Castle Super Beast - CSB 160: Out On A High Note

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

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music music Hello, good morning. Good morning, Isha. Yeah, close enough. For us, lazy content dirtbags, it's the morning. You're looking healthy. Oh, thank you.

I don't think you've ever said that to me in my life. But thank you. You might have fucked with the camera in such a way that it is projecting that possibility. The irony, of course, is that I'm like fucking exhausted and burnt out so bad that I'm taking like this next week off. I'm sleepy. Yeah.

I'm powering through a Breakless Weekend into a Continued Week. So, you know, the fun doesn't stop. So I know the feeling. To be fair, the reason why you're having a Breakless Weekend is for the kids. Sure.

But it's still Breakless. So, no rest, no rest. And, you know, and it continues. I've got stuff going on all over the place, which is also why we're starting a little early today compared to usual. Yes, in any case. Do you remember back in the day that you'd have like a five-day week

or like a six-day week, right? And that'd be whatever. And then whoever'd be in charge of your bullshit would be like, you know, it'd be a good week for you, guy. If you did Tuesday to Sunday, and then you did Monday to Saturday, and you'd lose your fucking mind every single time you saw that bullshit, you're like, are you fucking 12 days on me, you bitch?

But when you're self-employed, you'll just do it to yourself, whatever. You'll just do it to yourself. It's kind of wild, yeah. No, the exact same thing. It being imposed on you versus you choosing to do it. During the Guilty Gear lore weeks in particular, I'm like, this is illegal.

I'm looking at what I'm doing to myself. I'm like, this is illegal. This breaks all labor laws. Like, what am I doing? Yeah. Reminds me when I was doing the, I got a streamer Elden Ring, and I'm like on day nine in a row of streaming it for as long as I can per day.

And at the end of that day, I was like becoming visibly confused. I was saying stupid shit like, horsey go jump, bad, horsey, and just like, okay, maybe, maybe not another one tomorrow. Yeah.

So try solving some of the most brutal puzzles possible while that energy is sapped out of you. It's good to see that Baba, everybody feels like embarrassed playing Baba because the solutions are, when written on a page, simple, I'm using air quotes here, but like,

your brain just fights the method so hard that you just like, it presents itself as something that you should be able to clear in an hour or two tops. It presents itself that way. And, you know, the real damage after playing it with,

and Reggie saw it for the first time there, the real damage was pointing out afterwards. So that's like, by the way, we cleared like six stages over the course of the entire day. Infantesimal amount, you know, and that's the damage. Yeah.

And it's drawn up like a game for children. Like it like visually presented and it's like a little sheep named Baba. And it's like, it's uniquely cruel in how it, in what it asks of you, because the way I was kind of putting it together, especially watching through now,

you know, again, in the beginning of it, and then pushing up against the limits of where I got to last time. And it feels as if Baba as you is basically asking you to, within a matter of like three or four, like steps, start doing the things that speed runners figure out like over the course of years to make their games like jank into success. You know,

it wants you to acknowledge a system of rules per situation and then figure out how you can modify those rules to your benefit in a way that is like, I guess, programmers and yeah, yeah. Theoretical physicists might have an easier time with it. Engineers. But I don't.

I remember one page played on her stream. We had like a fucking 20 minute like screaming session where like the, the concept of Baba can't, it can be not Baba just wasn't hitting because it is not intuitive. Like there is a unique thing to that game. There's a unique fear that like when you, when you play a puzzle game and it introduces the rules,

those rules tend to then get tested by introducing new variables, new elements, right? And so you progress, let's say through the third world in a way where they're like, OK, now that you've gotten the basics of all the usual things, here's a wall, here's a flag, right? Here's a key. Oh, shit. Oh, keys and the concept of open and the concept of close, right? And then you go, all right, now here's the and word and oh, here's a robot

and it'll move and you're like, OK, we're getting complex, right? So each, each new layer of puzzle introduces this extra layer of complexity that you're like, yeah, this is, this is how it goes in puzzle games. And then you'll get to another level upon succeeding a complex one where the level itself is the most basic, simple two points of input to like, like solution required. But it appears to be functionally impossible. And in the fear that comes in when it, it's like, it's not the,

it's not the adding of elements, it's the subtracting. So it's like, you get a test on like, OK, now you've learned all the letters and all the numbers and now you know how to write and you can, you know, and then it's like, OK, now take away the complex things and just go down to the basics. And you just, can you handle the basics again? And it's like, I can, but they're impossible. There's nothing there to play with. Like it just, it just functionally, anyway.

It reminds me honestly at Wordle is a decent point for this because it has the situation where the other day, three, four days ago, Wordle had a word in which it had only a single vowel and the single vowel in it was Y. Right. Which is insanely rare in English. So all of a sudden you've locked, you've, you've deleted 99.9% of all possible words. And you even get the Y location on green. And then despite the fact that you know the word, you stared it for like 40 minutes,

trying every permutation of letters because none of them sound like words in your head anymore until you get like four in. I got that one. It wasn't too bad because I basically like, there's a rule that I'm realizing to Wordle that's basically been pretty clean ever since, but it's like, it's always a, it's always a common word. It's never a really rare, weird word. Like even that one is like, like that is not super common, but it's never a purple word.

You know what I mean? I would never say the null or epoxy are common words. Okay. Okay, fair. It's epoxy was one that I'm looking at. And it's like, I don't think I've had a person in my life say this word to me out loud. Okay. What I've noticed is like, there are times when a extremely unused, like there are times

when a word that is like a borrowed word from another language, for example, would fit in and I go, there's zero chance it'll be that, right? Yeah, I get, I get caught all the time because I'm like, I put in a word that like is a French word that I hear people use in English. And it's like, no, it doesn't. And it'll never be that. It'll be the one that's, it'll be an English word and it'll be a word that like you've probably read, you know, like somewhere. But yeah, anyway, there's just, there's guesses that I have that I'm like, that would fit, but it just strikes me as too uncommon to be used. Yeah, there are those examples where, you know, those are on the fringes, I'd say.

In any case, Baba though, it was pretty funny because it's like, okay. So, well, yeah, I guess to go into it, like I had a week played some stuff, but in particular yesterday was a fundraising stream we did for charity. And part of that was playing Baba is you and experiencing the maximum threshold of anguish possible. And then when self care was required, switching over to Kirby. Oh yeah, you know, that makes perfect sense. Excellent plan, worked out great. Very happy with that. And really what it did was it just kind of like, it was always fun to, it's fun to see like, you know, Reggie kind of figured that shit out for the first time and whatnot.

And then later, when I'm like, all right, let's my turn, I'll suffer for a bit and I'm going through the levels. And like, there's this, there's this like, moment of like, haha, since I was teasing Reggie earlier, the antagonism is going to turn its head back around on me. And it's like, aw shit, here it comes, right? And he's like, egging me on. And then it's like, hold on a minute, you don't have the solution either. You don't know what the fuck is, neither of us knows what the fuck is going on. And like the moment that shell breaks, it's like, okay, no, we're both just struggling here. So it's like, okay, what if like, even, even in a situation where I'm sitting there looking at it and then Reggie's like, I've got some tips and like, let's like go for like a co-op solve.

It's like, no, it's not making it any better because the game's rules are nothing. They mean nothing. The concept of consistency means nothing to this game. There are no solutions that are like, like even when there's a solution that is like, hey, we taught you something a couple levels ago, now do it again. It's like, do it again, but break it now that we've taught you how to do it. You know, which is making, it makes you a good tester, certainly. The way you solve problems puzzles in this game makes you really good at QA, but it's fucking infuriating. When Paige was going through it, I kept having like, I think it happened like six, seven, eight puzzles where I'm watching it.

I'm like, yeah, I think I got it. And then she's getting so frustrated. I'm like, well, obviously all you have to do is this. So she does it and it doesn't work for shit. And I'm like, oh, oh, I don't know the answer either. Yeah. Like at all. And like, you know, like literally took a break to just recharge, get a burger and like, dude's just like, why does it not feel good when you solve these puzzles, you know, and it's like, because it's not fair.

It doesn't feel like you're solving it because you thought up a complex solution to the problem. It feels like you bullshitted your way to the answer and the game went, huh, yeah, that's what it was all along. Lol, you know, and then it just moves you to the next one. It feels unceremonious for the struggle. It's been like a longstanding like game design idea that puzzles don't need to be smart, but they need to make you feel smart. And Baba shits all over that. Yeah, because the puzzles are smart, but they make you feel fucking stupid. They make you feel like a dumbass.

Yeah. No, the the the annihilator, the long suffering one yesterday was like it involved just stuff that like happened incidentally when you were solving other puzzles, but wasn't really to be taken seriously. Like while you're moving things around, there's some weird interaction sometimes, you know, and you don't register them because why would you, you know, and then you're just like and then you get you get into this place where you're like, oh, my God, OK, hold on, stop. I have to go back to the beginning again and I have to go. What rules have I created for consistency that you basically the way that human beings survive. Is to see and learn and internalize, right? What rules are there? If I pour this water out, it's going to spill and go on the tech and it'll be bad and then it'll wet everything around me.

Like it's just this is what happens when you put so that you have to stop and go, no, wait, hold on. What if but have I tested the water to see if it would spill, you know, and then and then have I tested if I could push the water? Like maybe it's, you know, if the water doesn't have the property of wet, then it's not going to be a problem. I would describe Baba is you as nonsensical, but in the strict terms of the use nonsensical. Usually when people say something's nonsensical, they mean like, I don't get it or it's a mess or whatever. It's like, no, I mean it in the thing of the experience of understanding Baba is you does not conform to the neat expectations of the five senses in that if it were a real world equivalent, it would literally make no sense, which is the root of that. And it's like it constantly asks you to internalize a concept and then throw it away immediately after you internalized it or pull it back out. Yeah.

And it's like nothing in the real world functions like that. If I drop this glass of milk in that part of the house, it's not going to go up. If I push, if I just label up on it and obviously game logic and all that, but it's just like you're trying to work through it in a logical perspective, but it wants to, I don't know, it's rules. It's rules. It's programming rules. It is. And the things that outside my realm. And then you get into this place where you're like, Oh my God, there are no rules. There's no rules.

The only rule is Baba is you. Nothing else is a rule. Like it's all, but then it's like no third on third examination. There are rules, but like there, but there's syntax rules and you can only, but it's not not just syntax rules, but like there are. Okay. So there are syntax rules, for example, where it's like, like, like strings, like text must go top to bottom or left to right. That's a rule. No one says that's a rule, but you must discover that's a rule.

Furthermore, text can push text, but text doesn't push objects. Right. Unless otherwise stated, but the interaction you have with text is, is not the same as the interaction you have with other objects. Unless of course text is introduced as a variable. You know, so then you're like, okay, but then now you, you have a world rule, but even that isn't called into quite anyway. So it reminds me of reminds me of Einstein talking about how there's no privileged reference point in space, which was a response to people using the earth and all of their calculations and basing everything off of that. And it's like, no, no, no, you count the right math and physics will work anywhere, but also velocity is always relative, blah, blah, blah, because it's velocity according to something else because nothing's actually staying still anywhere ever. And Baba is like, yeah, the reality is relative.

It's real. It's relative to chosen statement. You're not playing as Baba unless you are. The flag is not when, unless it is, et cetera. Only the only thing that exists is you as an identity. You are the observer. Um, in any case, though, um, that was nice. And then, um, well, no, it wasn't, but Kirby was because that was very soothing to switch over to and I very much enjoyed that.

