Castle Super Beast - CSB 149: Nightmare Philadelphia Kabedon

Episode Date: January 11, 2022

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Music Music Alright, welcome to the podcast. How are you feeling? That's the Castle Super Beast cast, if you're new. Yeah, which, you know, that's always a thing. But between the podcasts I listen to that like reintroduce themselves and those that don't. I think there's more that don't these days. But it's always, it's always good to do it every once in a while. Yeah, that's why I don't know if you ever notice, but like every like five weeks or something. I go, that's a great point. Good morning, Woolly. How are you doing today, Woolly?

Yes, yes. You know, yeah, no, you never know when someone just clicked on it and didn't read anything or get told. And to be perfectly honest, I think a lot of people are not really finding it through the sources of like where it's hosted, but it's more just like there's a Twitter thread. And someone goes, yo, I need podcasts. What should I listen to? And somebody goes, yo, here's a podcast and other people go, I don't know what's up with that podcast. That podcast seems like it sucks. I see a triangle and that triangle means the click it noises will happen and then they do. Listen, I need to play something.

I'm going to be grinding out fucking matches in league. And if I don't listen to something, I'm going to kill myself. So somebody give me a new podcast. Yeah. And then, and then the response to that isn't, why are you doing that? It's, hey, you should listen to the cast of Super Beast cast. Number one, approved by doctors to prevent your suicide while playing League of Legends. That's not real. I made that up.

That's, that's, that is not real. Anyway, so Greg, how's your week? I was waiting for it. I was waiting for it. That's the ultimate, that's the ultimate taking is just like confusing the shit out of new people maliciously and being like, come over to my channel, watch my streams or try to find Greg over here. I don't know where he streams. Yeah, you know, yeah.

I could have been a Greg. I knew a kid in high school that looked kind of like me. His name was Greg. He was the kid that kept getting in trouble for bringing napalm to school. Napalm. He was that kid. Oh, right. Yeah.

He had the anarchist cookbook. Cookbook. He had the cookbook. And unlike most of the children our age that were like, Oh, that's interesting. He was like, I'm going to build this shit and then bring it to school. And he got in trouble, but the physics teacher was like, Yo, that's pretty cool.

Wow. Okay. That's the same physics. Oh man, I remember that's the same physics teacher who used the fact that his car got snowed in by the plow to give us our inertia lesson by taking the whole classroom out to push his car out of a snow bank. Oh hell yeah. See how it's a little easier once you get it started? That's because of the inertia.

It's good. It's good. What Greg needed was a teaching moment and instead he got reinforcement right there. Yeah. Okay. Christ of fucking Greg. I read a tweet about like a teacher actually. I think it was yesterday.

Where the fuck was it? It was great because it was just like they're talking about like rip off institutions that like sell you the fucking the text books for ridiculous prices. I think it was like a flock of crows comic or something like that. I just saw that. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to read a book or I'll fail you by the way I wrote the book. Yes.

Yeah. Exactly. And someone in the replies to that just wrote, my casino gaming repair teacher told us all to bring an empty three ring binder on our first day and a note that said do not buy the books. Then he hand printed using school printers over 300 pages of books and reference material for everybody. Not just court stuff but all related stuff too. And his stance was it cost me nothing. The school writes it off as expenses and you're at a technical school because you're probably broke. Yeah.

I when I when we were at a stage up I had three different professors be like you got to buy these books. But a photocopier out in the in the in the print shop that costs like, you know, you go like 10 cents a page or something like that. No, you should. If you if you really want to want to spend the time you could you so do that. Absolute fucking W on that. And the last note was the teacher was formerly one of the pioneers of casino video gambling machines retired to Florida claimed the only taught the class to have something to do so he didn't spend his time with coconut hookers. Okay. Sure.

That's it. Works. That's a teacher. Yeah. Yeah. Strong. So how was my week. Let's see.

A site like in terms of in terms of the life not a whole lot's going on. Hey, we're back in lockdown. More lockdown. What are you? Are you all right? I am. I was hitting the mute button. Did you hear that?

No, I saw you like gagging on your fists. Oh, and it looked like you were going to throw up. I had a cough. Okay. Let's see. But instead, let's talk about those those entertainment things that we waste our lives on. One of which pointed out. What don't point it out.

Well, I mean, I mean, we turned it into a career. I've been playing Monster Hunter Rise for about three weeks on the PC. Got a super, super early code. I was going to say it. I was like, that's out. No, it's out on Wednesday. Okay.

And like it has an embargo on it where I wasn't allowed to talk about it until this morning, which is really weird because there's nothing new in it at all. There is like nothing new in it at all. And that is the PC version of the existing switch game that has all of the DLC that they've released for it. 99. I think all of which is free. All which is like just event quests, which when you turn on the PC port, it's really funny because like you hit start and you're walking around and then you get slammed with the pop up menu that goes.

These event quests have been added and it's like it's like 90 of them. You have to. It's like multiple pages. Yes. Yes. The starting menu prompt game is ridiculous. Yeah. So the only thing to talk about on the Monster Hunter Rise PC port is its PC port quality, which is nice.

Good. Good. Good. This is a PC port of a switch game. So it's automatically going to be impressive no matter what. Yeah. So the thing that's the thing that's very obvious is that like the game was obviously very clearly built to be ported to higher end platforms. Because like you go to the texture feature and like there's the standard textures, which were the switch ones, which are like money looking garbage.

And then there's the good textures or high, which looks like Monster Hunter World. Okay. Like it just it's like this giant it's like a next generation leap with no performance hit on your PC. You can run it on unlocked frame rate. It works well at an unlocked frame rate. No weird shit. It looks better. Aside from like environmental geometry, like the foliage and the flatness, it's flatter than World, but it looks better and runs way better than World.

And going from like there was like playing World on PC and you could run it at like 60 ish was a big deal for Monster Hunter because that had never been a possibility before. But going from Rise, which runs at 28 to 30 frames a second to running it to 110 to 140 frames a second, which is like four times its original frame rate. It feels like a very different game. The the the change to input latency alone just changes how a lot of the stuff feels a lot of the counter stuff is a lot easier to do. And like when I play primarily great sword, my timing is wrong. My timing is wrong now on PC because I'm like pre buffering it to the old frames. But like now it's so much more direct and obvious. It's like no, I should start I should start hitting the button when I'm in this pose instead of pre doing it.

Yeah, as somebody in the chat just pointed out, it's wrong because it's finally right now. Interesting. Finally working as intended. OK. Yeah, it's great. It's great. And all that stuff is nice. But the number one thing, I don't know how much of World or Iceborne you played.

None of Iceborne long tail. None of Iceborne World a little bit past the like fake story intro. Like, OK, you know, stuff. So they did this thing and it's it's this it's this weird thing where every time they jump to a new generation of Monster Hunter games, they they think up some new way to really just ring the most game time out of people before like the amount of monsters catches up. Because World had like a comparatively lower compared to like Cross Cross or Generations Ultimate or whatever you want to call it. And in World, the the the way they did that they is like every two months they would go for two weeks. This monster will show up and you can hunt that monster for special gear related to them. And then they'll fucking leave.

Which is not how they had done any of their event quests in the whole history of the series. It had been like, here's the event quest for Fatalis and you'll fight Fatalis and you can get the new Fatalis stuff forever. You just go download it from the the guy. And it was it was this constant thing of like, do you want to fight Archtemper Teostra and maybe get like fucking Dante's outfit? Better beat him up in the next 12 days. And it's like, that sucked shit. People modded it so that you didn't have to deal with that. And supposedly with Iceborn, now they're no longer temporary.

They're all just in there. But for Rise, they just started out like, here's the event quest. Do you want the Okami shit? Well, it came out. So when you feel like it, just go do it. Good. Okay. And that's the one thing I was looking for. Particularly when you, particularly when you start Rise on PC and you just get like 40 to 50, 60 quests that are just like bam. And I'm like, I have to look up what these do because they're all like cheeky little pun names and they're not coming out on a schedule where there's a little bulletin board that tells you, hey, this is what this actually is.

I'm like, which one is the fucking Mega Man one? I don't know which one is the Sonic one. I don't fucking know. I don't know. But yeah, no game's great and game is a significant real improvement on the PC. But I mean, shocker, right? I really wish these had come out day to date, but considering I would have double dipped if I had not gotten the copies for free. I get it.

I get it. I imagine the online improvement as well must be like fucking unbelievable. Wouldn't be able to tell you. Yeah. Well, but I'm sure it will be considering your options for the default right now or play it off the switch, get your Wi-Fi game going and have fun with whoever you like up with, you know. Yeah. I assume as much. And then the it's kind of weird because like the last time this happened or when this usually happens, the new one comes out alongside the expansion.

And no, Sunbreak is like six months away. So if you played Rise or didn't play Rise, you have tons of time to catch up before Sunbreak comes out because that's that's like summer. Okay. Let's see what else I do. Let's see. Let's I have to go look at my fucking video producer tab in and Twitch because I can't I can never remember what I fucking played this week. It's bad. Oh, I went back to bloodstained because a million years ago.

I don't know if you remember, but I was like, man, I'm really loving bloodstained, but it's not Dracula and that bums me out. And then the save bug happened. The version 1.0 bug where a certain enemy wouldn't drop like a key and the enemy would never respond because it was a boss. It was like the two headed dragon. Okay. And that would like fun. That would botch your your save file. And I was like, yeah, enough of that for for now.

And so I went back to it, man, bloodstains. Great. Yeah, well, the moon one and two are great. Last week was when you like completely replaced the word Castlevania with bloodstained in your brain. Mm hmm. So that has already occurred. Good. Moving on.

I played a mori. Oh, the kid with the with the face. Yeah, the kid with the face. Yeah. So I have to say a mori is like, it's very good. It's very interesting. It's obviously taking off the earthbound undertale, like, like kind of style of JRPG. The battle system is really good.

And the art is actually incredible. It uses a lot of like pencil sketch art, which looks really fantastic. Um, a mori is probably the game. The thing it shares with Undertale the most is that its fans have given me the worst possible first impression of the game. The undertale is the only, it's the only one that I can think of that was close to this in terms of like how annoying it was. Oh boy. To go, hey, I'm playing a mori where I think somebody just spoiled the ending for me in the chat just now. I mean, so.

Are you serious? So case in point then case in point. You don't have to scroll back. You can just let it roll. Well, no, because now I'm going to ban them from the chat forever. Because I was about to say that when it comes to a mori, I think of the kid with the face. And then I realized that I actually don't have any idea what gameplay looks like because all I've ever seen is art of the kid standing, having the face. And I'm like, and like when I went to look at Google, all the when you type in a mori, all you see are pictures of the kid with the face.

So I'm actually like, what does gameplay look like? I don't know. I have not even seen it. Gameplay is first person SMT slash earthbound kind of thing with four portraits in the corners and it has like a stencil art enemy attacks that move around the screen. Okay, looks really nice. In terms of management, somebody said that our mods are like, no, I got them and people say, oh, you don't have to ban them pets. You don't see the sport. It's like, I saw it guys.

It's too late. I might as well have the satisfaction of getting rid of them myself. That being said, that's not very surprising. Very good game. Excellent music. Excellent, excellent visual presentation. The game, the battle systems are a lot of fun. But as I was saying, the first impression I got for Undertale, like literally the first thing I ever heard for Undertale was people hassling me to play Undertale and telling me, oh, this is greatest.

Oh, my God. It's like, okay. Wow. And it was like it was it was people in my FF 14 free company back when I had it was part of a large one. And it was just like, oh my God, shut the fuck up. Jesus Christ. The second one for Amori was not that the second one was seeing somebody go, man, I wish somebody would make an Undertale game. Sorry.

No, no, no. Would stop recommending me. What was it? Earthbound style games about depression. It feels like it feels like there's so many of them. And the response to that was fuck you. How could you talk shit about Amori Amori is incredible. And then the person in question was like, what is Amori?

I'm not talking about that. What are you talking about? Which is, which is like, that was like Jesus Christ. Interesting. Yeah. I feel like the ones that I think the best version of that effect is when there's a game where you're like, why is everyone talking about this? Everyone's directly come to you and harass you to play it or whatever. But it's just been like, oh, this is a thing that seems to be like, like there's something going on with this.

What's up with that? I should maybe let me look into this, you know, which I feel like is much rarer, but does happen every once in a while. Like something will just pop up and be suddenly discussed. So like for Undertale, like I basically I had a timer on like, I will play Undertale in private for myself after somebody has not talked to me about it for 30 days. And I did so for Amori. I just decided to hop in and I put streaming like my stream in sub chat mode only. And that was still not enough for. Yeah.

You know, what's a really good example of this? You know, it's a really great example. I just got spoiled on the core plot twist slash ending of Amori like four minutes ago. Right. And that person is an asshole. I am not nearly as like frustrated with that as somebody just blurting it out as I am with people one minute before something happens. Go. Hey, pay really close attention to this.

Okay. Okay. Really. Okay. No spoiler. No, no, no, no, no. That is you can't do anything about that. And that has been literally years of that's been a problem for for years at this point.

And it's just it is ill placed excitement with nowhere to go because people are waiting for this moment. And it's one of the key moments in whatever game and they just cannot help themselves but have that. Oh, here it comes. You know, and like I really wish they could contain it and it's not malice. It's not malicious, but it's just it is it is badly contained excitement that ends up kind of spoiling the moment anyways to some degree in which case you can't defeat that. You kind of just got to go emote mode or something. So here we go, boys. There's a part where you climb a really long ladder.

It's very early in the game. Yeah. And so and people are making snake eater jokes because of the ladder, right? Because it's a really long jet ladder. People are going haha. What a thrill, huh? Until somebody goes make sure to read carefully what the snake says. And I'm like what snake and then like 30 seconds later, a snake falls from the sky.

And I think actually says something like what a thrill. And I'm like I I've discovered about me. I am so much more comfortable and less annoyed with directed malice than I am with genuine incompetence. I was because the question of what is wrong with you is immaterial when somebody's just an asshole because you're well, they're an asshole. I'm better than them because I didn't do the thing that they just did. Okay. Moving on. But then when you go what is wrong with you?

What are you thinking? I know I was. I thought that I mean I remember like starting Delta and being like like immediately like wait what the fuck what it like? Oh my God, what is what is really going to get the banana? What if he misses it? I don't know. And like just being like is there some kind of is there a very important thing here? Did I need to know?

Like what? You know, and like all this build up and it was it's completely nothing. But the fact that there was just like even a banana gate temporarily beforehand and then during, you know. Now here's the other thing. What you're describing like both types of those people like there is a nature of the beast that is streaming. That I think is just there's an unavoidable element to that, especially when people are tuning in for stream based entertainment and everything that implies, right? It's weird. It's weird the way I do things where I'm essentially doing an LP and you're invited to watch it as I do it.

Because most of the time, you know, there's a bunch of just a lot of the times people come in and they're like they're new and they're like, hey, hey, Willie, what's up? You know, just new to the stream. But they don't really know that I'm not paying attention to that, you know, type of thing or so a part of that is also the like here it comes boys is like what other stream experiences are for are about to some of these folks. And it's also about putting up doing that and then putting up the the bets on whether or not they're going to beat the boss fight in one or whatever the case, you know. So I don't know how you escape that, I guess, is I is I think I think you just you got to put up emote mode only. I've had I've had like when you can some limited success with like public shaming. Just like screeching the whole thing to a stop to be like, what are you stupid person name? Yeah, what were you thinking?

And as I took some feedback on on on the the the anime on the YouTube channel and one of the number one things people were unhappy about was twitch acknowledgment at all. So you and I have different styles. We have very different styles of things. That wouldn't be super appropriate in your thing. No, not quite. So. But yeah, okay. He's good.

Never going to play it ever again. Oh, no, I hope everyone's happy. Let's see. The spike clock is too strong, man. You got a life short. You got to enjoy what you can enjoy. We'll see the trick to that is that you say you're never going to play it again. And then just do it yourself.

And then 90 days from now you go, OK, I'm not grumpy anymore about it and then play it yourself in total silence and then bring it up later. Like, oh yeah, beat a good game and then have no more discussion on it whatsoever. Yeah, there's a couple of things like that that I started didn't end up finishing. So I never ended up like bringing it back around to the discussion. But, you know, kind of similar to how I started and finished Avatar out of nowhere and then started and got partway through Korra out of nowhere. It's like, I'm just going to enjoy this on my own time for the, you know, and then when there's something to say about it, I will. And there was a game like that that I didn't end up finishing because I kind of dropped off and things got busy. But, you know, yeah, doing it on your own like sometime later and then only coming back to talk about it when it's behind you is another way of winning that.

Also, I got to say, as somebody who does most of his streams solo, like by myself, I have discovered that games that include a fair amount of text and no voice acting suck shit to scream. When I was when I was doing the Amory stream, I felt like I was narrating it rather than playing it. Like it's kind of like lame. Like when me and Paige did Undertale and we were swapping off the voices, I saw you and Punch Mom did the Deltarune the same way. Like, yeah, that's completely different because you're performing with another person and you're having fun with your fucking stupid voices and the whole thing. But with like reading out like all the dialogue is like the nightmare is disco Elysium original cut. Oh, God, that's the worst one ever. Yeah, the game I wanted to stream the baddest the most like never I will not do it.

