Castle Super Beast - CSB310: Glazed in Powerful Wyvern Milk

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps Monster Hunter Wilds: Fun Starts After the Credits Roll Alice is Missing: The True Gen Alpha Board Game Experience GQuuuuuuX: 0079 - The One Week War Metaphor: A 9/11 For Euchronia Watch live: twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Go to https://www.turtlebeach.com/CASTLE and use code CASTLE to level up your game and get 10% off @TurtleBeach #turtlebeachpod - Go to http://shopify.com/superbeast to sign up for your $1-per-month trial period. - Go to http://expressvpn.com/superbeast to get up to 4 extra months free. - Go to http://hellofresh.com/hellofreshpodcast to get up to 10 free meals and a free high protein item for life. Monster Hunter Wilds causes sales of actual cheese naan to skyrocket in Japan as food cutscenes drive players into cheese craving crisis Monster Hunter Wilds has sold over 8m units in just three days, setting a new record for Capcom as its fastest selling game. Samurai Pizza Cats: Blast from the Past! Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 official announcement reveals deluxe edition with Doom Slayer Hometown Toronto rapper, Drake, was in attendance at Elimination Chamber but was never acknowledged on screen or on commentary New game in classic JRPG series Suikoden announced by Konami, but..."first title to be tailored for mobile", and the developer has confirmed it will have gacha elements. Hideki Kamiya still wants to resurrect the cancelled Scalebound "Let's do it, Phil."

["Sailor Moon Theme"] Hello. Hey, Wolves, how you doing, man? You have a quizzical look on your face. Congestion. Just, just- Congestion, no! Just really annoyingly congested. You have a you have a quizzical look on your face congestion just just congestion no Just really annoyingly congested. No don't do that hate that I Spicy food. I always have a like a 20% congestion going on wait really in the back. Yeah. Yeah, I have I have, like, I'm always slightly congested for years now.

But every once in a while it comes around and goes, like, a lot stronger. Yeah, it's odd because it's not like an allergy thing. I don't know if it's one of those, like, go in for surgery to remove it or deviated septum type things. I don't know. I mean, let's be honest, Willy. According to people who have heard asleep, like I've heard you sleep. Your shit back in that nose area, it's all fucked up somehow. Well, that was many years and many pounds ago.

Yeah. Losing weight has led to a significant decrease in my snoring and apnea. Well, yeah, I heard you snoring in your 20s. You snored like shit. Yeah. And that was over two decades ago. Yeah. So... Yeah, but we probably both do. I'm currently approaching double that age. No, that's... Yeah.

No. Okay. Fine. We have a couple more of those things before... Anyway, yeah, my sleep is different these days. But all that to say, it's just that I get these weird congestion things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's going on? Okay, let's see. What's going on? I'm rapid with

the with the human child that I have. I'm rapidly approaching sentences. Not there yet. But like you can see the wheels turn a little bit further every day and like new words get picked up slightly faster. Like you know purple kid loves purple. That's the favorite color. Nice. And we know this because he'll say purple. Hell yeah. Even said purple on pages stream was adorable. Hell yeah, even said purple on pages stream was adorable taste But nothing nothing crazy going on with that other than adorable good, baby I played a lot of Monster Hunter over the past week because Monster Hunter wilds came out big release Yes, I have heard

quite a bit about that game including quite a bit about that game including one of the the stories that it has sold over 8 million in units in three days which is yeah it's doing okay new it's Capcom's fastest selling game I don't know if you saw but it was also like the number two game on Steam yesterday hmm like I think it was just below Counter-Strike and pretty along- Which is pretty bananas. And alongside that, I mean, that sounds like what the Monster Hunter franchise is supposed to do to the industry, right?

Yeah. By the old standards. But I also heard the story that Japanese Indian cuisine places are struggling to keep up with the cheese nan Requests that are yeah, so going nuts You know how in a monster hunter game you have that part where oh you're gonna go eat some food And it's gonna be like lavishly detailed because Japanese devs have gone absolutely bananas over food pornography food porn for reals Yes, and not the Dragons dogma. We just cut to video shit. Yeah, which is cool in its own right. In Monster Hunter Wilds, there are two scenes that are part of the mandatory story in which

you all have a big dinner with people. And it is just a really long version of one of those food scenes. Yes, so I have seen the cutscene where there's the two types. I've seen the one where someone rips open the NAND and it bleeds Mozzarella style like super oozy cheesy out and a drink all over my fucking and if there's any part of you that is a Cheese loving person or even just a slice of pizza. God damn. Does that put it in you? Oh, absolutely and it also like rivals the Like a dragon bread tech?

No, that bread. So okay, the bread is a one-off moment. But the ripping of the nan is a very convincing bread rip with cheese inside. It's very very well done. It's very impressive. So before we even start to talk about Wilds, I need to put the baseline here, which is, you haven't seen it, but I showed it off on my stream. Capcom sent me a gigantic wooden Monster Hunter crate filled with shit. Okay. Um, with a wall scroll with my name on it and a really nice jacket and a bunch of cool

little doodads. Yeah, the Wilds influencer kit. And they were like, you are such a good influencer, Pat. Aw, we love you. Mwah, mwah, mwah. So like, that's very appreciated. But I should put that out there before I talk about Wilds. We love you So like that's very appreciated But I should put that out there before I talk about wilds did it take longer to go through the box or to beat? The base game. I was halfway through the game by the time the boss box showed up damn

So My thoughts on wilds are very complicated and they were complicated enough that after I beat the campaign and rolled credits, I then went and played 10 hours of Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate on the Switch, the oldest readily available Monster Hunter. Just to update your opinions because I needed comparative information That because my homework, okay, so you know when you go through a new sequel and you're like, oh Doesn't feel as good as the old shit and then you think about like is that even true?

Like am I even am I even right about that? No, respect for questioning it and going to verify. That's interesting. I know that with Worlds it was a much clearer discussion because it was like, yeah, we're moving over to a new engine so it's going to be a whole weird thing until we get back used to it. But now we're like three new games deep, right? There's now an incredibly strong dividing line between does mining a rock make that good sound effect or not?

Like that to me is the dividing line between the old games and the new games is does it have that nice little drum effect when you gather an item or not it's the most distinctive thing about the old games for whatever that lives in my head so you know I'll start with wilds in order of things that it presented to me. Right? Because my thoughts on this game were like a big ol' up and down. Right? They're mixed. So, Monster Hunter Wilds put out an online beta. You remember this.

I do. The online beta ran like shit, bro. Like... And had no hit stop. Online Beta ran like shit, bro. And had no hit stop. Disastrous performance, and it was missing hit stop, and that was like a big one. So when I went back to GU, I was like, oh, I understand why people are so mad about hit stop now. In GU and all the portable games, when you swing a weapon, it has these gigantic exaggerated

cartoon wind effects all over it it and blood is like a huge Burst in the middle of the screen like it's very very very cartoon Maximilian did a nice like explain. Oh, we did. Oh, that's great. He showed exactly what he meant. Yeah So yeah, I get it so now they put the hip stop back in I have no complaints about the head stop the hits feel good We just put that whole thing to rest Performance so they put out a benchmark and the benchmark obviously ran way better than the beta did It was a the final release version of the game's Build and you people could use it go. Oh, you know what that actually works pretty well

That what yeah that works really well. Okay I can't I figured out the settings that I can use to play the game on. All right? So I start up Wilds, and the very first thing that I have to tell you is that the benchmark is not an accurate benchmark of the game's performance. Why not? Because the benchmark does not include both of the always-on DRM processes that are eating up part of your performance. Shit, okay.

So Capcom has standard Danuvo anti-tamper, and it also has a Capcom-specific anti-tamper running on top of it. Damn, okay. So your resources are even more taxed than the benchmark would have you believe And you know, you know what? That's not that big of a deal. I'll solve to kick the resolution down. It'll be fine So I'll tell you this right now. I have an i9

13900 K processor. It's a very expensive CPU. I have 32 gigs of RAM I have a 4090 and I have a PC that all it does is stream video games. This game runs like shit. Hmm. It runs really bad. And you will then go and say that and people go, well, I got it running to 60 FPS or 100 FPS or whatever. And it's like, absolutely. But then you go to the digital foundry thing and it spells out in much clearer words than I could Which is the game runs really bad? For what it is showing you It is showing you a marked increase in fidelity over Monster Hunter world Which also ran incredibly poorly at release did you go back and?

ran incredibly poorly at release. Did you go back and test Rise on your PC? Rise runs at 1 billion frames a picosecond at any resolution you want. Is that because it was a Switch first? A Switch game. Yeah. Yes. Okay. So the, the, the, it, it, from Rise it is like crazy whiplash.

It's very much like Dragon's Dogma 2. It's very much like The game that I'm looking at is not justifying how much power it wants. My PC broke a fan Streaming it. Wow. Wow. Okay. So Rise was built for Switch then ported to Steam. Up. Yeah. And thus it's fine. Yeah, okay So Switch then ported to Steam. Up, yeah. And that's, thus it's fine. Yeah, okay. So, um, so Wild's, like, and it's this really strange thing that I had trouble, I had trouble typing and I had trouble bouncing it off of somebody because I was streaming and there wasn't, you know, a human that I could talk to, right? It's like, Rise is a Switch game but it runs at a million frames a second, and it runs

at native 4K, and it runs with all the anti-aliasing effects perfectly 100% of the time, right? In my opinion, even though the fidelity of the assets in Wilds is much higher, because I can't get it to do that even close and there's a persistent stutter when you turn the camera because there's a texture loading problem. Rise actually looks way better overall. Yep the high the aiming higher is not worth it if you can't pull it off. Right? Yeah. So like the textures I man I'm a graphics guy I love I love nice graphics and I love frame rates. I don't usually talk about textures because it's it's it's like nitpicking shit.

I burst out laughing at like how bad the textures on a lot of the items that the game wants you to zoom in on are. Like I am talking actual like and I went and double-checked and I triple-checked with digital foundry Actual ps3 like textures and they want those right up in your face So hey, that's fine. We'll download the high res texture pack, which is a 70 gig download Which is you know to that's why they separate it out. This is quite a large download texture optimization is what blows file size. Yeah, right It's like okay So I download the high-res texture pack and it does look good like they're good and then no complaints

Except it introduces a persistent stutter all the time No, no matter what setting. Oh my god, and it causes the's already bad asset loading problems to get worse. So do you remember in the Halcyon days of old, Unreal Engine 3 would load in a scene on a camera cut, and then, oh, the textures gotta catch up! And you would see characters become wildly more detailed after a couple seconds? Mm-hmm. In Wilds, This happens when you turn the camera. Oh Things things unload and pop back in like like the level of detail thing on like On like trees and and rocks pops in when you turn the camera so like

In a screenshot or if I'm not streaming it and I'm running it all max settings very nice very pretty but like the performance is terrible. Digital Foundry put out a video in which they basically explained that everybody who doesn't have like a 3080 or higher should not even bother to play this game on PC. Okay. Which is a huge fucking ask. Well that's what, yeah, like rip Reggie. That's like five, 10% of Steam owners have shit that high.

That explains the failure there. What I've been hearing as well, word on the street is that there are typos in ini files so that the word resolution is misspelled and you have to manually correct it to see certain settings improve. So get this. That doesn't matter. It's a Japanese game made by Japanese people. The games code wants the typo. Oh, okay. So that's nothing. All right. the game's code wants the typo. Oh, okay, so that's nothing. All right, false alarm. Like the internal game files want the typo version. When you change the typo to it being correct,

the game then just looks at whatever the default value for that would be. It's just funny that there's typos in there. What's not funny is that the game defaults to using a really low amount of CPU cores and that you can go change that to fit your computer in the any file and it results in a massive performance boost.

In addition, the game doesn't let you turn off volumetric fog because volumetric fog is an effect Capcom loves and it also hides textures going completely nuts in the background. If you turn that off, you get like a 30% performance boost. So you've got to go in and do it yourself. It's not a part of the in-game options. Yeah. The in-game options, you can go for volumetric fog being high and low. And the other thing is that that was exactly the same thing that happened in World. If you turned off volumetric fog in World, your game ran like 20% better. It was crazy.

So, aim for Switch from now on then. So, yeah. So, like basically, just like World, it's actually, I've been doing some dickin' around. The performance of Monster Hunter Wilds is approximately equivalent to the performance of Monster Hunter World relegated, like compared to the PCs of its era, right? In that it, if you have a really fancy expensive PC, yeah, you can run it at a really good frame rate It looks nice if you have anything other than that

It runs like shit like bad So grab it on a console now if you want to play on a console and you want to use the performance mode Get ready for that adaptive resolution to dip down to like 720 Okay, what when it needs to. I was gonna ask this, so you investigated on PS5 as well? I did not. Okay. I'm going off DF and talking to people.

So yeah, basically the game runs like shit. Just like all modern Monster Hunter games, it runs really bad. But let's move past that. By the way, all Monster Hunter games that were the first release all run really bad. Every single version of the series, the first release on the thing that it came out on ran like shit. Even the old ones? Oh yeah, absolutely. I think the best running game they ever put out was like 4U and that ran at a loose 40 something kind of FPS and

that was a fucking 3DS game. So alright I'm you know what I've fixed up my files and I've got Wilds ready to go. Alright so first of all a lot of things show up that are really interesting that I like. Your hunter talks. You select your hunter's voice, but they speak and not like grunts and shit when you're in a fight. No, they talk. They have conversations with characters. They are a character.

Nice. Good. They do things in the cutscenes. They fight monsters in the cutscenes. Rarely with their weapon, but they will do environmental stuff and shoot them with the slinger. The tone is very different. In World, every cutscene where you encounter a monster, your character will be like, oh

fuck the monster, and then ran away. She had to do all the talking for you. In Wilds, when your hunter discovers a monster, they usually get one over on the monster before the actual fight starts Like they drop a rock on its head or they shoot it to save someone or they Narrowly avoid a big attack and the monster gets frustrated. Okay So tonally it's it's very different On top of that we have our new bird companion, which is not a Palamute, it's a sacred, it's not a Chocobo, trust me, it's not a Chocobo.

Even though you get the ability to customize it and make it look identical to a Chocobo and all yellow, it's not a Chocobo, wink. That wink is for the audio people. I like the idea of just fast forwardinging to a full-on six Pokemon in your back pocket while you're going monster hunting in the future. A little bit. Because you've got three now, right?

