Castle Super Beast - CSB325: Castle Super Dads

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps Twitch VODs are now being uploaded to the new channel: https://www.youtube.com/@CastleSuperBeastArchive NEW CHALLENGER APPROACHING: A 2nd Baby Has Hit The Podcast Death Stranding 2 Playtests Aren't Making People Mad Enough Lies of P Overture Takes the Sans Undertale Approach It's OK To Turn Off the Subscription Guilt Button "Stellar Blade Modders, Your Firepower is Still WEAK" Watch live: twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Go to http://heroforge.com/ and use code CASTLE to get 5% off all orders of physical miniatures.  - Go to http://shopify.com/superbeast to sign up for your $1-per-month trial period. - Go to http://shadyrays.com/ and use code SUPERBEAST to get 35% off polarized sunglasses. - Go to http://expressvpn.com/superbeast and you get an extra four months FREE. - Get started at factormeals.com/castle50off and use code castle50off to get 50% off plus FREE shipping on your first box! Galvanized Demo out now - A fast paced, movement focused FPS in a foreboding, post-apocalyptic setting. Donkey Kong Bananza Direct 6.18.2025 Shuhei Yoshida says Sony has "huge respect" for Nintendo, but hopes Nintendo fans might "graduate to more mature systems" like PlayStation Shuhei Yoshida Says Sony Doesn't Really Consider Nintendo As Competition Marathon has officially been delayed beyond September 23rd, indefinitely. Hideo Kojima Made Significant Changes To Death Stranding 2 Because Playtesters Thought It Was 'Too Good' "He changed stuff in the script and the way some crucial stuff [happens] because he thought his work was not polarizing." Nexus Mods is being sold after 24 years by burned-out owner Stellar Blade's director throws down the gauntlet at modders, whose 'firepower is still weak'—all the sexy costumes are cool, Up until now, I think the official content is still better - he just also wants mods that 'expand the user’s play experience' Marvel's Spider-Man '94 Comic to Continue the Fan-Favorite Animated Series

["Sailor Moon Theme"] Switzerland, that's spam. Get out of here, Switzerland. Get off my phone. That's crazy. Switzerland. Oh, seriously? Switzerland my phone. That's crazy. Switzerland? Oh, seriously? Switzerland is calling. That's ridiculous. That's absolutely insane. All right, cool.

Anyways, yes. Do you want to start the podcast now? Yes, let's start the podcast now. Hey man, how's it going? Hey, Holy. How? I'm doing great. That's good.

I got this stinky dog on my lap. Happy, happy Father's Day weekend. It was great. It was a good weekend Yeah, I was a dad and I was like, yeah dad stuff. That's pretty sick in celebration of Father's Day, I Thought I joined the club. Oh Yeah. Yeah, I thought it seemed like a cool idea To perhaps doing this now we might be

It's going down Okay, hey hey, so yeah, this is happening pull break the alarm switch Hey everyone Yes, I am pleased to announce that At the end of summer. I'm going to be a father Yeah Accounts you're already a dad. Yes, right. That was like a cop. That was a good thing We kept going back and forth on the whole time

The transformation has already started. It's it's going. Yes. And, you know, obviously, congratulations, Willie. Thank you very much. Yes. Absolutely. Yes. Good. Good job. You did it.

The I'm very excited. I am very excited. Paige and I have been very excited. Yeah. Very excited. Yeah. Yeah. Welcome to Castle Super dads. It's going down. The podcast will become intolerable. Intolerable. The transformation has already begun. Fuck yeah. It's going down. Yes. Yeah, I know. So this is obviously, you know, the project has been under NDA

for a little bit. The embargo is now up and I'm surprised you just decided to announce it today. I thought you were going to be like, by the way. OK, baby, baby. Well, to be perfectly honest, I absolutely 100% would have just ran the bit, so to speak, until the kid walks past in the background. Make no mistake.

Is that a 15 year old? I am super down for that. However, this is something that I would like to share alongside the important hand in hand announcement that with this new found adventure, I will be taking some time off from the main channel. And the regular streams are going to take a bit of a break as there will be some new priorities. Yes.

Yeah, priorities. Yes, there's again, a new project is going to be taking up all of my time. And as we're announcing the release date, like I said, end of summer, the plan is to give some logistics, I suppose, with this is that, yeah, we're going to basically be streaming up until the first week of July. And then starting the second week of July, I'm going to be off of the Woolly Versus

channel. Podcasts will continue in the meantime. And- We have responsibilities to attend to on this podcast. We certainly do. So I will continue to be doing Castle Super Beast and I will continue to do Versus Wolves as well. You know, once a week and once a month

are commitments that are, that should be doable. Oh, that's doable, wolves. I believe, I believe so, yeah. So that's the deal. And in the meantime, it's the day to day main stuff over on Woolly Versus that we'll be taking a break from. There might be stuff that pops up every now and then sparingly, depends, like, you know, I'm going to keep it loose, but for the most part, I just want to let folks know. And yeah, to that end, of course, like, you know, so when you when the schedule changes

up and you're like, hey, where's the channel? What's happening for a couple months? That's I think it's important to let folks know about that part. If not for letting subscribers and people know that you know Hey, this channel is gonna. I'm gonna be taking a break for a bit. I wouldn't say shit I wouldn't say nothing you wouldn't hear You a really funny screenshot because I was wondering so here's the auto thumbnail of a sponsored double dragon guidance rise of the dragons

Yeah, 20 ish months ago. Yeah, and and that face of me just going oh Is because I did that sponsored stream while page was in labor oh That one okay, okay, okay? Yeah, that one. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah, that's the face. So, what I'm hearing, what I'm hearing is that you are not going to jet out of the hospital to run sponsored streams and podcasts while your wife is in labor.

Not currently the plan. But yeah, no, so. labor not currently the plan but yeah no so my defense she told me to leave okay she was she had that the pregnancy you know emotions so I wasn't gonna argue with her fair enough with that as we're talking I just hit the post button on our little internet. Right exactly. On that live internet. So there you go. That's a-

Oh, so this is a- aww. Yeah. What's that? Instagram. That is Instagram. And I guess that'll go elsewhere after once I get a second. I'm sure it's in a bunch of places now. Let me refresh a page.

Yeah, there it is. Sick. That's cool. There it is. Yeah, yeah, I know. So that's the deal. And Punch Mom's doing good. We're chilling.

We're out here. She's doing great. When we saw her, oh my god, she looked radiant and all that good shit. Yeah. No, I'm quite happy with all of that. For anyone that's been like, when I've been talking about how busy I've been, I mean, there's a lot going on, but you don't even know the half of it. There's so much I'm taking care of in the background.

So yeah, I've been extraordinarily busy with all of these things juggling all of that. And then when I talk about life happening, life is happening, happening, happening, you know? Life? Life? Life, life, life, literal life. So I hope some context, you know, can enlighten. Yeah, yeah, obviously we're super happy with that. There's all kinds of, you know, there's stuff I'm doing to the place. I'm putting up barriers and getting ready to paint walls and we're doing all kinds of stuff over here, you know, and we should be meeting her soon. This is the best thing that could ever happen to the insufferability of this podcast. How's about that?

Because now we've covered every base and every topic. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, man. Insufferable girl. Dad. Girl. Dad. Insufferable cast. Oh, man. Yeah. I can't wait. I cannot wait to talk to punch mom and for her to explain to me that you have turned into like a kept bitch because whatever your little girl says she's gonna get, you're just like, yes, absolutely.

Oh, as fast as you, oh no, I have to, oh, oh, I'm so sorry I didn't get it for you faster. I mean, we'll see, we'll see how it goes, you know? I'm like, hey, I might get some little mitts. We'll see, we'll see how it goes. You know I'm like hey, I might get some little mits. We'll see we'll see you know I'm I'm optimistic on how it turns out You know I want to get some little mits do some little

You know like work work the work the bag a little bit have some fun Yeah, we punch girl absolutely Is when they're like two or three months old and you do that shit and they just look at you and they're like, I don't know. It's totally fucking clueless. You're like, yeah, it's cool. Just do just doing a handstand like spinning on one of the gloves, you know. Yeah, no, I can't wait. I can't wait. Oh, man, there's going to be so much poop and so many noises and all of it all of it

All of it, you know, and so you know what I've been getting ready. I've been I've been mentally preparing I've had some time versions of this talk in the past couple of months But I'll have a version of it right now. It's like yeah, there's gonna be a lot of poop You're gonna deal with 12 to 16 diapers a day for like a year. That's rough, but You're like, oh this is pretty hard and then you get into that nice rhythm where you're like, oh, yeah It's actually yeah, I got this and right when you have that feeling. Mm-hmm. They're gonna start to move Difficulty multiplier like I got this. yeah, they're gonna start to move yeah

Like oh that that first six months a year That was that was cake. Okay, easy shit ever no, I mean like the plan is to you know, we're gonna set up some lockdown stations and Like you know, we're gonna have little change places to make it all happen I will I will prepare for projectile deflection You know whatever however that That may occur oh man 20 minutes within 20 minutes of my boy

Leaving the mom I got pissed in my mouth I undid the diaper BAM BAM well look we'll see we'll see what the temperament ends up being you know but right now she's she's kicking she's she's moving you know she's doing her thing and yeah I mean not not much really to report other than like yo it's happening you know and and yeah I guess just in the background does this been Yeah, I mean, not much really to report other than like, yo, it's happening. And yeah, I guess just in the background, there's been just the, again, the planning and the process and the thoughts of how to set it all up and all of that. Let me ask you, because I've asked you this every time we've spoken about this.

