'll see we'll see it's

funny to me because all the episodes that I think about that I would want to see adapted are all the ones that would actually be like an anime like whatever what you're gonna draw is what you're gonna draw right but like in a live action setting would be like super expensive so like them getting that fucking beta max tape would actually be like super expensive or a fucking space trucker old lady mission yeah like you know cuz yeah it'd be insanely expensive so

we're gonna see that where Faye is like in the medical place and being in love with that doctor who brought her memory back but it's not a real memory all that crap all of the episodes anyway based on yeah based on just some screenshots and how it looks zero expectation and let's hope for the best I'm glad to hear that Yoko is attached yeah so at least we'll get a soundtrack at least at least that at least we'll get a soundtrack maybe I'm like the maybe it'll land

at sorry good not after you I was gonna say maybe it'll just land as like accurate in offensive and otherwise inferior to the anime you know and that'll just be that and it'll think probably it'll be how the kids learn about cowboy bebop is that like one of bebop's themes or whatever that stood out to me the most strongly is that the people making it were like aware that they were creating something so special and so unique that it was going to define its own

genre that they literally said in the intro yeah like they just say the genre will be called and yeah this this saying it this just is not this is not gonna now the cowboy bebop genre will have two entries the good one and the other one mm-hmm I what how many I wonder if there's a way to like find out how many people that are like new kids to any legacy franchises then go back to see what the old one was about I'm gonna say 10%

hmm how many people how many people played FFR as their first FF7R as their first FF time playing anything related to that and then went back to FF7 yeah probably a ton but that's a little different because FF7R basically looks you dead in the eye and goes you should probably go play FF7 after that how many people watch the rebuilds and then went back to the original EVA I'm gonna guess a lot but that is also very different live

action is very different that that is a very different situation because a lot of people finished watching 3.33 and went I don't get it and then their friend who told them to watch rebuild in the first place was like yeah of course you don't get it and then they turn into a little mini ono and like you want come binge that shit at my house and they're like no they're like okay you're coming to binge that shit at my house then

well best case scenario a bunch of people watch this and have a reason to go back and enjoy one of the greatest enemies but yeah yeah you know maybe it just lands and it's like yeah it was fine and it was it was an adaptation and and then now go back and watch how would be pop I I become worried that it's gonna be like hot garbage except for like that that scene though yeah except like like spike falling through the glass and

it's it's it's Greenbird is playing and it's all cool and pretty but it's like but it already was cool and pretty but it's like pretty again. I don't who to blame with this I'm gonna just assume it's everyone over the age of whatever age I am right now because I have just become so exhausted of hey let's take this thing oh we want to hit big time let's make it live action that's better right just just like nonstop like my

whole life and it's so exhausting well it well it is just like always worse just what's a hot thing that blew up in the time that we were growing up like okay well here like check it out we're doing it again in this way it's it's we didn't you did have old franchises coming back to life when we were growing up but it was so much rarer back then than it is like now for the things we give a fuck about

because I remember there'd be things where it'd be like do you remember the phantom like the phantom 2040 I think it was called it was like this purple superhero and he had a mask and like he would ride a horse sometimes and you know just that was it it was just there was a guy in his purple suit with a mask and he had gadgets and it was like a movie there's a live action movie that came out for this thing

and yeah it was based off the original phantom comics which I remember the only comics my dad ever had in like new and was into was the original phantom comics. So they made a live action movie for this thing. I must have been like must have been mid 90s if not late 90s and I was like what the fuck is this why does this exist. There's like oh because there is a bunch of older there's an older generation of people that are like oh my God I remember

the phantom and they were and they're like oh shit they're bringing it back Wow. And that was a stand like that's the that's an example that comes to mind from back then because that's how rarely it used to happen. You know we ask you a question Josie and the pussycats at some point came back you know but like there was not a whole lot of like we're bringing this old shit from the 70s back to

you for a new generation in a way that is like you're going to see one or two every single year you know. Can you think of any thing that went from being an animated property not a comic or a manga or a book first like you are to animated property that then became a live action thing that justified its own existence. The live action thing. Yeah speed racer was pretty good speed racer is literally

the only thing I could come up with. Let's be kind there's a bunch of shit that we didn't see or whatever but like there's at least like a 95% fail rate on this right like it is it is the worst transitory medium jump possible. I've seen manga get turned into good anime I've seen anime get turned into good manga I've seen books turn into great movies and vice versa etc but for whatever reason the jump from

animated to live action fucking sucks like every time. A lot of people seem to like Scooby-Doo I've never watched it but they're wrong. A lot of people seem to like Scooby-Doo. Man. We're starting animated huh yeah that's a there's not a whole lot there's not a whole lot. Bomber.

I mean if you expand that list to include started at least as a comic or a manga or shit like that then you can say Ninja Turtles you can say Alita. I saw people in the chat saying Kenshin unlike you mean the live action movies that were adapted from the manga Kenshin uh-oh sorry you tried. Well yeah so it's it's but either way the the the rate at which like properties that we got into in the mid to late

90s into the early aughts are like coming back now a decade and a half later is the rate is so much higher and everything is like this now and you're kind of there was a there's a video that I want to say comic book girl 19 did that looks at like the rate of new releases to existing IPs in terms of movies every year and how that like that used to be you know like I was like it used to be like a third of everything released and then it just increase and increase and now

it's like 70 to 80% of things have to be pre recognized and it's but it's like the decision is also it's clearly it's a financial thing where they're like it's not viable because people vote with their money and they don't go to see new things you know. Yeah, I'm sad so it was like this is a formula that sucks to see the progression of the pie chart where like old things have to take up the whole thing but it's also like well but

people are only going to see the old things because that's the things they care about and they don't go to see the new things you know it's a safer bet every time so how do you just like laying out in my head the results how terrible the elevator scene would be with two actresses in live action. It would suck. I'm going to go further and say the last 10 seconds of the show are extremely corny in live action.

Disgusting you mean? Or um. Oh y'all. No just corny. Oh you mean congratulations just oh what do you do with live action? Oh God that one looked oh God how would you even shoot it like what bet like I don't even know what do you do?

What do you do? Fuck that would be terrible. Last 10 seconds a cowboy bebop would also be kind of corny. So many in our chat said that David Lynch could do it and you know what David Lynch could totally do it I genuinely believe that but he wouldn't because David Lynch is only going to do what he wants to make and if you try to talk to him about it he'll tell you to shut up.