Yeah. So, you hop on the sacred and you start running into one of the game's primary issues. They want to streamline Monster Hunter because even World and Rise were very hard to get into unless you had a friend like kind of pushing you on the back because there's so many dozens of subsystems interacting all over each other, right? So we've got to streamline the new player experience and they have streamlined it in a way that I think is the wrong way. They have automated huge proportions of the new player experience. So for example, hop on the sacred. Do you know what the sacred does when you hop on it? it starts running towards the nearest monster automatically.

Oh, it's a rail you're locked onto. And to make sure you're not bored, you can now sling or grab items as you pass them. Uhhhh, but you don't control it. Jeez. If you want to control the bird, like a fucking fucking video game and still keep the automatic thing, you can go into the settings and you can change manual control on and then the way that you control it. Because the way that you control it when it's in manual is like a race car where you steer

it left and right and you hit R1 and R2 for the fastness and the brakes. So you can turn it off and this leads to problem 2 which is there are an enormous amount of incredibly cool features in this game. You can turn off the damage coefficient so you can get raw numbers which is the one that Monster Hunter fans tend to like. You can change the way the target camera works to either a regular lock on like Dark Souls or an old-fashioned Monster Hunter's Camera where you just you just hit a button to like re-center on a monster millions of options that are all Buried deep in the gameplay section of the options menu

That has multiple pages of things in a gigantic wall of text multiple pages of things in a gigantic wall of text that is difficult to navigate and Some things that you would want to do like turn the sacred back to manual require like three different toggles that are not on the same page The so worlds had the fireflies to track where the things were and Yeah, you'd you'd see the fireflies and they'd snap your neck yeah that seemed fine so scout flies are back and then jumping on the dog you would then run through you controlling it I guess toward and so I guess was there like anything wrong with that like nope so this is both now and when you finally go into the options and turn sacred to fully manual control

you get a really good compromise which is if you want your sacred to track and run after the monster or item you've pinned on the map, hit up on the d-pad, he'll run over, you'll hop on and then you will sprint away automatically. Or if you want to do it manually, hit down on the D-pad and you will have full manual control. For some reason, that's not the default. For some reason, the default is every single time you hop on the bird, it just sprints away towards your objective and all you can do

is like kind of steer it left and right to get closer to items. Okay. There's a lot of things, a lot of things that are super strange about the way the game wants to automate and control. It's weird. Does it? So I feel like the flow of Monster Hunter from going through worlds and stuff, it's like, okay, obviously the meat and potatoes is the hunt and the kill, the fight. And then a lot of downtime in between hunts, doing busy work, leveling things up, making things,

and then there's the preparation phase for going into the next thing. Does this philosophy extend into? Like streamlining those sections as well. Yes So this is where you run into issue two. So for the longest time Monster Hunter players have said that Low rank is the tutorial high rank is where the real game starts and the devs have taken that to heart.

And now low rank is the tutorial and high rank is where the real game starts. And as a result, I would say that low rank in Wilds and high rank in Wilds are functionally completely different games. From their structure to their goals to their mechanics Okay, so you start your low-rank campaign and it's very dramatic and you have a big fight You have a tutorial monster chat a cabra and you beat the fucking piss out of that thing You beat the you beat the bricks off it like it's fucking embarrassing that poor bitch And then you discover what your formula for the next 10 to 15 hours is going to be.

Cutscene. Walk and talk. Like a classic, like, might as well have a finger to your ear walk and talk. Right? Cutscene. Monster introduction. monster fight. You may have noticed I did not say smithing or prep. Yeah, the hub. So they give you a little hub and you can go smithing and you can go get items. However, the items you start with in your box and the items you will be picking up at random when you're traveling to places and the items that they give you by default from Monster Hunts and Quest rewards are plenty to go through the entire low rank campaign

straight through. Ignoring. Like straight through. Other mechanics. Like if you wanted to, you could clear the entirety of low rank with just making up random pieces of armor that you could after every hunt. I made two sets I made two sets in the 15 hour campaign One about five hours in and one at about 12 hours in and I didn't need to make them I wanted to make them because I wanted my character to look cool in cutscenes Now how much of that is based on skill taking on the monsters with low level items? Some, obviously. Some of that is definitely part of it.

But the low rank campaign is generally easier. So now I'm going to skip back to me playing GU over the past week and I've been figuring out why the game feels so much easier. Did you start from scratch? And I realized that it has the same difficulty curve as an old Monster Hunter game, but people usually count that as number of monsters equal this amount of difficulty. No, now it is amount of hours equals this amount of difficulty so in nine hours playing Monster Hunter gu I fought three

Large monsters in total did you try to figure out key quests? tutorials egg quests gathering Mushroom fucking bullshit. Did you start a save from scratch, or did you load your own say I did I started a state of safe from scratch or did you load your own save? I did. I started a save from scratch. In Wilds, the first time I carted was about halfway through the game's campaign, which was about eight or nine hours in, which is the first time I carted in Monster Hunter GU. The difference is, in Monster Hunter GU, I was fighting a fucking Genpre, which is like a tiny little fucking lizard.

In Monster Hunter Wilds, I carded fighting a, what was it? I don't remember what it was. I think it was like a tough ass Rathalos, something like that. I carded twice in the entire campaign. No, three times. I carded three times in the entire campaign. No, three times. I carded three times in the entire campaign. And the campaign is extraordinarily linear. It is, hey, go on the cut scene, go on the walk and talk,

explore the area. And by explore the area, I mean, they put you and your party in a guided zone where if you try and walk out of it, they go, no, no, no, we're not going there yet and force your character to turn around. Okay. Okay. Like a fake exploration. And it's very linear.

Now you could at any point break off from that and do optional quests and play multiplayer and grind out materials, but why would you do that when nothing is giving you much of a challenge anyway? I was gonna ask you, does the campaign steer you towards the multiplayer platform and go hang out over there for a bit? No, so multiplayer in the game's campaign is inconsequential.

It's still there if you wanna set it up and you can SOS Hunter like in Worlds so that you can be like, hey, I'm having trouble here. You join somebody that needs help, yeah. But it is actually like genuinely designed for you to just beeline at single player the whole way through.

And the reason I know this is because I played half of that campaign in multiplayer and discovered that if you have multiplayer in that campaign, you are going to ruin that campaign for yourself. There is, so Monster Hunter has always like multiplied monster health and damage certain monster health usually by how many people are there It's basically 1.7 or I think 2.4 depending on how many people are there if you roll into any low rank quest with four people you are going to dominate that thing in under five minutes in a way that is specifically annoying to wilds. So in old games, yeah, you'd beat the fucking piss

out of any monster in low rank if you had a full group, right? Even in the gathering hub, which is the multiplayer thing. The difference is, is the Monster Hunter Wilds has a new mechanic called Wounds. So Wounds is if you bash on like the tail or like the front leg or whatever enough, you'll get it ready and it'll glow and it'll have a wound. And everybody has a wound attack now. So what happens is I would use my great sword and I would hit the wound attack on the glowing red spot and I would do a unique attack that would like drag the whole sword along the monster and then it would flinch and it would Pop and then I'd get parts out of it, right? It basically takes part breaking to like a new yeah

New level implementation of that. Yeah, okay So wounds is really cool And when you're playing solo wounds is this nice little like way to force a flinch or defend yourself or get more parts or whatever When you have four people in low rank, when you are flinching the monster from its wound, other people can also flinch the monster from their wounds or create new wounds. So if you do the campaign in multiplayer you run into this situation over and over and over in which the monster can't fight you for like 90 seconds because the time it takes for everyone to do the wounds

new wounds spawn stack each one on top of each other and you are just unlocking these things it's determined by weapon and It's determined by weapon? And it's determined by damage to any given part. So if I'm like cracking a wound open on the face and somebody is taking that monster's mostly still time to beat on the tail, by the time I'm done, they will have a wound on the tail and they'll do it and now I can beat on the head some more. Actually you just stun lock it, yeah, okay, okay.

And it feels like, I don't on the head so unlock it. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Um, and it feels like it feels like I don't know the numbers, but it feels like monster health increased because of multiplayer, but wound threshold did not because they seem to appear at the same rate. So when I was playing through the first half of that campaign in multiplayer, I was bored to tears because I would do half an hour of chatting with the gang at the base and a five minute walk and talk and a little bit of exploration and then a monster cutscene and then people would load into my game and we would kill the fucking thing in under five minutes. And I would have no reason to upgrade for any of that shit. And then I would go back to the walk and talk in the cutscene and the in this shit and it

has a really poor pacing if you play it in multiplayer I would advise anyone who plays Monster Hunter Wilds to not touch multiplayer at all until you beat the game like I bet that was a argument somewhere as to whether or not to even allow non-sOS multiplayer, but people would have gone nuts if you couldn't play through the whole game multiplayer. And it's still doing the thing where, assuming you're not curb-stopping it, that it'll have a phase and then it'll change locations and you've got to chase it up to that spot. Absolutely.

Now, chasing them to new locations is now really simple because you just hit up on the D-pad, and then the sacred chases after them. And as they're chasing after them, you're like, I'm gonna sharpen my weapon, and I'm gonna eat a heel. Right, right, right, right. Okay. But once I switched to single player

at about a halfway mark, which also coincided with the increase in difficulty in general, I started to having a much, much, much better time. So. If they're going to want you to really focus really incredibly strongly on this story. How's the story?

It's really, really great. How's the story? it's Really really great really For a monster hunter game. I mean is monster hunter not just kind of like yeah, there's a there's a story It's there or whatever so we'll wait more important to tell you okay more important. It feels like Like the vibes have been Fuck the dumb story the cool characters you get to meet are awesome, and just leave it at that. That has usually been the case. There is one Monster Hunter game that has a decent story

and it's for you, and the only reason people like that game's story, including me, is because Gormagala, the monster, which is the titular final final boss of that game, hates you specifically. Okay. Like it is almost a rivalry. However, I've made a joke about this and I'm going to make that joke again. Monster Hunter 1, 2, 3, 4 generations, stories, stories one, world and rise all have the exact same story.

Every single one is, well, monsters around here are getting really crazy. I wonder if there's a new monster in the region disrupting their ecosystem. We should go find out what new monster is doing something weird disrupting the ecosystem. Oh, it's introduced a new mechanic to the game like the Frenzy Virus or the Elder Dragon Eater or the Wings of Ruin et cetera, we have to stop the monster that's causing that to save the ecosystem. It is literally every single game has the exact same plot. And so does this one until it doesn't. It is the first game they have ever made in the series that actually does have a twist going on. Okay. And it is not just a twist.

It's the one that everyone wanted. Okay. And it is the deepest, deep pull from a non-canon Monster Hunter 1 art book that people have been asking for for decades. Interesting. Okay. And they totally do it and it's exactly what I wanted. Is the formula also that like the new threat is a giant god that is a set piece of a boss so it's not the real threat fight and then there's an actual real no it's a fucking fight okay no it's a it's a fight

okay they also start to include little narrative elements that were known to freaks like me but not to anyone else because they're not actually in the game so the long and short of it is people would ask, Hey, how come in Monster Hunter you just go and fuck up any given goddamn piece of wildlife for like no reason? Like what the fuck is up with that? Why are you guys such assholes? Conservation is what I was. You are conservationists and researchers and there is actually a subdivision of poachers that you never, ever, ever, ever see,

which is people who hunt monsters for profit or without authorization. So in this game, in every narrative moment, literally every single time you fight a storyline monster, your handler, you have to ask them for permission, and they will, she will tell you that the guild authorizes the hunt of blank for this reason. So it's this nice little thing where a monster shows up and causes a roadblock but is not

otherwise violent or harmful. So you have to ignore it. But then when it becomes a legitimate problem or a threat to people's lives, you get the rubber stamp, you get your deer permit essentially to go take it out. And they do an interesting thing with this where if you just fuck off from the story and go start hunting monsters that you see in the wild,

your handler will tell you to fucking stop that. So like, no, you do not have authorization to hunt this. What are you doing? Interesting. Huh. Okay. Because I feel like you get less rewards from that as a result.

World encouraged you to like stay in the field and like, and just get out there, take on the next thing and the next thing. Just punch things. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's it's really really nice it every single hunt has a little like not quite release the limiters But like come on. Let me at him. Let me at him chief, okay? The finale and the final boss are really great really really really great the flagship is a really interesting monster and a really fun fight of a huge ups to the game's story and low rank campaign. You fight, I want to say like 15, 16, 17 monsters in that campaign. There are only

Only three old monsters in the entirety of the game's campaign. Wow. It is nearly exclusively new guys. And the ones that do come back from older games, one hasn't been seen since the fucking 3DS. One is the one that has to be there because it says Monster Hunter. And the other is a pick that I never thought was going to come back, especially not so soon. And the two of the older ones are weird, deviant versions that don't function like their normal

selves. Interesting. Deviant versions that don't function like their normal selves interesting so like it is it is a it is a brand new roster for 99% of the campaign which is awesome. What was really great? What was the returning count on rise like? Because I because in worlds I remember 5050 okay because I remember that the lack of like Well essentially like the the amount of monsters that couldn't be there was the thing that people were bummed about with world right so world So the lots it's one of those interesting things you talk about like a fighting game, but in reverse Yeah, monster count is like the number one thing anybody ever wants to know like how many in there? We've had situations like try on the Wii where 18 fucking monsters were in try on the Wii

That is fucking ridiculous. That is Terrible that is ruinous And then you get stuff like GU which has a hundred And then you get stuff like GU, which has a hundred? It's kind of a lot. I feel like every time you've talked about GU, it's basically been like, this is the end of the same engine build up, so there's more than, yeah, there's like 60 or 70 or whatever.

GU is Street Fighter, Alpha Collection, Turbo, everything. Yeah. So going back. GU is Capcom versus SNK 2 what that's what Monster Hunter gu is or Marvel 2 for that matter like right? Oh, yeah, Marvel 2 is a better example actually um so world had 40 I Think or maybe 38 mm-hmm Wilds has 29 Which is Wilds has 29, which is the low end of what has come out in the past.