Have you felt the change? The change? No. The change. No, no just the dread just just the dread you that you will experience a Transformation and you won't notice until it's like completed. Mm-hmm, and you'll be like wait what when did I? What huh? Okay. I'm just different now. Yeah, no the it there's a single Giant empty thought it's like the thought the thought bubble like it's it's massive and the text is very small And it just says don't fuck it up. Don't fuck it up. Don't fuck it up. Don't fuck it up

That's it That is the only one. That's not, that's not, that's not. Don't fuck it up. That doesn't leave, it doesn't leave. It's there, it's still there, every day, every interaction. That is the only one, you know? Oh, I hope this isn't the interaction that causes them to complain to me, to the therapist, because I didn't give them their milk fast enough. No, wait, did I give them their milk too fast? Did I cave too soon?

Did, oh, did, oh, oh, oh. And now there's video evidence of it. Hello from the future. Hey. Hey, bye. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, That's the goal is for it to be cringe and super garbage and get it away from me I mean right now the the idea of course is that like You know things should be of course when I do set up and stream and do stuff like there might be some sounds You know that's possible the setup. I have is such that like they will be hopefully distant you know we have a couple of Barriers between us and where the noises ought to be, but there might be some sounds regardless, and that's just going to be life. You know what I mean? There will be a decent chance that folks are going to hear stuff in the

background from here on out. Do you have... You got the Nvidia card, right? I do have an Nvidia card, yeah. I think the noise canceling on that for your setup will probably work better than it used to at my old setup. The problem is we pop off too hard. I can noise cancel, but I kill pop-offs if I do. The aggressiveness of that, which I've tested, also makes it so that when we get particularly excited at cool things

We just disappear, you know, and it's like ah Yeah, it's a it's a sacrifice, you know Yeah, and video so that asna points out but it happens to page video broadcast just hates page Like at normal speaking levels, it's just like no be quiet Yeah, and's just like, no, be quiet. Sh, sh, you. Yeah. And then again, like, so I'm at a certain volume, Reggie's at a certain volume, guests we have depending on whether they are quiet spoken, which is most, and or Jimmy Bones, which is, you know, there is a specific-

Tweet the knob a little bit. Exactly. We got gotta tweak the knob. And, you know, there's... And then that also causes problems with like, okay, well then at a certain point, like Reggie just disappears and stuff. So it's tricky. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think I much prefer the option, which is let's keep our ability to, you know, be heard there. And you might hear a baby and that's too bad. What? A baby? A tiny human? There is a human and who knows what that temperament will be like I said. I'm wishing the best for you on temperament because temperament is a dice roll you have no control over And like our guy had a temperament that was like not like page or I

that he was an angel like as a little tiny baby just like Super chill slept through the night kind of thing. I wasn't fucking like that. Neither was page. I was a terror when I was a little baby. I will have I will have contingency plans for the like Tasmanian devil child, you know possibility And you know for the most part as well, you know punch bombs also like we're ready for that We got our we got we got our placement for the whole nursery type setup thing going. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I wish I could I wish I didn't have to say anything. I wish I wish I could not say anything but I would feel live in the real world with reality and Responsibilities and but it's not even a responsibility It's just my own feeling of I'd might my own ethical moral feeling of bad by him to be like hey the channels were disappearing by You know, I just I feel bad. Yeah, no reason reason. And people be like, am I still subbed? What's going on? Like, I just, I feel bad about that.

And I wish I didn't. You know what would happen, right? Because if I didn't feel bad about that, I wouldn't say shit. Because then you know what would happen is that you'd be like, okay, bye guys, peace out for six weeks or whatever. And then what would happen is people would flood over

to my shit, but what's going on? And I'd have to sit there and go like, everything's, ugh. I also don't know yes and then I everything's okay don't worry and then I and then I'd sit here on the Disney World and then once a week I'd be here like hey what's up anyway onto the news and it just be like oh you know today's schedule, this week's schedule, there is no schedule. Bye. You know? What the fuck? Oh man, yes.

Is Wooly dying? Yeah, somebody in the chat, it was like, is Wooly on the verge of death? Is he trying to hide his chemo treatments? I mean, technically, yes, right? My part of my soul essence has been put elsewhere. And- Ah man, love don't divide, it multiplies. I didn't say love, I said my soul essence.

Oh, your soul? Yes. And no, and it's pretty cool too, because this is my mom's first grandkid, right? So. You won? Mm-hmm. Oh.

Mm-hmm. Ooh, that's good. Yeah. Hey. That's like double firstborn. Hey, it's good. Hey, that's like double firstborn. Hey, it's cool. She's excited. And you know, they might even be watching this. So we don't have to, it doesn't matter. Listen.

Like I had my mom's first grandkid, but not my dad's. Okay. Okay. Yeah, no, it's the first on both sides of, on, you know. Wow! On punch mom's side and on our side, so it's a very. That kid better get ready to get fucking spoiled! Super spoiled, all the attention, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paige reached out, she says, yeah, our boy is the first grand kid on her mom's side. Okay, yeah. But yeah, you're first on every side. Oh big Big yeah, big spoiled energy and I can't run for sure And I mean like I gotta I can't and I won't show it but like I told you and I've already shown the Telling my mom about that. Oh, it was just it is, it is a GIF because it is just a, it is her, you know, cause she was out of the country at the time and telling her about it. It was

just the shot of the one second delay. It sinks in and then just camera shake as she runs the frog. She Kermit the frogs in circles for like 10 minutes throughout the entire house. You know, just in Gren Grenada just in Grenada running laps It was super funny Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know um so yeah, that's it. That's it. You know it's it's now You know it's now a thing because it's like ah, okay, so that's it's actually just a single data point It just happens to be the single most important thing going on in my life for the foreseeable decades.

Plus, you know, no big deal. Yeah, no big. Yeah. And because it is no big deal. It's like actually the least biggest, most common deal there is other than the fact that everything is different now and I'm preemptively like warning You know friends and then folks that are just something just like hey, so yo, guess what? I'm about to be one of those people that's like hey everything out of my mouth is baby baby baby now So yeah, I know I know I get it

You know and only gonna absorb and for the most part everyone's like suit of your waking thoughts Yeah and and for the most part everyone's like super excited and just like all in and just like, yeah, way, way, lots of love and a good surrounding energy for that. You know, there's definitely some friends where you could kind of read, they're like, okay, well, you know, sure, that's not their thing. You know, some folks.

I'm not only not in the place for that in my life, I'm not in the place for that to understand it being in your life either. It's it's just Some friends where you kind of you just kind of like hey, so You kind of just kind of like there's no follow-up questions you let them know what's going on I just kind of like they're like oh shit. Oh, that's cool. Okay. Yeah Okay, so anyway, you know Have you seen sinners? Yeah, I've been busy. Yeah, okay. All right, that's crazy. Yo, have you seen Sinners?

No, I've been busy. Yeah, okay, all right, cool. All right, got it, got it, got it. Loud and clear, got it, got it. But yeah, no, it's not Unc Energy over here anymore. It's Girl Dad. It's Girl Dad Energy. Which is a completely different thing

from what you got going on. So we're gonna compare notes. We'll see how this goes. You want to be like, I would absolutely be completely different. Sorry, completely exactly the same. No matter what my kids are like, whatever. And then you have to look in the mirror

and be like, who are you? Are you lying to yourself now? What? I mean. You a liar? I mean, I am super thrilled. I think it's super awesome that that's how it's going. And it is kind of funny too,

because there's definitely like, you know, so there's some family that's much more, they're kind of traditional about traditional about things. Oh yeah? Yeah. So when it was time to guess how it was going to go and things like that, there was a lot of guesses that it was going to be like, that firstborn son, that kind of godfather, may your first child be a masculine child. All of that.