It's my favorite creator quote ever eraser heads my most spiritual film could you elaborate on that no refuses to elaborate yeah that's that's the big Chad I will not make statement refuses to elaborate. He actually does go into detail why he he responds to that way in a different interview he's like people always ask you what the movie was about or what the movie meant and it's like I told you what it was about when you watched the movie the

feeling that you had watching the movie that's what the movie was about. Why are you asking me to sit here and explain it to you. I'm going to say that like to go ahead and answer my own question the only way to fight back against like an infinite remake Sukiyomi is to just keep making new things and when the funding goes away find other ways of funding it and make the new things that are good anyway because if they're good

people will you know word of mouth can help. But there's a lot of great shit that never gets that to be honest so it's it's it's it's brutal it's it's rough it's rough you know. Like the the time to let the time to get the gun ready is when in 20 years you start reading an interview about a young animator who really wants to get the rights to do a remake of his favorite live action Space Western cowboy

bebop only to be told in interview that it was actually an animated thing first. We didn't didn't you know. No what was it I was gonna say I didn't powerpuff girls hit that level of like adaptation into no but it wasn't powerpuff girls I mean Street Fighter the movie read the game real battle on fucking film is you know already what you're describing you know you know what I gotta say the real take away from

this is that every every person working on live action cowboy bebop is another person not trying to get live action Akira made that is that is true that is very true Akira is a film that everyone has like a moral duty to fight against its live action incarnation from existing. It already makes no sense as an animated film. What are you doing you can't understand it unless you read the books it's based on what the fuck you doing adapting this.

All right anyway cowboy bebop comes to Netflix in a couple months it's coming out in like November. So we'll see what happens yeah other things. There was a a leak of the new Spider-Man trailer so then they just officially put out the new trailer for no way home. I had the absolute stupidest emotion around that Spidey Man leak because I got to it too late and the good leak had been taken down and so all I could watch was the guy recording

his own phone like the phone was vertical and he was watching the tiktok horizontal at 144p and like kept flashing some name on it that I couldn't read and like it was the shittiest possible way to watch it and I'm watching it I'm like yeah it's like the good old day when you couldn't fucking weird you're some new characters in a fighting game and the only way to see it is between a crowd of people around the machine someone's holding up a camcorder and it's recording some shit blurry quality

and you're like did you already do a new super is that I can't see it the screen flashed but then someone got in the way. I think my favorite part about it is that love this dude was watching for whatever reason didn't have the visual effects finished and so people put that out the VFX aren't done but like there's a scene of strange walking around in an area that in the real trailer you can see is covered in snow but when you're watching it over this dude's shoulder at 144p it looks

like multiple scenes are just entirely CG white backdrop and completely and I'm like oh my God is this a fucking work print Jesus shit. Well then they have to put out the real trailer then because if the one people go watch is like an infant unfinished bullshit one then at that point fuck your marketing you know. So like I'm gonna go ahead and assume that they noticed that people enjoyed spider-verse yeah and they're

like hey how about that though so it's it's a couple things it's a couple things so we did the Thanos stuff and now they gotta have one they have to have a big arc right and this big arc also includes Sony making Venom and Morbius and it has to also include the fact that Disney bought the X-mans that they probably want to get in there at some point and so they do that Loki stuff with the multiverse and what better way to start it off with one they did totally prove that spider

versus a good idea for a thing and two those Raimi movies are still super beloved and the actors in them were the right choices for those characters 20 years ago almost not not entirely but go on who don't you like tolfer fucking grace while he's not in this trailer is he but that was not the right choice for Eddie Brock but anyway go on but I'm talking about Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina specifically yeah yeah yeah two people that are in the new trailer correct and ironically

enough I'll even say hey Jamie Foxx is a good choice for Electro just not the version they fucking did with that other shitty movie listen like Spider-Man Batman and Superman are the characters with the most multi universe movie nonsense bullshit history to go through so like you can have a lot of fun with that if you actually go through the efforts of hiring the people and going full on admission that shit was wild and corny and lame in some of these entries make fun of

yourself embrace it and then we can all have fun together because that's how we just realized how I just realized who they should have cast as Eddie Brock but the age doesn't line up I don't think let me see 44 maybe it should have been John Cena said he brought it absolute I just watched Suicide Squad the other day with the John Cena in it and he's actually a decent actor he could have totally done Eddie Brock okay but can they use Eddie Brock are they allowed who knows

I don't even know if that's allowed that might not be okay who knows though what's interesting is like did you see Loki I didn't finish it I'm okay I'm like two episodes from finishing it that's fine they do a lot of dumb multiverse shit and they do right they do and the best thing that they that has come out of that is they interview it's this fucking movie is leaking like a sieve like it is because of the casting yeah because it's the most it's the most interesting thing

about it has been the casting news so they talked to elect they talked to lecture they talked to Jamie Foxx so you're gonna be the new Spider-Man movie is electro and he's like yeah but I'm not gonna be blue they're not gonna be paint me up with that blue shit sure yeah and it's like oh and you see yellow lightning in the in the in the trailer and you're like oh they're gonna bring back Jamie Foxx's electro because that was a good pick but they ruined him but he's not gonna

be the same electro he's gonna be one electro over now the during spider-verse I remember hearing that like oh there was an intended bit that was gonna involve Andrew Garfield and Toby McGuire but like they just but they didn't actually end up doing it now do you actually is that even a thing that you consider doing here you know or do you just stick with the villains and keep it from like going all in with alternate actual part of Peters well the the set photos of

Andrew Garfield and Toby McGuire hanging out together in Spider-Man suits that came out the same day definitely lead to the idea that yeah they're probably gonna be in it okay all right well we'll see what happens we'll see what happens like the photos of them hanging out in a blue screen set just standing next to each other in Spider-Man costumes yeah so it's it's it bodes well it bodes well okay yeah interesting interesting

wow okay I like make fun of it this fucking shit on your own franchise yeah drop trouser and fucking dump on your own dumb old iteration if we're gonna have a million comic book movies I at least want some comic book movies that do stupid stupid comic book shit mm-hmm right we're finally there we're finally 20 plus movies in everyone knows what a what a cape is and now you can start doing the weird shit I wanted

the weird shit like 10 years ago but we weren't ready fucking finally did you see the new Suicide Squad I didn't I hear it's great Starro's the villain okay do you even know who Starro is nope he's that fucking Superman villain that's the starfish from space okay yeah fucking magic starfish

all right it's stupid it's stupid that's dumb man yeah here it's good uh it is it's fun I saw spider wait so who's who's talking to me shut up whoever's talking to me get out of here steam keys all right what else we got on news let's take a look over here we've got the announcement that River City Girls 2 is happening