Okay. However, it depends. They're doing the title update thing, right? They're going to be putting out new monsters every couple of months. So it depends how fast they put out those new monsters every couple of months. Right? Oh, world had less, world had thirty? Okay. So it's about the same as world. So there are two monsters coming in April. It'll be unclear to see how many more will come after that. Well, I'm happy that like that's cool that folks are down for the new,

because like that's yeah, that sounds pretty like the new monsters are also great. There are some there are some real winners in that new cast. There is a cephalopod skeleton now. And they have retrofit the spider skeleton in so bugs and squids oh I saw on the roster type I see yeah okay the cephalopods the cephalopod or squid skeleton is great. It is super fun and super weird. So it has a really good roster. It has a big monkey. It has a bunch of Wyverns, you know, Rathalos and Rathian are there. It's got a bunch of brute Wyverns. It's a really strong roster. And I was feeling really mixed, so I beat the campaign, which ends extremely strong,

with a fight that you can't play again. Like a big story moment that's once. A big story boss that you get to fight once. Just like Xenojiva in World, where you had to wait for them to get added to the game in a patch as a real fight. A monster, the final boss does not have its own armor set. It does not have its own weapon. And apologies if you guys don't like me talking about data mining, but it does have its own armor set and it does have its own weapon It's just not in the game right now

It's not the kind of thing where you could pick it on one of the like secondary mission sort of menus where it's like go into a No, no, no, you could SOS for it, right? But no, it doesn't have it doesn't have anything right now you can do But no, it doesn't have anything right now you can do. So I was feeling super conflicted because I did like the direction the story went, but I was frustrated by the game's terrible performance and I felt really, really, really railroaded. I talked to Gene about it at length and he described it as Monster Hunter became Red Dead because when you're in these walk and talks or the story wants you to do something and you try and like move like The fucking game hates it. It will like auto turn your character back to the path and shit like that

It's fucking infuriating. It's yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and like it's not it's not like it's not that bad on a Objective level because it's actually less intense than it is in other games, but this is Monster Hunter where I just, it's been completely free form for almost every game that's ever existed. So it's really, really, really frustrating when the game was no, no, no, no, go back, go turn, go look at this, go look over here. Come on, come on. No, I was just thinking, in World it was Zora Magdaros, right? It sure was. Yeah.

That, like after doing that in plot, you could like re-instance it. Yeah, you'd find them again. Or whatever, yeah. Okay. So, I was feeling really torn. I was feeling really torn. I was feeling very confused. There's another issue that I skipped over in the game's presentation, which is the game has a season system.

So I forget the name of all of them. There's the Fallow, which is like the, oh no, everything's dead and dying. There's the Plenty, which is like summertime and it's beautiful. And then there's an in-between that I can't remember the name of it, right? you spend 99% of the game's campaign in fallow Which means that the environment is extremely Oh inclement C is the second one. Thank you. The environment is extremely desaturated The we're talking like the area like ever the the area called the desert area

Literally, the entire screen is brown Even the sky is kind of brown It looks like you are running like a fucking broken filter to pop your HDR on it. It is brown or gray. It looks bad. And then you beat the game and you unlock the plenty and it is more saturated. It is better looking. The sky is clearer. It runs better because there's less fog everywhere

It almost feels like a sequel to itself in how much better the game looks After you beat the game as a it's a season or an area. It is a season, okay Okay, but the campaign takes place exclusively in one of them sad ugly season The game also teleports you around constantly at the end of your quests So you have a really hard time getting a feel on where the areas are so you beat the game and you roll credits and you start high rank and This is where I've never felt this way about a game before because right away the game starts to dramatically improve in

literally every single way okay yeah it feels like its own sequel so I was about to say that it sounds like from what you're describing basically the onboarding is poor the the optimization is poor, and you go through that and eventually you can fix and change and edit some settings, and then you can get further into the campaign where it gets better towards the end. So there's an upwards trajectory here.

There's a very strong upward trajectory, and then you get to high rank. And I hope this makes sense high rank is such a dramatic improvement to every aspect of the base of the games progression systems mechanics visuals performance that it made me pissed off Because this is the game that I thought I was going to be playing 14 hours ago Yeah, okay, okay

And it's lost so I'm completing the onboarding initial run new game So for people who are more familiar with Monster Hunter some of what I'm gonna say is gonna make a lot more sense. There is not a single capture quest in the entirety of the campaign. You kill everything? The... what's that? Captures in like don't kill. Trap and Trank. Trap, trap, yeah yeah yeah. The very first high rank quest is a capture quest and that's where your tutorial for capturing starts. So that really tells you like what the priority was for new players and it is a capture quest against three Yen Kut Kus so you not only have to learn how to capture it and Yen Kut Kus is a very like annoying tough monster you also have to dung potatku is a very like annoying tough monster. You also have to

dung pot it which is a mechanic you probably didn't learn. And you're in the forest and the forest is now bright and beautiful and gorgeous. It is the first HR quest against a low-tier monster is more exciting then Game's finale Like in terms of gameplay it sounds like they've basically taken the Kirby philosophy and applied it to Monster Hunter here Where the Kirby Kirby games begin once you beat the first main thing? Yeah, oh games begin once you beat the first main thing. Yeah. Okay. Oh, you're, folks in the chat are right.

There is one instance in the early game where they teach you how to use a Dung Pod. Okay. So you beat Yan Ket Koo, and then now the story has, even the presentation of the narrative has changed now. Now Alma will talk to you as you're traveling somewhere and then they'll say, Hey, go talk to somebody. And you talk to somebody for like two minutes and then they go, Hey, man, get out there and do whatever.

And from that moment onwards, the game structure completely changes. The map starts rotating through night and day and seasons. You have a little chart like Majora's Mask that shows you who's gonna show up at what time of day and during what weather and they say go out there and just fight shit. So you go out there and ride around and fight something and when you beat it up, when you knock it over the first time or when you mount it, you get the quest started and it auto does the quest for you and auto posts the quest.

And then you beat it and you carve it and then it says quest complete and then you just get your shit back together on your sacred and then you cook on the ground before going to the next one and you just run off in another direction. And you're just free. And just go. And you just go and go and go and go. And that is what the fucking game should have been from the very beginning and then you would do urgent quests

against tougher guys. On top of that, the interface is not good and I don't think there's a single place that the interface is worse than the game's most primary feature, which is multiplayer. This is the most confusing multiplayer menu system I have ever seen in my entire life. I actually mean that. I thought about it for a while. I've been playing GU. It is so bad I had to have chat explain to me on the second or third day how to party up with Gene because Gene

wanted to play. It was very, very confusing. So there are five different types of multiplayer lobbies. When you start the game, there are four options to start the game. You can start the game in a recommended lobby. You can start the game in a recommended lobby, you can start the game in online single player, and I can't remember what the other two fucking things are. Can't remember. So in order, you can be Hunter friends. That's the in-game friends list, which you can go look at. And if somebody's playing in a lobby or doing a quest you can join them from there.

There's squads which is like a little guild where you can have people join that and if they go into the squad menu they can look at where you are and join. There is the lobby itself where people are wandering around inside the the communal hub and can walk up to the handler and join the party if you've already started a quest. And here's where it gets really fun. There are link parties and environment link parties. A link party is a lobby agnostic group that you can invite people to that will

auto post quests that you join to them where they are and then they can join up. So when I had Jean and Diana and someone else in my link party, and I started a main story quest, it would auto post the quest to them and they could go, I want to join that. So what would happen is, is you fight the story cut scene and then you start fighting the monster for two seconds. Then they would load in about 30 seconds afterwards.

But link parties don't coexist in the same environment. You can't roll around the world with a link party, that's only for quests. If you want to roam around the environment together as a group, you need to join an environment link, which actually does drag all four people to the same instance, and then you'll be auto joining quests together. This is so complicated. It is so complicated. Some of these things you

could post quests in, some of them you can't. I just found out from chat just now that environment parties can't post quests to each other. They just have to get the auto quests you get from hitting monsters in the lot. Like, it is so complicated. I remember worlds being kind of complicated for me, just not fully understanding how to do that in and of itself. And that kind of resembled what it used to be. Why?

You know how you post a fucking quest in Monster Hunter 1, 2, 3, 4 Generations Ultimate and Rise? You go to the multiplayer hub, you give people your room ID and they join, then you walk up to the quest counter and start a quest and then you walk up to the quest counter and start a quest, and then people walk up to the notice board and go, I would like to do the quest that Pat just picked up. And then you eat your food and you go. That is how it has been in almost every single Monster Hunter game. World also does that with a couple of wrinkles. This is trying some new free form join wherever play and it's so confusing.

What I remember is I remember the SOS thing where people can join you mid hunt. I remember posting on a going to the board and just jumping into something on the board or posting and then I remember there being maybe this is a subsection or misplacing it but I remember there being like a location that was like on like a pirate ship deck almost that was like a multiplayer. Yeah that was the gathering hub. Yeah. Those are a multiplayer. Yeah, that was the gathering hub. Yeah. That's what those are.

They're always called. They're called the gathering hub. Yes, right. And I kind of was like, I wasn't too sure about that. And it took a second to get it. So what's going to happen? And I want people to remember this for when it happens. What's going to happen is that people are going to use these

five different types of multiplayer lobbies and at the end of the day in about two months, people are going to go, you know what, this actually is a really effective way to do multiplayer because if I want to do this, I can use this one and if I want to do this, I'm going to use this one and if I want to do this, I'm going to use this one and they're adding a gathering hub in the next title update in April. And you know what? You know, this is actually a really good version of the multiplayer. And then they will forget.

The experience that many people had, which is not being able to figure out this impossible to fucking understand pile of shit and then give up on multiplayer entirely because they're freaks and they pushed through because they love Monster Hunter. Like there's going to be like survivor's bias on this. Dude, I played every Monster Hunter. I am so confused by these fucking multiplayer menus. That's stupid. This is supposed to be the easiest part of the whole game is getting a group of people together to go fight monsters or play with your friends. This is also extra confusing because why wouldn't the design be streamlined based on the last three games experience from like,

you know, there was a new engine restart from scratch and then wouldn't you just build off of that? Like why? No, dumb shit, because you assume Monster Hunter goes one, two, three, four. We actually have two different games called Monster Hunter, portable Monster Hunters and home Monster Hunters now. The team that worked on World and Iceborne worked on Wilds. The team that worked on Generations Ultimate worked on Rise.

How do you know this? Well, one, I mean, that's the development practice they've talked about and it's actually really clear. But even a new player would know that because when you load up the game, you get a save data import bonus for World and Iceborne, but not for rise because they didn't work on that one okay because so sacreds are not sequels to palamutes sacreds are a different teams own invention along the same lines that would explain it yeah they're not carrying over their work between the two they're actually working in parallel that sucks because yeah it because I

kind of assumed I was like okay well I guess forward like did you use stuff is all basically the momentum from the first game up until then lessons and quality of life and all that stuff implemented and then it yeah it drops off because of the switch over but but then here it's now scattered. So Iceborn had mounts and these are sequels to Iceborn's mounts. Palamutes were their own thing entirely because Palamutes can fight. Yeah, they were part of the battle. That's true.

There was a whole mechanic about that. So we have a Street Fighter Marvel situation with this. Yeah, this is really frustrating if you're a fan of the franchise because there's no consistency or promises that anything good or bad will return in the future necessarily. Absolutely. It reminds me, and this is kind of a weird poll for this podcast But if if you guys back in the day played Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Call of Duty black ops those games were always came out a year apart and Stuff like what is crouching do in those games would change depending on the developer

Ward Treyarch wanted you to do a dolphin dive and and and infinity Ward wanted you to do a dolphin dive and and Infinity Ward wanted you to go prone and that changes a multiplayer first person shooter pretty fucking dramatically just that little detail there were more but that was the most obvious one and also we're not going to like meet in the middle or give up or compromise. Never, never, never. Yeah. So like, this, Wilds is a super weird game because if you just wanted to play it. So can I just?

Oh yeah, sorry, sorry. I had a bunch of questions from when you were going, talking about the changes. Sorry, I'm ranting. I know, and then into the multiplayer, but before I forget, because if we go into the third section, I'm super gonna forget, just before I forget, because if we go into the third section, I'm super gonna forget. Just design-wise, is the idea here, I guess, that we can change up the onboarding for new people every time because we want to figure out how to make that less complicated, but

if you're a veteran, you're gonna stick it out and you'll get to the end no matter what, and at that point, you'll get the game you want. So it's fine to kind of push push the real monster hunter experience to the back Veterans have always been like I don't give a fuck about this low-rank shit I'm gonna just power the fuck through as fast as I can to get that good stuff And that's and like all and like um, yeah you as you mentioned iceborn. It's like they're right That was a dlc, but it was it's still its own full campaign, right? Yeah, I treated treated as an entry so like so in in a year and a half or two years. We're gonna get Monster Hunter

cities or whatever Right right and that's gonna have master rank and 20 30 new monsters and all the title updates and That will have its own campaign as well So it will also have a 5 to 15 hour campaign that you will blow through as fast as you possibly can before they let you out. So never judge it on the basic run through the story to credits. That's not the game and they don't care because that's not for you. No for you came out on the 3DS.

Oh god here we go. Yeah. Ha ha ha. People like you are clearly just like, oh, the game you're looking for is way back there. Yeah. So if I was the type of Monster Hunter player who was like, I don't give a fuck about this, I just want to get to low rank, Wilds does let you skip cutscenes, which the other games didn't let you do. Oh, the walk-in talks as well? No.

Okay. But I'm going to delete my file and I'm going to replay the whole campaign, skipping cut scenes. And I want to, and in single player, and I want to see how different that feels. I bet it's going gonna be real different. I bet it's gonna be one real fucking fast and real different. Well, you said the first run through to credits was already insanely fast, right? Yeah. Someone in the chat says, you can just make a new file. So here's the thing about making a new file in this type of game.

