Castle Super Beast - CSB 159: Bully 2: Now With Magic

Episode Date: March 23, 2022

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps Testament is Back: Thirst Normals Incoming Ghostwire, Tunic, Triangle Strategy impressions Chocobo Turismo: There's No Bit, We Will Just Rob You The Slow, Tedious, Excruciating, Twitter Based Death of the Author You can watch us record the podcast live on twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Go to http://stitchfix.com/superbeast to try Stitch Fix! 3RD Japan Fighting Game Publishers Roundtable, F2P talk Testament announced for Strive Virtua Fighter announced a collaboration with Tekken 7 Netflix dropped a teaser for the new Tekken animated series called Tekken: Bloodline Street Fighter V - March 2022 Update Trailer Omega Rugal announced as free DLC for The King of Fighters 15 ELDEN RING sales performance press release: FROM and Bandai Namco are apparently looking into expanding the IP beyond just games George R.R. Martin comments on the claim that he purposely used his initials for some character names in ELDEN RING (since a lot of those names begin with G, R or M) one fake walls in Elden Ring take multiple hits to reveal, and oh my god this changes everything FromSoftware employees report poor working conditions and low wages “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” Custom Xbox Controllers Bandai Namco Mobile trials a four-day working week Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed revealed, a 4v1 asymmetrical multiplayer game coming to PC, PS4/5, XBO and XSX/S in Q4 2022 New Witcher game will kick off "a new saga" for the franchise, UE5 instead of REDengine, not exclusive to EGS Building has been removed from Fortnite Folders Are Now On Switch The Wii and DSi Shop channels are down worldwide with no explanation from Nintendo Hogwarts Legacy Final Fantasy’s new kart racer is rife with microtransactions, despite $50 price Gran Turismo 7 now has Sony’s lowest user score ever on Metacritic

Music Music Welcome to Castle Super Done. Why are we Castle Super Done today? I mean, I'm sleepy. You're Pat. I wouldn't call myself done, but I'm also, oh yeah, I'm Pat. You can also call me sleepy. I'm done. Like, I'm a dwarf. Why are you done, Sir Woolly?

I'm just... I didn't mean to say, like, Sir Woolly, like, a night. I just meant to call you Sir, but then I kept going and did your name. I'm just... I mean, like, for one, I just got a headache, so that's always fun. That ain't no good. I'll try and be less bombastic. And, you know, well, I took something that'll help it along the way as we go, but that's not great. And yeah, yesterday was admittedly a pretty fucking, pretty big power stream, you know, doing our Elden duties. Uh-huh. You know, and just whatever. I'm gathering the news for the week, and I'm just like, oh, I'm just fucking so tired of this industry and its shit.

And it's, yes. Oh, oh, I know, oh, and that, because you were, like, kind of half-heartedly grumbling when we're setting up, and I couldn't quite get on it, and now I'm like, oh, you just got three more articles about how a certain game do you think looks cool, eats babies, and you're like, uh... It's all that. It's, you know, and then you get nice things, and then you don't, and then it's just, I'm just like, is this... This is just what it is. It's just what it is, is, you know, um, um, um, every week you just gotta... You're doing, you're playing, it's the wholesome, unwholesome game that we played a couple weeks ago, except it's forever. Did you see that consortium of Latin American countries are going to start sanctioning Japan over the reintroduction of Rugal? That's deserved. That's unwholesome.

We'll, we'll get to that. We'll certainly get there. Um, yeah. Sanctions. Sanctions against Rugal. Well-deserved. And, and, and the brazenness to not just have Omega Rugal, but also have him with the armor. Absolutely. Anyway, um, so... Uh, yeah. There. I'm just, I'm putting, putting, I guess, that, that out there as I'm, I'm in a bit of a malaise, but, um... Would you say that you're suffering from an existential ennui? Um, it's not existential, but it's definitely ennui. Okay. Call me Robokai. I'll rock that belt.

Don't, don't, I don't care for ennui. Especially I don't care how I had to take an entire class about it for one of my social credits. And I still, still find it difficult to explain what it is in, like, two sentences. Like, it's, it's a complex emotion. Um, I remember when I was young, my cousin told me that my vibe is non-plussed. And I remember that was interesting. It was like, huh. And at the time, it was, I think he was using it to, to, to imply like, uh, unaffected by most things. But, um, then later I found out that the definition of that is kind of the opposite, where it's like you're actually so affected that you don't know how to react.

And, um, then I realized that that word came to literally be connotatively, uh, understood in both of those definitions. And so now, now it's just a very confusing thing. So I don't even know how to explain a word like that either. Sounds like you're pretty non-plussed about it. Pretty non-plussed. About my ennui. Yeah. Durkan can go straight to French hell for making me have to learn that crap. What'd you learn?

That ennui is a societal indicator of depression and suicide more than any particular individual causes for any particular individual. And you can look at societal ennui as a barometer for individual happiness without actually having to look at individual cases. Okay. Yeah. All right. I guess fuck that guy then. Basically it was the invention of sociology because they're like, did you know you could chart suicide without actually talking to anyone? You can just chart it by like wages and like things that are going in the country and shit like that. And he's like, what the hell? That's so fucking stupid. Why are you able to chart it without talking to individuals about why they would kill themselves? Turns out there's a form of societal depression known as ennui in which people feel their lives have no value and have no direction. So it's a collective thing. I actually didn't understand that about it either. Interesting.

You can obviously suffer from it personally, right? But it is a societal. It was basically invention of sociology to clean up large scale issues that psychology could not explain without jumping into the absolute nonsense that is the collective unconscious. Which is, Jung's cool, but the collective unconscious is complete fucking fantasy. You know what? I am nonplussed because my shit's all negative on block. I'm very punishable. You know what? You need to start doing. You need to fucking start spamming out raw supers. Yeah. I knew you would have seen that clip. There you go. I felt really seen because it's a clip of, uh, what's this in Goldilocks? Yep. Just doing three raw supers in a row and winning the match because the his opponent like just goes in on the third one.

And it's like, I remember vividly back in the day playing third strike against a friend of ours and he would love to play Sean and he would do like a raw full screen haddo burst and like no threat at all. But then he'd do a second one and just the absolute audacity that somebody would to two of the shittiest like full screen raw supers ever in a row would cause you to get hit with the second one. And I saw that in that moment you see that shock was then burnt in and you remembered it and stole that tech and used it. I did steal that. For your patented ridiculous double corkscrew blow. Yeah. What if I, I. What if you blocked the corkscrew blow and then I just did it again though and that's that's the patented.

That that thing hit like 60 70% of the time. Oh yeah. Like it worked so much more often. Didn't it hit like Max live on stream or something? I believe it did. It's kind of. I feel like he said like, well, who does two corkscrew blows. So yeah, that's that's that's a nice little stop.

Ah, it's a good move. Just do it again. Oh man. One of the most legendary ones to well, I guess it's it's not quite the same, but I'm thinking of one of the times when Marne beat Daigo because he caught him back dashing on wake up. And he did Dudley's raw ultra at that point and caught him on the back dash. And it was just like the absolute audacity, you know, it's like you did win. You did win.

No one can take the win away from you. There were about 99 out of 100 situations in which that would have led to your loss. But he did catch him back dashing to safety prior to that. But you did. Yeah. Put the install in. He did, you know. Yeah.

Anyway. Good times. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess, you know, just that was so what? I don't know.

Elden. Um, big, big Elden week. Doing Elden things. So I started my stream at seven p.m. last night and I saw some guy in check. Oh, I can't fucking believe Willie's still streaming and like it. Don't don't you start at one? Yeah. Yeah.

So what's what's the what's the start and end point for the last week on you for Elden ring because it's got to be pretty chunky. Well, the thing is, is that Elden though, the thing is, we sit down to do it twice a week. So yeah, what we do in that week needs to be significant. But you're also prepping location. I am, but there has been a bit of a change with that because, you know, not to get into the full drag out, but like essentially, I was doing location prep exactly. I was riding into the unknown and then not scraping just main road graces and finding caves. Right. Yeah.

Which there are many. Right. And then I would, you know, hit the replay of that stuff and whatever else was going on as I did that. When I initially put that together, it went over pretty well and people were enjoying the chill recap vibe. So we did. I did one of those for Learnea. I did one for Caleb. But when it did hit the the anime, the the YouTube reception was a lot more negative.

They didn't like that. They felt that like it was kind of like robbing content from the LP in a way. And it felt as if like it's an episode because I was in the middle of Stormvale and then it felt like like I left Stormvale uncovered a whole bunch of map and then came back and it felt like like a lot of stuff was gone there. It wasn't, in my opinion, it wasn't like that. It wasn't a thorough scraping, but still it led to enough people being concerned about that. So it will go on, go on. It's an interesting situation because like you're basically turning a massive open world experience into like a level selector to some degree. Right.

And like from a production standpoint and like I only have two days and 48 hours per day to get this shit in there. If this is definitely, definitely the most efficient way to get the most of it in like 100% to make sure that if people sit down for the stream, they're going to see at the very least like a bunch of a bunch of caves, a bunch of cool shit was hopefully my goal. The other way to do it, which is the completely, there's two other ways to do it. There's the way I did it, which is I looked at the map and I live scraped it like a grid, like a grid. And it wasn't so much what the fuck is that over there? It was I'm staring at the map and I go that looks like a building, that looks like a lake, that looks like a wall that I have to follow to find a cave, etc. And then there's the farthest extreme, which has been when Paige streams it. It's the complete head on a swivel fucking aimless nightmare where like she's like she did a stream where she was hanging out in Stormvale.

And then like she loaded it up a couple days later and she's like I figured out how to talk to climb the tallest tower in Caled. Just complete like what's that? And they all have their strengths, right? You're compacting the most shit into the smallest time. I tried to get as much of it as I could, but it meant that the only way to literally do that is to just sit there and play it and play it and play it and play it and not stop for two weeks. And I did 109 hours of that game in fucking 13 days, right? And then there's the Paige way where she's totally aimless. She misses tons of stuff.

She walks by the cool thing. There's no rhyme or reason, but her wander thing is the strongest because who knows what can happen. Wanderlust. Yeah. And the truth is, is that like if I were just sitting with no setup, no recording and just playing this game on my own, I would be wandering as well. And I would wander until I got to a point of significance and then I would probably mentally be like okay, now let's go back and scrape, right? But you know, doing this the way we've done it for a long time now, I've learned about how you need to approach LPs a certain way. You've got to keep things in mind.

There's a whole lot of background things to keep in mind when you're coming to, especially an unknown game. And I kind of looked at this size and the warning that you gave and that everyone has been giving me about how utterly massive this whole thing is. And I took that into account to be like, all right, let's just put some, I guess, we have to make some compromises, right? There's no clean solutions. You've got to make some compromises. I gave you that warning twice and they were like long detailed warnings, but I'm giving it to you. I'm like, he's not going to understand until he polishes off Limgrave and Weeping Peninsula and then starts Learnea and realizes that Learnea is the size of Limgrave and Weeping Peninsula. And then somebody tells him that upon beating Learnea, you'll be maybe, maybe 40% through when that sequence would have been multiple full games of anything else.

Right. Yeah. And then how do you get that across? And then you combine that with like my natural, my pace, which is, I take my time. And that, like, if I'm playing at a pace that's not taking my time to some degree, then I'm not enjoying it, right? So that will never be something that, like, if I'm, I don't know, lighting a fire under my ass because, you know, everyone's pressuring me to do that and act that way and then I don't enjoy it. Then what's the, what the fuck is the point? What am I doing?

Right. The only time I got the fire under my butt was when I could literally see the finish line. Okay. Like, there's the point of the game in which I'm like, you can literally see the finish line. Well, and it's, I mean, that I'm like, okay, go. Well, so basically, so that, that, that issue occurred and I was like, oh, okay, let's, how do we address this? Right. And I was looking at it and I was like, how do we, so, you know, everyone had different ideas about like what to do and what, what's the right way to go about it.

Everyone has different, you know, suggestions and such. And, you know, I mean, Reggie's take was just like, man, fuck it. Right. Fuck him. Right. That was, and I'm like, that's valid. But, but no, what I decided to do is, you know, in being me, I'm like, okay, we can probably find a compromise that, that, you know, works better for all sides here. And what I'm looking to do is like, I will not be doing your level of dedication and two weeks of endless streaming.

I can't do that. That doesn't work with two people on a limited schedule with a rotating game. It just doesn't work. It's not going to happen. Stream set up. Right. And yeah. So we can't do that.

And the others, like there are other like ridiculous solutions were just like, oh dude, just turn the mic on all the time and, and, and have it edited together by the time the next session starts so that you can just let him like, oh, it's just like, just do, do an extra LP inside the LP. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Fuck it. Haven't rendered and ready to go. No problem. That makes sense. Yeah, totally.

And also when it's three in the morning, be ready to go. Oh my God. You right? Oh my God. Yeah. That was, that was wild. But whatever. If you don't know, then you don't know.

And that's what it is. So what I, what I kind of did was I was like, okay, I think that even if it's not really aggressive scraping the perception that Learnea has been cleared out even before off camera and we didn't get to see you see any of it feels bad. So let me avoid map expansion off screen. Right. Okay. Yeah. That specific thing. I'm avoiding map expansion off screen graces and, and, and map collecting will, will, will be prioritized for on screen.

And then I will spend most of my off screen time either retracing the areas that we've already seen on screen or like doing any tasks obviously that are more, more mundane, you know. Yeah. So a good one is like, there's a bunch of death birds and Knights cavalry out there. Didn't even know what the fuck a death bird was until I decided to turn back and stick around limb, limb grave. Right. Yep. So that's exactly it. So I will, by sticking around and going, all right, we're not pushing out the map anymore.

Let's just turn around and do it here. Now there will be wild moments like that that are like, holy shit, boss fight out of nowhere. Cause I, I fucking literally, uh, I was all over the place. Yeah. So I was like, oh, we can break open these little statues by having a giant step on them. Okay. So I went over and I'm doing that. Right.

And then, oh, right. That's, you know, and right next to that. Oh, nighttime. What's going on? Holy fuck. It's a death bird. And then you do that. And then I'm like, oh boy, better go down and catch my breath at the, the grace right by the war master shack.

Huh. You know, so that, that, that sequence. And that guy is those dudes are always like a full zone stronger than the location they live in. Um, it was those sword guys. It was a hilarious sequence all in limb grave where I've been before. And that made me go, this is, it'll be fine. It'll be fine. Yeah.

If this is me walking backwards and just like, oh shit. Hey, Ronan man is hanging out under that bridge. What you doing over there? Right. If this is me walking back talking about dragons. Yep. We're going to be okay. You know, so, um, offscreen is still going to be a thing.

And then, and then furthermore, I also, um, was like, I picked up some, some weapons that I like. I want to see if this is vile, valid to be my main weapon. But, um, if I can't get it at least comparable strength to the bloodhound gang that I'm rocking, then, um, it's not going to be a real test. So let me go upgrade it. So let me go back to the, uh, fucking the, the Kaleid prison I was trapped in. Cause now I can, you've seen me do it. It's been on camera. I can go back there because it turns out I can get some fucking smithing stone up there somber.

And then by doing that, I got my new weapons up to like plus four, which is where my bloodhound, uh, was. And now I'm like, oh, cool. Now I can possibly switch over completely and I'm feeling it. You know, so there's some offscreen stuff that I think is, is, is going to be fine. Um, it turns out, um, the game is just that dense that, you know, we'll, we'll still be able to line up content without pushing the map out. Each session. So yay. Um, there's so much.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. It's, it's, it's, um, it's funny too, because, you know, like I kind of noticed like, um, that a lot of ghosts are running around me with the, with the bloodhound fang, for example. It's incredible. It's a really good early blade. And I'm like, yeah, this is probably just one of those, like you're going to, you're, a lot of people are going to grab this and have little reason to put it down. Um, and then, you know, uh, whatever. Some, some one guy was like, oh, well, he's just fucking doing all the meta builds and, you know, doing whatever he's told.

It's a popular, incredible sword. It's funny. And also like, and, and of course, and you by, by dropping all these, these conditioners on me as well are tainting my, it's whatever. One guy is at the maximum. It's a Souls game. This is the, this is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to that. Oh dude. It is funny because I'm like using magic summons, bleed faith, strength decks or bleed is cheating.

It's really funny though, because it's like, if I only could show like people in that, whatever people that are like creating that fanfiction, how often I get tweeted or sent or shown a thing. And like, I start to read it and then I immediately just scroll past it and go, nope, don't want to know. Like, if I can show you how much self editing every single day I'm doing when I get an Elden thing and I just go, nope, not looking at that. Don't want to, you know, okay, that's cool. Even the things where it's just like, oh, look at the cool Virgil stuff you got in this game. It's like, oh yeah, okay, there's some cool Virgil stuff. Do you want to see it in action against very, no, no, no, we're not, I'm not going to go, you know. And so yeah, like that of course is, I picked up the moon veil and there's that thing of like, oh, oh, it's the moon veil.

And it's like, okay, that's a cool sort though. I like it. Yes, it's really cool. It's very cool and it's doing big weeby shit. Sure is. But I think I'm going to hold it in my back pocket as I also have my, right now, I think plus eight cestus that I'm just sacred cestus. How are you doing that? Well, I've got those for fun.