and yeah it's got a bunch more characters including Proofy from River City Ransom Underground the cool cool hoody girl and Marion from Double Dragon herself as a playable character that's awesome she got kidnapped a couple times River City Girls that she learned how to fight game it's good game she learned how to fight so confirmed this is not the rage of the Dragon's Universe I want to talk to you about this Marion Marion is here and

she's got abs yeah that's dope that's dope more of this game is great I wait is that why she got abs because she's sick of getting punched in the gut I imagine she keeps getting punched in the gut of course she gets abs so that you don't get punched anymore in fact if this game knows what it's doing it'll have a moment where someone tries and the fucking head just breaks as it bounces off the diamond

abs she has you know or her parry or one of her moves will just be like her sticking her stomach sticking her abs out and just absorbing the head like like you like fuck you you ain't punching shit I really hope so that'd be amazing beat him up crossover shit is the most confusing thing in the world to me it is it is absolutely but it's not really it's just it's just River City Ransom Double Dragon and all that techno shit is just Predator Alien Terminator they're like oh guys you

guys want to be friends and hang out a lot we're still going to make our own money but do you want to hang out a bunch and everyone's like yeah okay let's do it you know Cuneo all of it they just they just that's it they just like hanging out people who have franchises that are similar that want to do crossovers all the time I guess so yeah River City girls to fight they need to fight because they need bus fare there's also a River City girls zero that's coming out that's a 16 bit D make style

game that's nice and a bit overlapping but but have you seen the artwork though yeah it's it's like it's old school Cuneo and it's like yeah exactly and it's like and it's sending everybody back into like what they would be like in that in that that era the of Shin Niketsu Koho that's cool more River City girls man that game was shockingly amazing not not D make old style games old 16 bit style game just yes so there's an announcement for that there's also apparently a

platinum game summer festival livestream coming on Friday new info on World of Demons first glimpse at soul Cresta gameplay and new DLC for the wonderful 101 which everybody fucking forgot that the Kickstarter campaign talked about Luca's first adventure I also forgot about that which was a 16 bit side scroller that was going to feature Luca and then I think there was like a second chapter of it so they're making more wonderful and shit once that summer platinum thing Friday

Friday okay so Friday is one two three so that would be day 1351 of no Bayonetta three news why have you not deleted Bayo three from your brain yet because I follow the daily status of Bayonetta three and retweet it at least once a week because it's hilarious that it's gotten to like almost 1400 days you should delete that from your brain and just yeah I'm not gonna I don't care the game and the game straight up needs to be re-announced oh it has to be like a big thing it has to

be like Nintendo Direct coming hot it's about a big thing and they have to spend like half an hour showing it off and and talking about why it took so long and like a like a proper re-announcement I wonder if I wonder how things would have went if they announced that they like didn't cancel it but they scrapped it and they started over like I wonder if that makes it a little more understandable when then it would definitely make it a lot more tangible as that would have

technically counted as Bayonetta three news therefore we would be at day 700 or something you're not counting the days until Bayo three exists you're counting the days since there's been news yeah that's right that's the daily status of Bayonetta three right right there is no news right right for thirteen hundred and forty eight days just information okay okay fine yes true that's an important distinction to make this is like like Kimia has like I think a year or so ago said like

we're still working on it I'm like stop thinking about news but he did say stop thinking about it he also said stop asking me about it and it's like no that's not news wasn't it didn't you say pretend it didn't get an exist and it didn't get announced pretend he said pretend it didn't get announced yeah there you go he literally said that yeah so no no well well I think the funniest thing is like I think it was two weeks ago Kimia retweeted the fucking day like fourteen hundred

did he yeah that's amazing retweeted at least one of them that's pretty amazing okay by the way reminder that World of Demons is pretty fun yeah that's cool it's a solid little imagine just getting the fucking release ready for World of Demons or 101 or whatever new project they're working on and then just like having to sit there and just like alright hey so we're here to talk about World of Demons today is there anything you would like to ask me about World of Demons yeah

yeah I've got a question sitting there I've got a question yeah what's your question sir is this an out of season April fools joke what do you know what many many gamers have phones for Diablo oh man you want to talk about Blizzard there's a minor piece of news today about them I have a minor piece of news about Blizzard that says that they've lost nearly half of their monthly active users in four years I mean over the past four years like it's been a drop for four years now and they recently hit half their

users it has fallen from 46 million to 26 million since 2017 correct the active user base is that everything on the Blizzard launcher that is World of Warcraft Overwatch Hearthstone and everything that you would consider an active user base for their games that is wild that is leading up absolutely crazy here on year they plateaued around 32 million monthly active users from 2019 up to 2020 but yeah half people are in our chat are pointing out that they lost those numbers continuously despite

the biggest video game boom period ever which is the pandemic so that's what that that's what that peak was about if not for the pandemic they would have lost even more the great the the the decline would have been more that is true despite that while expansion Shadowlands being the fastest selling PC game of all time when it launched last December swiftly taken over by cyberpunk it wasn't enough to turn around the numbers well that's a great sentence fastest selling ever but then cyberpunk beat it

like wow what a great batch so what's the other I haven't heard good things about Shadowlands by the way like did I feel like there was a massive drop off on that I mean look at 14 they just had to do maintenance last night to deal with server congestion like just nonstop what's the other bit the other bit of news oh well let's go to Stephen Tatillo's Twitter where he is reporting on a new piece of information about the Activision Cal Activision Blizzard lawsuit from California which will now

include references to contract workers and claims that human resources would routinely shred documentation about investigations and complaints of sexual harassment at the car oh my god quote the D F E H says Activision Blizzard has stymied its efforts through NDAs requiring employees to speak with the company ahead of contacting D F E H and its involvement with Wilmer Hale a law firm the game maker said will investigate misconduct the suit claims that this directly

interferes with their ability to investigate prosecute and rabbinie workplace discrimination and harassment violations on behalf of employees blah blah blah it alleges in part that the documents and related to investigations and complaints were shredded by HR personnel and violation of what it asserts is the game company's legal obligation to retain them pending investigation so as soon as the lawsuit hit them HR took every investigative report and fucking complaint form they ever

received and just started to destroy them literally totally aren't hiding anything literally flush the coke down the toilet the cops are coming up we needed the money carried because wow so the like wow those fun things where you can just assume guilt because if they were not guilty why would they have destroyed wow that's insane gated reports and it's like oh so what were these investigative reports were these like like literally a stack of binders going hey this dude's a