When you make a new file, it has to go into the second slot and that looks ugly. Your real file has to be in the first slot or else. So it has to be in the first slot. What you're saying is rational and makes sense. And it is not like it is rational. Thank you. I appreciate you telling me this. Don't let let anyone dissuade. I feel very seen right now good But

They said there are a lot of different ways I could have played this game and I feel like the way that I played It was by far the worst and I'm gonna put that on me because I wanted to stream it with my chat which led to all the fights being jokes and Being frustrated at being railroaded or if I had played it by myself I would have just done the same thing I did with every other monster hunter game of all time Which is do every single optional quest as it arises Every single time so it had taken me twice as long to do the low rank and and I would have seen more, and I wouldn't have felt as railroaded. Would you prefer if they either... Would you prefer A, it's the same thing, same setup,

and made for new players, and completely railroaded, but it's half as long? Or B... Oh, it's already half as long as world's Campaign well half that so nine hours to four and a half Mm-hmm or B You literally press the I know what I'm doing button and so it just begins a different thing Like right away. I think it's a little dangerous for us to arm share this a little too strongly, but I think that there's actually a really easy solution they've built into the game. I think that the main game in low rank should be get out there and do whatever, just like

it is in high rank. And then when you hit a certain hunter rank threshold, it pings you for an urgent quest. And then you go fight a new tougher monster And then they they dump a lot of story onto that Isn't that basically how like a game like ff14 works? Yes, right. In fact the games per. Oh, you know what? When I was playing through the campaign, I was like this feels just like Final Fantasy 16 I was like this feels just like Final Fantasy 16 That exact right like that exact right talk walk side quest kinda

huge bombastic fucking cool thing walk talk sidequest kinda Huge bombastic cool thing like over and over and over and over and over big map, but it is not a map It is a point two.2.2.2. Yeah, the map is really poorly used until you beat the campaign. So it very much is like training wheels until the real shit. And it'll be interesting to see how fast they get those title updates out. I would like an average of one monster a month.

So in April they're putting out two new monsters and if you go to the Monster Hunter Leaks Reddit you can see who those monsters are going to be and they're good picks and then you can see what the title update monster after that is going to be and that's also a really good pick. It's a really good pick. The problems that you're describing about being able to just gangstomp the monster in multiplayer, when you get to the higher difficulties, does it get to the traditional difficulty as well? Yeah, it's traditional high rank. You've got to fight and fucking survive. Yeah.

So if you're a total vet and you know exactly what you're doing, you're going to get to high rank and fight a Kongala or something, and you're like, ah, this ain't that big of a deal. But I rolled up to a Wrathion and what I don't know how to fucking fight a rathian and she tail swiped me And I died from full health and I was like Yeah, okay, so it is just like a fake mode stuck up top is what's going on. Yeah, okay um I really really think That if the game didn't go the place it did with its story that I would have been way harder on this game but it went it the story goes to the

exact place I have always wanted them to go in Monster Hunter like a really there is a singular picture of art that has been floating around since the aughts that I have been going every time Monster Hunter comes up I want them I want to fight that thing and we finally get to do it and it's awesome. I kind of want to throw out a spoiler guess but go for it. Is it a monster that is human-sized? No, okay Fucking terrible. Okay. Well, no. All right. That's that'd be awful

It's also you actually did fight a human-sized monster again thing that turns into a girin leg and like Boss that combines and has like oh that they've done that that's called a auto car Okay, yeah, there is there is a there is a mecha pilot final boss in Monster Hunter. It's called auto car That's the final boss of GU. Okay. Yeah, I thought I heard No, I'll you want I'll type out what it is in your Discord. That's fine, you don't have to. Alright.

I don't know, I don't know what Monster Hunter fans want, I'm just throwing random shit out there, but yes, that's obviously me, because I'm my brain speaking, so, anyway. Yeah. The whole system would completely fall apart my brain speaking, so anyway. Yeah. The whole system would completely fall apart with a human-sized monster. Yeah, probably. It would just... the whole thing. For sure, it's not made for that. I just, I'm like, when you talk about, like, what is this world of humans and monsters, like, okay, I don't know, is it a person piloting a monster?

Is it a fucking... or is it... you know, I don't know. I'm like, there's only so many variables of what this series can be of per- You need to go read some Monster Hunter 1 art books, dude. T-Rex and Sword swinging at it. Like, what do you want to do with that? I don't know. Yeah, some Souls bosses are giant monsters and some Souls bosses are small and sometimes you, you know, I don't know. Even the small Souls bosses are still like 10 feet tall. Even the Small Souls bosses are still like 10 feet tall. Like you know, so the camera works. But yeah, no, good game.

Going to become a much better game. I'm going to let it sit for a bit. I'm going to delete my file and continue playing GU late at night when everybody else is asleep. And then when we get the title update, then I will restart that game and go back. So you have not yet let the... the dust has not settled on your opinion. No. What do you think of it relative to not GU, but Rise? I think if someone asked me, hey man, I want to get into Monster Hunter.

What should I get? I would tell them Rise in a second. I would tell them absolutely no question. Rise, particularly because it has Sunbreak on top of the end, is like... Including the DLC, okay. Is not even close. And what about what do you compare it to with World and Iceborne? I would also say grab World instead, because you probably can play those games a lot more easily and run them better Like going backwards is hard unless you're a freak like like me like going back to GU rough

There's some old shit in that that's real annoying If I if somebody said hey, man, I want to get into Monster Hunter I would tell them play world arise and then wait until I would tell them to wait until the Expansion for wilds comes out. Okay. Is what I would tell them. And and for not a new player but for someone who's looking for a they don't listen to anyone. Well, that's someone who's a fan of GU and knows the games inside out. Anyone who plays Monster Hunter and continues to enjoy Monster Hunter is already playing Monster Hunter. That's why it's sold 8 million copies. Of course, it's not it's not a question about is already playing Monster Hunter. That's why it sold 8 million copies. Of course.

It's not a question about whether they should get it. It's more like how do you stack them? How do you stack high rank in Wilds compared to? Oh, high rank in Wilds is easily the best the series has ever been, no question. Okay, cool. Cool. But the low rank in Wilds is the worst it's been in a long time. Understanding, yeah.

That is a very strange dichotomy. Hmm Like I would say that that's like a seven and a ten Stapled together by their credit scene. What if you had to beat world tour to get to the fighting ground? That's kind of what it feels like Like it feels a lot like like Street Fighter's campaign were world tour. I enjoyed world tour. It's fine You know it was fun. The story was fucking terrible. It was terrible um But like the idea of like you must It's like it's annoying and the thing you want is right here. Yeah, I didn't even talk about all the little features that they added

There's now there's now clashes like power struggles between you and the monster with anything that blocks. So like you'll jam your shield up in its mouth and you'll both be like fucking draw and try and knock it over. There's also every weapon has a dedicated counter move. So you know every strike that a monster does where they hold up their hand real big and long and they go, Oh, I'm'm gonna hit you. If you clash with that, you'll just power through it and knock the fucking thing right over. Oh, wasn't that already a thing when you'd like with the perfect blocks and that on a charge and- So that was a thing, but it always depended on whether or not you flinched them, which was like a stun threshold. Right, okay.

Now they're dedicated mechanics that it's like no if you perfect block enough times You'll get into like a like is it it's I guess the closest like you call it mechanically is like a beam struggle Okay with the monster. Okay Or you do like a very large attack that directly counters them and just knocks them on their ass. It feels very dynamic Interesting because yeah, I'm thinking I'm thinking of like releasing your your your your full alt or whatever right in the middle of a charge When it like yeah, so that that was always dependent on their flinch status Okay, so if you had done enough damage to them recently you cross an invisible threshold That's like a miniature stun, which is the flinch threshold

So what you would think of is people's videos where you would see like a charge blade element discharge into a job When I say the word alt I'm thinking of like amplified elemental discharge But what you're not thinking of is that when the value isn't high enough and the monster just ignores it and just powers through you Right, okay. Gotcha. Yes now. It's a dedicated mechanic Okay, gotcha. Yes now. It's a dedicated mechanic So there's like mounting grappling grabbing and countering so that's there's a lot of really dynamic interactions with the monsters What else you got the game has its farm It's just a different form you can customize your bird to look like a chocobo or... It's a chocobo. It's a fucking chocobo.

I have thoughts on the way the end game weapon thing works, but I haven't touched it myself, so I'm going to leave those thoughts alone. Yeah, good game. Launch is rough. It's not stopping anyone. And I feel a little bit like an old man because I'm playing GU and I'm like, why don't they use the old Monster Hunter thing where you just post quests? And then I look at 1.3 million people playing on Steam right now. And I'm like, oh, that's why.

Because having a dedicated single player campaign that feels like a regular normal video game not like Monster Hunter is the point Yeah, I can see that when you do an SOS NPC show up first or can show up And PCs will show up and the NPCs are also really strong I was gonna well those like how does that like you, I'm sure you're not doing the flinch into flinch into flinch bits, but. You sure are, buddy. Oh, wow. You sure are.

How about that? Nah. Interesting. Yeah, the NPCs will kick the fucking shit. And there are a couple of the, you know, the repel quests where a really big motherfucker shows up and you're like, you're not killing this thing You just need to survive and get it out of here Those oftentimes have your your hunter with you Olivia who is a older very Jane Lynch looking lady

Like very like older lesbian gym teacher kind of thing. Okay Who has a hammer? And she's cool The cast is cool. I like the cast. Your handler's great. Although, are you familiar with iPhone face? No. So I've been using the term iPhone face and I have to explain it every time I say it. iPhone face is what happens when you put Ryan Reynolds in a Crusades film and you go, oh, that motherfucker knows how to use an iPhone. I don't care if he's pretending to be the King of England or whatever the fuck.

The Gears kids. Yeah. Gears of War, whatever, future kids where you're like, look at these influencers in Gears of War armor. Yeah. So like Alma, your handler, works at your local coffee shop. Like she just does. Gemma, your Forgemaster, is really cool for me,

and old heads because she is an existing Monster Hunter character that has been in an old game. Okay, so for me, Worlds being the first one I've played, I feel like a lot of the characters that have been introduced there don't look like anime characters. Some of them are, but a lot of them are just kind of like western faces and features. Absolutely. Yeah.

So I kind of get that impression of most of the cast already, you know? Yeah. So your Forge master in this game, your smithy is a character from for you Called little miss Forge when she was a kid Cool that you picked her up on the on the trail and She talks about the events of for you a little bit, which is really cool That looks like an RPG s character damn and the guy sent, the old guy who sends you on your mission, I believe is the ace lancer from For You as well.

Just, he got old. He's not hunting anymore. And yeah, your cast is really strong. Except for the child character that is like the main character of the story who is fucking intolerable. Oh, I love it. Just the worst. He is so awful. He is so goddamn awful.

And so here's the thing. Usually with child characters, you're like, oh, they're annoying constantly, right? No Natta is fine He's actually totally fine 80 90 percent of the story and Then he starts to become like the worst character Monster Hunter has ever had in a huge way and Every time he speaks. I'm like, oh my god. Shut up, dude. Oh Shut your fucking mouth. You're so stupid

It's not like like something like oh the kid from stories is now in the main line or something no no no no This is a brand new character, okay, but Basically basically this child character in the story has a hot take that is so hot in the Monster Hunter universe that I'm like, just throw this kid to the wolves. I don't even give a shit anymore. Okay. And it's, I never thought that a character in that setting could have a hot take because it's like, what could you even say?

It's like the hottest take ever and it's so dog shit. It's crazy. He is the dumbest character that has ever existed in Monster Hunter. We should let the Rathalos into the camp. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Congrats, Willy. You actually pretty much nailed it.

Okay. Alright. Why can't we just... This is a minor spoiler, but at one point in the campaign you are watching a monster cannibalistically devour animals at random and just be insane and he goes, it's just like me for real We should we should be friends got it And you're like Yeah, it's like a rabid super dog at this point man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Okay

That has been the Monster Hunter cast. It's a good game with weird issues. Just like every Monster Hunter game ever. It's just now the issues are different and that makes me scared. And old. I'm old. But how does it compare to Dotless? We'll be right back.

Let's take a quick word from our sponsors. Let's do it. This week the podcast is sponsored by Turtle Beach and that has been a brand that I've gotten headphones for Turtle Beach for my setup for years now. Always been pretty fantastic quality and the latest they've got the Gen 3 Stealth 700 headset which I have talked about because yeah, it's got 80 hours battery life that are pretty fantastic. No crackly mics, just pure interrupted quality with the rich surround sound and all of that

stuff. But in particular, something that has become really, really indispensable is the fact that you can have it connect to multiple devices. I love that smart switch between the devices as you need to. So if I have it connected to my phone and then collect it to, you know, via Bluetooth and then it has a receiver as well. Both of those are able to work together. However, not only does it have the ability to switch between,

it has the ability to simultaneously play both at the same time, which means if you're playing a game and taking a call, you can do both and hear them. If you're listening to music, don't know how that works, that's crazy, and it dips and ducks the volume so that you can hear both at the same time. It's incredible. It's a super duper useful feature and it's my favorite. That is the best thing. There's a lot of times where, you know, like I appreciate the convenience of being able to switch between the two, but one step better is literally both at the same time without needing to switch.

Really, really awesome. And then, you know what? On top of that, you got that comfy ear cushioning as well going on with it So yeah, the cross play dual wireless transmitter system on the stealth 700 is Fantastic get the wireless get the wires out of your life get get the quality and get yourself The stealth 700 it's got a quick charge on that 80-hour battery life as well. So oh man It is Fantastic. I'm getting annoyed by devices that don't have quick charge, right? Right? Why wait I Had to turtle Beach calm and use the code castle for 10% off your entire order That's 10% off your order at turtlebeach.com with the promo code castle.

After you purchased, I'll ask you where you heard about them. Support our show. Tell them that we sent you. Get yourself the ultimate immersive gaming experience with Turtle Beach today. Thank you, Turtle Beach. Thanks, Turtle Beach. This week, the podcast is sponsored by cha-ching by Shopify. Hey Shopify. Hey man.

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Very handy and being able to integrate whatever you're selling into that is very useful as well. So yeah, you can upgrade your business and get the same checkout that we use. Go to Shopify.com slash SuperBeast to upgrade your selling today. Sign up for your one dollar per month trial period at Shopify.com slash SuperBeast all lowercase. So once again, that's Shopify.com slash SuperBeast. Thank you, Shopify. Thanks Shopify. This week the podcast is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

Don't raw dog the internet. Don't do it. It might give you a thrill, but that thrill will bite you when you get sick on your computer. It might not even be the next morning. It might be that same night. Cause it works fast, you know?

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they can stitch it together for a detailed profile that includes your searches, browsing history, location data, everything about you. And yeah, they sell that profile off to companies that wanna deliver a targeted ad to you. So you'd be surprised, but they are also not just selling that to advertisers but they are selling that information to apparently the Department of Homeland

Security and the IRS? Wow that's damn that's crazy. Thank you for the heads up there. The... Yeah. Let's see here. I don't want the tax man showing up at my door because of some search I did on my phone. Man, I don't want that. Okay. All right, copy.

