Castle Super Beast - CSB295: You Can’t Hand a Beast Frame Data

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

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["Sailor Moon Theme"] Hello? Hello. So, this is the- am I okay? You are okay. You are here. You are- you okay, you're okay. You're here You're you're You're here. You're alive The pre-empt man fuck Jimmy though, okay, so you man fuck Jimmy the the it's clear that the audience Energy has decided how this is opening

The energy is clear. People have walked in with their signs and they're holding them up loud and clear. Fuck you, Jimmy! Okay, so we're opening straight first salvo hot into a mouthwashing spoiler cast. Can you turn me up so my fuck jimmies can match the volume a little bit more closely? Sure thing, sure thing. We can always do that. There you go, you're up.

Everybody hates Jimmy. I hate Jimmy. Um, so, so, yeah, if you have not played mouthwashing, do that. Do that. The following conversation is going to not hold back on any of the spoilers. It's a short game. It's playable in three hours, maybe four.

And it's very, very spoilable because it's very much, it's like a movie almost, you know? You just kind of play through it. So all right, spoilers are commencing. Man, fuck Jimmy. Yeah, yeah, sure, spoilers are commencing. Man fuck Jimmy! Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, right? I mean, people are gonna walk in hearing that unavoidably and be like, what, huh? But here's what I'm walking away with, because I sat down afterwards with this, and you know

what, here, let me even put the thing on because people are gonna wander in here a little late. And be like, what are you guys talking about? They're gonna wander in here a little late and not know. So yeah, let me put the sign on. We're not talking about Jimmy metaphor. And we're not talking about the concept of mouthwashing. No, you should do it. We're not talking about the concept of mouthwashing. No, you should do it.

We're not talking about just whether or not you should use mouthwash at all. My mouth tastes minty after I do it. Shout outs to Wayland Yutani Colgate. That's pretty cool. I'm a fan of that setting. Okay, so after a little bit of digestion, I'm saying all-time list. All-time list. Griffith.

Yeah, no one's, it's gonna be a while. Joffrey? Okay, yeah, pretty good. Jimmy. Jimmy's pretty bad. You know, I actually, you know, I have something to talk about. Joffrey Okay. Yeah pretty good Jimmy You know, I actually you know, I have something to talk about Unbelievable. I have so I have something to talk about this week that will add to that. I would add Between Joffrey and Jimmy I would add fuck Ted Farrow. Ted Farrow okay okay and fuck Ted Farrow. Eric Sparrow is beneath Jimmy. Yeah no. Eric Sparrow is beneath Jimmy make no

mistake his crimes are on par with Griffith. However, he falls beneath. The scope is small. He falls beneath. That is absolutely, yeah. Griffith, Joffrey, Jimmy, Eric Sparrow, and Ted Farrow? Ted Farrow, T-E-D space F-A-R-O. Okay, how can a man named Ted be so hateable man dude what's that from that is a horizon zero dawn thing

okay okay that is like I always wondered why everyone who beat that game came off with like a single phrase which is just fucked Ed Farrow. And I am now pretty deep into it. And man, fuck Ted Farrow. There's some, so it takes a particular level of disdain, though, because for example, one can say out to the ether,

fuck Luca Blight. And that's like, well. Nah, you don't feel that. Everybody's like, ah, I love Luca Blight. But that's like well you don't feel that everybody's like I love luca but that's like yeah whatever you know sure that's it that look up lights the shit you know that that's my toxic husband as intended you know but there's these little these little these little things and so with mouth washing with Jimmy in particular that is such a successful little space horror story that makes you loathe

a person with an intensity that I have not felt in a long time since the aforementioned previous two characters. And I think the reason why is because in the same way that, you know, remember Scream? 90s, right? Yeah. So the villain in that, it's like, oh yeah, you're just like a 90s douchebag, right? You're prime for the time.

Oh yeah, the villains in Scream are fucking losers. Absolutely, and your college campus fucking dweeb, right on point for the era you're born from. Jimmy is of our time and place in and he is horrible in a way that is way too recognizable. I have known people like Jim. I currently am like, you know that I know Jimmy. I'm people like Jimmy. I currently am like you know that I know Jimmy Fine, I'm related to Jimmy. Yeah, okay, okay My my Jimmy the one that you know, I know Yeah is capable of the things that this Jimmy

Yeah, the Jimmy that that stalked me that Jimmy Jimmy, yeah, yeah, the Jimmy that stalked me, that Jimmy? The Jimmy you know. To the subway station? The Jimmy that, from my past, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that Jimmy, yeah. You, like, a lot of why that chapter is closed is because that Jimmy is capable of the things in this story.

Yeah. So when you see it unfold in this way and then agonizingly have to spend time in their perspective, it's just a deep soul hatred that I have not felt in anything in a long time. I was thinking about what about it is so intolerable? Like what, what is occurring and why is playing through the Jimmy, the Jimmy verse so like repugnant. And I believe I like zeroed in at least for me,

like why I find it so awful. I got two things. Everyone has known that person in their life. Every single person knows this person It's not my fault though, and then they offer like nothing like they offer you nothing as explanation ever that it's not their fault and Because they're a narcissist, but they're stupid Right like a dumb narcissist They're not even smart enough to come up with like the explanation and we are being forced to play through but it's not my fault though right and then and then and then so then what is it and there's nothing there so you're just

you're too stupid does not compute processing echo back the last thing someone said to you so someone said said, take responsibility. Yeah, that's you take responsibility. Yeah, like for sure. No, and like then facing the consequences of your own actions, seeing them and running the fuck away, like high tailing it out of every single decision that you have committed to that has now ruined everything for everyone. And you cannot possibly for a moment sit and think, how did the first Domino get knocked over? Was it me? Could it have been?

No, you know what? You know what? Now that I think about this and I really look at myself and you keep telling me to take responsibility, it's really Curly's fault, really. Like at the end of the day, Curly's the captain. So it's his fault. Like when you talk about just again, echoing bullshit back that you don't even fully get

because again, you're too dumb and also like taking sentiments that depending on their context can have a significant and actually like relevant, like understandable meaning, like you're not defined by your worst moment. You don't get to say that. Like that coming out of someone like him is like. I think it's so great. I think it's so great because you have a story in which many people in this story are actively being... Everyone in that story is being defined by their worst moment.

Anya is consistently defined by her inability to get into med school. Everybody throws it in her face constantly and it has a knock-on effect with the treatment. Swansea's alcoholism is his fatal flaw to the end. All the way through. And of course, well, he plays an interesting role because he owns the fact that he was a piece of shit and what he was and is actually the example of stepping up to it without his personality necessarily changing.

Oh, he's still a complete asshole, right? Like, or no, he stepped up to try to do the right thing. Exactly. Despite your despite your tendencies. Fucking. So, okay, so you mentioned that's what it is for you, right? For me, there was a moment that comes, and it's in that denouement, it's as the ride is coming to a close where the worst has already happened, right?

Everyone's already pretty much fucking cooked and all we're doing right now is just like writing out the conclusion. And from the moment that it's implied what happened to Anya and How the whole like Narrative shifts in that like in that initial moment You kind of are waiting for that like okay So we're gonna spend some time with everybody to learn a little bit more about them and you're kind of waiting for that with her right, you're like after being fucking

raped you would imagine that there's a um really clear narrative moment coming to like examine all of this and especially the fucking insane way that curly reacted right at that point and instead you just fucking breeze past it. You spend no time with the victim whatsoever, right? Her tragedy is just, is in the room at that point. And now after like not getting that moment, and I'm like, aren't you getting, I'm like, game, where's the, aren't we gonna, and not only do you-

No, cause we're Jimmy now. And you don't even think about her She's not a person. She's not like she doesn't register as Like a thought or a blip in his mind. The only thing that she is is a Consequence in that there is a womb attached that has a fucking god. Damn it, there's a baby, oh god, a baby. Oh, god damn it. It's somewhere deep in the back of the recesses of my mind. I don't even acknowledge a person there.

And this is while Flowers Daisuke is being thought about and the admiration for everything Curly is. And you're just like, the most absolute, supremely hateable type of person that does exist, that is someone you know in this world and uses things like things that come from therapy, things that come from- Oh yeah, if you send narcissists to therapy,

they get empowered and they get way worse. Right? They get way, way worse. You don't understand what I've been through. Like here's my prescriptions and you just, you know, you just, you need to show patience to me and the things that I'm doing. I'm setting up a boundary to not talk about the crimes I committed.

Of course, and then classic fucking, what is it, Darvo, right? Deny, attack, reverse, victim, and offender. Right? Classic, super old, reliable, right? The moment you are guilty of doing anything, no you didn't do it, fuck you, you did it. And the fact that you're doing it to me?

How dare you, what a piece of shit. I can't believe you do this to me. How do you think I feel about what you've just done? Right like all of that you get to watch it play out and you get to watch the moment that his like Cognitive pathways ignore every chance he has to own up to what he's done It goes so far as to when Anya eventually kills herself Jimmy like, I don't even see this. Nothing. I literally can't even see this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it deletes,

it deletes the entire scene. Yeah, I don't acknowledge the existence, the pain, the trauma or anything. I had nothing to do with it. It's not my fault, cartoon horses. I think the part that is specifically designed to push you over the edge is, and what set me over the edge is him looking at a room of corpses going,

I can fix it, guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Guys, I can fix it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, it's not too late. Bro, these people are dead. What are you going to fix? You can still be a hero, right?

I mean, when you get to that ultrasound moment with the fucking Polly horse mascot wound thing, and I'm like, oh, what are we doing here? Come on, there's no reason for a Sonic generation, not Sonic Generations, Sonic Dream Collection moment. After, yeah, yes it is. I was like, we don't need to, and then it's like, oh no, this is what he sees,

and this is what he reduces his entire fucking sexual assault to, you know? It is a phenomenally disgusting fucking piece of shit character that can't die fast enough. And while you're agonizingly stuck inside of his slow traipse through the flowers ending you know as someone like that narcissistic has to come to terms with the fact that they're actually can imagine the weight of like thinking you are the center of the universe but then

having to pull the trigger on yourself right oh yeah right the what i'm doing right now is really noble. I'm saving Curly. I'm the hero. I save the ship. And so what fucking made me double take in a second was when Anya reveals her pregnancy and Curly is like... At first she says it and you're like, oh, you're like, oh wait, is there a different relationship between her and Curly that we didn't know about? It's like, at first she says it and you're like, oh, you're like, oh, wait, is there a different relationship between her and Curly that we didn't know about? It's like, no, wait, he's surprised too. He goes, that doesn't make sense. How could that have?

And then it dawns on him, right? And what the captain does, responsible fucking Buck Rogers over here says, okay, oh, this is bad. I can fix it, we can fix it. I'm gonna take care of this, it's okay. We can take care of this. And it's like, what the fuck are you doing?

Like, Curly is like half responsible. Curly is absolute, so like I joke when Jimmy's like, Curly, this is your fault. Yeah, no, Curly is also at fault. Curly is an enabler. The most enabling insane does not take a moment at all to respond in the right way to any of that shit and basically looks at Jimmy as like, I mean, like the fact like he, Jimmy scored this gig because he felt bad for him, right? Like the whole thing was Curly and

like giving Jimmy this opportunity. And then when you're supposed to step the fucking and step the fucking And protect everyone from someone that needs to be fucking at quarantined at best Right and his reaction is just like okay. No, let's let's play this out. It's not that it's not that bad We can still salvage fuck you dude. That's That's insane. Also, Jimmy, not Jimmy, sorry, Curly, you're standing there as your shitbag rapist friend is crying and muttering to himself, I can fix it, I can fix it, I can fix it, I can fix it. And you're like, I wonder what he's gonna do in the cockpit.

Right, right? I wonder how he's gonna fix it, oh, hmm. You know, who would've thought that your shining moment, right of Axing through your here's Johnny But like Swansea is the most justified ever for axing through that fucking door like get the fuck over here you little shit There's a There's a fun little detail that I think that I was thinking about the whole game That's relatively minor. It's in the very first scene when Jimmy's crashing the ship.

And it says, I might have the numbers a little off, but I remember it saying that there is a obstruction, 23 points something AU away. To the right. Right. Yeah. And so Jimmy steers towards it. And in the in-game time period that you are spending, in between that, it says it's now nine AU away, right? So that really jumped out to me because I'm a fucking massive nerd for spaceship.

An AU is 93 million miles. It's the distance between the Earth and the Sun. So in like a minute, they traversed 1.4 billion miles. And then they hit the rock and the rock kept going for eight months. They are like trillions of miles off course. No one is ever going to find them. Ever. Ever going to find them. They're like 50 star solar systems over from where they're supposed to be. So traveling at light speed or whatever beyond, if we're talking about solar distances here, we're on a metric that is impossible to ever salvage. Oh, ever. The

instant they changed course, they would never be found. And then they got hit by the rock and the rock kept going. Okay. And then I was what because I was kind of wondering if we were Yeah, I didn't think about the distance or any of that, but I was kind of wondering if we were being set up for a Yeah, this like evil evil future space Amazon is going to continue sending packaged and parcel deliveries and not bother to look at This lost package over here until we lost one until convenient You know maybe we'll get to it in a couple years time. Like Curly is going to wake up 20 years from now in the pod and then suffocate and die. Sure. Yeah. So all of that just phenomenal use of course of the, you know, on the technical

side the transitions, the fake crashes, which sometimes lead to real crashes. Oh, man, what an insane moment that happened. Yeah. And what was I going to say? Oh, yeah. And just, yeah, the entire character of Swansea being this real interesting, just like dude is barely holding it together, like when things are going right, you know, and so they start to go wrong and he's still, you're like, what are you at first? You're like, yeah, what an asshole. And it's like, no, he's still barely holding on to try to do what he thinks is the right thing based on his information, you know?

And there's that interesting moment too, where like he finds out and he's like, he spoke to Anya, cause like that conversation happened. And he's just kind of like, I know what you are, but you're in this situation, there's almost like, what can you do? And he's like, I'm gonna just sit here by the fucking pod

and keep your ass away from it. And that's it. You know? that's it. Every bar he drops, especially towards in that in that finale. Unbelievable fire Swansea is killing it. And he actually like by telling you his story in that final moment, like he disassembles Jimmy as a character by just telling you what he himself went through and what it meant. And what's Jimmy's fucking response?

Right over, does not, not a single word lands, and he just gives the deepest, purest, it will haunt you forever Fuck you from the heart like that Swansea fuck you is the realest it's ever been because yeah, like what's the point? What's the any if there was any humanity inside you left that could acknowledge this it might have been in that moment for a second You know, um, you can like you can just speed up that process by just having the gun turn a little quicker. The, whatchamacallit, fucking Mass Effect 1 finale moment. But no, no, no, none of it means anything because it's coming from an outside source

and it's not validating, you know? And then you get the wildness of his relationship with Curly as well, where he's so envious, he's so jealous, he wants to be the captain, he wants all that fucking, you know, all the air, all the glitz and all the honor. Doing being captain sucks, everyone just asks me for shit all day. Just help with the fucking pills of the problem you created. God damn it, leave me alone, get off my dick. Fuck.

You know? And then the fact that like that same person that he's admiring so much, but he hates so much because of that jealousy, you know? He can't get over the fact that it's like, yeah, I want what you have, but I don't really want it. I just want to feel the good parts.

He has that admiration, so it's enough for him to still put him on a pedestal and see him in a divine way. But also, I loathe you and I'm torturing you and I want to fucking hurt you at the same time. When you look back at the beginning of the game and you're like giving Curly his pills the first time and like he's so resentful, he's like, how could you do this to us, Curly?

Like you look back at that now and you're like, oh my fucking God, dude, you're off your shit. Incredible, incredible. No connection to reality at all. Yeah, I mean, I shout this movie out often enough, but I really like Shutter Island because of how it deals with just mentally avoiding the problem and doing everything you can to pretend it doesn't exist. But here you get to see the cockpit as like the literal reality is coming up and Jimmy just

swerves that shit off the exit at any and every single point possible. Phenomenal, phenomenal short little story artistically fun as well with the you know the low parley art style and walking around mixing the the ingredients charming you know until until it's horrifying, of course. But I just can't I can't I'm going to be thinking about that for a while, man. A character like Jimmy, who just it's all your fault and you accept none of it in the most in the most it's not my fault 2024 way possible just not fucking shit kid. Yeah, no, it's not my fault though. No, it's no, you know whose fault it is

The guy who can't talk Actually, it's his fault He'd tell you but Got no lips. Yeah, and also like fuck these whores am i right yeah man oh just they're trying to steal my captain's salary at the same time while we're at it um i think it's really incredible for i always love when any piece of media does this, when they sit you down and two characters look directly at you and go, this is a metaphor for the entire game. So when Curly's hanging out with Anya and they're talking about the view screen and she's talking about the dead pixel.