sex pervert and won't leave me alone and jokes about Cosby rapes and it's like 20 reports and every single one of them is like found no basis found no basis found a little check mark on it if it's a stack of papers that makes it so that you can say yeah I didn't know anything then that's why you you'd shred it wow oh man is there any gesture or action more guilty than destroying like like destroying things while your the door is being like bashed in alright Julie hey Julie

how you doing you still at the office okay I'm gonna need you to take everything out of every filing cabinet and shred it I want you to burn the paper okay yes no everything yeah absolutely everything no don't worry about it this isn't a crime I promise just people in people in suits and ties at the office working on their like swallowing the pieces of paper gag reflex before they get fucking brought outside oh my god okay damn that's a bad one just an optics in terms of optics whatever it means like

you know it just it's just that is that is as brutal there was also I don't guess I'm sure somebody either in the chat or listen to this podcast will post it somewhere but there was a young woman who was who still employed at Activision Blizzard who has been very active in showing off like hey we gotta fucking do something about this shit and like retweeting every article about how bad the company sucks and people from HR contacted her with a written email saying hey you're making it really hard to

hire new people because they're like looking up the company and seeing some articles on your Twitter could you just could you just calm it down because it's making it really tough to replace some of the employees we had to fire and this lady to her grand credit just screenshot that HR email and put it right up also we've noticed that you haven't been mentioning all the good things that we've done that's the underlying part to me so the underlying part to me isn't isn't either of those things and

it's it's the way that that goes down says a lot about because there's corporate culture and there's company culture but then each department has its own feeling and it's that the people in HR going through all of this and apparently shredding documents while this is happening right are stupid enough or near-sighted enough that the person banging the drum about their specific abuses is the person they should write down a request to stop this is not something you put on paper this is something Jimmy go

to her office and talk to her in person no Pat because when you make the call to say hey do you mind not doing that it's extraordinarily difficult to hear the request over the sounds of the paper shredder going on in the background the paper shredder is really loud it's there really loud it's tough you gotta send an email out very loud lots of shit going on in the background you can't hear you can't hear tough let's just send the message write it down a lot of sounds a lot of people running around a lot

of boxes getting emptied onto the floor now someone just pointed it out well with covid they could be working from home and that's true and if that is the case then it would have obviously been a better solution to do nothing well you know what's better than doing nothing what's that paying what you owe close to ten years later oh god I was talking about this last night this is such a feel bad so current shillings failed game studio finally sends its last paychecks

38 studios the folks behind reckoning which I tested and enjoyed no they weren't behind it it was a different team oh they published it then yeah they published it yeah behind Copernicus the MMO that never came out right their logo was definitely on on yeah and that was supposed to be a different game altogether until they they picked it up oh yeah no I was staring at those design documents while we were testing like it was you know it was a thing ambitious is is a hell of a word to describe it but I like the combat system in

reckoning and so the people who made that of course were all fucked over in lots of ways some nine years ago around four hundred employees as we were told you guys maybe some time ago were fucked over in the in the bankruptcy process of 38 studios because people were moved out to the location and in some cases like people were given houses in Rhode Island that were like it's meant to like support them while working at the studio and then after the shutdown they were left holding the bag last night it's called a double mortgage so they were out

wherever the original studio was and some of those people had Massachusetts on their homes Massachusetts okay so at Massachusetts they have homes in Massachusetts and then the company says well we need more funding so we're gonna go to Rhode Island get more funding and people go but I own a fucking house in Massachusetts they go well don't worry the company will pay your mortgage on either the old one or the new one I forget but it's not really important so you have a double mortgage but the company will pay one of those mortgages and then the company will just own the house that you're not living in

so you'll you will it's no problem right and that works great right up until the company disintegrates and you're stuck holding two mortgages including a house that you don't live in multiple states over yes so that entire process was a 75 million dollar loan that the company was acting as a guarantor for everyone's shit and then yeah they got fucked over people were stuck with their those old mortgages and you know not to mention other like basic like paid unpaid salaries and things like that you know there was literally canned food drives to help support the people that were suddenly out of work there so all

this to say that after nearly a decade of litigation payouts have begun and have started going to the former staff some people are so many addresses beyond where they used to live nine years ago that it's having a hard time reaching everybody but they have they have begun paying out their last paychecks and what they owe to people so far it's been a fraction of what's totally owed it's no details on whether this is the end of it or whether it was going to going to continue but there you go hey here's a bonus would you guys like to so fucking 38 studios went under in 2012 right and 2012 like that seems familiar

for some reason and I'm like we're talking about double mortgages housing prices have to sell their house and I'm like let's take a gander at a wikipedia well the United States housing bubble was a real estate bubble affecting over half of the U.S. states it was the impetus for the subprime mortgage crisis four years prior prices peaked in early 2006 declined in 2006 and then reached new lows in 2012 so the lowest shittiest price you could ever sell your house for in the past 30 years was the year that these people lost their jobs coming out of it with double mortgages so there you go

I heard Schilling went back to announcing for baseball and made a bunch of his money back and got to be rich again he dreamed of making a wow killer you know what wow killers are great segment are we got we got some fortnight on this docket woolly hit me you know what mode is coming to fortnight yeah true that's true I completely fucking yeah that was this week yeah yeah that's right imposters I mean look if you thought the apex they're gonna steal our shit release wasn't the epitome of like oh no they did steal it they took it it was two weeks later it doesn't matter what genre your game is if

the kids love it they're coming for it big old a muggus this is this is my favorite part because we he's showing talks about doing a wow killer and I don't know if you remember but 38 studios did do one thing that was smart in that whole period they never showed the game hmm game was never shown because if you remember wow had the most predatory business model ever for many years they were making the most money of any MMO that ever has and probably ever will and warhammer online would come out and say hey we're gonna make a wow killer it's gonna be good MMO we got the warhammer license and our big thing is gonna be

public quest and here's how the public quests are gonna work and they would show it off and wow would build a team yep to implement that in wow yep it would be in wow before it the fucking game it stole it from you and came out yep and then warhammer would fucking come out and people would be like what the fuck is the point of this shit I'm already playing wow it still has it and they did that to like tons of games and fortnight was a was a survival building game like minecraft and then they saw pub g and went no we're a battle royale game and then they saw a muggus and they're like now we're a fucking imposter game

we're gonna have a poster mode like the fortnight taking other game shit model is what made fortnight to begin with it started with what are they doing over there we can do it over here it started better because we have the we have the unreal money right you know there was no yeah it's it's my favorite thing it's my favorite meme I've seen in a long time where it's somebody is pretending to be you know world of warcraft it's like hey whatever your game does we're just gonna copy it and we're gonna do it better and then somebody goes well what if you had like good writing and good music and it just cuts back to like