And it's like, well, what if it's not? Is that okay? You know, let's see how this goes. This is one of those things where Paige and I, I remember talking to her about this ages ago, ages ago, like way before any of this, we're talking about like, what would it be like if we had a about like it'll be a girl. Mm-hmm Like we both put our feet down and was like, oh, yeah. No, it's gonna be a girl I felt good because it's your fate to be girl dad, I Felt it a long time ago. I I feel like In the moments where I've had like dreams about this kind of thing. That's that's been there That's been a part of it for sure. I don't know. Yeah, I you can, you know, like you can go back. There's we've had I've

had conversations, you know, with punch mom and stuff from a while ago. But like, yeah, I kind of just was like, this is probably how it's going. And sure enough, it did. You can't escape from crossing fate. So yeah, we'll see we'll see you know and It's also fun to get the little Lasagna scans as we've been calling them, you know Because you get the the the classic different views from the side the stuff you're used to seeing the the head turn and then the

sans undertale I You know crazy one. And then they can do the 3D ones, and then the 3D ones, they kind of start to look like a thing, but they also just attach into a sheet of like orangish fleshy goop, and you're just like, oh, it's a lasagna. The 3D ultrasounds we got were god awful.

They were nightmare shit. They were terrible. Yeah. It's cause the guy, he just he wanted to to stretch out in the spot That's the worst for the 3d ultrasound. Okay, his head was at the back or I forget what it was, but he was like No, I don't want I saw come on man I mean I saw some some cool services that come like in the later weeks, you know Like after 30 I've seen seen you can get some pretty detailed looking ones, so gonna see if that's a possibility.

If conditions are right. Right, yes, it depends on a lot of the details, which I'm intimately familiar with now. Where they at in relation to the placenta. How big is exactly in the space, and how high up, there's a million little things to it, but yeah, we're gonna give it a shot and see how that looks, you know, but in the meantime, though Yeah, I was like you you've you've probably learned more stuff in the past six months

Then you had in the multiple years prior. It's crazy. It's you have no idea It's so thick and that like my brain is doing, it is, it is mega minding. It is just pulsing with all this knowledge. And, uh, yeah. And like about 40% of it is just like poop, you know? And, uh, no, no, there's, there's a million little details, of course, with the actual process when, when the actual day comes and all that stuff We're gonna we're gonna be figuring out But I wasn't gonna say yeah. No anyway, it's um, it's it's it's I'm not sure exactly what the

Date will be for like the return, so to speak, of the regular schedule. However, the reason why I was racing to get through cyberpunk and now to start and get to the act one point of Expedition 33 and not necessarily announce a commitment beyond, I hope is also more reasonable and understandable. The yeah, yeah. I have a schedule based question that I think is the most interesting thing that could have happened. Do you plan after your break comes back to play death stranding. I would like to

Are you going to look at and or play death stranding before you come back or is that after in the future? I guess it depends on how torturous it would be for you to discuss and or not discuss it over here Oh, no, that's don't worry about that. I'm just like death stranding the aka the strap the baby to your chest An extremely different emotional Pre and post baby. Oh, yeah, I'm dude I'm watching fucking Donkey Kong bonanza trailers and I'm seeing Donkey Kong rolling around Little Pauline on his shoulder and I'm seeing Donkey Kong rolling around with little Pauline on his shoulder and I'm like, that's me. Everything. Everything is that now. You know? 100%. Yes. Death Stranding for sure. But I'm like, I'm kind of just like, no, it's going to be, it's

going to be all versions of that. I'm probably, I'm probably going to take a look. We had the same thing today, but instead it was banana. Ah. Monkey. Ah. And it was like, because you have that moment like, you know what? There's no guarantee the kid will like video games. They might think that's cringe-dead behavior. No one cares, right?

Yeah. No. No, no, no, no, no. Listen. Like, you know, there's a lot of talk about, like, you know, no, no. Listen, like, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of talk about like, you know, again, what you engage, like when your kids are obviously watching you engage with stuff that you're locked in with them at the same time, that's good for them no matter what the activity is, you know, and we happen to be passionate

about this thing. Even if it's throwing rocks straight up in the air. Even if it is, right? And you know, like kiting is not something I'm out there doing every single day and nor is boxing, you know, per se. So there are some things that I have, you know, passion for that I feel like, yeah, showing and sharing that gaming kind of part of your life in a way that is not, as we discussed, overstimulating is going to be particularly fun. I'm excited for that.

You know what? Go ahead and delete Hades and vampire survivors off of the list. I'm curating the list. It's... Listen, listen. Balotro will work if the combo gets really high. No, no. Just play Balotro on your phone. Just play Balotro on your phone. Yeah. No, I think that can work. I think that can work. But also, fortunately, the past has a lot to work with too. And there's that moment, I remember that time where I was like, oh, do you do that thing where you go,

hey, you start out at an older generation and move up? It's like, no, no, no, you don't need to do that. However. Paige and I have been having this discussion for three years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Three years now. And you can, because old shit's yeah. Three years. Yeah. And and you can

because old shits low stem. Yeah, that's like the one page always goes to his FF for FF for simple. And the language is simple. And just not fucking flashing explosions. The discussion for that has always been like, oh, so that they learn the history of whatever, right? No, it's about, it's just low stim. That's it, that's it. It's a much more, like a kid can watch that without having their brain melted.

No, I was like 10 years old, my dad's like, hey, let's watch the Maltese Falcon, it's old, it's good. And I'm like, okay. 100%. But I was like 10. 100%. Right, so I can, oh, it's old, blah, blah, blah. One of the things that we talked about is like, say there's something more modern,

but one of the things you can do, because we want the kid to have, like if they're playing a video game, they have to learn to be a skill at some point. And that skill can be reading, because reading's good. Turn the voice acting on. Yep, yep.

Just turn, just go to the voice, turn it all the way down. If you're gonna understand what's going on, it's because you're gonna have to read it with your eyes. Yep, down. If you're gonna understand what's going on, it's because you're gonna have to read it with your eyes. Yeah, I've heard lots of little tips about things like that with parents using games in certain ways, and yeah, that's certainly one of them, right?

Okay, you can play RPGs, you can play whatever you want here, but you gotta read what you're playing. Little things like that sound like a fun idea, but that's so, we'll get there. We'll figure that out one step at a time. You know? Yeah, no, you're gonna enter into the part where you're like, I'm gonna watch TV

because this thing's asleep and it's a potato. Yeah. This is just, you're gonna learn how many things you can do in your life with one hand. And guess what? It's actually a huge, it's a crazy amount of things that you don't need both your arms for. Yeah, no, I'm definitely getting ready

And there's also I see these cool little strap belt things where there's like a like a little surface shelf next to you as well That can work. I had one of those But no, then you get to you get to throw that away Or three and put it away and replace it with my favorite which just is the potato sack over your shoulder Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is just like potato sack over your shoulder. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is just like, no, we're gone. Exactly. Yeah, 100%. No, you can't have it. No.

But again, all of these things in due time, in the meantime, for now, the next step is to just catch the football. Let's just make sure we secure that, lock it in. And you know, I think as well too, like the... Well, you know, just again, all things considered, you know, Punch Mom's killing it. Right. She's crushing it. It's kind of sick. So, yeah, more I suppose as there is as it comes.

But in the meantime, everyone. Big things. Hey, big things. I don't know if I don't know if I'm the person you want to hear this from, but I'm going to say it regardless. There was probably going to be a moment real early, like really, really, really, really early when Punch Mom's like taking a shower or something and you're like by yourself with the kid and the fucking terror just just starts to increase and you're like, you're

looking at this perfect human and you're like, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Oh, oh, I don't know. Oh, I'm an idiot. Oh shit. If you want, call me, call somebody. It's gonna be so intense. Oh shit, if you want call me call somebody The thousand yard stair phone call yeah Because like when mean page left the hospital We had I had this overwhelming feeling of light. Well, who's gonna take care. Oh, it's me. I it's me I'm dad. It's I'm gonna you are you are it is it is you I don't think I'm wearing I'm wearing matching socks and and shoes today cuz Paige told

me what socks and shoes to wear yeah no I think I think the thing like she's probably gonna hear for a while just like me just staring going what the fuck dude What is oh what the fuck like that's gonna be the first thing she's heard for a minute So it's time. It's time to lean forward and lock in for at least 15 more You could go figure it out minimum 15 They're a person by that yeah They you know then you can then you can hit the old dusty trail and start your own adventure No, we we are we are locked. We are we are locked as locked can be

So yeah, that's that's been part of happy for you guys. This is gonna be so great There's also gonna be those other parts, but it's gonna be mostly great. Mm-hmm Yeah, no I I I look forward to all the the the new twists and turns that the times will bring as parenting becomes a different beast altogether and will bring as parenting becomes a different beast altogether. And as well, my mom's knowledge that what she brings and what my step folks bring and all of that kind of just swelling and swirling into this French, Acadian, West Indian, Jamaican, Grenadian, French, Canadian, whatever.