And I'm looking forward to more Kirby, especially discovering the lore. For example, upon the beginning of that game, getting a little anime OP was very fun. I didn't expect to see that. Um, my issue with the anime OP was that I had seen on Twitter not two hours earlier a photo of Kirby's interior shot of that car with him steering the car with his tongue. Yes, the hand is driving indeed. Which is upsetting. Tell you what, though, what I'm, what I'm also surprised by is, and this is going to take some real analysis for going forward. Uh, Kirby, this is actually, it's a bit of a relief, but Kirby is not, not what you thought he was.

It's Kirby developed mouthful mode as a side effect of going through the portal. So mouthful mode is a new development specific to the forgotten land that we don't know the true nature of, right? But mouthful mode was not a thing prior to this game because that was not amongst Kirby's abilities. So they specifically, they specify that, um, in the, in the lore as you, as you started out, you know. So he's like irradiated or something by the portal and it gives him something, something's going on, something's going on. Um, but, you know, freeing the very, very, it's very nice. You free the waddle deez. You know, you enjoyed fun in the sun and, uh, check out some of the new powers.

Um, you know, testing out this, this new 3d, uh, adaptation of the game and such. It's, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's a great time. And then you get some happy time in that and then you switch back to Baba and that's how you do it, you know. Um, so I'm going to be, I'm going to be, I'm going to be going back into that. Um, yeah, I don't know. I think just in my own time for now, since the schedule is pretty busy, but, uh. The Baba or the Kirby, the Kirby, the Kirby, the Kirby. Oh yeah.

I played a little bit of that Kirby myself, uh, it's nice. It's, it's not a, it's not a way that I usually describe games. I usually describe them in like, I don't know, the qualitative terms and according to like their, their specific genre or whatever, but like playing Kirby was nice. Like it's just, it's just, it's like, oh yeah. I would, I am a little like, I wish I could hurry up the difficulty a little bit. Like it's like, I understand it's supposed to be pleasant and relaxing, but it's like, it's way down there. And I'm aware that it gets harder in your, what you would call the post game. Now, I also realized a little slow with the, with the, with the relaxing nature of Kirby games is that, uh, I think like the feeling that it, I think the, I think, I never got into animal crossing, but I think it elicits a similar feeling for like people who are into animal crossing.

I would say as somebody who got a little bit in animal crossing, it is pretty similar. Yeah. I, I'm not into animal crossing, but like, I cause, but I like the things you do in Kirby. I like, you know, using the powers and just, just making your way through, you know, so, but it's a similar kind of like relaxing thing in contrast to everything else going on in life. If I had to compare Kirby and animal crossings, like emotional throughput to like a day to day activity, it would be like, like humming a song you like with your headphones on while you're like trimming your weeds. Sure. Sure. You know, or like gardening or something like that. And just like, you know, that kind of just pleasant, relaxing activity. And that's reinforced by the interview that, that came out where they were talking, you know, to, to the devs and they're basically like going, okay, so like what are some of the things you did since this is the first like 3D, you know, land kind of Kirby game.

And they're like, well, so there's some stuff that's like more of a Nintendo touch where you are like visually it's hard. If you can't tell if Kirby's about to touch the ground or not because of the camera angle, like the camera, the controls will just assume that he's closer to the ground. Then you think and let you jump again, you know, so that's a fun little thing. Or for, or if you're about to shoot at an attack at an enemy that is not perfectly aligned with you, but it overlaps visually with where your cut or your sword is going to be. It'll just take the hit, you know. Yeah. Perspective based hit boxes is a cool idea. Yeah. So that's nice. And then they're talking about how like the design to 3D, they were asked, Nintendo asked how to be like, hey, can you put more enemies in?

Because it's kind of a sparse environment in some cases and, you know, you need some things for the player to fight. And they're like, okay. And then they gave it back and then they added like barely anything extra. And they're like, no, no, no, you need to put more enemies in it's a 3D world means more room for more enemies. And they're like, no, it's, it's, we don't want to put more enemies around Kirby. It's too mean. We don't want Kirby to feel overwhelmed. So they're like, no, it's weird, man. It's fine. Just give him a little bit of a challenge and that's good enough. That's good enough.

That's weird. And that's the same way you go through a normal 2D Kirby game is like, okay, there's a couple things on the screen, but they'll feel bad if they put too many things, you know. So that that feeling of like, you know, wanting to protect Kirby from your own design is like, yeah, that's what I you play this to just to catch a vibe, you know. And let me ask you, because you would definitely know it looks like there's 12 powers in this game. Is that a lot or a little that's a little like kind of low. Yeah, that's low. That's low. And that probably does echo what I was saying about the engine reset. Right. The idea that switching to a new system means less time for bringing out just more and more powers and advancing the powers.

The thing though that I know is that there's different levels to them. So you upgrade them through level through multiple stages, you know, at least two or three. I've seen three phases of some of them. So that's perhaps where you're going to get some of the depth and the expanding move list out, you know. They are like, I did get some of the upgrades and the upgrades are great, but they are like more or less like, I mean, the gun, you shoot two guns. Yeah. Instead of one gun. Yeah. So, and I mentioned it last time too from playing the demo, but like, you know, I'm missing the move list that would appear when you grab any power, pause it.

And you get a piece of lore and then you scroll to the right and you get like three pages of moves per ability. Yeah. That's definitely on the lower end. Any of these games that are like, you know, in an engine that's been established that they've been working with for a while, you can go to like the arena or the Colosseum and see like the full lineup of powers. And like, there's just dozens and dozens, you know, so. Oh, I know what's happening here. I don't know why I didn't make the connection the first time you mentioned it. This is Monster Hunter fucking GUXX to World. To World. That's actually what I said last time.

Oh my God. Why didn't I catch that part? I said the engine transfer game where we've got to kind of start from scratch a bit, you know? I guess I didn't think it was going. I thought it was going to be like less extreme. Like what's your average Kirby power set like 50? Maybe not 50. No, but definitely above 20, you know. And if there's something else going on in the game, for example, if you have like a robot, then that's going to have its own combinations to its own amounts as well.

Yeah, you're definitely you're definitely above 20 below 50, I'd say in general, you know, feels like there's a lot. Now, the difference between. Oh, can you excuse me? I got somebody at the door. One second. So, yeah, for a relative comparison, Kirby Superstar has 25 copy abilities. Return to Dream Land has 23 and Kirby's Adventure, the original had 12. Okay, so yeah, that's that makes sense then. Like that's the minimum they felt they could hit.

And then they threw the upgrades in there as well. And the complexity, of course, like with each one changes to as well, where like in some cases it's almost like you have a three in one. Because of all the different things you can do with it. But yeah, good. Good old good old good old curb. Looking looking forward to some more of that. How far did you get? I got to like the third series of stages.

Okay, I'd say like past the water world. Okay, if you're like, yeah, there's there's there's there's the game is it tries to put you in a mood. So like it's definitely not something to play when you're like, you know, I'm looking at get in, you go hard. Oh, no, definitely not. I will say, though, that like the transformations like continue to like genuinely bother me. Like I made a lot of jokes about it, but it's like the the cone one where his like mouth is like stretched over and doesn't get all the way around the cone. Yeah, and then the the the ring light. Well, I don't know what to call it, but the ring one, like just just it's it's upsetting to me.

Like I just it makes me upset. Yes. Yes. No. I I'm I'm still trying to parse what they're what's going on and what they're going for. But yeah, yeah, we'll see. What was also a very fun was yeah, getting to fighting games this week went back played some classic CVS to just pop that shit on and how come that hasn't gotten like some decent re-releases ever.

Well, the the the long story short is that SNK up when they kind of went under and then had to rebirth themselves as Playmore. A lot of the staff that they used to have were gone and Capcom staff changed over the years. So during the CVS one CVS two cardfighters clash, etc. Eras, there was a friendly rapport between both companies that was very and they're very tight. And now they they're not they don't know each other as well anymore. And they said that basically they'd have to like drop new deals and such to, you know, oh, that sucks to ever do it again. But CVS one and CVS two are great, but it's not off the table. It's just that.

Yeah, there was they were much tighter, you know, back in those days and you I mean, shit, you would see like names and battle planners go go from one studio to another. And you know, being names that were in the same credits, right? So yes, CVS two in particular, man, like that's just just a fucking one of the best of the classics. You know, and like that was the one that was ported with 2D will never die on the spine, you know, in 2002. Right. But one of the things ever. Yeah, one of the things that I mean, you know. They're not wrong in the sense that 2D gameplay will never die.

Oh, that's not what they meant. You know, it's not exactly. But that would be the statement was inclusive of that, though, because they were also in an era of like Powerstone and other 3D things starting to happen. Soul caliber, you know, all of that was popping. Yeah. And Tekken and Tekken, of course, which is now the closest thing to CVS three. This CVS three is you'll get. But but what we'll get is like, well, the proposition at the time.

And I remember early on trying to be like, why don't fighting games just do this? Is the 2D fighter on a 3D plane? Right. This was before that wasn't even a concept that was like regularly understood, which is why battle fantasy. Yeah. The only time. Yeah. The only time you talk about it was be like battle Fantasia and God was the other one.

Slap happy rhythm. Yeah, man. Yeah. So we finally got to the point where it's like, OK, you can get the cool, sharp, new attractive visuals of, you know, shiny 3D, but you can still feel the way a 2D fighter does and not lose anything there. So but anyway, CVS two, though, the thing that going back to that really strikes me with is, man, the era of old custom intros between two characters was the best. And nowadays, it sucks when the games don't even bother to do anything or try. The compromise that we got was like the wind quotes in some in a lot of cases are going to be like the wind pose will be generic and the wind quote will be specific to the characters. And then you have strive and Mortal Kombat that do the banter, right?

So they do the line report, rebuttal and, you know, third rebuttal as a as a as a formula thing. And those are some there's some great bits in there and some really fun intros and Mortal Kombat and some fun interactions and guilty gear that are, you know, like a nice piece of personality. But I liked the unique intros as well that we used to get. Like I liked when you would see, you know, Yamazaki throw a knife on the ground and call Terry Andy. You know, I mean, to me, the biggest like jump from it was like Street Fighter 4 has Ken walking in and he's shaking his arm and he's getting right in. And then Ryu comes in as like it's the heart of battle. And then I'm like, yeah, that's visually cool. I guess.

And it's one one thousandth of school as them just touching gloves before the fight. And just starting it. Exactly. And that's the problem is like, even if they have a line that references a moment or something lower specific, like, like SVC chaos had had that too, right? SVC chaos had unique conversations between both fighters for every single matchup. And that was really fun as well. But there's nothing on the level of just Ken picks up Terry Bogard's hat. Soraya tosses it back at him and then round one fight like that.

It's so sick, you know, it's an action and it's a unique animation. It's more than just a line, you know, and I that's what I really would love to see. The problem is, of course, is the effort it takes to do that in 3D is even more. It's a unique cut scene you have to create. Yeah. Reminds me of when Virtua Fighter was like, OK, guys, we're going to do it. We're going to make unique throws for everybody's like rig for every throw, including Taka. Like, holy shit.