There's a fucking dead pixel up there. And she's like, it's all I can see. And Curly's like, I can't even see that shit. I'm too focused on the big picture. And then that pixel grows and grows and grows and destroys everything. Remember, remember your PSP. Remember that dead pixel that you could never unsee every time you fucking turn that thing off. I do. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. Super great. And then, you know, Daisuke, for what it's worth, it's like people were saying himbo and I'm like, nah, because himbo implies like some

kind of like burly charm or to the dumbness. He's just a Dumbo. He's just, he's just an airhead, you know. And, and yeah, and at the end- A layabout. But enough for Swancy to just be like, okay, yeah, he deserves to get out of here, I suppose. But what I didn't get from that conversation, and I suppose it was off screen, is the implication conversation and I suppose it was off screen is the implication is that like Anya and Swansea talked and Anya decided she did not want saving. I'm thinking that's probably what happened. I don't know. It's impossible to know. Yeah. Fuck Jamie though. It's also like I got to say, I mean going in that direction Because it going in that direction after the intro which starts with a classic little PT moment

Or I'm just like oh, yeah PT hallways. Okay, right? Yeah, the effects of PT have been For they forever changed the genre And I'm like, okay, that's cool But I hope we're not just gonna be five nights at Freddie Ing, a cartoon horse being scary in these hallways. No, and thankfully it does not do that at all. You know, it's really interesting because the walking sim was essentially created with Dear Esther a million years ago by Chinese Room and I played that and it's fine. It's a sad story about a guy whose wife passed away

and They made a bunch of those and Walking simulator became very Decried but now we have a horror type of sub genre of walking sim like like mouthwashing here and PT was the turning point. And the turning point was, don't show people a big fucking wide open area only to seal them down to a single fucking walking path. If you're going to give them a single fucking walking path, make it like a narrow hallway. How about a submarine or a spaceship? spaceship. Yeah, just make it so that they, you can't. You don't feel constrained by the logic of the game, you feel constrained by the environment. And when it does open up, like when you go into the mouthwashing fucking shipping area, it's awful. It's terrifying.

Yeah. It's super scary. You're dropping into the pits of hell. Yeah, yeah. Phenomenal, really, really, really good. There's a subreddit thread where people were talking about the possibility that Jimmy fucked up shooting himself and botched it and is just rolling around on the ground going, ah, fight club. That's just a a little fantasy oh man

that could that would be that would be phenomenal I mean I have never like I the moment he walked off camera I'm like hey where's that bang baby fucking you see walk all over that fucking grave. It's incredible He could have he certainly could have and you would you would hope because there's no better sound than like yeah the slow agonizing Continued existence into nothingness that you would get for old yimby You saw yimby on the wall. Little drawing on the on the on the the board of

Yimby. I don't like it. I don't like yimby. Yimby is the cause of all evil in the world. Yeah, maybe the source of the problems. This we would be. So yeah, life would be great. Mouthwashing is mouthwashing is. Mouthwashing is like A plus. Play on that mouthwashing. Also probably the best CRT PlayStation 1, PlayStation 2 aesthetic yet. Fantastic. Absolutely. Extra props for how up close the models are because for example, Signolus, which is also

excellent is you. Very far away most of the time. Quite at a distance exactly. for how up close the models are, because for example, Signalis, which is also excellent, is you very far away most of the time. Quite at a distance, exactly, and that does a lot of heavy lifting. But these are characters you're talking to in your face point blank the whole time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, excellent. All right, mouth washing over.

Go get on that mouth washing. You had to skip that part. It's good. Yeah, it's really good. You ever swallow scope? Yes. Not pleasant. It's awful. Not pleasant. It's terrible.

However bad it burns in your mouth, it's that much worse on the soft, soft esophageal tissues. Yeah Gross so aside from the mouth washing wolves. What are you been up to? So yeah, we had a little bit of mouthwashing and Then we had a little bit of fucking karma coming back around Got to the end of case four in Phoenix Wright 1. Wait, are you telling me that if it was almost Christmas, that means it wasn't Christmas yet?

Almost Christmas is not Christmas! Yeah. I felt like that was one of those bits where like everyone erupted. And it was like, oh, that's a moment, isn't it? And I kind of vaguely recall seeing that maybe once or twice in the past. It's the climax of the film we went to see. Right, right. Man, that von Karma freakout is such a satisfying justice to the veins moment.

It's so good. The Phoenix Wright formula, I'm like, okay, I see what it is now I get it but there's the special case where you have a fucking impregnable fortress you know and you just string it along and there's no cracks anywhere in the until finally there is and then the water comes gushing out. It's incredibly satisfying. Not to mention just sinister and awesome because there's one moment where you make the accusation and he's still smiling at you. It happens once, you know? But you straight up go like,

you call him a fucking murderer. And he's like, ugh. He just takes it. I think karma is, so you're asking a lot about like Edgeworth as like the long-term villain and The first game deals with that you're like well. What's the natural end result of a guy like Edgeworth? It's this I'm gonna find them guilty if I have to shoot and tase people as much as I need to to make this guilty If I have to shoot and tase people as much as I need to to make this guilty.

Unlike the most like the worst version of what a prosecutor can possibly be. And you did not none of it like the pettiest motivation, too. Like the motive behind the crime was just I went oh, and I went to and oh, but it wasn't perfect. Right. The slightest blemish on my record means this child's entire upbringing is a sacrifice I I love my favorite part is that you're like, hey, we got the evidence and he's like I'm gonna just tase your ass Steal it off. Nah, though. Fuck you that feels like like like If I like it when a character like that in a mystery like breaks the rules of the mystery Like you're not supposed to be able to come to me and beat me up and take the shit

And now Phoenix still has to work within the grounds of what is allowed and what isn't and prove it anyways, right? it's insanely unfair mind you and the judge is the most incompetent ever but Yeah, but that's's all the more reason why you're that much more of a hero, because you have to make the comeback from even further back from the starting line than you're supposed to be given all the evidence. But yeah, very satisfying original finale minus the fifth case, which I haven't started yet. And yeah. That fifth case is awesome.

And I'm sure you've heard, but like Reggie just absolutely crushing it on that fucking von Karma growl, you know, doing the getting getting in the freak outs. It's it's been a bit of an extra tax to like, not just go through all the dialogue, but go through it with effort. But the payoff is super fucking worth it. So yeah, it is, I think I get the Phoenix Wright thing now. That justice moment. And then you get to go like, hey man, how many more are there?

Like 10? Great, how many do are there? Like 10? Great. How many do I want to play? My only thing is there was a moment though, and I guess this is like important to set up, but there's a moment where when Phoenix is getting, when Von Karma is chewing out Phoenix in the last moments, right, as the whole case is crumbling around him. And like he makes reference to the bullet, you know, the missing one, and it cuts over to Phoenix.

And usually there's moments where Phoenix always they say they make some accusation, and it's a lie or it's unfounded or whatever. And Phoenix goes, ah, shit, fuck. Oh, and he starts sweating, right. But there's one moment where he does it to him. And then Phoenix just doesn't respond. He just straight faces it. I'm like, oh, fuck, and he starts sweating, right? But there's one moment where he does it to him and then Phoenix just doesn't respond. He just straight faces it. I'm like, oh fuck, oh he's sharp, he's doing the thing.

He knows exactly what the answer is and he's already ahead and he's gonna do the protagonist thing. And God damn it, he absolutely doesn't and is like, I'm gonna start talking now and hopefully by the end of the sentence, I will find a reason to make you guilty."

And I'm like, no, damn it. The turnabout is so satisfying, but I thought Phoenix had that little spark in him, but now he's a goof. He's a goober. Because even the goofiest Jojos will have you know, have that moment in the fight where they're like, ah, but I got you though, you know, and here you get to watch him string it along, trip over his fucking dick and barely make it across the finish line. Yeah, no, Nick, Nick doesn't get to be like a confident non-bumbler until you lose control of him. I imagine when you lose control of him he becomes

Like a fucking super-genius. Oh, I know the we know the rules snake pliskin Dante Every other protagonist that you know you bring the new guy in and the old one goes off and does whatever yeah, then they become Unstoppable because you can't stop the protag, right? Pokemon Red, whatever you want. Of course. I mean, I'm fully expecting that. But yeah, really, really cool to just have. It's simple, actually. It's just a gif of von Karma with his back turned, hands on the wall, just going, and slamming his head on the fucking, you know, on the court.

And that, that's the payoff for hours of work, is just a gif of him losing his fucking mind. Wonderful. You get it in small pieces when you get to watch, of course, you know, the shifty eyed salesman in the beginning crack, you know, or you get to watch the whoever goes on the stand have that moment of like, how dare you, you know, but coming from the other side of the bench is a big one. Yeah, so that's cool. Phoenix Wright continues. Little check in with Metaphor, which I have continued to play. You know, I was kind of curious. I'm like,

hmm, I wonder if there's some other kind of wild name for this game in Japanese. Turns out it's Metaphor, the Fantasio. Shocking. It's just lit. It's not. It's all the same. Something interesting about how the virtues of archetypes and heroes past coming forward is being reflected in the writing that is now, I guess, when you talked about facing your inner self and your demons and your shadows from P4, right?

That's a point that resonates that you can imagine as a kid when you're thinking about like, oh, the things in your life that you don't like about yourself and being like no that's not a part of me and then it's like no you have to acknowledge that and own your shit yeah no that serious is like no man that's not me that shit's cringe and a magic voice says but you are cringed aren't you gonna say that it was based no no use the power of cringe embrace that you're a cringe and then you will get, yeah, you'll power up and you'll be super cringe. But something interesting that it comes up a lot in not just the

the the struggles of the characters, but also the status effect inside the game is the use of the word anxiety. Dude, anxiety might be the most vicious status effect I've ever encountered. Have you noticed that the game has basically gone, oh, people nowadays are really, really dealing with anxiety? It's become a major point. It was not discussed as much in the past, so it was not used as a status effect, you know There's something really awesome about the anxiety effect

Meaning that they can beat you up so easily that it doesn't even take them any time it uses no terms. It's free Stomping you out. Oh, it's real. I can I can shit on this dude with anxiety no problem. Take me two seconds all day You know on this dude with anxiety, no problem, take me two seconds. All day, you know? And if I'm not mistaken, I thought I saw a message pop up that says like, someone who attacks and gets their attack blocked completely starts to feel a bit anxious. Yeah, if you get repelled or blocked or absorbed,

your character gains anxiety by default. Right, right, right, there you go. So yeah, you have that. You know, you get blasted back with a fire spell and you're just going, oh, fuck! God damn it! Oh, I'm so stupid! I suck! Why did I do that? Why didn't I pick something better? Of all the question marks, I picked the wrong one. Idiot. And then yeah, in the actual inner voice that's talking, you know and narrating about like, you know, rising up to power and such you they talk about facing the fears and anxieties and overcoming them, you know, so I'm just like, yeah, yeah. Okay. This is this is

au courant. Um, I mean, shit panic as a status might as well just become panic attack at this point Mm-hmm that is it was something else too that I've noticed so I'm currently middle of the second village the fourth party member just joined Yeah Awesome really really cool Kind of hilarious though, in that, like, you're- We can talk about Heisme, by the way. Heisme is known. Okay, so-

Everybody knows about Heisme. Heisme is the best. Awesome. I, uh, yeah, that was a surprise to me. I didn't see him in any art anywhere, so I was like, what the fuck? Oh shit. Yeah, let's go. Little mascot character that's a badass and not a mascot at all. Um Wild vet this like the strongest noblest art like tragic incredible samurai night Shadowguard His class unlocks thief Yeah, he's a tiny little Batman

thief. Yeah, and he's a tiny little Batman. He's the furthest thing from a thief ever in terms of just his energy in his actual story. No, listen, he's an agility fighter. That means he's the thief archetype. And he has a steel ability, so therefore you, yeah. I'm like, what the fuck? This is the first... He is a samurai. He's literally pulling out the fucking long katana. Yeah, anyway Heisman is great. Very very cool. Happy to see him introduced and of course, he's also really strong. Of course Yeah, and sprinkling, you know a little bit in there with like a look. It's a Katarina and She's gone. All right, cool. Well and you're and then you get the point where you're like, oh, she's not a party member. She's gonna be like a fucking Oh.

Back and forth thing. Oh, really? Yeah, didn't you notice that? No, I didn't, but don't say anymore. I assumed that she was gonna jump in eventually because we got the style, you know? Okay, well. No, I was at that point of the style, you know? Okay, well. No, I was at that point of the game with you

that I noticed that like, oh no wait, she doesn't have the right skills on her bond thing. Okay. Well, that aside, something I noticed in playing with these builds now that I've gotten a bunch of different archetypes is that you can create a synergy that you either steamroll or you get rolled. Some of the harder dungeons now and stuff, like the bigger challenges at this point,

it's clear that it's like, if you don't have the right three going on with enough double techs and covering for each other's weaknesses and stuff, you're gonna get fucking stomped on. It's quite interesting. A couple of bad things that don't work together are- Like two bad turns can be the end of you. Yeah, yeah.

And like, so I was running Brawler and Knight for a while, you know, to have the... Because Brawler, Knight, and Warrior have great triple... Yeah, they all touch. ...with each other. But then I pulled Brawler out to put a Mage up front for more like, elemental spell variety, and then the whole thing fell apart and then like Knight could no longer do the insanely strong 18 MP, you know, create a weakness type of a dual tech and shit and you're like, oh, when you have no dual techs except for like these like passive buffs and you're fighting something particularly strong and you also just don't happen to have a decent weakness spell on you, you're fucked in that fight, you know? Some of the dual techs are so strong that they're worth putting in the wrong archetype

in just so you can do the dual tech. Every boss fight I've had so far has been deleted with the Brawler Knight piercing dual tech. Yeah, that one's incredible. It feels unbalanced as when you watch the numbers like just fucking drop so that's a type of dual tech like there are a lot of them like that there are ones that are like does a massive ice attack gives an ice weakness yeah and so once you can get that rolling you're like well I'm gonna do this hit for free yeah and then get two

more but there's a lot going on with that system. Yeah, and I'm still trying to explore and find a bit more between the classes I have, but nothing has beat that combination so far. That one's been absolutely stellar. Plus, if you have Warrior on the side, you can do kills, net a free press turn icon. So that's great. Unlock the merchant, of course. What am I missing? Mad Fientist So what you're missing is that if you beeline merchant right away before you leave for Braillehaven, you can get three inheritance slots before you leave, which means you can put merchant… You can have like half of another class of skills

on merchant right away. And the other thing is that the gold attack crits all the time, especially if you have high luck, is non-elemental and every single fight that you win will get you more than that gold attack costs. Okay. Only when you use it or just by having merchant in the party. You have to be merchant. So the other thing is that...

That would explain it, because I had merchant in the party and I was like, this is nothing special at all. No, no, no. So here's the thing. When you play as merchant, when Will Metaphor is merchant man, and you kill anyone, you get like double the gold from that fight, and so what happens is, is that you get to a dungeon in which you're like, oh, I just leveled up past the grunt enemies.

Now these are money trees. You know the MP thing with wizard, or mage rather? It's cash for merchant. It's 10 times as strong with merchant because you can just make as much money as you fucking want okay right away okay cuz yeah I I I I didn't put it on on the bird the protag and I just couldn't see what the benefit was yeah no the protag is the merchant of choice and three slots slots on merchant, but aren't slots available? You increase slots on all archetypes by putting...

Oh yeah, but I'm saying it's like if you... So I got merchant the first day possible in that game. So I had like 14 days left and I took merchant in to Fight Zorba. And what that meant was is that when I got out, I got to like rank five or six with Brigitte before leaving and had three inheritance slots for that. It actually takes a weirdly long time to get a lot of inheritance slots outside of this one specific situation. And the reason for that is because Brigitte is the only person you can hang out with at night for a really long part of the game. Ah, okay, okay. Leveling up the actual archetype isn't what's giving you the slots though. It's increasing the relationship. No, it's increasing the ball. The other thing is that there's a rule that it took me a while to figure out. You can never hang out with someone two days in a row.

The bonds are guaranteed, but you can never ever hang out with anybody two days in a row. So if you have two people at night, you're going to end up ping-ponging between them. If there's three people available during the day you're gonna be rotating around them and this basically stops you from just beelining to like eight on one person. And then the game will just stop you and say you're not smart enough, you're not tolerant enough, or you need to talk to them on the runner or you know any other like progression blocker. Okay and those merchant farming situations,

you're describing only using them in the story dungeons? Oh, I used it all the time. I ran merchant for like 60% of the game. Wow, huh. It's incredibly strong. Because what happens is you cap merchant, and then you just use merchant's extra XP to build up something else.

And then when you build up like say the healer archetype, you just take the healer spell you want and just put on merchant. But that may not work for what you got going on. That's how I built it up. Yeah, because I'm trying to think about it. I'm like, okay, well three spells is a lot to customize, but you're losing out on a bunch

of other things that I like. The main thing is that merchant is kind of to be assumed used sometimes with the way the game's economy works. I used merchant all the time and I was able to buy every single item I ever came across ever. Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah, I've definitely been running short on money. So yeah, and

I've done one mag conversion, but and it was fine. And they know that merchants really strong because tycoon, which is the upgraded merchant is only available in like the last month of the game. I still don't even have it. Wow. Okay. Because the game the game, there's a bunch of like the bonds that just go, you can't continue this bond until and apparently until is like the last 30 days. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. So you know, that that's going in. I'll, I'll, I'll examine that a little bit more. Beyond that. So what else this week? Yeah, while continuing to just play some one offs and check shit out, yesterday I popped in Hylics. You've heard of Hylics?