This catamary of things. You're going to get something really awesome, and I don't know if it's universal, but it definitely happened to me, which is like when you have a baby, you're a parent, you're part of the club, your mom or dad will start telling you the real versions Of events that happened Not not the story no, they would tell the truth. Yes. Okay. No, here's what actually happened and you're like, oh what? That's what the fuck that's like how much whiskey did I get as a baby? That's like 11, right? Absolutely, though the final one that couldn't happen until years later.

Well, you had colic, so you know. What? That's not what I want to hear, Ma. There are no guarantees in this world, but there is one that I can lock in right here and now. Her hair is going to be so fucking cool. You have no idea It's gonna be the coolest oh

man Yeah, big giant That's like is like Riley boondocks. Just you know or you like just that big sure is it? I mean, we'll see we'll see but big open take after mom's hair it could it could but there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a nice Gamut there's different hairs numbers that you can associate with the curl intensity But whatever it is, it's gonna be like just big wild I love I love like wild kid fro, you know I think that looks so fun and I can't wait is stop saying this to do is stop saying this out loud because by putting this into the air, you are inciting hair rebellion in the ether of your future child.

Well, I mean, you know. They'll know. They'll know the hair that you want them to have and be like, nah, I want the opposite hair. Well, there's a little, you know, they like like they go through, I'm sure there'll be a lot of styles and switch ups and we'll, you know, it'll be all around the place. But, um, yeah, yeah, we'll see how it goes. We'll see how it goes. Cause like we were shocked. My kid ended up with stick straight hair and I have like the

curliest hair I've in my, anyone in my entire family. It's like, no, you got Paige's hair. Crazy. I thought curly hair just beat straight hair on genetics. Like it was just a I've in my anyone in my entire family. It's like not got pages hair crazy Hmm, I thought curly hair just beat straight hair on genetics Like it was just a one-to-one, but I guess not it's not 100% There's a it's there's a lot that's still up to dice roll, you know, um, but in the meantime, you know like it's pretty cool because like Punch-bomb has been like, you know, like helping me with like twists and stuff like that Just like tightening up from time to time. And she's kind of been learning more about essentially working with black hair.

You gotta know, right? Working with black hair is a thing. It's different. It's not the same. And so she's learning about that. And it's like, yeah, that's fun to have these new experiences that otherwise you just wouldn't think about. Yeah. Yeah. these new experiences that otherwise you just wouldn't think about you know mm-hmm yeah yeah yeah can't wait till she's old enough and we can just

torment a torment punch bomb we're just like you so you gonna say it there's two It's gonna be fun. Good times. The house is gonna be a fun time, y'all. You gotta be careful, Wolves. You gotta be careful. You gotta be careful because, listen, you and your girl can obviously make fun of mom based on one division But at the end of the day, you're outnumbered in your own house. Oh, I'm super outnumbered for sure. Yeah Oh, no, make no mistake. I gotta take the dubs where I can get them. I realize I realize what's going on

I'm gonna get you buddy All right, so this seems crazy to say, but let's see what else is going on. There's some other stuff. So more updates in the future. Other cool stuff happened though. So for me- I remember when I talked about this on the podcast, I felt everything else I said on the podcast seemed so stupid and trite and pointless. It's gray and fading into opacity zero. Every other subject is fading into nothing.

Yeah, sure. You eat any good restaurants lately? Yeah, F1 Weekend came around, took the fam out, had some fun. No, well, I've been working on this other project, which has been me getting my ink done and stuff. I want to wait until it's all proper touched up and everything, until I'm going to show off what's going on. I did basically sit and get this whole thing done over here.

For those of you who are on the audio version, Willie is showing off his cool shoulder. Is a shoulder to mid forearm rendition of Shivers from Disco because I fucking love Shivers more than anything it rules so That's happening and I'm coming in on the other side with some other stuff as well Some working on it on the project. I'll show stuff off as there's more in it as it heals to as well You want to kind of wait for that? How you feel?

Yeah, it's good. It's it's it's fine Healing going through. I'm used to the motions of the healing process at this point. And it is interesting to have the experience of sitting somewhere for many hours and focusing on your feeling pain. And then you mentally meditate. You learn to meditate to deal and stuff like that.

And I've learned a lot about just being able to essentially just raw dog the entire session, just sitting there, locking into my own head. Just fully disassociate. Exactly. I can do that now. Time to leave my body and look down on it from above. While sustained pain is happening.

And then you can kind of interact with it in different ways, where you can go into it or go above it. And then you can feel when the endorphins kick in to kind of like give you a bit of a breather and you go Hey, I'm going to the dentist. Thanks body. You know, it's you learn a lot about yourself in the process It's it's a lot of fun. It's not a lot of fun, but it's cool to learn about that stuff, you know That's I should say to specify What else happened I went on a game show called That's My Streamer. It was so weird that you were like a human being in the cartoon world.

I went on Jabroni Mike's That's My Streamer game show where I was joined by Quite and Vexoria who are VTubers and I was a flesh tuber in the middle? and You know while it certainly was possible for me to get the old rig out and blow the dust off and hop back in It would have been Horribly false advertising towards people who were you know seeing me for the first time especially considering Show later they'd be like what the fuck is this? Exactly.

How you was a cartoon. This is one of those things where these are all different streamers coming together with different followings. A whole lot of people are going to be seeing me for the first time, and if they saw a VTuber and then just went to my channel and saw flesh tubing. Imagine how gross that would be, right? Bro, I hate this word. So I didn't want to disappoint them by revealing my meat. And so I decided to just go with

the camera instead. It was a fun time. We jumped on there and it basically consisted of more or less like some Wheel of Fortune style stuff, some improv, whose line is it anyway, trivia, all over the place with it. But it was a ton of fun. But, and yeah, no, shout outs to Jabroni Mike and the whole, you know, met him through Vinny and Red Vox and all that stuff. So cool folks, a lot of fun over there. Go to check out on his channel the full That's My Streamer episode now. And I've been clipping and throwing up a couple of moments from the episode on to Woolly versus the Algorithm.

So if you wanted to catch any highlights from that as well, there's some fun ones that are already out there. Whole lot of practice, you know, doing some... When I spend over a decade improv-ing about shaving your balls and breaking into your house to make sure that they're smooth, you bet your ass that that will lead to an ability to shill any other products that I have seconds to put together a pitch for. Yes and. There you go. Yes and Bandover.

So we did that. And yeah, beyond that as well, we've been continuing through Expedition 33. It's been a lot of fun watching as the light bulbs go off with Reggie. And then the second tier of light bulbs. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I'm like, I'm like, I'm absolutely containing the pop. But like shit that's that comes in for that second playthrough is

so phenomenal. It's a lot of fun. It's really cool that there's not just telegraphed, but it's new information for the second time player. And yeah, the connecting pieces and learning how the system works. The end of each session has been pretty great for picking up a picto or two that opens up an idea pathway towards what's possible with the builds. So those are great. I would say that in terms of going through it in French, the first wrinkle has occurred, I would say. The quality of voice acting in French has been quite strong. It's been great. You would expect it. So the one thing

is Andy Serkis' replacement is not as strong as Andy Serkis' is. This was the issue that I first saw because like, okay. So you know this thing that happens when voice actors are like you what you think I look like my character and you look at like the fucking team that did Baldur's Gate 3 and like their characters are all modeled after their fucking heads hold on a second like hold on a second Reggie's in chat like an asshole so now we're putting everything into emote mode so that nobody fucking ruins anything. Reggie! Get the fuck out of here, Reggie!