I did it like I like in that trial run. I kind of just talked to myself a little bit just being like, OK, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And then paragraphs of conversations later, you're like, this is so interesting. Oh, my God, there's it's impossible, you know. And anybody who's like, I'm going to minimize this and just listen to it as like as a background podcast kind of thing. It's like fuck off. This is the wrong game for that. I literally play everything dubbed nowadays for that explicit reason.

So that people who have decided to turn my stream into a podcast can still actually enjoy it. I learned my lesson and I'm going to swerve towards dubbed when possible unless I have a particular preference for like the voice acting. Unless you want to be a big weeboo. Unless I want to be a weeb. And if I want to be a weeb, exactly. Some games I'm going to weeb out on more than others, you know. I grew up watching Japanese Naruto subs from my own fucking torrent list. I'm going to be playing it with those voices.

Yeah, I want grandma. I want grandma Naruto. That's it. Let's see. What else did I do? I played this honored one DLC, which isn't of note in any way. I mean, it's good. The what what say that again?

Dishonored one DLC. Dishonored. Okay. Yeah, which isn't anything of note other than one thing where I can add a new entry to the list of minor improvement that is so good it makes the older shit impossible to go back to. Which is the the the the marquee ability in all those games is blank, which is short range teleport. Yeah, that has like a mantle attached to it in the DLC and everything onwards like the second DLC and dishonor to when you hit blank time stops. And in Dishonored one, it doesn't. Oh, that's a huge difference.

The the reality of that is that when you're playing Dishonored one and you're running and you want to get a really far jump, you got to run, you got to aim it. And it's it's it's iffy having time completely stopped. First of all, it gives you like a natural pause button, but also lets you do stupid stupid acrobatic shit like really easily. Like really, really, really easily and just like makes it like I will never go back to sonored one now ever. I wasn't going to anyway, but now I refuse to. It's different. Time stops cool. It's great.

It's very useful. I also played. Did you know there's like a lot of Dark Souls 3 mods coming out like right now? Like like a bunch of them. OK, so after the there's after the sender's discussion from a while ago, there's been a bunch being brought up and the names are kind of just I don't. Yeah, I don't know what's what. So Dark Souls 1 had a mod called Daughters of Ash, which is what kind of kicked this whole thing off. And while stuff in Daughters of Ash was cool.

It was also like one of those things like if you want a harder experience, we put four moonlight butterflies in the boss room. Yeah, kind of shit. It was like, OK, that's too much. And then senders came out and senders is incredible, but it has one big problem, which is every single time senders updates a single version number. It's a completely different game. Every single time like you'll get a version number like 2.01 and it's like re reverted all magic changes to vanilla. And then version 202 is like completely redid every spell in the game. And then version 203 and it will be like reverted magic changes to 1.99 and then change the stamina costs.

And it's like every single version is completely different. And as I play through senders, it was kind of awesome because I've played through senders like three times and they're completely different. They're completely different. But it does suffer a little bit because there's no goal development wise. So I was about to say that if I had to take a guess based on what you're describing. I mean, besides talking about like the idea of someone like that going on to make their own project and this is just kind of like testing the waters. It's yours that way. The iterative brain, you know, the developer or the modder that really kind of just wants to keep tinkering with things and not necessarily hit an end goal.

And has no problem scrapping everything and completely turning it odds up just to see how it feels this time around is like it's bad for you wanting a final product that is a cool packaged thing. But it's fun for them and it's the same level of interest that makes them go into the realm of like deconstructing the game to begin with, you know. Yeah. So the the God, the future mods are called Ashfall, which is a Dark Souls one mod which completely changes the game into a different action game entirely. Create a Dark Souls mod. Okay. Ashes of Dark Cinder. There you go.

You got it. Done. In Ashfall, I think you switch between like a fast teleporter and like a regular character. And then there's one that's farther on called Arch Thrones in which they're trying to combine- Thrones of Dark Ash. There you go. They're going to try and combine fucking Demon Souls stuff into existing Dark Souls three levels. But the one that I played this weekend is called Convergence.

Okay. And Convergence does not have the problem that Cinders has. Convergence has a extraordinarily clear goal. And that goal is I am disappointed in the way magic worked in the original game. And I want to make a version of the game that has like 700 new spells as well as restore a bunch of cut content and make new bosses. Okay. Like show like a D&D style magic system. Closer.

So there are like 24 starting classes and every single one of them say for like two starts with like one or two spells. So I picked a Druid and started off with a soul arrow that does a really powerful damage over time and a rat that follows me around and fights enemies for me. Okay. Fun. Having fun with that. I went to Firelink and discovered like 10 new like people in the environment that sell all the equipment that goes with all the new stuff they have. And most of them are voice acted and the voice acting is dead on. Wow.

Okay. Then I went through the first couple of areas and they're fairly well remixed. In addition, it's the only Dark Souls mod I've seen so far that will actually change the architecture. Like they've added new shortcuts by adding bridges between places that were not there prior stuff like that. But most interestingly is do you remember curse rotted great woods that big tree that tries to sit on you. Because that whole boss is completely gone. Okay. And they have instead put and this is I mean this is only the first of many of these they put a new boss called the Archdruid there.

And I'm fighting the Archdruid and it's a really tough fight with a tall Super NPC Druid looking guy who has a stinger who snaps his fingers and a Phantom Wolf attacks you does backflips stuff like that. Looking more carefully at his model and like this is literally owl being back ported into the Dark Souls 3 engine. The moveset. Yeah. Okay. You know the you know the Sekiro Stinger where you have one leg out on the floor with the dash. That's what he's doing. Wow.

And he snaps his finger to have the wolf attack me. That's what he would do to have the owl attack you. Okay. Okay. And man fighting a Sekiro boss with the Dark Souls moveset is rough. It's also super cool. I fought him on stream for like two and a half hours. I had a great time.

It was a fucking blast. So yeah. Convergence gets a thumbs up. Another thing of interest is you wouldn't think it would make that big of a deal. They changed the weather and lighting in a lot of the zones. So Firelink Shrine instead of like cold and gray is now like an orange sky. It's raining in Arch Dragon Peak. It's foggy in Lothric.

Just those little changes that make them feel much newer. That's great. It's a good mod. The lighting and weather changes they do. The engine was clearly optimized for this area to look a certain way. So the game like will occasionally chug. And there are occasional lighting bugs because your shadow doesn't know what to do with the new placement of the light source. Does three have more overhauls than all the others?

I imagine. No question. I imagine. I don't know what it is. I think it's the engine. I think that with three it just became easier to play with it to drag shit in. Very interestingly, when I was playing Elden Ring and talking to people about Elden Ring on the network test, people were like, Not only is this still the Dark Souls 3 engine, this is so much the Dark Souls 3 engine that bugs from the PVP are still here exactly the same.

Wow. So it is absolutely the same thing, which makes my brain go to the point of like, I've watched them drag Bloodborne enemies and weapons and demon souls shit into Dark Souls 3 engine and move architecture around and randomizers and like, And how long is it before the Elden Ring mod comes out called like the Tale of Four Kingdoms and it's just like transplanted The whole thing. Like Drangleic and Lothric and Lordran next to each other and you just take a bridge to go to them. And also the Nexus because fuck it. Why not? Why not?

There's a guy already working on that. Okay, apparently there's somebody already working on that. I'm excited. Yeah, that's just great. And all that stuff was good. But the thing that I've wasted the most of my time with this week is Pathfinder Kingmaker, which is a CRPG. I'm seeing you smile. I'm seeing a big smile on your face. Is that related to what I'm talking about at all? No, no.

No, I'm laughing at the like the Pokemon Golden Silvering of Dark Souls games via modding. Oh yeah, do it. I'm laughing at the prospect of we've smashed all the games together in a giant fan fuck and there's no where do we go from here? Every boss is in and everything is in every game is all together in one all classes all spells. Where do we go from here? Answer number one is get a randomizer going. I guess. And and it becomes like, well, I need a key to open this.

Where do I go? I guess I'll just beat all the games to try and find this key. Number two is to remix existing bosses. I don't think I mentioned it here, but I was telling Reggie about it because I had a dream one weekend. It was super weird that I was doing a stream of a Souls game of Dark Souls and every time I died, I had to pop in the next Souls game and do play that until I died and then switch to the next one. And I was like, that's rotate around and keep rotating around. Yeah.

And I'm like, that sounds like an insane hardcore challenge for somebody who knows this inside out. And it would probably be a fun like thing for, you know, Souls Masters, but I saw was a dream. There's one guy that did it. And I think he fought. He'd been trying for years and he finally did it a few months ago where he succeeded in the no hit challenge run. But the no hit challenge run was to do it in deaths, DS one, DS two, Bloodborne and DS three. Without getting hit at all. If you got hit like if you got hit like Dark Souls one, start the whole thing over.

He would go back to death. Oh, my God. If you got hit by Dark Souls three, he would go back to death. Oh, my God. Oh, and Sekiro. And Sekiro. Human beings, man. Yeah.

And he did it. What are human? That's the half. That's the happy hob. And wow. Wow. Now do it blindfolded. Yeah.

Pussy. He did it all on stream because you have to nowadays. If you're going to run some kind of insane challenge nonsense. Yeah, no. That like the dream, the dream was just like ever like doing that and then just Reggie sitting there dying as I fucking ate shit constantly over and over and over and all these games. It was just weird. It was just weird. But anyway.

Oh, Sekiro on AGDQ is going to be blindfolded this week. Of course it is. Yeah. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll check out the thought on that. I'll, I'll check that out. That's crazy. But yeah, what I've been spending most of my time with is Pathfinder Kingmaker. Pathfinder is not.

I'm using air quotes here. It's not D&D. It's. It's D&D. But, but not, but it's not Wizards of the Coast or TSR or any of that. Okay. Back in the day, nobody liked like fourth edition. Caves and Wyverns.

You nailed it. Good. Back in the day for fourth and fourth edition, nobody liked fourth edition D&D. So some, some big old nerds made their own D&D with blackjack and hookers and called a Pathfinder. Pathfinder is, how do I put this? Pathfinder is a person who looked at advanced Dungeons and Dragons and said, I can't min-max this hard enough. I want, I want more options. And I want bad options.

One of the weirdest things I discovered is that one of the creators of the Pathfinder system was like there should be bad choices in character creation. And you should be punished for making them. That's what makes the good choices feel good. And I'm like, okay. So I don't know if you remember, but I played Wrath of the Righteous about six months ago. And I described Wrath of the Righteous as the, as the most character creation nightmare game I've ever played in my life. Because it's like page after page after page after page of, do you want this stat or do you want this alignment or do you want this whatever? And when you load up Pathfinder Kingmaker, which is a CRPG in the style of a Pathfinder adventure module, like a Pillars of Eternity or what have you,

normal difficulty in that game, like makes enemies 20% weaker and decreases the strength of their critical hits. And the reason for that is that core Pathfinder in that Pathfinder using all of the rules assumes that you are min-maxing your character to the absolute utmost. Okay. Well, there's something for everyone out there, certainly. And those who want that level have their place to go now. Yes, they do. What made you decide to go down this road? What made me go down this road?

Somebody had been recommending it to me for years, but as CRPGs come out, they are literally always fucked on release. Even the stablest ones are always kind of screwy. And the more indie the company is, the more screwy it is, Pathfinder had not gotten any patches for like six months or something like that, and Mandalore did a video on it, so I'm like, okay, it's done. It's finished. I can go to it. Once you get past that initial hump of how do I make a character? God damn it.

It's relatively smooth sailing. Aside from the fact that it has a very weird way of dealing with encounter design. So the way a CRPG will design a level is very similarly to how any RPG would design a level, right? You have a, you say you have a big open map and you have a sliding scale of increasingly leveled opponents or perhaps lower leveled opponents that have a higher difficulty, like all these guys are invisible, blah, blah, blah. And the gear treadmill will work accordingly. And it's pseudo linear. And as long as you go through it all in a row and do everything, you should be prepared, right?

Kingmaker is designed along the lines of its original adventure module, which means you run into issues where you're like, well, I'm beating the shit out of these boars on the main path. This is no problem. What's in this cave? Oh, a level 19 crag linowarm that I can't hit even with natural twenties and heals faster than I could hit it even if I did. And just total party wipe in a second. Shouldn't have walked in there. Shouldn't have walked in there.

And all of the negative reviews on Kingmaker's page are who balanced this fucking piece of shit. You can't go anywhere. Anywhere I go, I get fucking total party killed in a second. And it's like, I get it. The way that it's made now, I will go to areas that I could have gotten to. There's one piece of the road that I just didn't get to. Some forest thicket that I just didn't get to at any point. And I'm going through and I'm like, I'm instigibbing everything on the main path, right?

Just wrecking this shit. And then I went off the main path and found something because it was so jacked up over the total zone level that it was actually appropriate for me when I got there. And I got good rewards out of it. I was going to say, like, are there not like enemies around the thing to show you, hey, these levels are starting to get really high? Yeah, but every now and then you turn a corner and a ten will of the wisps sees invisibility and hit you with chain lightning six times in one round. And you can do real time with pause and you're moving and you don't see the damage indicator. You just go straight into seeing an enemy into the fading out for game over. Okay, like, like, yeah, it's it's pretty fucking funny.

And you have to be okay with that. That's a very old school. That's really, really old school that like, yes, no, some areas are going to be vicious and mean and horrible. And you will unexpectedly horribly die. So quick save when you're going into weird places and have your boss up. Okay, question. And this is just genre question. Well, does does disco count as a CRPG?

Yes, but it has no combat. Okay, because I was about to say I don't think I've played one. But at the very least, I can definitely say I haven't played any of the resurgence because all because I'm here, you know, all these years of hearing about pillars and landscape and divinity and, you know, like, and I'm just like, yeah, these are all games that have come out since 2014. Yeah, no, they were. We were hot and then they died. They died about as hard as the genre can die and that there was zero of them for like 10 years. And then they all went whoosh right back.

Kotor. Kotor. Yeah. Okay. No, that counts, I guess. Kotor. I would say it half counts. It's it's definitely pretty close.

Though I though I mean the camera angle in my brain is much more zoomed out and the mouse is involved, you know. Yeah. So in Kotor, there were moments where you could go into a cave on fucking Corvon and just get your shit completely fucking ruined. But yeah, no, Kingmaker. As a CRPG, it's absolutely fantastic as long as you can put yourself in the mindset of like an old school adventure module, because that's what it's based off of. It's based off a really specific old adventure module from the early odds. And like a lot of games are long because I don't put this a lot of games are long because of their their scale or their big because of their scale. Like look how big the map is.

Kingmaker has the opposite idea where it's it's it's long and its scale is related to time, which is fascinating to me. So the core of it is that you get a barony, like you you get some bandits off your land and you you establish a small little barony. And you have 90 days to establish your barony in game days, like D&D rest takes eight to 16 hours. Traveling takes time, but like it's still like I established the barony with 41 days remaining, right? Tons of time. And then the rest of the game takes place over a five year period. And that five year period is split between the regular CRPG adventuring of going to new areas, doing quests, fighting monsters, etc. And the other, let's say third of it is governance.

And you are handling the kingdom like it was a game of Civ. Hmm. And you are building things on a grid to up your kingdom stats. And you're sending off advisors to handle problems like a weed infestation or taxes tax collectors from a different state while also having to like manage and level up your advisor. It's a whole involved fucking thing. So there's a calendar. Yeah, there's a very intense calendar. In fact, the game straight up tells you always get back to the capital on the first of the month, because on the first of the month, that's when everybody's going to come to you with their bullshit.

So I've been like running. I've been upgrading my barony. And then I'll set everybody like, okay, you, you, you, you and you, you all handle these tasks. These tasks will all take 11 days to 14 days for you to do. So I'm out of here. I'm going to go up to the Northwest and do the super dungeon. This sounds a bit like go ahead. Go ahead.

And then when I come back, I want this tax situation dealt with and I want that printing press and solve. Yeah, this sounds a bit like, Hey, do you want to play two games at once? It does. Do you want to world? Do you do you want to warcraft three while you hero system? Kind of. But they're split and they're turn based and there's no actual like there's no in person time pressure. It's you looking at a map.

And the, the time constraints are generous, which is something I didn't expect. Whenever I get, whenever I get a timer on a game like this and I'm like, you have four days to do this. I'm like, I'm sweating, right? Just every problem that you get to solve that takes like a week for one of your guys to finish. It has little tabs like should finish by such and such. And it's always like 40 days away. And one of the early quest is you're getting, you're getting invaded by trolls from a neighboring country. So like, you better go fix that because people are kind of upset that there's troll raids in their villages.

Okay. So I be lined it and found where they're at and I genocided the shit out of them. There were peaceful options available, but no, thank you. No more troll problem. And then the, the games quest thing ticked up and said, cool, you dealt with the trolls. Well, that curse on the nearby hill is going to be a problem in a, in a little while. You have 179 days before that becomes a problem. So I guess you'll just have to wait until then.

I'm like, okay, that might be the largest timer I've ever been given in a freely directed game. And I'm down to a hundred days right now and I'm scraping like the exist. I'm scraping the edges of where my character has late claim territory. I'm about to head to the super dungeon later. And the way to deal with that is in a situation where you're like, okay, well, I've explored everywhere and I've done everything. What do I do? I still have 60 days on the clock. Well, upgrading certain things like upgrading your village to a town or upgrade your regent to a better regent is one of those things that you have to be present for in your capital and you have to spend 14 days.