Hylics. I have heard of Hylics. Hylics is weird as fuck. Oh yeah. So take your Undertale or Earthbound style RPG and make it one day, make it like three hours long maybe, and make it even more of a mushroom trip. What if you invented a new drug in a lab and took it before you designed this game? Hylex is incomprehensible. On purpose. And it's great. It's really fun. The whole time you're just sitting there going, um, mmm, um, mmm.

Absolutely. It is, you are tripping, right? You have taken some shrooms, you've taken some edibles, you're waiting to see if the edibles got hands. And on the way, you're playing as Wayne. And it's like you're meeting these- You're playing as a Wayne.

Sure. But like the, I don't get it. Don't worry about it. I've also played Hy Hilux too. Okay. Well You're playing as Wayne and then there's Like and that's the only normal name in the entire game. Everything else. Everything else is fucking nonsense and Yeah, but but despite the nonsense though the thing that is extremely recognizable and understandable

is just RPG mechanics. So you understand the other, without telling you what, because like your stats are fucking... Oh, it doesn't tell you shit. I mean, there's mightiness and then there's like, what is it? Like a fucking pluckiness or whatever it is. You know, like it doesn't, it's nothing, but it doesn't matter because you're just like, Oh yeah, I put this on and then that number went up and now I can take more damage.

So it's fine. You know? Um, and you, so you just understand the basics of, all right, go shop, put better things on your character, learn a spell, fight enemies, learn to defend if you've done any of this and you kind of know how it works. And then experience is Post death only it do you get to cash it in and you know and it's and it's like yeah And it's just like like the the mechanics are self evident despite the fact that no words make any sense

Which is a really interesting like fucking it kind of feels like you're playing a game in the wrong language. Sure. But it's in English. Yeah. Yeah. But I love how, like, you can... It's almost like playing games back in the day in Japanese, you know, when you're just like, I just want to fucking play it and there's no translation out there.

Fuck it. I'm doing it. You know, and you're waiting for a fan translation and just mashing through text and hoping that you're selecting the right option. Because usually yes goes on top and no goes on the bottom, right? Usually, hopefully. And yeah, I know it's hilarious as well. And then you just kind of get all the way, you get through this nice little brief adventure,

you get your airship, you get your party party the whole thing goes through the it goes through all the steps it speed runs a full RPG and like you go from you know I can go from continent to continent by boat until you get your your ability to fly around and then you go to your final area and fucking Gibby awaits you you know and Gibby is sorry for the things he's done You know and you just have like like what the fuck is context who cares you just have a short and sweet beautiful RPG experience Hilux is great. I yeah, I I'm extremely pleased with the one day RPG adventure that Almost feels like I was on an 80 hour journey with these characters. You fought bosses, you learned skills, you struggled along the way, you came back to

enemies that once one-shotted you and you stomped all over them. And it's clearly RPG Maker as fuck as well. But fucking yeah, I know that's got recommended and Hylics 2 as well has gotten recommended. So you know, we're starting here just checking out one for a nice little one off. If you haven't, I highly recommend checking out Hylics and yeah, one afternoon is all it takes. One thing that really sucks, however, is when you tap right on the D-pad while you're selecting your battle option, it passes your turn, and that's a terrible development that should not be, and I hate it.

That's fucked up. I've accidentally caused a pass. I don't think Hylics 2 does that. It sucks. That's really not fun. That was pretty much it. Beyond that, played two little fighting games. One, Knock Off, is the Kickstarter that I talked about a couple weeks ago. Fight for the imagination or battle for the imagination. I think the Kickstarter is ending this week. I think it's looking shy of its goal, but the concept is rad. It is your childhood toys

fighting against the child. Right, right, right. The fake action figures. Yeah. On your desk, in your room, in your backyard, and they all look and they have joints of articulation and everything. Fake He-Man versus fake Skeletor, fake Ninja Turtle, old fake biting street shark, etc. And yeah, it's a lot of fun, but yeah, it seems like it might not make it on the Kickstarter goal. Hopefully they can find something to do and find a way to release it anyway because it is a mostly functional game with

eight characters already in going. Something notable as well in terms of attention to detail is it's not just that it's throwing back its aesthetic to that style with the characters' names and sound effects, but even the types of supers and moves that the characters do look like early Hyper fighting game moves, you know newer moves. They're old-fashioned Yeah, like newer special moves tend to be like someone gets hit and then you go into like a cutscene. And a fancy animation Exactly, you know you go into a domain expansion and then shits all crazy and nuts and then KO you know, but this is harkening back to a day of like,

one elbow knocks you up into the air, a bunch of spinning slashes and then a bah, big one. Or like a kick and then beam, da da da da da da da da da, you know? And it's like just one or two simple things, but it's like over the top. Real fun. Yeah, simple and goofy.

Do they have blue energy lines coming off them? Like shadows? Absolutely. Absolutely. See, you gotta have that. Yep. And, you know, shit's busted as fuck. Huge combo potential possibility.

Clearly not meant to be balanced or sane in any way, shape or form, but had some fun with it. And then there was Blazing Strike, which... Feels like a game I've played a million times before. Yeah. So that sprite-based fighting game that looked really cool. And here's how it's notable. Here's a picture of the characters in the cast. It popped up on Twitter a couple times over the years. Those look like Last Blade 2 edits. There are some original fighting game fucking characters, I'll tell you what. You've got your karate man with his ripped shirt.

Those look like sprite edits. They're not. They're beautiful. I know, I know, but I'm just like they are like the late SNK style to a T. So the style of these characters, absolutely, no, I would note, not even SNK because they're too flat shaded for SNK style. They're closer to Capcom, Circus CVS, you know. Oh yeah, this does look like CVS. Yeah. The years of Mugen edits of people editing Mugen characters to look like different styles of games I can fucking pin the exact era and time these would be would come from but All this to say that like this is a really strong roster of like winners across the board right like there's no

overt Freak picks Gotta note that everyone's a cool character like winners across the board, right? Like there's no overt freak picks. Gotta note that everyone's a cool character. But you're like, I could main every one of these. They're all rad. They all look cool. They're all rad as shit, yeah. So character design is fantastic. And then the portrait art for them as well

goes even harder for all the characters in the game. So yeah, art style and it embraces as well. The title screen has the announcer going, Blazing Strike! You know, it knows what it is. It wants to sound and feel like Street Fighter Alpha 2. And it has, yeah, like a pretty good, the soundtrack as well is pretty sick. What's, it was having a struggling, it was struggling for a while to come out, I remember, and I was like, what's the deal with it?

I think it had a crowdfunding that failed and then it got a publisher or something like that. Game wise, it's not, it's got some rough edges, I have to say. It's fun, it's got some cool ideas. There's a lot that still feels a bit janky. There's a particular thing that would happen when, I'm thinking of Mugen as well, actually, when you would animate characters and you have to position them on the move after they completed animation, and characters would slide around a little too far past where they're supposed to be in moments.

You'd find, imagine a buster wolf, but Terry shoots forward way too quickly and kind of snaps in the wrong place. There'd be a couple of moments of that where it just feels like it's not quite smoothed out. There'd be some issues with navigating menus as well. It felt like the controlling, there's a weird lag to it. There's a really interesting concept it has though,

where it's a four button fighter, but there's a rush button that you hold. And it basically works like holding run in Mortal Kombat. But it acts as a simultaneous it's a Mortal Kombat run button. But it's also a drive rush. And it's also a like cancel whatever you're doing button as well. That's a lot. Yeah. So but essentially you hold it and then every action you do gets shadows behind you. And you just go further, faster, harder. All right, that's OK.

And if you press another button after the last one, you cancel and do another one, and then you do a full string of attacks. But it drains a rush resource. So yeah, you get access to that. And because of that, you get the ability to jump and kind of directionally influence yourself a little bit forward or backwards.

It's interesting to add that much movement, variety, and utility to a 2D sprite-based fighter, because usually they lock in with, OK, you got short hops, you got super jumps, you're kind of locked in place, and here you have much more freedom of movement. But yeah, it's interesting. I hope that though they can continue working on it and kind of patch it. And you know, I think like a second version, like a second impact of this game could go

really hard. Because the moves and the characters and the designs and everything aesthetically is killing it. And the concepts of the moves are, the characters actual, move lists and shit are great too, but overall the system is just not quite fully there yet. Also, the most busted feeling characters in the game feel like they come from Marvel,

and the worst characters in the game feel like they're from Street Fighter 1. So there's these Like the discrepancy between the character that has a fly button and a full screen beam Versus the guy who takes a full second to do and recover from his three specials You know is like you to does a wider gap than I was expecting you to say you don't belong in the same game You know, is like, you two don't belong. That is a wider gap than I was expecting you to say. You don't belong in the same game, you know? Yeah, there's a feeling of a, there's a bit of a canyon between the characters in some cases.

But yeah, I wanna see that, like, you know, with a little bit more polish. Hopefully that's possible, but I don't know. Anyway, yeah, there's a bit of an odd one because since we since I haven't done like a Monday recording until like yesterday but rest of the week gonna do some more Phoenix Wright and we're gonna check out dizzy and guilty gear strive on Saturday so yeah tune into the schedule on wooly versus on twitch and on YouTube for more.

What's going on? All right. So, in the, I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I've been playing Horizon Zero Dawn's remaster over the past couple of weeks. And I am at the 99% mark. I'm two missions from beating the game and have done literally every single collectible side quest, etc. I haven't done the DLC yet, but you know.

Did you enjoy that? I did. And I'm starting to understand parts about what's going on with the way people talk about Horizon. And this is a game that I like crashed out on three times. This is the fourth time I've tried to play Horizon Zero Dawn. And I would crash out at the same point every single time. Wait, do you mean crash out as in your game would crash or are you talking?

No, no. I mean like I would, something else would come out. Modern lingo, we're using crash out. Yeah, okay. All right. Yeah, something would come out and I'd be like, oh, that looks so good. I'll get back to Horizon later. And then by the time I would get back to Horizon, it'd been so long that I'd be like, oh, I

could just do the starter area again. And yeah, Horizon has a direction problem. So the game is pretty focused. It's giving you a big hallway for the first 10 hours of the game where there's a very clear drive to move your character north and then there's side quests on the side of that right and then you get to the big proper wide open world and it says hey you're in the southeast your next mission objective is in the farthest northwest point in the game it is the absolute other end of the planet and

the what they seem to want you to do is Ping-pong between all the story quests which hit every quadrant and do side stuff on your way there, right? There's a problem the The problem is, is that the fucking third merchant or second merchant of the game just gives you a map of every single collectible activity in the entire game. Every single one. And so you, and it's cheap, you just buy it and you're like there and it just shows every single, every single fucking like pickup, every single feather, every single, you know, one of those items that you get it. And so on the way to the side quest, to the way of main quests it is just well I'm like a hundred I'm a

hundred and eighty meters from one of these collectibles so I should go get that and I'm actually I'm actually 250 meters from the next collectible Sire there's some roots nearby that I've heard whereas the shall I story things the story things like ten miles away okay and so the way that I ended up playing it is that I would follow these collectibles around and then do the side quests that were near them and ended up having this massive gap of like 5 to 10 hours of story content plus side quests, then 30 plus hours of open world playing. And now that's all completely finished. And I've just been story mission, story mission,

story mission, story mission, story mission. Oh, so you just did it all nuts in one moment. And they have like, they have this weird problem with the way, like every side quest and main quest has like a level range that it suggests. them with the way like every side quest and main quest has like a level range that it suggests. And the level ranges are all liars. Every single one is wrong. I've never seen a game like that, where the recommended level for every single quest in the entire game is wrong below or above. It doesn't matter because the only like you gain levels and it

unlocks new abilities but you don't need any of those abilities you just need to be able to be decent at the combat and you can beat anything in any way so like I get a side quest that's like level 35 and the main quest is level 15 so I guess they're telling me to go do the main quest but I'm having no trouble with any quest at any level because I've I've quote-unquote solved the combat and figured out the elemental weaknesses for every enemy in the game so I'm immediately reminded of what you were talking about rebirth though and the fact that that was just overstaying its welcome by dragging. Yeah, so the open world content in Horizon is pretty good. I liked it quite a bit, but the thing is that I would have been much more

hooked on that game if I had gotten like literally one more main mission further. So like they give you the gigantic open world and the main mission that is the biggest hook in the game as to like what's going on is the one that is the furthest geographically from the place you start it is literally the two furthest points on the entire map from one to the other that is the is the trip to the story getting really interesting.

Okay. So it's not so much a case of like overdoing it with self regulation in this case and like just you committed to way too many side things. Imagine if Ghost of Tsushima's map was one contiguous map and didn't split into the three pieces. And the next objective is at the end of the- Was at the top. Yeah, okay. How long would it take even a normal person to get all the way to the top?

It would take them a fucking while. Right, and I would say the design is encouraging you at that point to bumble around until you get there. Oh, absolutely. And so like I explore to the south of the world and it's like, oh, level 12? Dude, I was level 12 before I even got here. And level 12 is underneath the implied level 15 of the next story. So I guess they want me to hang out in the southern jungle area. So I did everything in the southern jungle area and I'm level 30. And so now that I'm level 30, well I can do all the hard desert areas. So I did all the hard desert areas. Is fast traveling and stuff like decent? Oh it's

easy. There's no problem with fast travel. Okay, so nothing's particularly like tedious about... Yeah, so yeah, no, the game should have like directed me a lot a lot more strongly than it did. And the map could probably stand to be half the size. I was asking around and apparently the Horizon Forbidden West map is sectioned because I was like, I would have probably gotten to these story beats a hell of a lot faster if this map which is mountains in order is mountains, jungle, desert, different mountains. If those were instead of being completely non-separated in any way, if those were in fact divided into smaller open segments like Ghost of Tsushima and for Forizon, Forizon, W-W-W-West, the sequel is in fact divided that way. Yeah, well, so hopefully, yeah, what you're describing is just like, yeah, it's the first

one in the franchise and then they get the chance to refine that shit going forward Like a fucking like yeah, once you get to once you get to the emotion in your chest of fuck Ted Farrow That story flies Like it's great and it's very interesting to under uncover the bits and pieces of the mystery Okay, but until you have that like that chest, fuck Ted Farrow, it's you're just like, where's Aloy gonna find out about her mommy? I don't care. Now I don't care. I need spite. Now how does the Lego horizon style storyline fit into this?

I don't think it does. Well, I don't think it does. Oh, I thought it was crucial linking information. I don't think it does really I don't think it does I thought it was crucial linking information I don't think it I don't think it is also I would like to take Sony to task for gas lighting me so I don't know where you played goes to Tsushima or if you've played any of the PlayStation games that have the overlay yeah but you know I'm PS5, yeah. I've been playing Horizon Remastered and as I've been playing it, I've been encountering catastrophic hitching and stuttering every time it autosaves. And I couldn't find anyone online that had the same problem.

And then after I would close the game, I would have Firefox crashing all the time. And I'm like, well, that's Firefox crash sometimes. But like my PC would be like notably slower. And because I have an i9 processor, I was like, oh no, is my computer fucking dying? Is it the rust? Did the Intel rust get my computer? And I reached out to a computer place asking about like upgrades and was going through that process until I realized, you know what, what if I just figured out how to turn the overlay off? And so I went into my program data and I renamed PS5 SDK to PS5 SDK backup. And now when I load up Horizon, it says, can't start the PlayStation 5 SDK.

And that problem is gone. And my computer runs great. And the game never stutters ever again. And it's like, oh, it's sending some kind of fucking telemetry over every autosave to Sony. Like for trophy shit. It's like it doesn't even matter what the dev team does or how they optimize it. Once these stupid fucking middleware things get dropped in at the last second over everything. I hate

that shit. It's so well. It's nice that you can actually fucking rename and you know bullshit bullshitted out of there. But yeah, incredible. So stupid, stupid as fuck. Yeah, games like that I would just go straight to the console with. Well I mean I can play real shiny on my computer. Fair enough.

I can real shine. What else? Paige and I watched that them their boxing match that happened this last week. Oh yeah, that did occur. Where everyone who doesn't watch boxing gets reminded why they don't watch boxing because it's always fucking rigged and fake and stupid. I mean, like, we can unpack. It doesn't even, there's not much to it. I think rigged- That's it.

That's my whole thoughts on it. Yeah. I think rigged and fake is not so much the case, but I think it's just going in knowing there's always an asterisk. There's always a like a qualifier or a thing about whoever he's going to, Jay Paul's going to fight. And in this case, the outcome is pretty much, we know what this looks like. He went in also knowing that like he had, he mentioned he almost died four months ago. He had like a bunch of blood transfusions and he was in really rough shape health-wise.

So it's a paycheck, you're gonna go in and you know what the deal is. And I think it was quite clear that like all the clips of Tyson kind of trading and getting back into that form and all the hype and stuff over time over the buildup was like essentially you've got one round to get any of that done. He's got one round in him to push that hard.