world of warcraft like crying because that's literally all it was just a first file fantasy I'd say you can't steal good writing you can't steal good music you know like suit like imagine the world that we would soon live in the in our lifetimes where like so spider-man trailer comes out today and then yeah the AI behind Warner Brothers generates a Batman multiverse movie which releases tomorrow using all of the footage of their old movies and we um um deepfakes to take the actor faces and create new scenes we literally bang this movie out in three weeks it's here no actors required just deepfake

everything and use the old footage you know and now it's out and you've got Batman multiverse adventure what the fuck you need the spider shit for it's uh and it's it's it's weird because in games it's one of the only mediums that if you throw more money at it it can become better right Alfred Milino as much we have Heath Ledger yeah you can throw as much money as you want at uh uh George R. R. Martin right the book's not going to be better because you gave him more money no right you can throw as much money at a manga artist or comic artist and it's like it's still going to come out in the time frame that's going

to come out at the quality that they want to produce but with and with a movie yeah you can make the special effects look better and the production look better but you're not going to be swapping actors in the middle of the film because you got more money like it just doesn't work like that right with a game you can say I want a hundred more people to work on what a jump feels like yeah and that'll make it more fun night is yeah yeah fortnight is just spend infinity dollars on making every single part of this process feel and play immaculate now it'll even though it's a massive ripoff fest guess what it's still a quality

ripoff and it'll it'll it'll never have like a disco elysium level script you know you need somebody to write that you can't just give more money to 30 like 300 writers and be like give me disco elysium script but you can make the game feel fun and good to shoot the bang yeah that's that's a doable mm-hmm yeah I absolutely think like this is fortnight doing this is the beginning well wow wow really as you gave the example was the beginning but like the idea of companies ripping each other off has been around for a while but those ripoffs would often come out to be a new game or a different property or franchise or

some kind of staggered release slightly different not an ongoing live service game that has everyone's attention yeah that's the difference is like I would have to beat you to the punch and put that shit out and have someone go come out here and buy it not beat you to the punch and hand it to people that are already here that have paid that are interested in what I'm putting out anyway or they haven't paid because my services free it's brutal fucking brutal don't announce your shit don't say what it is don't do anything and maybe you'll stand a chance apex new the the the only other interesting thing about this story is

that the among us devs did mention that they did not copyright or patent the gameplay in among us they don't think that's very good for the industry but they wished that for night like tried harder to differentiate itself mm-hmm mm-hmm it's called imposter mode like that's probably where most of the IRC I'm like wow we don't we don't want you to not we want you to recognize and think about among us when you see this we don't want you just for a second think we're doing something else however to be fair among us is a very old genre of games werewolf that has had dozens of incarnations prior to it yeah then

not just happen to be the one to hit it them not trying to own that concept is because that's a game you can sit with your friends in a circle and play you know it's a fucking campfire game like why would you try to do that so that that makes perfect sense you know but as somebody oh man I love reading these people during this because sometimes they really nail it like trouble in terrorist town is one of the first big video game incarnations of this right but as someone correctly pointed out among us isn't called trouble in terrorist village right right right it's like right the fact that fortnight's

like it's an a pot like fuck off holy shit even like secret Hitler is secret Hitler call it secret age Jesus Christ but their children are supposed to recognize it and like that they recognize it like that's the point the differentiation defeats the point yeah so anyway there you go other shit going down saints rose being rebooted again apparently so oh no wait no it didn't get rebooted I just they've been talking about this for years I didn't realize they were not there yet well they basically have updated the website with a big wall reading rebooting and apparently it's going to be possibly

revealed at Gamescom or or I'm something along those lines according to the I'm not surprised I don't know if you followed the Saints Row games at all well a there was literally nowhere to go that franchise to go yeah fair enough they did the GTA game and then they did the version where you had superpowers and then they had the version where you were in hell with superpowers and like by the end of that like the earth is destroyed like there's no earth yeah okay okay and you're a demigod in like a GTA world and you never ever get into a car ever and you're shooting fireballs and magic and it's like yeah they'd have

to do a total reboot if they want me to get into a car and pick up a shotgun again because um yeah so it's more info later not much to say though is game is that this Friday okay I guess that's where all this news is coming from as well as gamescom this Friday gamescom is happening right now there's an Xbox thing that was going on right before we started the podcast I did mention Halo once and now everyone is sad yeah I saw like Psychonauts 2 got a trailer and some other stuff yeah I was wondering like I saw a bunch of Xbox news popping up um never mind all that shit though fuck Xbox let me tell you

something the future yeah tell me yeah the future is here the future is Atari Atari is officially 100% completely owned by soldier boy tell him the Atari is great to launch title for a new Atari console let's go everybody go follow at Atari go follow the various on Twitter on everywhere because soldier boy has bought it he owns Atari and he's already announced that he is about to sell it for 140 million get fucking told to soldier boy who wants to buy the Atari right now so no seriously so Atari then follows up with some messaging saying nah soldier boy does not own Atari wait what soldier boy puts out a video

saying I own Atari he's wearing a hat he's wearing a shirt and he says I'm the new owner I'm the first rapper to own a video game company I own Atari Atari releases a statement going nah and I believe that the tweet was we know the CEO of Atari is a dream job but that honor still belongs to Wade Rosen so Atari is like no soldier boy does not own Atari soldier boy then comes out and lose and starts and goes off and says no I do own them I do own the company I have proof the proof is right here yeah trick yeah I own the company I'm gonna make my money and he holds up a contract that he apparently owns people zoom in

on the contract that was screenshotted and he noticed that it does not specify he owns the Atari company but he does in fact own Atari tokens which are Atari cryptocurrency that he purchased through a promo deal Superman now Superman that hole you soldier boy does not take the news kindly and reacts quite angrily to what what what people are accusing him of and you know he he did say he did say that they were proud of him for what he did with the soldier boy game console they saw that he blew the soldier boy game console up and they and they figured that you know he would be the right person to take the brand of Atari forward

and they they're in talks you know he says they're in talks about where to go with Atari and he's the owner he signed a deal they reached out and signed the deal this is this is just million dollar cringe 140 million specifically you know but like how much did he spend on these fucking tokens we get to think we get assume he was willing to sell it for 140 right but how much did he fucking spend on it enough to think he owned the company and then went out and bought a hat and shirt and then put out tons of videos of him talking about making moves making fucking moves that is that is million dollar cringe that is absolutely astonishing