So like, those things are great for a blunt like, I'm going to say most enemies, though I ran into an issue. There's a couple that like your arms don't go far enough in front of you. And so the hitbox can get a little goofy. So it's not the best for like your main thing, unfortunately. Yeah, I kind of, I just had them sacred because it's the only, it's the best damaging thing I could put inside of them as ashes right now. Yeah. But, but my main weapon right now is probably going to be St. Trina's sleepy, sleepy boys. Sleep sword?

We sleep in. We put in everybody to fucking bed, baby. It's so much fun. I saw I plus forward it and I've been using that for the last little bit and things are getting critted. And for some reason, I guess it's just a sleep state build up. But when you crit on a sleeper, it's doing more on that pop sometimes than bleed does. So I'm like, ooh, sleep is fun. Sleep is like one of the rarest status effects.

And like there's very, very little that is actually resistant to it. Yeah. I only fought, I think one, I put the flowers to sleep, the giant flowers. They took a nap. It doesn't really make a whole lot of sense at all. But fuck it. The only thing I fought that doesn't go to sleep is the iron virgin. I fought one in Kalid.

He's not alive. Yeah. But I did fight a couple of badasses that started to go to sleep and then they go and they wake themselves up. And there's an animation for that. They get drowsy and then like power back up and keep fighting, you know. So there's a sleep resistance moment where it would go off, but this is a tougher character. Yeah. There's a lot that just works in the game.

You probably, you played it right after the patch that added the new stuff, which nerfed the stuff that fucking desperately needed to be nerfed, including Moonvale, actually, and buffed a bunch of spells and buffed a bunch of shit and added the NPC quest line, sorry, the NPC little map icon, which is great. Though I will say from software games always come out with cut content and you always find out like, oh, wow, there used to be a quest with so-and-so. Oh, they never implemented a bummer. So it's kind of incredible that they actually not only finished and implemented all the cut quest lines, but they also ended up adding an NPC or two in the last patch for everyone except my friends who are 90% through the game and killed some of those NPCs because their quests were done and now can't do them because their quests suddenly work now.

The day before the patch dropped was when I killed Gatekeeper and then his shit got updated. Now, the idea, of course, of doing that in any first run through a game, yes, the soul's sin is don't be dumb, don't remove your NPC from the game, you never know what's going to happen, but he was a shop and he stopped being a shop and I wanted that shop, right? So that was like, I'm like, underneath the like, ah, you fucker, curtain aside, I also want my shop back, you know? And also, I was mistakenly under the impression that I would get a set of spiked cestus from him as well that didn't show up. So I'm guessing that's something else. So anyway. You get it somewhere else.

Anyway, so that happened and that was like- He's the one that almost everybody has killed because of- The shop stop. Yeah. So, you know, in any case, it ultimately is kind of interesting to see a balance patch occur like that has a sweeping change to the game and a lot of weapons and bosses getting easier or harder. Arcane went from being objectively useless to possibly being the best way to play the game. Wow. Okay.

Like. There's a katana that did bleed and it's just a high end katana and it, you know, does a lot of hemorrhage damage. But it had no scaling at all on it, right? Because it had the split damage and it was broken due to arcane. Then they turned on arcane scaling again and it does maybe one of the highest amounts of damage. And it's weapon arc that used to do a bunch of damage now does twice as much and it does like the highest bleed of any weapon in the game. So like, just tear shit the fuck up on it. Fucking bananas.

I'm really shocked at how nice the game is being at certain things too. I mean, I just got a talisman that gives you like plus three to a bunch of stats and it's like- Oh, uh, uh, Radigan America's Scar Seal. Yeah. And I'm like, what? That's really, really generous. Yeah, there's one that gives you five to four stats. And at the beginning of my new game, I just immediately be lined to Radigan's Scar Seal so I could get five to all the combat ones.

And it gives you, you take more damage though. Yes, not significant. It's eight percent. Yeah, I did a quick test and I was like, that's so small. Because if you get five points of three or five points of vigor, the health that you gain is more than the extra damage you take. So yeah, it's nuts. And I was like, that's not even the limited use like rune arc. It's just a talisman that does that.

That's fucking crazy. So I was like, that's very, very nice of them to give you shit like that or like, you know, the auto healer and such. Yeah, to clarify, the one that gives you plus three is eight percent. The one that gives you plus five is 13 percent. But in both cases, the one that gives you more health, it gives you more health than you take more damage. So it's great. Yeah. It's the prisoner's chain from Dark Souls 3.

It's just better. But yeah, I know. So basically, like, it's funny because in my course of events, like I peeked into Liernia. I peeked into Kalid, did limb grave and just ignored the weeping peninsula until last time. And I finally went there. That's weird. Yeah. Well, because you would have blown through that shit then.

Well, I just picked a direction, you know. This is saying whatever. But it's like, you know, you know, some people go south. I just didn't. I happened to wander elsewhere and that was it. There's no, you know, hard fast rule. The logic is, did the sky change color? It's probably tougher than the last spot you were at.

Hmm. Yeah. Okay. Right. Like just straight up with a couple of exceptions if you're going underground. Because underground tends to be tougher than above ground. And I, you know, like I get that the, like it's like there's intended difficulties in each zone and such, but it's like, but like if you're going to, like, I guess if a game,

there's something about like a game being like really open, but if you still stick to the thing that you like the, if you still stick to level one, level two, level three, then, you know, like you're, are you truly embracing the spirit of what the game has designed? You know, I enjoy doing whatever is interesting. So the good example that is Caleb is like double optional. Like there's absolutely nothing in Caleb that you have to do at all whatsoever to beat the game.

Wow. Okay. Like it is tougher than Le Ernie considerably. And I think it's tougher than the Altus Plateau, which is the area that's next. Like it's Caleb's rough and Dragon Barrow is rough and you get big rewards for going out there. Hmm. Like there's a ton of good ass shit out there.

Yeah. And you know, I know that I also like was hearing that like the thing is, is wandering too far into the wrong direction might make an NPC quest line in a different direction, but it's not work or or break. Yeah. No, there's that. There's one highly specific area that when you walk in, it advances every NPC quest line in the game.

Okay. Well, all I can say is I hope that a patch will address that at some point. No, it won't. It's designed. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah. No, it's basically when you leave Le Ernie and go north.

No matter how you get there, the instant you walk across that threshold, every NPC location will update. Okay. What do you do? What are you doing? What are you supposed to do? No one's no one's a pre-cog. You just you just do whatever is happening, right and react to it.

So anyway, I think I think it'll be fine. And I mainly am just like as just, you know, the way that we've been I've been able to do stuff offline, it's been satisfying. It also scratches the itch I have to want to play, certainly, I'm not going to, you know, say that's not a part of it. But it does clearly like feel like with with the strategy here, it still is going to likely be a very long LP. But oh boy, yeah, yeah, big.

But the the we're putting in these big sessions like we did yesterday and episodes are now double triple length, you know, as they drop as well, I think we'll be OK. I'm still not looking at this as like something that'll be like running into next year or some crazy shit, you know what I mean, like, it'll be it'll be fine. But yeah, I just kind of the only thing is I know how like building out a flat of build that's too flat is like I mentioned this before, it's like it can be like a detrimental at a certain point. But I did finally randomly, surprisingly get a a respec item for God knows what reason.

So if I ever see something that's like really, really cool, but like I'm just not built for it, then we'll cash it. There's a ton of them. I beat the game and I respect, I want to say like eight times and some of them were like back to back because I didn't like a weapon I had respect to use. And I think there's like a 18 of them around like it's not infinite, you can't farm them. But there's like more than a dozen easy. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot of them.

So you know, that's that's pretty much it, I feel for for now. Not much else to say. Lower drops are coming in hot and heavy, talking to turtles, probes and getting getting you met turtle you met the turtle dog met turtle Pope met turtle. Yeah. And then and then everybody loves that guy. And then the old old grump back at the round table that's giving you the breakdown on everybody and you see the letters G R R M in their names everywhere and it's like, OK, George and George

like, no, oh, wasn't me. And I'm like, that it was someone from softs. You can't he just gave an interview yesterday that was like, yeah, no, it was me. He did. No, no, he said I didn't do it on his blog. It's it's in the docket. So I don't believe I OK. Well, we're just I literally like in the list of names.

It's Godric, Radan, Rinella and then whatever the last M was. And you see that letter or like like that order of letters. And then people are everyone else thought the same thing. And then on his blog, like yesterday or the day before, he went, a lot of people are saying that I named I put my name is in these characters or whatever. But I didn't do that. I've been naming all kinds of characters things. And I'm just happy with having my credit name on the box.

And it just happens to be the exact order. Radigan, Radigan, Rinala, Radan, Ronnie. Well, it's not it's not even that. It's the fact that in that screen, it's the thumbnail of the episode we just put out called George thinks he's slick, where it's literally the same. It's G.R.R.M. are the first things you can select. Anyway, he says no, that I didn't do that. So then I'm like, fine, then someone at FromSoft did.

Like if it wasn't you, there's not a someone else did that. There is not a single major character in the entire game that is a demigod that's name starts with anything other than G.R.R. or M. Like even like even a bunch of the minor characters. Like there's a guy named Gowri. And I'm like, really? You couldn't name him anything like Jesus Christ. Like, thank God, Blythe is fucking named Blythe for fuck's sake.

The best guy in the game. I love him. Is that how you pronounce it? It is, in fact, because it's using a lot of Gaelic lettering. I did get a message. It's pronounced the same as you would write B.L.Y.T.H.E. Blythe, OK. Yeah, because I did see that it's like it's Shelfra and like, you know, you just don't don't don't get tricked by the by the vowels next to each other. So yeah, all right, cool.

Right on. Anyway, and then the other thing, too, is, of course, like if I spot a dragon sleeping on the overworld, I'll let it sleep. Stab it. Oh, really? Until we're live, that is. Oh, right. You know, unless it just drops out of nowhere or is behind a door, in which case, hey, man, it's go time. You know, if you want to put a couple points in the faith and arcane

and you want to get that decaying dragon, I don't that rot spell. No, I'm good. The most fucked up thing in the game. No, no, I've been I've been getting it's it's getting ridiculous. Now there's a gag or Reggie and I are laughing at how the next thing we get will be some faith required spell of some fucking amazing ability. And it's just like, hey, look, it's the next cool thing you can't fucking use. And all I can think of is like, man, boy, I can't wait for fucking Magic Town.

I I felt that way playing a what do you call it, faith guy when I got to the middle section of Learnea around the Academy. OK, OK, where you I'm waiting for that. Like, like literally 15 different spell. Yeah, yeah, like the Academy itself has like six or seven inside of it. I'm I'm it's like, God damn, I'm I'm fucking waiting because right now the entire game has been. Do you want all this cool faith shit you can't use?

And then you go to the round table and you meet two guys who are like, hey, do you want more faith shit you can't use? And then there's one teacher in the basement over there. But then you meet knights on the on the overworld and you kill them. And they're like, we're going to drop even more faith shit you can't use. Hey, do you want to kill a dragon? Cool. It'll give you something that requires faith shit you can't use. Like the amount of front loaded shit is crazy.

So the reasoning on that is pretty simple. And it's that the these were not decided because of like they were not populated based on like like what would be good for people's discovery. They're populated based off of what items would make sense in what areas. So like Knights and Dragons huge, a huge proportion of the boss weapons are faith weapons because a huge proportion of the enemies that you're fighting

are way about the urge tree. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And therefore have faith based weaponry. Right. No, it makes lower sense. You know, it's just it's being heavily, heavily front loaded. But when I did peek into the the academy and you meet that the archer NPC. Fuck, major archer.

She's like casting a giant bow and arrow at you and you chase her. Oh, Loretta. No, no, no, no, no. Oh, God. What's oh, I hate that bitch. Oh, I know what's when you're talking about Miriam Miriam Miriam. I love that was so that was my favorite part. That was my favorite part so far. That was the best. Like you hit the staircase and I'm like, OK, we're going to be doing this.

You call in a bunch of little you have a little ad couple ads here and we're going to have a little fight. And then she starts zipping through the fucking like area and basically doing what I'm interpreting as Gwendolyn 2.0. Yeah, the cooler version. The cooler Gwendolyn, you know, it was so red. I think I said this to you last week, but this is a really good example. Every single idea I have ever seen in any from soft game is here somehow.

Like every single boss gimmick, every single level trick, every single type of shortcut is somewhere. I'm surprised how many of you guys are annoyed at her. I loved it. I thought it was the coolest thing, man. I there's one moment where she was drawing the spell casting. And then I was like, OK, well, she's a little too far behind the barrier, so I'm fine. And then she shifts ever slow slightly to the side to correct her aim

before firing. And I'm like, it's a double cast. She can she can do a zip while she's mid startup. Like it's so fucking sick. And I know it's not of the thing that players can do. But oh, my God, it was the coolest. I love it. I love it. Anyway, yeah, good times, good times. That's that's going strong.

And yeah, we will we will we will keep on at it. What else is happening? FF six is continuing. It's it's fucking great. Hey, I just want to say I just want to say me and Paige checked in to see a certain little bit of your FF six playthrough in which Reggie the Lord of certain certain writing techniques, certain writing tech tricks.

Um, and we both thought it's like the cutest thing we've ever heard in our life. It's so adorable. Yeah. Protected all costs, right? And Paige Paige was like if she had been like back then and gotten that kind of love letter, she would have lost her shit. So, yeah, no, that shit is hilarious. And again, I'm I feel as if like, you know,

it's another layer of Reggie getting more comfortable in front of a microphone and just getting the part where it's like child cringe. That's like it's cute, but it's a little bearish having the thought to pull it up and expose it. And I'm like, oh, now you've joined us. Now you're here. You know, you're you're you understand the flow of what we do where you're like absolutely exposing something that nobody needs to know about you. So, you know, those of you who are not 100% on the ball,

haven't caught up Reggie when he was a very young man, used the FF six opera scene as a template for a love letter to his crush. Yeah, just changed the lines around as appropriate and and pretended that he wrote it, which he did. Yeah. Yeah. He totally did. So that was that was that was a great, a great moment. Yeah, you can check that out in the episode. Reggie Lordrop, I believe, FF six opera.

As well. So good times with that. Haven't having a whole lot of fun with that LP as well. And that is going fine. Um, I watched Turning Red. Yeah, how'd you like it? It was good. It was good. It was very good. Overall, just, you know, like solid, enjoyable, funny movie. I I feel as if

there's I feel as if like there's two shots in the entire movie that like are are the movie. Yeah. And I want to say, like, one is her mom reacting to the phone. And two is her mom walking down the street very angry. Towards the third act of the movie is like, I'm like, oh, the whole thing is about this. This is the energy. It was it was really, really great. I was overall, though, left with an impression where I'm like, you know,

I have a lot of friends in my life. I can specifically think of at least two people who would benefit greatly from watching this movie with their mother and mother-in-law. I can think of one. Yep. You know her. And I'm like, boy, would this be beneficial. And I'm like, I kind of think it it exists. And it's a high profile movie as well

that is probably going to do a whole lot of good in the world. If anyone with overbearing parents can sit and watch it together with their kids. And the kid is like, hey, let's watch this fun family movie. Oh, my God, it's got a message talking directly, directly to the mother's chill the fuck out, chill the fuck out. I got a I got a buddy of mine. His parents were first generation from Cambodia, and they were pretty chill.

But his mom was this weird, passive, aggressive overbearing, which obviously he had to do everything good. But like her main her main thing was that she always wanted him to hang out with the right people. And specifically me and my friend and a bunch of us went over to their place and we're hanging out and we decided to crash for the night in the basement and the parents were cool with it. And her way of showing off who she wanted her son to hang out with

was that she came down while we were asleep and put blankets on all of us, except for one. Oh, wow, she just let sleep with nothing. Jesus Christ. Oh, there like what was I think I saw like a post someone made about like sleeping over at their friend's house and the all the kids that were there all got different dinners because you earn your food in this house. Even if you're just a guest.

Reminds me, Mike, you know, insanity. Yeah, yeah, my my grandmother's excuse for why the food was why we should be grateful for her terrible food was because when she was raising my mom, the people across the street would eat steaks and give the kids like sandwiches. And we don't do that in this house. We all eat the same meal. And I'm sitting there going, Grandma, please, I would eat. I would I'd eat raw bread then have this fucking awful lamb.

God, I'm going to throw up. But yeah, um, uh, uh, turning red, AKA Tiger parents, chill the fuck out. Chill the fuck out some. I saw some folks. It was it was I guess the kind of thing that I can't identify with. But it's funny regardless, which is some people watching it with their parents and go, Oh my God, that's just like your aunts. That's crazy.

And then the mom comes on screen and starts doing that shit. And I'm like, what's this character about? I don't understand. Yeah, man. Yeah, yeah. So I'm going to I got to I got to check in. I got to check in with some friends and see if they've they've watched this, you know, together with the fam because boy, boy, you know, do they, uh, it

certainly starts out like you said, as that, as that, that period analogy. And then it real quick is like just staring deadpan at the camera, you know, at you parent on the couch, hammering the message in, uh, which is great. And I think that's needed. And I think that'll, I think it'll legitimately like help some people in their relationships, possibly, you know, that are going through shit like that. Um, you know what I could see? I could see two similar friends in similar situations.

And they go, wow, let's get our moms to watch this. It'll be great or dads depending, right? Whatever. And then one of them comes to school is like, wow, we really had a nice talk. It was great. And then the other one's like, my mom said the movie was stupid and, uh, I'm grounded. We're not allowed to watch Pixar movies in the house anymore. Yeah, like, yeah, yeah, no, exactly.