Yeah. What an absolute gargantuan use of resources that they can only get away with because Virtua Fighter has a much smaller cast. Than other fighting games. Shoutouts to Alex in Tatsunoko versus Capcom, who will do a stun gun headbutt on anything. And if it lands on the PTX, he just grabs the top part of the cockpit and slams his head into it. And if it lands on a roll, who's the size of his up to his knee, he crouches and then just does a bunch of little chest slaps. Real low to the ground. It's great.

It's great. You got to customize it for everybody. On the other hand, there is always the appeal of having like one animation and then just struggling to fit it on the wrong character size. Yeah. Yeah. Like Zangief doing a fucking SPD to like Mega Man in Marvel 2 looks like shit. Yeah. Yeah.

Just flip them upside down. That's the school of Suplex the Train, right? Like that's the idea. But I miss those intros. I really do. And I, you know, I'll take the fun quips. I'll take the custom outros. But it would be nice to have those in.

And there's other little features too that like, you know, just you don't really see as much. I know that BlazBlue, well, Guilty Gear had a little bit of this because Guilty Gear, when you go to the sound test, you realize that back in like Accent Core and I mean reload even they had multiple recording sets for each character. So they would do, they would load out an entirely different set of audio for them depending on certain matchups or certain states, you know, BlazBlue had like unique. Matchup stuff for like if Jin is fighting Ragnar, then like they're going to say shit to each other while they're doing their moves that are more direct and pointed. And then of course there's the rival battles in Street Fighter 4 where in the middle of the battle you would hear automatic taunts, you know. And like that stuff is kind of fun too. I wouldn't mind the ability to work that in. But yeah.

I just remember with like Yori having his level three where he grabs you and holds you up. And again, certain people that turns orange for split second. Universal. It was always, it turns out. Oh no, wait, I'm thinking it wrong. I'm thinking that was year to year. Yeah, it was always purple. But in that one year in in two thousand and three, it turns.

It turns. It goes from purple back to red for just a split second, you know, referencing the the family blood before it was corrupted by the Orochi. Yeah. Yeah. That shit's dope. But yeah, no, CVS was was just a great time. And then, you know, also going back to a game where you're like, this thing has six fucking grooves to pick per character like you customize. What the fuck is that?

You want parries? You got your parries, you know, six grooves per character and then multiple ratios to assign to each one. And you're like, damn, this thing lasted this long because of like infinite matchup possibilities. Like it's so so huge and fun to see that stuff, you know. I know we'll not design games to be that way anymore because like I remember part of Street Fighter 4 was like saying, we want you to just pick a character. I remember there was an ask, it was like, will there be isms, you know, like Street Fighter Zero series? And at the time they were like, no, we kind of as this is a restart and we want people to remember the simple things like Street Fighter 2, we want you to just pick a character and then that's it, you know. And then eventually it's like, OK, we'll pick an ultra.

You fine, you know, but pick a V pick a V skill and then we slowly we bleed it back in over time. But for that initial moment, just no, it's just the character one. Look, it's Cami, that's it, you know. Yeah, I like I like the ability to like to have different styles and different grooves and different isms and all that, you know, that's that's a lot of fun too, as well. So yeah, CVS 2 is fucking great. Got some good matches. I love the free ratio system so much. Yeah, yeah, it's it's like held under the free ratio system. It's just it's like those days where you're like.

Yeah, I don't care. I want Sakura just be the biggest Sakura ever. I'm going to do it. Fuck it ratio for how Maru. See, let's see how big that slash can go. Hold forward. Press hard punch. After life bar.

Shut the fuck up. Don't get hit by it. Yeah, yeah, it was fun. Good good times with that. So yeah, all that's all that and more coming, of course, on the channel. Elden Ring continues and yep, having fun with that, of course, going about things. Speed runs now down to 18 minutes. That's cool.

That's they figured out how to teleport by holding block. It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen in a game. Jesus Christ. You just hold block and tap forward a couple of times and your character just leaps forward like three kilometers. Oh my God. So like the start of the speed run now is you get, you know where Vare is right at that bonfire.

You just hold block and tap forward and you just your character just instantly transmits next to the bonfire that gives you torrent. Not even on the horse. You don't even need torrent. Wow. Well, you go and get torrent. Like I assumed it would be some like knock, like pull, like not get knocked off of torrent at a certain velocity style, you know, but fun fact, if torrent is dead and then you

summon torrent and then summon torrent immediately afterwards on a slope, torrent gets stuck on the original incline. Yeah. Yep. Yep. You can use it to just walk to the final area. The open world will always be a bug wasteland. There's just nothing to be done about this.

It'll never be clean. We saw like the hardest defense ever was Breath of the Wild because it was so clean, but even that after about a year, some of the dumbest combos started coming about. Well, what if I sit on this tree and hit it with the stick five times at this time of day facing this direction? Pause time. The stick flies all the way up to Gannon's asshole. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like it couldn't resist forever. But yeah, that's that shit's really fun. And oh, there's a really weird unique thing that like no one that doesn't do this kind of weird gig for a living can possibly understand. But like there is the thing that is like, OK, there exists in this game the woolly sword.

And when he gets the woolly sword, is he is he going to use it? And I and I'm like, well, it's a really cool sword. It's really cool. It feels kind of weird that it's like, do I do I have to, you know? But but despite all the also got nerfed right before you got to it, certainly, certainly. So there's that too as well. I'm also sad about the nerfing of the turtle shell because I really wanted to use a turtle shell the whole time.

And so they nerfed it because they nerfed it because it was too good. It was a 100% physical resist shield that had pretty good guard boost, but it was also the stamina shield was the grass crest of the game. And as such, it's like you can't do 100% physical, then it's better than most other shields. You're supposed to wear it on your back. That's why it's the turtle shield. Well, you know, I was really happy with its design. And then I was like, oh, it's not 100.

Well, anyway, you know, but yes, I do. I can see that part of it. I would also get again, pray for glamour at some point, but that's never going to happen. Hell, the glamour is get your equip load real high. Yeah, yeah. The stitch because they clearly are like, let's not make armor go high variants between each other like the old games. We want it to be closer and tighter together so that fashionable choices can be made.

But we're still and we're even going to put stitching to remove capes, but not change colors. You know, yeah. But no glamours. Anyway, whatever. We're not going to have that conversation again. But I will say those that obviously the moon veils really cool and obviously, you know, and it's like, yeah, totally.

And I happened to be in the middle of like, I want to switch off of I wanted to switch off of the bloodhound because it was like it was super cool too. But I do get that feeling of like, oh, this can just you can just hold this the whole time for the whole game. You can totally absolutely with that. And I'm seeing people in ghost form walking by me with it like a bunch and I'm like, OK, yeah, I don't want to. I don't want to know.

We both showed up wearing the same thing. I have to go home and change. So I'm definitely like enjoying Saint Trina's and I'm putting people to sleep. But in the off time, I've been fucking around with the moon veiling. It's pretty cool. Just just understand, though, that like there is something weird about like about a perpetual state of say the thing, Bart, going into these these these moments that just it keeps going never every couple seconds.

Say the same, you know, like just it's a weird feeling. Just don't, you know, that's all. But I can see after fucking around with it how it's also like a footsie deleter. It's a mob handler. It feels ridiculous, even in a PvE context. Yeah, no, it's the anger towards that because there was a lot of people loved it, but then people hated it just as much. And it's because it has the same moveset as the Uchi.

But when you do the unsheathe attacks, it goes like 10 feet and it's just as fast. So in PvP, it's like one of the fastest projectiles you could possibly get out. And I realized good chunk of damage. And like the projectile itself is pretty solid. But if you hit with the blade and the projectile, you get extra damage and you get the poise damage of the sword. So it treats it like an R2, except you have the projectile and you can go for both if you're within range and it's still worth it.

Anyways, like that's a pretty nerve. That thing was totally ridiculous. It was absolutely absurd because you could hit two of the R2s, like the verticals, and it would stagger almost anything. Yeah. And it was like, that's a little invalidating. Like the heavy knights are getting crumpled. It didn't touch the damage at all.

Just the posture. OK, OK. Yeah. And then bleed on top of that, right? Because it's a katana. Yeah. So like it's funny because in my game right now that I'm just poking away at with an int build, I'm running Moonvale and Frost Uchi so that I'm doing frost damage,

end bleed damage, and then I basically just use the projectiles off the Moonvale instead of casting most of the time. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. It's the speed at which it comes out, even with the shorter range, makes it super worth it. You know, and like, and again, the ability to get two spells, one that's a wide sweep and one that's a ranged vertical, it's absolutely like a casting ability. Yeah.

So, so, you know, I'm fucking around with that. And I think I'll just I think I'll just, you know, kind of go through this being a little polyamorous with my weapon choices, you know. Yeah, that's what that's what pretty much everybody does. The one I could you could grab your starting weapon and carry it all the way to the end of the game, no problem. Yeah. The thing that that it has me, though, is like when I have one somber smithing

stone six, and it's like, OK, I can't put all of these up to where I want them. I got to pick something at some point, you know. So that's, you know, I mentioned I mentioned Torn getting bugged out on inclines earlier. I caught a clip of yours in which a certain bear hugged you. So I have killed tons of those bears, but this was the one that was like, I guess, like the intro to it in the boss form solo in a room. And yeah, it landed its bear hug on me and then proceeded to drop into the sunken place. Would I would it shock you if I described that as 100 percent reproducible?

Oh, man. The day before you had that happen. It happened to me twice in a row post bite. Yeah, it's it gets the hug and it just goes right through the floor. Man, in that room specifically in that room. OK, I've had another A.I. break at this point. I've had, like, oh, I forgot to tell you, I had the tree spirit, the thing you described with the explosion and the report that happened to me.

Uh-huh. OK, so like, yeah, there's some there's some high reproducible ones there. I had a crab break on me and this one's going to be upcoming. Perhaps tomorrow, I suppose. So a little little preview, but OK. I need to confirm or something. You know the deathright bird? Yeah. You know, it's big.

I'll just call it the Marx attack, because that's what it really looks like. It flies backwards and it does a Marx, like Kirby, the Kirby villain style wing spread and torpedoes up into the air. It's literally just a Kirby attack, right? Yeah. Is that its final attack that then kills itself? No. OK, well. Oh, then I had that. Oh, you had it step on an invisible hitbox and then fall off and die.

And it just died and it had maybe 10 percent left, maybe 15. And I was like, oh, that's its big death attack. Because the way I was looking at it, it made it seem as if that was its final thing, like a Castlevania boss, and then it just dies, you know. Yeah, no, there's there's some hitbox shenanigans going on with what I'm going to assume are zone transitions or something. But like I have seen dragons land on top of hitboxes that are like, you know, 30 feet up and then the hitbox goes away because the hitbox isn't like a real place.

And then they just do the fall, the unmoving idle fall, and then they hit the ground or go through the ground and then die. Now, the weird thing is that dragons and mounted knights are not I noticed they didn't have the issues I'm seeing on some of these other bosses because they just hit the bounding of their fight range and then teleport back into another one, you know. So I had when I fought Agheil and when I fought the Glenstone Dragon, like I had so many constant issues

with them getting stuck vertically on the sides of walls. OK, I had a fight where Agheil went up the wall, but then I just fought him on the land and it was awesome. It turned out to be a really cool moment, you know. He backed up so that he was kind of pointing down from that that like far cliff side in Agheil Lake. And then I rode Torrent up onto the cliffs behind him. He turned around and then we're like, oh, I guess we're fighting on land for a bit.