And when you click that button, the calendar just starts shooting forward and goes one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and goes great. They're upgraded. Here's the things that happened while you were doing that. Are you spending stats on experience on upgrading combat or governance? No, they're completely separate. Okay. Like the governing thing has its own stats. Okay.

Because that would be ridiculous if you had to split between the two. Yeah. All right. The flow is actually really fun because it's explore around, do quests, yadda yadda. Get called back to the homeland. Okay. What? Okay.

You got a problem. Like literally you have a problem with your sheep. Okay. Give the guys sheep back. Okay. Cut the drinking age. Increase taxes. This asshole from two towns over wants to kill somebody.

No. Okay. Lady comes to you. Your child ran away. Okay. Good. Fine. I'll find your kid.

Set everybody up on their projects. Let's go figure out where the kid is. Find the kid. Do the kid quest. Okay. Back to the, back to the capital. Okay. You shouldn't have embezzled money and you are getting executed.

Oh, what's this? You lost your printing press on the road and you have a duel up north and I'm getting nightmares to go up here. Okay. You, you, you, you, you handle the weeds, handle the mermaids, handle this. Okay. We're out off to do that stuff and back and forth and back and forth and upgrades to the city eventually start paying off like items like artisans will give you really powerful

magic items or people will pay you for solutions, which you then use to upgrade your characters, go out, claim new areas, which increase the barony. Like it actually works really well. Okay. It's, it's a ton of fun. The only suggestion I would have to anybody who were to play that is put the kingdom management thing on the easiest difficulty possible. It's a separate difficulty slider from the combat because if the kingdom falls is a game

over and you can, if you're really bad at it, you can actually get yourself into a doom spiral. Oh yeah. You can't like have your kingdom fall and then you're just back to being an adventurer and then you have to like fight your way back. Okay. Because if you don't have a kingdom, then the next part of the game, which is the undead or attacking your kingdom, what do you, isn't going to happen because there's no kingdom.

Okay. You see dice rolls for everything, right? You can see dice rolls in the battle log. If you see like a Valerie hits for 17, you can mouse over it and it'll show Valerie rolled a 20 plus seven natural attack plus two because of her weapon. It means nothing, but I think seeing the dice roll helps you feel like it's a little less bullshit, you know? Like, do you mean being seeing the dice roll like every time or being able to see it?

Being able to see it. If I got fucked on something and I can see what the roll was and how it happened, I can be like, okay, fine versus playing the Vegas digital slot machine that is just running the odds on you. For a game that will throw like completely bullshit encounters at you in areas that they have no business being in, being able to see the dice roll is vital because you will attack, God, what was it? I attacked some werewolf, some were rats, right?

And I swung with every character and missed nine attacks in the first turn and they hit me with a crit on their first hit and like knocked my fighter out and I'm like, okay, let's mouse over this. What did you actually do? Yeah. Many of these people rolled 19s and missed, which means I can't hit them. He rolled an eight and crit, which means I need to load my auto save and leave because there's nothing that's going to happen here for another couple levels.

There's nothing versus like he got an amazing roll and yours were all terrible, but this is yeah. Maybe maybe I just got unlucky. Maybe I just got really unlucky. Cool. Yeah. Games, games absolutely super great. And there's an interesting thing because it's direct sequel, Wrath of the Righteous solved

a pro like this is actually like fighting games a lot like unironically. This is like training mode. This is like holding start to pause, right? A while ago, some devs figured out holding start to pause is the better solution instead of hitting pause and instantly going to the pause, right? It's it's a solved problem. It's not a it's not a patented fucking thing. Just do it this way.

Quality of life. I want to be happy. Yeah. Pathfinder Kingmaker came out after Pillars of Eternity and Pillars of Eternity solved a long standing RPG problem, which is, uh, I don't know, you might actually remember I talked about this when I was playing Baldur's Gate two way back in the day. And that problem is all right gang, we're going to be fighting a bunch of high level vampires.

It's going to be a tough one. You throw down bless prayer aid on the tank. You throw down cats grace on the Ranger throw down bulls strength on the fighter. You hit your paladin aura. You hit mirror image shield blur vanish. You also hit mirrors edge as our mirrors image blur. I want a heroism cast, et cetera. And those last one minute per level of caster, which means by the time you're done, two minutes

of the first buff are over. You have to go back and do it again. And by the time you're finished fighting like two encounters, the buffs are gone and their per rest buffs and you're like, that sucks. That's garbage. Yeah. Okay. Free fight buffing in DND 1.0 2.0 3.0 3.5 and pathfinder is terrible.

You're a one man raid. It sounds like you're doing the jobs of an entire raid. Yeah. Well, the difference between having all those buffs on and having all those buffs off is the difference between dying and scraping through with no damage. It's crazy. So in Wrath of the Righteous, the sequel to this, they made a system where one of the special abilities your main character gets is any buff that lasts longer than five minutes

will now last for 24 hours. That's like, oh, okay. You do it once when you get into the zone and then it's good for the entire zone. Okay. Cool. Maker doesn't have that and that's where a mod called buff bot comes in where you program into macros and you bring up a list and you set characters and go, I want this character to cast this, this, this, this and this and you set them all up and then you can hit control

F10 and hit the execute button and they all just explode in instantaneous buffs. Macros. Yeah. Okay. So what you do is you download the bag of tricks mod, which is a cheat mod, and then you scroll down to player buff counter and then you change the multiply number from one to five so that a buff that would last four minutes now lasts 20. And so like, is it cheating?

Yeah. Do I care? No. No. No, I don't. No one cares. The devs realized this was an annoyance and changed it in the sequel. They made it work like the mods in the sequel because pre-fight buffing is terrible.

It's terrible. I mean, I'm thinking of the P3. You cannot control your party members' difference between, like, it's beyond night and day. It's a different video game. It is, yeah, the ability to just fully control and do things. Yeah. Okay. Somebody in the chat asks a good question, which is how did pillars fix this?

Because I mentioned that pillars fix this problem. The way pillars fix this problem is really simple. One, buffs are rare and can only be cast in combat and they're super strong. So like, there's no like, because a bless is a spell you would cast in every fight, in every D&D game of all time, because it gives everyone a plus one to all their roles, right? And it lasts for five to 10 minutes, right? Yeah.

Those don't exist in Pillars of Eternity. Instead, the buff you have in Pillars of Eternity is for the next 30 seconds, you'll gain 10 armor class. They're not to be always on. They're like, I'm about to be fucked. Go time. Turn it on. Okay.

Okay. Right? So they completely removed what's called Vancean Spellcasting and replaced every single ability in the entire game with a per encounter ability instead of per rest. So you don't have to, yeah, stop mid-fight, okay. The thing is, when I'm playing Pathfinder Kingmaker, the Vancean Spellcasting system that I've hated my whole life, it makes much more sense in this context, because in a Pillars of Eternity game, a Baldur's Gate game, etc., when you're rolling through a dungeon, you

just want to roll through the dungeon, right? You just want to keep going and all these buffs are annoyances, right? And running out of fireball is an annoyance. In Pathfinder Kingmaker, you're traveling between discrete points so often that nine times out of 10, you have to rest on the way there. The only time you actually ever go, fuck, I'm running out of spells, is when you're two layers into a badass dungeon, which is when that should be a problem. It should be like, oh, we're really deep in here and we don't have that many supplies,

uh, ran out of fireball because we used it on that, but then you can still rest down there but it costs, it's like, oh, it makes sense. And it's one of those things that's like, I always thought that adapting this idea from tabletop to a game was a bad idea, but it turns out the problem was they didn't adapt it hard enough because in your classic RPGs like Baldur's Gate or Pillars, there's no travel time. You just click on a button on a map and you're there and time doesn't pass so your people don't get tired and since they don't get tired, there's no reason to rest on its own

as a natural thing. And since there's no reason to rest on its own as a natural thing, the only thing you rest for is to get spells back. So it's infuriating. When I'm playing Kingmaker between every single point of interest on the map, I'm probably going to have to rest once. So, so what if it, if it's per rest? So just cheat.

Yeah. Okay. I would say with Pathfinder specifically, never before has a system encouraged cheating more because the Pathfinder system is inherently unfair to new players. The Pathfinder system is so complex and so easy to make a not that good character, but the game expects you to have made a good character. Like the idea of you should make, you should have the chance to make a bad character is so fucking callous because like you can then commit to playing and loading and playing

and dying and playing with that bad character, not realizing that the problem was step zero. Yeah. And I can tell you where that comes from, right? That does not come from the game. That comes from the creation of the system and the issue with that is an old Dungeons and Dragons issue, which is the, you remember the old way to roll your scores, which is roll it and that's what it is. When you're making like the giant grid sheet, the, no, the ancient way back in the nineties

was you're rolling for strength, roll these three dice. Okay. And that's it, right? That then became a best of, right? And then that became roll all your total scores and then assign them when video games came out. I remember now. When video games came out, they had, they started back in the eye of the beholder system.

It was, you could random roll it or you could just put whatever you want it. And then as time went on, the digital versions were like, here's a total of 28 points or, you know, whatever. Distribute. Put them where you want. Yeah. Okay. And so on and so forth and so on and so forth.

And then in high school, uh, lunchtime D&D was, uh, yeah, was the third edition where it was, uh, the best, best roles of a set of roles or the ones you're allowed to keep. And the reason why you should be able to make a bad character is because in pen and paper, a bad character is interesting. When you're playing with people and humans and particularly a real dungeon master who can fudge the roles and make interesting situations, a dumb wizard can be interesting. Yeah. Can be.

Yeah. But when you're talking about Baldur's Gate or Plainscape or fucking Icewind Dale where you have to fight your shit off for 60% of the game time, a bad character is not interesting. It's just miserable. Also a DM with a sense of humor, you know, who's like setting things up and playing along with the mistakes. Yeah. That's a huge difference.

Yeah. Totally. So when it's, it's one of those things when they, they bring over holes, this is similar to the Baldur's Gate three thing where they brought over all the dice rolls completely as is. And just and the player feedback was like, this is completely goddamn miserable. I fucking hate this. This feels like shit.

My regular DM seeing these roles would fudge it in our favor. It's not fun. Yeah. Kingmaker is I'm having a blast with it. I think it's a, I think it's a more direct sequel in spirit to the old Baldur's Gate games than say pillars even. I'm really excited to beat this and get onto the sequel because the sequel has the most replay value of any CRPG of all time.

Wrath of the Righteous has what's called a mythic path, which is the secondary main quest for your character. And there are 10 and they range from becoming an angelic paladin to becoming a lich or a gold dragon, like the character becoming a dragon. And the whole game accommodating that like the, like the lich turns the game world into a zombie shithole. Like just complete, but yeah, no, so Kingmaker's great. One of your, one of the biggest cells I feel was when you were talking about Baldur's

Gate three. I don't know where that's at. If that's in a fully released state or not, but it's, it's, so let me tell you, I think I brought this up, but I'll bring it up again. Baldur's Gate three is in the early access of act one. Act one is out and they're tweaking it and tweaking it and tweaking it. And when it comes out, I would suggest fucking around with it, maybe, but don't go for the whole thing until a couple patches because it's always that way, right?

Baldur's Gate one, I'm like, Oh, act one, cool. And I played it on stream for two nights and was like, okay, I'm done, right? That was about seven hours of play. Apparently the first act is like 35 hours long. So the first act of the game is currently like a full length game. And they are like, much like with the Divinity games, they're like overhauling systems and tweaking all sorts of bullshit all over the place. And it has genuinely improved even since the beginning.

I don't think even all the classes are in yet. Okay. It's still not there. All right. Like last I checked, Paladin wasn't even in the game and Paladin is one of those classes that's like, it needs to be there. You need to have fighter, Paladin, cleric, wizard, ranger, sorcerer, et cetera, right? Like, and like, I guess I was just, I was going to say, like, how does this stack up

to the stuff that that was doing Baldur's Gate three is not really a fair comparison. And the reason for that is because Baldur's Gate three is money. It's money. It's big money. Every single line of dialogue in Baldur's Gate three is animated like a Mass Effect game. Okay. And it is like it's obsessive with its adoration to the rules in that on your hot bar, you have an entire graph for push, pull, jump, sneak, throw, like all the all the generic physical

actions that a player character would be able to do that you can use to interact on everything in the environment. Like it's almost simulation based. Um, but it's early and it needed, it needed work when I, when I played it. Like the, what I'm playing in Kingmaker right now, I'm having a lot more fun of than Baldur's Gate three when I played that. And a lot of that comes down to the way dice rolls are handled. Okay.

Dice rolls in Baldur's Gate three up until recently were like just the worst shittiest experience. Um, and Pathfinder Kingmaker is also a Kickstarter game, which is nuts because it doesn't feel like one. It's, it's, it's well put together. It looks good. It sounds good. It runs well.

Um, there is one thing though, and I don't know how to feel about this, you ever, you ever see like a sequel, get an improvement and you're like, I hate that. I hate that genuine, obvious improvement. Uh, I need an example. I'm trying to. So here's the example. You are familiar with the camera angle associated with the genre. We're talking about the CRPG books like Diablo has in fact confused you for Diablo in the

past in, in Wrath of the Righteous, they gave you the ability to spin the camera in every direction to get a better view of the 3D environments, which when I played Wrath of the Righteous on stream, I was so fucking lost all the time because I would spin the camera to look at something and then I would forget what North was. Oh shit. Okay. Because I have spent decades with this genre where the camera is locked. It is a static locked camera.

Interesting. It's something to get used to, but you know, but yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to play Kingmaker after this unless there's a stream later tonight. Yeah, why not? Okay. Actually, I'll instead, I won't be playing Kingmaker. I'll be on a Peach Delivus stream. She's going to be playing, talking to you, no, this is just going to be my own bullshit.

Demon souls. Yes. There'll be a demon souls later tonight. Okay. You want to check out my crap though. It's over twitch.tv slash Greg stares at correct, but you have to see. You spell Greg in a weird way. You have to spell it P-A-T.

It's the French way. Yeah, the French way. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. What about you, man? What did you do this week? Uh, okay.

Couple things. So I guess I'll start with the beating inscription. You beat it. Yes. I did not beat it. Okay. And I would like to discuss with full spoiler blast. So let's do it.

Uh, yep. I'm going to put a visual little warning up and inscription. Oh, I like that. You should just take off the inscription word and then you can just use that for, for anything. Well, yeah, but you probably, but it helps to tell people what the thing specifically is. So when people come in, they're like, ah, exactly. So our inscription spoilers are going to begin and you can come back later if you want to

avoid that. All right. Let's, let's hear your thoughts after beating inscription or fast forwarding further. Okay. Spoilers start. Um, so act one is fantastic. Act one's incredible. And where I left off was getting into the, uh, videos on the border.

Yes. Exactly. The introduction to a meta layer, a, a, you know, a live action, um, a person that you're playing as a person who's playing the game, uh, the card game. And I was like, ah, okay, I don't like that. I don't mind a, um, a layer removed, but I, I just, I'm like, we're watching these skits. What's going on here. And then act two begins, uh, well, the sequence by which you get through act one, uh, you

know, you get the special eye, you walk around and do stuff. That's cool. I like all that. Get the film. You're right. Uh, awesome little game, turn him into a card. Absolutely. Right.

Final battle, et cetera. Um, and then you're getting like the hang of how to make your cards like super busted, uh, as well. Yeah. Fun. The time that I beat him, I beat the piss out of him. Like it was not. Oh yeah.

Um, absolutely crushed, you know, uh, in fact, and like after, I think like the first time I did it around, uh, I just had a bunch of insanely busted flying cards that were nuts. And then the second time I had a, uh, one touch of death card that you just bite the moon and the moon dies in one bite, like, you know, yeah, I won with some powerful flying cards that couldn't be attacked and just every turn they would just attack the, the health of whatever I was fighting. Yeah. It was a real card game at that point.

Yeah. Bam. Um, okay. So that act two begins and, uh, it is the, uh, eight bit or 16 bit, um, world where you're walking around and having like kind of like a Pokemon card duels. Where it opens up three different sets of new cards. Yes. And I basically was like, okay, this is not what I was looking for.

I mean, it's not like, I'm not going to say what I signed up for because I just went in and like expecting anything, but it's not what I was looking for. And, uh, but I was like, all right, let's, let's, let's go with this. Um, and I basically, it was interesting because it introduces a bunch of new decks and mechanics, which I all, I kind of read and when I'm going to stick with what I know. So I picked the skeleton deck and couldn't get back to Leshy's deck fast enough. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's interesting in that I think that's intentional because it feels, I don't know how it goes if you decide to like lean hard into the more obtuse decks, the P three deck or the, um, you know, the, the, the, the, you know, all the weird shit going on with the, the cubes and the colors and stuff. But, um, I went back, I was kind of like, I'm going to go with what I know here. And then like, I picked him to be the replacement, um, and, um, at least the system of bones was introduced to you beforehand. So you can get a hand on that, which is why I picked that one.

I'm like, Oh, I kind of get it, but I, I know the bone mechanic, but the, the wizard, uh, and computer decks, like I really, I'm like, I'm going to have to fight enemies seeing how they use this to learn it because I just don't get it, you know, I, now that we're spoiler talking, some of what I said in the past will come to come to make more sense. I, I, I used the Leshy deck to get more bone stuff and I ended up using bone for most of that section. And every time I got the wizard or the robot decks, I tried pieces of them and was like, I hate this.