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slash superbeast and you can get an extra four months for free expressvpn.com slash superbeast thanks expressvpn thank you and lastly this week the podcast is sponsored by hello fresh oh man HelloFresh ad reads are rough because I always have a piece of toast before coming to the podcast. I should probably have had a real meal. I mean, look. Probably.

It doesn't help that we started this out talking about how games that we play have food porn in them. And then we transitioned right over into telling you about delicious meals you can get. But- I mean, when you got a HelloFresh box, you're opening up a box of food porn.

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Go to hellofresh.com slash hellofreshpodcast. That's America's number one meal kit. Thank you, HelloFresh. Thanks, HelloFresh. Uh, ooh, mouthouth words. Hard tired. Oh yeah. Yeah. Here's a mouth word for you. You ready for this? Yeah. Something I left out of the Monster Hunter discussion.

At some point in that game's story, an element of that story becomes a concept known as Wyvern Milk. Nice. And they keep saying it a lot. Nice, good, good, good, good, good. I like that. And every time they say it, you're like, ugh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, no. If these are the animals, then why wouldn't we milk them?

Like, so no, that's not what it is at all. It's a totally different thing. Just happens to be called Wyvern Milk. Oh, it's for baiting Wyverns? It's the other way around? No. No, I'm not gonna to go into it. They talk about it a lot and every time they talk about it, it hits your ear like, ugh. Huh.

Eww. Because I mean, I'm all on board with the idea of fictional milk from the world of the thing. Okay, I'm just going to tell you, man. It's cum it looks like come It it's it's it's it it gets on the monsters and it looks like come awesome And they power up by eating it. Oh, they get out they get powerful. It's a whole fucking thing. It's come It's it's so fucking weird good good good good. They're like all that that guy got into the come He's stronger now, and you're like Jesus Christ. I like it good. It's fucking weird He's stronger now and you're like Jesus Christ. I like it good. It's fucking weird

It's super fucking weird. I like how Luke Skywalker is drinking that fucking Green alien milk or whatever it sits in little pools on the floor and the monsters go and lap it up And it's it's fucking it's piles of cum. It's fucking weird. There's I'm sure there's Pokemon milk There's got to be Pokemon milk out there someone's milk I mean, if you type in Pokemon milk right now, I'm sure you'll get search results, but I don't think it's gonna be what you're looking for. Well, for sure, there's that cow. No, it'll be what you're looking for. No, no, no, there's Miltank, right?

Miltank has this, for sure. You can just Miltank it up. I'm dodging it, I'm getting out of here. Miltank is a cow Pokemon. Yeah. Ready to go. Yep. All right, well, okay. Miltank is a cow Pokemon. Yeah ready to go. Yep All right. Well, okay

Did you Want to hit up your schedule First I want to talk about expedition 33 So they sent out they started They sent out preview codes for that and it's a proper preview code like you you motherfuckers don't get to play this Haha, Claire obscure. I mean you can well you just ask for one but This thing looked so fucking cool from that trailer it looked so French and so cool Okay, so and those are not usually exclusive details. I Have good news for you from my exclusive details one. It's so cool. Yeah

Yeah, it's it's sure it's so cool. You can tell um it is using a it is using a Mario RPG like battle system where it's like enemies attack you and you parry them or you dodge them with timed button presses. Hell yes. You have Legend of Dragoon style QTEs on all your skills. Wait turn based RPGing? Yep. Interesting. I beat a boss in that preview content that was like a dozen levels higher than me that

would one shot me every single time it hit me because I learned it's parry timing and I just parried every single attack for 10 minutes and killed it. Love it. And then then got like five levels off of it and fucked up the rest of the preview content. Turn-based RPG with little minigames, fuck yes. It's great, it's great. I mean, also but like some of but like some of the diversity of mini games in like Thousand Year Door and yeah, or even just hitting that circle in Lost Odyssey, you know, like hell yes. So there's a bunch of different types of QTEs. You have to jump over attacks.

You have to parry. It's great. It's awesome. It is also the franchise game. Yeah, it is. Baguettes and striped shirts. So you joke. So that's a DLC, right? But if you play the preview, there's a hidden super boss that is literally a demon mime. And it uses mime attacks on you.

Let's go. And when you beat it, you unlock the ability to dress up the main character in the striped shirt with the baguette shit. Let's fucking do it. So if you watch anybody's Expedition 33 footage, make a note of who's using the striped shirt and baguette because those people beat a boss that other people did not. Does the music sound like Amelie? There's fucking accordions when you find it. Let's go! Yes! It's Charlie Cox as your main character, doing his regular ass Britishy accent, but

it's aggressively French. Like, his favorite swear word is patin. Yes. There's a lot of merde. In English. Oh yeah. Nice. Beautiful. In British accent in English.

A lot of the little monsters talk with little French accents. I don't know how to describe it other than the dialogue is French. You can tell. You can tell it's very French. The characters are suffering from ennui. Of course they are. It's crazy. The world of Victor Chevalier.

Yeah. Expedition 33 is to France the way Stalker is to Ukraine. Beautiful. Beautiful. Right? Just like, you touch it and you're like, oh wow. Oh, I can taste the culture through the screen. It's a law Yeah, I Can I said so that all Goku a couple times and people didn't understand what the fuck I was talking about but I knew Someone yes, no Because the Dragon Ball manga we got here in Quebec was the France French Dragon Ball translations, so there'd be like Frieza going, you know, and the sound effects or the onomatopoeia

were also French. You know, yeah, it was great. But yeah, no, that expedition 33 game is going to be really good. Nice. I did not know. Really's gonna be really good. I didn't know it was a turn-based RPG. That's fucking sick. Yeah, that's the best part.

That's super sick. Cause you watch the footage, it doesn't look like a fucking turn-based RPG. In fact, I kind of was like, oh, it's gonna be a little automata action-y 3D thing. Nah, man, this is a, this is a, this is a JRPG, old, sorry, it's an FRPG. But-

Because AAA game 2025 is that, right? It's 3D action, lost soul aside, and that other game that was announced at the Game Awards. The round table one. Where you're like, look at these beautiful boss fights with dodges and monsters and great designs. Yeah, it's cool, but it's just, this is video game current year.

Yeah. Nice, nice, nice. So, it's base is FF10, but with action commands. Like, that's what that game is. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Like, it has the turn order at the top left of the screen. And it looks like the FF10 turn order. Gotta be great. Yes, I was talking

about Tides of Annihilation. How long was this demo? three hours Okay, it was quite long. It was pretty juicy, so I got a real good look at it You check that out and put up on the YouTube on the path stairs at YouTube you know look at that shit What's the release date? April 24th. Oh shit. That's way sooner than I thought huh, so it's a shame because the demo It was sorry the the previews went out on March 3rd

Which is like you get it because it's like it's like 33 Expedition I bet they wish they could have gotten that release date But it was not to be yeah Okay, and that was it for me this week If you want to see more of my stupid shit go down to twitch.tv slash Pat stairs at We're gonna be back to pirate yakuza and on thursday I would advise you fellow hunters to get your switches out because i'm going to be playing monster hunter gu on thursday with chat

Just very go back to the old old shit for comparison I wonder if someone I wonder if an English producer went, you can't just call this game Claire Obscure. That's not going to, people's brains will auto delete this word, these words in English. You have to put something in there. I feel like it's the complete opposite. Yeah. I feel like it was called Expedition 33 and they're like, no, no, it's a... it could be. But the thing is, if it was Expedition...

But if it was Expedition 33, you know, perhaps it's different. It's not the same thing. Well, because that's the thing is you say you know like that's like I did I saw Expedition 33 pop up way more than I saw people right out Claire obscure, you know, yeah. Yeah, no one's gonna use it It's gonna be great. It's gonna be great I'm gonna LP that I'm gonna play that I'm gonna stream that that's gonna be great. Nice. Yeah What's up with you man? How's your week been? Uh, pretty cool. Had a couple things I was able to get up to Pretty cool. I had a couple things I was able to get up to. The first of which was a board game that I had been eyeballing for a little bit. There's a game called Alice is Missing. It sounded pretty interesting as it was a... I kind of first heard about this, Sir Meow told me about it. It's a, it's a like card game that you play entirely with your phone with other people in the room via.

Wow, this is the perfect Gen Z game. Oh, it sure is. It sure is, right? So yeah. Is it my turn turning a monopoly yet? So not exactly that. It's interesting though. So, Foxgate is in town as well. So basically, went to go hang with them and we did a little round of this game, five players. And the main detail about this, because I got a copy as well

because it sounded really interesting and it was like you can it's a cool thing but you can only really play this once oh and you can show it to other people but like it's not something that you can really redo multiple times because of how particular its kind of narrative is. And what it is is essentially a game where it is part card and role play. It is part, like you are playing the role of a character. Alice is a teenager who lives in this town of Silent Falls. All right. And she goes, All right. And Alice is a teenager and she goes missing.

And the five people playing the game, you each are someone in her life. You're either, you know, her older brother or her best friend or her secret girlfriend or one of multiple people in her life. And you take on that role and you each, once you have that, the people in the room, you are basically going to be playing and communicating via texting each other only. So shooting, I mean, you can play it via like that or just jump into Discord, but you only chat.

You don't talk out loud. And the game lasts exactly 90 minutes. Okay. The way you play it is there's a video that you load up on a TV and it is a 90 minute countdown. And you click play and begin the game and there's a timer that is going down. So the whole time you're in the room, it's playing, there's music and it's got the timer and you've each drawn cards that are meant to be played at certain number of minutes

counting down the line. So you get to, you know, like five minutes in, one of the cards, or 10 minutes in, one of the cards I've drawn is to be played, at the 80 minute mark. And it is an event that occurs, something that we discover about the missing, about Alice, like some detail. that we discover about the missing, about Alice, like some detail.

And, excuse me, I just muted out scoffing. And then what you're kind of doing is, at that point the card will tell you to draw one of these suspicious NPCs in the town, draw a suspicious location, perhaps go to it and do a search, or perhaps just tell everybody about what's going on but you are Putting these pieces together and getting a clue as to like someone that might be you know

The culprit or someone that might be suspicious or whatever is going on You also each character has their own Elements that are, they have a different relationship with Alex, with Alice. They have like different relationships with each other that you have to kind of play off of. And you have to kind of create one or two secrets that only you and Alice have with each other. So your, so the Alice that's kind of created for your game

is unique to the people that are playing that round. It's a very interesting, because it's not exactly a board game in that way. It's not just playing cards and pieces. It's the kind of communication element is a big part of it. And to that end, I would say that the role playing is also a big part of it. You essentially are looking at it and going, okay, my role as the older brother, for example, was to... I'm very protective of the best friend, but I am extremely suspicious of the secret girlfriend.

I would be suspicious of the secret girlfriend also. Right. I'm just going to tell you that right now. Sure. Then it asks you, okay, you had a big fight right before Alice went missing. What was it about? That's a detail that only you have. There's these things that are like,

you know, suspicious details that can be on other people or on yourself. And you can kind of like, you know, work those things together with any other relationship, like issues that they might have. And in the end, there's one of those bits where I'm like in it. So there's that part of it. And then there's also like, even though it's my it's my sister that's missing, I'm kind of the goofball that's not going to take it seriously. So people are like, what the fuck, dude? It's your sister. And you're kind of like, you know, you're afraid of the reality of things.

So you're the one, the first one to crack a joke, to toss an emoji in there, to do whatever. And so you kind of have this sort of, I guess, back and forth. And then you get to a certain time point. And then another escalation point happens and happens and happens and till you get all The way down to the final one, you know Based on the cards you pull and or what pops up you yourself your character can die you can so you can get things can happen to you and Again, the only way to communicate is via text. So sometimes, you know, like messages are incomplete

or there's missing information and stuff and the rest of the players have to kind of figure it out without you. It's a really interesting, you know, unique experience of a board game. It's also like, you know, obviously, it's a type of thing where as everyone's playing and as multiple things can can go wrong this can get super real as well you know some of the the There's there's some of the locations in town can involve like, you know The old mall that empty barn up the you know up the hill and there can be like the creepy history teacher That that that weird person that lives in town that nobody really knows teacher, that weird person that lives in town that nobody really knows, the popular kids, the bully, you know, all these people are kind of like floating around as well. And

like, you know, at some points you can get calls from them or rather like get information from them and then have to like break that out to the group. But like, who do you share it with back and forth and stuff is part of it as well. It is definitely got little elements where, you know, now that I've seen it, I can say, I'm like, okay, so one, the location of Silent Falls, two, at one point, there is like a card that's like, the best friend has a buried locket that went missing. Who was like, who saw the locket go missing? And you're like, oh, we're just doing Twin Peaks here, right? Yeah. There's big, big...

100%. Exactly. So big Twin Peaks vibes to the game as well. And big, I'd say Twin Peaks, what I said before, and Life is Strange 2, you know, is part of it as well. But it is it is kind of like, it's the fact that the game is on an active timer means you have an active time battle board game feeling to things, you know, you could you could only communicate so much and so much time. And while you're in the middle of trying to convey some information or something, someone

else might pull their pick up a card and play it and be like, nevermind that shit. We got a call from the lighthouse. Some things going on over there. It's muffled screams. What's going on? Someone can go investigate. And then if you go investigate, no one can be in the same place at the same time. So there can never be any like, you know, reason for you to be able to like exchange information directly. It has to be, you know, either in this like group text or via DMs and stuff like that. So, yeah. So let me ask you a question. This has been a relatively complex explanation. Do you feel that this game was very complicated to explain how to play for something you can only play for 90 minutes one time?

I think the complexity is more just me describing the variations of what's going on. It's not that complex once it's actually rolling out and happening. I think the fact that narratively, I think you can play it with other people that are having their first time. I think if you and the same group of friends play it, it might be like, yeah, something that won't be as effective necessarily on repeats, you know?

You can, I suppose, but the RPing is part of it, right? To me, I like the kind of randomized gaming element of it, so there is a bit of, I guess, your rogue type quality of it's going to be different each time. What it's doing is unique enough that I feel like it's like, that's pretty cool though. It's worth experiencing, I think, with some friends if this sounds interesting to you. You know, if you're into different kinds of board games or not into board games at all, then you know, the appeal might be different.