that is absolutely unbelievable you know and people people when I'm talking I'm like yeah cryptocurrency is a scam everything about it is a scam and you're either being scammed or you're in on the scam and there's no two ways about it wow here we go somebody just got paid millions of dollars of real money that that they can go out and buy shit with to give the to give soldier boy fucking I don't even know like if if the end result was he he thought he owned it and it turned out he owns some shares and not as many as that's totally different that's a dip that is a thing there but he owns Atari tokens whatever the fuck those are

it's it's it's incredible because like anything is only worth what anyone's willing to pay for it that's correct and at some at some point Atari tokens let's take that specifically are going to be worth literally zero because no one's using it unless this news blows them the fuck up in which case everyone jumps in on this wild fucking ride so the only way for soldier boy to make his money back is for him to now talk up how awesome Atari coin is and how Atari coin is the future and how it was actually very lucky that he got Atari coin instead of shares because the shares are going to go down a value but Atari coin can only go up and that's

why you should buy my Atari coin ignore why I'm desperate to sell even though I'm saying it the value can only go up are you talking about soldier coin yeah sure yeah for sure for sure the I hope Jonathan blows having a good day I hope I hope he's working on I don't know but I hope he's having a good day you know I hope something something nice is happening anyway do you remember you know of like blows soul leave his body when he's watching that soldier boy clip do you remember the look on his fucking face I just I just like what I love what I love is that like you can count on like the fucking like the tithes like the

calendar like the moon you can count on soldier boy popping back up within two years in the gaming industry in some way shape or form to do something to say something you know you know always gonna be around I remember soldier boy in Superman at home all that blown up and iced tea came out to just talk just endless shit about what a stupid unappreciative fucking moron soldier boy was and the general consensus was yeah but T you're feuding with a child yeah right like you're a you're a full grown man with wife and kids and a long story career and you're you're fighting a literal child like come on and then you

grow up and he gets that was like ten years ago and this motherfucker still just as stupid he gets to say yeah trick yeah get out my face get out my face and then fucking you know cuz you're a big adult don't talk to him you can't say shit is this right wait hold on no no give me one second to verify that are you looking at the Snoop Dogg shit he's collaborating with Chet Hanks soldier boy it's gonna be the poster child for white boy summer yo let's go real original Jamaican bad accent Chet Hanks hey oh let's fucking go hmm oh that's good oh that's beautiful view I'm seeing a lot of people who don't know

my friends my friends believe I know about lend me your ears citizens of Castle Super Beast if you do not know you need to understand that Chet Hanks aka Chet Hayes is Tom Hanks other son that's not Colin Hanks he's the one that didn't become an actor he became a rapper and sorry did he originally blew up for saying the n-word and then making a video about why it was okay for him to say it and why his friends get said it was okay for him to say it and that you just don't understand and then most recently he blew up again because of white boy summer because he said it's about to be a white boy summer and then he blew up

because he was at the Oscars I want to say and then he spit some fucking garbage patois into the camera and then after that he blew up one more time because in the middle of making a everybody get your vaccines be safe out there do your thing he then went psych and then goes off on a rant about why fuck the vaccines if you're young and all that shit and it's just it's great it's a if you have zero brain cells to dedicate to to just a rabbit hole of the other Hank go down the rabbit hole that is Chet Hayes because also mind you one of the first celebrities to get COVID was Tom Hanks and and his and Rita but

never mind that it's it's yeah it's it's an amazing profound waste of your time and yeah okay he signed up a soldier boy I didn't expect the crossing of the crossover episode but here we are that's amazing that's I thought when you were you were checking out stuff like you saw that Chet and soldier boy hanging out I thought you had seen the Snoop Dogg news from a couple weeks ago about his streams that is basically the funniest thing I ever heard I did not I will link you to a PC gamer article okay I was just amazed I'd like you to tell me about this article I mean because the collaboration with the white Don Dada is you know it's

gonna be hard to beat snoops dog Snoop Dogg stream I'm glad you did not see this Oh come on Snoop Dogg stream I'll read it I'll read it Snoop Dogg stream has been muted for a week and his fans cannot tell him Snoop Dogg was playing Madden for a week and put out three full streams with completely muted audio because he had been playing his own music in the background which had to its auto mute him and it's just like so high or so

non-viewing of his own chat that he just did three full Madden streams until his friend Jean came over and fixed it for him Oh fuck and apparently apparently Jean had to fix Snoop's microphone also so it definitely wasn't just the music okay he got it working he got it working he was like yeah so his friend Jean came over and fucked around with his microphone and stuff for five minutes and then and then Snoop was was back in business for a week

five and forty eight thousand people tuning in to watch him inaudibly play Madden while he has a few joints people tried to let him know that he's muted but his chat is emote only so there's a photo here of just like nothing but chat going nay with the microphone symbol trying to get his attention oh fuck me that is the best thing I've ever heard oh that makes me so happy that's so good yeah yeah and people I just I can imagine like the chat collectively trying trying to just can we get him to understand and he just cares there's something about the fact that it was the list is five to

forty eight thousand people were watching that so I can only imagine people are tuning in to see the moment that he realizes mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm yeah yeah yeah wow well hey man some streamers some some rappers take better to twitch than others you know I hear this is the second Snoop dog streaming story I heard he was good was he he lit up a joint and started smoking it with both hands visible while the game yes yes yes yes true true true true true right right right right um my god that's fucking great anyway let's fucking let's let's take some letters all right you want to send in a letter

maybe hold off for a couple weeks I guess because we're not going to be reading them not until what three weeks from now whatever but if you want to send in a letter anyway send it to castle super beast mail at gmail.com yeah if I do see it it will be at least by the 23rd no that's not right the 20th people people are saying that at one point he rage quit Street Fighter 5 and left the stream on for eight hours after just walking away I did see him rage quit games before I've seen Snoop rage quit I put like yeah I didn't know he left it on that's great that oh man no one help him like let it let it be let it fucking happen like I

remember there was a there was a point where you came on muted and I saw that you were muted so I gave you a call on your phone to be like dude you have nothing coming through mm-hmm and that was like what three minutes four minutes or something you imagine if I had seen that and went nah nah this is good like this this is yeah okay all right good for Jean Snoop Dogg's friend Jean the thing is is that I always assume the celebrity streamer has their streaming friend right there yeah you assume he's always right there that's the thing well Jean came over and set it up for him and