Yeah. I especially, especially hate the robot deck. God, I'm never going to use the robot deck. I hate it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so that was the thing is like, I'm like, these, these, uh, others, this other style of game and there's four styles. I'm like, that's interesting. Um, and there's a connection between some of the cards on, uh, like, you know, obviously you get bones for killing sacrificing beasts and bones can be useful if you're going with a bone build.

And you know, there's interaction between them. If you'd like where some things can allow you to two color, basically, you know, um, so I can see this as probably well thought out, but as someone who's not a hard card enthusiast and I feel like this game would land super hard if you're, if you're really into like magic and Yu-Gi-Oh and all of these things, you know, I'm seeing people say that it's like there's a meta narrative about tabletop gaming and the differences between the way companies build their games, which doesn't mean shit to me because I don't play card games set off.

So as a non-card gamer, I could feel a lot of that going over my head, especially towards the end. But, um, but yeah, so the second act though was like, all right, yeah, I'll, sure, let's, let's go with this, you know, um, and then more of the skits got introduced and I was like, oh, okay, I can, I'm really the most checked out of the live action bits. Like, yeah, but I'm following along and that's what it is. So I'm kind of going through that, um, then the end of act two, uh, you know, it comes upon you and then bam, act three begins and I'm like happy to be back in that, uh, style

of game. Yeah, I agree. I also agree with you. That was my initial reaction. And I'm going to guess as you went in and you realized, oh, this is the PO three version of that game. You're now stuck with that deck. Miserable.

Yeah. Okay. I gave up. I gave up. I got like two zones in and I'm like, I hate using these fucking car. I don't, I don't get the synergy for them. I like, I just, I want my old fucking deck of cards back. So I, I was confused, but I just kept with it and got the hang of it eventually, um,

the, yeah, the, like I didn't, I completely misunderstood the concept of energy and how it worked initially, um, as well as like what would increase it versus what would replenish it, you know, uh, but just kept going and, uh, got the hang of it. And then eventually I was fine with that. I still much prefer the leshy system in the Meleshy deck, but I got the hang of this and then, uh, kept going with it, right? And then you go through that and, um, and then it gets, you know, and then you kind of realized like as you're going through that map in the enact three, it's just a shorter

like lazy version of what you just did in acts two, because PO three doesn't care, you know, he's just kind of like, Ra Ra play the game, do whatever, who cares? Greater, you know, da, da, da. And, um, what made it really fun, uh, was the point at which like you start, you, there's a point, there's a point, uh, in that third act where PO three goes, Oh, you think you feel like you, you didn't have fun with that. Is this, this is not, you're not enjoying it. You think you're so good here.

Then you make a fucking card, you know, and then they give you a card maker and I was like, okay, and I designed my own card and then like you get to use that, you know, and then you can basically look at like, and then I took a while looking at that. Cause I'm like, Oh, like if you're, if you're paying attention, you can make game breaking cards and the game is totally okay with you busting it open at that point, you know, and I was like, Oh, this is okay. And that's when I was like, okay, this is kind of really interesting because like there's a, but is that boss fight, does a boss fight where you like set your own rules cause you're

connected to the internet at a point, you know, and you get a card from someone like there's a whole thing going on that is, is, is, um, like no, no, we're encouraging you to bust this card game open kind of the way you did at the end of act one. And that was pretty fun. Um, and, uh, so I mean, if we're doing full spoilers, I'm going to go past where you must have. Yeah, go for it. Yeah.

So I'm never going to get past that robot thing because every time I upgraded a card, the game would tell me, by the way, if this card dies at any point, it's gone forever. Okay. So you made, which made me never use them. Yeah. Which made the game impossible. I remember. So here's a thing that I didn't like from playing fights and tight spaces.

I remember being introduced to the idea of like one of these paths you picked that you went to is a card disposal thing where you'll trade in a card, destroy it and get stuff back. Right. You might think that sounds terrible, but trust me, you'll want to destroy cards. You'll, it'll make you more consistent. You know, and I was like, Oh, okay. And then I realized it's like, no, it's true. Like even if you like all your cards, getting rid of some that are weaker means that the

better ones will show up more often and that there is a means of like getting a consistent type of deck that comes from discarding stuff, you know. So I was then looking at the cards that I was like, what are what's going to instant kill or whatever. I was like, okay, I'll put that on a card I don't necessarily want and use that to hone the consistency of my deck, you know, but it, but it can be helpful to get rid of some cards. Uh, yeah.

And then it, so then it goes into some other fun stuff. I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't like, why are, because the thing that I dealt with was I upgrade a card and once it's upgraded, it says if this card just dies, it's gone forever. Yes. Why would I want my good cards to disappear forever? Well, so that's the thing is the way I looked at that, because like you can pick good cards

and make them better. But I was like, I don't want to risk losing a card forever that I'm that I really care about. And earlier, not only from the previous, like the game I mentioned, fights and tight spaces, but in this game too, PO three tells you, you may think getting rid of a card sucks, but trust me, you want, you want to get rid of cards to make your deck more consistent. So I upgraded a card I didn't care about as much to be the one that can be killed on death and permanently removed so that if it did get permanently removed, I wouldn't mind.

Because there's another upgrade path that is not it permanently dies path, but a trade in a card for upgrade for materials and completely sacrifice a card option. So the so basically the act of getting rid of a card is not necessarily a bad thing. But why would I upgrade my bad cards? I upgraded all of my good ones. And the way I thought about it was I'm going to I'm going to upgrade the bad card so that I can get rid of it or or succeed again in the mission and not mind that it's lost. Otherwise, it's I'm holding a good card in my hand that I'm too afraid to play because

I don't want it to die. Yeah, that's what happened. Right. So I didn't do that, but but OK, say I realized that, but I had already done it. Why supposed to do that? I have no idea. I don't know. I think that then yeah, it's like I still have a safe file active and people are giving

me this vice, including you and I'm like, oh, OK, so I'm going to go back and just lose. Well, again, the further in you go, it doesn't get harder. It actually gets easier because of the things I'm talking about where it tells you literally go make a card, OK, create some bullshit, create a system that like, you know, creates a rule set that like breaks the system in some way if you can. So losing a strong card on on your save right now would suck, but it wouldn't be the end of the world. I could progress further into the game for sure.

But anyway, that's how I treated it as I treated it as a glorified get rid of a card machine. So you go and understand. I feel I feel so stupid. I don't understand. But because like I was playing without the good card that I had upgraded because I didn't want it to die. Yeah. Beat that I tried like 20, 30 times.

Was it like your double gunner or so? It was the Fisherman. The Fisherman card. OK. The Angler. The Angler. Yeah. And so I'm like, OK, so if I if I died, like if I lost that card, then I'm you and other

people say, oh, there's a lot of good ways to get replacement cards like not unless I am able to keep going forward. And he's also like a lower card to that talk. So like the way that thing works, I can't just go reset the whole P03 section to neutral. Oh, I don't know if you can chapter select at that point. There's a chapter select that comes after a new game. Oh, I definitely didn't have it at the at the part that I am at. Yeah. OK.

I don't know because yeah, you have a yeah, you have a card like you don't want to get. I wouldn't want to get rid of the talking cards just to see what they say for as it's from a content dialogue point of view. Yeah, you would basically be forced to push on and like get lucky hands, I guess, or good items, right? Because the table items can also help like delete some some fights in that in that mode. Forcing see a lot of folks saying that like you can just get those cards back. I genuinely don't know how.

How are you supposed to get any cards back at all? Every card that I can remember getting I got from like a item like a chest in the P03 zone, right? Or like a reward from like a battle. There are so there are like money based purchases you can go cards you can go by. There are some randomized like rewards so you can you can try and see what happens because the truth is is what you're describing. I don't know how to get around that necessarily.

I'm just saying what I did. People are saying that there's a shop to buy cards and I don't remember that at all. There's there's dollar store that it is there's after the part that I'm at. So there's dollar store air rooms that you can walk into. And it'll ask you to buy whatever of these things around you for the money you have. And some of the time sometimes and there are different types of upgrades. Like you can click on the the the beast paw to get the it flips between a beast and its normal function or other or get a new card or whatever.

You know, like all the different types of upgrades, like you'll walk into shops that'll be pick one of these things and spend the money on it. So I think that would be your best bet. Try the shops. I think there's a shop in each area, too. So there's a there's at least like three or four of them. You can you can do. But anyway, that that's a bit of a side because like, yeah,

so you you kind of push that you get past that point. And then you get to the point where, yeah, like I said, the game is is practically encouraging you to break it. You you design your own boss fight rules for one. You design your own card for another. Someone uploads a card and sends you one. You send them a card. It's it's just, you know, and literally like I made at first,

I made like a super card that was like floats above everything. Does the Mantis God triple strike, you know, or does that the split strike or whatever, but expensive cost. And then you kind of are like, wait, hold on. How about a free card that has no play requirement and gives you a new card on death and always returns to your hand? Oh, I get a free card every time I hammer this, right? So you just you just play until you want you see a card you want

appear in your hand and you always play the perfect card, you know? So you kind of get into that. And then, you know, like that that's like a fun like breaking of the game that happens and then that whole segment continues onward. And then you go back to some of the narrative of like the characters earlier, Leshy and the crew, you do some back room shit and like they get reintroduced and it's pretty awesome. Like it's a it's a nice reveal of like, you know, they're around and like

they're you're going to now take on P03. And then basically you go into the end game sequence, which is like you're playing as I forgot his name, Carter or whatever the the the the the live action guy and you're basically deleting the disk and you're trying to stop it from uploading itself onto the internet, which is the great awakening, which will allow you to, you know, which will allow it to like replicate itself and sell itself on steam, take the screenshots, etc. And in the process of like the game, deleting itself, you then enter the

world of the the the bone cards, the bone deck and the death lady. And you quickly, like while the game is like wrapping up because you've already triggered the delete sequence, you start a act one and act three style version of her game with the bones. And it's another fun system of like, Oh, this is interesting. We could have had a whole adventure here if you liked act one and you wanted to play the one the one on one table versions of these like of the game, which is what to me what it's at its best compared to like, say, act two, you get

that would have much rather had a table version against the death lady. Yeah, the robot. Yeah, it was and it was it was really brief because it's like, Hey, we could have had a lot of fun, but we're deleting ourselves, you know, but this is what it would have been like kind of thing. And you play a couple rounds of that and it is pretty fun. And I was like, Oh, that's cool. And then as that goes, then the only one left is your final the the wizard deck,

you know, and you're like, OK, I hate this fucking wizard deck. I don't understand it. And you're forced to kind of like when I beat the wizard in the act two, I didn't even really know the rules. I was just still I just don't understand it. Yeah, I filled my deck up with like colorful cards and I just played them and it was fine, you know, like I just brute force through. And I was like, I don't even get it, but whatever.

So then I when it comes back around to now the fully like 3D version of that where you're like having the 1v1 with them, you get a fun little reveal where like it's like the wizard battle is you put on a fucking Yu-Gi-Oh arm blade and then you elevate into two pillars and then the monsters you play on the field on your board on your arm appear in the battlefield in between you and you're having a Yu-Gi-Oh battle and the numbers of your HP are floating in the sky, you know, and I was like, OK, I'm not into Yu-Gi-Oh, but that's a fun thing, you know,

that you dropped there. That's cool. And like and you're playing that mocks based game, which is still, you know, least favorite of the set, but you're having a little brief Yu-Gi-Oh battle for a couple of rounds until it starts deleting and everything the narrative comes through. And then the whole game, the whole game world gets deleted, you know. So I was like, all right, I like I like the different versions of Act One that we went through.

And while Act Three was initially confusing, sticking with it kind of like and then, you know, getting getting to the point where I realized it was like less about the rules and more about breaking them. I was like, OK, this is fun. And then it wraps up with the the final live action bits, which, you know, I got to say, like, as and as much as like I didn't like them, the the final one does its job, which is, you know, the game deletes itself, the game deletes process, deletes itself.

He pops the disc out and destroys it, whatever, and then gets a ring on the doorbell from, you know, like the lady who came to visit earlier. And he and he walks to the door and goes, like, I told you, I don't want. And then she just blows his head off and then you get your credits, you know. And I was like, OK, well, all right, that's your narrative. That's the end of your narrative. It's done in the end. I it won me back, you know, like I liked what it did going into that finale.

And like those other versions of the game, it is it does a job. It does its job of kind of being like, hey, you can have enough. It's not so brief that you don't get to enjoy it. You get to enjoy a few rounds of that, you know, and and. I still liked Leshy's the best, but all in all, I liked it. I liked what it did. The turnaround at the end won me won me back over despite confusion in the middle. I as for what you're describing, though, I don't necessarily know.

I'm still sitting here just baffled. I don't understand a single thing that we talked about. OK, with that chapter. All I can think of is how am I supposed to get new cards if I've already gotten all of the all of the chests and done all of the battles? Have you so have you unlocked all all of the zones in Act Three, including? No, I only got to like the second one and immediately started to hit roadblocks. OK, I couldn't cross a bridge to the north side of the map.

Um, yeah, you don't get. So that one tells you go fight a boss, I think, and then come back. So you have to explore a bit more. Also, something that you that I noticed was when you're walking around the map in Act Three, there are invisible arrows. Yeah, I found all those. OK, all the ones that I could access. Yeah. So then it's so that, yeah, I guess it comes down to just like

making it through a fight and getting some money to go to a new. No, I I guess there was a shop. But all I can remember is there were like three things to buy and I didn't want any of them. OK. Unless the unless people are suggesting that the actual solution of the problem that I'm having is to buy up everything at the shop. And then go and constantly reset all the fights to just buy as many cards as I want and then use the upgrade machine to destroy all the cards that I don't want.

I don't feel like you would need to do that. And I know that using it tells you use items liberally because you get them back, you know, especially when you reload. So I talking about or the the, you know, the items on the table. Yeah. So using those to get through some of the fights might help. What do you mean? Reload? So when you get to a new checkpoint, I believe you get like the re-enter you get the energy re-up battery, for example.

I think you get one of those back at the checkpoint. So like using items, not like a hoarding items is not going to pay off because you're going to get them back more generously. So you can afford to use them throughout the fights in each zone. Then they can some of them can help you win key plays like forcing a pass on a turn where you you'd get killed is like a really good one, for example. So I kind of think you'd have to like just like brute force past like one battle using items and using what you have on you, go buy another card or two.

And then like you'll come into some easier battles, probably, I'm guessing, you know. I'm in a state of like, I'm like, I could do that. I could go back and just ask for advice until I get past it. But it's but it's annoying that more shitty robot fights. OK, fair enough. But that's that's that's what I liked about that was just like going into the robot that that that act like the rules of that, like as you hit each boss, start to become less and less relevant

because it becomes more about like, I guess, the narrative they're going for. But you're still having fun with the cards in a way. Anyway, that's all really. But no, I did like inscription. And I thought that the like, yeah, so you start a new game and then like there's a chapter select so you can go back to each section, depending on what you want to do. But I I thought the the meta stuff like they figured it out.

They they brought it back. I still I guess I don't know how you would do that live action bit without. I don't know what the alternative would be, but action is cringe. It is. And I don't know how to make that work. You know, maybe if you did it without actually cutting to live action and it was just like the dialogue of the player. But even then it's, you know, like if you did a bit of like, like I'm thinking of like almost like a beginner's guide kind of thing.

But I don't know. But it's it's the part I would say that I was the most like turned off by. And the final stinger was like, all right, I'm not going to hate on that. Like that that that worked out for what the rest of the game was doing. But those two those sequences I was describing where you get to sit across and one V one, you get to do with each of the four afterwards. Like I was like, those are fucking great.

I really like that, you know. So yeah, that's that's my feelings on inscription. Um, have you tried out Casey's mod yet? No. So that's a I think it's in like the beta branch or something like that, where they're they're expanding on part one of the game. Cool. To be a full thing. Wait, you told me about that. Yes, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because it's good enough over the overwhelming response is. Yeah, that other stuff was cool, though, but I still just want more of the first part. Exactly. The narrative you made is a fun thing. However, this is a card game I like playing. I want more of that. Um, and it's also the type of game that like works. It fits nicely into that, um, genre for me where I'm like,

I want into the breach or I want bumbo. I want a game where I can just like listen to a podcast, click, you know, and just like go through something, uh, and like build a deck and have fun with that, that rule set. Like I just I enjoy that that style of game. And I had a definite like desire for that right now. So I would love an expanded version of the first act. That would be fantastic.

Man, I really wish there was a full thing of Grimora's section. That's that bums me out. Um, it's and it's like the way you move about the board and in her section is it's like a chess board on the map. And then like you piece by piece and you bump it to someone and then you start a new fight, you know, and then like, yeah, you put the bones down and then the skeletons come out and knock the board and stuff.

It's it's it's cool. It's cool to see Grimora's. Yeah. Um, in any case, though, um, very interesting, unique game out of nowhere. And yeah, I didn't know at all that, uh, the creator had previously done meta type things. So, uh, this is dope.

This is dope. And so one of the more interesting things is that, uh, if you go to the scene page right now, the featured trailer does have live action in it. Oh, uh, and I think that is a response to the kind of emotion you're describing. I did notes. I didn't sign up for this. What the fuck is happening where now they're like, ah, hey, you can see. No, it helps to know what comes past that.