Or if you're not gonna get out of here then fine. Everybody shut up. You know, you've seen Devora Wilde be like, I don't think I look like Lae'zel and she's got her hair the same fucking way. She's got a similarly angular face. And Jen English looks like Shadowheart. Shit like that, right? Like, Shadowheart looks like Mael because of Gen English. Okay, okay. And then you get to, you get to Inua

and you're looking at Andy Serkis and it's like, that's just Andy Serkis. I haven't- That's just Andy Serkis off the fucking steps of the set of Andor. So I don't know what old man Serkis looks like now. I still have the younger Gollum era version of him in my brain. I haven't seen him recently It's ridiculous

It always is cool when like yeah, you have a performance capture, then you have the model and then the the The full-on look but um yeah, I all this to say though that I would say it looks like this. Oh there you are Yeah, okay, okay, okay? Just the same fucking guy in the game. I Mean you know perhaps a little more old and distinguished you know But I can see I can see some of that energy for sure That's kind of important character not it's it's no no it. And the thing is that it's just... It's good. It's fine. But it's not the like, oomph, you know? And the delivery of it, the thespian energy and weight that Andy Serkis brings in English is definitely much better there. So,

it's the first moment I felt of like, you would say that there's a couple of emotional moments that if you are, I think depending on if you're used to hearing it in a certain language or not, if you're more of a speaker, you'll catch more. There's a little bit up, a little bit down, you can say for a couple of moments between all the other main characters, but nothing I would say is particularly a big issue or so. Although I will say that, yeah, old man Andy Serkis, that's a dip. By the way, I've informed that Reggie has left. Okay, okay left the chat Messaged me saying that he left. Okay, okay

It's not safe here it's not safe during this highly specific portion no you can come back now But yeah the that's that's the deal. And everything else has been pretty sick. I'm going to, you know. Before you go on, do you see that Sanfall said that they're planning to add more to the game? Oh, shit. Okay.

Nothing specific. Oh, I didn't see that. Interesting. They said there's some tweaks and some updates and some new stuff they're thinking about because the game has done unexpectedly well. Ah, yeah. And got Kojima's blessing. That's really cool.

No, the little patch that capped the damage at different numbers was pretty much everything we were talking about. I would, like we talked about it here and then I had on my stream, I like sat with my chat for like 15 minutes, like hashing out, okay, what do they need to do to the damage cap to this game to make it work? Then, then they took that conversation

and they took the description of the enemy HP mod off of Nexus mods and they included both of them and went here. Here, just fix it. Only other thing I can think of is just like, yeah, boss rush. That would be fun if you wanted to just jump in and go straight to the meat on some of that. But beyond that, I mean, and cleaning up the UI for Picto management for sure Anyway, so that is that is Continuing and yeah as as foretold We will continue until act one at which point we will stop and then

You know, I will I will leave that on a little a little break So I'm really glad that you'd like That you the people that are enjoying your e33 and now know that that is not like I don't know. Let's see what'll happen and in fact. It's actually like oh, no. I'm gonna take a break. Yeah No, that's I I Exactly and and you know there's a certain even from the moment we like wrapped up I'm gonna take a break. Yeah. No, that's, I- Because those are very different. Exactly. And, you know, there's a certain, even from the moment we wrapped up the last LP before Cyberpunk,

I forgot what we were alternating between. Was it, yeah, Phoenix Wright, right? And once I completed Phoenix Wright, I'm like, Cyberpunk is a massive game and I need to lock in and do as many sessions as possible No matter what that's gonna do, you know dive for the diversity of the channel because we got to get going You know, we got to go but we got to move, you know And so and that that's why I didn't start I didn't start a second thing immediately and I law and I just stayed on

cyberpunk and then this is like one at a time only of controllable things. Anyway though, that'll continue and yeah, by my calculations, we should be well and clear able to complete Act 1. I think E33 is actually really easy to plan around if you've beaten it. Some games are, some games aren't. This one is like, no, this, this, this,'ve been seeing Willie and you've been seeing Reggie's progress So, you know if he's gonna get stuck, he's not gonna get stuck

He's he's not mm-hmm. Exactly. No and and Yeah, you know we and I'm not I'm not Anyway, we don't have to discuss like when and where that act will go or so on but we're on track, you know? And so, yeah, beyond that, this week we're going to, we got that session in. On Friday, I'm going to have a sponsored stream. I'm going to do a switch to stream of Yakuza 0 so That will be an official look at the the new version

Gonna gonna pop in back to that game for a minute fortunately very very familiar already So yeah, we're gonna try it out and and you know See what's new see how I didn't play it last time we got it we can go with an English dub on that we can do we got some options but I'm gonna be trying it out on the switch too and yeah that is sponsored by Sega so more details incoming on that no other game you're I said sponsored right someone came to me and asked if the other one that you want to see is They got up if they bring it if the other company brings the other game. You're asking about then yeah sure I can't even get a I can't get a email back

They don't seem yeah, if the other company you'd like to with the other game You're talking about brings that then sure But in terms of what I'm describing I'm describing the one that was brought to me What do you want me to do about it? And That will continue as well as on Saturday Yeah, we're gonna have another special get into fighting games.

We're gonna do Street Fighter Alpha 3. Street Fighter Alpha 3. We're gonna hop on. It's a good one. And I've been waiting to do that as well with somebody who knows that game well. And we're gonna get Tenmujin, AKA Tony, an old-school

tournament alpha 3 player who's gonna jump on and show us the ropes and then we're gonna have a lot of fun You know about this game is stupid. Yep. Yep. Here's everything to learn about what's busted which isms are insane and here is a a meditation on everything wrong with Ingrid Please please look forward to the Ingrid hate session that is incoming. Oh man, some people are getting fucking... I can hear the twisted panties. But no, we're gonna jump into Alpha 3, which I've... Yeah, a couple of these classic old street fighters I've wanted to do with somebody who fucking knows.

And that'll be this Saturday as well so yeah that's pretty much my week past and present and future how's it going over there uh I'm in a kind of like a I don't know what to call I'm just holding pattern period after my 30-day sprint mm-hmm could have been 33 it could have been it could have been but I wasn't playing 33 at the time. So right Had a good time playing race wars with you and Reggie and and Paige and Jean Once that video went up it became a lot clearer Why so much of the dialogue in that stream was race war adjacent?

Because I'm because you're sitting there going. I'm gonna put the race wars intro. That's lit. That's literally it's the it's the bit It's the whole bit and then you pointed out that like oh the three teams Were divided that way and it was like well I guess happen to just happen to work that way. The theme has been decided. Like, that was the bit. And we all won together, right? Yeah, good, excellent.

We all finished at the same time. Yay! Oh, just like the kindergarten poster showed me. What else I went back to hell divers So speaking of Mario Kart and during Mario Kart I Was like hell divers available worldwide again, and you guys were like who gives a shit which Reggie actually reached out to me And was like hey, sorry if I hurt your feelings So sweet

Well, I do I do oh, dude. You don't have to worry about that shit I do I do remember you're like, oh and I and in my head I also was like, oh well I know the super earth stuff is going on and that does look pretty exciting But it was a dunk opportunity and who am I to deny a dunk opportunity? I just care about the people around the world who didn't get to have Helldivers. But actually the actual underneath part for real was that Helldivers was really popping. You remember when it came out, it was like everybody was talking about it and everybody was invested in the meta narrative.

And then Sony did that account stuff, then banned like fucking the world, some countries. And the vibes just tanked. Yep. Yep. It killed that games vibe every time it came up as the subject wise it was just like That's some stupid shit. It sucks. It's not it's not their fault necessarily, but it Ruined a lot of the fun people were having with it for sure And so I went back to it, you know in honor or whatever of everybody But North Koreans and Vietnamese people being able to play it again and the north say

What's that? Yeah, North Korea is not allowed. Ah There's like seven countries still off the list. Gotcha. Okay, North Korea Vietnam. I can't remember the other five but going back to a live service game like Helldivers after 390 days away, which I know because I logged in and said, here's your reward from 390 days ago. That's funny. Is fucking crazy. Um, just like was tutorial explosions. Yeah. Fucking feature. Just yelling at you. So this is the, this is the question I'm wondering now, right? It's like, is it like a mobile game, like loading back

into gacha after a year passes at like, which is the worst example? Like I need that. That's an investigative feature. That's a video right there. I know, I have the investigative report for you right now. Which game is the worst upon return after? The game in general? Which, including Gacha, including Mobile. I know which one it is.

Which is the most obnoxious? Can I cheat and use an answer that I've used many times? The worst game you could ever come back to after a long period of time was Destiny 2. Word again with the fucking Destiny. Okay, okay, all right. Not even some iOS trash. By far. There's no question.