It's totally like there's a coin flip on that. They're definitely telling your parents that they're not doing something all that well. Seems like a real coin flip, depending on their personality. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, and it is, it is interesting coming off of the, the, uh, in canto as well, where exactly like the, we don't talk about Bruno aspect, same story.

That's more of the, like the, the, the rock that is the, the grandmother, you know, and I mean, having a same level of like appearances matter. And that's all that matters. Family members can crush you. Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, no, just super, super duper necessary. Um, and, and, and yeah, the Toronto aspect is ever present and fun as well. And they, they keep that going, which is nice too.

So, um, Oh shit. There was one other thing that I thought, but, uh, oh yeah. Um, the, they did a really good job as well with, um, mace personality in, in establishing in the first like five minutes or so of the movie. Like it's not just, uh, here's a, here's a perfect, uh, student or here's a rebellious student. It's like, here's the high overachiever that is like, no, no, no, I enjoy doing this.

I love it. It's great. I love it. This is what I want. Don't tell me it's not what I do. Like I don't want. I want it. I knew a couple of those kids, yeah, they were all, they were all girls and

they were all weighing the Lord. Yeah. And they all got the best grades and we're doing everything after school and we're absolute perfect people and I couldn't stand a single goddamn one of them because everything was perfect. I was always wondering what would happen to them in life. It's so, it's so key that it's like, it's not the symbol first layer of like one or the other.

It's the, no, no, no, I've, I've convinced myself that this is what I want. You know, um, that's great. And then of course, you know, uh, whenever you want to hammer in one of these messages, you just got to see how the cycle continues forever. And so like, as the movie gets towards its climax, you get to see like history repeating itself, you know, in a very literal way and you go, Oh shit. Okay. Like hammer that point in, make it human, make it relatable, you know.

So yeah, good shit. Um, that was there. And then I guess, uh, just a, uh, quick update on, we played some fighting games, uh, played the strive mods in particular. I was installing sin, who's awesome. It's, it's, uh, a wistful hopes, amazing credit to her. The modder that's, uh, doing all these wild strive characters. Uh, so sin kisk is in, is in guilty gear now as a mod and is a like pretty

faithful, uh, inclusion of, of, of sin, um, only missing like, uh, like one or two moves, but ultimately like converted into the strive system feels good, was totally fun, viable. Um, and then while I was installing sin, I saw that Goku had been released. So well, let's just install Goku and we did. And Goku from fucking dragon ball fighters is literally in the system, in the in strive has a super dash has a vanish has launched our combos. It's, it's just Goku.

It's, it is probably like, cause you know, you've been talking about the MVC three mods where people live in modding in characters and that's obviously crazy, but like strive being out for a year, less or whatever. And then just, just like a transplant, not like a new character, just like a rip. And it, it, it works. Like it, like it actually really works is probably one of the craziest things I've ever seen in a fighting game. It's just, it's willpower.

Anybody who wants to like just crack open these games like a nut and put whatever they want in, if you're, if you believe hard enough, you know, you can go further than just a reskin here and there. Um, and also incredibly impressive is that you don't have to replace the existing cast to get them in. You can add slots for new characters. Um, which then I believe in turn, like I said last week or so allows online play to work if two people connect and they both have the mod installed.

So it's unbelievable, but that was, that was a lot of fun. Just doing Goku versus sin matches. Um, and then me playing Nagariyuki and Reggie playing Goku. And I'm just like, okay, let's see if we can catch him. Let's see if we can do it. This is the most busted shit ever, but maybe if I believe, you know, it was a lot of fun. So, um, yeah, I think, and I have the woolly costume on as well. So I think we have that, that coming out soon, just literally called woolly versus

Goku, uh, the episode should be coming out this week. Um, and I also, uh, grabbed persona and tried out ultimax and, you know, we were having some fun with that. It's a new version, of course, that was never released in North America. It was only the, the, uh, Japanese arcades. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. So it's, it's 2.0, which has a lot of, a lot of major changes to the system and

to the game, um, a lot of balance changes as well. Like, uh, it was, it was a pretty big update that we, that never came over to North America. Uh, so we played that, had some fun. And then we're like, all right, let's fucking do it. Let's see what this online is like for now, because it's going to be gone come summer. Let's, let's just fucking subject ourselves to it.

And boy, boy, the underwater matches we had. Um, it was like the, like the best match I had, I think was with, um, I think we was me and someone on the East coast, uh, in North America, and you still felt that just that little bit of delay base that you got that lag going. And then as soon as we started reaching out to, like we were playing, we played matches with people in, uh, like Texas and it was like, okay, this is getting a little worse. And then we played someone in England and it just became nightmarish.

And it's like, yep, this is it. This is, this is your proof in the pudding. Let it be a, a time stamped reminder, you know, and you can, and the funny part is, is that like a lot of the people that come hang out and we, that we play with on getting to fighting games are the same people, you know, it's like we have locals each week, practically. So I know for a fact that the last time I played against this person, we were fine, depending on the game we play.

It's, it's very interesting going from game to game, fighting some of the same other people that are playing with us and realizing how much the connection varies because of the game itself and, and, and the netcode in the game. Whereas I know when we played, uh, like something with rollback, we were totally fine, you know? Um, so, uh, yeah, let that's, that's one for the, for the record, you know, just to see it in there, like it's, it's, it's just as bad as, as, as we remember. Um, and, uh, you know, please pray.

You know, for the, for the, the rollback test to come soon. I'm, I'm so excited for the next fighting game fucking round table where everyone at the table, but Herata is doing rollback and Herata starts going, you know, rollback is trash, but also tech and has it. So shut up. You guys are idiots. And he runs away. God, we're going to talk, he just runs away.

So we're going to talk about that in a minute. Um, but that's pretty much, I can't wait. I can't wait for it. That's what's going on. Um, please, uh, uh, tune in to woolly versus on YouTube. We've got hot episodes daily. We've got lots coming out on the regular, um, the, the, the Elden Ring and uh, Final Fantasy six LPs continue.

The get into fighting games continues. And this week, uh, we'll be doing CVS to Saturday and on Sunday. Just a reminder as well is the charity stream. So 1pm, uh, come tune in. We're going to be doing a stream for, uh, children's hospital gamers forgiving. We're trying to get a stream, uh, not a stream station, trying to get a, uh, a gaming setup, uh, portable for, uh, children's hospital and the, the right energy, I think is to play some long suffering bullshit for the kids.

So, uh, Baba is you is currently on the slate and I'm going to see what else matches the energy, but, uh, at the very least I can confirm. Baba is you for Sunday. Yeah, it'll be, it'll be rough and we'll do it. We'll do it for them kids. Oh, oh no. The goal is not the, okay. Well, there's a goal, but the goal is to end stream without yelling fuck them kids.

That's the goal while playing. Baba is you know, part of me want like, oh, gotta try to not get possessed by the spirit of Michael Jordan. Very hard role. Impossible disco Elysium might say. Uh, yeah. Anyway, that's happening over on Willy versus. And of course we're twitching all the time.

So come hang out on the twitch as well. All right. Now it's time to switch over to me. I'm Pat. Hello, everyone. So I'm having a pretty good day today. I woke up a little early because I went and it's the, one of the first nice days that could be planned for, uh, this season.

Uh, so I went and hung out, uh, with a bunch of my family today for the first time in my, with my folks over a year. And I saw my sister for the first time in of like 25 months. Uh, she finally, uh, grabbed, uh, my brother-in-law and the nephew. That's nice. We went and masked up and we went to a big public park and we hung out and chatted about a bunch of bullshit because we, you know, this, this shit's not going away anytime soon.

I can't go multiple years without seeing every single member of my family for in any length of time. Right. It's, uh, it was really nice. Uh, we brought the dog. We brought saying Gief, which was great because, uh, my nephew, uh, has been unfortunately kind of isolated and has not had, like he's, he's like, uh, 11 or 12 and he's like shy around dogs because when the fuck is he going to

see other people's dogs around? And, uh, the last time, uh, he pet a dog, um, it bit him on the top of his head. Oh no, that'll put, I think that'll, that'll install, that'll install a fear. Yeah. Uh, and when we were like, what the fuck, why did your dog bite the kid? My brother said, well, you know, he pet him the wrong way. So it's really my nephew's fault. Uh, on the other side, it always comes back to the antagonist.

My dog, uh, did tricks for my nephew and slobbered all over his gloves and was very nice. Well, that's very nice to hear. Yeah. Also, I'm seeing people in chat asking, was your brother there? No. Are you stupid? Like I give a shit.

My brother could be literally dead right now and I wouldn't know. And that's fine. I'm giving a thumbs up for those of you who can't see me right now. Uh, let's see what. So that was nice. It was nice to see my moms, especially she misses me the most because, you know, she old lady now and she miss her, her boy. Um, what else I do?

I played a lot of indie games this week, actually, uh, some better than others. Uh, was one of them Ghostwire Tokyo? Yeah, it was the, the indie game. No, no, it's not. No, it's, it's not, it's a Bethesda game. Well, I played, I played Ghostwire Tokyo last night. Um, and, um, it's really fascinating. Uh, it's kind of not what I thought it would be.

It looks so cool. It looks so cool. What's happening? It's like an open world ghost shooter. Uh, but the area is like absolutely gigantic and like probably the weirdest thing is that like they go, Oh, Tengu are in the sky. And you just pointed a Tengu above a skyscraper and just latch onto it. And then your rooftop jumping and then you can glide like Batman.

Yeah, it's, it's fascinating. That's so fucking weird. So like what's, I've been, I'm, I'm really curious to hear like what it is that is rubbing people the wrong way. Uh, the thing that I would probably suspect is that, um, there aren't that many weapons and there aren't that many enemies. Repetition. Yeah.

Okay. Like, like the, the, the absolutely like visually immaculate, fascinating world that they've described like shown off is super cool. Um, but like what fighting enemies, even, even at the end of like the four and a half hours that I did was starting to get a little, little tiring. And I wasn't getting enough cool new abilities to balance that out. Uh, but I'm going to be playing it again, uh, uh, this week. So I'll have more say on it then.

Did you, um, did you have any boss fights? Yeah, I had a couple, but the, the boss fights in that game are either arena battles against huge amounts of enemies or fights against somewhat stronger enemies that have like a different look, but are functionally the same as a regular enemy. So nothing like, nothing like a big bombastic. Yeah. Okay.

Um, uh, like boss fights so far, but again, I only played it for four ish hours. Uh, so it's like, it's very positive, but I feel like, I feel like it's going to be like a flawed gem, like people who love it are going to really love it. And it has some incredible strengths, but it has some like significant weaknesses. If repetition is what is, um, hurting it, it makes me think that could it have been perhaps better if it was like a smaller scale. So you just had more unique things that you didn't have to, uh, uh, repeat over and over, you know, less encounters of the same kind.

Cause like one of the biggest draws of it is wandering around like a, like what feels like 40 or 50 Shibuya blocks. And it's really cool. Okay, bro. I'm okay. Okay. Like you're about to vomit into your shirt. Just coughing.

Okay. Don't, don't vomit into your shirt. We can all, we can all, I'm not, I'm not, uh, it's okay. There's no purses nearby. We're fine. Okay. We're good. Okay.

So there's ghost wire. Uh, ghost wire is cool, but probably a little flawed. Uh, what else? I'm actually looking at the list of shit that I did this week. Uh, I talked about trying a strategy. No, I talked, I didn't. No, I thought I did. Oh, well I played triangle strategy.

Hey, guess what? Uh, that is a, uh, really gorgeous little strategy RPG that, you know, that, um, has very bad pacing. Oh, I played it for hours and hours and only got to fight twice. It felt like I was starting up a persona five. Oh boy. Okay. I know that vibe.

What would you compare that? How do, how would you compare it to Octo? Uh, visually it's very similar. Uh, the plot's a little bit more interesting. It's a lot more like, uh, Game of Thrones, like backstabbing royal families kind of stuff. Uh, it has a main story instead of a bunch of different ones, but it clearly spent, like, I played it for about four and then I'm talking to people and it feels like the first five hours of the game are the setup to the conflict, which you would need for there to be a big

war with all this political maneuvering, but like, like that's like, you, you fight a bandit asshole at the very beginning of the game and I genuinely feel like that whole sequence was added in because they realized that you went five hours without fighting anyone in the game's real gameplay. Is the, is the setup engaging though? Yes, it is engaging. Okay. But it's also slow and methodical and I have not gone back to it since.

That being said, when I did actually get to play the strategy RPG parts, yeah, it's a really solid strategy RPG that I will eventually get through that slow burn and very much enjoy. But yeah, it's a super slow burn, like super slow because I mean, I think I was having, that kind of sounds similar to what I was describing when I played, um, wolf's stride, but if what is happening as it's setting up is, is enjoyable, then, you know, it's not as bad. You're, yeah, the basic thing is that you're, you're, uh, you're getting like a lady in arranged marriage, uh, to you for your royal house, and then you meet everybody in your household

and what the situation with your household is, then you go to the king's tournament in which all the major players are there. But the way that it does that is that it literally like you encounter and it will list off and it will show off every single major player in the game politically back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back. Events aren't happening and it makes sense in context because it's like a royal event where people are showing up and actually legitimately being introduced, but it's like, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, okay.

I was, I was about to say like, you know, uh, like even in games where if like it'd be so, it'd be great if you had something like where that setup was happening alongside your inability to like, I don't know, go through some sort of little training room that like, you know, gets more, that gets harder as you build up or whatever. Then I was like, wait, no, fuck that. 13 Sentinels is amazing. It already solved this problem. God bless 13 Sentinels.

Tactics to this day still remains probably the best strategy RPG in that it does not have flaws. Like I'm sitting here and I'm like, no, it's kind of perfect. Like you're going through the story in 13 Sentinels and you're like, okay, I feel like fighting now. Games like Word. Okay, let's go. All right, I'm good.

All right. Nope. Whatever you want. It's right there. Just press R1, you know, like it's so nice to have it at your own pace. But yeah, it's a, it's a good game. I'll get back to it. Slow start kind of a bummer, but okay.

I played tunic. Have you played tunic Willie? I have not played tunic. Okay. Have you seen tunic? I heard the name tunic. Okay. But I don't know what it is.

Tunic is one of those games. It's an independent little game with a little fox character and the little fox character wears a little green tunic and has a little sword and a little shield. And you play it from a pseudo isometric perspective in a cartoon art style. And I'm like somebody and you wake up on a little beach on a mysterious island. And the shield is blue with a sigil on it and a little and you have a parry that you can reflect the laser beams from the robots back at them. Oh yeah.

It's definitely not Zelda. Wink. It sure doesn't. It is, it is the most unashamed, unashamed, legally distinct, a fucking Link's Awakening tribute game I could even concede. Spin attack. No. Okay.

There's a little bit of souls stuff in there with like the way your potion works and stuff like that. It is so incredible and perfect in every way. The art style is really cute. It's really cool. It's visually gorgeous. It sounds great. The level design is fantastic. The controls are stellar.

But on top of that is the exploration in the game is like one of those things of like behind every weird angle of a door. There's a secret hidden path or there's a hidden treasure chest and something like that. And it has a fascinating take on in game language that makes Fez look so stupid in which there is an in game language which is being actively translated by your character on items as they use it. It appears. Okay.

But the game's biggest collectible is so fascinating. The game's biggest collectible are pages of the game's instruction manual. Whoa. Okay. So you pick up a page of the instruction manual and that is what tells you how to sprint. Okay. Right. And what the buttons do.

But you'll also pick up the instruction manual slash strategy guide and it'll tell you to ring the east bell you go to these areas and bring the west bell you go to these areas. But some of them are question marks. And then you'll pick up a different piece of the instruction manual and it'll tell you that there's like here's a map for this dungeon. And when you go and look at that instruction manual for the map of the dungeon, you have a little character icon because it's the game's real map for that dungeon. And that's the in game device for teaching you things.

Yeah. So there's a mechanic to upgrade your character that is is not is literally hit a certain button in front of the upgrade machine. And the only reason I figured that out is because I got the instruction manual that says this is what these items mean. And this is what you do. You go up to the statue and you hit this button. And I did that.

And oh, there was an upgrade system here the whole time. I didn't know because I didn't hit every button right next to it. Does it feel totally dissonant to the game itself as you find? Absolutely not. Okay. And it's it's it's so it's just so good. Okay. Interesting.

It's it's you should you should check it out. When I see it's great. When I see isometric like beautiful levels like this, like my brain just says like super giant, you know, like they've they I feel like they've just kind of equated themselves with it. Like I'm looking at this and I'm like, oh, yeah, right. Bastion, transistor, you know,

uh, uh, Hades, um, who makes this though? Who's who's tunic pie? I don't know. I don't know. Tunic. Fingy game. Fingy. Who the fuck is that?

Oh, wait, engine. If the developers are Andrew Shouldis and the tunic team. Cool. I'm going to assume this is their first game. Uh, wait, this is not on switch. Oh boy. You would think. Oh boy.

Okay. All right. Yeah, it's it's very good game. Moving on. You know what else is a very good game? I don't know if you've checked it out, but it seems up your style. Have you ever seen Anomutation M?