And, uh, I'm glad that I did like, you know, push through. But yeah, this, this is something that might be interesting to visit, uh, maybe down the line, I was thinking like, oh, maybe like, you know, this might be fun if Reggie checks it out. But I also know that Reggie's like super not at the card games. But, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's good. I don't know if I'm in the card games. I play so much goddamn runeterra, but then I do the robot section and I feel

like the dumbest motherfucker in the world. I play enough teppin that I can't not be at this point. I have to accept. Your, your, your rank is too high in teppin. I have to accept that I'm clearly into some form of card games. Um, you're too good at it. Uh, yeah, inscription. Good.

All right. End of spoilers. Goodbye. Spoiler warning. Um, other things, uh, from this week, uh, really briefly, I took, uh, it's not much to say about it right now, but for those who are unaware, the JoJo spin off manga has started, uh, Crazy Diamonds, demonic heartbreak chapter one is out and being translated.

And, um, really early to, to, to tell, well, you know, but so far they're doing something, uh, that I, I like and it's, it's definitely a fans, not a fan service, but there is a, there's a fan service element that is clearly being scratched by this manga by going like step one, introduce like whole horse and introduce Josuke in the same manga chapter at the same time. You know, um, and a couple other, uh, part three, part three villains, you know, doing their thing, time has passed. And, uh, yeah, there's, there's an aspect so far they've introduced, which is

like, Hey man, were you a slave for Dio? Yeah. Doesn't it suck that he's like, you're still obsessed with him all these years later, even though he's dead, is it, is it kind of fucking you up that like Dio was a thing in your life for a minute? And they're like, yeah, yeah, fuck that. You know, I think I heard that Mariah is there. Yeah.

Which I want to say Mariah is my pick for Jojo villain. I can't believe didn't end in a fatality. And the idea that she's able to walk like at all is, is like one of the most unbelievable things in all of Jojo's bizarre adventure. She's too hot to die, man. Okay. You know the rules. Um, yeah.

Also whole horse has three watches on and the tie and like has his times all synced ever since he lost because he lost by the fucking slight hair of a clock. So now he's obsessed with having a precise time. It's a, it's funny. Um, but yeah, I, uh, let's see where this goes. You know, if you're going to dig into something with these characters, because whole horse is like a cool guy, but like, what are you going to do with him beyond him being whole horse?

And, uh, if the answer is, yeah, fucking Dio though, huh? Try getting over that shit. Like, okay, as a bummer, okay, his charisma. And, uh, you know, of course we wind up in Mario. It doesn't say whether it takes place pre or post, uh, DIU though. So I think it's, I think it's pre, but it's the exact year. It's 1999, but it's, it's, it's 1999. So it's the same year, but I don't know if it's taking place before or after the

events. It feels like it's pre, but I didn't have a confirmation on that. Man, what's going on with that town? Yeah, it's crazy. It's pretty noisy. Uh, yeah. So that, that started, go go check it out. Um, I have for the longest while for a long, I mean, pretty much forever, but

especially since the Creed movies came out, I wanted to go back and watch Rockies, uh, you know, I want to watch the Rockies. I just had, I, I got so confused when you said that. Yeah, because me and me and Paige were just laughing about But Rock last night. And so when you said the Creed movies, I thought you were making Creed. Can you take me behind? I thought you were talking like, wait, Creed, the band got a movie. No, no, no.

Uh, Rocky, you know, as a, I think you did the, did the marathon some years ago. I watched Rockies one through six, but I haven't watched Creed yet. Yeah. So I keep hearing about, I didn't hear good things about Creed one. I heard better things about Creed two other way around. I heard Creed one is unbelievable and I heard Creed two sucks. That's what I heard. So I'm, I'm, I'm curious, but either way, uh, I was like, yeah, let's go do this.

And of course you, I know Rocky through memes and I know, I know like all the bits of, of that are, you know, parodied and everything, parodied and fresh prints. I, you know, you see the robot and all this kind of wild shit. I, and, and everything, every show that I listened to, uh, fucking like Reggie came in one day and was like, yeah, I watched all the Rocky movies. I don't know, whatever. Like it just, it's just such a thing that's always going on.

So I was like, all right, let me just put this, get this done already. Um, went back and watched that. And it is hilarious in that I can't think of a more dated thing I've ever seen. It is the most dated media I've ever fucking watched. Rocky, Rocky one, like the rock had, did you, did you, did you just watch Rocky one? Yeah, just Rocky one so far. Okay.

So the Rocky series is like, how do I put this? It's like watching resident evil turn into Devil May Cry five. I know exactly what you mean. Yes. Like, like, cause when I think of Rocky, the one that I had always thought of as a child is Rocky's going to go fight communism. Rocky's going to go fight communism for America and the robot is there and he's a Superman is a, and then you start watching Rocky one and it is a dirty,

pathetic, depressing, uncomfortable, kind of terrifying movie. Every one sucks. Go ahead. Uh, what's his name? Uncle Nikki, uh, Uncle Adrian's brother, Paulie, Uncle Paulie, him like smashing their living room to bits with an umbrella screaming at her that she needs a ban. He's holding a bad his that he gave up his life so she could fucking yeah.

The home is fucking no good garbage and it's just like, it's terrifying. Yeah. And the whole time scary. The whole time, right? He's garbage and you're like, okay, I'm waiting for the part where he does something unforgivable and like fucks the whole thing up or does, you know, and it never quite happens. Instead, there's just a punchline where he shows up at the fight with a, with a,

like a hooker as a date and that's it. You know, and I was like, ah, I paid 254. All right. You know, and that's like, okay. So this whole thing is, it's the, it is because here's why it's so bizarre. Cause it's not just it's seventies Philly through the lens of Hollywood. Right. So it is simultaneously like horrifying and gross and dirty while also ridiculous

and over the top, like this is only happening in movie land. Because again, I have the realism of, of the real seventies. It has the realism of the TV movie seventies. Exactly. The most they could get away with. Like when he's doing the, when he's doing the fucking jog through the burning dumpsters and a punchbomb was just like, oh my God, like, is that Philly? And I'm like, well, think about what you heard about Times Square in the seventies.

Right. Yeah. Before the fucking cleanup. Now think about what's happening down in Philly at that time. You know, so yeah, it's probably that bad. But at the same time, while you know, that's what's happening in reality and you're seeing a bit of that there, he's also walking out of the fucking the boxing, the training gym, hitting the corner to a bunch of like, like smooth

talking and his brother and the, and the bunch of dudes are going to take me back doing, ooh, a cappella around the dumpster fire. Burning trash. Burning trash bund barrel. And it's like, yeah, right. Two in the morning in fucking South Philly is a bunch of white dudes on the street singing a cappella clean in their leather jackets. You know, it's it's like because I just

can't get over what what a different movie Rocky was than the movie that I was expecting because the bit with Uncle Paulie losing his mind and screaming at Adrian, it always sticks out to me because Rocky does not act like a hero. Like Paulie trashes it and like, I think he destroys the turkey. He throws the first time he comes in, he throws the turkey out. The second time around, he smashes everything. And he's going nuts and he's screaming at her, get out of my house, ruin my life and all this shit. And like, Rocky just goes like, so do you want to go out?

We can go out and go to the ice, go to the ice rink. No, no, no, you already did that. Oh, yeah. He's later. He's like, hey, so you need a roommate that she's like, yeah. But like what I mean is, is like, he's not like he's a big tough boxer and Paulie's just some fucking slob. Yeah. Yeah. And you expect the hero of my story.

Yeah. Just stand up and be like, but he's not. He's he's a weirdo because I it's I assumed at that point he's thinking family code, though, you know, yeah, totally. You can't go swinging on on the family. And then the other scene that sticks out as like the last thing that I expected because it had been such a staple of boxing, cinema and storytelling for ever, which is Bergus Meredith set the tone for every boxing coach to ever follow. Right.

Ah, right. You got it. Right. And you got to get him in there. Right. That's what I expected. What I didn't expect is that when he finally goes to talk to Rocky, the actual scene is Rocky telling him to leave and then first alone to just scream at him through his door. Yeah, audible out into the street for like 10 minutes.

Not to his face is mine. How dare you come to me? Like, right. What is this? But then also the weird part there is like, you're thinking like, oh, so he's been shit to him because he's had potential and he wastes it. But then the opportunity comes and he's going to be like, hey, I see a chance for you, kid. And you're like, but like everyone at that point is grubbing for money

because of the payday. So you're like, oh, well, he's going to come and do something to show you that he's not in it for the money. He's in it for the heart. And like, no, the heart is in it for the glory because he's 90. But I know he says, I'm an old man, right? But Mickey shows up like everybody else at that point. And he doesn't.

You expect him to say something to the effect of I'm not going to get paid. Don't don't even pay me. I'll do it for free, right? And that never happens. He just says, get the fuck out or he doesn't say he doesn't get the fuck out. But he goes to the bathroom and then he leaves embarrassed because like, oh, you came grubbing for money talking about being a manager like anyone else would be at that point.

And then after yelling through the door, he runs out to him and goes, OK, fine. I'll take the shot. You know, and it's but like Mickey is not doing anything, particularly heroic there, considering everyone was all about the money at that point, you know, every everyone is is like awful. Completely rocky one. It's it's astonishing. Yeah, yeah. It's wild.

Like every character like kind of sucks. The only one that doesn't like isn't like a bad person is Adrian. But she spends more than half of the movie like so awkward and so withdrawn that she doesn't talk to. Completely quiet, introverted type, which I could see that being like something that is like, oh, that's that's probably a very unique casting choice because movies from the 70s at the time probably want a blonde bombshell to be on the poster, you know,

as like the champs, the champs girl, but instead going with an awkward, like shy, librarian, mousy type, you know, you get a very different thing. So it's like, OK, that's interesting. That's cool. Um, and then the first date happens and you're just like, oh, oh, this is going. This is taking a while. Do you remember that first day by by modern standards,

the way that Rocky pursues Adrian is kind of terrifying. Crazy. I was what I watched it with Paige for the first time, yeah, like a little while ago and like watching it with my girl. We're just sitting there going, oh, man, this is so uncomfortable. Yeah. Like she says she's going to leave and he like puts his hand on the door and it's like, don't go, don't go.

Please don't go. He cabidons her into the corner and straight. I like it's a slow progression all the way up from the like, hey, come on in. Come on. I said she and then while inside, she's like, I don't want to. She says no, like three times and it's, you know, and he does all the stuff that you're like, is there going to be a pullout at some point to show you like, oh, you might think he's this big lug, but he's actually pretty sensitive

because he's got the animals. So, you know, he's sensitive, right? So is there going to be a pullout fish? He loves this fish, right? A pullout to be like, OK, well, you know, and there's no pullout. He just completely out is to them like cuddling on the couch in a different scene. He just quarters her and then she's awkwardly like, oh, and then he just goes in for the he takes the glasses off and goes right on in.

And then it's like, OK, and by movie rules, the next scene, she's like, well, I guess I'm with him now. And and what you'll see for Rocky to onwards is that getting that good dick changed her life. And now all of that awkwardness and shyness has been driven out. It's gone from the scene after they hook up with. Yeah, but like, there's no hint of it ever again. OK, like ever, because she's immediately like, well, I'm on your side.

I'm in your corner. I'm with you. I'm here. You know, you're my you're my dude. That's how you do it. And you're just like, yeah, I guess that's your 70s movie. Like it's just it's. You had it possible. It's quite possible that a fit, young, aspiring actor, writer

who was a proud Italian American and a soft core, poor and actor. The Italian stallion. Time would have written a story in which the shy girl just needed to get some of that good dick to come out of her shell. She didn't know she needed it. It seems like that is a definite possibility. She needed it. That's what it was.

And then the scene after when, when, when, when fucking her brothers losing his mind, how does he tear her down? He's like, oh, you're busted. You're not a virgin anymore. And it's like, Jesus Christ, dude. It's so brutal after complete so fuck having no agency in the situation. It's immediately followed by, ah, you goddamn whore, you know? You're like, it's crazy, it's wild, it's fucking nuts.

So anyway, there's all that. Right. What else is happening? It goes, I've known for a million years that the boxing itself is terrible. I've known that the whole time. So I already went in like expecting to see the hilarity of what's important, though, is how little of the film boxing actually takes up. Yes, that's exactly it. So so I'm like, the boxing is going to be terrible.

I know this blocking with your face. That's clearly the way we do this, right? Like I can't. Anyway, it needless to say that just what little bare bones, beginner ass experience I have with boxing, it's like rule minus one is put your hands up. Just you put them up to stop the fucking constant jabs from happening. So whatever, there's been a million other more qualified people

that have laughed about this forever. We don't need to need to get into that. The fact that he gets picked as a random spectacle and it's like, OK, that's the the message of the American opportunity thing. But like behind that really creed is Apollo's, you know, like doctoring the situation to make himself look better. And he's these two busy taking business calls while Rocky's training on the meat, which, by the way, when the news interview happens

and they show you him punching the meat, they then cut out, cut to full screen dramatic cuts of a five minute montage of him punching the meat. I'm like, what new story is this that just cuts from all like dialogue, all like interview questions to just the montage of him fighting, punching the meat? Um, you literally see him get picked and then all the build up to him being the protect like the way he gets introduced at the end of the movie towards the fight. It makes sense for the protagonist of the movie to be introduced in that way. It's almost as if everyone in the movie knows him and knows where that

where he comes from and what's going on. Right. But from the perspective of the rest of the world, why would you give that much of a shit or talk about him at all? He didn't have any exhibitions in between. There was no build up. There was no in ring anything between the beginning and the fucking end of the movie. There's two fights, you know? So by the time he's yet by the time he's walking down,

Rocky movies tend to have one fight at the beginning, sparring training and then one fight at the end. It's like, that's the formula. It is so funny to see like how much everyone is aware of the fact that they're in a movie where this guy is the protagonist, because even the announcers are talk hall like, yeah, Rocky Balboa now doing that. And it's like if you had just seen a random guy whose name was picked off a list and then the fight would actually be happening,

there'd be so much like going into who he was or establishing anything for people, you know, but it just it just gets he immediately elevated. You didn't see any of that because that was all off camera because we were dealing with the people who already knew. Of course. Of course. And here's like you got to be real now. At the end of the day, you're talking about random bum from Philly who's getting picked to be the people's champion and he's a white guy that's an Italian that's about to go trouts, a black dude.

Of course, he's the fucking hero. Are you crazy? Yeah, come on. Yeah, the takeaway from Rocky one is that he's the hero, not because he won because he doesn't. It's he stayed in. He stayed standard. Is that he could have been a contender, which is an old boxing. Exactly. He went to distance. He could have made it. He went to the whole whole thing is the whole. I don't want to call it fantasy is that like I could have gone pro, you know,

yeah, becomes like, no, you really could have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that's not just an idle boast you could have, which is why it becomes so crazy to see Rocky turn into G.I. Joe. OK, I'm prepared. I'm prepared because like, because you've seen that shit from like Rocky four and five where it's just like he's a Superman, he's American hero. Bits and pieces all broken up throughout my life, you know, I think Rocky one and Rocky two are the best ones by far.

And it's because they're the two that take place. Of course, what I would call the slime universe of that is Philadelphia, the fictional, the fictional USA. Yeah. And and Rocky, too, like the most interesting thing about it is dealing with the fallout that he did not win the fight. OK. And Apollo dealing with the fallout that he didn't just knock him out in like a second. So I mean, the other things, too, where you're just like, like all this time that we spend not boxing is spent like

Rockies pulling 12 year olds off the street being like, go to bed. Or else you'll become a whore and she's like, screw you, Rocky. He's like, oh, yeah, I try to do that. You know, and I'm like, wait, but wasn't that the same street corner where you told the kids, hey, you guys sound to pretty good because your brother was singing, take me back like, how come they're no good anymore? It's the same kids, you know?

Ah, anyway, it's weird because what happened to Rocky is exactly the same thing that happened to Stallone's other written property, which was First Blood. Mm hmm. You've seen First Blood, right? No, but I know that it doesn't become Rambo until everything after that. So John Rambo in First Blood is the Rocky Balboa of Rocky One in Rambo Town. He is a sad, pathetic, p.d.s.d.

out drifter who is just trying not to kill himself. And he becomes like to awaken the beast. I'm going to pick up the machine gun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what was the fucking thing? Oh, yeah, the the part where like, you know, he's like, oh, he's working. He's a he's a bum and he's working for a two bit mobster. And but he doesn't break the thumbs, right?

Shows you, oh, he's got a heart. He's he's a good guy, you know, deep down. He's down on his luck and this is all the work he can get. Yeah, except for when it comes to giving that good dick in which case you got to go right through, you know. But that's that's the thing is is like that. Even before that, like when they actually go on the date and you actually spend the 10 minutes in real time

listening to him just drone on about nothing. And you're like, oh, my God, he's he's so dumb. He's not he's yeah. There's really nothing going on. You know, like, I think I think there's one of those things that I laugh really, really hard about it. Because I think it's a writing mistake they made in the second Rocky movie that relates to him working for the mob.