You are old. Yes. And as Roy Jones pointed out on commentary, he was moving around much better four years ago when they had their match. And even then, he was pretty old. So what a difference that same amount of time makes going forward.

Here, with the recovery and everything else, you're like, it's not that there's no path to victory there, but it's just it's limited to that first round. And then beyond that, there is always the random lucky one, right? There's always that, oh, you fucked up hard and took a swing you shouldn't have, you got downloaded and then you get, but that's not, but that's such a, it's a Hail Mary. Oh yeah, but I'm not even talking about that. I'm not even talking about that.

Yeah, he's an old man. I'm talking about how this is the plot to Rocky III. I don't know how well you remember the plot to Rocky III. I've only seen the first Rocky. So yeah in rocky 3 he's the champ And he's like why is everybody saying I'm a bum though I only fight bums cuz I'm making you fight bums rock you lose You lose if you fight a real contender because you're a bum right and it's like it's just Jake Paul standing on a fucking Right and it's like it's just Jake Paul standing on a fucking victory platform one. I'm the fucking best I can beat up a 60 year old man. Look at me. I'm in the peak of my fucking life

What a fucking pussy I think I think it's pretty I mean At this point based on the the record what you have is quite clearly a He's a very competent good boxer that knows what he's doing that could get matches and potentially even prize fights That would be not The peak not the top of the card not the highest he would get a number of undercard matches And he would and he would know. He could become a ranked boxer. Absolutely, 100%. You do not do and fight the way he does and have no skill whatsoever.

And anyone who says that just doesn't know what the fuck you're talking about. No, he can absolutely become a ranked boxer for a little while. But it's knowing where that is, where you would land, you know. Can you get to top eight at Evo? No, can you get top 64 consistently? Yeah, you're pretty fucking good, right? But then in order to appear to be like on top or to at least, you know, create that trajectory,

you side skirt like, what is, and here's the thing too as well, it's a very, it's a brilliant move marketing wise because you're side skirting real challenge and direct peers to always fight somebody with an asterisk next to their name which is like this person but they're not a full boxer or this person but they're primarily MMA or from a different sport or they're older. Yeah, he's taking on Muhammad Ali and Jimmy Carter next, right?

Whatever the fuck, you know, people are saying. Jimmy Carter can take him. I don't know if you saw him watching those airplanes. But but all of that is like it works extra well because boxing is fucking corrupt and has been forever. And what's boxing is maybe the most corrupt sport that has ever existed. And so the idea of side-skirting all the corruption is not even something that doesn't make sense, you know? And just kind of making like YouTube fights and just forcing it, forcing yourself into the relevant spot because yeah, you've got the financial capital to do so is it's

a it's a marketing, like brilliant move, you know, you create got the financial capital to do so, it's a marketing brilliant move. You create relevance and then you don't go through that thing and you don't get matched up in a way where, so whenever there's leagues, like UFC and things like that, you have someone who's in charge and sets up the fights and then two people challenge and if it's a good card it makes sense and they're within the same range or someone comes up or goes down, you have the fight and you go. But when a world where Don Kings are setting up these bullshit, you know, matches over the years and fucking everybody over

or when Mayweather has, you know, like he has an impeccable record. But as long as you are in my ring with my ref, with my rules on a Tuesday, you know, like, and it better be kind of foggy outside. Like then it's like, oh, yeah, well, then everything is perfect perfect like it's it's been so corrupt for so long that like to come in and side skirt that Doesn't even like it makes sense marketing wise you know Rocky and Hajime no Ippo fictional narratives are more honest and real pots and the worst thing is that like are more honest than real boxing. And the worst thing is that the match that happened immediately before, the women's fight that happened right before that is a perfect example of how bullshit and corrupted

nonsense judgments can be when the judgment goes to the wrong person anyway. They're going back and forth about the headbutting and whether it's because of our Southpaw or what, you know, and you're like, here's a perfect example. The outcome of the Serrano match is why Jake Paul is able to sidestep and get into the title card, you know, or the get into the main event by just YouTube sidestepping bullshit. It shows you the problem and that's a fucking crazy ass match that happened That leads right into exactly this type of outcome, you know But in terms of yeah, like I said in terms of like the actual Fight it's like there was there was that one round and then everything else was just staying in don't get don't don't get

embarrassingly knocked out or so and then for for, it's quite clear that it's like, hey, I know the game plan, I've studied the, Jake is pro, you can imagine him in a fucking float tank with computers and algorithms processing, you know? Like you could, just going through all the tapes, studying everything to be like, here's the algorithm, here's the outcome, here's what you need to do. I need every piece of training and technology in the world to beat up an old man a little bit.

And so you know that it was just a data fight. And for him, it's like, we're going to fight differently from the way he usually does. We're going to hang on the outside, we're going to use the range and we're just going to literally not even take any risks, not go in because because why would you write? And that's the thing. It doesn't make any sense to if you know you can win on points and you're like, but do a Hail Mary. It's like, well, yeah, when you pick the judges, it's pretty easy to win on. So so like like that's the that's the thing, too, about it, like where

like the the the if things are legitimately just a... Because it's a sanctioned match and it's a real thing. Some of the YouTube fights and stuff that have happened before are not official. Some of them are just like, oh, we found a ref that would call it. You can get a legally sanctioned match that's not considered, that's not, that's not like official or doesn't have, doesn't affect your record. It's not part of the association. And in this case it is and was. So like if there is like actual untoward shit going on, there's grounds for lawsuits. Right? So it is a real fight. Um,

and the other thing too is like, you know, if you know, like it's, if someone is, is a grand finals at like a fucking evil or something and like, they're fighting in a way that is like clearly fake and or like creating open like, they're not what it's like a rigged thing. Like it's extremely difficult to do so in a manner that is like convincing to anybody else that kind of knows what they're looking at in a way, you know? Wow. But all but like, what was clear here was that, yeah, he knew exactly what to do and it's just stand there,

hit the points, don't do much and run the clock out and then you get the cloud victory means as he said afterwards, I can do whatever I want. I can fight whatever I want. I don't know. We can all argue forever because no one's ever going to know for sure as to if this was rigged or how much it was rigged or how much it was age or whatever. rounds and this is just an overt scam or a boxer in the peak of his life could not knock down a 58 year old man. Yeah. I who has leg problems and almost died. So like you can pick one or the other. Sure. Either Either he took it easy to run out the clock so that he could make the most money, which is like immoral, or he's a pathetic pussy.

Yeah, I know it's not a particularly exciting or fun answer, but hey, that's me. You know how this goes. But like the idea of like a choreographed dance in the ring and then someone takes a dive in Round four or whatever is just that's not what's occurring there I think what is occurring is this weird kind of understanding and an in-between where it's essentially like he's fucking old and They're not even in the same like like height wise and then weight class wise

They wouldn't be matched up at all regardless, right? He literally was told the ref was telling him you'll stop measuring at one point during the fight What you have is an understanding between both parties in the agreement that it's an exhibition Yeah, you know, that's kind of what's happening. You know, there's a there's a we're not gonna call it that We're not gonna say that and it's certainly and it's not Staged you can't like stay like faking a thing is crazy But but it's it's an exhibition and we kind of know like that. That's the deal. Yeah That's an important distinction to make but it's a distinction nonetheless

I the the you to yeah, you just you can't quite go like and now with the left and upper dirt But yeah, they know what the deal is and it was a fucking insane paycheck for Mike You know He did say at the end of his like there's the footage is coming back out over the years of him talking about like I don't Have it anymore, you know, like I kind of done He kind of started to feel it a little bit more with the with the Roy Jones bit And he also knew that like financially he's got fucking Obligations and he's been very transparent about that shit. It's also like he's podcasting and going nuts and whatever he's you know, he's got his hot boxing show

and everything that he's doing now. He's also just like, yeah, he's got he's got money. He's got debts. He's got fucking shit to take care of. So this is a humongous financial alleviation for him. And the him being even being like like, oh yeah, Logan, I'll take you on. It's like, yeah, I'll take another paycheck. What the fuck? Who cares? Yeah, why not?

Right? He just established with that child, what the fuck is legacy? What does the word legacy mean? Who cares? He traumatized the child in an interview to be like, you're fucking dead and you're gone. Who cares? I think there's something awesome about boxing, like genuinely, that every, like, this has happened twice now with the Pacquiao Mayweather fight and this one in which every time there's

like a really big fight that pulls in non-boxing people into watching it and getting excited. We end up in the situation where after the end of it, the average person goes, so why didn't they actually fight though? Why? Why are they just dancing around like a bunch of pussies? And it's like, it's like, yeah, right. Yes. And there's things to it. You know, like the reason why Logan can go and do like that exhibition against Floyd especially is because it's like Floyd has been,

Floyd's not knocking anyone out and he's not that, he's gonna stand there and he's never been that. He's gonna sit there and he's gonna make points on you. He's gonna fill his shell and call it a day, right? That's what this is. But yes, there is that kind of like, but make an effect, though, where's the cool thing?

Yeah. And you know how, here's a suggestion. And I make this suggestion with the full knowledge that this suggestion has already been implemented. How about we make it in the boxing, make it more entertaining by? By just letting the fucking fight go until one of them actually wins. Right, right, right. UFC one rules. Yeah. No, it's just that, right?

I'm also reminded of that exhibition in Street Fighter where Daigo and Justin fought after all this time and then the first game was a draw game. Right? And everyone was like, rigged! It's fucking rigged! What a crazy outcome! It's like, no, that shit's wild and nuts and it does happen sometimes. But it's just...

Yeah, anyway. I don't need to spend a bunch of... I'm not watching boxing to watch two guys dance. But it's just the yeah, anyway, I would do whatever. I don't need to spend a bunch of- I'm not watching boxing to watch two guys dance. I wanna see them punch each other in the gut and throw up on the mat. And I'm not trying to sit here on the fucking Jake Paul. I'm not trying to defend any of that nonsense,

but I'm saying what you saw there is a, there's an understanding, unspoken perhaps, between both camps that it's like, let's go out there, let's do a little exhibition, let's make some money. It is what it is. And then of course the clout outcome versus the paycheck is extremely worth it for all parties involved. Step on the toe, make a headline. And yeah, he gets his 22 million, Jake gets his 40. I gotta say, I really genuinely mean this. I'm not making any exaggeration.

This is not some kind of goof. I'm of the belief that professional wrestling is a legitimately more honest spectacle than professional boxing. Because it is not trying to pull the wool over your eyes and pretend that it is real anymore. Yeah. So the sad part is that if you just take it between the competitors and you watch amateur boxers just fight and there's nothing about the outside, there's no extrinsic value, it's all intrinsic, you get a real awesome sport where two people are putting their all into it and they're

matched up in weight and size and all these factors that creates a really interesting paired off dynamic. But because of the way it's been from the jump where it's been the dirtiest, most fucking sleazy mafia ass corrupt shit, you know? And like nobody, like you can have an overseeing organization, but that basically needs to be a list of like, you know, greased palms and not an actual league, you know? Or like, like overseeing body that like can actually determine like matchups as well and things like that.

It's just what promoters can get the most hype going for things. Then it's like, yeah, it's never, ever, ever been honest. And to get honest, you have to leave the organization. You know? You know what the greatest boxing match of all time is? People say it's Muhammad Ali in form and whatnot. No, it's when Kimbo fucking punched that guy's eye out.

Oh shit Kimbo slice. Yeah. God yo that's that's how a nigga eat. That's the most, that's the most honest boxing match I've ever seen in my fucking life. Out of the car through the bushes into the backyard. Let's go. And then they hugged afterwards afterwards even though that guy's eye was hanging out like there was no no bad blood. We fought that was it that was great yep yep yep Kimbo slice

what an era you know an era yeah and then when she I remember people getting excited about him going to MMA like are you stupid? No no no no no no no no punks in the backyard of his buddy's house. The moment it gets real it's not gonna work and you're like you can't you can't yeah you can't like refine the beast and then give it the technical like you can't give a beast frame data. Nah man. You just gotta pit him against other beasts. It doesn't work.

Other lesser beasts. It's like, okay listen, unknowable, insane, like, jaws of death. You're plus on block here. So you should, hey, hey, are you listening? Stop swiping at me. You know, it just doesn't fucking work yeah anyway um no it truly is it truly is just this this goofy thing and and again you just for all the legitimacy you have the Serrano you have the fight right before it to

just be like yep and that's what happens when two fucking warriors give it their all and you just, you get- And they get robbed! You get absolutely robbed for it. You know? Incredible. Well, anyways, yeah, there's that. Alright, moving on.

I did two sponsored streams this- oh no, I did three sponsored streams since the last time we spoke. I played the Dragon Quest III HD 2D remake. Hey, did you know that people like that Dragon Quest? Dragon Quest is cozy as fuck. Nice. And that, they did, so apparently the Octopath HD 2D style is just gonna become a fucking thing going forward,

and that rules They do a really clean job of Dragon Quest 3 Like you know Octopath had all the shit ton of particle effects and like fancy modern lighting like lighting engine effects Yeah, no none of that. Oh, it's it's it's You got depth of field and some nice lighting But like it's it's it's it. You got depth of field and some nice lighting,

but like it's kept super, super clean and and non non non like fancy, not not. It doesn't overdo it. So that's exactly what they did with the pixel remasters of FF FF six and the FF games as well. Right. Like they had the sprites redone and they had everything sharpened up But like when it came to these moments where you can go over the top and with with it They kept it tame and it was just the opera scene if you remember in FF6 Yeah, just the opposite or where they went for it with the 3d and everything else was fairly tame

It's updated it's Dragon Quest 3, that's the good one. I like it, however that's a sponsored opinion so be aware that I'm biased. I also took a look at something called Rue Valley, which I'm not sure, I think that Alpha is just available right now for people to try. I'm typing in the word alpha. Jesus Christ, Pat. But Rue Valley is you're stuck in a motel doing therapy for some reason and you are stuck in a time loop and it is basically Disco Elysium. It is a Disco Elysium-like. Yay? It's good. It's very interesting.

It looks really cool. It has a really cool comic art style with like the little dots that you would see on paper. It has like a mind palace instead of stats where you're connecting your different thoughts. Yeah, it's a disco like and it looks very interesting and very good. I hope that this world we're in now where disco stands out as a shining star that burnt out where we're soon gonna have the The the five trails of comments that come from that Some of whom are suing the other comments which are trying to smash into others

Anyway, I hope that like we don't Anyway, I hope that we don't end up just rolling our eyes and going, ugh, another disco-like at some point in the- I cannot possibly imagine that. I don't want that to ever be a thing. Also, that's a great situation to have. I don't even care. Ugh, too much cake. Well, here's the thing.

Imagine a game that has the aesthetic and control system, but the writing is not that great and Everything else is kind of terrible. Oh, I really like the writing in Rue Valley. It was very different It's also judging by the temporary voice actors in the game. It is also Eastern European. I'm not exactly sure where okay Yeah, no, I like it quite a bit. Okay, I don't know when that's coming out. It's coming out later Yeah, no, I like it quite a bit. Okay, I don't know when that's coming out. It's coming out later Because just all this to say that like the the hallmark number one step one needs to be Impeccable writing that's carrying the show and then all the other fun flavor I also did a sponsored co-stream of the of college Street Fighter players

Okay, for a Pacota snack, Pagoda snack champion series. So yeah, what is that exactly? Apparently it's an egg roll. I don't know what a Pacota snack is, but apparently it's an egg roll. But basically it's the league is qualifying matches for college Street Fighter esports. Okay. So esports. Okay. So, esports, I've been here because, yeah, I have friends that are in education that have been letting me know about how you like esports, like programming classes, game development and esports, like, yeah, intramurals and things like that are becoming more and more of a regular thing in school. In a couple cases,

they're like opening up like, hey, if you know anything about this and or if you're a professional gamer or whatever, come in and help us design the program or create the curriculum. This is a league between schools at the college level? Yeah, between colleges in the US. Okay. It's primarily hosted by a gentleman that people said he was a pro, so you might know him, Saint Cola. Oh yeah, Saint Cola, I know Saint Cola.

Yeah, it's hosted by Saint Cola. And the production is rock solid. Okay. It's very well produced, matches come out super fast. It was really, really good. The only problem that I had with this pagoda snack champion series for college Street Fighter is that I'm sitting there and these are these are online matches

being played between different schools. Like, you know, it's like Texas A&M versus so and so is that I'm sitting there and I'm like I'm actually in a place for the first time in my life watching a Street Fighter tournament like Yeah, I could beat these guys Well like 1300 master, yeah Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I could I yeah, I could beat that guy. What was what was your role in the event? Go stream. Okay, you were you were Streaming I was watching them watch it and were you providing commentary over the yeah, I was like I could I could take that guy

Everybody loves the commentator.'s like, man, yeah, I could beat his ass. I could beat him. What I would have done, that's the best, right? I don't know why he dropped that combo. I wouldn't have dropped that. Yeah, the classic, like, and Sage Evans talked about this. It's so funny.