Yeah, I haven't played it, but I do. I have heard much about that over a while. You should goddamn play it. Anomutation M is a side-scrolling action RPG adventure game. Yeah. That has one of the most striking art styles I have ever seen in any game in my life. It was one of those things where I saw the tweet, uh, announcing it, and I saw footage of it in on, yeah, just Twitter.

And I'm like, okay, what is that? Add it to the list. Immediately just put it on the short, like check this out for sure. At some point when you get a chance, a chance. It is, uh, it is like 19, like, like 2000 era sprites with too many frames of animation. On top of super, super, super high res PS1, PS2 backgrounds that are 3D. Blade Runner, Cyberpunk. Like Blade Runner, Cyberpunk, Valhalla, uh, aesthetic.

And then I played the demo of it a while back, and then I played the retail version just a few days ago. And the retail version had a lot of, like, you just felt better, like jump timing and like movement and swinging your sword felt a lot better. Uh, and like, it's, it's this hyper specific perspective, but then they still figure out ways to do cool camera tricks and lighting tricks. Like there's a sequence in an early rooftop chase where they're, they, a person uses a crane to like knock over a bunch of stuff

and like the cyberpunks shaded lights are going, it's, it's so cool. I feel like I heard about this years ago and we've been waiting on it. It's been in development for years and years. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's a name that I've been. I've seen some people go, Oh, like Valhalla, cool. Like not only just like Valhalla, like you go to a bar and meet Jill on her off time.

And she's like, I run a bar from Valhalla from, it's my bar. I am the bartender from Valhalla. Hello, indie game creators are all friends. We will put our characters in anything. Uh, it's, it's just so cool. Like I didn't play enough of it to give a review and I'll definitely be playing more of it on my own time, but like it's so, it's so fucking cool. Oh, I'm glad it's finally out.

Yeah, they've also translated it so that it's, uh, the translation when I was playing it was a little rough because it's, I think it's only one or two people working on it. And there are Chinese, so they're translated in English and there's a couple like, uh, a couple foibles, but apparently got a translation passed again just yesterday or the day before. Um, like it's just so cool. It's a cool game.

You should check it out. Yeah, uh, I'm looking back at when I, when it was announced in 2020. Uh, so I mean, I've, but I feel like even before that, I must have seen a, a dev tweet or just a, you know, there's stuff that is in like a really, really early alpha phase that people are kind of going like, oh, just messing around in a, in a, a test environment, you know. Um, yeah. Right on.

Oh, absolutely. So there's like, there's like this and then there's also like later on, there's going to be signalis, which is the other game that is just trading on that like extraordinarily specific PlayStation one aesthetic that I think is fucking cool. Um, but to change gears and talk about games that are really intense about their own aesthetic, um, I want to talk about a game called golden light. Willie, have you played a game called golden light?

Talk to me about golden light. It golden light is a rogue like first person shooter, uh, that is about meat. And everything is meat. And I, I would, how to put this, I would describe the game golden light as the most violently anti human game I have ever seen. So I'm seeing a lot of eyeballs. I don't mean, I don't mean that it is a bad game.

I think it's probably a work of genius. I, and I don't mean that like is poorly put together. I mean, it is explicitly created for not humans. And it starts from like the main menu. Um, when you click, when you go to the video options, it just lists all the resolutions and graphics settings and they're all the exact same size in this weird yellow font. And when you click on any of them, uh, the game spazs us out and all of them change size and skew and morph simultaneously.

And there's no indication that the one that you clicked on was the one that is active. Can you read what it says? It, yeah, but like I click on 4k and like every menu option in the, on the screen switches and stretches and goes, and then it's like, did that work? Okay. Um, the game, um, no matter what resolution you put it at, forces itself down to what I think is 240p. Love, I love fucking with this shit. Yeah, that's, that's always great.

Like, like it will, it will force it all the way down. Did you, um, sorry, just out of curiosity, did you, uh, fuck around with Bloodborne PSX? I did not. Okay. Because it's, it's totally fixed now, but the, the first, first version of that would like, it would, if you, if you told it, you wanted a different resolution in the first version, it would fight you tooth and nail to be like, nah, we're going to do something else. But you can try, you know, see what happens when the screen refreshes.

And I'm like, I haven't, like the screen refresh, like, like as if it was a VGA monitor clicking off and on, you know. So Woollie, by the way, I just sent you a photo of the video option menu. Okay. Uh, and, uh, as you can see, everything's in this weird yellow font. And when you click on any of the resolutions, it, it just, it just, all the, the whole menu but like they all look the same. There's no way to see which one you've selected.

And if it doesn't feed back to confirm what you've chosen. No, no, it doesn't. Okay. And, um, you start the game and, uh, the game talks to you via gigantic blood red text in the dead center of the screen and, uh, starts telling you that everything is made out of meat and tells you to eat every eyeball you find. And, um, almost every enemy in the game, there's a bunch of enemies that are mimics that are just weird chairs covered in meat that will then like, they're not mimics.

Like they just poof into a new animal, like their arms will extend out and their head will pop off and meat will spill out. And then I talked to like a jukebox that needed 10 gold coins to get more lips. And, um, uh, then I died and then I woke up in a weird field with a bicycle to talk to me. And then I, I then went into a new place with cages and there are doors that swing open that are just mouths of meat. And, uh, the game is just this constant droning, crushing industrial screeching noise. Um, and, uh, and I, I kept getting, I put my hand in a, in a, in a meat hole and then

it gave me a deja vu hand and the deja vu hand would randomly jump scare me by putting its hand on my camera's face and then teleporting me to a random part of the floor that I was on. Is there a goal? Is there a main goal? The, the, the goal is that you, that she, who is your girlfriend at a picnic gets eaten by the meat and you have to go get her. Okay. And, and you gotta get keys to get through the door to leave.

But once you get all the keys, all the meat comes out of the walls to, to eat you. And if you kill the meat, the meat hates you. So you have to sneak past the meat. It's, I, I turned on display capture to uninstall it on video. Um, it is, oh right. And the game keeps telling you to hurt yourself. And if you click in on the right analog stick, you, you stab yourself with whatever weapon you have. And sometimes it's a knife that if you stab yourself in the stomach, it'll heal you.

But if you stab enemies with it, it'll heal them. Um, and, and if you, and if your weapon, which is like a crowbar, if it dies, then you can eat it because everything is made of meat. But if it's alive, then you'll, you'll take on the effect that it has. So if it's a fire crowbar that's alive and you eat it, you'll catch on fire. But if it's dead, it's just meat. I'm seeing a bunch of shit in screenshots that just kind of look like different versions of P Saka from SMT.

Uh, I don't want to tell you, you know, the, you know, the demon with the, with the mouth body stomach thing. I don't know, man. Okay. I don't, I don't know. Um, it's, uh, it's an absolutely incredible art piece that is fascinating and, uh, amazing. And, uh, I had one of my shortest streams in like six months playing this game and was so fucking just turned off that I just stopped streaming after like 90 minutes of it.

And, um, cool game. Cool game. Okay. Did it, did it deliver what it promised? Uh, let's, you know what? I bet I could go to the steam page and tell you what it promises and then say yes. So let's, let's see what it, what a promise, um, I bet, I bet it does.

Also, the game has a battle royale called meat royale. That's just the same game, but with 10 people. Nice. Welcome to the meat zone. Prop hunt where the props hunt you. Oh, it's prop hunt. Kinda. Okay.

Goldmite is a procedural dark comedy horror game with roguelike in an eerie atmosphere descended to the depths of the gut to save your loved one. Wow. This, this store description is actually really laid back. Eat weapons, be scared and question your own mind in this survival horror FPS prop hunt roguelike about meat. That's, uh, it's a mouthful. It really is what it says it is.

Boy. Okay. Um, I, I, I felt like I was being violently attacked while playing this game. I mean, I feel like there's a lot of indie games that come out hot and heavy out of the gate, real weird, like, and you have to adjust yourself to their pace and speed and be like, Whoa, what the fuck is happening? But then there's a moment of click where you go, okay, I kind of see what you're going for. And it sounds like that didn't happen here.

And you were just being dragged along and didn't get to a click. Hey, remember when I played Kenji Kenji on stream and you had heard of Kenji and we're like, ha, ha, ha. And how that was like wildly confusing and like, I didn't know what to do. And it was a frustrating experience. Okay. So it's like that, but also being tinged with not just like confusion about how things worked, but like a violent anxiety confusion.

Good. Like it's like, like, like it's upsetting. Like, I'm like, I'm just sitting here, like trying to figure out how what the, the, the skill use of the corrupted baby fetus item is. And I'm just going, if the survival horror is your experience with the game. Yeah, I guess. I think the person, I think I'm not sure, but I want to say that cruelty squad might have been made by the same people.

Because if so, it's consumer soft products, I don't know, golden light. Who made, who made golden light because if it's not made by the same people, says here, um, oh, we're published by hype train digital. Yeah. No, totally different, totally different. Just similar nightmare aesthetic, similar vibes, Mr. Pink. Someone called, you know, what, you know, what, you know what it is, well, they, uh, the, the emotion I had, um, playing golden light is the rough equivalent of helping salad

fingers make dinner. Okay. Does that do it for you? No, but just, just mass discomfort. I, I think, I get it. I think I get it. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. That's what I did. Hey, if you want to check out more crap, you got some, some, some, some, some, some. I'm going to play more ghost, why I'm going to play more Tokyo ghost wire. That's the name of the game. Not really. I'm also going to play weird West over the weekend.

Devalver sent me an early weird West thing where you play as a pig man. Um, we probably need to, uh, we need to, we need to, we need to, we need to, we need to weird West thing where you play as a pig man. Um, we probably need to update our internet references for the kids to get them, but we won't. So no, I won't do that. It's like if Freddy Fazbear was making you a birthday cake. Is that a five nights?

Is that? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. I didn't even know for sure. So there you go. All right.

Goes both ways. Cool. I got a P. Yeah. I, I'm looking at a smelly boy over there who needs to pee too. So, uh, let's take a break. All right. Okie doke.

Quick word from our sponsors. Uh, huh. This week, the podcast is brought to you by stitch fix. Look down. See that? Yeah. Horrible. Oh.

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So that's it. That's a weird style to go for the ad read. Well, look, you got a couple of ways to play it. I have, I have some favorites. My two favorite styles are either shame the listener into compliance or blatant acceptance of the fact that this is an ad read. Just fucking get the product. Shut up.

Help us please. All right. Thank you. Moving on. Those are my two favorites. You know what it is. Anyway, um, we got, uh, got a lot to move on through this this week. Uh, giant docket of, of shame and wonder.

So, uh, whoa. We got to move. We got to move. Whoa. Let's do, let's do it. I bet. Keep in mind. Do the wholesome, not wholesome this this time.

We can maybe do, we can maybe do wholesome, not wholesome. Okay. I'm going to try on the fly. Let's see if we can get it. We can try on the fly. All right. Uh, all right. So opening with the fighting game section, because there's a couple of fighting game stories.

Um, uh, we got a, yeah, the, the, the third, uh, Jap. Japan fighting game publishers round table, uh, where basically Arksis, Erica, SNK, Capcom, Sega and Bandai Namco get together and talk about, uh, the state of fighting games and what's going on and what they want to do. Oh wow. It, it really is going to be like five rollbacks and a Harada. It's, uh, it's coming. It's coming, but, but there's other places to go.

You know, so, uh, a couple of things, I suppose, uh, wholesome. We got announcements. Biggest probably, uh, uh, drop has been, uh, the return. Testament has returned to strive. Testament is back and, uh, they're looking great. I'm absolutely fucking happy to see what's going on there. The interesting thing, uh, looking at the trailer because, uh, I'm watching it and I'm squinting and I'm like, show me a fucking tree.

Let me see a fucking web trap. Let me see that exe beast. Let me see that shit. Like a, like a trauma victim. And, um, it is, it is, it's, it's gone. And I'm like, oh shit. Oh, we got a new character. Real character.

They're now real and everybody is going to get blown up by the gender nooch. Step up your footsies. Let's go. I feel like, I feel like literally a year ago on FGC Twitter, I saw the joke gender neutral implies the existence of gender footsies. Yep. And like, like that, that becoming like aggressively real just yesterday is absolutely hilarious, hilarious, hilarious.

And, and the thing is, is like, if anyone in hilarious, and if you are unfamiliar like with testament, like that character being the example to use the level of oppression, like the fear that testament brings based on plus R and everything back in the day, it was crazy, you know, uh, so seeing how they get adapted to strive and whatever the mixes are going to be from now on. Because now we've seen their gameplay explained. It's like, OK, this is still kind of nuts, but it's nothing compared to what it used to be. It's puppy dog mode.

It's going to be fine. It's not the, it's not the, I don't remember where all the fucking shit they hate on screen. It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's great. Um, top hat, let's fucking go. Like testament's new hat. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's good.

It's good testament. I'm glad to see what, uh, I'm glad to see that, like, the little, the little shot of them in the ending of, uh, strive story mode because they wanted to include everybody. It was unre-designed, but there was a little bit of a change. I forget exactly, but there's a couple of details, but it seems like they were working on something at the time, but it wasn't fully settled yet, you know. And, uh, yeah, now we're going to, now we're going to see it fully unveiled. Oh, it's like the old, like, leather crop top look.

Exactly, exactly. With, I think, a couple of, a couple of slight details, but they're so far in the background that, like, you can't fully embrace the full glory that we can now. And, uh, you know, it's always fun to see, uh, I mean, it's not, it's like buttons freaking the fuck out, you know, and shit like that. You're like, oh yeah, oh yeah, no, like, uh, maximum, maximum hotness has been accomplished. Yeah, new testament's hot as shit. Yep, yep.

And you're just like, okay, so, um, knowing what they do, knowing what, uh, Jacko's crouch pose is, knowing what Bikin's walking animation is, which one of these, like, attacks or poses will be the thirst button? I don't know, I don't know if this counts, but somebody pulled a still from, uh, the trailer in which testament's new low kick is a pretty standard looking low kick. It's just like them crouching, like, their right leg knee down and like their left leg extended and like a pretty, like, like reused short. But they're picking up like the hem of the cloak, like dainty like and lifting it up.

So it's actually a curtsy. Yeah, yeah. Okay, nice. Like it's, oh man. That's great. Um, yeah. And I also think that, uh, the gameplay wise, you're looking at another like normal character instead of like the freak systems of, um, I don't know.

They have a stain mechanic that I watched the video. I don't know what it does. It all, it's basically a, um, a second hit that pops when they touch you again. Right. So it just, it allows for comic combo extensions. And, uh, it's, it's going to be much more straightforward than, you know, a gun play and weird, uh, uh, jack-o-assists because you need fucking 200 IQ to get them. And in this behemoth typhoon.

Precisely. So biking was, excuse me, immensely popular for being like the first of that raw of that DLC pack that's kind of like, it's, it's a character. They have a cool counter, but it's a character. You can, you, you're not going to be too stressed out about it. And I think Testament is also going to be a, uh, low stress character. So, um, yeah, I imagine they'll be popular too, uh, when the drop comes. Um, yeah.

So that was, that was a, a, a surprise. And, uh, also kind of de-confirms that leak list from way back when. A little bit. That leak list was mostly accurate, but not entirely. You know, and I wonder if that was like a swerve that was made behind the scenes on purpose or not, you know, but, uh, that was not supposed to be who was expected. The leak basically expected, uh, that man to be the next character, you know? So, you know, I don't care for that man.

That's right. Don't ask a, I'm interested in seeing what the mage style systems would be. You know, I'm curious to see what the mage zoner. Like gameplay would be, would convert into. I think it could be interesting. Um, and like the fact that in excerpt story mode, like specifically soul asks Kai for advice on how to fight a zoner, you know, like as he gets ready to fight Asuka. Like it is, it is something that I kind of, I'd like to see what's weird.

Yeah, because, because, um, you know, Kai and the Knights have a lot of, uh, a lot of tactics that are made for fighting off gears and monsters in a very particular way and magic users, you know? And so, um, he's soul is like, yeah, uh, fucking teach me something please. And he's like, okay, I'll show, I'll teach you the matchup is how that game ends. So soul looks to Kai and says, I'm all gorilla doubt. I've un-good. I've un-good.

And now my bunga is too weak. How, what do I do? So yeah, basically like get, get a projectile. So a real one, get a real, a get a real projectile is Kai's advice. And then he's like, uh, uh, what if I just drag and install for two seconds and fly across the screen with no, with all I frames? Is that a projectile? That's like, no, it's not.

Not if I jump, idiot. Uh, success. That'll do it. That'll show him. Fucking idiot. Yeah. So, um, yeah. Testament back.

The schmix is in. God bless. Um, and, and shout outs to, uh, the old interviews with Daisuke, uh, uh, where he's like, yeah. So, you know, we pretty much like the Testament is someone that has, uh, uh, surpassed humanity, their ex-gender in, in Japan. So, you know, going, going the, uh, gender neutral route. And, uh, they have Testament is Testament.

They have surpassed their humanity, kind of like I have. And I'm like, yep, Daisuke and, and, um, Araki are these kind of barely human figures at this point. Yeah. So to me, well, like, it means very different when Araki would say something like that as well. Daisuke would say something like that because like, I feel like with Daisuke is like, you go, mm-hmm.

And then you look up from your notepad and you're sitting in front of and giving an interview to like, uh, Stratocaster. Yeah. Yeah. With like a guitar with like a, with lips on it. I, I do, I do have to say that like I was very surprised because what I expected when I met him to, to do the interview was like long hair, like full on rebellion, you know, the embracing the fire within, uh, uh, on stage Daisuke.