He works for the mob and there's the driver who is the biggest piece of shit in the world. Antagonistic just to be antagonistic for no reason. He doesn't like shits shits all over. Adrian calls her a bunch of names and lies that she's right. Take him to the zoo. They love the zoo. Right. So the thing is, there's a romantic scene

with Rocky and Adrian in the second one. And like every time I get to that part, I lose my fucking mind. Please. I'm like, is that why Rocky brought her to the fucking zoo? I heard about how they actually go to the zoo later. It feels like a mistake. It feels like a scurra. Oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah. Oh, man, it's dude like it is such a fucking trip

to just like turn your brain off and like let this go where it goes. And at the same time, though, like there's some stuff where I'm like, damn, I wish I could have been in a theater in 76 to watch the shot of him sprint jogging alongside the boat and then breaking into the full sprint. That shot is. Yeah. Awesome. And I've seen it parody a million times, but it's still a reason why Rocky invented the montage.

Yeah, you know, and of the stairs, of course, is the, you know, your big takeaway. But that that fucking jog shot is still as good, like incredible. And I'm like, yeah, no, I I see the the nominations that this movie got in. In rock, I think it's in Rocky Balboa. There is the funniest, dry, undersold joke about the training montage that I think I've ever seen. It's like, as you've seen a parody to million times, right? And they they have their own spin on it

where Rocky in six is old. He's in his sixties, right? Mm hmm. And he's kind of bummed out about something. Balboa, that is to say, right? Yeah. Rocky Balboa. It's Rocky six. And somebody goes up to him and was like, what's wrong, Rocky? You do you do is because they took your statue. And it's like, wait, Rocky takes place

in the real world or the statue of Rocky statue. It takes place in the world where Bill Burr tore down the city of Philadelphia for worshiping a fake movie, for having a fake movie hero. And he's in that world existing. Yes, exactly. It's so weird. It's so bizarre. Oh, man. Oh, yeah. No, I I I'm like fucking dying at how ridiculous all of that is. And like Punch Mom is just kind of like, oh, boy, OK.

How many of them is there? Are we we really doing all of this? That because that was that was fun for a gag. But oh, oh, boy, that's a lot. Currently, there are currently there are eight. Yeah. I feel I feel bad subjecting like her to like the ridiculousness of this because it's like, OK, there's supposed to be a thing where this is a ridiculous goof,

but deep down there's some fun, serious, good stuff. And I mean, I know I'm knowing that this is like where we're starting and then it stays good for a bit and then goes even further off the fucking rails. Yeah, I don't know how we're going to get there. But also Rocky Rocky is one of the pioneers. And you start to see it in three and four and five. And I don't know what it's called. There's a term for it, but it is.

I'm going to say my own. And if anybody remembers the the right term, you'll remember, there is such a extreme performative heterosexuality. Oh, yeah. OK. About about just how not gay Rocky is totally not gay. Creed is that in the modern context, it's like these dudes are cheating on their wives. These dudes, they're fucking. This is I'm specifically thinking of three where they're running at the beach.

OK, Splash. Oh, yeah, dude. No, you're talking about like, wow, you're talking about top gun volleyball. You know, oh, man, top gun has like verdant. Yeah. Top gun is the greatest. Did you mean to say did you mean to say inverted? Yes, I did. Top top guns, entire, like, like, sexuality of that whole movie has 100 percent upside down inverted.

It's hilarious. So that's like, like when you die, that's exactly what you're what you're describing. Yeah, no, we all know that, you know, the the the the I don't know what you would call it, but like the the like the the muscle cam moments. Oh, yeah. Of very of these various movies is like, yeah, no. There's like, there's just like a slow motion shot of Rocky on the beach, like, and they're zooming in on like the rippling muscles as he's like

splashing his friend with water and like running away going, ha, ha, ha, ha, you can't catch me. And I'm like, wow. Yeah, OK. Absolutely. Tom's playing volleyball. Fuck out of here, lady. You know, that's what you play volleyball with the boys to get you ready for the date later that night. You know, that's what gets you excited. Yeah. No, I mean, the the I'm I'm glad that the pace has been set

for the absurdity that is Rocky one. And like I said, I just I know that this is also like the most real filmmaking is to be found here in these first two. So I don't know how to go about, like, I'm you know what? Like, I basically I'm like, I said, look, we can try the second one. And like, if she's got to tap out, then then she's just going to tap out. The set. The second one is great. What's what's probably of most interest to you, if you're going to like go

through this whole thing is Rocky for has is like as a cartoon. OK. Um, but Stallone, I don't know if he finished it, but he's in the process of recutting it. Oh, yeah, that the director's cut is already out. I heard about that. It's out. Apparently, it's it's like much better. Yeah. I have some some scenes. I've heard about some scenes being re redubbed,

re replaced for the first time in my life, I'm afraid. I think there's one part about that that I don't like, which is you mentioned it earlier. So I don't feel bad about mentioning it where they take out the robot robot. Yeah, there is a science fiction like from today's future robot. Yeah, that is a character in Rocky for. Yeah. And. Oh, just wow, I got both versions.

And I'm absolutely watching the version that has it because fuck you. I'm going to miss out on that. As well as whatever the original recording is of him doing his oh cry, which I I've heard a ton about. Yeah, there's a lot in there. So yeah, no, we're doing I'm going to do it. And what I'm actually looking forward to the most is the boxing getting real, which I believe by Creed.

It's real boxing now. Yeah, you only have to get through about seven movies. Great. Great. That's great. Oh, yeah, the adventure. I'm I'm I I I didn't know how impossibly dated because the thing is is things that are literally more dated are black and white. And so your brain doesn't care about trying to like

recognize it as a as a as a modern concept, a modern thing. You don't try to relate to it because it's just black and white, you know. Anyway, incredible. Good stuff. Also, you got to get through all of these so that we can we can talk about. How much I don't like Rocky five. And if you agree. Oh, everybody keeps go. Everyone goes on about how four and Balbo are pieces of shit.

And Balbo is the worst. It didn't need to exist. I keep hearing. Oh, they're wrong. No, five is five is an abomination. OK, well, five is like the shittiest fucking Rocky movie of all time. We will. Yeah, right there in the chat. I like Rocky five followed immediately by somebody going Rocky five is garbage. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about.

I love it. Well, in any start arguing, all of you now fight to the death and the winner is right. Anyway, so that was a good time. In terms of over on the channel, we have wrapped up with Silent Hill, at least in terms of the stream, the episodes are coming now. Oh, can I ask you some questions about that? Yeah. How do you feel about the ending of Silent Hill? And did you get good plus? I think you did.

I got good plus and then I went back and watched the rest. Got I got it. And then someone had a really good explanation about the reasons why you're kind of supposed to get them in in set different orders. And the impact each one has, which it was a really good comment, kind of describing like you're supposed to kind of like get a get a bad ending and then the ending kind of clues you in to what the next thing you need is, right? Yeah.

Whether it's him throwing the thing or, you know, there's always a little piece to show you, oh, maybe go focus on that next time to get the better ending. So, yeah, that that was cool. I, you know, I'm pretty sure I'd be a piece of together and got what was going on. Bad minus, holy fuck, at that. That was wild. Yeah, I could. It's like, really, you're going to do this. OK. That was super brutal.

Hey, it's based off Jacob's Ladder. It makes sense. And then the other thing being the memories of shattered memories that I had coming back to be like, oh, yeah. So shattered memories is a is a direct sequel to bad minus. Perfect sense. Like, right. And like now now you have finally caught up to just about how crazy I was

feeling when I got there and I'm like, shut up. Yeah. You made a sequel 15 years later to an alternate ending. Near start out of here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And bad minus was the like, that was the most holy shit. That's brutal of all of them, you know, like, fuck me, that ending was rough. So, no, that was great. And I, you know, I talked about what I felt about the obtuseness of the other things, so that's all there, just the level to which that last boss fight

is like a, no, you can't run from it. No, you can't really dodge it. Just unload and get lucky. It's it's Silent Hill's final boss is the absolute pinnacle of bad survival horror design in that the only thing available to you is, did you prep for this or not? If you did, there's nothing to do but win. If you didn't, there's nothing to do but lose.

And yeah, and pretty much like never allow a reload animation to occur, always pause, never allow a healing like moment to go by. Like you just stand and dump shots into the fucking thing. It's such a ridiculous like end and challenge bit that like the game asks you to turn it into a full on combat mode situation when it couldn't handle that otherwise, you know? But yeah, you know, the I knew about, of course, the the the psychological aspects and then the the horror and these the slightly eldritch things.

I didn't know that we were workshopping drugs, government, science and cartels. Yeah. Cool. Why not? Cool. It's good. It's good. Why not? Indeed. It's it's wild thinking back to the year that that came out. I want to say it was ninety nine and just like how far above it was its own contemporaries in terms of that genre. Like Resident Evil was a great series of games and I love them to death,

but like there's only so much actual anxiety or fear you can get out of them because they're they're cartoony. The problem is selling the idea of bad controls on purpose to the to the player in a time when like controls are trying to figure out how to handle 3D. It made a lot more sense back then. Let me tell you, you know, we were trying to figure out how to deal with like Siphon filter and Mega Man Legends, 3D platforming. And then this game came along and said, OK, but what if we made it worse

so that it's scarier, though? You know, you're like, I always under the impression that that was a lie. I was always under the impression that that was a lie because of they just knew that the game was never going to control as good as Resident Evil. I mean, a load in the dark is pre predates this, though, right? Like they deliberately went this way and a load of the dark controls like shit.

I don't want the last time you've played that. Oh, yeah, but no, but I mean, no, but it but it's doing that rotational tank control thing. Yeah. There's something wild that happens in Silent Hill five, which is called Homecoming, which you might be familiar with. Little little testing here and there in which the character controls a lot more smoothly. Because for the first time ever,

the the character is somebody who is in the armed forces. So they would control more like an action game and they would do a better job controlling it, despite the fact that that's not true. OK, which actually kind of falls apart. OK, so but there's lower reasons why the controls improve. Interesting. The lower reasons is that the character you're playing as is a soldier,

so it would make more sense that they would be more combat ready and control more easily with a with a shooting and stabbing and whatnot. So in future games, when there's options for like analogue, is that just deleting tank controls? If you go on a Silent Hill two, which I would suggest it's a great game. There is 2D movement, which is the deletion of tank controls. Yeah, OK. And there's 3D movement. I don't know which one I would recommend.

Interesting, because the 2D movement feels very good and very snappy and really, really excellent. For about 90 percent of the time. And then you hit a bad camera angle. Oh, and then you just go a certain direction and you go off to the wrong direction. Yeah, the DMC for problem. And you it be and you can switch between them on the fly

and you get to feel exactly why the decisions were made to use tank controls for these games in the first place, because like it does control better most of the time. But the times that it doesn't is the worst. And the camera angles are made to clue, and at least in one here are made to clue you into things and to fuck you up running from those dogs. Yeah, I still think my favorite camera angle

in a whole in a game ever is the Silent Hill one. And it's right at the beginning, the drunken cam. When you hit that corner, when you're going into the first spot where you spot monsters and the camera is looking at Harry and it zooms down and you have to hide him as he goes around the corner. The L shot. It is at the time that was the most

mind blowing camera movement of ever with no question for any game. Yeah. And when I was sitting in the Silent Hill movie and they hit that alley, I'm like, they're going to replicate that camera movement to a tee because it is like the most impressive thing about that game ever. And they did. So good for them. You did do a good camera. Don't fuck that up. OK. Basically. Yeah. Well, anyway, I mean, you know, that that's that was the

that was the adventure and properly dated. Good fun. Almost almost like Rocky, right? You're going back and you're like, yeah, I see the dust on this thing. But it did its job. And yes, indeed, that should be. Episodes are coming out over on the channel. In the meantime, with that, there is a brand new gap in the schedule. So this week, we get to start some new things. Of course, we will be playing Silent Hill 2 starting this week.

So. That should be that should be fun. I did a quick boot up to check and I saw like, oh, yeah, the no, this this this PC modded door cut thing looks like it's looks like it's good. Looks like it's running. So that's that's a thing. In the meantime, Mortal Shell also wrapped up. And here's what I can say. All the impressions I gave last time continue, except the further you go,

the jankier it gets and the jank got worse and worse. That area that I said was really beautiful continues to be very beautiful, but it's so big and empty that who cares? And you kind of end up wandering around a large space where when you're playing a Souls game, for example, you're like, well, there might be something over there and a look, there was an item over there. There was a reason to wander 10 minutes in that direction. But in this case, there's a whole lot of nope, there's nothing there.

It was just a big empty space that feels bad. And then I started hitting some bugs and some cool stuff was happening. But while the cool stuff was happening, I hit a bug where in the middle of a boss fight on phase two, I lost the ability to parry completely. I just it was gone. Oh, and then I started sliding instead of running. And it was just like, oh, my God, this jank. I would rather the game crash than sort of function, but take away the things that like I need.

It feels like I was being punished for like, you know, rage quitting or something like it was. Yeah. Anyway. Um, so you fight through some of the jank and there's some cool stuff. But boy is that there's a point at which you're like, OK, no, that whole thing about the small team, there's smaller games that are more polished here. And there's there's an enhanced edition where it's where they made a lot of changes for PS5 and improved some stuff, but they didn't improve

some major, major gameplay things, including the fact that, yeah, enemies will be unspawned because they're still loading in and you'll run past a spawn point and it'll be safe. And then an enemy will attack you from behind because you were too quick to pass its spawn. That's not OK. That's no. Come on. So some of the difficulty comes from like, yeah, that wasn't there a minute ago, but now it is because sorry, you just didn't see.

You didn't turn the camera at the right time. Anyway, that wraps up with some some, you know, some fun stuff, though. And then that leaves another gap as well. So, yeah, the two new LPs we're going to be starting Silent Hill to. And I'm also going to be playing Miles Morales. Oh, that game's good. Yeah. Hell yeah. That game's really good. Just going to have to take note of the music and kill that shit

at certain points because there was a DMCA thing. Nope, there is no DMCA toggle. People have gotten their their shit blown up. And there are, I believe, like actual kidcuddy tracks that just play out in the open. So, got to be fast and loose on the mute button. But fortunately, you can pause mid cutscene and kill the music.

So I think we're going to be OK. Give me a break, man. Yeah, give me a break. Also, Miles and music is a thing. So it's it's we need we need a solution to this. And I don't know what it is. You know, Twitch is not about which is Twitch's recommended solution is to play the game completely muted. Yeah. Yeah.

I just I don't imagine there's a world where they strike up a deal where it's like we'll put an ad for the song below the stream and you'll be OK because that's well, I mean. Well, if failing that, you can just do what the the the co owners of Evo do and just stream yourself watching fully length feature films on Twitch. Get some avatar in there. Yeah. Yeah. And if you're big enough and popular enough that you're immune, I suppose.

You only get a two day suspension. Yeah, whatever. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think I think we're just going to be aggressively on that music button. Anyway, so yeah, that starts this week. Come hang out. It should be fun. And of course, good stuff over on the on the anime as we've got tons of tons of new shit dropping on the YouTube channel.

So that's Willie versus on Twitch and on YouTube. Just a heads up for you, Willie. You're going to want to check out Sound Hill ones. Do you see what their UFO ending? I sure did. That song is that that exists in its own cannon. Yeah. Uh, I am aware, I do know that the that the the UFO and dog endings are like continuates of each other.

Yeah, it's it's the it's the zanyest thing ever. And for my own stream, it's pretty normal this week. I forgot to mention what I was actually doing. But the only thing of note is going to be that on Wednesday, me and Paige are going to head over into Monster Hunter Rise. So come and check that out. I'm sure it will be interesting and not at all frustrating. Not at all. There you go.

All right. Quick break. Yeah, let's take a quick break. All right. You're right back. All right. Quick word from our sponsors. Dude, I love our sponsors and their quick words. Uh, the first of these words comes to us from Bombus.

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Uh, the podcast is also sponsored by Hello Fresh this week. We're talking about the foods, talking about getting good eats in your tummies. It's, it's, you know, yeah, it's, I think you want to, you want to live. If you want to live and get the food in you to stay live, then it's good to get the healthy food in you so that you can stay live. I did and you can stay live for more. If you, if you get yourself some of that farm fresh, pre-proportioned ingredients, seasonal recipes and good food so that you're not crapping

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Thank you, honey. Thank you, honey. All right. Yeah, I'm going to need 10 minutes to charge these. They're, they're literally dying. I couldn't hear half what you were saying. So I was going to say, these are the new model, but they don't have the thing where you can charge while they're on.

No, nothing, the most stuff doesn't. Okay. We're going to take 10 minutes. Uh, we'll be back as soon as, uh, those are good to go. Sorry about this. Everybody who's watching the slide. Oh, fuck off. They've got two and a half hour, three hours out of us already.

You can give 10 minutes to get another bunch of hours. This should be three podcasts every week. You guys get one. It should be three. I'm going to meet myself so I can charge these. Be right back or back. And I just, some, geez, no, just, uh, but we're back. Robert Durst is dead.

So that's, that's the guy from the jinx. Did you see the, the jinx? The, okay. The, um, do you remember in, uh, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, there was, did you see that the first two episodes? Okay. He's a crazy fucking murderer from New York. Okay.

So did we trade Bob Saget for Robert Durst? Unfortunately, um, that seems to be the equivalence exchange. Yes. Now, is he really dead or is he just going to be living out the rest of his days in the lap of crypto luxury in the blockchain Hills? Seems like he's super dead for realsies. Um, but, uh, the store, but like the, the, there was a documentary about him because he basically got away with like multiple murders.