There's absolutely no question. All right. Hit me. Walk me through it. Okay, so you played Destiny 2 at release and you did the first two mini expansions and then you did the Forsaken expansion. Then you took some time off and you're like, oh wait, when you come back to Destiny two years later, every part of the game you've ever played has been removed and then you load in to a tower that's running seasonal events that are that half of them have

disappeared and Go do whatever Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay Every gun you ever had Had been sunset in the background so none of them can scale upwards and you have to regatt all of your equipment Okay, so when I say worst I was originally thinking which had the most obnoxious menus things of fucking collection

For like you got to go through 15 minutes of this but straight up you're describing everything you played is gone Everything you had is now you're not allowed to access it. It's all been taken away from you it's like if I was playing Final Fantasy 14 and I Took a break in between like heavensward and Shadowbringers and I come back and they're like Shadowbringers is the new start and all Your equipment from before is gone figure it out and you're like what what are you fucking what what the fuck are you talking about? What do you mean? It's fucking gone and my equipment is shit? What? What the fuck?

It there's literally no it might as well be two games, but you're using the same account. And you remember that that other game used to exist. It's the weirdest fucking thing. It's live service was a mistake. So we can put this in the context of Helldivers in Helldivers. Just fucking thing it's live service was a mistake so We can put this into the context of hell divers in hell divers nothing ever goes away and The their battle passes are fake remember you buy them and they just last forever and then they're always available

So when you load into hell divers all get, you get every reward for every major operation that ever happened since the day you started playing. So when you log in for the first time, it just says, here's your reward from 390 days ago. Here's your rewards from 325 days ago. Here's your rewards from 285 days ago. Here's like 30 capes Yeah, yeah, okay. I got a bunch of capes and and I got some fucking armor And I got the hell I got the killzone collaboration shit just dropped into my fucking inventory And I and I immediately hit the metal cap oh Because I just accrued medals from operations Okay, okay, okay, okay?

So when I came back I was able to just go oh I'll take the demolition war bond that I already had and I'll just cash it all in and I just got the whole fucking War bond well, that's just a great feeling that come back to that's good. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, okay What else you come back to? Is you go to a mission and you're like what happened to that planet? Oh that planet became a black hole that planets Oh, the map is changed. All right. Well the bugs are attacking. Let's go. Let's go fight the bugs Okay Well the bugs have a new mechanic that didn't exist when I played called the predator strain

Which is the the little invisible guys that would chase you the stalkers? They don't turn invisible now. They just move twice as fast and kill you in one hit oh stalkers, they don't turn invisible. Now they just move twice as fast and kill you in one hit. Oh. And this is just a modifier on certain missions. Okay. And so I load down and, okay, what's happening? Oh, there's a bunch of new ordinances like people driving cars around that we got cars now. Okay. And I load into a mission and it's like, you need to, you need to decide where you want to put your points in the orbital DSS station, which is the, the orbiting station that the player base chooses a planet to go put on and, and get random bus for a planet. And as I'm trying to figure that out, I'm walking through the

bug Island. I go, what's that gigantic bug tower in the distance and then fucking bats attack us. Oh the bugs have flying enemies now. Okay. They fly now. They fly now. And then one of the guys on my team has a flag like a like a calls down a stratagem and it's just a super earth flag. Nice. They're running around with the flag and like stabbing bugs with it, and I asked the chat Hey, what's the flag do and they say nothing? It's a flag bro. It's just a bad melee weapon use that strategy Yeah, I did see some of the super earth mission stuff where yeah, I saw like what looked like warthog style Yeah, driving around as well which

You know hopefully it rolls around a shitty and as jankily as you would need it to. It's a little janky. Good, good. Yeah. And then, oh, let's do a mission against the Illuminate. So then we discover that there are city levels now. They're like towns and cities like skyscrapers and we load into what I now know was a illuminate mission that had like a challenge

Modifier on it. So you load in and you fight the the squids as they are called And they're not like fighting the bots and they're not like fighting the bugs It feels like fighting like alien hell divers because they have fucking fighter jets like your Eagles strafing you cool and they have they have their own super carriers in the sky that can lock on to you and hit you with artillery from like ten miles away nice yeah yeah it's like it's like dropping into aliens and becoming fucking Private Hudson. No, the prospect of fighting the monsters is one kind of vibe.

You know, fighting the robots is certainly another... The Terminators. Yeah, but then having that Terran versus Terran sort of style fight is... Oh yeah, it's like an enemy army. Instead of the other two, it is like an enemy armed force with air support and vehicles and shit. Nice. Okay.

Interesting. It's crazy. And then I get back to base and they're like, by the way, primaries can now be upgraded and have weapon customization. So all the primary weapons can now have a wide variety of accessories that you cash in your points on. Okay. They couldn't before? Nope.

You get a primary and the primary was just like games. It's just one of what is. This is exactly how it is. Okay. So hey, do you want to put a different scope on or do you want to have a larger magazine or do you want to change this or that or whatever? Okay. So they've been doing it in the meantime.

Dude, that game's great. That game's incredible. Like just top to bottom. They also added a new fucking difficulty for freaks called Super Helldive. Which is difficulty 10. Which I didn't even bother to look at. Oh yeah, well because 9 was just drop and die. Yeah, well for the people who thought that shit was for pussies here comes difficulty 10, okay? I

Mean you I imagine there is no you cannot so random cue With that and expect any kind of result you can you have to be coordinating with people you could do it with one person Apparently I'm just I just shit There's always somebody out there, okay Yeah, okay, if you if you dedicate the time to becoming a freak beast It was like Pat playing difficulty six and going nuts And it's like me going over like a child's hill, and I'm like I haven't played in I saw I

Yeah, I saw the little spongebob me like just going over like a child's hill and I'm like I haven't played in 390 days! I saw the little spongebob meme like just going over the bump difficulty. What do you want? It's been almost 400 days! Nah bro, just don't lose, crush it. So yeah, hey, Helldivers 2 now for everybody and hey, guess what? It's still incredible. And I didn't have a single FOMO Not one isn't that nice

Isn't that great? It's very nice of the people who made the game to not like predate on Your inner fears of content being missed and going away Speaking of I actually re-cancelled my FF14 subscription. Did you now? Absolutely. Yep. All right. Okay. On again, on again, off again.

So I wanted to give a shout out. There was a thread on the subreddit that was like, hey, do you think Pat's ever going to go back to warframe? Oh and in that thread there was a gentleman who said I don't know man pats like a ff14 lifer I don't know if he has time for that in warframe, and I saw that and was like hey I haven't played ff14 in like two weeks This guy's right. I should just go and cancel myself, so I went and canceled myself, okay, well Is the makeup sex is worth it though, right? So here's the here's the issue the issue is really really really simple. Yeah

Uh, we put the baby, you know, I do I do my chores during the day. I do a stream I blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah dad stuff. Hey, you know when I play games 11 pm pacific That's 2 a.m. Eastern. Do you know what that sucks for? Meeting up with everyone else that you want to play with. Yeah, if you're trying to coordinate with friends, that's not going to work. All of my friends are asleep. Everybody on every server is asleep. It just doesn't work. It just doesn't work.

And I'm under the impression that there's no enjoying the game for you without queuing up with other people There's no like just jumping on yourself and doing stuff. No that is an MMO. That is that is a massively multiplayer online video game Right like I can hell dive at Midnight Pacific. I can run I can I can climb up to Master Rank with Elena at Midnight Pacific. Mm-hmm, right I can I can climb up to master rank with Elena at midnight Pacific right I can play Age of Calamity on my switch to whenever the fuck mm-hmm right but but But you know what 14 is a social game, but like actually though like like all kidding aside I I applaud your decision to switch the button on and off Like all kidding aside, I applaud your decision to switch the button on and off because I've long for years talked about how when you are paying for a subscription service, you feel

indebted. Yeah, you feel indebted to your time on it. And like it's not just the FOMO idea, but it's the god damn it. I've been- I just threw $14 in the toilet. For nothing. I better get on there before the month is done. You know, and like I don't even really want to but now I feel obligated right so that feeling just going like no

I'm gonna turn it off, and I'll come back and my data is not going anywhere right. I'll come back in four years Yeah, your data is not going anywhere, right? There's a there's a no no yeah, 14 is there's no exactly right, so you don't have to worry about that Yeah, so then that's it you turn that button off. You don't think about it And you're good yeah I respect that because it would certainly bother me to just feel like I'm subscribed to something that I'm not using and then You know I'm like all feeling obligated to go log in on it. You know yeah, I can barely I'll come back probably you know I'll be honest. I'm probably gonna go back to ff14 on like a regular basis when that baby is

in kindergarten I mean just just straight up like I can I can barely get like what I remember when exclusive costumes work was coming to five Street Fighter 5 back in the day and now with some of these stuff as well you get like oh here's the third strike if you want to get like if you want to get the the the versus screen for like third strike or all these little things and you kind of gotta go pop on and I don't have fucking time for that Yeah, you got to jump on and seasonally keep up with things and I'm like Oh, you're putting a time limit on me the moment you put a time limit on me

I'm like, I know it's supposed to push me but like I can just as easily compartmentalize that out of my brain I can't remember where I read it and I can just as easily compartmentalize that out of my brain. I can't remember where I read it and I can't remember the numbers on it, but basically I remember reading up that that kind of FOMO time limited thing works incredibly well to retain super players like power users until they miss one. And once the player misses one, the spell is broken. It's broken forever. Because their ability to have all of it is gone. They're free.