And what I got was, um, the quiet later Bowie years where short hair, glasses, you know, just calmly delivering the, the interview. And, uh, it's like, yeah, well, I suppose at the end of the day, no matter what you see as, as, as the, the, the front facing image, like these are still game devs. Like, you know, like whatever Yakuza man wants you to believe about himself, he's, he's still a game developer. So don't, don't get too caught up in the hype. There's something about Negoshi.

The, there's like a, like an internal feeling in my chest when he's hanging out with those dudes so often that I can only imagine they're like, Hey man, you want, you want to shake this guy down for, come on, we'll, we'll send the big guy with you. You can do it. You come on. It'll be fun. It'll be fun. Oh, I'll make it a side quest.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, so other things were announced. Uh, oh yeah. So, okay, wholesome, uh, Testament's back. Uh, not whole, they've got a new hat. Uh, not wholesome. Collaboration costumes have come to virtual fighter in the form of tech and seven.

And the trailer makes it look like guest characters are showing up. And it's not just costumes. It's a full life bar change, a full K O U I U X change. It turns virtual fighter into tech and seven for a brief second. And that shit is a fucking amazing and cool and wacky and fun to look at, except it's on a version of the game that's not worth playing. I, not wholesome. They keep adding more.

I literally don't even know what to say because they're, they're clearly supporting this virtual fighter more than they've supported any virtual fighter in like 15 years. It's wild. After the Yakuza costumes last time, it was like, okay, sure. They've been two franchises that have been parallel with each other inserted into the other. And now it's like, no, no, no, no, they're continuing to develop new shit. And they're pushing this and if, if anything, if anything made me feel

like V F is going to like go the way of the dinosaur is I look at this and I go, I worry the game is not doing well because of this. And then they're putting lots of resources into it and not getting returns on it because of this. And they go, oh, I guess people don't care about a virtual fighter. Now I'm seeing people in the chat say that apparently it's doing well in Japan, where of course it would, because anything to do with the internet does well in Japan. Yeah. No, that I'm talking like globally.

That's the thing is like overall the, the virtual fighter, yeah, I mean, and they, they have their bias towards the virtual fighter competitive scene in Japan where they've, that they inserted literally into the game and got the AI like recordings of various players and back in the day. Like it's, it's very, very much concerned primarily with the Japanese tournament market. The, you know, even that eSports trailer and all that shit. So the fact that no one else can really enjoy online is of secondary importance to Sega, it would seem.

It just gets like so it feels bad because the more support it gets, the more they continue to develop shit, the more you're seeing like money being spent on the product in not the critical super important feature that might as well have not like released outside of Japan and Korea. Like more money is being put in, more features, fun things like this and like it's dying out. It's in the, at its core, there's a very important thing that it needs for anyone else outside of those areas to enjoy it and they just don't fucking care. So that's that.

Anyways, what else is going on? Well, there's some other fighting game stuff as well. Hey, wholesome. The, the Omega Rugal trailer was kind of amazing. That's a great trailer. So Omega Rugal has been announced as free DLC for KOF 15 and, you know, all the, all the Rugal isms are there. Genocide cutter, take him to the wall, even the, the eye laser and the fucking,

yeah, the, the, the teleport cross. So that shit's cool. And then it's like, but wait, there's more. There is Omega Rugal with the armor boss mode, which is basically like the most unwholesome thing you can announce after announcing Rugal, you're like, boss Rugal is back and take on the ultimate challenge and it just shows a montage of, of 2002 boss mode, uh, Omega Rugal genocide cutting the entire cast. Like the CPU from hell, I'm going to use my big move and he's going to fucking genocide

cutter right now because he's going to do it every time, every time. What you're missing there too, for anyone who has not fought through, um, the various examples of SNK boss syndrome, uh, is like input reading CPU. Shit that the moment you tap the up button, a flash kick is coming out. The moment you press a button, they're responding with the counter immediately. Like dead shit, fucking cheat ass AI on top of an unfair move set. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Um, so it's, it's, it's, it's, it's immediately wholesome, unwholesome within the same trailer and God bless because the, the bullshit like boss that is in the game in the form of, um, reverse and, uh, well, I forgot what the other one was called, but whatever the, like Japanese demon that you fight, it's like, it's almost like the samurai showdown last boss where it's like, this is, this is practically a bonus stage because it just kind of floats around throwing a couple of things at you. Um, when you do full-on bullshit SNK boss, it still needs to be a character underneath that, uh, you know, like Orochi and, and Goanitz and, um, zero.

We're, and Ignis were like characters. They're full of bullshit, but they, but they're, it still exists in there. Magaki, Mukai, a little less so, you know, um, they start to stray more into really infuriating to me. They're more of shmup bosses kind of, you know, but, uh, yeah, that's, that's the thing is, is we, we are, we are getting a real representative of that era coming with this, this Rugal DLC. So, uh, God bless and be sure to use your continue service because it's the only way you're going to fucking do it.

It's the only way it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's, you're not going to beat it legit. Stop it. Um, and then they showed off a trailer for the new Tekken animated series called Tekken Bloodline coming to Netflix. And, uh, it's interesting. It looks like it could be cool. Uh, I, I, yeah, I, I like what I saw in the trailer. The art style is really surprising though, because it's just, it's never what I would

have expected them to approve of and go with because I feel like Tek, Tekken's art style takes itself so seriously. Uh, it sure does. And even when you saw simplification of it in, um, Project Cross Zone, Namco X Capcom, um, and like the anime joke endings for like Zau Yuland and shit like that, it, it's still more or less adheres to, you know, their, if not the proportions, the, the aesthetic. But here it feels as if like they've really kind of allowed the artists, whoever they are, to just put their style into Tekken and everything is now like adapted to it.

So I don't, it's not bad necessarily. It's just, uh, surprisingly, like they're letting like the art design of that show be its own thing. And, uh, very, very separate from like the photo realistic, uh, or at the very least like realism, uh, approaching, uh, style of Tekken should be, should be interesting. Um, it's, it's following Jin as a, as a younger guy, right? Following Kid Jin and, uh, everyone else is making their cameos. Then I just want a scene in which Hayashi shows up and just beats the ever loving fucking piss out of them. Well, for sure. Oh, you're getting that in the opening fucking like episode and the pilot.

No question. Like what they really have to do is re up. So Bloodline Rebellion, I believe, uh, I can't believe so fucking similar. So that, uh, had hit its peak with the three-way had hit its peak with the three-way crazy fucking nonsense between all of the hair, the Mishima is coming together. But now that the full family, uh, tree has been fleshed out, it's going to have to be, uh, a six way or seven way possibly between, uh, Kizuya Jin, Hayashi, Jinpachi, uh, and then you're going to need to get Jun Kazama in there. You're going to need to get, um, uh, uh, what should we call it? Hayashi's wife, um, Tiger Lady, uh, I forgot. And, um, you're going to need to get Lars in there as well. So it's, it's going to have to be this insane

eight-way battle from, from everybody. Kazumi, Kazumi, um, they're going to have to up it, you know, and they all hate and want to kill each other. And then Akuma jumps in and then just starts jerking off in the corner like, yeah, I like it. I like it a lot. Is that what happened? I think that's canon. Is that, is that? I think that's canon. I think that's how it went down. Okay. All right. I'll believe you. I'll believe you. Um, Street Fighter five is getting an update and it's a pretty drastic overhaul to the entire cast. Looks like, uh, you know, yeah, just some balance changes and stuff coming, uh, this month. I saw some wild shit in there. I saw like some, some moves that didn't have exes are now getting exes.

And I saw that's cool. Yeah. Uh, for, for some added utility. And I saw shit like Rose, not wrote, yeah, Rose getting a combo off of a throw, uh, you know, when her, um, her, her, her, her, uh, after images are activated. So there's some, there's some pretty drastic stuff they're doing. Um, I think that game is going to end up in a pretty, in a pretty good state for as far as gameplay and balance goes. I think, uh, the, the V shift is a cool looking new thing that, uh, in practice has been very, very strong because it gives you back half of your V bar when you activate it successfully. But overall, um, it seems like it's, it's added a fun dynamic to the game that, uh, you know, again, looks, looks kind of cool. It's going to, it's, yeah, Street Fighter five

is going to end in a, in a kind of, you know, cool state outside of course, your ability to fucking play against other people. Um, and then the focus of the discussion overall with the publishers round table went to different things, but what is notable is the part where they talked about free to play as a possible road for fighting games to go down. Now we've been talking about this for a long time. We would love to see, uh, fighting games go free to play. Uh, so that can't believe there isn't a major player that went totally free to play. It's clearly a very successful, um, thing that different genres have managed to pull off successfully and get a lot of new eyeballs to try them out and such. It's, it's, you know, there's a lot to be done there.

We've, we've repeated the point ad nauseam. Uh, uh, Harada did point out that they have tried it with tech and revolution. Um, and no, the game had like an arcade token system and the, and the push wasn't very popular. Um, but, uh, overall they basically said everyone contributed to the discussion and said that like, uh, it's a possible model if people are willing to buy cosmetics and like DLCs and things like that. Um, so it's, it's very, it's considerable, but on the whole, it'll have to be up to the decisions of the marketing team because they as the developers just want to focus on making sure the gameplay is good. So it's a kind of a non-committal answer that basically says that's like nonsense. We've, we've thought about it and we think it can work

if it's costume, but if it's, if it's cosmetic based, but, uh, leave it up to marketing and it's like, okay, well, that's not, it's not how that works. You have to develop it for the, the, the system. It's, it's not, it's just, it's just acknowledging the subject without giving a, you know, a thorough answer on the matter. Certainly. Um, they need, they, one of them needs to get that shit in fucking gear for before project L comes out. I think that it's going to just be the way it's always been where somebody crushes it and then everyone goes, oh shit, we need to start crushing it too. You know, that's, that's about, that's, that's how it's going to keep going.

Like street fighter five and the amount of costumes that it already has is already a free to play fighting game. The only difference is that you have to buy it. Like street fighter five is right there. It's literally right there, except you have to buy it. If project L drops and fucking just, you know, does everything, right? Then every, they'll just have to take notice. Who cares? It's like, then, yeah, too bad, whatever. Like wake up. This is, this is what people want. You know, this is what's going to ideally get in an audience that is not sure of, of, of how to commit. And you know, when you, and you have to exactly, you have to like build for that type of system. You can't just, um,

kind of retroactively fit it onto, uh, previous products and hope that that's going to work. You know, there's a lot of, of consideration that has to go into, uh, the economy and, and, and how you present it and like what platforms you play it on and what new people experience when they download it for the first time and shit. So anyway, it's the round table, um, that, you know, I'm glad it exists. I'm glad they're, they're, they're doing these so we can kind of get an idea as to where their heads are at when it comes to these features. So you can kind of get a feel for, uh, should I get my hopes up or should I just be never, right? Uh, but that's the answer for now is yeah, maybe, you know? No. Yeah, maybe, but not really.

It's up to marketing. It's up. That's bull. That's nonsense. It's up to tarot. It's up to tarot. That doesn't even make any fucking sense. It's up to marketing. Marketing doesn't go. Okay, cool. We change all this shit in the game. The other thing to system game and then they market the other thing too, that's not going to be something they can necessarily openly say live on, on, on stream with people who have like less popular franchises there. Like the dude from Erika is representing, uh, you know, Fexel and it's like, it also needs to be a franchise that people care about. It needs to be something big. Like it's unfortunate. Like for example, like street fighter easily has the best street fighter, street fighter league of legends,

you know, it needs to be something that can make that kind of impact as well. Yeah, I will be like, I will not be shocked, but I will be shocked, but I won't be shocked when F, when, when SF six is just a regular ass, like by the game now go buy the costumes game instead of being free to play. I think MK has the, has the influence to be able to pull it off as well. They could. It would, it would, they could. Yeah, it would have, it would take a lot, but they could, they could. These all have large, um, whatever headspace in, in the, in the, in the industry. Um, so yeah, anyway, that's, that's, that's the fighting game round table more or less. Am I, why am I seeing quotes from Harada saying that Fortnite, Apex and Warzone are all the same?

Uh, I don't know, but well, I'm seeing like a bunch of people in the chat, Jesus Christ, describing this. Okay. Well, yeah, it might, can I get a, can I get a fucking link to this? Can somebody Twitter me a link to that so I could say it? I'll fucking, I'll say it. It might be, um, it might be round table four or five before like the, the rollback versus Harada moment happens, but, um, I think we're going there. We got people in the chat. He said that when explaining why free to play works with Fortnite

and Apex, it's because they use the same skill set and players can jump from one to another. That's not true. Okay. All right. That's not, and also guilt, wait, the guilty gear and Tekken skill sets don't transfer. He's, he's at the, he's at Harada's bar. He's drunk. He's, that's, yeah. All right. All right. Okay.

AI is, is important to the future of fighting games. This is what we need to focus on. It'll, it'll put the resources there. Okay. Okay. Okay. Enough. All right. All right. Um, done. Please move it on. What's going on? Hey, um, wholesome Elden Ring sales performance. Very good. Very good. In fact, so good that they're thinking about expanding the IP beyond just games. No one's surprised. Yeah. You know how it's going to be written by George RR Martin. I mean, I like, you have to wonder if there's a little bit of coin is when they make these

announcements as if a Nintendo was announcing the new Smash Bros. game without asking Sakurai. You know, like, do they say Elden Ring would be great to expand beyond the realm of games? Who knows what medium and then stare at George in the front row, just fucking who knows. Just lock eyes hard, you know, while he's jumping on his trampoline. I, uh, I don't know, but, um, I, like I said, I'm somebody who is like, yeah, if you have to adapt things and adapt them, but like, you know, it can work. I just, I just don't care about adaptations as if they're more important than the source material. Would it be fascinating? Sorry. No, just when it happens and it works, that's great.

I just, uh, I just don't like the attitude of like, you know, oh my God, the thing I love is finally becoming a movie. Yay. It's a real thing now. It's real now. I hate that so much. Just like Halo is real now that there's a TV show. Sure. Where we don't look at the source material because we don't want to get that in the way of, of what we're making. You know, it's going to be weird if they adapt it in any way because, um, from software games that have really sparse storytelling. And so like a comic book would make a lot more sense, right? Cause comics have like a, you can do like a limited scope, but if they did like a, anything, anything broader than that, like you're going to get more out of like a 22 minute episode

of something than you do out of like multiple hours of playing Elden Ring. A dramatic audio book read by Sean Bean. Okay. I, that's, that'd be of use to anyone. I'm, that's, that's the thing I would like it to be adapted to. Would anyone know what, but like, would anybody be able to use that? What do you mean by use? Sean Bean would be like, the North, the night. Yeah, whatever. No, but it'd be great. It'd be, it'd just be the ASMR vibe, you know? Yeah. I take it. I take it.

Uh, just having him go into depth about loathsome dung eating, you know, it's funny because British people talk like that. Well, anyway, I think, uh, so that's, there you go. That's great. And then we already talked about it, but George did come out to say, Hey, I didn't purposely use my initials and the characters names. Everybody shut up. Stop it. I disbelieve that so strongly that I completely misread multiple headlines about that. There you go. Uh, unwholesome, uh, one fake wall destroys everyone's minds and causes, uh, what some are calling psychological warfare. And, uh, that was the best way I could describe it. Like I was out with, uh, with punch mom and I saw that and I'm just like,

throw the fucking phone away. I don't, I don't even need to get into this headspace right now. And sure, it turns out that perhaps this was an unintended thing and the only fix was to give the HP, the wall a really high HP bar instead of making it actually unbreakable and whatever the fuck fuck whatever, but it's too late. The damage is done. We've all seen it. We can't unsee it. And, um, it, it actually like it hurts. If you are interested in seeing and finding and collecting things in games, not even all of the things, just, just kind of the things of interesting note, uh, God fucking damn it, man. That type of discovery. So I have, uh, I have some details about this. There are more than one that people found more of

them. So the people have found two straight up, uh, also, uh, Zully the witch and illusory wall have been taking a look at some of this stuff. Zully, uh, put out a video a while ago that was about the way, uh, wait, was it Zully or illusory wall? I'll be honest. They datamined a bunch of stuff out of these games. I get their videos confused, but they both do great work. But, uh, there was a video about the defensive values of objects placed into the world and how, um, rolling has a damage value that doesn't apply to enemies, but like it does apply to objects. And that's why some objects or even walls will break because they have really low health thresholds, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So, um, what seems to have occurred is that in

Elden Ring, they had illusory walls as we know them working, but they wanted to disable them. So, instead of like redoing the level's geometry, what they did is they just made the wall have extraordinarily high HP thresholds. However, they didn't also give them extraordinarily high defensive thresholds, which would make it so that you couldn't actually damage them. Instead, you can damage them and can eventually break through. And it's why when you break through these fucked up walls, there's no animation. They don't fade away. They instantly blip out of existence. Uh, Zully, that's digging in. The video that was going around showed it like an explosion though. The video that was going around showed the wall kind of crumbly.