And, uh, there was always some kind of technicality or some bullshit that basically he got off on. And then the, um, final thing, or at least of that story at the time was, uh, they sat down to interview him about it and then they kind of caught him. Like red handed, so to speak, by like, they found his handwriting matching the handwriting of like the killer at, from one of the scenes. And then, uh, he went to the bathroom because he started, he started burping and like coughing and having a weird reaction to being caught.

Um, and so he said, let me go to the bathroom. And he did, but while he was in the bathroom, he was still wired up with the mic and then he starts talking to himself and basically says, well, now they've got you, of course. So what did you do? Of course you did it. You killed them all, of course. And he just completely confesses in the bathroom while he's wearing the mic.

Awesome. And you did tell me that before, but I had, I forgot the person's name, the hottest mic, the hottest mic in the world. Yeah. So anyway, that guy, so he's dead. Hooray. Yeah. Um, and, and, uh, it was for anyone who has seen Kimmy Schmidt, uh,

Fred Armisen plays a really weird dude who's dating, um, the, the, the, the, the Kimmy's landlord and like, it was like, who is this guy? Why is he such a weirdo New York serial killer? And I was like, it's because he's playing the dude from the jinks. Robert Durst anyway. All right. But I did that. Um, I had a couple of things going on, uh, story wise.

Um, I guess the big ones right off the top are holy fuck. Armored score six seems to be a thing. There are, there are leaked, uh, screenshots coming from a consumer survey and, uh, the screenshots were like, they had a bunch of, um, uh, watermarks on them. Why do they? So there were ID, they were ID watermarked and the person did the best they could to hide the ID watermarking.

So as a result, the screenshots are, uh, far from clear, uh, but they do look like a next gen ass armored core-ish thing is happening. Uh, and there's, uh, there's, uh, some details talking about, you know, what's to be expected of the third person shooter mecha action title. Um, and I know some of you were thinking, but wait, what if it's chrome hounds? No. No, there's a, one of them is flying right there. It's not, it's not chrome hounds.

It's, yeah. My, my, well, you know what, but my question is they're going to take any of the lessons they've learned after making like 89 souls games and bring them to armored core. Well, I had a thought, right? And it's this, when you look at the entire from soft library prior to souls games, you're looking at a million, like a bunch of robot third person shooters and a million first person, like dungeon crawler games.

And I wonder if they ever returned to first person at this point in time. Never. No. Like, what would that even be? Like, because it's they, they still have more experience in those games than they do with souls likes. I think the most interesting thing about like the souls games and armored core is that like I say, oh, I'm sure when I said that earlier, someone was like, oh,

I don't ruin armored core by making them like souls games like souls games. They're general systems and controls are lifted from armored core. The buttons are all in the same locations. Armored core doesn't have stamina, but it sure as fuck has energy. Like it's, it's like it's, it's way closer right now than you would expect. I would expect if they were going to do something like you were describing and take a lot of lessons from those games, they'd make a new IP for it because they have no problem commit creating new IPs.

They're not afraid to do that versus taking something established like armored core and fucking it up a bit too much, right? So, I mean, what it's the last one was V-Day. I want to say that's accurate in 2000. I think it was V-Day from 13, 14. Anyway, it was, it was less than a decade ago, but it was almost a decade ago or so. So I imagine they're 2013. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I imagine they're going to make an armored core game. That's, you know, AC fans won AC, you're going to get that. But anytime they have a new idea from soft is shown that like they're like, fuck it, just make a new IP. We don't give a shit. We'll make a new IP every two seconds. They don't care. Yeah, which I like.

I like that. If anything, I just want, we're making Tenshu, but it's kind of like solzi. Fuck it. New thing. New thing. Fuck it. No, that ain't Ricky Maru. I want to see the return of laughing hyena.

Are you familiar with that, that pilot? Let me see if I, which, which games, I believe he's in multiple. Okay, let me see. Laughing hyena armored core. All right. His icon is a fucked up dice and the pilot of laughing hyena is named patch the good luck. Okay. The independent mercenary has more history on the field of battle than most piloting a

strange looking reverse legged craft. His favorite combat strategy is to snipe from the air or from concealed locations to catch their opponent off guard. Very nice. Very nice. Perhaps a boot. That's good. A super kick would be amazing.

Yeah. And it's like, you look at the, you look at how it's designed and it's like, oh yeah, no, that's, that's, that's just patches. Can't get away from him. I mean, if Miyazaki is directing patches is that the only, the only one he missed out on was Sekiro. What? The, the only one he missed out on was Sekiro.

What's the, what's the mech name? Laughing hyena. I should probably specify armored core. Okay. Yeah. No. I think the fucking, the nine breaker is one of the sickest mecha designs. Yeah.

There's a lot of good stuff. Like ever. There's that. Like that thing was sexy upon first glimpse. Huh. Cool. Okay. That's fun.

Hell yeah. Good, good, good news in the form of, of rumor. I, uh, I hope that like, I don't know. We like it's, the, the, from soft is one of those companies that doesn't have a lot of, uh, there's not a lot of like, I guess transparency into like how the studio runs and what's happening. All I know about like the way Elden Ring is being built right now is that it's all hands on deck.

So that's where I'm wondering like, you know, is there a group of people that are just going to detach once Elden Ring launches and start moving towards the next bit and then you kind of cycle through employees off of one onto the other as the launch happens and you can have more of a post launch team that shrinks. I assume, I assume they'll, they'll have part of the Elden Ring team move on to an Elden Ring DLC team because it's become expected that these games get expansions a year ish later and that the other team will go into full production on Armored Core. That seems to, that's, that's just my gut feeling.

Hmm. But it seems that like massive success has like slowed them down. Hmm. You know, it's made them like a much more deliberate like company that's putting out, well, you know, effectively triple A's at this point. Well, no, that in, in terms of impact, that to me, not in terms of has, is not, is not so much about like their output, but it's been like, so this is not me going on a Dark Souls 2 rant or whatever, because the version that we got is pretty good.

It has its flaws, but Dark Souls 2's original version and development needed to be rebooted and Miyazaki came in and was like, what are you guys doing and had to reboot development and they, they rushed that thing out the door. And ever since then, it's got like Miyazaki as director on every project that comes out of that company, as well as being the president. So like Elden Ring seems like the natural extension of that. It's like, well, we can only do one project at a time because I have to watch it. There's a, there's a limit.

So we might as well just make the biggest thing we can get a hold of. And then of course the success of these projects, like in some cases in the, in the mid growth from Soft Era, it would be like the success of one of these games can bankroll a bunch of other things. But now it's just going to directly bankroll the DLC and next huge thing that we invest into, which fortunately like between sick ass mecha games and, and cool fucking Souls born is like, it's fine either way. No complaints really, but armored core fans, I'm sure have been fucking hungry for close

to 10 years now. So it's nice that, you know, the variety is returning a little bit. Our core deserves a nice game though. I would like a control scheme that does not require you to flip your controller upside down. I just want to mention Chromehounds. That's nice. That's nice buddy.

Nobody talk about Chrome. I will say I saw a person, a human being say the word Chromehounds on social media about a month ago. So there's at least two of you out there. There you go. And metal wolf chaos. Same, same pedigree. All right.

There's that. The other big thing this week was the announcement but not reveal of the PS VR 2. So the next gen VR headset for PlayStation is going to drop and they gave us some details but they didn't show it off and they didn't show what the headset or controllers are going to look like. But from the description, you know, it has a lot of the things that have become kind of like standard fare with headsets currently. The iteration process that this entire market has gone through is pretty fast.

Like every subsequent headset has become way less cumbersome. Like the first version of it is a wired annoying mess that requires external cameras and fucking games. The Oculus in this house and they all follow the same path of like this is really cool. But the games and the tech demos that we're using are not justification enough to deal with this fucking mess in the house. Yeah. And while it's and while it'd be nice to like wait until it's in a light easy package, the

development process as well needs to grow and developers need to learn how to make these games because there's so many new things. You're right. It would be nice to just wait until it's a nice easy package. But alas, the growing pains. So I'm interested to see like how this is going to look and how it's going to feel because the weight obviously is going to be a huge difference that is in need of improvement. The specs are saying that it can now output 4k.

Wow. So that's nice. It also no longer needs the external camera so it has its built in camera tracking. So that's nice. The PSVR never worked properly in my own house. It worked at the office and I was super thrilled and then never worked in my own house once because of the distance. So I could never get it.

I would it would always want me to be looking over in one of my corners. I could never fix it. Interesting. Yeah. Because you have to plug in the PS camera and then point it at you and it was a whole thing. A whole to do. But now that's gotten rid of as well.

So you're basically getting, you know, if it supports 4k, then that means like, you know, each eye. Well, we'll see what it is, but I assume it'll be, you know, 1080p each one. And then, you know, self tracking, self gyro, self aware, you know, placements, you don't have to worry about any of that. The constant getting, which I'm going to call it, discombobulated by, you know, like a drifting tracker on the camera would cause games. You'd have to constantly recenter, you know, all of that hopefully is gone now.

So that's nice. How much is it worth? We don't have a weight given. Like all the other issues with VR aside. And I know I'm not the only person. You see these headphones that I'm wearing that we've been talking about because they keep running out of juice. These are the only headphones I wear because they're the only headphones that don't press

in very strongly on my ears. Right? Yes. Every single time I wore any VR headset ever for longer than 45 minutes, my issue was not eye strain and my issue was not dizziness and my issue wasn't motion sickness. It was that the pressure on my head would give me a migraine 100% of the time, just like a slower virtual boy. So for me, when you're talking about these things, it's like I need you to tell me that

it weighs less than half of the existing PSVR headset. See, my problem wasn't the pressure. My problem was getting a snug fit because I've got hair. Yep, you do. And a lot of it to fit around and it's got, you know what I mean? Like it doesn't like when you have a big poofy fucking dread head to work with. So, yeah, there's no listing on the weight yet. There's just a specification that the field FOV is increased to 110 from 100 degrees.

It's got a proximity sensor included now. And yeah, the cameras are all... Basically, if it's the way that the Oculus has improved and the Vive, then you're going to see an overall reduction in weight. A biggest, heaviest part of these VR systems is the fact that if it has an onboard computer as well, if it's doing its own standalone thing, then it's going to weigh more than the ones that are just passing through via HDMI from a stronger PC, which this is going to do. But that's where it might hurt them because it's not just competing with other VR headsets

that are plug-in to your desktop and get better quality games, higher resolution, etc. It's competing with self-sustaining VR headsets. Self-sustaining? Well, the headsets that don't require a PC to be plugged into. Oh, right. So the new Oculus, you don't need anything. You just wear the headset and its own computer. And the standalone headsets are a massive appeal on their own just because you don't have to worry

about plugging in wires anywhere, any of that shit. It's super nice to not have anything tethered to you. Similarly, the headsets going over the original PSVR were really annoying because you'd have to have a decent headset to layer on top. And the free-form Oculus had the speakers just built in right underneath the viewing frame so that you didn't have to worry about headphones and shit like that. So we'll see. I was able to look it up and these headphones that we're wearing are one pound.

Okay. So get it to one pound and I will become a VR man. Other noteworthy things that haven't been specified besides the weight is what's the price going to be? A lot. Because that's a huge question, you know? Are you going to aim for $399? Are you going to go for $500?

Like what's your... I feel like that's your range because you're competing again with Oculus Quest 2, which is coming in way cheaper. Let me ask you. Let's say it's $500. What's the killer app that's going to come out with the thing to justify me spending $500? This brings me to the next point, which is it better be the existing PSVR library. But what is the killer app out there?

If it's not everything that has released so far, if you're dealing... It's like, hey, it's another way to play Thumper or Beat Saber or keep talking and no one explodes. And it's like, yeah, we've got those, but you're going to need... They're going to probably have something first-party developed to show off. But yeah, they need to probably announce that the existing library can be backwards compatible with it. They need to announce a price point that's not going to be like, buy a PS5 if you can get one, and now that you're lucky enough to get one of those, spend $500 on this as well. That seems like a high-ask versus getting a standalone Oculus 2, which isn't going to look as good,

but it's $300, and again, you can wear that and that on its own, and it'll be fine. Just go down to the store and get a PS5. Just go buy one. You know, furthermore, that Oculus 2, when you plug in a USB-C into it and then into your computer, it acts as a desktop Oculus, which is allowing you to do stronger things, play better games, and there's a pass-through Oculus link app that you can run so that it treats it as if it's a desktop headset. So yeah, there's not enough info to make this a competitive peripheral at this point, they're displaying their intent to stay interested in the space. Putting out a peripheral like this when people can't even get the console that it's supposed to go where it sounds like laughable.

Also, I need to make an addendum. I was wrong. These headphones are not one pound. That's the box and everything. They need to get the PSVR under 240 grams. The other thing too is that you have to also consider that these VR headsets are kind of still novelty accessories. Oh boy, are they! Just you pull them out to show off to your parents, the cool thing, and then you put them the fuck away. They're novelty because there's not a lot of software for them because they're novelty and thus people don't make a lot of software for them because they're novelty. So my understanding is Half-Life Alyx is like the biggest commitment we've seen from a studio tour and that will not be playable on the PSVR. Anyway, if they get their first-party studios working on some kind of, I don't know, horizon crossbow training. I genuinely don't know. Like every single one of these new input methods is like, it's the future. It's like, is it?

I played Link's Crawl. I got through the entirety of the Wii library and didn't see anything better than it could be like a mouse. I had fun with it and having like dicked around in VR chat, having played some of the Oculus desktop things and whatnot, it was cool. I had like a near-religious experience playing Res, but that's more just me personally loving that game and then Res Infinite as well. And it was so nice to just kind of forget Child of Eden existed. It was beautiful. It was beautiful to have had to feel that the memories of Child of Eden being deleted in front of me as I played Res Infinite. It's more of a clap for Res than it does for VR because like before VR was a twinkle in anyone's eyes, Res also gave people that experience because Res is Res. Sure did. Yeah, we'll need to see, you know, but I'm sure they're working on at least something that'll be the Sony flagship to be like, hey, you got to come look at this.

It'll be the thing you really want. I'm calling it. It's alloys crossbow training. It's like, listen, VR is obviously like immediately cooler and more interesting than most, if not all of the gimmicks that we've dealt with in the past many years in technology, not just games. But like there was the Wii, there was the Kinect, there was the Kinect again. There was 3D televisions and now we're in VR and they all end up in the same problem where people go, think of the potential and I go, no, show me something good right now. But the future. It's like, no, show me something good right now. RE5 was solid too, wasn't it? Excuse me, RE7.

Yeah. That was another pretty full. It was a good one, right? Yeah. Alright, so there you go, those two. Other cool things. I'm pretty excited about this. Looks like there is a Scott Pilgrim anime series in the works.

Do you think that we're going to get hit with about a million people who smugly tell you, you know, Scott's not supposed to be a good person, right? Perhaps. I think those people are going to have a chance to. Go back to your Facebook posts from 10 years ago and just post them again. Scott's a dick. That's correct. Yeah, no, I would love to see something that resembles the original comics dropping, you know, the fun stuff that they did, of course, with the adaptation is cool and different, but fuck yeah. The graphic novel series, I had a great time with that.

I'd love to see that. And it looks like, yeah, Brian Leo Malley is working with Ben David Grabinski, the show runner behind the revival of Are You Afraid of the Dark? Has anyone seen Are You Afraid of the Dark 2019? I have not. Is that anything? I don't know. I don't know what that means. Brian might mean nothing, but I've been, I kind of, I've been hoping for something Scott Pilgrim animated to exist.

So this is nice. Hopefully it's not shit. I kind of, well, just let me, let me correct that. Brian Leo Malley's style has a deliberate kind of jank to it that I hope animation captures well. There's times when the eyes drift off of the character's faces. A little bit. In goofy ways where you're like, yeah, okay, no, that's intentional. I'm interested in seeing the people of today see a vision of Toronto that used to be interesting.

The old TO. A lot of current Torontonians will look at it with confusion. What is this? There's like a place to go. You could eat food at a diner. What is that? The pre-Drake era, the original 6X. Indeed.

Back when the Beguiling still existed and Honest Abe's was a thing. Honest Dads, excuse me. What is happening besides that, we got Mario Kart 9 and Active Development. Shocked, I'm shocked. The only reason why we bring this up is because there's a new twist, quote unquote, that will be a part of the game. I'm hoping that twist will turn out to be that you take all the Mario characters and all the carts and you replace them with F-Zero. And then that's your twist. Somehow I doubt it.

No, no, you know what it's going to be? It's going to be story mode. Sure. It's going to be a one-player story mode for Mario Kart. Sure. All right. It's the most popular racing game that's ever been. No question.

Okie doke. Next, we've got the trailer for Bomb Rush Cyber Funk. Did you see it? I did see it. It was pretty good. It was pretty good. It was pretty good. What I liked was the confirmation that no matter what this game was going to be, I was going to be in love with it.

But it's going to have skating. It's going to have inline and BMX. So who fucking cares? Go fast, grind, do tricks. It doesn't matter what you're riding. It's your, you know, everyone wants a jet set successor, but it's not just that. It's a little bit of that Tony Hawk. It's a little bit of that fucking Dave Mira or BMX triple X.

I was waiting for it. I was waiting for it. You knew it was coming. What if I could ride some bikes and see some titties? Can I do that in Bomb Rush Cyber Funk? We don't know yet, but maybe. Maybe. What if there's wakeboarding?