Or just like, yeah, the commentary where it's like, oh, you just go like, oh, yeah, this is what I would have done. This is what he doesn't know this is where he fucked up And then you know what I would have done. I would I would have just done better I would have not taken that throw I would have I would have done a reversal and won or like or when you When you kind of like the will it kill moments right you deflate those immediately because you're like as soon as he gets touched The first time you just go yeah, he's dead. He's dead. He's dead. He's dead. All right. All right. It's over And there's it's still happening and everyone's still engaged, but you're like as soon as he gets touched the first time you just go. Oh, yeah, he's dead. He's dead He says centers. All right. All right, it's over and there's it's still happening and everyone's still engaged

But you're like, yeah, he's that moving on pop the balloon like like Like there was a match between a men all player and a Rashid player and I don't even play Rashid and I'm like The Rashid should be going in more he lost because he didn't go in enough If I was playing that Rashid I would have simply won the match. That's great. Man.

That was fun. I would have not gotten hit. Yeah, you know what? You shouldn't have jumped there. I wouldn't have not gotten hit. Yeah, you know what? You know what? You shouldn't have jumped there. I wouldn't have just not jumped. Let's see. What else? What else do I have going on this week?

Yeah, so what I did, I threw what I would describe as a child's tantrum over Dragon Age The Veil Guard when it got shown off because I was like, I don't want it to be like whatever the fuck this is. I want it to be like Dragon Age Origins. And then upon going through all three games and messing around with them, I discovered that all of these games are completely different and they're all catering to a subset of the fans of the last game, which isn't me. So like Dragon Age two was catering to like console Dragon Age origins players. Oh, no. Inquisition is catering to the people who loved Dragon

Age twos narrative. And then this game is catering towards the people that liked Dragon Age 2's narrative, and then this game is catering towards the people that liked Dragon Age Inquisition's character dialogue in between each other. It's Devil May Cry 2, except it never learned its lesson. Yeah, well no, it's Dark Souls 2, but every game is Dark Souls 2. They're all weird and different and for a different group of people.

But you just keep adjusting according to the comments instead of creating a vision and then seeing it through. And then I watched the Skill Up review, which was scathing, and I got confirmation biased to hell I Was like man good it felt good to hear a better so smart to hear this review Tell me the things I already thought Smart dude, yeah Let's ignore the fact that I'm listening to skill up who's a very talented reviewer and apparently a very nice guy But I'm listening to a guy who doesn't very talented reviewer and apparently a very nice guy, but I'm listening

to a guy who doesn't like the like a dragon games and going, Oh, I'm so smart for having been conferred. Um, and so, man, so the turning point here was that friend of the show, Jean park, uh, started to play it and started to turn on it and started to be like, wow, I actually love this game. And I'm like, well, shit. And you know, I know and respect Gene's good opinions more than other people's bad opinions. And if I could just pause to insert for a second that like you're also on this growth kick after coming into Silent Hill 2 with the predisposed, like I'm... I'm so ready.

I'm so ready. The hate is, fuck, and it's like, unload the gun. It's actually pretty good, right? And like, that was an, oh shit, oh shit, okay, we're growing. You know what I did? When I sat down for Silent Hill, I had the metaphorical gun and I kept it next to me, but I took the bullet out Yes, so that I would have to load it back up again

So Jean Park known good opinion have her and friend of the show was like actually this rules and I'm like well Now I'm in a now I'm in a in an issue The issue is is that I don't know anymore. I had all this certainty. What if everything Gene has ever said is bad? Yeah. What if he's been wrong? What if he's been wrong?

Because Gene's also a guy who came onto this podcast and was like, I love Resident Evil 6. Resident Evil 6 is a good game. So I don't know who to believe anymore. And this leads to a very specific emotion, which I know you have felt, and I'm sure most people listening to this has felt about a piece of media, which is, well, now I have to know. Now I have to see for myself. I have to know. That's the correct response. Yes. And what I discovered, uh, I've been, I played it for about 15 hours. I streamed it a couple of times.

What I discovered is that I actually think that most of the stuff in skill ups review is actually accurate is that, um, it does feel like human resources is in the room for every conversation. It, uh, it does have some, some dialogue quimbles that are moderny and marvely and shit like that. And a lot of the little environmental puzzles are for babies. So here's the part that fucked me, is that those environmental puzzles for babies, I actually had like a slight, I felt like so stupid. You know when the modern game gives you like the big glowing arrow to the solution yeah and you somehow miss

it because you're a dumb fucking idiot that was me somehow okay it happens um and it happens as a dumb fucking idiot myself who spins the camera past solution sometimes I don't I don't fault you too much for that one. And I did maybe 15 different character conversations. And you know what? Those conversations, I felt like I lasered in on what's happening. So Baldur's Gate and Mass Effect and Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2 and maybe even Inquisition were made by dudes who lived in Alberta. Right. Yeah. And you can, if people who are not in Canada don't really taste that, but you know exactly what

I mean when I say that you, you can feel Alberta coming through Mass Effect one, especially the West Canadian. Yeah. You can feel like a different group of guiltier, whiter Albertans making this game in that they've sanded off all of the edges and everything is very nice and kind. And everything is very nice and kind. So I'll take an example that stood out to me during my playtime, which was you get an assassin on the gang and the assassin is possessed by a demon. And you know what? They actually do a really interesting thing where the player can see the demon talking shit constantly, but other characters can't. So they're just like unaware and you

have like this director eye that you can't see. And the demon gets mad and punches their possessor, right? And he gets like a bloody lip, right? And I wanted my character to say, yo, it is not okay that you have a demon controlling your actions. And the line of dialogue was, that's not okay, right? Because he's like, it's fine. I'm like, oh, it's definitely not fine, you seem insane. But what my character said was, that's not okay.

It wouldn't be okay if one of us hit you, would you? And I'm like, no, no, no, no no no no I did not mean that's not okay because you're in a an abusive married relationship With your possessed demon what I meant was it's not okay because you seem like a crazy person Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, all right Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right. Do you see what I'm talking about? Yes, 100%, yes. I'm not validating you, I'm telling you you're an insane person.

And you got, and like the truncated preview for the line just goes off in a completely different direction. Um... So like, you can, like I let a guy die horribly and I've been a complete dick to some of the characters I've run into with the,headed dialogue options, but with your party, you kind of

have to, we're like, you know what, you know what, Willie, this party, this feels like a family. And your particular tolerance for that, it's going to like wildly vary, right? When you're playing Baldur's Gate and the girls in the party are like stabbing each other over there and Astarion is like taking bets. Right? That is more my speed of like a bunch of toxic, shit headed, angry RPG members. In Wrath of the Righteous or Pathfinder Kingmaker when you have party members that just actively hate each other all the time

for the whole stretch of the game. That's my speed, but here man we're gonna hey you know we're gonna we're gonna do our best and we're gonna stop those elven gods that went crazy and we're gonna do it as a team And it just has a lot of the teeth filed off of it Okay, like do I think that the writing is particularly bad? No, do I think it's a little cringe? Yes Okay, but like it is going for like a very specific tone and Watching these these like the easiest thing to do is to like grab one of these scenes and like throw it at you on social media and you go, oh, that's pretty bad. It's

a lot more tolerable in context. Okay. With the tone of the game. Because I guess that's the big question ultimately, because like I just as someone who's only seen the, you know, like, yeah, barely just seen random clips or whatever, I'm reminded of like the similar energy when like Andromeda was around and you're just kind of like, is there a case here where- Oh, there's just nothing going on in that fucking thing. Is there a case here where it's like people are not really talking like human beings? You know? No, no.

These people are talking, the people in your party talk like they're from Portland Okay, okay, okay They see you and they hear you and like yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah And you're and like depending on whether or not that fucking dialogue makes you go fucking crazy Like I expect them to fight and for my character to walk out and go gentle hands gentle hands everyone gentle hands would with the conversations end with me yelling just call me pointy-eared

yeah so like and it's really interesting cuz like I'm a piece of shit from the East Coast and now I live on the West Coast and that's really interesting because like I'm a piece of shit from the East coast and now I live on the West coast and that's how people are. People are like very like it's like I'm not going to sit here and say that I don't appreciate people like validating me if I get a little pissy, pissy thing. But at the same time it can feel fake. It can feel disingenuous. It can feel insincere a hundred percent and And like yeah, I know it feel it's a very West Coast video game. Okay. Okay. Yeah However, yeah, did you ever play Kingdoms of Amalur reckoning boy?

Did I I spent quite a few? Boy, did I, I spent quite a few, many a day testing that game. So when you play this game, I called it out very early and I reiterated it. And maybe the 10 people in my chat who did play Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning piped up and went, yeah, this feels like a sequel to Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning when you're playing it. I play, I'm playing it on the hard difficulty, the hardest difficulty you can start on, and it is a competent action game with a really good skill tree and a lot of good RPG systems. It feels good.

Does it have the Amalur unexpected juggle combo system going as well? No, it has the Amalur, you know what, you have this massive skill tree that branches into all these different things and you can just respec for free whenever you want. If you want to just completely change the way your character works, yeah here you go. Yeah yeah yeah, okay freedom on the tree, that's nice. Yeah it plays very well. So on top of that, occasionally I cringe at the dialogue, but overall it's fairly charming. It's nice. You know what helps out a lot?

It is the most mechanically and technically solid game BioWare has ever put out by an order of magnitude. It runs like a dream. Everything is super slick. Everything controls really well. I have encountered no bugs Everything is polished to a mirror shine and now granted as somebody points out That's not exactly a high bar because Bioware games have never really come out super solid except for Mass Effect 2 It is a very solid and enjoyable 8 out of 10 with some docking

to some of the character writing, but like some serious pluses in the way that it plays. It is easily the best game they have made since Mass Effect 2. And you can take that in one of two ways. Either that's really easy or thank God. It's interesting because I was just thinking about Mass Effect 2, right? And I was thinking about how when you talk, when you're mentioning like the, you're cringing at some of the sincerity, right? And it's like, well, I'm thinking about how the relationship you have across these games is where you have a Kaiden or a Jacob, right?

Where these are the sincere characters. And basically, what's his name in Baldur's Gate as well, the fucking item eater? Gale, right? Where you're like, oh, the sincere characters are the ones we shit on because we're like, well, fuck that guy, right? Well, oh, hey, hold on.

I'm gonna hold up my hand here for a second. Like, Gale is the most toxic person in the Baldur's Gate take part in. Okay, okay, yeah, admittedly, I'm just going on for the first question. Gale is actually the worst out of all of them Okay, cuz he's like he's just a big nerd Maybe he's got a little bit of autism, but he's got this magic hyper fixation And then you're like oh his hyper fixation is also his ex-girlfriend right the fuck that's

And every time you're like Gale. I think you're being an asshole. He's like what if I killed myself like Gail, I think you're being an asshole. He's like, what if I killed myself right now? Would you like it if I just killed myself? Would that make you happy? And you're like, can you fucking calm it down for a second, Gail? OK, so yeah, not that. But I'm talking about more like the carth energy

that you kind of get off of some of these characters, where you're like, I don't read that as sincere. That feels fake. And what I do feel is sincere is my relationship with Rex, who's like, ah, you fucker, get over here, right? And you shit on each other and you fucking. Yeah, no, that's because we're pieces of shit. But that's fun!

That's because we're pieces of shit! Well, I want other people who are also pieces of shit, and we happen to save the world. There's a whole type of person out there. Think about this, there are entire groups of people out there that are just nice to each other all the time. And I'm not friends with those people, and I didn't marry that person,

and I'm not related to even one of them But apparently they're out there and that works for them punch bomb used to be that person until I got involved God damn it Keep those keep those keep those dukes up. Yo, but no, that's the deal. It's just that feeling of just like, ugh, I don't want to be friends with you. That's not the vibe I want. I don't want that kind of relationship. Talk shit! Throw fucking, throw it out there, you know? I just, yeah. And so if that's the-

When your party banters in- When your party banters in Veilguard, it's it's like it's pretty positive Yeah like like no Traditionally when your party banters you expect them to be talking shit. Yeah That's that you know, so that's it. That's it. I'm like, okay. It's just Not people I'd be friends with then. So like, I think back to like, Keldorn and Vakonia in Baldur's Gate 2, in which every interaction

those two have in your party is I'm going to kill you. Like, the dark elf, sorry, a drow cleric and a lawful good paladin. Every interaction they have in that game is I'm going to kill you. And eventually one of them does because those two cannot live in the party together under any circumstances. You hit a point and one of them kills the other. It's unavoidable. And I think, wow, that's so cool. But that was also 25 years ago. Sure. Sure. And it doesn't have to be that extreme even

But it's just like yeah If I didn't detect if I didn't get if you were not at least a little bit toxic when I met you I don't think we'd be friends And it's one of those things it's like maybe like so there's a the one of the things that That veil guards gotten flack or praise for whatever is that it does a lot of like there's like, one of the things that, that Veil Guard's gotten flack or praise for, whatever, is that it does, it deals with a lot of, there's like a suite of trans options, and there's like a non-binary storyline in it.

And one of the things that I find is like a really big missed opportunity is that like, not even one member of your party is an abject piece of shit about it. And I feel like actually dealing with somebody who's like a massive asshole about literally any given topic is like a really good way to deal with that topic. So I think back to Pillars of Eternity and one of the members of your party is a guy named Durrance and he's a priest and he is a dirty homeless man and Every single thing that comes out of his fucking mouth is awful

like every he is just every single conversation is how much you suck and every other member of the party sucks by name and How you're all garbage and how your morals are trash and if you were just cool like me and murdered kids you would be cool too. Like he is he's the fucking worst and he has the most dialogue of any companion in that game and he is by far the most interesting person to talk to because you argue with him constantly about what a piece of shit. He is right right right, okay? Yeah, yeah, man. Yeah, you know I just I'm not looking for a party of affirmations Well some people are yeah, I guess I guess and that's fine, but it ain't me All right

like you know you instead of hanging out with HK 47 and Like, you know, instead of hanging out with HK47 and Mandalore in Dragon Age Valguard, you're hanging out with Mission and Zalbar. Yeah, like, I didn't want to say Kraya, but I was thinking of Kraya throughout this conversation. I was really just thinking of the- You old fucking bat! Why can't anything be good enough? Why is every choice shitty? And then I reload and I look at the other version

and no matter what, you can't get happy with what I say. But we're still, we're doing this on the way to the ship going to defeat the big evil to save the universe, right? And that's the thing. Like all that toxicity and nonsense and bullshit is happening as this group is going to Mount Doom to fucking toss the ring in. as this group is going to Mount Doom to fucking toss the ring in.

So yeah, as its own thing, if this was not named Dragon Age and this was a standalone RPG from hit RPG maker Bioware, I think it would be a lot more liked, but it's kind of drowning in the expectations of the games that came before it. Because the tone between the past three games are pretty solid.

They were pretty, they're pretty consistent. Whereas this one is a lot more modern. That being said, yeah, no, it's the kind of thing that I'm actually really enjoying it and I'll cringe every now and then, but like your tolerance will vary wildly

Wildly on that stuff. So if this did not play very well, I would not go through it I would not be like ah, well, I really wanted to get to the story because the gameplay whatever but it does play really well so I Notice you didn't point out that it's like oh There's some characters that are great and you can just tag with them or anything like that like if it's so far I've actually liked all the characters I've run into Okay, just despite their Kindness, I'm actually like oh, yeah. There's something here. Okay

I also Played a real game of Dungeons and Dragons last week. And that was interesting. So the long and short of it, Dungeons and Dragons is fun. It is fun. Unfortunately, you have to play Dungeons and Dragons with people. This is one of those things that is part and parcel. Yes, we've unfortunately other people are not me and or also not my wife. And so they can be different. And sometimes that's annoying. So sometimes you encounter and you discover that one of the players in your party is a rules lawyer. What did you do? I didn't do anything. Okay. I did great. Okay. I did fantastic. I did my role play. I used my spells correctly. I managed good. Great. I did fantastic. Some people like to explain mechanics to you that you

already understand like you're stupid. That could be really annoying. Other characters don't understand party synergy and want to split the party to do their character's own thing because it's what my character would do and butt heads with the DM for over an hour. Mad Fientist Are they under the impression that this is your first time playing in a long time? Oh yeah, no, no, it's, you know when someone starts to explain something to you and you're like, no,

I understand and they're like, no, you don't, I'm gonna explain it anyway. Okay, okay, gotcha. And you're like, no, I I'm gonna explain it anyway, okay, okay got you and you're like no I I understand right right right and they're like no no no shut up listen, and I'm like you fucking And then they talk over the DM You're like man You know people things dealing with humans

But all in all despite a couple rough patches did you get Claire explained a little bit a little bit yeah but overall I had fun I'll go back unfortunately doesn't look like it'll be for a bit because I believe we're not gonna be able to make it the next couple of sessions so it won't be many updates for a while. But, yeah, no. D&D is fun even with other people, but also there's other people. So this is the trap of doing things with other people is that other people are there. I don't know what can be done about it. Not much as you've committed, but I'm curious if, because different games have different

flavors to them. Like if you have a party of people that are all kind of funny, then your game is going to be kind of goofy and funny the whole time through I'm gonna be blunt. Well a page and I are in this group. We're the funny ones. Okay, okay It's not fair Not to us, I mean, but it's not fair to expect like but it's not professional funny people It's not clown shoes all the way around the table. No, okay. Okay, because sometimes it is, you know, yeah. Yeah I'm a professional Anyway, that's what's been going on with me this week. What's going on with me this coming week is

God I have to look at a fucking schedule. I don't know what's going on in my life What's going on is more metaphor and More metaphor and more metaphor and Paige is going to be streaming the golden joysticks on Thursday morning and I'm going to be doing a sponsored stream of something called Inaya Life After Gods on Thursday afternoon. People are saying I should play stalker. I'm not going to know. I don to know. I don't know.