It was very cool. But of course, yeah, when he just vanishes and then is a mile in the other direction. Diagon, right? That's fine. You know that counts. Yeah, so so it was it was very it's weird because it's like when you put. When you put 300 bosses in a game, I suppose some of them are just going to, you know, do the same.

Some of them are going to have the problems that we ran into in the old Souls games. Was it Dark Lurker who just broke, I think your Dark Lurker? For some reason, I think when it's split, it's AI. No, it got stuck in the wall, right? There's something and it just completely broke. And Dark Lurker is a super boss of DS2. Yeah. And it just flat fucking completely broke.

I mean, so this is not an old this is not a new a new issue. You know, it looks like like most of these bugs are actually in regards to like the enemies like meeting the floor. And I guess it makes sense because Elden Rings can't be using the same ideas as like Dark Souls because it's so fucking big compared to usual. Yeah, like, yeah, no, just enemies just constantly fucking like freak out on inclines and die. And that being the solution of if the thing breaks too hard,

just kill it is all right. Yeah, can't because there was a bat who survived under the floor, like I said, and that was a bigger problem, you know, because I'm like, well, now I'm stuck in combat with you. That sucks. I know that an old trick this is probably like like long gone and unused these days with Unreal and such. But back in the day, if you wanted to stop anything from falling out of world,

you would just take the the ground collision you had in your game, move it down by a couple of in universe units and shift it slightly to the side and then just create a second floor under the first one that if they happen to fall through the first floor, well, the second one will catch them and then load in both invisibly. And that's how you prevent people from falling out of world. You know, if I remember correctly, you've brought this up before and I described that that's what happened to or at least that's what people

think happened to Red Dead One, where horse hooves would get stuck in between the two. Rocket them out to space because the physics would freak out. OK, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because that was a solution. Old school, you know, for just like, OK, we can't be bothered to individually patch these floors properly, just create a catch all for the whole thing. You know, it's it's goofy, but it works. You'd be surprised how many goofy solutions you come. You have to come up with for things like that or for like when you're doing

like a low poly model in your cutting corners on shapes. Anyways, yeah, so Elden, Elden bugs continue and and that's a good time. Have you last thing, I guess, on Elden Ring, have you had to do any grinding for a set that you wanted? For what? I wanted a set. I would have had to if I wanted to use a set that I had to grind for, but I didn't. I just used the ones that I picked up.

I use the Royal Remains set for like. Most of the game, so because it had a skeleton head on it. I went looking for there's two sets in particular that I was trying to get to completion. I went looking for the night set of like, you know, the captain who's in front of the storm gate. Yeah, that guy I wanted to write. I went looking for that.

And then I went looking for the the knights that are in North Leonea that that cast as they ride. The the cuckoo nights. OK, yeah. So, yeah, I was trying to get I was trying to get the the the the full sets of like, you know, the the Cuck Knight and the whatever, Godric Knight. And it was kind of crazy how I know I have low arcane. So my item discovery is not what it should be.

But I'm like putting on the chicken foot buff, right? Silver silver foul foot to find higher item drops. And it felt really, really ridiculously low. Sometimes. And I don't know what the drop rates are. If people have figured them out. But like, I mean, the amount of times I had to just run back and like go through four of these things to get some gauntlets,

you know, after they drop, I sometimes they drop multiple things. But they're so low. The drop rates just feel so incredibly low in these two examples that I'm just like, is this the whole game? You know, because I got lucky with some things. But I haven't. These are the only farming moments I've had. I haven't farmed anything. The only thing I farmed was runes.

OK. And almost all the equipment I actually wore was found or like reward equipment. Interestingly, so I like I'm basically like the runes I'm I got, I'm getting in those times. I'm not spending on levels like I'm just like buying extra twigs or or or, you know, arc rune arcs or things like that. Right. But but yeah, in all the runs, I like I feel like at one point like dozens, I feel like I had to do dozens of runs

through like four of these things to get like one drop with the the item finder item on me, you know, and it's it's so low. I really I guess that's intentional. But it's it's low enough that it feels like when I was going through my experience wasn't. Oh, man, it takes so long to grind these. My experience was, oh, these guys dropped their gear. Like I would have killed like a hundred radon soldiers

and one would drop their helmet and I'd be like, oh, you can get this or a weapon in some cases, you know, where it's like, oh, shit. Like the like all the miners might drop their staff, you know, like, oh, fuck, that's that's, you know, you go through a bunch. Yeah. Yeah. And and by comparison, I had like six brass shields and tons of the minor staffs, but I couldn't get like the I have like six Godric arms, right? And one chest, but no feet.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So I was missing I was missing arms and I was like, and I had a helmet and just trying to figure it out, you know, because whatever fashion. I guess like I'm wondering, it's like, I know like these drops and these drop rates forever have been like they're such a pop off when it's like, oh, like, for example, like, oh, shit, you got I got super lucky picking up the ball or swag sword, right? Or like Reggie having some crazy luck in an early game going like, oh,

my God, I can't believe you got that because of the drop rate on this thing or that thing. It makes me kind of wonder if there's like a better system for that randomness. Yeah, the system is to run an arcane build, I guess. Just an item finder like like build specifically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it would be nice if you like didn't have to. It feels you don't have you don't have to do anything.

You beat the game in 18 minutes. Right. But it feels like the kind of thing in which like they don't like it feels low enough that the design isn't. You should go and get the full set by grinding for hours. It should be like, oh, you you're like, oh, cool. It dropped and then like move on to a new area. Yeah, but that's not the reality for many people. Well, because it depends on how much you care about what your looks are, right?

Or how your style is going to be. And I know for me, I'm just like, I'm wearing what I like of what I pick up up until I see something where I'm like, I want that. I legitimately want to do that, you know? I mean, I had that back when it was like when I got the the skeleton, the predator head in DS2, you know, back then. And right. And I have that moment in these games sometimes.

And in this case, for example, like, yeah, I spent most of the game kind of going like, well, or most of my play through so far going like, I'm going to I'm going to, you know, mix and match what seems cool. But if I see a specific set that I'm like, no, I'm going to stop and get this. I know I'll enjoy myself more because I care about the fashion, you know? So have you gotten the enchanted night set yet? I don't think, oh, from the demo, what that is.

I don't know. No, I don't think so. No. OK. That one looks great and is great. And you'll probably like that for a good long ass while once you get it. I did get the the cuckoo night set, though. I did eventually get it, you know? So I have that and I do have the as well as the the the Godric one. So, you know, I essentially got what I was looking for. But those are the only two enemies I saw in the game.

I was like, I want what you're wearing, like the whole the whole thing. Give me that, you know? And I imagine, well, going through the Stormvale, the the the the the the exiles, like they just dropped their shit way more frequently. Like I got a bunch of weird, weirdly fast and lots of it. I had tons of it. Exactly. So those were not much of a problem, you know?

Anyway, anyway, cool. Yeah, Elden Ring. All of that continues as does Final Fantasy six over on Woolly versus. Be sure to check it out. Plus, we got some specials and best ofs that are that are coming out, too, as well. And, yeah, I think. As well as and then we're going to put up the stream archive, too, of the.

Of the the charity stream. Thank you to everybody who who came out and supported pretty good cause, I'd say, for them kids. That's what basically just everyone is just like, yeah, for the kids, which is, you know, which is good. And, yeah, no, happily, I can say that we raised above 10,000 just above that. We got to 10,800, which is enough for three

portable stations to the Children's Hospitals. So thank you, everyone, for that support. And true to form, as always, enough to run a tournament is what you said. Yeah, yeah, you can run a full bracket with at least three setups. You can do you can do a solid, you know, you can you can get like a 64 man done, you know, with with three, or you can do a smaller bracket with a side tournament, even if you wanted to. Like like a local major, even.

So, yeah, good, good stuff on that. Also, I'm I know some I've seen some people were going like, like, that's more than the cost of a console. And it's like, yes, because it includes multiple games, the television, the portable stand to play it on everything included for it to be a large variety of options and a pretty good monitor that is movable to multiple children's rooms. So it's not just an Uya and

and like a hand, you know, a handheld screen. So, yeah, they're there, they're there, they're building them a proper setup. So thanks to everyone for that. Good, good stuff. Good stuff. Is that pretty much it for your week, man? Pretty much. All right, let's see.

What the fuck did I play this week? Well, I talked about I talked about what do you call it? I can't even remember the fucking name of it. Tokyo Ghost Rider. That's not the name of the fucking game. Ghostwire. Ghostwire. Thank you. Yeah, no, I talked about that before. I talked about Kirby.

I took a look at Weird West. Are you familiar with this at all? What's that again? So it's a devolver game and it's an immersive sim that's done from like a top down perspective, like a like a fallout game. Oh, was there a trailer for it in their in their their wacky direct in their wacky fake video game that they put out as a direct? Yeah. Yeah, there was a trailer for it.

OK, yes. It's really cool. It really just feels like a I don't know how to put this, but like an alternate future for like the fallout series. That is not just that is not Outer Worlds. That is not out. No, that's not Outer Worlds. No, it keeps the same kind of perspective. It does change it to like like real time combat with like shooting guns and what not.

But it's focused on like, do you want to use your skills? Do you want to use your sneaking around? You want to use different kinds of RPG mechanics? Like it was really fun. And the setting is. I mean, it's a weird Wild West with pigmen and magic. It's just very it's very cool. That's it. That's all I got to say about it.

Does it have the trademark, like devolver family style of? I wouldn't say so. No, OK. I will say that, like it was a little it was a little sad that it was going to be an ISIM and that it didn't have key codes or anything like that, because for an ISIM to be an ISIM, you have to have the first key code be zero, four, five, one only for the first quest of the game to have a guy give you a safe combination,

which is zero, four, five, one. So thank goodness. Yeah, that's hello. Yeah, no, no, I'm just I'm like, no, I'm just like, is that that's like your your Deus Ex legacy, right? But I want to say it's System Shock one legacy, actually. I was going to say, where did it start? Yeah. OK. All right.

Yeah. And they just all have it's like, it's just the the only one. The only one that doesn't that I can think of is like pray and I pray death loop and death loop. If you try zero, four, five, one, it basically gives you an achievement. Goes a nice try, but no dice. OK. And I also took a look at Norco. Have you seen or heard anything about Norco?

OK, I don't know how to describe Norco. Let me think about this. OK, did you watch True Detective Season One? Yes. OK, do you remember how True Detective Season One had those really long driving shots of showing off that like World Louisiana might, in fact, be the most godforsaken fucking place on this earth? You're in hell. You are in hell. And the Yellow King is just doing what he should be doing. Yeah.

Right. So Norco is a sort of what if future around the Louisiana area in which you go back to town because your ma died and you got to put her affairs in order. But ma was also looking into some weird cyborg shit. And you and your cyborg companion start wandering around town. And the first thing that you got to do is go down to the gas station. But that fucking prick you used to know just hangs out in the parking lot and shakes people down.

And he's just this disgusting balding dude and a wife beater just going, I want to you beat his ass up so you can buy fuses from this nightmare, fucking automated convenience store that has no humans in it. The term seeing described here is Southern Gothic. Yeah, that's that would I would I would call it Southern in this particular case, Southern Southern cyber gothic and it's a point and click adventure. And it has a really, really like dead on style of 1994 complete with optional CRT filter. Oh, nice.