Yeah. And I always remember feeling that from way back years ago when Min was telling me about Guild Wars 2 and describing how he's like yeah No subscription required right just jump online and play and I was like fuck. I wish Everything in this genre. I wish more MMOs could do this. Yeah, that's that's such a cool idea. And then you're like, oh expansion Okay, that's where you gotta that's where you gotta you know support spend the money buy that you know There's a scale that I'm sure there's a scale that doesn't work at anymore sustainably. I imagine you know, support, spend the money, buy that, you know? So here's the fun thing about Guild Wars 2. I'm sure there's a scale that doesn't work at anymore, sustainably, I imagine.

Do you know what scale that is? FF14? The scale of Guild Wars 2. That's the scale of it doesn't work out. Oh, shit. Okay. Okay, okay. That game has almost gone under like four times.

Failed experiment. Because they can't actually count on any money coming in. Hmm. Yeah, okay. As a business model, the new, I guess the idea becomes you must do more frequent seasonal updates than like would be natural.

I could see a reason to have, instead of these big, whatever, 14.5 or these kind of massive things, much more small ones to be like, hey, we need some money, hey, we need some money, hey, we need some money, and with a little bit of content. That's not how that audience works. The audience works in two ways. Either big bundle of content, so expansion only, or a monthly fee that helps incentivize bi-monthly content drops.

So was there a secondary way to spend money on the game besides these big... Yeah, it was the in-game cash shop, Which was cosmetics and conveniences and stuff like that. But that's not reliable. Okay, okay. Right? Yeah, I'm not a fucking video game economist. I couldn't tell you, but there has to be a better way. I can tell you that the subscription model, if you get a certain critical mass, allows

you to plan out your expansions and plan out your content and roll it out and say look you pay us a monthly sub this is the kind of stuff you get. FF14 has that down to a production pipeline so extreme that people can tell you when it's like when patches are gonna drop within a five-day period because everybody knows their production timeline right that's probably too extreme World of Warcraft would put out an expansion like every god it was every year every 18 months at one point and But like nothing would come out in between that like all the content was in the expansion That was that was the stuff does anyone do a thing where like if there's a monthly subscription but like there's a free version where you can do way less shit but it's still tons

tons where you can still yeah yeah tons and tons of games like every free-to-play MMO is actually still a subscription MMO just the free-to-play version sucks right right okay so Kotor Star Wars the Old Republic it's like that cap where you can totally play it free-to-play if you don't want to have any friends or inventory or Sidekick or whatever, but if you're enjoying yourself this this is a shitty way to play it. Yeah, you want the subscription yeah, okay? Interesting well yeah, no, so yeah hit that off by hers Hell divers just ignores this whole thing and remains a game that I'm like hey if I want to play hell divers today once Or for two solid weeks in four months

Hell divers is there and Remains solid the only thing that I'd miss out on is like well. I didn't help defend super earth And remain solid the only thing that I'd miss out on is like well. I didn't help defend super earth Right right. I was busy. Sorry. Sorry fellow Democracies I was I was busy doing stuff and that's a game where you can have fun playing solo or queuing up randomly Absolutely hundred percent yeah like worst-case scenario you kick the difficulty down one Right from what you're comfortable with with like a group. Oh I missed out on a cape

I Also went and beat lies of p overture the DLC for lies of p Mm-hmm How would you say that how large is it by comparison? The base game has 11 chapters the expansion has five The base game has 11 chapters the expansion has five So it's like half the half the game is like 45% the size of lies of Pete. That's a shadows of the earth tree scale Expansion no, it's an old hunters scale expansion, okay If you want to if you want to compare lies of p to something

Just skip like 10 steps and just compare it to blood every time always every every time blood-borne is its core like inspiration And the main thing is that it does a lot and I mean a lot way better than blood-borne like it is mechanically and Way better than bloodborne Like it is mechanically and I mean it fucking better actually more consistent than bloodborne It's just it wasn't first. It's coming a life. He was almost almost a decade later. I would hope He had come out before bloodborne. We would be looking at bloodborne and going wow we have lies of p at home

Huh like it like it is it is excellent Like it is a fantastic game. And then we get to the... Best of the Clones? What's that? Best of the Clones? It's... I would put it...

If you were going to ask me, hey, what's the best from software games? I would put Lies of P into that list. Okay. All right. All right. All right. Like it is like you can argue as to what Dark Souls games it's better than. Gotcha. It is it is excellent. It is absolutely fantastic.

And its DLC is also uniformly excellent. Its DLC is also extraordinarily similar to the old hunters in a lot of very interesting ways in that it takes place in the past, before the events of the game. It recontextualizes huge portions of the game. It has zanier weapons than the base game. They understood the assignment. Absolutely. It has a really, really incredible final boss that has a very strange difficulty. I would, so Liza Pease core defensive mechanic is just defending. If you guard, you take a little damage through your guard and you

take stamina damage But you have like regain like bloodborne so you can get your health back if you attack quickly But if you parry within I don't know ten frames or whatever the something hitting you you'll take no damage You'll take no stamina damage. Are those the same button? Yeah, so you want to parry like Sekiro basically, right? the final boss in lies of Pete p overture if I had to compare it to any encounter I've ever fought in any game I would compare it to sands in the first attack like you fight the boss the very first attack is the strongest and it's just like survive this okay

okay and if you survive this shit okay now we get to have a boss fight oh yeah okay I see what you mean I see what you mean yeah yeah like the like the first 10 seconds yeah yeah yeah is the skill check. This is it, right? If you can even get there, yeah, yeah, totally. Cool, cool, cool. And then when you get the boss down to 20%, here it comes again.

Yeah. And it's like, cause there's resources you can burn to force your way through mechanics, but there aren't enough resources to burn to force your way through mechanics, but there aren't enough resources to burn to force your way through the same mechanic twice. So you must learn how to do it. There's, yeah, I like that's a fun way to do it because it's the traditional way to do it is a bit more like, you know, we won't no specifics on it, but the super boss in

expedition 33, right? presents you with a challenge and then a little bit more of a challenge and then an insurmountable holy fuck then it pulls the table out from under you and kicks you down a pit yeah right it just the whole the escalation goes you go up up up up up and then I what the fuck do you mean right and a lot of bosses in Expedition 33 function on breaking the rules of the battle system. But like, but a San-style setup here where it's just like, die, die, die, okay, you can breathe. You know? And you can barely breathe. Like, you're not out of the woods, but-

Oh, it's not free! It's not free by any means! But I'm just, I'm thinking about that moment where the intro to Megalovania, like, you know, finishes and then you're in it and you're like, OK, fuck, these are going to be the worst, but I can kind of skate by, you know, or yeah, you can't tank the full run a second time. I like that. I like that. That's cool. OK. Yeah, Liza P as it is now is fucking incredible. They have updated it in a bunch of ways. Like alongside the DLC came difficulty modes and boss rematching. So when you get in there, you can now rematch

any boss you fought. Nice. And you can rematch them alongside easy mode, normal mode, new game plus, new game plus plus, and new game plus plus plus. Oh, okay. Is it like for rewards? Is it like burning an ascetic? If you beat the new game, if you beat the new game plus plus plus versions of the bosses, you get a handy dandy cute little sticker that you can put on P's bag while you play the rest of the game and it will show that you

really beat up that boss really good. Good for you. You earned it. Okay. Yeah. It's a gold star. It is literally a nice sticker for you And what because here's the thing if you if you beat the bosses on difficulty five There's no reward that could ever mean right to you. Yeah, you're doing it you you you know

You're fucking Ryu the the victory means nothing the fight is everything Is there a spirit ash style or summon style? System in this game where you can like fight bosses with others to mitigate them Thing going on in this game in any way Are you doing let me okay, I see that no no no it's I'm not trying to avoid saying something mm-hmm I Don't know Okay saying something. I don't know. Okay. Is there a system you don't use that is deliberately a difficulty modifier?

There is like a glowing thing next to boss doors that I think uses a currency to summon people. Oh, okay. Okay. I didn't You don't engage your thing. I did not use it. Okay. There's a system that is there that you have not been using but it does allow some sort of Cooperative PC someone or so apparently okay, and that'll that'll drag aggro around Yeah, yeah, okay the game's hard as fuck.