But if you do like the aspect of role playing and kind of creating character and having a customized experience, if you thought that dialect, that game I talked about, which is like about creating a language, if you thought that dialect, that game I talked about, which is like about creating a language, if you thought that sounded cool, you might also think this kind of sounds, you might also like this, is what I would say. It's not for everybody. It's not for anyone who's looking for

necessarily a game of risk, you know, which is like, here are the rules, here's what we're gonna play, we're gonna go hard and that's it. This is a bit of a, you know, like a back and forth with the group of people you're playing with and you know, like you might get the role of again, you're helpful or you're an asshole or whatever the case is. And if your job is to be standoffish, but you're not good at playing the role of that

person, it might be less effective, you know, as far as that game goes. So I kind of feel like I've played good and bad games with Secret Hitler, for example. It all depends on the crew you're with. But as far as a gen alpha ass, everyone in the room is going to sit in front of a YouTube video and heads down in your phone for 90 minutes and just go. That is the most, yes, that is premium Gen Alpha gaming experience right there.

But I think it's interesting. So yeah, that was fun. Yeah, so to go back on the only play it once bit, I guess, let me elaborate on that because I can see that would be a major sticking point. You can play it another time, but I would definitely think that it mainly, you want to have new people each time experiencing it. It wouldn't be like you and the same group of friends playing Catan for the 80th time doing the same old thing.

You are working together to solve what happened. There's a chance based on what you draw or based on the random way the cards come together that you may or may not be able to solve it. You know, there's good, there's bad endings, there's all kinds of variations to it, and how you particularly play and what you draw from the decks as well kind of create the narrative. But in the end, you are ultimately trying to cooperate to solve what's happening.

So that's- So what happens if you don't solve it? Well, and you can't play it again. Well, well, you I mean you you can play it again, but for example what happened in our game was Sir Meow ended up finding ended up finding her but he found her body. And then he got ambushed by one of the people that was suspicious from before that we couldn't find. And then got cut off mid-text before he couldn't talk anymore. There was like a whole particular way that our way played

out. Some of the some of the the the details and cards and stuff as well can get pretty gory and pretty not so in graphic as well so it's kind of like there's a lot of bad that can happen you know and to you and or to your Alice so anyway yeah played that how do you had a had a unique and pretty fun time with that. Check it out if that sounds like it's up your alley. Alice is Missing is what it's called. Interesting. The other thing I did was I got to...

Yeah, so me, Fox and my buddy Josh went and checked out the G Cucks, the new Gundam movie. I can't believe it's fucking called G Cucks. Yep. Like I don't know how they think it's supposed to be fucking pronounced. The most- It reads like G Cucks. The most un-Googleable name in Gundam history. And believe it or not, of course, there is a reason why it's called G-Cucks.

I mean, I could fathom a guess, but it's based off of its pronunciation, not its name. Well, it's more about the spelling, isn't it? Because it's spelled G-Q-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-X. G Q U U U U U U U U U U X. So, you know. Oh, God. I mean, tell you what, like, you see it and your brain goes, what? You remember that as a like, what the fuck am I looking at? What is the title of this thing? What is Gundam doing? But then good luck remembering how many yous are in there. Gee quacks even. Sure. All right. Whatever you say, man. Okay. So this was basically a movie that is the summary of the first four episodes of the anime that's going to be starting that has not started yet. That's a strange way to fucking do that. Yeah

It's I mean it's happened before there's but you know there's like times where you'll just do like the intro to a series as a movie and then You can go and then the rest will bleed out the the pedigree behind it is when they announced this was wildly interesting because It's written by Hideaki Anno Right of Evangelion fame It's got mech designs from the Ava designer as well Ikuto Yamashita

It's got character designs from the Pokemon character designer Okay, um and it's also got FLC FLCL Furikuri and die Buster Director Kazuya Tsurumaki as well who also did Ava stuff too so so it's like an all-star team. Yes this how is it it is a All-star team. Yes. So how is it?

It is a wild ride. It is not what I expected. And I have to explain where my expectations were with this going in and then how insanely different the result turned out. I did enjoy it, but it's kind of like caveated in the same way you were talking about Monster Hunter, where there's two things happening. Holy shit. So for starters, all I saw of it was sort of that, those names associated working on

a new Gundam series. And then I saw the designs. And the designs are pretty extreme as well, because there's basically just like Ava unit proportioned Gundam like designs happening. They just went, yeah, take a humanoid like Ava body and that style of proportion and those lines and then stick the fucking head on it, put the V fin there. And not all of them are like that. But some of them are pretty exaggerated. And then other things are kind of remixes of older suits and Zaku's and everything.

I feel like there is so okay, the setting. I'm just going to go full spoilers on this movie. If you're interested in talk, if you're interested in G quacks, G cucks, the beginning, there's, it's cool, but it's weird and crazy. Check that out. But I'm just going to tell you what happens in the first four episodes and shit. All right. So let's hear it. So who's getting G cucked?

If you watch, I suppose, promotional material and trailers, and if you go into this kind of knowing what to expect, you'd probably see a lot of these characters that are kind of, you know, Pokemon proportioned, bunch of kids doing, you know, having adventures and all that. And I saw none of this. So I didn't know what I was going into, except for just the names involved. And you sit down and what you get is the beginning of 0079. The original Gundam series is just playing out and it is like, you know, almost,

it is almost shot for shot at points. Oh, that's fucking weird. The quality is obviously, you know, much better because it's a current movie and stuff, but like it's really, it's just doing one year war from the jump. But what happens immediately in episode one is instead of Amuro running and jumping in the Gundam, it rising and him having

his first victory. Shar jumps in the Gundam first and it gets up and you just immediately get to watch as what would happen if Shar got in the Gundam. It's the most- So Amuro is the most- So, OP- So Amuro is the G-Cock then? There is no Amuro. Shar shows up, jumps in the RX-78 effectively, but it's the version from this setting,

and just steamrolls the war. Ha ha ha ha. Like, it's so busted it's not even funny. It's insane. You know, he gets it, he goes, wow, this thing's pretty cool. All right, we're taking it. And the white base that's coming back with us because yeah, let's go. They steal the base, they steal the fucking Gundam.

And he's like, ah, good shit, paint it red. Let's go. And just takes it, sticks a couple of fun on, and annihilates the one-year war. Alright. Um, it begins with the setting of the stalemate or what? Not, not, the war is over. Zeon wins. It's done.

Oh no. Right? Cooks them. And you get to just watch this alternate timeline of, there was no chance Char got the Gundam. The thing that should never have happened happened. That's really interesting, actually. Yeah, he speed runs the whole campaign. And they're dropping names of like various zombies and,

you know, the relationships are there and everything. But you're following this alternate timeline, just going like, well, there's nothing that can stop him. There's literally, you know, and like you and there's a point where the the giant Zeon base is basically going to, well, no, at one point you basically introduce Cassilia, the evil lady. She's there right away and you know that Shar has it out for her because she's the one who gets fucking bazookaed in the original and it's Oh, I love that shit. It's the rawest shot in the world. And so you know he has it out for her,

but like he can't make his play too quickly. So the Earth, the Federation is basically like, yeah, we're fucking cooked. This is done. This sucks. We're gonna go out basically doing the same shit that Zeon does and we're gonna do our colony drop on the lunar base. You know?

Oh man, really? So they're just like, yeah, we're doing- Is that their one move? Fuck it, fuck it, you didn't win. It's like, yeah, no, we did. Like the way he just, the way he smokes the entire alliance is insane and they're basically just like, yeah, fuck it. We're dropping it.

And so it's you're watching this and you're on you're watching it again with like it's like, you know, kind of update, like faithful to the old shots, faithful to the old music, old sound effects and stuff, but just an alternate reality series. And he goes to make his play where it's like, okay, who can stop this colony drop essentially? Shar and the boys can, right? We got a plan, let's figure it out. And then he's like, okay, but can I use this as an opportunity to fucking get her ass and

blow up Kassilia in one shot? Because that'd be pretty hype. And starts running that ploy and goes into the mission, has everything succeed. succeed and then essentially an unknown event occurs where he slips into new type space, you know with the colors and the noises and the blulululu, right? But essentially like an event horizon of new type energy explosion goes off and He and the Gundam disappear and nobody knows what the fuck happened. And this super crazy like believable alt timeline then just cuts to your title.

This is like maybe an hour in and then we cut to a future in this world where Zeon won the war and we're going into a Your we're fast-forwarding to double o 85 in post Zeon victory world. Oh to 0085 in post-Zeon Victory World. Oh, okay. How is it? The art style changes to the Pokemon characters

and we get to hang out with this new girl and she's cute and she's running into this other girl and Haro's around and a bunch of kids are gonna have these tournament battles with their Junker Zaku's and it's cool, it's fine. It's all right, it's just not the same thing as that intro. That's super fucking weird. It's crazy. You just described one of the weirdest fucking things I've ever heard in my life.

Yeah, and you know, there's even like a little almost Yuri moment where I'm like, oh are they doing like G-Witch kind of like energy with that because that was a big success? I don't know. But these characters are hanging out and their whole thing is, Zeon wins, they end up selling a bunch of their suits to like civilians because whatever, it becomes this thing where Zeon is now the empire, but they're still free, they're still neutral colonies and stuff. And you basically get within that, yeah, there's these tournaments that are like build fighters where people like, kind of like people are jumping in their little garage mobile suits and taking them

into these pirate environments to have junker battles, you know, for cash and for frame and for tournament purposes. And it's a bunch of kids that are like doing that essentially. Mully, you're describing like wow cool robot made manifest. Yes! It's nuts! It's so weird and for me, I think people going in that I might have seen the promotional material and stuff might have known that that's the main series I didn't know that was coming. So I'm like we're watching alt one year wars

like sharr in the Gundam just killing it this is crazy and It's like no, that's just the intro setup to this alternate reality weird, right? And so you have you know alternate reality. Fucking weird. Right? And so you have, you know, and so there's one of these things too where one of the leaks that had come out beforehand was like, okay, besides the whole Anno involvement and Ava stuff going on, there's a detail here, which is, yeah, the setting is not anything we've recognized.

It's literally alt reality. Yeah, no shit. What if Zach, what if Zion won the shit. What if Zeon won the war? What if the Nazis won, right? Men in the high castle type shit. And it was like, is that supposed to be a spin that you find out 20 episodes in or something? And it's like, no, no, no.

No, you get to watch it happen. You watch it happen from the jump, you know? But it is something where I'm like, okay, in this new now, like, yeah, real steel ass, like much lower stakes kids in tournaments environment, I don't know where it's gonna go, but like, you know, the characters are fine. The main G-Cucks design I'm not a fan of.

I kind of just don't like some of the shapes on it. But I forgot, and you just hit me with it, and it just fucking just sniped my ass, dude. Yeah. But I do like their take on the RX-78, especially when you add the funnels and go all char-colored. It's pretty sick. But it is one of these things where, okay, that's all happening, but you're kind of seeing,

oh, what is a Xeon run or a Xabi run, I should say, universe kind of look like? And you're like, oh, there's like, of course, it doesn't mean any freedom for space noise. It doesn't necessarily mean, you know, of course not. It's all lie. Yeah, fuck that shit. Right. It was corrupt from the job. Well, not from the jump, but from the savvy takeover. So you're like, all right, you get to see the like, you know, this immediately the second class citizens in these neutral states are in the sides that are colonies that are out there. And then suddenly, after trying to track it down for a while, some of the old characters

that are now jumping into this new setting, fast forward, are like, whatever happened to Shar? Where is he? What happened to the Gundam? We don't know. And then suddenly the Gundam shows up again and is wrecking shit and going nuts and causing problems and we're trying to track down, oh, is he there? What's going on? But he's not there.

It's a new pilot. It's some weird kid who's kind of spacey and aloof and we're kind of like, okay, what happened to all that origin shit, right? And so it feels like there's a bait and switch and the switch is into a completely different energy that is still fine. But if you're like a fan fan of the original and you're like or you just want to know like What happened to Char what happened to the one-year war in this alt reality whatever? I mean they can hold that and where's Quatro vagina at they can hold the where is Quatro vagina? You know carrot on that stick to the end of that series if they wanted to and I have my guesses I suspect he's no longer around but

You think this new kid is him and Amuro's like gay love, baby No, I think that Shar I guess I'm going with I think Shar probably wound up being in Inside the the Gundam or like fused with it in some way because it gives off energy and Voice it's it's I don't know. I'm expecting I think his brain is in the I think child I think Shar's brain is in the is in the Gundam is that's is what's happening. I hope not that sounds stupid Well, it might be an Ava

It might be a it would be very very Anno to put the characters' soul inside of the robot. So far, besides that though, yeah, no other... I mean, okay. So there's those initial characters we talk about. And one of the old characters from the original series who was just like a quick standby dude, ends up being in the new time jump. But no Amuro, no Camille, no anyone else in alternate timeline, at least yet so far. So who the fuck knows?

And also when they show up, they're gonna look Pokemonized, which is gonna be kinda wild if they ever do. That's so strange. That's such a specific- the art style changing two episodes and it's so fucking fucked. It's so weird. It's so weird. But it's just- and again, it's like, you know, if you want that- because it's G Gundam style, like 1v1 or 2v2s, it's 2v2s, but it's G Gundam style like tournament shit happening, and Build Fighters is also cool with that. Like, it's like, what's happening is fine.

It's just the most completely different energy ever from the, from the premise. And I guess, you know, the characters are, are, are, are, the kids are alright, the characters are fine, and they're gonna sell their toys. But right, I can tell that anytime if your eyes start to wander, they can just be like, ah, ah, ah, ah, 0079, ah, ah, hey, you know? Say a sentence or two, drop a name, say Dozel, say Abao Kuh, you know? And then have you go, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on? What's going on? Because, yeah, when you... One of those things that people who follow Gundam pretty religiously know is that the one year war is like, there is always another one year war story. There are

365- Yeah, it was a one year war, but it was a million stories. There are 365 days in that year, and there are 365 different stories you can tell. Did you know that the engineering team that put the big XAMM together actually had a really deep narrative in the background? Did you know? And so by starting that way, but then ripping it it into a this is not UC. This is fucking CU.