And it's just it's just like these. It's just these like constant like you click on something and it'll give you this long story about how the house that you guys bought flooded three times and how fucking mad your mom was and how she didn't really love your dad, but it was a whole complicated fucking situation and how they're getting too old to bring out the drywall, blah, blah, blah. And then the robots. So it's like all this like very like classic,

like I'm going to call it like misery, Americana storytelling. OK, but also there's a robot there in a spot here there. Was there a cyber tremay going through Nolans, you know, with the with the with the mechanical trumpets and such? Well, I'll tell you what, one of the very first things that happens in the game is that your mom can't make ends meet for cancer treatments. So she ends up getting fucking wrapped up in a fucking crypto fucking shit and has to go to like dead drops to some fucking

convenience store that can't sell anything because people don't want these shitty fucking tourist trinkets. And she's having to try and figure out how to buy a 12 year old hot dog with fucking crypto bucks because nobody fucking takes anything but cash. But I don't have any cash. I just got these wumpa coins or whatever the fuck they are. It's a fucking weird game. I really like it.

Yeah, it's just it's like, but I hope you like reading. I really hope you like reading. And kind of being sad. Well, I'm looking at screenshots and I see it's got that full on like. Like there's a permanent text box on the right side of the screen, and it seems in almost every screen. No, that's just every screenshot that got taken that you're looking at. They happen to have clicked on something.

So it's not like this, but I mean, functionally, if you were like looking at a video timeline and scrolling through, it would look like there's a permanent text box on the right side of the screen. It does share like a similarity kind of in tone with disco of not quite the real world, but also like dirty and miserable. It's good. I really like it. Oh, beautiful art. And that's is that it for me?

I think that's it for me. OK, is this all I'm going to look over and see people going, you forgot about this is all pixel art or is it 3D? This looks like it's all it is all pixel art. Yeah, OK, yeah, it's all pixel art. Yeah, that's it for me. The next stuff that I'm going to be putting on my channel is all going to be pre recorded stuff this week.

I got some best of compilations and I got some some pillars of attorney things that I recorded. So those will go up like as normal at seven p.m. Tuesday or Friday. Aside from that, I'm basically just be like catching some disease. OK. Oh, and that's a twitch.tv slash pet stairs at you. That's that's where you should go. Cool. All right.

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You're the one with the docket. Uh, yeah. Okay. Well, there's been some rumors and there's, I was hoping that they would, they would, um, be confirmed by at least the time of going live. But unfortunately they're still in the rumor phase. Uh, let's just say they're confirmed. And if we're wrong, we'll just, we'll just say that we made a mistake.

Well, blame, blame Bloomberg in that case, but, uh, a Game Pass competitor from Sony is apparently coming very soon. Uh, this week, it's going to be revealed at some point, perhaps even. Oh, I saw a lot of people talking about this code named Spartacus. And this will be the, um, this will be the way to challenge Game Pass. However, uh, immediately alongside this rumor is the idea, uh, is the possibility that while it will be a Game Pass challenger, they're going to, and they're going to have like a merging of like, um, uh, PlayStation plus and a couple

other things into it, it won't include the biggest titles on day one. Oh, cool. It's useless. Great. So it's essentially, I mean, well, it's, it's, it's not going to be for all the people that Game Pass is for, which is like a lot of people that are trying to get in on what's hot and also, you know, save a buck, right? It's going to be for anybody who's not necessarily trying to stay on, on the

cutting edge of what's coming out and, and, and it's just for like, think of all the value you get from a subscription to PlayStation now. Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you what, for you, for me, and for anyone who's listening to this, this probably serves very little purpose. Uh, for people that are way more casual about it, they might find benefit in the subscription service. I like, that's, that's the, the conventional wisdom.

And I, I challenge it every time because I feel that the average person who doesn't play video games often enough to really care about the hot new releases don't care enough to sign up for a monthly video game subscription service. I, I think so, but I mean, I got like every once in a while, you know, like when you, I mean, I, like I talked to like, for example, like some of Punch Bombs friends and, you know, about like, Hey, what are you guys up to? What have you been playing? You know, and I'm kind of finding out they're like, Oh yeah, like one of them

might be in Telden ring. And then, you know, some of the others are like, Oh yeah, I just, you know, they're just getting around to like something from last year or something. You know, like, Oh, picked up then, you know, old, the assassin's creed or something, like there's, there's a group of people that are not on the what's hot this month, but I still have one of these consoles and I want to play something on it. Um, I mean, hell, a bunch of those people also never got a PS5 because you can't

fucking get them. Cause you can't. UK literally cannot get them. Um, but that's, that's it. It just, you know, for people who are playing games the most, who are everyone who's within earshot right now. Uh, yeah, this is like not having the big titles up defeats the purpose because the whole point would be that you want to use this service to do the almost

like, you know, the GameStop rental service where it's, it's the buy the latest traded in, uh, uh, thing, you know, where it's like, it's a rental service at that point really, and you trade it in and the bucks go towards whatever the newer thing is, uh, within two to three weeks period. If you can't do that with it, then, then it's not going to, it's not going to serve the purpose people that constantly play games would want it for, you know. Um, but again, I, I do, um, I do always consider that like, yeah, there's probably enough people out there that are down to like Netflixify the idea of

their games, especially now that that's become the, the, the thing. And now that we're quickly heading back to a level of, uh, multiple subscription services that rival network television to begin with. So we now basically have what it used to be, except it's, it's, it's recreated digitally. Oh, I think there's news about that on the docket later. So, um, uh, yeah, I, I, well, we'll wait to see what the details are for this and what the price is going to be, you know, but that's, that is what's

coming and yeah, if it doesn't have the latest, then it's definitely not going to be an actual rival to game pass because it's not going to be serving the same audiences. Yeah. It's just, if it does, if it doesn't do the same, like it's just worse for the same price. Now, the question is, of course, is like, how old will the games be? Right.

It definitely can't be the PlayStation plus thing of like, um, last year, for example, you know, or, or so, but, uh, if it's a matter of like two months out or something like that, then yeah, you know, it might, it might still, it might still work out. Um, let me just do a quick check to see, but I don't think there's been any other details about it. Of course, what the other, what I'm wondering is like, like, if it's combining PS now and PS plus and it's going to have multiple tiers, um, will

that affect the ongoing services or will it just be, you know, built on top of that? At a glance, yeah, we just got to wait for the official reveal. Yeah, I, I wonder if, I always wonder when these things like leak out like this, that they leak out these details to gauge the reaction and see, like if people go, why would I get that? If it's not dead date, I like to change it behind the scenes. Yeah.

No, no, I don't, I don't, I think there's strategic. I think we absolutely live in a world of strategic leaks where the marketing team wants to gather data on how people feel about things. Totally, totally. Um, yeah. Now, the other thing too is like, if there's a, like, if there's a possibility that like, you know, they're not going to put out their AAA Sony first party things, but other companies are down to have their things included, then that

could make it better as well, providing it's an opt-in basis. Um, and you have to wonder if like, so the way PlayStation Plus worked with its free games was that every time someone downloaded it with their purchase, with their PlayStation membership, that would count as a purchase, which Sony would pay for, uh, behind the scenes at a bulk rate, right? Yeah, that deal rules every purchase you make through a download of the service is actually going to the developer as at a bulk rate, like individual copy sold. Um, if that's happening here, that would still be a very good deal for, for

all developers that'd be incredible. Um, and if Sony is taking, you know, the, the, the basically the cost of the subscriptions and putting them towards that purchase, um, then yeah, um, the devs win and players went out, you know, that's, that's a, that's a great deal. But, um, the other thing is, it's like, what if it was, okay, there are the latest titles on it, but you have to pay for a super tier, you know, at a certain point where you're like, you're going above the $10 per month range. That it's still just a worse thing compared to game pass.

If you're playing, yeah, if you're, if you're directly, if you're directly playing like that amount, uh, of new games per year, like you can, it can pay for itself in those purchases. But again, they're, they're real, the real point is what can you get if you were to do this with game pass instead and the exclusives and the shit that's not an Xbox is going to be what your biggest selling point would be. Um, anyway, so more about that, uh, later, maybe, maybe, maybe, um, if it's real. All right.

Other things going down, uh, subscription services are not, uh, that's not the only thing going on because, uh, yeah, Rockstar is like, we too would like to gasify, uh, our, our already existing gas. So let's get a reveal going for GTA plus, a membership program for GTA online, um, and this is console only. Now, as someone who is not, uh, who's, I'm always surprised to hear about how active the GTA online, uh, communities continue to be, uh, all this time after all this time.

I can't see a single person liking what this deal is giving and thinking that it's worth it. Oh, you're nuts. Oh, you're not really? Because the reception I'm seeing is like, what the fuck? Um, yeah, from savvy consumers that you'll see on Twitter. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Fair. Compared to like, I'm talking, I'm thinking of like the 55 year old grandma that, uh, drove our Uber the last time I was in the States, ranting and raving about how much she plays the GTA online. Okay. So GTA plus members, um, are going to be able to sign up and you're

going to get with your GTA plus membership, uh, 500,000 GTA bucks, uh, delivered automatically. Um, and then, um, some, a principal devist, devastate, um, auto shop located somewhere that introduces gameplay updates, uh, car model member, car meet memberships, yacht owners can upgrade their yacht. Oh man. Who, who cares? I like every single person I've seen that knows what this shit is goes.

It's a fucking total ripoff. It's bullshit. Um, and then RP stuff as well. I see at the bottom of this list, but man, I have never, I have never felt. So you remember that time we didn't know what fucking, um, GMOD was. Yeah. That yeah, they felt about that out of touch weird. I've never felt more out of touch, even including that moment than when I discovered

like what most people are doing, playing Grand Theft Auto online and they're doing like the role playing super long form role play, just driving around or being cops. So that's so fucking weird. That's what I was talking about is like, I had no idea that there was this giant role playing community that was existing and that like not only that, but they stream like different, um, major like events where people like either some, some servers are strict about whether or not you can like joke around and break character and others are, you know, like more loose, but these are all like huge

communities and it seems like it's, you know, looking at the fact that, um, that shit is included on the list of what you get with this membership. They're basically just going, there's a secondary market here of people that are like into the RP scene. How can we get a couple more from them? You know, yeah, um, man, I don't understand that shit at all. Like I popped into like a bunch of streams of people doing it and they were like standing around pretending to sell fake drugs to each other.

And I'm like, I, oh my God, what is the fuck am I watching? It's so fucking, it's not weird. It's just so transparently shit. Whenever, um, something has an unexpectedly long tail end to its life, uh, with a game and then like, uh, fucking, you know, marketing man comes over and goes like, oh shit, how can we find a way to recharge these people for continuing to love this product over time? You know, um, I mean, shit, the fucking, um, uh, uh, when, when there's like,

oh, the Capcom tournament rules or whatever that, that like from a little bit before it was like, they just, they announced like some rules for like, oh, certain size tournaments. If there's a prize pod of certain size, you've got to be officially, you got to be officially like approved or whatever. And it's just complete horseshit. Um, we're just like, anyone that likes your game enough to play it more than the people who just do a couple of weeks and then phase off of it, shouldn't be

punished for liking the game and continuing to play it. Well, I mean, they're not punished by just not buying this. No, no, no, I suppose not. No, no, no, that's, that's true. That's true. It, but it's, it's, it's a, it's a scummy fucking look, I suppose. I'm just like, yeah, rock star to make the grand theft auto. You know what's interesting to me is they wanted to do this with Red Dead, but

Red Dead online is like fucking 1% as popular as GTA online. I'm going to assume, I'm going to assume flat. It's just, it doesn't have cars in it and people like cars. Like the way he would rather fuck a car than a horse. I discovered the existence of GTA RPing because like it was a recommended like a Reddit post that's like a part of a popular community that's a, it was like, there was like shit popping up on like, it was like live stream fails or whatever, you know, that we're just being recommended.