Has it? Will you play a Stalker game within the month of its release? Didn't play a Stalker game. Yeah. You know what? I wouldn't recommend playing those games within the year of their release. You're looking for that year two patch? I'm looking for that.

It's on sale on Steam patch. Okay. Didn't eval on one stalker game that came into the office once but that was pretty much it otherwise, you know Okay. Yeah, but yeah, you can check me out over twitch.tv slash Pat stairs at and Thursday morning You'll be able to check out page over at twitch.tv slash peach saliva Thursday morning, you'll be able to check out page over at twitch.tv slash peach saliva Okay, let's also for stock or two They they increase the system requirements like a week from launch to having 30 gigs of RAM in your computer To that game recommended Yes, okay that game's gonna be on fire

It's gonna be on fire You know, it's funny all this is coming up because I'm like, I haven't wanted to open up my computer and do anything to it for a long time. The whole point of going nuts a couple years ago was to not have to. I'm like, is it that time? I don't want it to be that time. Probably not. You don't have to go in there and do anything.

You gotta clean it. You know. We'll see. Alright, let's take a quick break BRB let's do it I'm gonna pee all right let's take a quick word from our sponsors I love you sponsors I just want you guys to know that this week the podcast is sponsored by Uncommon Goods. Uh oh. Oh, I'm gonna sneeze. Oh no. Oh.

What is it? Was that a yarn sneeze? It's a snar. I kind of aborted the sneeze. I got out of it. It was a snarn. Oh. Okay.

The podcast is sponsored by Uncommon Goods and yeah, this holiday season is we are approaching the time of gift giving. Guess what? A lot of you suck at giving gifts and there's no helping it. I do. There's no helping it. You can't get better. End of story.

Not me. Couldn't be me. I'm fucking great at it. But part of that is because I like finding shit that is totally unexpected and not even on the radar of the person that you are buying the gift for. Sometimes they drop hints and they're like, oh, I might want this or so. You can find that stuff and do it. But if you find something that's super duper unexpected, that's always really fun.

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That's uncommongoods.com slash superbeasts and you'll get 15% off don't miss this limited time offer uncommon goods we're all out of the ordinary yeah check them out thank you very much uncommon goods thanks uncommon goods love you guys alright Um, all right, let's talk about multiverses winning fighting game of the year again. Wow. I don't, I don't every year, every year. I know it's pretty much the story. I just, I just don't like TGA anything because it's so meaningless. But it's so it's all it does, I've had this discussion like four times. All it does is once a year it's a reminder to that some stupid shit that is meant to,

some stupid shit that doesn't matter, that's not real, pops up, makes no sense, gets everything wrong, makes everyone upset and then it goes away for another 12 months and then you don't think about it till it comes around again. Okay, so here's the fun thing, right? You are an expert in your field, this subdivision of pop culture, right? I would call you an expert. I would also say that I am an expert. I would say that most of the people listening to this podcast are Most of the people listening to this podcast are experts. And it's very easy as people who are just as intelligent and well-informed on all of these games and all of these prizes and all of these,

da, da, da, da, to go, this shit is stupid. This doesn't matter. Wooly, to average normie man who's thinking of an RPG to buy after he's done with Madden this year the Game Awards Absolutely totally fucking matter Yeah, the Oscars yeah, hey are you in the movies if we are we doing a movie podcast now But if we did do a movie podcast would be very similar to this and we'd like man the Oscars get Yeah. Hey, are you in the movies if we are we doing a movie podcast? No But if we did do a movie podcast would be very similar to this and we'd like man the Oscars get it wrong every year Every single year, but you know what most of the movie going public sees this thing won 12 Oscars

Holy shit, that must be the best movie ever and all I really I gotta watch the Revenant Well, all I really want is for like something like Ballotro to get its accolades so that the people who made it or the devs are like, Hey, yo, you did a fucking awesome job, hey, look! And then it can get that spotlight, maybe even have there be a storefront page that's like, Hey, winners of the awards, hey, look, you get a little bit of extra boost because you deserve it because you did a super good job.

And that's the type of shit that like it should amount to. But it never just, it's never that simple, is it? It's never just simply like the creators of this did a good job and deserve some praise for that. It's always this other shit, this nonsense fucking... Drek. All right, so I want to go into it because this is so fascinating to me because the reason why multiverses is up is because they needed a certain amount of fighting games to fit

into it and for everyone there forgot the Rivals of A for their even exists, right? Well, they didn't forget, they just, you know, they got the list that they were told to get, or they played the games for an hour or two and wrote their impressions down. So actually, the way that this works, I remember Jeff Gerstmann talking about this back in like 2015, like a long time ago, and the way that it works is the same as it always is. And there's a problem with the judging process because they're attempting to make it too fair. Like I actually genuinely mean the attempt to make the voting process for the TGAs or the VGAs or whatever the fuck version we're talking about is, fair makes

it a certain way. So the way that it works is really simple. Keely says, hey, these newspapers, these websites, these things, so this newspaper and GameSpot and IGN and GameRank and all these people, right? I want you to send us one judge. I want you to ship out one judge down to San Francisco, which is where all of you are anyway, and I want you to send one guy down here and then we'll argue about it and we'll put together the thing of nominations. So what ends up happening is they send down usually either the EIC with the editor in chief or like the second tier guy, which are the people

who tended to review the biggest budget and largest games of that year for business purposes. Which means when they walk in, already Elden Ring is a front runner because everyone in that room played Elden Ring. They may not agree that it's the game of the year, but they all actually played it. And I use the example of Castle Superbeast. If there was a Castle Superbeast game of the year right now, it would be between mouthwashing and metaphor. The only two games we both played that came out this year. But I also, you know this, historically, hate the top 10 idea stuff, and I don't like listing

because I also know how many things I didn't play. And I'm like, you can definitely always qualify and go like, yeah, it doesn't matter. And Bellatro, yeah, you're right. Et cetera, right, yeah, so that's going hard top on my list in many cases, just based on sheer hours played. Although Shogun Showdown is catching up, I'm not gonna lie.

So what would happen? Let's say you say Shogun Showdown is like your. I'm not gonna lie. So what would happen? You would let's say you you say Shogun Showdown It's like your game of the year. It's the best and I go. Well, I didn't play that shit But I played bilateral. Do you think blatchers pretty good? You can be like, yeah, I play bilateral is pretty good and we end up at the consensus that bilateral is the game of the year Even though that's not how you really feel right? When bilateral gets nominated in a situation like this, what I believe it to be is that they sat around talking about these things and one, Shadow of the Earth Tree kept coming up despite the fact that it was disqualified from the rules, so they changed the rules.

And second, of a group of about 30 people, there must have been at least two people that would not shut the fuck up until Bolatro got a nomination. Like disruptive, I'm going to kill myself if you guys don't put Bolatro on this list. I will scream to the heavens Bolatro deserves at least a nomination. Giant bomb style. We're locking the door and the knives come out. I mean, you know, that game's fucking incredible. So you know, it is what it is. I get it.

But when it comes to like, for example, this whole DLC discussion with with Shadows of the Earth Tree and shit. Oh, that's so unfair. But it's that that's my the thing is like, I don't care in the sense that I'm actually super fine with DLC counting. I don't like I don't find that the sense that I'm actually super fine with DLC counting. I don't care, like I don't find that's not what... Oh really? I don't find that to be an issue.

Shadows of the Urchery is a giant significant piece of gaming content that was released. Absolutely. And it should win the DLC category. So the only thing with this is I'm just like, be consistent, don't be a hypocrite. If that counts, then Phantom Liberty... Phantom Liberty counts! But then it didn't! But no, no, no, Willie, Phantom Liberty counts as best ongoing game, even though it's also

not an ongoing game. That's for games that are... that's for gas games. So that's it. I don't give a fuck whether you make it count or not but be consistent don't be a hypocrite and don't make certain things count just because it's a nearer and dearer to you and It gets a special place versus other things. Well, yeah No, as long as you're there and go either way with it Though the reason why Erd tree gets to be in there

So the Elden wing can you win two years game of the game and it's fucking Elden Ring. And you want to talk about casually. It's like, yeah, that's the biggest thing in the fucking world. So, you know, that, yeah, that that's a spotlight on a very known, giant, immersive video game industry shaping experience. I can't wait. I can't wait till the TGA is because everyone going to be mad and Elden Ring is going to win. Like, I would think it's really funny. I would

think it's like the funniest fucking thing in the world if Elden Ring's DLC did not win Game of the Year despite the rules being changed to get it in. That'd be really funny. But then there's the other bit, right? And here's the aspect of it where this is like in the same way that it's like, oh man, the fucking Logan Paul Tyson bullshit, where it's like, yeah. And then you put put out you have tweets and you have like Hey, who's gonna get biggest snub who you you know or whatever you have these like things where there's a bit of there's a part Of this nomination time of year where we're supposed to be doing this in advance of the the thing happening in a couple weeks, right? Everybody has to start talking and going off and getting mad and there has to be a big

negative discussion around it because it's a huge, like, a fucking whatever, you know? It's a big storm of attention before everything actually drops. So like, it's actually best if there is some type of controversy or some type of stupid thing or some type of Sifu in the fighting game category. You know, like, it's good, actually, to get everyone. I don't think for a second that Sifu in the fighting game category. Yeah, like it's good actually

I know I get everyone second that who got in that category because of controversy I thought it got in that category because the people doing the fighting game category don't know what the fuck they're talking Of course, of course But you know what man if you can be a shit on Twitter and get paid for it, then why the fuck wouldn't you? well Hey why the fuck wouldn't you? Well, hey. Like, you know? Like, I just, that's the thing. So I'm like, yeah, and then also,

this is what it's supposed to be. I mean, it's shit on Blue Sky, by the way, now. I deleted all my tweets. Okay, yeah. No, I mean. I'm actually being way less of a shit on Blue Sky. It's very weird how the tone of a place changes your opinions

But yeah, I think I think it is really unfair to people who Put out games this year to have to compete with Elden Ring again. I think that's like I think that's I think that's like just I think that's like, I think that's, I think that's like just bringing out the greatest champ that ever lived to fucking beat down the new challengers. It sucks. I, yeah, I, I guess. And I mean, I'm like, should Marvel collection be on that list? Is that? I think the fact, I guess, I think we've, I think we've hit a point where remakes and re-releases should

really live in their own category because there's so many of them in every category. Yeah, and we're in a time where we're going back to a lot of old shit and preserving it for future sake in this current gen. But it's like you want to throw on collections and stuff like that. Then it's like, okay, you can do that. But yeah, we have then Under Knight and all these other things that just get... You said Rivals of Aether. Fucking Under Knight 2 came out. There's some things you just go like, yeah, no, we just completely...

No one who came in to make a decision here took a look at that. And so because there is a perpetual problem with the choices here not having their ear to the ground, I guess, you know, then it's just going to be a fucking manufactured outrage machine. And I just I bums me out. I don't know. All right. Well, yeah. But yeah, shadow. But also there's going to be trailers for Xbox games there. Yeah. I mean, I feel, I think Shadows of the Earth Tree was incredible and I think it deserves some kind of something.

I think it absolutely clears the expansion pack of the year. I don't care what you call it or give it, but it deserves something. Yeah, yeah, sure. It deserves the same thing that brood wars would have got fine No, make categories if you need to I suppose but and then yes a whole lot of trailers and especially looking forward to the the the mobile game trailers and tie-ins for things that you can't quite do. Do you remember Shick Hydrobot?

I think about him every year. No, I don't. I think about him. I mean, I love this fucking stupid bullshit. I love it. I eat it up. Yeah. Yeah.

It's my favorite meal. I realized stupid bullshit Man, I well cuz cuz by being by being blase and smug about it that just shows how much smarter I am than everybody else because I'm not being affected Look how fucking smart I am. Oh my god But also it's fun to do that shit with the Oscars too If only there was a way to get these game creators their accolades Without the bullshit. Well, the golden joysticks is like this Thursday

Oh, and that's voted on by other developers. Like last year, other developers said that Baldur's Gate III was the best game that's ever happened in the history of the fucking industry because it won every single award it was up for. I look forward to seeing how Matan will figure out how to crash this year despite probably having his face on the security wall. Is that the Bill Clinton kid?

Yeah, he's actually a internet person who has a podcast and is a known person with a huge following and does that as a professional thing. I will admit, I will admit I did see a clip of that kid that was actually really funny in which he asks someone, so do you read at all? And they said yes. And he's like, name 10 books. Okay. And like he didn't say name 10 books that you have read. Just name the books. And they fucking stalled out. And I'm like, that's, that's, that's a, that is a conversation ender. There you go. Yeah. Perpet Actually 17 years old and so on

But I imagine one of the things we'll probably get to see At the Game Awards the TGAs copyright Trade I think by the way the for the the TGAs. Sorry the the I think by the way the for the the TGAs sorry the the Yeah, the game awards chai tea you know the game awards featuring hit fighting game 2x Short for 2x ko quite frankly. I say why stop there. It should be the TGA Awards like I Think we're like we're like right. Yeah, we're like should be the TGA awards like I think we're like we're like right yeah get to see there will be a new trailer for

Secret Level, but one did come out this week. I don't know if you saw it. It looked cool as fuck. Yeah. In particular, I'd like to call attention to the Pac-Man shot of which there is a Pac-Man logo and a nightmarish shadow teeth demon creature behind that logo. I have a screenshot of it. Yeah, hit me with that screenshot, man. Here you go go I love

Pac-Man Pac-Man's my friend we're all friends of Pac-Man it is walk a walk oh here I think I can drag it into frame actually oh yeah doing like this then yeah look at this yeah that's Pac-. That's my friend Pac-Man. Yeah. It is a shadow beast. Pac-Man. You can see it at 1 minute and 14 seconds into the trailer. That is the Pac-Man from...

Not Pixels. That is the Pac-Man from the backstage like pre-viz music video of that Bloodhound Gang song? Which one? Relax, don't do it. Okay, yeah. Where they, where Pac-Man shows up and gets high. That's what he looked like right before he got high. I mean, it looks like something Samus should be hunting.

It's fucking what the shit are they going for? And then, yeah, you get to see Mega Man putting on some armor and then some other of that stuff. I like that the emotional core of that whole trailer is like, do you remember the love in your heart that you felt for Mega Man? He's going to run, jump and shoot though. Also, they confirmed what?

Arnold Schwarzenegger? They confirmed a lot. Keanu Reeves, Kevin Hart. So they dropped some names. I didn't notice the Concord in there. You didn't? Which was weird. I didn't see any of the Concord. I'm pretty sure there was a couple of Concord cuts. Maybe I'm just not familiar with the Concord. Maybe your brain just filtered it out auto deleted the Concord like you like possible like yinbi No, my brain did not auto delete the yinbi

Most I what I particularly enjoy is Sifu is getting a whole lot of play in the trailer and that look like it's gonna be rad as fuck Yeah, there's a couple of these that look like they're gonna be bigger winners than the others. Well so the Sifu short is just gonna be a run of Sifu. Yeah but it's like the coloring and the animation looks like exemplary. The camera, the HUD will be off and the camera will be slightly replaced in other angles but we're just gonna watch a run. Yeah, and like, I look at the, there's the other one that really stands out.

It's like, hey, do you want to watch the opening cutscene to a new Warhammer 40K game that hasn't come out and doesn't exist? Those space marines are gonna fuck up the boys! And then Dungeons and Dragons just like normal, raw. Little Tiamat's there. She got five heads, bro. When they say Dungeons and Dragons but they don't specify like a realm. Could be God, no it's Forgotten Realms.

It's Forgotten Realms by default, right? That's yeah, that's what I was- We're not doing fucking Planescape or any of that nonsense. It's Forgotten Realms. It's Forgotten Realms by default, right? That's- yeah, that's what I was- We're not doing- we're not doing fucking Planescape or any of that nonsense. It's Forgotten Realms. If they- that's the rule if they never specify? Yep. Mm-hmm. Okay.

And, you know, it just happens to be on the Sword Coast. Just- it just happens to be on the Sword Coast every single time. It's crazy. Um... Yeah, so- That looks cool. Like Like there's the Call of Duty thing and the Call of Duty thing is gonna be the first mission of Call of Duty 4 back when Call of Duty started. The price is gonna be there and it's gonna have a big mustache. Was that no Russian? No man that. That was Call of Duty 6.