This is backwards. This is upside down shit. Means that like you can play with it in an interesting way that doesn't have to like follow any, you know, prescriptive beginnings or endings. So my hope is that, you know, they properly like, you know, give this new setting its time to shine, but spend the right amount of time getting into like what Xeon run timeline looks like. And I gotta say, man, I'm at this point where like hopping on a new show like this,

unless I know it's going to be a slam dunk dunk for sure I'm probably gonna have to wait for this to finish a full season out because like I don't want a darling in the Franks situation Well, I will say I mean on I know has some shit up his sleeve. I'm sure you know we'll see where it goes but Having him jump over on to having him jump over onto Godzilla and do some crazy shit and then he jumped onto Kamen Rider and he did some crazy shit. Like, I feel like he's doing it here. He's doing all of his childhood. He's doing the tour. And he's just, he's, you know, doing fucking insane bat shit directing and writing with all of his favorites. So yeah, I'm curious to see where this goes. I'm also curious, I'm more curious to see how it is received.

Like by you, essentially. Yeah. In 25 weeks, tell me if I should watch it. I think, I think, like also by pedigree, like Hideaki Anno and this staff get a lot of leeway I think I think like also by pedigree like Hideaki Anno and this staff get a lot of leeway on You know like you can you can start a Gundam series and kind of like a few episodes in kind of be like yeah I'm out right. Yeah, you totally it's very easy But not this one. This one's two different ones

I guess but still but so exactly and so here you're, you're gonna give these names a little bit more leeway. You get a lot more benefit of the doubt knowing that fucking furry-curry, diebuster shit is happening in the background, you know? And, you know, even though I don't really like pay much attention to like the newer Pokemon stuff, I do like that art style. I think it's- Yeah, it looks much better. Yeah, absolutely. It's very cool. And there's even parts of it where I would say the color, the way the colors look on the characters and designs and stuff is there's some really nice bright pastels. I lost some clips while you were talking. It pops. I like it. Yes. It's colors like Promare has colors. You know? So that's also a really nice thing that it's doing. But just a wild ass like crazy start. That is not what I thought you were going to tell not what I thought you're the last thing I

expected you to tell me yeah and here's what I'll say for sure um just out of curiosity even if you say didn't like where it went or whatever that first bit of like Shar stealing the Gundam and just that's a crazy idea. Yeah wrecking the war Is awesome? Crazy it excites the brain with what if like hey, what if? What if? Camille never heard some cop say that Camille is a girl's name Like how and he had some fucking complete meltdown or like what what what would have happened?

Or just like litter or just take any like setting and go like what if the hero wasn't there and the villain just fucking? Got it You know what if? There was no Jonathan and Dio just just ran with it all the way Yeah, one of the Joe stars just didn't exist You just have you just you know Jonathan died job. I get the mask. I'll sick ass cool vampire now vampire man like that's ever You know vampire forever um Yeah, I don't know

I don't know but like it is in this case the fact that it's too again like you know what what what charge true intentions? Are and stuff like it's just he it's He starts when Char gets in the the Gundam. Oh, hey, man I hate to bring here, but I have to take a break that dog has definitely got to go out BRB I was about to say That yes, so in this series when when Char gets in the Gundam like he's in a world that's taking place in 0079 and everyone is in 0079 space and like

right and he's moving like a G Gundam character Like it's like he's in turn A. Like he's just... Like he has shown up from a different dimension. So it's that thing where later Gundam series had that thing where like looking around, where did it go? It's like they're teleporting around space type of shit. He's doing that and saying like what the fuck? oh my god, you know, and you're and you're, it's yeah, it's it's it's just busted. It's just busted. It's great. The character is stuck in 1978, you know, while a character from 2025 is styling on him. So it's, yeah, I'm curious to see, at the very least, not just what Anno has up his sleeve, but I'm curious to see what becomes of this obvious... Obviously the Zabby family is going to tear each other apart and given free rein to rule

over everything. What comes of a fucking Dozel and Giren and everybody just once they're trying to cannibalize everyone in this like actual space noid rule, you know? So yeah, G-Cucks has an interesting premise so far. Can't believe that's the name. So the reason why it's called GQUUUUX. Oh, is there a reason for that? There is a reason that's stated, yeah.

And what's the reason? Because the person who jumps in and sees the project name is looking at a placeholder name. And the letters are just filler for a placeholder that has not been filled out to completion yet. Well that's stupid as fuck. Yeah it's just it's like a placeholder project name. That's it. You know it is it's it's a XY local singles. Someone in the chat says G quack it's fucking G quacks I don't know if you are have better eyes than me, but it definitely doesn't have a a in there

Sounds like it's written G cucks to me So what you're it's the difference between what your eyes are reading and what the Japanese voice actors are trying to say G quack kisser You know? So. Yes. Sounds like they're reading letters that ain't there. Yeah.

But it's the U's would be like underscores or like stars in a project. Even more of a reason to think it's G-Cucks. It's G-Cucks. It's G-Cucks. It's been asterisized for censorship reasons? You know, Gatsu and Shimon would like to have a word Anyway Yeah, yeah, fun stuff there. Okay, only other little bits are

I have been moving through metaphor Okay, only other little bits are... I have been moving through metaphor and I just got to 9.25 which is the day after shit goes down. And without spoiling, I will say that I'm very pleased with how the story's progressing. I'm very pleased with the escalation of events. And I am very pleased with the party. I love everyone. So last time we spoke about the party I

described you as meeting the the party member from Virga Islands and You threw me for an absolute loop Real hard because you perhaps when I said I just got to the island Yeah, you might be misremembering how long it takes before the island party member joins you, but you have to go through the whole beginning part and then the dungeon and then afterwards they join you. You're probably right. What I'm thinking of is they're visible on the box.

Yeah, I mean. They're like, right? There was, I saw the, so the Steam artwork when you load load the game up, has a bunch of- That's the Vox Art. Yeah, so I saw some characters, but I didn't stare too hard at it, you know? Yeah, I really, really didn't stare too hard at the Steam art, because there's a party member I was actually legit surprised by coming into the gang, despite them being front and center right there. surprised by coming into the game despite them being front and center right there.

It is funny that they had so well for one yeah 9-11 is actually a significant date. I wanted to talk about that really bad when I was playing the game but I knew you were far away and everybody was playing the game and I was like fairly advanced compared to the ad. I think it took huge balls to have metaphors 9-11 take place on 9-11. On 9-11? I mean, there's no way that's just coincidental, right? Well considering the events that occur on it, I think it's wildly co- it's definitely just a big coincidence. Definitely just a big coincidence. Uh, indeed.

Indeed. But more to the point, 923. Big shit poppin'. I love, though, how this game is doing the same thing that the Persona games have geared me up for and trained me for, which like Prepare to overcome your final challenges. I'm like bitch There are s links I have not met yet There are question mark s links on this friend list I have not met yet

There are people who I have not maxed out because you've blocked me from being able to do so. Don't even fuck with me. Why you lying? Why you stay lying? I'm double I'm double checking right now. Always lying. Yeah. OK. Yeah, there it is. That's what you're talking about.

Nine twenty five. OK. That's OK. So, yeah, I just think in general, I really like this party. Everyone is great. I feel, yeah, like no stinkers, you know? Can I pat myself on the back for just a second? You know how I love to throw Hail Marys out all the time when I'm playing a video game because I think it's fun? I am so

glad I streamed this and did the preview event because I called 925 within like an hour of starting the game. Yeah. And I was like, it down to hyper specific details. It's pretty telegraphed in some ways, but not. And I was like, yeah, it's pretty it's telegraphed in quite a few ways. I would say that that's a that's a you know, that's a decent call out, but it's it's pointing it out. I think Something interesting I like about it so far too as well is that Luis As the best as a villain as your best as your Griffith. He's great. He's the best. He's great. Everything's awesome um, I really enjoy his depiction as

like a sociopath. Oh yeah. In the DSM sense, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the sense where he's like, oh, that's good, now I don't have to go annihilate an entire town and burn it to the ground, you saved me the trouble, thank you, and then everyone goes.

That's really great, that would have been annoying. Yeah, and then everyone goes right that would have been You know annoying yeah, and then everyone's like What the fuck? What are you talking? He's like there's right you go. What the fuck? Are you insane and he's like every single time he's like Why is that surprising of course? Oh? Like naturally this is what would have to happen wise. I don't he seems genuinely confused that you don't follow along with his logic. I'm in love with when you see the talks that he has with his gay boy squad and he's like,

well this goal has to happen so we're gonna do X, Y, and Z." And the gay boy squad's like, isn't that terrible? But the plan has to go happen, so go do it. He's so genuinely confused that you're not following along. I love that. He's really, he operates on a completely different rationale from the planet. It's great. He's great. Um, I said I'm gonna do it, so I'm gonna do it. And I appreciate that the member of the gay boy squad that I liked the most is the one that I get to hang out with. That's correct. Um, so, uh, yeah, just really happy with where this is going.

F- one last little bit about the archetype system I feel as if the most recent and later archetypes you're getting like the summoner devil summoner and the Fucking whatever persona mask changer like just persona, you know it feels as if well one you have the the versatility of mask changer, like just persona, you know? It feels as if, well, one, you have the versatility of being able to use them in all these different ways, which is, it's so strange because it's a versatile system to begin with, but then you're adding versatility to a single role, which now makes it like, well, then I don't

need to expand your... Okay. I fucked around with that system like crazy and it's so fascinating because you have the XP feed system where you can feed archetype experience, but then they also balanced party members that you get later by just giving them stronger base classes. Yes. So the final party members base class is so strong, I never swapped him off of it, and he was my strongest party. Well, so far, for two of those characters that have the ability to mix up their ability, yeah, I'm keeping them on their thing.

And it also feels as if the first group group you know the first four I have them Earning tons of different archetypes and mixing and matching for optimized You know you don't need that for Devil Summoner, and then the rest of like it is just good Yeah, and I'm just like no stay locked into where you are. Thank you And oh can we get a little bit of a bonus if we get you into something here, okay? Sure fine a little bit of f bonus if we get you into something here? Okay, sure. Fine. A little bit of faker's roguery for you, but stick to what you showed up with. So I'm going to give you an archetype tip here. Heisme, his final archetype requires dramatically more experience than the others.

archetype requires dramatically more experience than the others. The requirements on actually unlocking it are enormous compared to everybody else's. That is because if you unlock Heisme's final archetype, you have essentially beaten the game. It is unbelievable. Wow. Okay. It is the primary reason why I broke the game's final boss fight. Interesting.

I will say- I mean, I literally broke it in that mechanics didn't occur properly. So I did notice that like I had been neglecting him because I looked at like my crew which I was I was rolling with like Stroll, Hulkenberg and like rotating the fourth one out a lot. Yeah. You know one of the support classes usually but I did see every time I pull up the menu of like what are other people's party looking like Everyone had high's me in there. Yeah, I noticed a lot of highs me in there, and I was like okay Well, I had him on gunner for a bit, and then I switched them back over and it's like okay cool Well now I just got ninja you know so I'm like okay cool great

Ninja ninja has some really good-looking abilities. Let me start working on those But I haven't had him as a staple because I've just been like working really really well with like the main three and a healer You know So I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you something in the in the discord right now It's a mechanical thing that heisman gets if you level him up all the way. And it will make a lot more sense as to whether or not you wanna spend that time. That's pretty good.

So that breaks the game system entirely. That's pretty good. Okay. Gotcha. I mean, right now I feel like I'm breaking the game in a subtle way, you know, by messing around with, not breaking, but just like... No, no, no. The game is about breaking its own system. I think it's a metaphor. Perhaps. system I think it's a metaphor perhaps I actually legitimately think that the

gameplay of feeling like you are breaking the RPG system your characters been put into is actually a metaphor for the game fakers roguery feels like you can't do this it's not it's a, it is a move. It's not fair. That gives you a random number, a dice roll worth of turns and the chances of it going bad seem to be like minimal compared to the chances of it being good. Well, I mean you roll it and you could get between like two and six turns or one and six turns and like Even if you only get the one that's still like you have minor loss. Oh

They're blinking now. Oh, I lost the one turn. Okay the next time around it's gonna make up for it's crazy It's crazy, and then you give it to two or your party members You're just like yeah, we're gonna be doing dual techs all day, you know? Oh yeah. So anyways, yeah, it feels ridiculous. By the end of the game, I had the final party member running a dual tech setup with an accessory that would create its own weakness to its own attack.

Yeah, yeah. And then give him his turns back. I mean, right? Yeah, and I'm also doing like, you know, auto buffs that also you have MP recovery while you're buffed. So you just keep going. Like, it's crazy, you know? Anyway, so that's a lot of fun to play with.

It's a great system. But though I am annoyed that some of the stuff I think is the coolest is locked behind hard progress, you know, like I've wanted to spend all my time with Katarina and they game they make you fucking wait. Yeah. Well, it's because her final set of upgrades are crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Like when they make you wait, what you get at the end is like, oh,

also, hey, just for your own Information you're coming up on the final couple of months The finale of that game is just like you want like 40 days To just fucking do whatever Here you go. I finished everything and still had like weeks to go good It's really, really open. Good, good, good. Because yeah, there's a lot of stuff that's lagging that I'm like, I wanted to get to

work on for sure. Oh, you'll have so much time. Fantastic. You'll have plenty of time. Yeah, and not to mention as well, but like I really do also like that a lot of those relationships are like, there's one big problem you solve and then The the denouement is like the last one or the last two in some cases Where it's just like reflecting on it, you know, which is like great

characterizing down how we solve that And then there's fucking Alonzo Which is a whole other thing, know yeah he's alright but like really like the social links in this game really enjoy that you know they just kind of sit down and go damn that shit was nuts let's talk about it you know good very very very good so I will I will update as I as I close out on that. Cool. So yeah, we did a slop stream.

That will be coming your way soon. I saw some numerical victories on that slop stream. There was a numeric victory there was a taste test of hot ramen noodle marshmallow chocolate s'more flavor no I'm good man apparently Reggie was holding that waiting for the next slop stream and I'm good. You want to talk about slop you got some yeah And when he opened the lid it went in his eye And it truly became a one-day blinding stew, it's so good. That's amazing. I love it.

So good times ahead. This week we're gonna keep going with cyberpunk and a thousand times resist. Yeah, good stuff over there, and and we're also going to be this Saturday coming back to Mecha Break sponsored. There's an open beta going on, and that game's very fun. I'm looking forward to jumping back in. How's your credit score? What? Oh, you don't know?