Oh, really? Because I did the first one that came out. That might have been the second one. The first one, it just blips. Okay. But, uh, there are, Zully was digging into it. I can't find the tweet now, but she said that there's at least like seven. Sweet. Fucking great. But like, it doesn't look like the data shows her where they are. I don't know. Just like the numbers or some shit. And then it's going to be difficult to find where they are. And then now I saw some like, there's one floor. There's one floor that has this property. Zully tweets out and puts spoiler warnings that I scroll, you know, thankfully I can avoid stuff with, but I did see something that said in previous games, the threshold for stuff like this was set

to 999, but in Elden Ring, it's set to 9999. So that it's literally like 10,000 HP versus a thousand HP or for whatever the case is, you know, there's tons and tons of detail on this. But yeah, I mean, I think my, my favorite version of this entire process was a guy just loaded into his game and turned it on. And then a little ghost showed up in the room that he was in. Swinging at the wall. And the, and the ghost is just swinging at a random wall the whole time. You can see the ghost. Yeah. Yeah. The first victim. I mean, honestly, I don't know if it's better or worse for Miyazaki to just come out and pull a Mega Man nine and say there are 10 year secrets in this game and you will have to find them all and we'll never tell you where

they are or to just not say anything at all. Oh, they're not going to say anything. Of course they're not, but it just, I mean, is it better to know or is it better? Do you know what I mean? Because people are going to do that. I mean, the modding is already happening. Like once you have PC access to a game, you're now, it's not just about like finding the secret. It's about like fucking reverse engineering it. Yeah. Like tarnished the tank engine is already terrorizing players. For example. Anyway, extremely unwholesome, but that's not the only unwholesome news because we're also getting reports here that say, uh, hey, go away, please. Thank you from soft employees,

reporting low pay and bad working conditions. They got some issues to address based on what is coming out right now from employees that are not happy with. Yeah, I'm not surprised on that. They had like a real, a real fucking freaking sprint there. It and developed and ring development sucks. Everything sucks. Nothing's cool. Everything sucks. Fuck everything. It sucks. Like when, when, uh, when reviewers got a hold of the really early Elden Ring copies, like the ones that were like weeks and weeks out, like, like the, they were getting like by daily patches that were adding like items to the game. And, uh, we have a patch that came out this week that added UI elements and

NPCs to the game that didn't make launch. Like, so I guess they didn't hit the finish line. I mean, this is something that I'm, Oh shit. Well, oops. Something that sounded bad. It was the, the armrest on the chair went down a notch. Um, something that we've been hearing about, of course, uh, with, you know, working conditions in different studios is that this is primarily a lot of the stories are North American, you know, you don't often hear about the working conditions from, uh, Japanese studios, for example, a lot of the time, probably because the work culture is not going to encourage people to talk

about that type of thing. Put your head down and then die. Karoshi. Um, you know, die, I guess, eventually. Keep, keep, just keep trucking. And, um, occasionally things like, you know, the Nintendo approach to like not having overwork be a possibility for employees and shit. You get news like that. But, um, I can only imagine how many Japanese studios that have a very traditional old school style of development, um, would have these stories, but there's just no place that the employees are coming out to talk about it. Furthermore, the more prestige the studios have over the years, the less willing, uh, a brand new employee is going to share anything about that because they're lucky to have gotten it is the vibe is the feeling, you know, you're, you're,

you're lucky that you even nailed this. We could have gone with what other people is often a kind of feeling as well, or just a kind of unstated pressure, certainly. So, um, fucking boo. Um, yeah, in particular, I am seeing some folks say that this information is out of date and that it is in fact actually a 10 years old. Is this coming back around because of just Elden Ring being in the new popularity of Elden Ring? It's possible. Okay. What they're, I'm on the Japanese website trying to parse it. And, uh, I don't, I don't speak that language. So this is going real slow. I see. Um, there's, okay. So there's reviews that have been written, uh, towards job satisfaction,

uh, that are listed as coming in from a decade ago. That is true. Uh, yeah, the article here has mentioned that, uh, some of these are talking about a poor working environment from, from soft 10 years ago. Uh, let's try to get to the source on it because they're citing an article from the gamer. Yeah, they're all citing the same article, which is all citing this one, uh, website called the career connection, which just feels like it's a, like a glass door kind of thing for, uh, here we go. Google Translate finally kicked in, uh, 40 hours a month on average, no average of 40 hours of overtime a month. Uh, 2012, 2013, 2016, 2012, 2016. I mean, I think the one of the, the metrics they're using in this

article are describing the rating that, um, different studios would get out of five stars. Uh, they would basically list, uh, on career connection, um, from soft at, had a 2.6 out of five, uh, 2.2 for job satisfaction, um, 4.2 for workplace intensity, 2.6 for stress management, 1.9 for compensation. Um, but again, I don't know, uh, if this is talking about the 2011 data. On the, on, on the plus side, when I clicked on, uh, ease of employment for women, it, it, uh, a review there describes that, uh, there aren't that many women at the company, but none of them have just described any sexual harassment. So we're not going to get that story today, today.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, I mean, my brain immediately goes to like, uh, is it, is it the kind of thing that goes down when everybody goes for after hour, after work shift jerks till pass out a clock till you hit the pill hotel, you know? Um, okay. Well, it's a story that has been, uh, popping up. And I guess if it's an old story that has popped up because of, uh, Elden Rings popularity, we don't have an update on the details about it, but, uh, this is not one that I knew about prior, certainly. So, uh, at least going to mention it until we find out more about what's happening. I hope everybody gets a bonus because of the Elden Ring.

Yeah. I hope the massive, massive success and popularity of this is absolutely felt and shared by everybody who works really hard on it. Of course, not, not much of a, of a controversial statement on that, but also the skit, the thing that didn't really, I didn't realize, because you know, we're in the bubble. So you're in the bubble where you're like, yeah, from soft game, it's going to be huge, right? But casually, this is magnitudes more popular than DS three. Oh, uh, it's like it outsold like the whole Dark Souls franchise. I, it's crazy. And like it's, it's because you're already in an environment where you're so close to everything. It already feels like it's all encompassing, but like you don't get to see,

like basically as far as being, you, when you're standing in the middle of industry, shit, you're looking in the horizon at the horizon and it's like, as it's, it's Elden Ring, as far as I can see, but that means you can't see how far beyond the horizon it goes. And, and the deal is apparently it's go, it's this game has gone crazy, uh, uh, popular by comparison to all Souls games. Uh, it's a massive, massive, uh, success. So yeah, that's, that's, that's absolutely worth noting when you, when you, you know, bring up the success of this and, and, and the employees that should fucking get compensated for it. So I went and checked and I was able to discover that in its first month, uh, Skyrim, which is the, the comparison point for this kind of

fucking RPG mammoth sold 10 million as first month. So this is actually the Elden Ring now is comparatively larger than Skyrim upon its release, which is fucking crazy to me because Skyrim was like made as the most digestible mainstream thing imaginable. Yeah, this is, this is wild. Um, well, I guess we'll just, uh, we'll see where this goes. Uh, okay. I think Blythe is a cool wolf man. And I think he's really cool. That's where I think. So far, he's been pretty cool when I seen him. In fact, I'm kind of, kind of bummed that I, I killed

Bloodhound so fast that I didn't get to team up with them. And you'll get to team up with them. Yeah. So, um, what else is going on here? Hey, wholesome. Um, BAMCO, you know, you know, you know, you know, you, you know, you, you know, you, you know, you know, you know, you, you know, you, you know, you, you know, you, you know, you, you know, you Hey, wholesome. Um, BAMCO mobile is trying out four day work weeks. So That's cool. They're giving it, they're giving it a shot. That's good. That's wholesome. I like that on wholesome.

Xbox has announced Sonic 2 controllers for celebrating Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and they're fucking fuzzy. Yeah, they're furry. They're fuzzy, furry, furry controllers with fur on them. These things are the fucking weirdest, grossest, horrible things ever. And I just need to see, I don't care about it now. I care about it 10 years from now when the fur is dirty and moldy and wet and when it actually smells like Sonic. That's the controller we need to see. So here's the part I legit don't understand. Sonic and Knuckles are a hedgehog and a echidna.

Neither of them have fur. No, you see, this is not based on hedgehogs nor echidnas. It's based on the alien that is Sonic in the Sonic movie and Knuckles that is Knuckles in the Knuckles movie. I don't know. I don't know. Don't care for this. It's not, those animals have no bearing. It's the thing in the movie. They're fuzzy. They're wet. Don't care.

If it smells like wet animal after you sweat into it for years, you know, like, I anyway, they know exactly what they're doing. They release these shots. They're limited edition and everyone has seen them and reviled in horror and like, hey, congrats. You saw basically the way the world reacted to mouthful mode and kind of like, you know, it's like there's a shock and horror to these types of announcements that you can use and power your marketing with. And that's now what we think about when we think of Sonic 2, the movie. So good job, Xbox. You did it. And they showed you the in hand shot to maximize the pain.

It's not just showing you the fuzzy controllers on a white background. You see both of them in use so you can envision the feeling on your palms. I don't like it. Nope. Nope. Could you imagine if furthermore that's it's a softer controller underneath it? It feels kind of meaty and flesh like like you can and the rumble starts going. Okay.

Yeah, all right. Oh, I hate this. It's good. That's good. Um, it's not. I don't know. You tell me, I felt like this was kind of one of those like it's the announcement to the announcement.

But basically they said, hey, there's a new Witcher saga coming and we're using UE five instead of red engine. Oh, I can tell you exactly what that is. That's the most obvious thing in the world. Well, what's the date? March 22nd. What's in nine days? The end of the quarter of the fiscal quarter.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the most fucking flagrant thing I've seen for this shit in a long time. That's literally all it is. Not a new Witcher game, a new Witcher saga. Um, and the only other detail was it's not going to be EGS exclusive. Yeah, they said they working very closely with Epic specifically to use Unreal Engine

five real good, which is a good idea. But they then very carefully clarified that it wouldn't be EGS exclusive, which of course it wouldn't be they own their own storefront. Like so, yeah, very, very like bare bones announcement to the announcement. But I am curious. I bring it up mainly because I also wanted to know like from everything I hear about Witcher three, like it's a fucking insanely huge game and all that shit. And it's very good.

Big game. Yeah. So it sounds like Red Engine was pretty capable if it was able to do that. Red Engine is capable, but it's also jank. It's not as jank as Bethesda's, but it's also a little jank. Was Witcher three pushing the engine to the limits? No, Cyberpunk is. Ah, OK.

Yeah, I forgot about that. That's that's right. OK, they did. Yeah. Unstated, but yes. OK, there you go. We're using a new engine, folks. Don't worry about it.

Damn. And now it all comes together. Yeah. All right. Sure does. All right. All right. There you go.

I'm going to throw this one out there and you I did. I'll grab it or not. Let's see it. Building has been removed from Fortnite. It'll be back in seven days. This is a PR move. It's part of the story. It's not the season dropping into season two or whatever.

It's the new season. The new season is dropping and the villain took away building. Oh, but it'll be bad. It'll be back next week. Oh, so it's not like data. Data miners immediately pulled out the unlock day. OK, fuck off. Whatever the building.

Non-story. All right. How about this? Wholesome. Wholesome. Folders are now on switch. Go to hell. You can finally put your games in folders.

No, that's wholesome. Fuck. Fuck off. No, no. It's wholesome. It's good. That's good. You can put them in the folders.

It's good. They're called groups. Unwholesome. The we in DSI shop channels are now down worldwide with no explanation from Nintendo what the fuck is going on. Oh, cool. It's good. They don't feel like it anymore.

They did say that they would still allow people who had purchased things to be able to retrieve those purchases if needed. However, the down that's happening is not letting that happen. So if you've already bought something and you're trying to re-get it, that's still no good. So it'll probably be is that they'll turn the servers on for that once a year on Christmas. So if you want to read download your game as your time.

Yeah. It's it's a gift that you you're allowed. Yeah, Nintendo really just does everything it can to justify to pirates that what they did was the right thing. It's wild. I mean, I feel like conceptually we are like a few steps away from deliberate arson if there was a physical video game archive museum.

Oh, yeah, just like someone like in the middle of the night setting fire to the archives if they were a real thing, a place to go to. It's you know, the old joke of like nope, the, you know, taking trying to take the ball away from the dog. And it's no play. Just remember. I don't write. Okay.

So there's all there's a little comic of a dog of a little cartoon dog running up to you to get to and it says fetch. And then you go to give the get the ball and it goes no give ball only throw. Right. Because dogs are stupid. Okay. Well, the variation of that is like don't don't buy games.

Just remember them for Nintendo. Okay. And it makes me think of how like, well, no, there are also assholes on social media and YouTube. So it feels like they don't want you to remember them either. Like they they just want the game. They want to kill the game and delete it from you. But if you are and pretend it's a new game later.

Well, that's the thing is the step is also you are allowed to remember for a limited time only for $30 until March of next year. That's that's the other thing. But also if it's not a really popular franchise, then you're not allowed to remember. Fuck you. Like I found the meme for you, sir. I will now transmit this this Nintendo dog meme to you.

Oh, this dog. I know that dog. Please remember no play only remember. Yes. Yes. Yes. He's holding a little retro video game in his mouth and is labeled Nintendo. Nintendo is in a very strange place in this industry because they used to always be like,

well, at first they were the leaders and then we moved into the next generation of that where they're like, no, no discs and so on and so forth. And then they became the innovators that like were off to the side. That would be where you'd go for unique things. And they stayed alive by offering something different. And they they continue to generally do that now though they can take ports instead of being like substantially weaker than the other consoles that are competing for the main market. But you have a weird thing where people are still willing to pretty much go.

OK, I'll invest in either a PlayStation and Xbox or my computer. And I'll grab a switch for some weird switch stuff that every comes out every once in a while. People are kind of willing to do that. And you could just hold that corner down that corner down by not being shitty about things like online, things like a chat, things like fucking the the e shop, you know, like you can just hold that weird corner that people are willing to give you as the second pick from the three that are competing for their money. If you just stopped being a shit about this stuff.

Well, you see, back when we used to sell playing cards, if you made the cards out of really cheap shitty paper, then they'd have to come back to you and buy more playing cards, you see. Like, I can't imagine any other company getting the permanent like nostalgia leeway that Nintendo gets. You know, oh, Nintendo is the video game equivalent of Nintendo is the video game equivalent and Harry Potter is the literary fantasy equivalent of the Disney adult. The the person who attaches a not insignificant part of their personality to the the cute brand. Like think of how many people in the influencer business are variations of the Nintendo gamer

and legitimately pretend that Nintendo is the only company that makes games. It's fucking weird. It's also immensely popular. It's a hell of a way to make a YouTube career, certainly, or it was at the very least. Nintendo first party only as the subject matter. It I didn't realize I realized years in that that was a corner that was blowing up on its own. I didn't I didn't even know initially. It's bizarre, just bizarre.

Um, I mean, yeah. So, you know, anytime Nintendo takes an open ass dump on, I mean, just not even preservation, not even archives, just the ability to redownload the thing you bought from them already, you know, again later, like, I think I think my favorite part of this is because the cynical person, i.e. Pat would blurt out just buy it later on the new thing. But Nintendo doesn't do that. Like, you know when like the Disney vault happened, you remember that idea? Yeah, you won't be able to buy Cinderella after the next two weeks.

Every e-shop is its own e-shop. Right? Yeah. But with Nintendo, it's like you'll only be able to buy this over the next week. And then we're going to destroy it. What? Or like, ah, we disabled the ability for you to redownload it. Are you going to put it on a new service?

No. Stupid. Why would we do that? You want to play that, uh, rolling game with the with the allocator? What the fuck was that called? Uh, Roland Dixon? Oh, oh, oh, um, uh, Dylan's rolling adventure. You want to play Dylan's rolling adventure?

Yeah. Die. Muscle march. We can talk about the legacy of muscle march to our children. Yeah. No. Anyway, so like, so the real story every time is basically just like, yeah, no, um, you just validate emulation super hard every time.

You, you just, you underline it. You circle it. You fucking, you highlight it every single time you do this, you know, like they're going to pull Mario three off a store at some point and there won't be a version of Mario three to buy and people will ask like, how can I play Mario three? And they're just going to pull out a gun and start shooting at the reporter. You know, and in the meantime, people are like, yo, we got the Mario 64 source code. What can we do with that?

Literally everything and anything, um, including you can now drop a little playable Mario into your test and unity environment from that's perfectly Mario 64, uh, ready to just see if that works with whatever you're building. Cause we have, we literally have it. Anyway, um, keep up the good work guys. It's good stuff. Doing a great job out there. Yep.

Okay. You know who else is doing a great job? Who's that? Uh, Sqeedix, Chocobo GP. It's good, very wholesome. Let's talk, let's, let's get into it. So Chocobo GP, have you heard of it? It's the racing game.

It's got all your favorite final fantasy characters in it. It's a full price game costs about $50. You can grab that or you can grab a free light version that's available on the Nintendo switch. You drive around, you pick your Chocobo or your final fantasy character. You can have a good time. Yay. But if you really want to unlock the cool stuff, you're going to have to get some microtransactions, some mini buys, we call them.