they live they don't live in the same house so he checked in on a stream on the third night was like oh Jesus shit yeah yeah sometimes sometimes something falls on your keyboard and it presses the start streaming button and then your stream just starts itself up you know who among us cast the first stone if you haven't streamed darkness at 4 a.m. I haven't but I've started muted like literally 30 40 times there you go let's see here if you got a mail you want to send it you can send it to castle super beast mail at gmail.com we got one coming in from Adam says dear wrong and strong got back I'm the strong one uh-huh

that's me for sure got back into fighting games this year after not touching one since MK9 on the 360 went from third strike to a keyboard on SF5 pad something terrible happened I was playing the games getting hang of things I got pressured into a corner and then I pressed R2 to block muscle memory from a decade prior kicked in and I attempted to press right trigger but now is on my ps4 controller and I had no block button needless to say it was strange and frustrating to get back in but now I'm enjoying strive no problems does your muscle memory totally fail you absolutely every time I went back to Sekiro and I was like oh god

fuck shit jump you know and and and everything else and playing Sekiro and Neo at the same time I'll think and they're visually kind of brutal samurai shit brutal man I I had this happen last night real bad because I beat prey and then an hour and I've been playing praying on stop all weekend and then an hour later I went and hopped on to Mass Effect and the first thing that I did Mass Effect is I tried to click in on the left stick to dash not a function then I tried to hit up on the d-pad to turn on a flashlight which isn't even a thing that exists in Mass Effect there you go

like just I think I think any game that doesn't have click in the left stick to dash is the worst culprit for me because almost every game does have click in the left stick to sprint and then switch to a game that doesn't do that and it's like for me sometimes you go back to older games and you try to hit that right stick to rotate the camera and it's like what the fuck you think you're doing there's no camera control here this is a inert stick don't look at me you want to you want to play Jet Set Radio you're gonna move in one direction and press the re-center the camera behind you button and that's all you have

fuck you second stick yeah yeah I have had moments where I hit why to jump in games that don't have a jump button if I've been playing a lot of ff14 that sure sure just like this game does not have a jump fucking mechanic why am I oh okay we got one coming in from Civ Sarcaste how you doing so dear Wellington and Patron 4000 Civ checking in got my first letter on here touches on the email from two weeks ago with the ice born player with the best gear because it made sense to them being strong and getting stronger in games is a more natural thing to players there's a series I can think of where I

leveled up past the point the less I enjoyed the game the less I enjoyed the game and it was Dark Souls because of how single and multiplayer are interwoven together so level affected my online experience on my first DS3 run I intentionally kept my level relative to each area stopped if I got too high this allowed me to match with more players for jolly co-op and some PvP I beat ashes of Ariandel at a hundred allowing me to use DLC gear to help players with certain equipment and stuff and as my level got higher there were less people playing the game especially ng plus so I wasted time being

summoned and got bored in DS2 I made a character that was the iron keep guide where I capped my level at 85 to 90 and served as a tour guide for players to navigate through the iron keep it's my favorite area the game many traps and things that players tend to miss because there's no voice chat you use gestures to help people with stuff and guiding them to do through the area was the most fun thing I ever did in DS2 so those are two instances of where getting stronger allows you to enjoy the game way more but it's probably because of how soul games handle online play yeah so the ability to serve as a guide can make

being over leveled a fun thing but some people also just naturally enjoy being over leveled like min for example it's not always a negative I'm one of those people I like being powerful in games but it depends on what I'm going to that game for so being overpowered in Devil May Cry sucks because you can't combo things enemies aren't enemies aren't forcing me to engage with the game's mechanics so I can just do whatever I want and there's no joy here it turns it into mooso yeah like my one of my issues with prey is that like I got so strong that enemies meant nothing to me anymore and it's like well the middle part of

that game was actually the most enjoyable and it's any game gives you a number that can go up and make you stronger runs into flow problems flow being perceived difficulty of task and difficulty of task versus perceived competence and real competence there's a sweet spot there where you're being pretty challenged but not to the limit so you can really engage and you totally immerse yourself if you ever I think to I think just to elaborate and clarify the point being if you ever swung your sword in Devil May Cry and your sword did more damage at the end of the game than it did at the beginning and things died faster you would

have less fun with the game yeah so in Devil May Cry what they do is they increase encounter complexity and difficulty to accommodate for the supposed increase in player expertise per level which is why when you beat Devil May Cry the last thing you want to do is go through the first couple levels on the same difficulty because all of a sudden they're boring as shit now you got new difficulties to unlock that are going to exactly compensate for that yeah so the specific thing in that last email before was the new player who's playing for the first time who doesn't know what's interesting or attractive

about the game yet and not sure if they're like it then you're forming your opinion off of the over leveled version of the game you don't even know there's a struggle and then you have a complete warped thing and then you bounce off of it you know that's a very different experience for sure flows really tough because every player's competency is different everybody's experience is different everybody's reaction of those competencies and experiences and physical abilities is going to change per situation like I find I like to think that I'm good at multitasking but I'm terrible at slide puzzles so if I was going to

increase like I man witness is a cool game that I can't play for shit because as I was learning the mechanics of those types of puzzles my actual ability to solve them was not increasing I was still at the beginning level because I suck at that kind of puzzle the biggest difference between doom and doom eternal is to change to game flow which resulted in a lot of people having like a lot of people hating the new flow and a lot of people loving the new flow and having a preference over one game or the other and in both cases I'm like I like both but they're doing two separate things the the the loop that you have to do

and doom eternal if you don't enjoy that process if that's not a thing that you dig you kind of die that the whole game is pointless just quit immediately like you're not going to like what the game asks you to do you know later on Pokemon is a really good example of this issue because if you're not a child most Pokemon games are going to be way too easy and thus you're not going to feel challenged at all and so you're not going to have as good of a time so what a people what do adults who are familiar with Pokemon do in order to really get a good challenge out of their new Pokemon game when it comes out they run some

kind of bullshit challenge run sure they go okay I'm going to nuzz lock it or I'm going to whatever PvP yeah but I'm talking about just going through just going through it yeah thing at the same time Kirby is a great example of it's always going to be too easy but then the challenge comes on later on locks and challenge and things that you know you get to but even then it's like it's it's just meant to be an enjoyable breeze yeah Kirby kind of sidesteps that because playing her even all admit that playing Kirby is just pleasant mm-hmm it's a nice pleasant experience that feels good and it's got nice colors and

sound and music and it's just nice it always has an ad like it always has like an ass kicking like boss or segment or thing that you eventually unlock or challenge but like it's usually not like insanely brutal you know it's just like a like okay you you've gotten to a point where it's going to be a little tough yeah so there you go let's see here got one from Ryan who says hey William Pat you address this during your conversation about Jacko but I wanted to explore further where do you think the personality draw where do you think you should personally draw the line between