The Mecha Break progression system is called your credit score. Oh, shit, I forgot. Like a system to determine whether or not you can buy robots is your character's credit score. Okay, okay, I don't remember that detail. No, it wasn't there last time around, it's only in the new one.

Oh, sick, okay. Yeah, team shooter that feels like Zoe slash armored core movement and stuff lots of fun It's very very down to get back into that. That'll be this Saturday over on wooly versus on twitch and on YouTube Okay, let's quickly get through some of these stories. All right, anything happen this week So yeah, Monster Hunter wilds did real good and made everybody want some cheese nan So yeah, Monster Hunter Wilds did real good and made everybody want some cheese nan We did there was it was teased and now it's confirmed Tony Hawk's pro skater 3 plus 4

Fucking great. Did you I can't wait to buy that and just have it sit there Did you see the the new secret character? Fuck? Yeah, doom guys a great pick doom guy is Amazing love it great pick doom guy would would definitely fucking shred with Isabelle. I still hold that in my heart. I mean the question is, is like, does he come with BFG as a playable background track for his, you know? Oh, he will come with music. So that's cool.

I really hope so. Skating over Doom music would be amazing And you get to be one of the grunts too right that's the other one is little yeah the revenue little yeah So so not much to say there, but nice hell. Yeah, very good very cool. I love doom man I Love I love Doom man. I love doom Guy more than in the past. Doom Guy now is a cooler thing than historical gaming Doom Guy, you know? Yeah, you know what?

Doom Guy was always like, I always loved him. I saw a spot in my heart. But Doom Guy just absolutely refusing to speak at all ever in a world in my heart, but like Doomguy just like absolutely refusing to speak at all ever in a world in which he totally can and if he wanted to Endears me greatly. It's the dig dug effect every like nobody hates dig dug dig dug was always cool He did his thing, you know blowing up those fucking He did his thing, you know blowing up those fucking Enemy whatever the fuck that shit is drilling, you know

But then when you saw him as a grown-ass man as mr. Driller's fucking father in Nabco ex Capcom you're like fucking go dick-dog Right It's all about that effect. It's like yeah that energy from the past and seeing what he becomes now is incredible. So, um, fun stuff. Uh, did you see they announced a Samurai Pizza Cats game? I did, and I also saw that they're like hand animating it. That's nuts!

It looks great! It looks great! I never would expect this to be a thing because like we love samurai pizza Cats, but it feels it feels like a show that was made You know the berserk dubs and how yeah those were just goofing around and like only amongst the English voice actors And then we just fuck it we put it out there It feels like that where it's like this is a completely different show in Japan And then a bunch of voice actors said Who cares what the script is?

You know, and then we got samurai pizza cats out of it and then We're just going back to that now Great. It's great. It's great. I love it I really hope they get the the the intro Narrator back as well and do the whole rap and the whole everything do the music do everything there's one job and That job is to do the theme song Mm-hmm Unfortunately, the genre is like it's a kind of animated side scrolling thing that looks beautiful

I wish they decided to go with like a team beat-em-up instead of a say man say character platformer, but it's fine It's fine. Stop spitting in this gift horses's mouth. Oh, I know I know I know It's just you think of being able to like oh What I? You kind of you kind of think of like being able to like fight together You know as a as a a team of three, but anyway samurai fucking pizza cats blast from the past They announced a new

They announced a new sweet code in Give me a second it's for a phone isn't it? But here's the problem. You watch the trailer and they're doing Octopath Traveler stuff. Okay. And it's like, you son of a bitch, you're actually trying. And they basically went, yes, this is our first title to be tailored for mobile and it will have gacha. Of course it will because it's 108 stars of Destiny. Go fuck yourself.

It's never, if they, come on. It's built for that. So you know, I guess the thought process here is though, just based on the sprites and stuff is like, this might get ported and like de-gatchified But not before a couple years go by and they're fucking done with it right so that's fine Because that shot was chased with sweet coden one and two Releases slash remaster are out on Friday. There's that and and an anime Okay

All right So a whole bunch of sweet code and use and look it's one of those things where again, it's Konami, right? so trying to salvage one of their brands from What was otherwise just not the Pachinko, well whatever Konami Pachinko mine like hell. From the trash. From the trash dude just from the trash. Yeah so if it's one of those bits where it's like okay they're you know they have all these projects they're revitalizing and somewhere in

all these Silent Hills hey look there's a good one in there somewhere in these Metal Gear things hey look there's a good one in there and then I guess in this case same thing then sure sure Konami um you know Castlevania's coming around the bend I okay so I love Castlevania a lot doesn't come up that much because Castlevania hasn't been doing a lot in the past decade It vampire survivors It makes me so insanely pissed off

That during we're on what fucking seven seasons of the Castlevania TV show Nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing the castlevania tv show nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing not even re-releases vampire like vampire survivors by someone who fucking loves it actually no there was a re-release there was the DS games but still I mean so I think too as well like the era of like timing a Theatrical release to a game and like oh no the movie sucked now. What are we gonna do? We had a whole plan for a Dragon Ball evolution game You know that we're committed to it. What do you mean? I just

Yeah, I just get something the end of the night on Steam, please the only game When you when you decide to not like pair up the relief of the main release or the show release with a game thing? On the show a movie sucks then great great erase it No one has to think about it But when it's a huge success and it keeps going and there's and then you don't have something for it and going and going And going and going and going and going and going Can we get the mercury Steam that made Metroid Dread to make a new Castlevania game instead of the Mercury Steam that made those shitty Castlevania games?

I feel like Metroid Dread took away a good Castlevania game from me. Like they gave all the really smart people the Metroid job. If time, like, was, was, if time bent in a different way, then you would have, then Dread would have happened first. Sure. Um. Metroid Dreads pretty great. It's pretty great. It's pretty great. I can't wait to play it on the Switch 2. But would you truly, well you would sacrifice Metroid for Lords of Shadow being good.

Right? In a second. And I hate that! That upsets me deeply! I'm so mad at that. Yeah, why? Because Saturday Night is the day. And I hate that in a that upsets me deeply Yeah, I'm so bad at that. I would I yeah why?

Because Samus is much more than Simon Belmont record enjoy other M I'll enjoy the combat no no you won't do that the comment that game also sucks That's what really bugs me, so I just found out I disagree, but I just found out that I didn't I wasn't paying attention, but someone pointed out a friend of mine pointed out to me that like a a two MR like is actually one of the best Metroid related things that's ever come out. I haven't heard that. yeah. And it's super worth going and checking out. And I'm like, what the fuck? I was sleeping on that? I'd been following it for a long time,

about over the years. Yeah, that was what people would say, like, oh, don't worry about Metroid Dread, because A2AMR was great. And so I'm just like, I had a blind spot. When it finally released, I was kind of like, OK, cool. It's a remake of Metroid 2 and that one needed some upgrading, so that's dope. And I didn't know that it was like,

oh no, this is phenomenal and better than- Oh wait, I'm thinking of a different game. I'm thinking of the, no, this is the remake. No, another Metroid 2 remake. It was a fan thing that was being made for a decade practically or so and it kept getting updated over time and then the thing that eventually came out is like really really good and apparently it has like a hard mode that kind of turns it into a survival horror thing or like Ammo's limited and you're playing a Metroid game on limited ammo and you know it's really hard different that so cool sounds though anyways um speaking of the past...

Hideki Kamiya says... We can still... What does he fucking say? We can still resurrect Scalebound. Hey Phil. Shut up. Hey Phil, let's do it. Shut up. Let's do it, Phil!

I'm surprised by- Judging on... Mmm... I'm just surprised by this because I really thought that like the the Bayo 3 monster stuff was Recycling the ideas. I believe that also I thought they got shuffled forward into Bayo 3 with the Gomorrah control I'm really surprised that It's like no, this is still a thing.

Here comes a hot take. Are you ready? Fucking Gurd your shit. Judging on Platinum's fucking recent output, Microsoft was probably right to cancel that game. Was it old Platinum by then or was it new? Who the fuck knows? What era were we in? Who knows? It was pre astral chain platinum. I don't know. I think. Oh man. Somebody has summed it up so good. Oh, I want to credit the person. Sure. You can a botch says scalebound died so Bayo 3 could flop Man yeah, I I really do I Really do think like you can see the bones of everything they wanted that monster controls stuff to me with Bayo 3. Absolutely.

And it wasn't that compelling. No, it wasn't. And to add insult to injury there, controlling V is actually pretty fun for being a monster summoning dude off to the side. V is pretty fun. V is a lot of fun. He's not as fun as the other two, but it was their first shot at V, right? They got to do multiple Nero's and multiple Dantes. You could do a better V. Absolutely. Maybe they should make a game starring V called Astral Chain 2. And the character's not called V at all.

It's just Astral Chain 2. They should just do that. Oh, okay. All right. Well, Astral Chain is... I'm looking back more and more fondly on Astral Chain as time goes on. And who would be making it, Pat? Who would be making it?

Capcom. They just, they're just like, you know what, we give up. You guys can just, here, just take it. Yeah, no um anyway tough times Yeah, you know not much else. I mean hey WWE elimination chamber happened and you know it was in Toronto and WWE elimination chamber happened and you know it was in Toronto and Drake was in the audience, but you couldn't tell by watching the event

Mm-hmm because he was never acknowledged on screen or in commentary or at all. Oh, that's nice. Yeah That's good So you know everything in its right place. God is in his heaven. Wait a second. Every time they have a celebrity in the audience, they always pan to them and go, hey, look, who's the celebrity in the audience? 100% of the time. And then even afterwards, there would be like, oh, look, Tyson Fury is getting in

the ring. Like, there's always a, you know what, there's always a little something. You know what? They always a little something you know what they probably don't want like people there with their kids to be scared it is a family business you see he cancelled his australian tour oh the one where he went under the earth for oh the one where he went under the earth the one where he went under the earth to get away yeah okay cool anyways all right yeah you know that's fine that's fine that's pretty much it six letters hey if you want to send in a letter send it to castle super beast mail at gmail.com that's castle super beast mail at gmail.com did settle that lawsuit though still got the one going on against UMG let's see how that works

out shoutouts to Conan O'Brien that That Conan riff was fucking A plus. That just, cause it's so blunt and flat. Vicious. Vicious. It's the halfway point through the show, so this is the part where Kendrick Lamar should come out and call Drake a pedophile. It's just, it's so direct and without any like ornamentation whatsoever. Mm-hmm. Ha ha! Isn't it funny how that keeps happening?

Yes, it is, said everyone in the whole world. Oh yeah, a claim is back? Yeah whatever. And who's behind it? Some, it's Jeff Jarrett. Jeff Jarrett's behind the claim coming back What? I should paraphrase a quote from JR about Jeff Jarrett broke tens of thousands of

guitars every night is a tens of thousands of dollars of guitars and never filled a seat. Is what JR has to say about Joe Jarrett. Jesus fucking Christ. Oh, sorry. The quote is never drew a dime. Oh, God. Oh. JR is fucking... Yo, he puts that hot sauce on when he really wants to, man. Yo, Jeff Jarrett fucking sucks, dude. He had nothing. I'm gonna smash my guitar over the guy's head and my name's Jeff Jarrett.

That was it. That was it. That's the whole fucking thing. I hate rap. Raaaaa Rap is crap. Oh yeah, he did that too. He had a rivalry with Masta P. The new era of honky tonk man.

Effectively. All right, if you got a letter you can send it in to castlesuperbeastmail.com What do you got? Hopefully a good email this week. Even just one! Even just one good email. Uhhhh... Let's see. Let's see Let's go with

Pardon me hello Pat and wooly my I'm a longtime listener started watching guys when it was to SPF Question simple some games come with games inside of them like Tekken and Beach Ball. Ergais had the RPG inside it. League of Legends has them beat. It has TFT in it as an auto chess game. It has a vampire survivors game. It has an arena game and more while being free. Mad Fientist Anything to distract you from the fact that you're playing League of Legends. Absolutely anything. So yeah, basically strongest examples of that. FF14 has its card game or something like that.

It's Yakuza. It's like a dragon. Oh, having having Virtua Fighter wins? No, having having Virtua Fighter wins have no having Have you ever gone down like the full list all the games all the games yeah You have a you have a veritable fucking Mario. There's an entirety of a Sega arcade catalog in Every like a dragon game, and I don't just mean arcade games I mean pool dart games Mah Jong, mahjong, shoji, like it's, it's, it's, there's, there's absolutely no question that like a dragon is the absolute king of internal games. The mini games.

To the point where their master system emulation in like a dragon has been winning awards for emulation because it's literally the best master system emulation that has ever existed. It's weird. You can't play those master system games anywhere but inside Like a Dragon games. And just in case you didn't want to play any of the arcade classics or so, you can go play literal board games or literal? Shogi chess mahjong etc. Yeah, no you're right. That is it. It's there's no question. That's the one Like have you played golf in like a dragon? It's great Bowling and baseball, but it's great. And the bowling game is great.

It's fucking ridiculous. Also, I feel like anything that's like League of Legends or Fortnite or so is kind of like, that it almost doesn't count because that's more of a platform than a game at this point. At a certain level of free to play, quadruple A size and scale, your game becomes a platform for mini games

and features every season. It's not like a release that has like, oh, triple triad is in this thing. Yeah. How's the, how's the- No, Gwent, Gwent is, Gwent's all right. Gwent's all right, Gwent's all right. I got all right? What's all right? I got I got into it for a bit

I did fall off admittedly, you know, but I did get into Gwent for a bit. I do like Gwent How's a how's a pirate Magima get minigames? The it's the most it's ever been. Yeah There was a review I saw recently that said fire. Yakuza is a minigame collection pretending. It's a real video game, but like Complimentary nice. Okay. Okay, like everything in that game is an excuse To play 200 different arcade games are there like pirate themed like drinking fucking swill There's pirate themed baseball and it's way better than the regular baseball minigame sweet Dead man's way better than the regular baseball minigame sweet Dead man's way better actually

Hell yeah Okay And you can play mahjong and pirate in pirate theme. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm a John you play shoji Shogi or shoji. I believe it's shoji shogi. Yes Shoji is The name No, yeah. All right. Okay. That'll do. Have a good week, everybody. Um... Ah, fuck. Shit. God. Wait, that'll do it for the email or that'll do it for the podcast? Because I'm about to look really stupid. No, no, no, no, no, we're done, we're done, we're done, we're done.

It's done. Alright.