And I'm like, why, like what's, what are these? I'm seeing acronyms that I don't understand, you know, I want to say we talked about this perhaps a month or two ago where I was just like, what the fuck are these acronyms even? What are you describing? And it's like, it's describing the type of server. And like when you, when you join this type of RP, you must stay in character and you must do things that are only in the job of what the role you're

playing as and you can be penalized for breaking it. I don't know, man. Like my history with this stuff is being 10 years old and hopping into fucking TF2 or day of defeat servers or World of Warcraft servers or whatever that were RP servers and just immediately being the absolute biggest immersion on annihilating fucking shithead that existed until they banned me. That's fun in, in an RP context. But I, I, the, the, I don't, I don't get it.

Yep. Well, I'll get it. There you go. Membership program. Just don't get it. Um, yeah. Then, uh, there was a little, there was a little touch on this. I'm sorry.

I just saw people going, oh, so Pat was that guy. Like, oh, right. Yeah. No, that's a whole archetype, isn't it? You're ruining the RP. Yeah. I mean, doesn't every MMO have an RP server as well with that level of life? Um, so it depends.

It really does depend. Um, World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy have RP servers, but it's definitely not like every single MMO has an RP server and FF 14 has a really weird scenario. I don't know if WoW has it, but like when you match up for duties, you'll, um, you'll, you'll match up cross server. So people from the RP server, they take it really seriously. We'll just match up at random with other people during like a dungeon or something. And they'll have, they'll be people that have like, like the really annoying folks

will have like every single time they hit a button, there's like a text macro that comes up with some gigantic long anime fucking cringe shit. And like it's either met with like dead silence or like very blunt mechanical like spin the boss over here, put him to a blah, blah, blah. And like, I've gotten to see, I've gotten to see my favorite interaction where somebody pretends they don't understand the game terms because they're not an RP language and just hell, just fourth and people get so mad. Okay.

No, no. It's great if you are not automatically going to be matched up with people that are also opting in on that server and you continue to enforce your rules. You're an idiot. Oh my God. You deserve like I'm not going to, I'm not going to respond to you if you keep talking to me outside of RP terms, you deserve everything you get. In fact, if you know what's happening and you try to enforce it on the,

on the flip side, RP servers is where you get all the funniest character jokes where I think you probably even saw that fucking guy who just ran an account called Tablecloth. No. There was just, he just, he parked a Lollafell on top of a table in a popular area and called it Tablecloth and just left it there for weeks. Does, do the RP servers have in game official recognition of that? Or is it just a community understood software?

So as I have not rolled on an RP server ever, I believe it is, I believe there is a certain, can you load into Balmung and just start playing it normally? And it's like, there's no rule that you don't pay my sub. I can do what I want. Or is there a message that tells you, Hey, this is different. Think they are enshrined about, I think Balmung specifically is enshrined as the RP server. And I believe you can tag your character as an RP character.

Okay. There's an in game mechanic for this. Okay. And if you went to an RP server and started to just start screaming at the top of your lungs about your Xbox for 15 minutes, like it's possible that somebody would come like a mod or a GM would come over and be like, dude, come on, come on. But like, what if you don't know, what if you're just playing for the first time and you're like, Ooh, that's a funny sound, Balmung, I'll go there.

Right. What if you just don't know? I mean, and then you're like, I'm just playing my game. What's going on, everybody? You know, what's, what's the, I'm just enjoying what I paid for. I'm, I'm under the impression that it would work itself out within about 10 minutes or the other, either they would leave, they would get annoyed or they would just go, Oh, okay.

And just chill or they would pick a different server. Now, when, when the people of Balmung come to chastise me, will they do so in character? Depends. My good sir, my Lord. The real, hey, listen, hey, so a lot of people get like, a lot of, a lot of people get mad when I criticize specific servers. We understand not the language with which. Because they have like a attachment to it.

I don't know. I just think it's fun. But what I will say is that you're really naïve. Well, your worry isn't that they would come and complain to you in RP talk. The genuine worry is that they would look at you and during the conversation, they would mod you on screen into a big teddy fox goddess with horribly deformed joints that breaks her own rigging so that they can take screenshots of you. Something that became so prevalent that they had to put a rules update in the

game's TOS to stop modifying other people's characters and then posting creepy pictures of them. You can fuck with someone else's like, look. Client side, you can. Oh, but not, not from my angle. No, here's what happens. That's really simple. In the FF 14 engine, you have a certain amount of models associated with players.

You have a certain amount of faces associated with certain player characters. Fuck with the textures. Fuck with the models. Yeah, okay. You swap those in for your big teddy Freakazoid mods. Okay. And so now everyone that uses the same settings as you do is walking around to be with with the 10 pounds of saline and then you take photos of them.

Yeah. Creepy modded positions with your character with their name on them and then post them to the official forums. Yeah. Okay. And people go, stop that. That's weird. Don't fucking creep out and fuck my character.

And they actually have to fucking make a rules adjustment. Like not only is modifying against the rules, but also don't fucking do this to people's characters. It's weird on your own machine. Yeah. Okay. And even if you do it, shut up. No, like people would do that in real life in two seconds.

If you gave them the black bear ability to, you can't control my eyeballs. I want it. Oh, yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. Um, well, well, oh, okay. Uh, apparently Min came from Balmong, doesn't RP and never had people with, uh, that took issue with him for not our peeing.

So there you go. Fair enough. Yeah. The vast majority of people genuinely are actually just chill and they'll just RP with their groups and they go to that community, they go to that community so that they're, they're more likely to find like-minded individuals that want to RP with their groups. That's good.

That's good. I, I, I certainly hope it's not, uh, you know, just a whole lot of lightning bolt energy. No. And in fact, uh, when they did that is that is unsolicited, I should say, because you can lightning bolt with your buddies, all you want. There's nothing wrong with that. As long as they all want to play, then that's cool.

Yeah. No, it's, it's really rare to encounter the, the RPR that I just described earlier. Like I've encountered two in seven years. Uh, but when you see it, it's like a fucking unicorn and you're just enraptured by the situation. Uh, and when they made it so that you can just hop servers like for a day, a little while back, like all the, the, the cliques fucking spread out because you don't actually need to be on such and such server in order to actually engage

in this activity. Okay. Well, um, speaking of final fantasy, um, shocker, stranger of paradise is not doing that hot in Japan, despite being immensely popular in the West. It's almost Japan loves limp biscuit. It's almost as if the, the hypothesis was carried through and its conclusion was exactly what was predictable. It is, it is, it is what they wrote down and it is what we got.

Um, it is the fourth lowest launch for a final fantasy spinoff in Japan ever. And, um, it is performing, uh, worse than even Neo performed at launch. Either of them in Japan as well. So ninja team ninja standards are also, uh, usually far above the way this is doing. I think what's wild though is that when you look at these, uh, when you look at these results, like when you look at Japanese sales charts, like they're everything's low, like everything's way low, like it's crazy. Like I think, I think the stranger paradise, uh, I might be wrong, but I

think it was like 48,000 or something like that. Yep. Exactly. Like that wouldn't even fucking chart on like a North, uh, North American or European chart. So the comparison is wild for, um, final fantasy spin offs is tactics at, uh, 600 K, you know, wait, tech tactics. Yeah.

Like one. Yeah. 641 20 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, um, yeah, that's not a fair comparison, but that's the top of the list of spin off final fantasy spin offs. How, wait, you said it's the fourth most popular spin off.

Yeah. Fourth lowest, what's the fourth, fourth lowest. It's fourth low. Oh, okay. Fourth lowest. Oh, what's the lowest? Is it on there? Uh, I'm mentioned, but no, I don't know.

It's not there. Um, but basically low for that metric, low for the low, but low for the metric compared to Neo as well. So, you know, there's a, there's a, a, an operating theory here. Oh, here we go. Okay. I got the list. So top, top of it in terms of launch sales, final fantasy tactics.

Uh, with yep, six and a half, uh, a hundred thousand, uh, Decidia coming in second and type zero coming in third. Um, and then towards the bottom of the list, uh, stranger, paradise, uh, FF fables, Chocobos dungeon, uh, crystal chronicles and Chocobo tails as the absolute bottom. What the fuck is Chocobo tails? Final fantasy fables. Okay.

Sure. Whatever. DS game. Well, that sucks because it's being listed amongst games that I'm like, I don't know what that is. Uh, stranger of paradise. Yeah. I mean, going down this like, and if that, that list is specifically, that's

like, uh, it's number 25 out of 28. So crisis core coming in at fourth, you want to guess what's a good game, except for the parts that came, that's really bad. Want to guess, like half of it, want to guess what's fifth. I can't even keep the number of final fantasy spin-offs in my fucking head. Durage, bro. Just shut up, get out. Yep.

Shut up. Go to hell. All right. Well, Hey, Willie, I think we're at the end of the story. I hate to be so stop and go, but I got to help someone take some heavy ass groceries out of the car. So I'll be back in just a minute.

BRB. Okie doke. Other things going on. Hey, you know what? Actually, um, this is a, this is a new story slash question. Um, there have been a lot of one piece games over the years, uh, that many people have not necessarily cared about is Odyssey, something different from that, that is, that bears mentioning.

That's one piece Kakarot, but that's what I was thinking. I was thinking, I'm like, is this just Kakarot for one piece? Um, yeah, but it's a new story instead of a, you know, a retelling. Okay. So that, so then there have not been other things like this in the one piece catalog up till now then. Cause I, I, to be honest, I'm like, I know there've been a bunch of games from here and there, but not anything that I have necessarily tried or looked at.

So one piece game, new story from the original creator, uh, Odyssey. And yeah, it, it, it looks like it's the Kakarot treatment. Look forward to this great adventure with these cool characters and some of the shittiest drawn antagonists you've ever seen. Although is that series not perfect though for a game of like endless, like little one bit villain of the week style, you know, people to show up for quests and they're just like a weird new character shows up for a particular quest and that's it, you know.

Um, although I feel like, you know how like you can just take a normal human body and dress them up with an NPC character creator and that'll be fine. I feel like you're going to have to go through the, the hard work for every one piece villain because they don't tend to be deformed. They don't share shapes do that much. Do they? No, yeah. No, no, they have to be extremely deformed.