Let's not, let's not get any dirty words in here. You're going to have to get into the mini buys and the mini buys are, uh, you know, pretty aggressively pushed at you, uh, even in the full priced version of the game. Cause you know, what if they want to spend the money? We should take it from you. We should take it from them. Um, of course you can also, of course, buy like a prize pass to unlock things. Uh, but the time spent to unlock things is, as you can imagine with these, these

fucking shitty ripoff services, always abysmal. How abysmal is it? Well, um, winning a tournament, uh, barely gets you like one tenth of the way towards level 60, I believe, and the ultimate reward is cloud strife being playable there. Um, you have to pay, of course, for the prize pass itself. It's, it's basically serving as a battle pass, uh, even worse if you're trying to grind on your own without spending any money on the game. Um, and it turns out that basically the full, the full economy of this whole system is

insanely bullshit. But if you were to decide to say, fuck it, I'll just play and save up the points it takes to buy something special and unallocable, like cloud or squall or whatever you wanted. Uh, you have a time limit of, I think it said four or five months before your points are deleted because they expire. So you cannot save up for that much time, even if you wanted to unlock that shit. Thanks for your money. So I think what might be the most dire part of this whole thing is that when you, you

purchase Chocopo for 60 bucks and literally the first thing that happens when you hit the title screen is an ad for the battle pass comes up before you even see the main menu. And this, this, this isn't within like two, you know, like, like this is the first thing after you, you've spent the money is you get hit with an ad on how to spend more money. Um, what's, what's wild is like the game's good. Like it's a good game, but it's like actively like fighting your sense of taste at all points to the point where it taints the whole thing and just kind of ruins it. And what's double crazy to me is that despite how disgusting this thing is,

Gran Turismo seven is actually worse. That's next. We'll get there, we'll get there. We'll get there. So, um, yeah, yeah, in particular, right. Okay, to specify the free currency that you gain for grinding expires, the premium currency does not expire. It is, it is pretty fucking disgusting.

And I think you kind of have that we've kind of talked about this before, but when you play a game that's like a free version of a thing like cell phone game and iPhone game, whatever, you kind of expect a certain level of that pushed at you. And you're like, well, it's, it's the cost of doing business for this. Um, but when you're going to offer multiple game, uh, you're going to offer multiple versions of the game and one that is supposed to be just a normal retail ass game. And you're still finding a way to put that in there because you can't resist the fucking urge. You can't help yourself.

You're frothing out the mouth to get that out of, out of any whales you can find. Um, I don't care how good the cart racer is. I don't give a fuck if it's a decent racer or not. This is disgusting. This is the type of shit. That's awful. And the fact that it's like, you kind of hope five, five years ago when we were talking about this kind of story and you're like, maybe, you know, the pushback will just, it'll, it'll keep

the fucking the wolves at the door and not have them come inside. And it's like, no, they're going to keep trying. There's always going to be another one of these and they're going to try to push and like, okay, it's been a while since we've tried the last one. Let's try it again, you know, and, and whatever they've had an update to the story where they went, oh, sorry to hear everyone's so upset. We're going to relook at whatever, you know, it's like at that point it's like, what's, what's the fucking point?

Like that's the type of shit that when you look back at any older game that's already existing in a genre like that, and it's just buy game, drive carts, unlock cool carts by playing, end of done, end of story, the most simple thing. It's extra, it's extra gross on this one because the cute characters, like it seems to appeal to like, you know, children, and they're going to be not savvy to this crap. It feels particularly predatory. Yeah. Anyway, so,

you know, they're forever, like I said, you'll have these, these people that work that are specifically going to find the best way to monetize, going to find the best way to stretch that monetization out, going to find the best way to introduce money. You know, they're going to try to balance all of that shit. And the idea of the like perceived outrage and then like, or expected outrage and then roll it back to like a saner rate or whatever. I don't know. I just like, well, it's easy for me to talk about this when it's, it's also something,

it's a game that I personally don't really care, you know, that much about what this is. But I just kind of hope, or you feel like you would, you would want to find a way to send a stronger message. I don't know if it, I don't know if it's just like seeing this and then thinking about how you talk about how 14 has just fought back all of these types of practices. They've been kept clean. Yeah. Yoshi P is unbelievable to imagine what this would have been if they were allowed to do

everything they wanted to with that like unbelievable success of a game. Yoshi P has been working for a decade now as the creator, the director and producer of both the large FF 14 team, as well as now the entire business unit associated with it, with a almost entirely unbroken staff, which means they're all super loyal and they bring in good numbers and they work six hours a day, five days a week. Like, and they give him FF 16 because he kills it on big projects. So like, like he's, he's insulated from this. I'm imagining that like his elevator ride up to the floor he's on just has like,

you know, the, the, the micro, the microtransaction dudes from various departments kind of trying to get a word in real quick before he walks into the office and beeps, you know, like, you know, they're trying so hard. I don't know how office loyalty works. I've never worked in an office, but you do because you have worked in an office and you've worked in game dev. If there was a lead that ran your whole department and they managed to hit their targets, do good work and make sure that you didn't even have a full eight hour work day for the same salary.

I like to think that that would engender some loyalty in the company. Yes, yes, it would like, but that loyalty goes as far as you can continue to appease of investors. There's, there's a hard limit on it. 14 keeps doing bigger and bigger numbers. And so like, I was there during, there was, well, basically there when there was a turnover of leadership over subjects like this kind of thing, you know, the water was out. So it's, it's, it, it absolutely goes all the way to the core of the company.

And how much you're willing to appease those investors will determine whether or not the board wants you to stay in that chair or not. You know, if you, if you put too much loyalty, I believe he is on the board now. Sorry, your, your audio cut out. I said, I believe Yoshi P is on the board now. Yeah, well, fucking, I mean, obviously he's only one person on the board. Like he's, he's at the top of the company now. Then again, every board has its different levels of power.

And, and you know, like we've heard about some companies that have like one person can veto everything if you're on the board period versus others where it's not quite back at that being the case. So, right. And yes, alongside Chocobo GP, you've got Gran Turismo who is also trying to find their own path to hunt the whales. I gotta say GT seven is like GT seven is so scummy that I would personally, not a lawyer or legal ex expert would say it borders on the criminal.

Yeah. So, I mean, to work backwards, I suppose GT seven is now Sony's lowest rated user score on Metacritic ever sitting at, well, at time, at time of report 2.5. I don't know if it's gotten worse since. Um, but that is in contrast to the, uh, critics review score of a raving 87. So, uh, what happened? Right. Why?

Well, basically it's just Gran Turismo once upon a time was a game with a bunch of cars in it and you'd buy it and you drive them around and then you'd unlock more cars and then you'd have a good time. Um, and somewhere along the way, I haven't been paying the closest attention to the franchise. You know, microtransactions have started to become more and more common. And, uh, this time around people who have been long time fans and covering the game, are basically, uh, practically giving up on it or at the very least, uh, mentioning that they'll never, ever participate in the micro that it's offering.

There are cars, single cars that cost $38 to purchase to unlock in the game. Um, that's right. They've patched the game to reduce the amount of money you get by just playing normally. So I'd like to clarify that one specifically because the, the, the patch isn't even the issue. The issue is, is that the version they sent out to review had no store and did not connect online for anything other than online races. Okay. In between the review period and the launch today, it got, it got, it got day one patched

and the day one patch gutted normal race rewards from every event in the game. It forced online DRM requirements for every mode and it added the store. Oh wow. Yeah. So all these reviews went out on embargo on like a day before release. A completely different version of the game. And it's, and it's a, it's a different game. It is a different game.

The fucking, the criminal audacity. Yeah. Okay. Go on. Go on. On top of that, here's how you buy credits in the game. There's four options. 100 K for 250, 250 for five bucks, 750 for 10 bucks, or two million credits for 1999.

Now you may have noticed there's nothing in between 750,000 credits or two million credits. Right. Well, it turns out a shit ton of the games cars lie in between 750,000 credits and two million credits. Guess you're going to have to go for the high one credits. And then you have not enough left off to get a second, $1.5 million credit. So you got to get another million credit, but you can't buy a million credit. You can only buy 750,000. Like it is, it is right on the line of criminal.

But wait, right on the line. There's more. There are loot boxes. And apparently, uh, with the patch aforementioned, loot boxes are rigged. So you always get the lowest reward possible. What? This is also from, uh, the, the reviews that were, that people were noticing. So.

Oh, I didn't, I didn't see this. It's unbelievable. It's crazy. So yeah, people are basically just like, we would give this a zero. Oh, that is criminal. Yeah. That's violation. We would literally give this a nothing if we could.

So, uh, the, the, the statement, of course, has been addressed. They've put out the thing. We're going to resolve the future content, the unspecified point in the future. It like grant, that's you've effectively killed Gran Turismo until you put something else out. That's a complete non-product. Um, yeah. The, the, the, I don't know what the largest discrepancy has ever been between user score and critic score, but this shows you like a problem with the system, uh, especially if

you have an early embargo, and then I can patch to lie with so that what you give your reviewers is literally just not what's going to come out. Like that's just a lie. What did you just get? Okay. Uh, I have the statement from four days ago. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is the reason for the patch.

Blah, blah, blah. Oh, forced online, by the way. Oh yeah. No, I mentioned that earlier. Yeah. Okay. Uh, out of, out of nowhere was not in the earlier builds. Also, some event rewards have been adjusted.

I'd like to explain the reasons for it and our plans going forward in GT seven. I would like to have users enjoy lots of cars and races, even without micro transactions at the same time, the pricing of cars is an important element that conveys their value and rarity. So I do think it's important for it to be linked with the real world prices. I want to make GT seven a game in which you can enjoy a lot of variety of cars in a different ways. And if possible, would like to try and avoid a situation where a player must mechanically

keep replaying certain events over and over. Okay. I don't know about you, but I don't play video games to reenact my financial nightmare. Like, hold on. Did you feel this way when Gran Turismo didn't do these things? Did you have these feelings when the games were coming out and didn't force you to have this bullshit rarity? Like, hey, you know, where did these only happen to come now when you're dropping this

one version of the game? I used to know a guy in high school named Mike. Mike was the biggest car nerd I've ever met in my life. Mike could tell you at 15, could tell you every single thing about every car that's ever existed. He fucking loved cars. But do you know what he was? He was kind of poor.

He was like middle class poor. So he did get a car. Do you know what car he got? He got a fucking Honda Civic. You know why? Because Honda Civic is cheap as fuck and is decent enough car. Do you know what that dude did all day? He played Gran Turismo and he would tune every single fucking car in Gran Turismo

and he fucking crushed every event in Gran Turismo, including the fucking Monaco race, which is like the fucking 24 hour nonsense thing. Do you think that my friend Mike would be sitting there going, boy, I can't wait to not be able to buy a Lamborghini in Gran Turismo because I can't buy one in real life? That's the experience I want to have with my fantasy car game. Do you remember years ago when we talked about like project cars and how they found a market of insane, hardcore, car enthusiast whales to just feed them money and keep the grift going? Is it possible that like they just got jealous of that grift and wanted?

I don't know. Is it, you know? I just, we've come a long way from quote, I want to drive a car on my television and quote, which is the one sentence design idea for Gran Turismo. I would like the car to look like a car is probably the second step you got there. Anyway, yeah, just the fact like multiple just garbage fucking like literal criminal shit coming out of even like, well, in particular, these are two racing games, but it's like, I'm just, it's tiring.

It's tiring to fucking read this bullshit. Whatever. If you want to play a fucking good racing game, fucking grab an Xbox or a PC forza, forza, just hit the forza. Yeah. Forza is just great. Again, I'm on the outside, but like, I yeah, no, I mean, I'm not the biggest fan of sim racing games, but like, even I can tell like, yeah, no, forza is good.

Um, yeah, so all that going on. Nintendo doing Nintendo. Good stuff going on in the fighting games. Good stuff going on in the from soft. And apparently they announced a wholesome. They announced bully two. They asked that eight ago. Did they?

Did they? Yeah. Apparently this one's got magic in it though. That's the best joke you've ever told in your life. That is that is flat out. That is the best joke you have ever made in your life. I'm not. I'm not fucking around.

I am not fucking around. That is a plus number one with a bullet a hundred percent. Cheers. Are you sitting on that or did you just now just go? No, we just go. We just go. Okay. Wow.

Wow. That's right. That's good. Cheers. That's really good. Yeah. All right. Well, you got one of these going on.

So, uh, Hogwarts legacy. It's a thing. Yeah, sure. Make sure to get the goblins back into their, their where they belong there. They're the evil, the not not trolls goblins, right? They get the goblins. Got to stop them.

It's cool. Got to stop them. They're rising up against their working conditions and you need to get your your bullying stick and beat them down. Make sure they don't upset this wizard status quo. I just as much as I have that, like, um, I feel when Reggie goes off and is like, this is some fucking normie shit. And I feel that, you know, I also look and I'm like, I know that, you know,

punch bomb is a fan that fucking had this as a childhood memory. And I, I just feel bad. I feel bad for people who have like Harry Potter as like a formative memory. The, the, the thing. That's all I, all I feel is just sadness and sympathy for that because it. So like, I, this happens a lot. Like not necessarily with Harry Potter, right? But like I, I was like, I was thinking that I used to read a series of fantasy books

when I was much younger called the sort of truth series. Uh, uh, pretty typical heroic fantasy book. Guy named Richard gets a magic sword, goes on an adventure and he's always the, the person who solves every problem. And you know, he expands and scale. And then I was like thinking about it the other day and I was like, I hadn't had it had it hadn't read it in decades. And I was like,

Oh, that's a libertarian fantasy. That's a series of libertarian fantasy novels. Did you revisit as an adult? No, I was just sitting there thinking about it. And I was like, oh, shit. Oh, damn. Damn, all the governments are super worthless. And only me can actually run things.

And I was like, oh, shit. Um, the long. No, just as like, I believe the, the conversation is the, uh, the long drawn out excruciatingly slow death of the author that continues. And as, and that happens live on Twitter over the course of about 15 years. Yeah. It's like, uh, I mean the Harry Potter, like I saw some clips of it. It probably looks like a relatively well produced open world action adventure game

or whatever, but it's like, uh, I had a, I had a experience with Harry Potter where I liked it well enough. I read the first four, five books. Oh, wow. You're in there. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

I liked it well enough. And then I watched two movies and did a, did a fucking ride. Then the half blood prince, uh, this situation happened and I fell off of it. And then I just like, like every, every time, like even when the books are coming out, like there's stuff in, in half blood print in the last one, which like, like stupid and embarrassing. I know, I know, calm down. No, not bad.

Not bad. Someone just went, you like Dilbert? Yeah. Uh, and right. And it's just like every, every single thing that JK ever said from that point on word was like weird and embarrassing. And it only got worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse.

And then you look back on stuff that you didn't pay attention and you're like, oh wait, that's like, like the last, one of the last lines of the book is Harry going like, boy, hope my elf gets me a sandwich. Fetch me a sandwich. I caught that. Yeah. Oh man. Yeah.

And it's like, can you enjoy things that are fucked up? Absolutely. You can enjoy all sorts of shit that's fucked up. That doesn't make you a bad person. Like I love watching law and order. Does law and order glorify the police? Absolutely. I don't care.

They want to see two guys run half of a murder mystery for 22 minutes. The wire is one of the best things ever made. It's fucking amazing. Yeah. Uh, can you, uh, am I going to stand here and moralize over you for supporting somebody evil? Yeah. No, not even because like the fucking everybody.

Well, you want to play this game? Where'd your, where'd your clothes come from? Yeah, I'm not playing. I'm not going to play this game. You want to play this game? What do you fucking sit in there? I don't want to. I don't want to do it.

Like, let's, let's, yeah. But like, yeah, like I stand here and I look at this thing that I did like once upon a time and I'm just like, man, every, like I don't understand people who like look at this and go, no, no, it's fine. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. And it's like death of the author is one of those things that's named pretty accurately, even though it was not named in this way prior death of the author is the idea that you can

separate a piece of work from its original creator. And that's fine. And it completely makes sense. And it was like a metaphor. But like death of the author only kind of works when they're dead. When they're actively using whatever you give them to do things. Like when I'm not going to stand here and say you're a bad person, but you must be personally aware at the end that is happening at the end of the day.

Like all the shit that you hear about late HP Lovecraft is not great, but it's moot too because he's dead as shit, but it cannot continue to happen. And a harm does not increase as time goes on. There are no tweets coming from his corpse. You know, to be fair, though, that'd be a good Twitter account. The harm does not increase over time as we go because the story continues. There is in fact a difference. And it's like, if you're the kind of person who's like, man, but I actually really like these

characters and part of my childhood and I really like it and I know it's bad, but come on, please. I get it, right? We're none of us are perfect. What I actually would say is actually genuinely infuriating is the people who try and intellectually jerk off all over themselves to try and convince everyone that no, no, it's fine, though, because she's not involved in the book. She's not involved in the game at all. Are you fucking stupid?

Or, well, you can't punish the people making the game for, you know, being involved with this project. I'm like, they're all going to get paid, dude. Like by the time the game comes out, as parts of those teams will be laid off and gone, like what do you like? You would eat stupid, like no, shut up. I think you have to acknowledge it. Um, yeah, I think you, I think you have to acknowledge it.

But all I can imagine is just as this conversation is happening, just sitting over by the fucking fire, a Kenshin fan turns around and calls everyone a fucking amateur. Shut the fuck up, all of you. You don't know what it's like, you know, and and pour one out for them to because also there's, I'm seeing never forget how the apparently one of the leads on the game is actually like right up there with JK and it makes sense that they'd be running the game. Yeah, cool, cool. Yeah, no, you just very controversial old YouTube account.