Oh. I remember three we actually tested and I had on my computer as well. That was just straight up World War. Yeah. But I was getting into the modern warfare. Yeah. Anyway, so there was that. This is a story that kind of like it was brewing a little bit earlier, but it seems like it's officially going down. Yeah, Ubisoft is being

sued over the shutdown of the crew. A class action lawsuit has been filed because it turns out that when you buy a game, people believe that you should be able to play it. I love that out of all the companies that have ever done this, Ubisoft gets to eat the lawsuit. I love it. So I think part of the reason is also because let's say you boot up, I don't know, fucking Metal Gear Solid 3 online and you're like, ah, the servers are down, it's over, I can't

play. Well, I still have Metal Gear Solid 3 in my fucking PlayStation to play. Or I boot up PSO for the Dreamcast, the it's like yeah what the fuck are you gonna you know it's like alright well you hit offline mode I guess but in many instances if it's a game that is like literally this is online only what the fuck are you doing there's a bit of an understanding there but if you could offer some kind of offline thing that's it that's fine here to just say you cannot drive your cars. Fuck. Yeah, fuck your cars Fuck you fuck everything you've ever done in this game by skull and bones dipshit, you know, and then your your your legal defenses

Well, you never knew it, but you never actually purchased the game. You purchased a license to access the game. I think is like I think this situation was like incredibly well summarized by Ubisoft putting out a real statement by real people saying gamers should get used to not really owning their games to which the universal response was I guess you should get used to us not buying them and that has happened. was I guess you should get used to us not buying them. And that has happened. Ubisoft is in dire fucking straights. Oh yeah, no, they're currently, they're putting price tags on it.

I was speaking to somebody a couple weeks ago who told me that they are seeing a bunch of CVs coming in from people in different Ubisoft departments because People are work there seem to be convinced that if shadows does bad. It's time to go man as somebody who like and I know a number of people who have been like careerists at Ubi, it's gonna be pretty rough when, well, I mean, if you're good enough, you can figure it out,

but Ubi has a very particular workflow, and if you're in their system for like a decade, it's kind of like, they say the same thing about like being at like Pixar or so, like you you're kind of you're out of the rest of the world and like the compatibility issues with jump yeah it turns out you're not allowed to touch the girls of the other offices like you can at the Ooby office it turns out it turns out it's not it's not like assumed not all studios though you know there's unless you go to ride or blister some studios where you can just continue that

The policy rolls over, baby Yeah, I The the shittiest part was probably that after that statement steam updated its terms to then reflect that you don't own shit To preemptively be like hey hey man, it's not on us. Yeah, and then GOG came out and said, all these dudes are pussies, you own whatever, bro. Ah. Which was nice.

You know, as someone that held onto the, I pretty much was like, not against digital, but I was like, I would rather have my cartridge or my disc physically, please, for a long time. And then I gave in because like space mattered and it just became more practical. It was always the way things were going to work out. But these streaming services that these fucking stadiums and these lunatics, that rose up to be like, hey, you get your metadata and that's it, but buy us, buy games and give us money for DLC that you'll never fucking actually own though.

And once the service shuts down, thank you, goodbye, get the fuck out. Yeah, Ubisoft's been the worst of it by far. They've killed the most games the fastest. They've apparently responded by making it so that the crew sequels have an offline mode now that will be accessible once the servers for those eventually shut down. Oh, that's great as long as they give those games out for free to people who bought the first one. But they're not going to do that.

So we'll see where this lawsuit goes. But yeah, generally speaking, I think, Your Honor, I bought it and it's gone. And they're saying that I bought a license, but nobody was under that impression and or that was not a thing. That's not really a thing. I'm hoping that for the same reason that NDAs can be fucking thrown the fuck out that a judge can look at that and go Yeah, that's bullshit. You buy your games you own that what are we talking about, you know? But I know a lot of that also tends to depend on where the case is filed

There's a really interesting This is a minor aside, but California Really interesting, this is a minor aside, but do we talk about Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown? That was next on the list, I was going to say. Also speaking of Ubisoft, and how that bombed and how Ubisoft just split the team up and just sent them to various other teams and say, oh, just didn't perform very well. Oh, wait, Lost Crown.

Sorry, I was going to talk about the Rogue. Never mind. And I don't know if you played Lost Crown. It's easily the best game Ubisoft has made in 10 years. It's incredible. It's a fantastic Metroid game. Not yet, but yeah. I am super.

It's amazing. And it's like, it's really good. And like, why didn't it do well? Well, the publishing guy over at Larian, Cromwell, actually made this massive thread explaining that because that game did not come out on Steam, it died. And if it had come out on Steam, it would have done really well. Wait, didn't it come out on Steam it died and if it had come out on Steam it would have done really well Wait, didn't it come out on Steam, but you had to get a fucking no play thing to get to do it No, it came out a year later on Steam. Okay, cuz I definitely saw and added it to my list. I remember doing

But that was not on my mouth in like January of last year. It came to Steam like two months ago. Okay. And Cromout went on in this big long tweet thread that was basically like, well, it's an old franchise, so it's going to skew older because you have to know what Prince of Persia is to care, right? It's a Metroidvania, which also skews older, and the primary skew is PC, which also skews older and skews for Steam. So older people who own Steam are going to be like

most of this game's market, and that's the only place it didn't come out. So it bombed. Yeah, well, you know, when we have a a bunch of when we're a giant game company, we can sacrifice some lambs to force you to use our our launcher. Like, you know, we can take a few couple franchises and bleed them out to force your hand over here. Like, what's the what are we trying to we trying to actually make sales here? Like, fuck that. Take a couple. It's really interesting with Veilguard because EA just gave up. EA has been fighting the origin slash EA app battle for like, god, how long?

Fucking a decade more. And they finally just gave up and like, we will sell more copies than the 30% fee will lose. Like, every time, over and over and over and over and over. I mean, I don't appreciate that. Like, you know, when I click play on cyberpunk, it launches the CD Projekt launcher first and then you got to go again. But whatever, it's there, it'll do. We're just we're in like, we're never gonna live in a world without this bullshit.

I'll tell you what, if Veilguard had asked me to install the EA whatever, I would have returned it. That would have been like the final straw on me going I gots to know. Just removing that little piece of friction made all the difference. I mean, it's like streaming services though, right? The prospect of getting people over though

to browsing and playing on your platform. And then we can make all the money. It's all there. One, each person we bring over is millions of dollars in sales. Okay so Wooly, we've been running the Epic Game Store for years now and we have successfully brought over ten guys. How much money did we make? That's uneasy. That's a quick 10 mil in the pocket. Oh, wow. Yeah.

And those 10 guys are upset because when they open up the store, nothing shows up actually. It's just a big black box on the desktop. They can't launch their games. But if you navigate invisibly, you can eventually find which button will launch it. I don't think anything is funnier than Square Enix pretending that Kingdom Hearts is finally available on PC when it came out. Like that might be the most disrespectful shit. Now available on Steam available oh my god yeah yeah well so no I was

actually gonna say the rogue prince of Persia was the other one that came out yeah they made it look less interesting why isn't he purple anymore he's not he's not pink anymore so they changed changed the art style and they've, well, so they've released it's art incoming as a big overhaul patch, doubles the size of the game, adds a lot to the backgrounds and just fleshes everything out. And then yeah, also changes him from pink to flesh colored. And I guess somewhere in there, the Dead Cells guys were like having a battle over that art and then they were like please make him a normal prince color

and they're like no let's have a dress a fun extreme art style it'll stand out and then they're like well the sales show you what they show you so fuck that shit switch it up. Pink? Purple? Yeah, it's kind of in the middle there. Something. Anyway.

It's like a lavender. Anyway, it's a Play-Doh colored. But yeah, I feel like an internal art battle was lost with the decision. But yeah, let me tell you, Woolly, that lost lost crown game that Prince of Persia game. That is incredible Yeah, I is oh I from each each the from the first trailers from each trailer I saw I could tell I'm like this the combat in this looks fucking sick with the time base shit I'm like, yeah, I just I'm waiting for a chance to An opportunity to jump on street and also using the Ubi shit launch. So I got that game for free and using the Ubi fuck shit

launcher is so annoying and infuriating that I ended up not finishing the game. Sounds legit. Because I had to fucking route it through Steam and I had to deal, and sometimes it would log me out and it was like a whole fuck, and I got so fucking pissed off that I just gave up on it. U play was the number one most annoying third-party launcher. Oh, yeah always always second

Didn't we do this already? I think we've ranked them Yeah, we ranked it before and we we can all agree that you play was like the word no games for Windows Live Gfw games or it come on five by far the fucking worse and I'll give a special shout out to the Microsoft store for stealing parts of your hard drive um I don't I can I also like I feel like battle net is immune because it existed before steam you know like not in its current form it didn't. No, it was not the same, but I feel like Battle.net has been such a legacy fucking PC...

I've never had trouble with Battle.net. No, I don't have issues with it either. Never give me grief. Anyway, so, yeah, not a ton. There's that stuff, and then there's an interesting game that just came out that is fucking with my brain. It looks cool, but here, follow my logic here. It's called VED, V-E-D. It is a hand-painted RPG, and it looks-

Oh, I saw this! Super real, not super realistic, super detailed and painterly and it's layers of- A scene on this. Yeah, it's interesting because it's like, it's basically like taking a lot of like layered paintings and putting them in parallax with each other. So as you move through and battle, everything is just scrolling layers

and beautifully animated, or rather beautifully painted, and it feels like it's animated with the, the smart animation tools that they would use to take a quick digital painting and make your character look like they're breathing on the title screen of a mobile game, right? So when you log into your favorite gacha

and you see a piece of art that's actually kind of blinking and you know bouncing up And down it's that sort of thing But it looks gorgeous Yeah, this is one of those games that even if every single thing about the game was complete fucking awful live toady You'd still be like, but I want to look at it though. Mm-hmm Now looking at the trailer and looking at some of the assets and screenshots as well, it's gorgeous. And there's also, there's a particular thing to the way it's lit and the way some assets

look where you're like, motherfucker, AI-generated art has ruined this shading style and this color and this this this kind of look where there's things where you're like that's not AI generated but I've filtered so much of that shit so much of the particular kind of art that is like taking art germ style character lighting and and and composition that you look at this and go this is hand-painted shit, but it gives you that vibe and my brain's fucked from filtering out AIR. This is incredibly unlike me because I'm a highly suspicious and incredibly cynical person. But this has been a topic that has come up because with the backlog and stuff like that,

I play a lot of out there stuff that's unknown or I don't know anything about. And people in the chat will go, this looks AI generated. And I'm like, unless you fucking show me a direct amount of proof that this thing is using AI shit, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to sit here and fucking wonder or pretend. I think everything about generative AI art is terrible, but I think the worst part is looking at things

that people actually really made and doubting it because other people are shithead. It's so unfair to the artists that working on this that because of the way shit has worked out now I get that initial pullback whereas a game like this from a couple years back I would like torment them member that I'd be like yo remember that very well Let's play this fucking incredible game. Everything is is beautiful And it's just and you just accept it for what it is which is an incredible labor of love and here you have that extra fucking you know but you

have to kind of be like no that's not what this is so that that's it like I getting that vibe off of this gorgeous game and it's not their fault it's just the fucking shitty world we find ourselves in where it just this exact type of high contrast lighting looks like it was fed into a prompt in some cases and some of these layers are just hitting that exact same kind of fucking bullshit. Anything too that kind of goes into I mean, I would say... Fuck, what's the other thing called? That really gorgeous 2D platformer.

Man, that could be... Ori and the Blind Forest. Yeah. World of Wisps also. Yeah, another type of game where like magical green-blue forests with little fireflies dancing around them, and, you know, that kind of, like, that type of imagery is just, like, the- the- That's the first thing to go into a prompt for these fucking hacks, you know? So you- anytime you're going to be like,

no, I'm actually sincerely painting that kind of environment for, like, the home of the elves or whatever. It's just... ugh. I hate that I have that in my brain and I have to fucking turn that off on instinct now. Anyway Oh, I have a small piece of news That is of note to only a couple people So you've probably heard me talk about the owlcat games like Pathfinder and rogue trader and shit like that. Yep well three and a half years after Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous came out, they have finally patched it the last time

and said, it is done now. They have rebuilt that game from scratch like twice and gone back and like, so there's mythic paths that you choose and Expanded on like all of them and put out fucking two season passes with six DLCs So it is now Done for real this time Yes, there will be bug fixes, but no more changes or contents. Okay.

Alcat is like, I think I mentioned to you at some point, like these CRPGs, like you either play them right on release or wait like four or five years for them to be finished. This is like the most intense out of all of them. Like I look at the Warhammer one and I'm like, I'm so excited to play that in two and a half years. That's going to be like my favorite game ever. I mean to be fair, I remember when like Baldur's Gate was just at that first chapter and it was like this is going to be unbelievable. Give it a minute. That game has now released three or four times.

Give it a minute. That game has now released three or four times. It had the early access, then the updated early access, like patch one and seven were worlds apart, and then full release. And then since the full release to now, they have added like an expansions worth amount of content in patches. Like they just added Mass Effect Citadel DLC to the end of the game in a patch. Wow. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, well past the point where anyone was even asking for that shit too. Way past. Yeah. Um, and then last little bit here. But we'll see what the ramifications of this are. Uh, Sony Intox to buy Katakawa. And then last little bit here, but we'll see what the ramifications of this are.

Sony Intox to buy Katakawa. Sony Intox to push you further towards anime piracy. This is particularly relevant because A, Katakawa, who they actually had a huge server hack the other day and they got ransom, server ransomed by a ransomware group or whatever. It brutally affected them. They got everything, tons of employees had got fucking, it was really, really bad. It was one of the rough ones. I was looking into it

so I feel and I feel like so the last couple press releases they've had for a while have just been like here's the state of the damage we are undoing that I feel like that must have had an effect but they are also in addition to being the owners of a ton of like manga and different studios the owners of from soft so if Sony buys Katakawa Sony buys from soft and That it's a lock It's really interesting

How Sony waited until from soft was super expensive to buy instead of buying them at multiple other Opportunities they've had over the years one could argue when it would have been just as smart of an idea one could argue that if it But if they bought them then that they would not have necessarily create had the same trajectory No necessarily had the same trajectory? No. I wonder. I wonder. So Sony's going in on the sound business decision of buy high, buy higher. Yes.

But what I mean is if Sony bought them when they were smaller, is that a limiter on them that they wouldn't have had now? I doubt it. I don't know. What will, what would happen of course is like, okay, so fuck any multiplatform releases from then on and- Well, not necessarily. I mean, I'm playing Horizon Zero Dawn and Ghost of Tsushima on my personal computer.

Okay, fuck any multiplatform releases to PC. Simultaneously. Okay, fuck any multi-platform releases to PC. Simultaneously. Yes, simultaneously. You can definitely promote your sequel once the old one gets a Steam port for sure, as long as you sign into your PSN account. But now you have to do Bloodborne? No. No, we don't. Shut up.

Stop asking us about the critically acclaimed game we purchased the development from software to do for our hit platform that is there. That is beloved L.B.O.L.T. Stop at Last of Us Part 1 Redux. Let's go. That's crazy. And again, it's not the FromSoft purchase. It's the parent company. Yeah. And that's... they want that anime. Sony wants to own anime. Oh, God. Kadokawa has their hand in every pie. They own a fuckton. Yeah, they also get Crunchyroll with that. They get a bunch of shit. Mad Fientist Hey, what if Sony did anime but it was bad? I wonder what people would do.

Mad Fientist Anime can't be bad. It's anime. Mad Fientist I wonder if people would… I don't know what people would do if purchasing anime legally would become prohibitive or arcane or hard to do, it's just impossible to foresee. I feel like Katakawa and Shueisha are like 90% of all of it. All anime, all manga, all of it. I think that covers like I wouldn't know I'm not super familiar with that scene

I'll take your word for it All right, um Take some letters Hey, I just want to give a shout out to friend of the show, DePurple Sharpie, who is watching the arcane and then said, I got to get back into League of Legends. That was like four days ago and now is back out of League of Legends. Oh, the update from last week.

I was about to say, are you repeating yourself? Yeah, because she lost a match real bad and League of Legends sucks ass and makes you upset So all is well with the world Return to skull girls stomp someone out feel better Yeah whoever had to Whoever was on skull girls right after that probably fucking Got got a big bad Band Symphony finisher. Let's take, if you got a letter, send it to

castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com. Send a good letter though. I know some of you are writing like shitty letters right now. Look at it and think. Okay. I think I have a good one. I have a good one. Here's a good one. No pressure. No pressure So name not given hello wool wool and Pat pat Oh I've heard Willie express interest in previous podcasts to the subject of rage quitters and the psychology that goes into it So I thought I could try to offer some sort of insight. I am a rage quitter I am a rage quitter. Oh man, this is gonna be fucking awesome. Yeah. Hey, wait, before we continue, name not given, I'm going to judge you at the end of this no matter what, but I appreciate that this is a genuinely nice, kind gesture to put yourself out there and that's cool This is a moment of rare introspection into a world that you could never know

Because they don't think this hard, right? It's it's it's a fucking it's id in Control driving and you've had a moment where the id took the backseat for just a second. The super ego of this gentleman is talking to us right now. It's typing to us for a brief moment and I appreciate that. I am a rage quitter and a pretty bad one at that. It's not just limited to multiplayer games.