Hell, if, if there was a one piece character creator, like you would have to just give free reign over the size, um, shifting, uh, like, like basically you'd be, you'd have to be able to grab any given limb and stretch it like 300 to 300 percent. Well, yeah, well, that's Luffy's power, but not just stretch it inflated out of rubber inflated among every access, you know. So if I take a human being and then I was in his thumb, he gets big, he blocks the cannonball and then I want to be triangle shaped with humongous feet

and the tiniest of heads. Okay. I mean, you can do that. Like that. I feel like that, you know, start with a geometric shape and then put a character inside of it. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Um, all right. Good, good, good, cool. Luffy is like objectively very close to mouthful mode. Isn't that, is that not what Luffy ends up being later on in that? Like, is the use of the gummy fruit stuff, his powers don't just become mouthful mode. The whole thing was actually like one of the worst things that one of the

worst like, like body is I ever saw is the Jake suit from adventure time. Oh yeah. Where he just squeezes all over. Yeah, yeah, where Jake just eats Finn and Finn just puts his arms and legs out and his head goes over and I'm like, could Luffy do that with someone? There's one where Jake does a full on transformer and like he drops on top of Finn and like folds him inside of himself like a car and then Jake becomes the vehicle, right?

And Finn gets flipped into the Jake car, but his face is like, oh, like he has a look of a horror on his face for what just happened and they just don't acknowledge it and drive off. It's great. Yeah, that's what you need. It's just like, no, we're not going to talk about how that wasn't cute at all. That was horrifying. Luffy, if Luffy ate and piloted Zoro, would they still get lost?

Because I mean, yeah, I don't know. I don't. Like there's whenever you make a stretchy man, whether it be Mr. Fantastic, Plastic Man or Luffy, you have to start finding creative ways to use those powers and it is impossible to not hit horrible vac bed territory after a certain amount of time. It's they're all going to end up there. Well, anyway.

Well, yeah, hey, one piece fans, you're going to get a new one piece game. It looks like it might be a good one. Apparently one piece games are like pretty bad overall. I guess that's why you don't hear about them that often. There was also a, oh, yeah, just quick, quick heads up about a pretty dope looking Kickstarter that just dropped once again with all Kickstarter's be sure to check at your own discretion and, you know, see if you think it's up your alley.

Speaking of, you see your ghost song on update? Oh, God. Oh, man. Yeah. Apparently so. Publisher update or something like that. I don't know. I don't know.

I didn't even bother to look. All I saw is that people were talking about it again. Oldest five dollars in my pocket. God damn, dude. Oh, anyway, so this game is called May Fumado, and it looks like 2D Sekiro, essentially, you know, 2D Souls games, like this is doing a 2D, 2D Souls game, but going Sekiro style with it. Oh, I love this animation style.

Yeah, looks pretty dope. It reminds me of like the Genesis or like Prince of Persia or something like that. Absolutely. And I like as well the, yeah, just really clean pixel art, you know. I remember when we were seeing lots of games coming along in the style, you know, Death's Gambit and that other one. But yeah, this has some pretty slick, you know, combat options. It seems like you got some good defensive movements, good quick

some platforming and some pretty cool looking executions and stuff. There's a one point he flips and decapitates a giant troll as a samurai that looks pretty much like a Sekiro boss kill. Like it's right on with it. This is fascinating because it's done a really old style, but there's way too many frames of animation. It's like, even on the jump. High animation frame rate in detailing.

So yeah, pretty much just, you know, looks like an amazing, looks like a really solid game. It's already right next to close to hitting its goal. May Fumado, it's at 47,000 Canadian out of 49,000 and it's got 66 hours to go. So they're fairly close. It can be done, but under three days left. So just wanted to say, check this out, take a look. And if it fits up your alley, give them some support because I mean, shit, what they're showing so far looks like they got, they got most of the game or a whole

lot of it already done and like they're showing off, you know, like what you're putting your money into, which is this is the amount of game I like seeing already made to feel comfortable supporting, you know. Yeah, the issue with old Kickstarter was that the amount of game they had to show that was made was nothing. So and that and at some point they changed it to be like, no, there has to be at least some at least something before you're allowed on the platform to which some creators said, well, fine, I'll go to other platforms with my nothing.

And you're like, oh, instead of making something, you're, you're instead your, your decision is to just take it elsewhere. I'll take this shit to fig. Excuse me. So may Fumato check that out. Suicide Squad killed the Justice League delayed till next year. Eh, we'll talk more about that when it when it starts to show up, but it's so far away now and from the creators of Bloodborne PSX comes Bloodborne Cart,

which has already gone off the rails. Have you seen this? I've seen a little. I've seen though the preview tweets. So a shout outs to Lilith, AKA a botster who made Bloodborne PSX. I mean, I did the full LP on the channel and she crushed it. It's one of the best demakes of the thing ever. And having full fun with that engine, you can also see she was up to co-op

modes and other weird little fun things. And it all comes together into another announcement for Bloodborne Cart. The intro trailer is the Akira walk up to the bike with the angle. And I'm like, good shit. That's a good start. I like the look of this. Yeah, I'm down. So doing laps around the the the car or friend of cause beach.

They put out a tweet that was basically like we had a second video for Bloodborne Cart and it was help. I'm supposed to be making a cart game, but I added shooting controls and aiming mechanics. Yeah. And if you go to their website right now, they have the battle type prototype up. Of the Bloodborne Cart battle mode, where the hunters doing fucking drive buys on a target. Yeah, that's that's the good shit right there. Man. Oh my God.

How fucking sick? Like, and I think like, like the fun just comes out immediately in concept, right? So Michael is just on foot. Michael Ash is just on foot and you got to keep up with that fucker. You know, I can't wait to see what that cast looks like and what they will all be respectively driving. Yeah, no, give it to me now.

Yo, pizza cutter pizza cutter wheels. Pizza cutter wheels, man, right? Yeah, that would be that would be that'd be like a motorcycle warly gig bike. Right? Yeah, that's the fucking that's the design that like there's so much fun to have with that. Oh, yeah, 100 percent. I'm very much looking and like when you do Bloodborne Germans just in the wheelchair with rockets. Oh, of course, German is unstoppable in the chair. The chair is tricked the fuck out.

That chair is just boosting blood all over the place. Yeah, man. Hell yeah. Gas coin riding a big music box, you know, with wheels on it. I feel like the fun can shine in again, because it's not the it's not about the faithful remake or the D make a redesign now. It's just fan service for all the shit we love. And you can go wild with it, because it's already a funny concept to begin with, you know? I wonder if there'll be any of the beast characters that don't have a cart.

They just run around on their own like Amelia just just runs. Yeah, because she's so big. Could definitely could. Rom is a vehicle just like skittering around and drifting. Yeah, man. I can't wait. There's so much fun and fun stuff to do there with the with the cast of selectable vehicles and characters. And of course, knowing that

she's already put in like above and beyond the expected level of work into like the first project, this is going to be another example of that, you know? So go go check out Lilith on Twitter to see her work on on Bloodborne Cart. That is coming along. Just an update to something, but the Steam Deck is now in people's hands. And so there was an initial report when Jibaley did a test to see how viable this would be for, you know, for, let's say, tournament setups to do like FGC to do fighting games and such plug in two sticks, because as we all might recall,

the promotional material literally showed off a running copy of Strive with two arcade sticks plugged in going, hey, look at what you can do with your Steam Deck. Well, it turns out that no, you can't because not only do most fighting games not run well or without issues or run with issues, rather, Strive specifically has a bunch of textures that don't load. So when you start the game up, basically, you end up having weird looking almost like the the color bars on an old TV set

just popping into the character select screen to various forms of versus mode. Like it just doesn't run. They've managed to get some functionality out of, I think, like single player. But it's so weird that that was advertised as like, you know, a game in the promo for it, but it's not on the list of I forgot. There's a hashtag called Great on Deck is what it's called. And and like the if you if you advertise your game is great on deck, it's supposed to be like good to go.

But the only fighting games that run, quote unquote, great on deck are Skullgirls and Them's Fighting Heards. It turns out just about everything else is kind of struggling. And I think someone explained that the reason why is because they were made, those two specifically were made engine wise to function natively on Linux, whereas a lot of other games that use unreal don't. But in the end, anyone who was hoping

that this could be a solution to, you know, getting PC setups or or or something easy to do PC tournaments on. It's just not there yet. I don't think it's ever going to. Or at all. Yeah. Bummer, man. At bare minimum, you hope for like at least it'll run like in a semi decent

state so that you can just practice combos or something if you wanted to. Because that's ended up what being what what the the Vita version of Marvel three, like you're not going to take it seriously, but it does have hitboxes, displayable in training mode on that and only that version of the game. So you then get that in order to do your labbing. And then that's not that was such bullshit. Then they know what they're doing. You know, they're basically it's like it's selling frame data.

It's just they're hiding something you want in a version you'd never buy otherwise, you know, but yeah, in that in that case, at least the game worked. So. And then. Lastly, we have some Elden Ring diggers that are reporting that in the files of the game, there looks to be a number of icons and specific art that references the game was going to have a bestiary.

Yeah, I saw that it's like there's there's both like gray and like black icons for every enemy in the game. Sixty four unique icons ranging from regular soldiers, nobles to animals, demihumans, God skins and some unrecognizable ones. No major bosses, but there was going to likely be a bestiary. And the game fucking totally would be awesome to have one. Dude, I would love to have a bestiary in this kind of game. We've got a map that's, you know, like detailed in a way that

it would be awesome to flip through pages of, you know, profiles and descriptions for things, because again, that's where the that's where something like the grim would be able to shine through as well. You know, if you wanted to have like you have your item descriptions up to up to that level of detail, it'd be really fun to see them written on the on the the animals and the things you encounter as well, of which there's so many and then contribute to the lore. Why are those Kaleid dogs like T Rex's?

What the fuck is happening with those? Kaleid sucks, dude. Yeah, why? No, Kaleid sucks shit. Of course. But like. But what what specific type of of of brought, you know, yeah. Well, all right. Yeah. I saw some folks digging through Elden Ring and they found something else.

You know, the six divine towers? No. So I mean, so, you know, I found I found a divine tower, I suppose. OK, well, there's six and they're they're equidistant. They form a little circle, right? Well, if you use, you know, a ruler and a pen, you can see that they, you know, and draw a line through all of them to each other, right? You can see that the point in the dead center of the divine towers is a big, super dense cloud in the center of that little

lake that's right in the middle of the, like, you know, east of Learnea, north of Limgrave, you know, the middle of the map. East of Learnea, north of Limgrave, you know, when you're in Limgrave and you look north and you see the Erd tree. Yeah. And it's all water. Sure. The map has not uncovered for me to the east of Limgrave, to the east of Learnea yet. I'm not there yet. OK, well, regardless, when you're in Limgrave

and you look north, you see the Erd tree, right? Sure. And there's water. Yes. OK, right. Around that is six divine towers. And at the dead center is a weirdly super like in game dense fog that you can't see through at all. And when you get closer through it with no clip, you find out that there is a giant section of that ocean that is a completely unused square. Like there isn't even like water there.

It's just completely texturless, gigantic square dead center, which is probably where the DLC will go. OK. Um. Yeah, that's that's pretty much it. Oh, you don't have crunchy roll on here. Hold up. That was there. Oh, it's sub only now, right?

Something like that. Crunchy roll. It said, hey, unrelated to absorbing funimation, you will absolutely have to subscribe and pay us money to watch your anime. No more ad supported anime for you. Crunchyroll ends ad free supported simulcast streaming for the 2022 season. Subway, I wonder what people will do. What crunchy roll used to do?

Country, a lot of people don't know this, but Crunchyroll just used to be a straight up pirate website. And then they went legit. And then part of the going legit is they had ad supported free streams of anime so that you could watch ads and they'd make a little money off the ads and you could watch your anime for free. And now that their primary competitor, Funimation is them. No more.