No, you just got to, you just got to basically acknowledge, acknowledge the shit that's a part of the thing you like and it's a part and that's what it is. Um, again, though, even then, it's like the Kenshin fan can also not see a bunch of tweets actively, you know, like there's just it's it's it's it's it's rough. It's uniquely garbage, uh, uh, surrounding surrounding. Like, let's say, let's say you're a big Kenshin fan. You've been following Kenshin forever and then all that crap happens about Kenshin's author. Like, do you suddenly just immediately stop liking Kenshin on the spot?

Like, no, it doesn't work like that. Right? Yeah, it doesn't work like that. Definitely not. Like, no, what some people can distance themselves. Some people would view it as being tainted, but still have like memories and care for that thing. Some people have been waiting for the game that they should this the trailer for how gross legacy is legacy is the game they've been waiting their entire life for.

Absolutely. And like, I feel bad that this crap is associated with the thing that they really like. Right? But it is. Sorry. Like, I'm personally not going to cover it. I mean, I wouldn't have any way. I have no desire to play what is essentially a turf fantasy game.

But it's, yeah, it's just so different because of the ongoing story, as you mentioned. That's the dynamic here that doesn't put it to rest, you know, even fucking, what was it? Because I feel like the introduction to this type of story was back when Shadow Complex came out, you know? And in all these cases, you're like dealing with like, yeah, long, long gone authors, long dead works and shit like that. And with JK, it's there's going to be more steps. There's going to be further pushes.

It's going to continue. And, you know, I don't know. I mean, you have the cast getting together and having a gathering and it's like, she wasn't there, but we'll have the interview. It just it becomes such a weird fucked thing because there's too much money that we need to keep making with this franchise and people are already attached to it. So there's no collective like tossing it out. It's just too far past that point, you know?

Oh, yeah, like I like George Lucas could be on camera eating a baby right now. And like Disney's stance will be like, well, we own Star Wars now, so don't worry about it by the re-release. And it does feel like we are multiple like discussions of could you just stop? Like we are years past that point, you know? I think artists and movie people and anybody who does anything creative should do their creative thing. And then be banned from leaving their house or using social media for their whole life.

This way, all things can be fine. Especially George RR Martin, but that's just so he'll write a goddamn book. And that book will be called Elden Ring, the adaptation. Chapter one, book one. Godric, a 12 part macro series. I was I don't know. I was looking for a word to say it's going to last a long time. Shut the fuck up.

What is a macro? What is a macro series? Serious. Damn, George is writing more than you've ever seen. There's a really there's a really fantastic quote that somebody just put in the chat that I feel like I should point out because it's a it's a point of view that a lot of people share that I don't personally, but I can I can sympathize with. When a given IP legitimately enriches your life, it is kind of unreasonable for you to

expect people to disown it if it turns out that the creator is a shitty person, which like I can absolutely understand that to expect people to just turn on a dime and hate on something just because part of it is becomes found out to be fucked up is ridiculous. People don't work like that. Like it doesn't people don't most people anyway don't have an instantaneous like off switch. But if you're in steering about something, no, but if you're off switch instead is a defense switch, which then is now putting on an air of bullshit and going to war for something that's garbage, like that's horseshit.

Don't do that. Yeah, no, acknowledge it and like real about what it is. Some people are like that with people as well. Right. So it's like, yes, my this is an example because my dad's great. Yeah, my dad did this that was fucked up, but I'm not going to get rid of them. Just because of that. They're still my parent, right?

I think that's stupid and we'll turn on family like this. The Oh, that was a terrible snap. The instant they cross a line because you don't need that garbage, but others value those relationships more strongly than I do, right? Like if if I was, say, stabbed by a loved one, I would cut them out because I think stabbing is over the line. Some people don't think that it is because they care really strongly about family more than being stabbed.

You know, I have to say, if you didn't just say that, I would have pegged you for being on the other side of that. Really? But specifically if your spouse stabbed you, you might look at that as kind of romantic. That's not really. Okay. All right, fine. Because the way we've talked, the way we've talked, we've talked about stabbing me

so they can have me forever because that's romantic. Okay, well, that's what I'm talking about because we've talked about Koichi and what's her face. And we've gone down that road where you've actively defended stabbing like behavior in the name of love. So fictional stabbing behavior. But yeah, no, it's it's it's complete. It's it's completely unrealistic and not even helpful to expect people to turn on something they care about just because something bad was found out about it. I thought you were gonna say it's completely unrealistic to expect people to not stab you.

All right, yes, fine. No, that's that's completely unrealistic and not particularly helpful. It is, however, reasonable to expect them to acknowledge that that fucked up thing that got found out exists. Yeah, it's a completely different conversation when you're being honest about it. And you and nobody's trying to pretend that no, no, it's fine. None of the or better yet, like just it's not as bad as you think it is. And sure, it's bad, but we're going to run defense for this for JK as she as it gets worse over time.

Yeah, so let's take, for example, earlier, I said something which might have been inflammatory, which is I said, I don't feel like playing the turf fantasy game, right? Now, when I say that, I'm not saying that the game is a turf fantasy in that people who play that are de facto turfs. I say that it is literally the fantasy game of a turf, right? But I it makes sense that I would say that and I'm not personally going to cover it because I don't care for it. And that's fine.

And I'm not going to tell you you're a bad person for playing it either. But like to turn around and go, well, why are you punishing the team who made it? They don't got nothing. No, nothing to do with it. You're acting like it's my responsibility to engage with this when I don't have to. I don't have to like it. And I especially don't have to like it. Specifically, because I found out a reason to dislike it, because it makes you feel uncomfortable.

Yeah, it's also it's funny that it's hot on the heels as well with this type of story coming out alongside Testament. Oh, yeah. No, for the perfect time, excellent timing, the perfect back to back on that, you know, where, yeah, I don't know. I'm just like as someone who was raised to look at people like that as lost sinners who have the magic. Yes, because of the magic.

No, anybody who is basically, honestly, I was going to say like anyone who was raised anyone who's like LGBTQ or, you know, just somewhat deviant. But if you really want to be honest, it's like anyone who's not having straight missionary sex for procreation is possessed by a demon. And we should not. And you know what I mean? Like that kind of idea of just like, no, there's a lot of people. There is sin within you.

And I am that's a that's a that's a bunch right there. Anyway, so as someone who was literally raised in an environment that was all about reinforcing, dehumanizing said people, fuck those people, fuck them, fuck them thoroughly. They suck. There's no need to even acknowledge that shit. It's it's just it's been the way humanity has grown. It's been the struggle of every civil rights movement. There's always going to be those who are on the wrong side of history, and you're going

to look back and probably have an embarrassing series of rants. You're going to maybe explain to your kid one day, but maybe not. I don't know how it goes, but they would have been right there behind earlier struggles for civil rights, trying to oppress that shit, pretending that they wouldn't have been on that side. Fuck that. Fuck that thoroughly and completely. I just it's different. It's different.

This time is different. It's not the same thing. It's different. It's different. Yeah. No, it's different. Come on. Cool.

It's come on. Yeah. I would also say that if if if this kind of maybe maybe this is like the way that I interact with media is different than some others and because I really love a lot of different media, but there are people that attach certain portions of their identity to media properties, which are intellectual property. And I would view that as probably a really bad idea, like for them personally, because it can lead you to being attached to something that turns on you.

And to what I think of is getting a tattoo of a band you like as the ultimate example. Like if I had gotten a tattoo of a band when I was 15, I would have gotten a Metallica tattoo on my arm. And then I would have cursed that shit every day until I could get it removed. Right? Like, I am excitedly looking forward to the new muse song, which is going to be about as usual fighting back against the power and the compliance of governments who try to tell you how to be safe and what kind of medical decisions to make. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. As somebody in the chat points out, don't name your daughter Khaleesi, no matter how much you love Game of Thrones. You don't know what will happen. Yeah. And there's a line with everything and you watched, you literally watched us like have this discussion about King of Fighters, not but a couple months ago. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah.

Like it's an honest discussion that you have to have about this shit, but you can't automatically just switch into this fucking defense force because you're being attacked. You have to be smarter than that. Ah, come on. You have to. Well, also, the other thing is that I don't feel that you necessarily need to attack people for liking things. I don't think that's like, well, I mean, if they like murder, I mean, but I mean, if they like, it's okay to like shit that either is fucked up or sucks,

but you still got to live with the real world and people will care about your actions in regards to that. There's a massive difference between declaring that you're not interested in partaking in something and declaring that anyone who does is a piece of shit. Yeah. That's a humongous difference. I think the most interesting thing is that I saw some people saying that I said that anybody who is interested in the new Harry Potter game is a bad person, as if that was a direct quote. Did you say that?

Oh, I didn't say that. Oh, damn. For a second, I thought you did. What's funny is that people are pointing out that, yes, that is actually hyper hypocritical because I say that people are bad people all the time, but it's actually a reverse sliding scale in that the angrier and more judgmental I will be, usually it's at the low end of the spectrum, like I think that people who eat pickles are subhuman, despite marrying one, right?

Like I'm going to get married to a pickle freak, right? And I think that that means she's a fucking mutant and I don't care. I love her very much, but I've seen her sit and eat a jar of pickles and drink it like a fucking soda. And drink it. And drink it. That's like the worst goddamn thing I've ever seen. Well, she has to watch. She drinks the brine.

The brine for fuck's sake. She has to watch you flap your balls around to air them out. So they get, dude, sometimes give her a break. You, you see the supercut I made of people going, yeah, that's normal. I, uh, did you? Yeah. Did you? Because I flapped my balls around and I was like, this is normal.

And she put it on Twitter and then everybody like literally 30 different people were like, yeah, that's normal. And then I supercut all the tweets together and quote, retweet her. And then I heard her like scream from upstairs like she had been stabbed. They, they, they do need airing. This is real, but the, the, the ritual you go through to air them is one that can be anyways. All right. So normal thing you just grab your balls and you, you flap them like a bat wing.

Emails. Let's get to them. Hey, emails. It's good. Oh yeah. Right. Yeah. I just, I totally fucking left.

I was in space there. If you want to send in an email, send it to castle super beast mail at gmail.com. That's castle super beast mail at gmail.com. I just, I left. I was gone there. Man. Anyway, um, I like muse. They had a Mecca in their last concert.

It was cool. All right. Let's take one. We got, if you got a letter, you can send it into a castle super beast mail gmail.com. That's castle super beast mail at gmail.com. We got one coming in from John. He says, dear woolly magician and Pat sphere mode. In Yu-Gi-Oh master duel, the most recent online card game in the franchise,

there's been a limited time event where you build a deck with certain restrictions and face other players with decks made from the same restrictions. Yeah. Tepin has something. Right. Okay. Yeah. It's pretty fun.

Earning points and resources gets you new cards if you win and half as many points if you lose, nothing if you forfeit. People came to the conclusion that if you lose quickly enough, you can earn points faster than playing the mode normally and winning every time. So they built decks designed to delete their health points as fast as possible. I love this. Sometimes ending the duel before their opponent can even act. This of course leads to Konami banning some of the key cards in those decks for future events.

What's the most clever and or unorthodox way you've seen people get the benefits of a system? That's fucking strong because it's, you can't quit. You're not allowed to just log into a match and quit for the points. You've got to lose. That is, that is some fucking brilliant shit. I respect it. So that's a good hustle despite, despite not being my jam. I do have what might be the best version of this equivalent and it is from Yu-Gi-Oh.

You might have heard of it. Originally Yu-Gi-Oh events did not have a regulation deck size. This led to people with 40, 50, 60 card decks, which would take a long time to shuffle and would thus lead to long periods of downtime. One person decided that this was enough and brought in what I think is like a 1,000 card deck that was filled with nonstop shuffle bullshit, which caused the match to go on forever. Match to go on for hours leading to the creation of a card limit. It took two guys roll.

It was 2,200 cards. Oh my God. Yeah. Okay. It took two guys and they, they brought it in like it was a coffin on their shoulder. Like, like, yeah, just, just like, no, you need to institute a fucking deck limit. God damn it.

I will always have a place in my heart for games that are so fucking not solved, but like, we know that as of this moment, it's already over. And in particular, like Marvel two had of some of that and Marvel three at its peak, absolutely had a fuck ton of that. And in money matches, there were moments in high profile money matches where round one round start first touch pause quit back to character select screen. I'll take the L. It's already done. Like two players are money matching for high stakes, like high stakes money,

thousands of dollars on the line. And they know that like momentum matters and we start the match and you touched me. It's already done. I don't even care. Take the L pause next game. You touched me with the right normal. I assume it is the combo has started over. Yeah, we're done.

I don't even want it. It's fucking sick. It is the coolest shit. Hey, as of 18 minutes ago, Ocarina of Times fan made PC port is complete and now available. Go get it now. Yeah, no, that's that's my favorite. Yeah, shout outs, flux and coach Steve. Yeah.

Uh, we got one coming in. From tentavision says hello, Madden versus Patcom clash of the super beasts. It's no secret that the most that most of the Internet knows of the banned episodes of the Pokemon anime, famously the electric soldier. Poragon containing a flashing light that put 500 kids into epilepsy. Almost causing the show to be canceled. However, while this is the worst thing to happen to the Pokemon animates, not the most surprising thing to happen in an episode of Pokemon,

there's another episode called The Legend of Dratini, which was banned. Because 10 year old Ash Ketchum and his friends are taking a walk, singing happily together that an old man comes out of a nearby house, yells at them to stop singing. When Ash proclaims that he'll sing as much as he wants, the old man points a gun at the 10 year old's head and threatens to pull a bullet in him. Throughout the episode, this happens multiple times with numerous characters being held at gunpoint, which obviously four kids was not keen on adapting

to a Saturday morning cartoon. There are some screenshots of the old man pointing the gun at Ash. Yeah. Saying, do you want to die? And then there's clips of Jesse and James as well getting put at gunpoint. And then they steal the guns and point them at him and reverse the tables. Of course they do. So Shoot to the Child is another banned Pokemon arc.

Wow. And Jesse and James fucking rule. Those characters are great. They literally threatened murder to get their hands on the most safari Pokemon. I don't get I don't get the logic here because now we have guns and you can use your guns to take someone's Pokemon away. So what what is the just just skip the step where you take the Pokemon away and just have guns. Dude, they live in a reality where God is a is a Pokemon.

It doesn't it doesn't matter. Yeah, I'm stupid. I'm an idiot. It stopped just. Okay, last one. Let's take over here from let's go with Julio says, dare Patrice kicked a cop server for toxic kicked off a cop server for toxicity. Boy Vardy, that's true.

And we'll we'll have our Christ is nothing special. Madden, I did say that I was like 13 you mentioned in 157 a hypothetical. In 157 you mentioned a hypothetical tablet kitty whose parents throw a Luna controller at them to shut them up, causing a horrifying thought in my mind. What's up? How are you doing? You okay over there? Why not over that at all?

I said that that would be the probable solution for things like Luna is you just give your dumb kid that instead of a console and they'll play a stupid stream game and they'll be happy with it for five bucks a month. It cost a horrifying thought in my mind. There will be children growing up in 10 years whose formative experience with games will be the shitty proto cloud and they'll just assume that delay is part of every game. Right. What's your most busted weirdo shit that you recall getting accustomed to as a kid and assumed

that it's all just like that? For example, I grew up playing platformers exclusively. So the first time I played a third person action game, like Ocarina of Time that had a jump off the ledge, I was baffled and I used to tear a V game apart looking for a jump button because I assumed jumping was a natural function in every single video game. My first RPG was Mario and Luigi so I could cope with it because it had a jump button. So I have to say the example they used is both really fantastic and kind of bad because Ocarina of Time came out and its jumping controls were fucking weird at the time.

The auto jump shit is super weird. It was super weird the first time, but then you get used to it and I was like, oh shit, I liked it. It wasn't fine. It was okay. But in the end, it was okay rather. When I was a kid, I got used to the idea of buying a video game and then playing it. Damn.

Shit. Wow. All right. Uh, I was thinking it's equated. Yeah, I know, right? God forbid. You shouldn't worry. What are you thinking?

That's crazy, man. Um, I was thinking, um, it's been said before, but I was thinking about how, uh, for me, I still, I'm not fully over random battles. And I still- Oh Jesus, it's been decades. No, I know. I'm used to them, but I still prefer seeing the enemy even if it's the same battle frequency. Yeah, I think that's the general consensus.

And the example I give is Lufia 2, where the map is rife with enemies, but you can see them. And it's a high frequency battle, um, you know, amount, but you know when you're about to step into one. So I remember probably my first exposure was Dragon Warrior on the NES was one, it was like, you know, again, like one of the first like non-action games that we had. And that was, it was super strange to me, you know, with those systems, because I also think that if I had been introduced to D&D beforehand, there would have been a template for what RPGs were doing to kind of go like, oh, you walk around and then you see a bunch of slimes and

or a goblin and then you go like, ah, attack. But it, I was still thinking of just like, no, in games, there's an enemy and you attack it. What do we, what, you know, it just, it's a reasonable assumption. So, um, that never just, even all these years later, I'm still just like, okay, it's, it is what it is. But, you know, when I, when Chrono Trigger fucking started up and I could see the thing I was attacking, I was very, very pleased. And I realized, I'm like, I just, I'm going to love this forever.

I'm going to always want to be able to see them, no matter how good the game is, despite that, you know, so. Uh, yeah, I guess the closest thing I can think of. Okay. I think that's satisfactory. I can't think of anything mechanically that'd be too weird. No, I'm done. I got nothing.

All right. I've cast this over. Good. Bye. We out.