Can we get a little bit of a spiritual successor to God damn it. I was stalling for time, but the name didn't come. Shit. Sean. Sean Murray. Sean Murray wakeboarding. You know what the stupidest thing I've ever thought of in my entire life is? When somebody told me they liked wakeboarding, I thought it was like surfing on a coffin at someone's weight.

You didn't even have to get there. I already am like, yeah, there's two things that you can be referring to. That's pretty good. That's good. Wait, it's Sean White. It's Sean White. It's not Sean Murray. Sean White.

Okay. Sean White. Whatever. If you can do that, despite the fact that the family will be very upset. Yeah, but you're in the ocean. It would be technically very impressive. Yeah. Right?

Or like, like big boss man is dragging the coffin with his truck and then you're trying to surf on the coffin and not fall off. That's impressive. No matter what anyone says about you, man. It's not the smartest thing I've ever thought of in my life. Nope. That's okay. Pause for takes, no worries.

All right. Let's try this story on then. All right. What do you got? Do you have anything to say about Prime TV's fallout series directed by Jonathan Nolan? I can't think of any TV show that would do more poorly than a fallout TV series. The fallout series has no main characters. It has no main plot and it's the entire games narratives are fucking defined by a wandering

aimless meandering, a guide list aimless wander. Say wander one more time. Wandering. Okay. That show can only be I went to one town over and this is the little story that happened in this one town. Then I went to a different town and then this episode I'm lost in the desert and in this next episode I got bit by a rattlesnake and I'm dying from radiation poisoning, etc.

So there's always a like 50 style TV sequence zoomed out into the horrible real world, right? Is there a way to stay in the 50s world and then like do something interesting? I don't, you know what? I just don't know enough to understand how you would execute this project, but they should just do the Mandalorian, but with like a little bit of 50s styling on it and more radiation. And if they do anything other than that, it will be a complete disaster. Well, the good news is that the name Nolan is on this and you know, that means good things sometimes, but the bad news is that Chris Nolan on his own is responsible for West

World, seasons one to present. So you know, it seems like the best works are the ones in which the Nolans team up and it seems like on the on the own is not quite the same pedigree. So I'm going to tell you right now, get ready for this. There's going to be ghouls in the fallout TV show and a main character is going to be a lady ghoul and she's going to be like, I'm so sad that I'm such a horrible freak mutant with all my skin burned off and they're going to show this by having the skin around her temples and maybe her forehead be a little wrinkly and her skin tone being a little off.

And she's going to be like, I'm a horrible monster while still obviously being the very attractive actress they picked for the role. I completely fucked up my last sentence and I need to correct it very, very importantly. So when I said Chris, I meant to say Jonathan. Okay. And instead I was saying Chris. Chris good, Jonathan also usually good, but not not the West World, though. That's what I'm that's what it is.

Yes. Did you see ready player one? No, I just to anyone who has I cannot like the female character in that her big her big reveal is that she's like not the hot babe that she pretended to be. She's like a normal looking good looking chick with like kind of like a scar. Yeah, I remember the movie treats her like a fucking mutant and he's like, I'll still love you. You freak.

And she's like, but my horrible scar and it's like a painted on fucking like birthmark and it's like, I forgot. Like, oh my God, there was a movie that was making fun of movie ugly. I forgot what it was. There was some there's something I saw where they're laughing at the fact that like ugly people in movies are just hot people with glasses on. Yeah, it's just the it's the dumbest thing ever. I hate it.

Oh, it's. Yeah, but anyway. Yeah, so everything Chris and and John work on together is all the shit you like. And then the solo stuff is Malcolm McDowell still alive. Is he? This is an important question. Oh, also, he wrote Interstellar and I know people have their feelings. Malcolm McDowell is still alive.

OK, put him in the new fallout thing and I'll watch his scenes at least. OK, there are all fucking rules. We got some. We got some. You have some that some takes for fallout. We got one more here. And this is just. A story of sad to to hilarious at this.

Oh, I love these. Oh, good me. Give me this because Madcats has had a history as a company that has gone from making horrible shitty ass garbage peripherals back in the day. To make a high end quality merchandise, sure did. Affordable, but garbage peripherals in the N64 era, eventually relaunching and becoming the fight stick company that was making what people needed to play arcade stick to what people needed as arcane sticks for the new era of fighting

games circa 2009. Markman was a part of the team was helping them with all of that stuff. And they released the T.E. They released the T.E. to, you know, they're putting out some other stuff. And yeah, like for a while, the Madcats T.E. tournament edition fight stick was the hallmark of just a solid ass, solid ass, reliable arcade stick you can buy, probably find one at your local GameStop and it'll do good for what you need.

Plus, you can open up and mod the buttons parts if you need to replace anything that doesn't work. And, you know, it was it was solid and worth the purchase. And in that time, then he left the company and then they started kind of just doing their own thing and, you know, focusing on other stuff, whatever the quality of which is up in the air. But after years away from the game, it seems that they have decided to enter into the fight stick market once again.

My understanding is that Markman was working on a T.E. three design prototype for them before he left. And then eventually they just threw that away and didn't go with it. Of course, he went on to, you know, work with like various other stickmakers and do some good shit. They have as as of CES, which was just finished or just happened, they announced a bunch of new peripherals, including headphones, controllers, mice, et cetera, and a return to the arcade stick with the T.E.

three. The T.E. three that we got to take a look at is a design that not a lot of people are thinking too highly of. It's got a tiger on it and the scratches and it's a thing. But yeah, you know, the aesthetics are. I'd prefer. Why is it so long at the top and the bottom? Yeah, it's just it's not exactly the shape that I like.

I've seen I've seen sticks with this type of shape, but it's it's not great. But that's not a big deal. Whatever. Usually you can, you know, especially like change out artwork and do things, whatever, blah, blah, blah. The other details that come out about this arcade stick are that it's going to be a multi platform so you can use it on Xbox and PS4 and PS5. And PC. And it's like, oh, that's useful. That's good, but that's usually not something that you can get a license

peripheral to do because Kanba just kind of does it because those come out of China and Kanba doesn't really care. They just put all the guts in there. They just do it. And then like you can't really stop them is what Kanba's version of doing things are. So they've made dual modded sticks or whatever. But Madcats is not going to be able to get away with that. So instead, they are making it the only way you can, which is you're not

allowed to be an official license peripheral. Thus, you must plug in a controller as a dongle for the stick you want to use and keep that controller plugged in the entire time you're using the stick in order to have pass through compatibility with the console. PS5 only has two USB cables. Yeah, figure it out, buddy. This thing is totally worthless. OK, so so there's there's a stick known as a may flash.

It's $40 and it works the exact same way. It works on any console, but you have to plug a stick in in order to get it to pass through, right? Cool. Piece of shit, but it's 40 fucking dollars. And absurd. You're so you get what you pay for. Plus, if you at least go and buy some buttons and some replacement parts, you can put in some good some good parts and get a decent stick out of it

at the very minimum if you're going for a low end, you're low balling. This thing requires a fucking controller dongle for what they're calling overbridge compatibility. And on top of that, it also supports macro features, which allows you to program macros onto stick buttons, which is expressly banned from any tournament ever anywhere on planet Earth because it's cheating to have a macro input on of say you can program a combo onto a button.

That's not allowed. You can't do that. I wish the audio listeners could see me just stare off. It's it's the thousand yards there because disbelief. Like you want to talk about not having a single person at the company that knows who they're making the product for and why. How did they not pick one up and all these not one? Was it just a man?

Markman came and Markman left and they didn't know what the fuck to do. It is. It seems it is literally a countdown until like tournaments start banning the stick outright. So, yeah, it's not. It's a matter of tournament edition, except you're not allowed to play it at tournaments edition because all macros are not allowed, period. You know, like there's people that are having discussions

about like like hit boxes that allow you for to have to hold a left and a right input like a I think like a Afro box. I think it was at one point and it's like that is a contentious argument to see whether or not this type of stick is allowed because you have to be very precise that like you can't allow inputs that cheat or assistant, assistant input, you know. And in this case, it's like, yeah, if you can program a full sequence to do something like a fucking top jet upper perfect every time

that shit's not OK. So anyway, this is it's like it's just you've never seen a stick. Mr. Mark Harder, not just because of the macro inclusion, but because you have to have a controller plugged in sitting on the table the entire time or sitting in your lap the entire time. And like you just there's no version of this that appeals to you know, someone who actually plays these games and or is a part of this community.

Like what is your audience here? You know, people who want to cheat in online tournaments. I guess so. Yeah, that's the audience. Unbelievable, hilarious. And it's and it's like I know the thought is probably like it's going to be too expensive to license out one for Xbox and another product skew for PlayStation. Just do it because we don't we're not committing completely

to reentering the stick market. But now you have this bullshit solution instead, which makes no sense. Like at this point, like if you're going to reenter, you bite the bullet and choose to make proportional product for the amount of people buying on that console. Most people with an Xbox that want to stick are going to be there's going to be one to God knows how many for PlayStation. Like there's so much so much.

There's no fighting game players really using Xbox for anything. So you're not going to need to push a lot of those products, you know. But if you wanted to go down that road, like, sure, you can have a reduced production rate. But this dongle solution is ridiculous. But yeah, the two point mark man feel really good to see just how important he actually was. So he's being on Twitter.

It's funny because he's being professional, but just like like emojis tell the story. Yeah, you know, um, wow, it's tonight left, huh? Wow. I wonder why that is. Why even reenter the market? Like you've left the stick game behind you. You don't have anybody there to tell you what's what. And now we get to see that in real time.

It's fucking embarrassing. Anyway, get yourself a conba. That's a good stick. For shame, you know, and we kind of get to see the people watches. Madcats returns to the depths from once it came. You know, just wait till these don't sell very well. And then they start putting out more and more products where they just cut a little bit of corners here.

Just a little corner there, just a little corner here, just a little corner over there, or just lean into it and call it the cheat stick and just that'd be awesome. Embrace it and let people know that, like, no, we're making this for those who want the big cheats do it. And we have it pre-programmed with all the one frame links and all the best combos for your character. Just install them right here.

It's good. What a fucking stupid bunch of idiots. All right, let's take a couple questions and get out of here. Hey, if you want to send in a question or an email or any kind of talk, talk words, go out and send that to cast superbeastmail at gmail.com. That's castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com. We got one over here coming in from

a chemo force who says, dear woollyverseevilandpatmaycry, what is the worst way you've ever seen bonus content be packaged and either physical or digital mediums for a game? Recently, I picked up P5 Strikers Deluxe and in order to access the OST and Artbook, you could only do so through a hastily cobbled together Unity app that can't transfer the files to your phone.

My friend got the special edition for Xenoblade X and received the OSD on a USB stick that has copy protection that needs the USB drive to be plugged into your computer in order to listen to it. That's pretty bad. I want to say every single PlayStation game that when you go buy the soundtrack, it goes, look, you can listen to the soundtrack

on your PlayStation dashboard. Yeah. That's pretty awful. Not in the background, but as the active thing. Those are annoying. I'm going to give a shout out and I've used this example before because it was not bonus content. It was the content.

I bought a copy of Space Cop from the Red Letter Media Store and spent like an hour. Could not download my legal copy. It would not happen. I had to go to a torrent site to get it. There you go. I'm going to say similarly, Mortal Kombat 10.

Either 9 or 10 with the multiplayer code, which was meant to basically cut off GameStop from reselling it, but just ended up fucking over the player. Your intention was one thing and everyone that bought your game suffered as a result. Yeah, no good, no good. I want to give a shout out to the best piece of bonus content in a physical form I've ever received

for any video game of all time. If you pre-ordered Portrait of Ruin on the 3DS, that game came with a tiny little rectangle box that would hold two DS games that would have a flip top to put them. And it was the perfect thing to put in your pocket next to your DS to carry three games around with you. And I used that the entire time I had my DS.

That thing ruled. Shout outs to any game remake or so that launches and just gives you the original with it. I think Syndicate did that. I think Bionic Commando did re-armed. No, they were separate. Anyway, that's a fun thing where they're just like, yeah, we put the original in here for you.

Cool. I want to give a double shout out to a terrible, terrible piece of bonus content for the Persona games. People who have played the Persona 5 Royal may realize this, that if you go, hey, I love Persona 5 all by the fancy version and you load up your new game and it turns on all the DLC and now your fucking compendium is shitted up with like 35 end game sheet Personas that all cost zero

that you can't get out of your file. Yeah. Yeah. No, you gotta tell people how to distinguish that stuff. You know, Demon Souls, they had them in your inventory, in your box waiting there. Demon Souls did it the best because the Demon Souls items can't be upgraded, so they're shit after 1-1.

Yakuza 0 had them too. And they were just, I think it was just like, yeah, like Bob Okonomiyaki or whatever his name was, was just standing there with a bunch of like super items and it's like, you kinda have to know in advance, don't use these. Dead Space is the worst one, Dead Space 2. There were a lot of console exclusive DLC suits

that came out with Dead Space 2 that never came to the PC and when people got frustrated with it, they updated the PC version to have all of them unlocked by default as well as all the gear in the game from the first fucking shop, which if you don't remember what unlocked where, completely destroys the balance of the game. That sucks. That fucking sucks.

Yeah. Nah, man, you gotta be careful with that bonus shit. You really do. Keep it cosmetic, you know? That's always a nice way. Anyway. Yeah, make your pre-order bonus thing. We made one of your guns solid gold,

so that if you ever use it, everyone can see what a tacky, tasteless fucking stupid moron you are and everybody else is like, oh, thank god. Gears of War is the absolute ultimate. Overwatch, man, Overwatch. The golden weapons. Like, ugh.

So fucking idiot. In Gears, I felt like because it was so gritty, it was like way worse. And you'd see Marcus Phoenix with a solid gold lancer and I'm like, oh, cool. You're a fucking idiot and have no taste, and you look like an asshole and a moron. Like, I saw a skin of one of the guns in Apex

that was like retro-themed, so it made it look kind of like a zapper, you know? And I wanted that so much harder than any stupid, sparkly, gemstone, golden gun bullshit. Anyway, yeah, that's the solution. Keep it cosmetic. We got one coming in from John who says, dear spooky skeletal specters,

back when Xbox Elite Series 2 controller dropped, Pat mentioned that it was only useful to play shooters. Found that sentiment to be funny because I've been using the back paddles to create a healer-class build for Monster Hunter World and even Rise. One back paddle opens up the radial wheel. The other uses selected items,

allowing for near-instant usage of potions. This lets me almost instantly negate damage before my teammates can even get out of the stagger animation. So have you found a niche way to bring out the potential from something in a game? No. The reason why I don't use that stuff is because it doesn't involve taking the radial menu stuff.

You don't have to take your thumbs off the sticks in the first place, whereas in shooters to hit most of the face buttons and do all that stuff, you would have to take your thumbs off the sticks. For me, it just doesn't work because I'm a clencher. Are you a clencher? I clencher, so I'm going to accidentally trigger those buttons when I grab the controller, like harder, similar to how I accidentally press L3 and R3 sometimes.

Mainly L3. I can't have anything important going on. Like sprint, fine. Run, sprint, okay. Anything super important, mapped to L3, is going to be a problem because I just happen to clench as I play. Big clencher. I've actually been using my PS5 controller nearly exclusively on PC, and I only switched to the elite pad for shooters.

Same, the problem is a lot of games don't play nice with the DualSense yet. Yep. A lot that act up mean that I have to switch back, but otherwise, yeah, that's the preferred. And lastly, one coming in from Adam who says, Dear Tropic Island Punch and Continental Breakfast. Okay, about two years ago, Walmart tried selling me maple water.

It was supposedly filtered water through maple wood to get essential vitamins and minerals. It tasted like a bottle of water with a drop of syrup in it. I got to have one bottle before the entire concept disappeared from my state. I need to know if maple water exists in Canada. No, that's not true. That's a scam. That's a racket. So was it on the homeopath aisle?

Because if it was, then no, that has nothing to do with Canada and everything to do with scam artists selling you water and saying that the water has special properties. Hey, guess what? If anyone's trying to sell you real special. You know, some might say that for thousands of years, special water has been scamming humanity. Don't do it. Don't buy special water. What if it's really clear though?

Well, that comes in nice bottle. Well, that's fine. You know, if it's not muddy and milky and, you know, that's good. But I mean special water with special properties for special things. Oh, you mean like battery acid? I mean like the priest getting his super soaker out to bless that baby. Anyways, um, yeah, it was about the Lord. Don't don't do that. Don't do that, folks. Stay away. That's that's that's good enough. That's good enough, folks.

Enjoy your three back to back podcasts. What's the pH on holy water? Well, it depends. Is it blessed distilled water? Or is it a normal body of water that you're dunking people into? Because I've there's all kinds of the sources. If you're going into a baptismal pool, it's a regular ass chlorine pool. And you're just standing in it and then getting dunked. If it's inside the church and it's like a little pot,

then, you know, it's probably just a little bit of boiled water poured out into the little pot. I see. Hey, do you guys want to buy my special water? I farted in it. I'd sell it to you for a jar as an NFT. You might have to save up to go to crypto land. Oh, no, now you're going to the hospital because you farted too much. Oh, no.

Imagine farting yourself to death. Imagine that's how you go. I can imagine it. OK, we've all had we've all had our bad days. OK, we've all had our bad days. All right, that's that's let's wrap that up. OK, please. Have a good week, everybody.

Yeah.