Yeah, well, it's it's again, back to roots, back to back to what they used to be. It's the watching like watching the streaming thing for every single thing follow the same path over and over and over is so. Hey, I would really like to buy this. Go go fuck yourself. Can I buy it? OK, actually, yeah, you know what you can. And you can all buy it in one place and it's really convenient.

Oh, thanks. I will now buy it. Hey, do you want to subscribe to Disney plus HBO Max? Netflix and and the four other fucking pieces of shit you never heard of to see one show that comes out for a three month period? No, I don't want to do that. We'll do it. I think I have a better idea. It like I said, the slow recreation of paying multiple companies for your television channels is now being recreated on the internet.

It's and the pace at which you get your company set up to have that. The slower you are, the dumber it gets because then by the time you're ready to start, you know, charging people for that shit, you have to then pull all of your shit off of the existing services that people have been using, but you didn't want to abstain from because not having access to your shit was worse than a holding out. So you eventually reveal, oh, I've got my own and let's pull up all of our shit. And now we split it all up again and we just recreate the same shitty TV

world on the internet. It's it can't go any other way. And just like the first time people go, I'm just going to just going to watch it anyway. Like, Willie, do you want to sign up for a Paramount plus Canada subscription? So that you can watch that mediocre Halo show? No. Yeah, me either. It's either going to lead to me not watching that Halo show

or watching that Halo or watching it. Like it's yeah. No, some things. Anyway, so some things never will change and never really change. It's it's wild to me how how badly the war against piracy was lost. Like like the RIA and all that shit. And like just fucking didn't make a dent. I mean, when you show up late,

essentially chasing people around going, hey, hey, hey, no, you get and and and like you could have there was a time and a place where you could have showed up, embraced the idea and like essentially offered people like the best quality of something that they're willing to consume while they're willing to consume it at a reasonable price and like everyone would have been on board. But that's not the way you played it. And this is like I still have.

I still have the situation where it's like if I really like a TV show, I would like to buy a digital version when I look for the vast majority of shit is just completely impossible. So when I go to look up to when I go to look for it to see any given movie, for example, I go to rent it. I'm like, yeah, I'll go. Let me let me look to see if I can rent it. Like that's my first instinct, you know, in many cases it is.

And then other times I, you know, I get quoted in an article that says, hey, HBO, I'm trying to give you money, but it seems you don't want it. You know, my you know, my favorite version of this is did you see Netflix last week was like, hey, motherfuckers, stop sharing your password, you're stealing from us. You motherfuckers read ads about stealing password. Sharing password.

You literally have a tweet from a couple of years ago that says love is when you share a password with with a friend or a partner for your Netflix account. Like what? Yeah. Yeah. It's like I have a Netflix account and my parents also use it. There's, you know, there's Pat and then there's mom and dad. The day that they say that I cannot use that,

I am quitting that service immediately. Just just be like on Twitter, at least be like, hey, so it's me, the social media dude. I wrote this tweet back when it was cool, but then the company policy changed and this is going to look real awkward as I get ratioed myself. But, you know, it's it's it's what it's the change that's happening because when anyone and everyone retweets and or quotes you

with your own stupid shit, like, ah, anyways, yeah, that was that was funny. Well, you know, nothing really changes in the end no matter how often changes shakeouts. Let's take some letters. Hey, if you want to send in a letter, it's going to be an email and you can send that email to Castle Super Beast Mail at gmail.com. That's Castle Super Beast Mail at gmail.com.

All right, we got one that says, Dear Leather Daddy Sword Snatchers, D here, have you ever hated a character design upon seeing them and then 180 upon seeing them do a cool thing? Like, no, the one eyed leather pants wearing Ivan from Devil's Third who can catch a katana blade with his hands or the one eyed tattooed leather pants wearing Magima from that game. I forget who can catch a katana blade with his teeth.

No, no, never. OK, the aesthetic, the aesthetics of a design to me are completely separate from the characters attached to the closest thing I could I could say with this is that in Hunter Hunter. Gone is like one of the ugliest main characters in the world. I think the way his shorts and jacket make his legs and arms look fucked up and weird, but he spends like a hundred episodes in the shorts and like a wife beater and he looks completely fine.

Oh, OK, he looks totally normal. Cool, cool, cool. But like, that's not the same design. Yeah, right. Well, that's never to taking off the orange jacket and just having the ninja tights underneath. Right. Like that, it's like a slight modification, but yeah, I see it.

I have one that kind of comes to mind, but it's not quite the same thing. But the closest I can fit to this, because I as well can I do separate the characters actions from their their aesthetic King Kitan. When King Kitan first shows up, I felt like I like. Well, the character and then you have the actual then you have the actual fucking gunman. I feel like King Kitan kind of fills this role as like the second fiddle, the goofball boss, Borot kind of energy.

But he still has these badass moments, you know. Like the shotgun, for example. And like it's a it's a thing where it's more of a gradual. It's more of a grad you OK? I'm just waiting. I have something to say about King Kitan. OK, it's more of a gradual like escalation throughout the series. But yeah, King Kitan like obviously gets gets his finale.

And when he does, it's like, oh, shit, that solidifies you as like fucking sick. You're one of the champs. I still remember when I went over to your house, your apartment. Many years ago, and you were watching Gurren Lagann before I showed up and you had it paused on the screen. And I walked in and looked over and the screen was just the Kitan mech like full frame and I looked at you and said, what is this fucking banana robot? Shit, you're watching.

And I you look like you were going to have an aneurysm because you were like, it's the coolest thing. I'm like, whatever, baby. And then I like went into a different room. Yeah, OK. I'm sure checks out that probably happened. That like I remember it so that you're a banana man. What?

Like, I'm like, he looks like a stupid banana robot, whatever stupid thing. And then I only I watched Gurren Lagann later, like like months later when somebody recommended it to me and I'm like, oh, there's that banana robot. Oh, that's that's that's the closest thing is the banana robot glows the fuck up and it gets real cool. It's OK. No, I love the. It's fucking cool.

And don't forget the multiple forms as well. Like it, it. Yeah, but they all the forms in Gurren that aren't Gurren, they all look pretty similar. He's a star. He's a star. Star banana. Yeah. Well, we got one coming in from Ali in the UK.

Hey, guys. Long time listener. First time writer. Been listening to some of the old CSBs recently and I've gotten to the Game of Thrones is shit. Elden Ring announced with Grimm attached arc and the infamous lock the man in a shack until he finishes the book. He owes me arc and got me thinking. Since you're at very different points in Elden Ring,

you probably have different answers. How much of Grimm's influence do you actually feel in it? Was it worth getting him or should they have? Should he have prioritized his books instead? I think it's significant and I think it's you can definitely feel it. And he was worth it. But like I can only imagine he could have banged out the stuff that's in Elden Ring in like a week.

He wrote the background for the gods and their backstory. Like he didn't he didn't write like the narrative or or any of the item descriptions. I can feel his influence over the lower characters. And yeah, like everyone that I'm I'm being told about the the the bosses, you know, that I'm probably going to meet and the the other round table stuff. Like I feel as if like you can sense his influence there. You know, the night of long knives like come the fuck on.

That is a grim ism if I've ever seen one. Relationship drama is in that way, you know, is a is a grim ism. There are some things that stand out more than others. But I would say it feels significant enough in the the the the major pieces so far. But I've only had a few of those major pieces. But yeah, I don't think I don't think like he did. Like any progress was stalled on the books because of this.

Like the the the work he did on Elden Ring, it feels like it was a short period. I would love there to be some kind of documentary showing like, OK, so he wrote up, you know, 50 pages worth of this and then a couple of descriptions here. And then more or less just checked over some preset work. Like did he walk through like Lucas in a golf cart? You know, and did he roll over and point at Talon and Maul and go their friends and everyone went, oh, and then there's like, OK, and then they solidified it, you know, did he look at that he grab a handful of characters and go?

God family. Our family. Yeah, and picks up the action figure of Melania and goes, what if stinky lady? And then we just go, OK, thanks, Grim. That's yeah, I would love to see a documentary of a day in the life of George R. Martin and it's like, get up, take a shower, do all that stuff, have breakfast. Watch TV, OK, then go into the writing room and just piss all over the writing room, just piss everywhere. Take a dump, smear it on the old copies of books around, go take a shower.

Like not even enter the room, stand at the door frame and launch his fluids into the room without entering. Let's see if I can get it on my desk. I refuse to enter. Oh, yeah, I feel his influence. I do, I do. Um, let's take any goes to his email and goes, what if a man had a tiny horse but man big?

I'm a genius and sends that to Miyasaki. Um, what if phase two, like, here, write a cut scene for this boss, Grim. All right, here, we got one coming in from Geo. The game says hybrid genres made too early for their time. Hello, WP of Castle Super Beast. While browsing YouTube, I happened upon a video of old PC games. I remember enjoying the demo for Rise and Fall of Civilizations at War. It was published by Midway and the game was developed by St.

Stainless Steel Studios. It was a hybrid RTS and FPS. You could manage your base and units like a typical RTS, but you also had the ability to control the hero unit directly. Camera would shift into a third person view. You could move around and slash and shoot enemies in buildings. I remember it got middling reviews, but mostly because Midway ended up closing the studio, uh, mid production due to no funding.

Can you think of other games that mashed together two genres that you thought were cool, but in the long time, uh, didn't spawn copycats? I've, I've mentioned it a bunch of times before, so you probably know where it's going, but sacrifice is what comes to mind right away. That's the game that I played on PC way back when, where you're playing third person running around, but you're also RTSing your, your base and your units over to the enemy base as you are on the battlefield itself as well. I'm looking at this Rise and Fall game and it is pretty impressive for the time,

but at the same time, like this general's genre never caught on. Like this, this went on to become like a brutal legend. I was about to say sacrifice as well went on to become brutal legend. And like that's the end of that game also didn't hit. Yeah. Um, it's impossible to not also think of, uh, for me at least guilty gear overture, you know, as the proto MOBA, but, um, all these types of things kind of hit that same, your third person action or first person, but you're also

doing strategic things and controlling it from a, on the, on the ground point of view, um, and yeah, Anarchy is ahead of its time. And I'll say that until a game comes out that's just like it when people care. Wait, that wrestling game, that wrestling game you played, isn't that like pretty close? I was about to say rumble versus the closest you're going to get, dude. Oh, cause it's, it's way closer than anything else. Yeah.

You're, you're not getting anything like that until, until rumble verse. Also, I'm talking about Anarchy Reigns. I just think the title Max Anarchy is better. Fucking great. Agreed. Hey, I'm not going to shame you for going with a Japanese title that's cooler. Trust me. It's cause the villain's name is Max.

Yeah. The whole thing. No. Try, you know, as someone who will infuriate people over my over that, that exact thing, I will not shame you for going with the cooler name. I also think biohazards a way better name for Resident Evil than Resident Evil is. Agreed. I like, I'll take, I'll take fucking judge eyes.

You know, I'll take that. Anyway. That'll, that'll, that'll do for now. That'll do it. That'll do it. Okay, we'll see you guys next week. Everybody stay safe out there. What are you laughing?

What are you laughing about? I see it. Just a little, just a little, just a little, a little tweet. That's, uh, yeah, let's just say it, you know, well, Chris Rock was lucky that all the other dudes, Bang and Jada didn't rush the stage. We'll see you next week.