If things don't go my way in single player games, I'll rage quit them too. Stuff like XCOM, I'm save-scumming like crazy, I've even peaced out of D&D sessions when combat isn't going my way. Okay, so what we got is we got somebody who is for real. I'm so grateful. The best way I can describe it is two factors that go into it. I have high expectations of myself and I need things to go well as possible as well as possible the first time or I can't accept it. Things must be perfect immediately or it feels bad. The second that a fight the second that that's fight or flight, I always choose flight.

When I'm put under any amount of pressure, my immediate response is to want to leave. It doesn't matter if I'm enjoying the thing in question, if problems arise that are beyond a comfortable level of challenge, I want to get out of there. If I'm playing a game and I start losing, I get salty. Wonder why I'm even bothering to convince myself I've been cheated in some way. So I leave and move on to something else where I can get my way. It's not universal though. If I'm in a good mood I can roll with the punches.

If I'm stressed or annoyed ahead of time I'll give up faster. I'll try and relate it to you. Do you remember when you were playing Mass Effect 2 and you reloaded the ending because you got screwed over by mechanics you weren't aware existed? Yes. It's that feeling, but my threshold for what counts is way, way lower and it contains a bit of lying to myself. Okay.

I'm aware it's a massive problem and I've tried to work on it to little success. The D&D example I gave was a one-off that resulted in my group dragging me over the coals and giving me an ultimatum of sucking it up or getting kicked out. Five years on and I've not done it again. The feeling hasn't gone away, but societal expectations seem to help me get over myself. So yes, making fun of these people does work. In private, I still do it. The best best solution I found is to just not play multiplayer games and save scum my hundredth hour of fire emblem in peace Hope you enjoyed the clown exhibition Okay, so there's a lot going on here number one

This is a lot more This is a lot more Personally understandable than I was expecting. I understand every emotion he's describing. I felt every single emotion that he's describing. Especially I have to do it right the first time. It must be perfect immediately? I have to do it perfectly the first time has resulted in me failing out of things that I

wanted to try because I'll go, I'll try it. I'm like, I suck at this and, and, and walk off. Um, that's an anxiety response. Um, yeah. So, um, so step that up. Uh, shame is the way to deal with this, because shame causes the same anxiety response, but stronger. So you get like- Because it's in your head confirmation, versus everyone around you actually confirms it.

Yeah, they actually hate you. And the other thing, the other thing is that if you take this to its absolute extreme, this is the mental trap that leads to what's called family annihilation. Are you familiar with that term, Woolley? No. Okay, so for people who are not familiar with the term family annihilator, this is what happens when a traditional, upstanding, providing man becomes the centerpiece of his view of his family. And I am the patriarch

and everyone's counting on me to bring home the bacon and provide for them and protect them and I lose my job. And there is a percentage of people that have this flight anxiety response that is so intense about that failure that it is better for everyone to kill your whole family in their sleep so that they don't find out that their world is coming to an end. I've always wondered every time I hear about those stories or like the mom that swerves the van off the road, like, why do you think that that the your family are your objects? Like how do you perceive them as your possessions that you are taking with you? Like I, it is, it is a form. Yeah. Like it is a form of my kids

look up to me and now that I have a little baby man, I understand the feeling of the baby like going, dead dad, when I come in the door and how that's the best feeling in the world. And letting them down is worse. Of letting them down and ruining their life by their dad is now a fucking loser.

You feel that is so destructive that it would be better if they never woke up ever again. And they could just sleep away in blissful ignorance. And then once the deed is done, they come back to the real world for one second and go, I just iced out my whole fucking family because I'm a pussy, and then they kill themselves. But the rationale is that you are the center of the universe and everything revolves around you including other people's existences, therefore the flight from that feeling should be a black hole that absorbs all around it. Now I want to be really clear I'm not saying that rage quitting equals the predisposition to family annihilation. But you're connecting the threads to the

same source feeling. Yeah so there are little bits and pieces and all of them have to line up just so to cause a certain situation but But yeah, no, he's describing perfectionist anxiety. Swerve that spaceship right into the asteroid. Yeah. And it's the kind of anxiety that would be like, hey buddy, you want to come play baseball with us? And you're so fucking freaked out that you're going to do a bad job or embarrass yourself playing baseball that the very first strike, you just throw the fucking thing down and go, no, no, no, it's not for me.

It's better for me to say that baseball is cringe and gay and pretend I don't like it naturally than to be bad at baseball because that's embarrassing. So instead, yeah, yeah, I'm going to be above baseball because I'm so I play real games or whatever happens to be. I mean, to be fair, baseball is boring. Baseball fucking is awesome to play. That's that's the the tragedy of baseball and golf is they fucking rule all playing rules to play. Yes sucks to watch and To be fair baseball is cringe, okay Cheating in baseball is lame as fuck

No, but but the but the actual fascinating part is because when you talk about instant perfection and needing to have that feeling be immediately like no resistance, I want a smooth ride right away. Like, I think about how I immediately get rocked by something and then I'm like, ooh shit, you I wanna learn. Game over, fuck yeah, okay, let's go. What do I gotta change this time, right? And when I'm LPing and stuff, I'll talk out loud.

You'll hear me literally going into Radon being like, sidestep left, he's gonna swing twice, back it up, right? And like just doing, I'm just slightly adjusting, slightly adjusting, and that's how I do everything. I found fun in that through the hobbies and stuff that I've picked and all that, but I remember when we used to talk about this,

going back way, way when, where I have almost never, there is nothing in my life I can think of except one thing where I've started it and been incredible at it immediately right away, crushed it, and then it felt amazing and then I'm like, oh, I'm great at that. Like almost everything has been fucking eating shit first.

I feel like. So that makes a good attitude. But there was that the one thing I remember was I skipped grade one and I skipped grade one and as a kid who script grade one, oh wow you're so smart. Oh you're so smart. You're you're wow you're you're thinking ahead of the average. You should be you that's a good trend. You should be on track to go really far and do a whole lot. Oh, I guess I am smart. Yeah. And you think of that study you learned about where you're like, oh, you praise-

Effort versus values. Right? You praise someone for being smart. You're so smart. And then you reach something that's actually a challenge. And guess what? You're not so smart anymore. There's a million kids that are way smarter than you, and you don't instinctually have the answers right away. You meet some resistance and you fucking quit because guess what? You have to work for it for the first time versus praising someone for hard work where they go, I'm going to stick at it and actually try to overcome whatever this wall is. You're describing the tragedy of the gifted child. That. That's my life story. Sure. Where I went to school and

school up until grade 11, up until grade 11 math, school was a joke. Like I was like I was so fucking far ahead the rest of my peers. I'm like, and like, you know, when you're in English class and like Jerry can fuck is like barely like putting his finger on the page to read like Shakespeare or something and like, like stumbling over his shit and you're sitting there, oh man, I'm so fucking smart compared to these fucking these plebs and then the shonen power scale and 11 math Yeah, and like despite the fact that I now know I definitely had the capability to do that I never learned how to study a goddamn thing in my whole fucking life never had and I fucking failed that multiple times I had to switch math programs in that school And if I had done bad enough, it could have stopped me from graduating high school. Yep

If I had done bad enough, it could have stopped me from graduating high school. Yep. Yep. Yep. But, but you, hey, in the first episode, you were so talented, you overcame the struggle that everyone thought you would never be able to overcome. What's going on now in season two? Oh, fuck, actual talented people are showing up. And so now, even now, I have this thing in my chest where I'm like, well, I should be good at something right away because that's what smart people are. They're good at something right away. And I'm a smart guy, so I should be good at it right away. And if I'm not good at it right away, I guess I'm just terrible and stupid. So yeah. And so I ate shit and my face in the dirt on that for a while in multiple things,

until you kind of go, oh, this is what, there's actually a benefit to being willing to take, taking a second, third, fourth, fifth swing at it. Getting into art school, in particular, getting into the illustration program, which had a bar where you had to submit an impressive portfolio because they selected, I think it was, I think year one they allowed 35 of 200 applicants, right?

So it's like, oh shit, okay, yeah, I'm feeling pretty good about that. Oh, I managed to make that cut. That's cool. I guess I ain't so bad after all. I managed to do that one little thing in 3D that time and I and I dicked around with with with a Photoshop. What are my peers up to? Oh, they're fucking painters and classical cariscuro artists that have been trained from, you know, multiple, it's like absolute, like violin music is happening when they hit the canvas. Oh, wow. Okay, that's cool

Some of them are already famous They're they're coming from families that are known for art and some of them are getting hired out of the program before it even finishes Because their careers can't wait for them to graduate in time. Oh, that's cool. Okay Here's my little fucking tears my it's it's it's not Dragon Ball, but it's, he's got spiky hair though. You know, like, it's insane what you have to face up to and compare yourself with. And this is late in the game. Do you want to hear how bad this mentality can get? In grade 11, there was a girl who joined my grade 11 grade and she was homeschooled prior,

but she had to finish out a year so she could get a proper high school certificate so she could go on to university. And she was, she got 100 in everything. Like literally perfect. Yep. And also I know this girl, the extracurriculars, a bunch of them always. And I is she would study in between periods and she would go home and study and she would come in early and talk to other people about their study plans. And then and I remember thinking, oh, the only reason she's getting better grades than me She's studying that actually means she's stupid

Because I don't want my grades are good That's incredible if you have to study you're basically dumb that's crazy and that's that's the way that I convinced myself that's wild Oh Man, okay, I thought I study things for dumb people Oh my god Because I thought you're gonna say cuz I there's that girl in our class like when she did not Crush it one report card still on the honor roll still fucking you know first percentile But you know when she did not she did not get perfect one time and absolute devastation in tears, right?

No, no, she she she rolled it. Okay. What are you gonna be when you grow up? I'm gonna be a doctor and everyone's like Yeah, she's gonna be a doctor And this discussion is also never complete without talking about Tomo Ohira the first the first Streetfighter to champ back in the day before complete without talking about Toma Ohira, the first Street Fighter II champ back in the day before people knew about even Daigo or Alex Valle. This was the early, early years. And he disappeared.

But after winning so many tournaments, people were like, where the fuck did he go? He's the greatest. What happened? Right when things were starting to pick up before the FGC, as we know it, was's the balls rolling. And basically he's like, yeah, winning felt like nothing but relief. There was no joy. There was nothing positive. All I thought was relief. Oh, thank God I didn't lose. I won because I'm supposed to. And losing was nonstop agony for weeks.

Why would you do that? Why would you opt into that in life? I don't mean to get too personal, but I have had a long, long struggle for most of my life that I am getting better at now. That I will resent a certain degree of compliment. Like, hey, you did a really good job, and I'm like, I was supposed to do a good job.

Like, why would you compliment me for doing the bare minimum, which is excellent? Like, anything less than excellent is failure, and would be embarrassing. So why are you telling me that you're proud of me for not being an embarrassing fuck up? Oh yeah, that's a project you gotta work on. That's something to work on.

Yeah, no, that's been a lifetime thing. That's, that's. Uh, yeah. Like, like 95% is like the, like average. And then someone correctly says, that's insane. That's not how numbers work. To which I reply, that's loser idiot talk. Second place is first loser. Yeah. That's what losers tell themselves when they only get 80 on a test because they're

too stupid. And so in conclusion, our dear Ragequitter, we all actually feel things similar to what you're describing and there's reflections in that and the insecurities and anxieties in day-to-day life all over the place from top to bottom. But if you don't have the pleasure of eating shit really fucking hard somewhere early on in on your life and getting a nice little combo breaker to what you expect your natural abilities to be able to deliver, then yeah, when you're sitting down having fun playing a video game which is supposed to be a leisurely activity, you can find yourself experiencing this where if it doesn't go yourself

your way immediately, it sucks. And the whole point of these games in many cases is that there's a challenge and that the challenge overcoming the challenge is the fun part. That's literally what a lot of games are designed to be. It's a lesson that fucking sucks, but is fantastic for what you eventually get out of it. And now I always talk about like, I gotta kick the tree, I gotta rock-a-lead it, because my instincts are not gonna give me what I need to do when I see something for the first time. I don't have, I don't grasp it as fast as other people might, but if I get around to it the fifth time through, then okay, cool, I think I get what it wants me to do now. You know?

But yeah, to pair this off, this gentleman or lady, possible, is correct. Shame is the solution for people trapped in what's called maladaptive reasoning or maladaptive coping. I mean you can heal yourself and all that shit, but that could take your whole life. What you need to do is create a larger scarier threat if you don't do it. Like, hey, are you having trouble filling up this paperwork on time because you're getting distracted and it makes you nervous? You need to set up a threat that will burn your house down. Ah, if you don't finish that shit on time,

because the fear of your house burning down will cause you to man file your paperwork. Yeah. So if you run out of the DND game like a huge piss baby, everyone's gonna call you that for the next couple years. And then you'll suffer social ostracization. Right. Which is terrible. But when you rage quit out of the game at home on your own, you need to set- Who's gonna judge you?

No one. Me? Will he? So you need to set up some consequences. I will judge you. Like, you know what's a really good example of this? To rage-quitter people. If you are even on Discord streaming your matches to your friends, that will help because

your friends will be like, did you just quit out, you fucking pussy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What I really appreciate too about this little insight as well is the part where you can take this nugget of data and extrapolate it to other versions of this type of player. So there's the type of player who needs not only everything to go so smoothly and feel no resistance whatsoever, but they also have to feel like they're stomping on you and taunting you and teunting you and

Teabagging you and they have to feel superior to you and you have to be inferior Because their day sucked that much and ooh, it feels good for someone else to be dumber and worse at the game than me there is a entire genre of professional content creator who decries Sweaty matches in a wide variety of games. But what they're actually complaining about is that their wins, that they still get forced them to try. Because forcing them to try means they weren't so far above these people that it's like a joke.

Winning isn't enough. Destroying isn't enough. I had to do so without any effort whatsoever. Yep. Yep. I shouldn't have to sweat. I shouldn't have to sweat here. Fuck this. Why do I have to try? I came on to stomp. It's not enough for me to be good. I have to be so good that other people are non threats. Yeah, yeah. And, and, and, and, you know, I love because there's people are, you get these clips every now and then of like, it's yeah, the person who it's the, it's the triple combo, right? You have the tea bagging taunter who then proceeds to lose because they were taunting long enough for you

to fall on the ground after getting wall splatted, wake up. That's like the best ever. Wake up and then while they were taunting, you comboed them, you supered them to death, but before the super finishes, they rage quit. You know? And you're like, oh, it's the one, two, three.

Like you're a shit bag on top and you need everything to go your way. And also I'm out if it's does it for a second. Right. The part where you're like, I deserve that never even remotely happens to occur. Like, yeah, it's great. It's great. Oh, hey, there's a last second piece of news today from steam. Steam is now changing their store descriptions to include descriptions of the type of anti-cheap work included in a game. Cool. So instead of saying something like includes anti-cheat software punk buster it will now say use kernel level anti-cheat. Perfect.

Requires manual removal afterwards. Nice to know. Nice to know. Yeah as the shit is becoming way and more and more common. Nope. Anyway. Yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. Do as I say, not as I do. Just be bad at things. Not like me. You know, I actually look back and this is a little bit too theropizing, but fuck it, I'll say it. I talked about this on a different stream. I was talking to my darling wife, Paige, and I was like, you know, it's crazy. My dad was good at everything. And like, you've heard me talk about my dad and like my dad was awesome and he's like my hero and I love him and it's crazy. My dad was good at everything he ever did ever.

And then Paige said, well, that you could see. And I'm like, what do you mean? And like we went through it and like, Oh, dad didn't try new things in front of the kids. Everything my dad did was something he already knew he could crush. Yeah, there you go. There we play pool. We play cards. We play backgammon. He'd work on the yard. He can, he build things, stuff like that. I don't think I ever saw my dad try something new in my entire life. Brilliant. Absolutely fucking brilliant. Yep. And that's the gift I must give to my child

in which I am perfect. Put the blinders up. Controlled, controlled exposure. Listen, little baby Pat Jr., do you want to learn how to play Street Fighter? Well, yeah, get ready for this. I appreciate as well the Herculean effort it takes for someone to rip outside of their, in the middle of being shitty and knowing it's what you are, to take a second to have an outer body experience and capture that. Because I find these types of things incredibly fascinating. I need to get that inside look. You know it makes no sense, but you're just like, this is what I am, I am is what I am, and I admit it. I admire the ability to capture that about yourself.

You know what? I just internalized something to somebody who doesn't understand the rage-quitting feelings that we're talking about. I can turn it into everyone's favorite, a food analogy. Have you ever taken a bite of something someone's made for you? And every cell in your body is like spit that the fuck out right now. Get that out and get it out of your body. And what do you do? You go, and you chew it and you fucking force it down because you don't want to deal with the societal blowback that's going to

happen of you spitting it back out on your fucking plate. And that's how shame can prevent you from rage quitting. However, if you eat the rotten meat, that is your emotions. But if they gave you Tupperware to take home and you were by yourself in your apartment and you, and you took a bite of that shit. You would throw the Tupperware away. You wouldn't even keep the fucking thing. It is hitting the walls. There you go.

Alright, that's a good one. We'll leave it there. Have a good week everybody. Thanks for watching!