changing a character's move list and turning them into a new roster slot versus separating that for a brand new character how different is too different I'm a fan of Jacko from Rev 2 and I don't like her minion gimmick so I never used it I had plenty of fun with her other moves while I would have liked to see minions further reduced I also enjoyed the revised stride version but I can understand that fans of the character would not enjoy some of those changes I fair for a similar situation I had was with Ibuki from third strike to SF4 to SF5 I maintained her in third strike enjoyed her translation to four but I didn't like

her in five took away a lot of the moves I liked replaced with new tech I didn't enjoy so I stopped playing her I felt she was changed enough that she might as well have been a brand new character I agree with Pat that story justifications for removing characters are irrelevant and I extend that sentiment to the reasons for reducing a move list from that's really interesting because you can tell that certain developers feel much more strongly about this than others so like Street Fighter characters despite being an example change relatively little over time compared to let's say King of Fighters where like almost every

version of a King of Fighters game is going to be a different character from every other version is he already good this year I don't know what fucking year is it yeah so I mean the fact that when they made CVS one they had to make EX get versions of the characters is like a perfect example of like okay so we made the Terry Bogard you know but some of you might not like that Terry Bogard so we have EX Terry who has all the other moves we didn't give him because these are the rest of the things he has in other years and I don't know take your pick you know I don't think there's such a thing is too different I'm okay with

going as far as you need to I'm okay with reinventing the characters kit and changing them entirely if you know that's what you want to do with your design it's just a matter while I know people that looked at geef in SF5 and went no banishing flat fuck this sure sure right but sometimes you reinvent a character and like it just depends on whether or not you end up with something that's fun to do I've had reinventions that I've hated and I've had reinventions that I've liked I think juries changes to SF5 are interesting there's some stuff there's some stuff there that like I get why they made it different and like

overall I prefer I think I prefer her for version but I kind of get that they wanted to like reinvent it a bit when the banishing flat is like yeah like a like a legacy move that like makes a huge difference to how the character sort of plays out gin in Tekken is like you know plot reasons unlearn your entire style here's a new character but we know that some of you still want gin so here so they made a new character specifically to be old gin and that'll be that forever you'll always have old gin you don't have to worry about it you know well yeah gin's cool and all but I don't care give me devil gin every single day

of the week because that's the moveset I want to play yeah the things that I that I enjoy about Makoto had to change when she came to Street Fighter 4 you know they they her her rush punch hi ate can't be as fast as it was I know but that's what I like that's what's a lot of fun is that exploding dash punch that's really quick I enjoyed that so that being nerfed was like a definite fun down you know but like if you build her around other things like they mentioned with a boogie that it's like yeah you know you might create something that is like well personally I still like character but it just the main thing I enjoy is

different there she can still do her dash up the character man throws and shit but I don't mind the reinvention personally I don't think there's ever a two different it says it's just like make sure that the end result is not like just a change because the old version was to OP make sure that what you reinvent into is fun in its own right so I mean the question is at what point do you make a different character instead of just or instead of just you know keeping it within the same character and I guess it's like how much do you want to change it right and that's going to depend on any particular person but if

you're going to change a character like more than like 40% of like their total move list including normals just make somebody new there's there's no point Ken's a really good example I think Ken is at the absolute limit of SF5 SF5 Ken the absolute limit of what they could get away with and still be Ken yeah I think there was a theory that like Evil Ryu from Street Fighter 4 more or less became Nikali he's got the stomps he still has a DP but there's like a you know there was a there's a theory about like how it's like you because Evil Ryu is shodo plus these things you know I can kind of see that

yeah as a like let's turn him into his own thing and then now Kage exists who is super different from original Ryu like the new Evil Ryu's and Akuma style characters are like being differentiated more extremely over over time across each of these games yeah you when you see the way Kage fights like he's nothing at all like the old Evil Ryu's used to be you know but yeah again it's just like I don't I don't mind the I don't mind the the the reinvention that makes it like really fun you know try to think of like an example where like a subsystem that was fundamental to the character changed and I mean it could a bookies bomb shit

the count of the yeah or the no the the kunai counter right yeah and birdie I think is a good example his food stuff right right like dramatically changes him yeah but then there's stuff like an example I keep coming back to because it's by it's the it's the easiest one and it's like man biken is like really similar character between some versions but just can you do this move on the ground or not turns her to completely different character yeah but biken from excerpt to the old guilt to double X is fucking insanely different like it's a it's a it's a reinvention of her her entire like game plan because her whole

thing used to be like on out like alpha counters basically like on block I can do all my special moves and now it's just like no I have to manually catch you didn't do something so anyway there you go personally I don't have a problem with it but every time it's happened so far I'm never in a place where I'm like I fucking hate this new version and it will happen to me eventually that I absolutely you know actually did it was it was taken for and taken four is a really good example because gin and taken four is fucking busted he's so good but I didn't care yeah I still wanted taken three gin so sometimes it happens

across the entire fucking game like blaze blue tag battle where every character is coming in as a shell of their complete self because they're all simplified basic versions of what they used to be like a lot of the persona characters have to be way way simplified you know so I'm like so just like don't you know they the whole thing don't play your mains because you're just going to be upset if you play a unial main or a P4 main you're going to be like oh god why can't I do this thing and it's like because they have a third of what they used to and in the end the game found its place and like still has its own

like craziness in the form of the tag system but the feeling of what those characters used to be what you're Akihiko or you're Waldstein or whatever you wanted like all the missing shit was all you could feel for the first fucking half of that games life you know I'd say and then you just you kind of go like alright it's something else entirely make your gameplay based around the tag system instead but I really did yeah that everyone across that was upset at like their mains feeling worse you know cool alright that's that's good enough I'm satisfied with that I think okay good we did it good podcast I think we can

yeah no that'll that'll tide you guys over for don't go work for Blizzard I think they're they're a bunch of jerks did we leave them with three weeks worth of food in the puppy chow nope nope if you guys need more chow you can go over to the woolly versus channel and press the little puppy chow button and then the chow will come out oh and I'm still streaming over twitch.tv slash Pat stairs that that's not gonna change yeah and yeah Jojo part 8 ended and part 9 is probably gonna be called Jojo Lance but I can't wait for people that don't tend to watch my streams but watch yours go fine I'll go watch Pat

stream and go dude this sucks what the hell god everybody take care I'll see you guys in a bit