I mean, considering you haven't used it, I assume you never have to use it for any plot-based reasons. There is... If you do use it for, no, no, you never have to use it for plot-based reasons. Okay. Okay. Though there might be one or two you should.

Like, think of Egon and Bale. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. The payoff is great. No, because that's the thing is like, you know, Souls games are obviously this whole living, breathing, dynamic, difficulty thing of bringing in other players or bringing in NPCs or bringing in your mirror mimic or whatever yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it But like this this feels more like Sekiro in that response of like no you're gonna go in there And you're gonna fight your little puppet ass off mm-hmm

But like there's that feeling in the in the souls games of like even if you're somebody who's like no I want to go in and experience the brunt of these fights, the game is like, yeah, but if you wanna push this plot forward, you should bring this buddy with you. And it kind of is like encouraging you to like take the- That happens once. Take the head out. It happens literally once, and it is like unavoidable

to know that the game is like telling you to do it. Okay. It's very, very, very, very, very, very obvious. So yeah, no, L overture and lies P are fucking great fucking great. They're fantastic I remember early on in I think when we're doing souls two or so and I thought and I like first learned about that system And I thought that the person in the room had to survive the boss fight with you Oh, thank God, and it was like that is the most obnoxious fucking bullshit design I've ever like that. I thought I thought it was that insane. You know

Yeah, okay cool Yeah, can't can't glaze lies of P enough. It's it's excellent Well, it definitely without some varnish on that wood Yeah, well, it's more like ceramic It creates a nice. It's a more like ceramic. Okay, but it creates a nice glaze nonetheless. That's that is the kind of finish you want Let's see what else I've been playing a lot of age of Calamity on the Switch 2. Ah!

Which, um... It's wild that Nintendo hid this good-ass Zelda game underneath the Switch 1. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. It's crazy. The Hyrule Warriors evolution has clearly, like, stepped up quite a bit. Those games have started looking less like Musou and more like full on Zelda guidance.

Yeah. I've noticed. Yeah, no, Age of Calamity is fantastic. And like, I went to check on my Switch One and like it is what I thought. Like you and I have a decent eye for framerate and the lower the framerate gets, the more accurate you can be, right?

So yeah, when you load into the very first battle in Age of Calamity on the Switch 1, it's running at fucking 13 frames a second. It's running sub 15 FPS. Classic Switch. And then when you do, when you get all the spirit clones as Impa and you do her super, the game drops to a negative FPS. Oh, I believe we're calling that Mind's Eye FPS. Yeah, it becomes like one frame every two seconds. And I'm like, this is actually unplayable. This is actually ruinous.

It's terrible. It is echolocation. Yeah. And then you play it on the Switch too, and it's a lock lock 30 the whole time it devolves back into literature Switch to it a lock 30, and I'm just like and I'm playing in handheld mode So the child can't get his brain run and I'm like oh wow There's a lot of like really great like different characters in this that all play like real despite the fact that

it's just the xxx and the yyy like wow they actually play like really differently and character upgrades in this game are like really interesting and the the mission types are are interesting and finding the the little Koroks in the missions is fun. And then I unlocked Hestu as a fucking warrior's character. The fucking maraca-shaking big Korok is a playable character. I'm like, wow, that's crazy. So I feel like the age of calamity or the Hyrule Warriors agenda is Nintendo being like, leave us the fuck alone for people who want us to change the formula. We're not gonna do it and

Here we're gonna do it already changed the formula a lot with Breath of the Wild But anyone who's like we want the game where you're gonna be Zelda upfront. I mean they did the the you know They did have the what you would call it The one they announced where you are playing is elder, right? But like the idea of turning the whole formula on its head when the mainline games have the, whatchamacallit, the one they announced where you are playing as other, right? But like, the idea of turning the whole formula on its head when the mainline games, they're like, no, but over here, go look at this. You want 30 playable characters and doing all this stuff, then fine, you can do this, you know? Echoes of wisdom, yeah. There's a resistance

for the mainline to swerve too hard, but you can throw all that wild shit into this Musou thing. Oh, that's cool. It's fucking great. It's a great game, and it's a really great game to play handheld for short periods. And it's like, the Switch One version is so fucked up that I feel like, oh yeah yeah if I came out with this It's a switch to launch game

Like it. I oh they finally released it at I mean That's all you've we felt this before right the thing that came out late in the last Nintendo generation cycle and you're like this is not even out yet. This is made for the next thing yeah I've also been playing a good amount of tears the kingdom on the Switch 2. And yeah, running that game at 4K60 is transformative. That is, and also more than that, using Ultra Hand and the building mechanics

without the game going, ugh, ugh eugh, stop, is incredible. I mean, any time you have a system that can, you can populate a form with like tons of extra assets, I'm sure that game can be chugged by building the most complex possible things, you know, that you can. Well, the main thing is that like when you used Ultra hand in tears of the kingdom like putting two objects together you would you would see the game go okay okay primary mechanic this is this is ridiculous is there any part of it that got easier to do through like I don't know this the switch over to the mouse

mode or anything like that oh I haven't I haven't really fucked with that okay but yeah no hey no that's switch to also I've been using this which to in general super slick the game card thing switching between accounts and consoles and shit like that Super cool really easy to use virtual card. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a fake digital card so, okay, I wanted for years for the return of the So okay, I wanted for years for the return of the Whatever it was called the share play feature from the DS You know yeah, where you can just like hey you pull your DS out download and we can just play it even though you don't have the game and

This is one way to do that right? It's not the same thing, but ultimately like it makes sense it works And the games actually have that exact feature We just it was Donkey Kong with that or we were just seeing right? It's like you can have a switch that is like that doesn't you're not sharing Donkey Kong bonanza with it It's just gonna download and be a second player and that can be a switch one or switch to exactly I'm like that's a great feature to pull back and and and give to people like like, you know More games need to do that for sure. It's really, we used it a lot back in the day

at work and everything like that. Like that was a particularly fun one. Oh, I need to clarify something. When I'm talking about the game card switching over, I'm talking about the virtual game cards because people in the chat are saying, Lick It, I don't own a single Switch one or switch two game cartridge. Physically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, the virtual one. Now I'm talking about switching the virtual game card between different

systems and accounts. I bought one or two physical ones because the storage I found to be insufficient. Now that you can get those terabyte things it's like that's a bit nicer. But yeah, there's games where I'm just like, I don't want to have to install this on the very limited space on this thing. Yeah. But yeah, no, it works. It works extremely well. Like when you have the work switch, which is right there and I have the house switch. And so I had Mario Kart on this and then I want to play Mario Kart at the house. And it said, Hey, do you want to take your virtual game card out from one to the other?

And I went, yeah. And it goes, OK, it has a little animation. Now my virtual game card is in the house switch. And then Paige has her account, which doesn't own Mario Kart, on the house switch. And it goes, well, of course you can play that game on this switch, because the card is in the switch It basically takes digital games and treats them under the same Physical rules as a regular cart would right yes. Yeah that little that whole graphic is to put that idea in your head Did you?

Did you get a an SD micro SD at EX as well or did you you got what yeah? I got a 256 gig micro SD So now my switch to has 512 Okay, yeah more than enough. Yeah every single switch game on there plus Mario Kart and here's the kingdom shit like that They're not on there. I was looking like they're not on shelves available. Like it's a very pretty it's a rare It seems like it's a rare. Yeah, I guess that's the way now, right? Yeah, because they're like just looking around in person. I didn't see any And I'm wondering if there's like a one terabyte to just have to never thinking about it again, you know Okay, cool, but yeah, no hey switch to very very good console to fuck around with I am enjoying it very much to play

excited to play. Excited to play Donkey Kong on that shit. Looks very cool. We'll get into that in a bit. That's pretty much it. On my show this week, what am I doing this week? I'm going to be playing, I'm going to be doing some backlog stuff page may cry is back on Friday finally going back to DMC 3 yeah Thursday I'll be playing Mario Kart world with the chat and so on and so forth so on but you can go down to twitch.tv slash Pat stairs at 4 p.m. Pacific usually and I'll be streaming over there all right let's take a quick break and we'll be right back

Okay, let's pay some bills Quick word from our sponsors and I'll tell you what I I love them more than ever. Love them more than ever. Let's take a look and see what we got over here. This week, the podcast is sponsored by Hero Forge. Ah, Hero Forge. Custom miniatures and As is becoming tradition. I gotta I gotta focus up the camera lens over here Oh, it's gonna be tough. Oh the camera doesn't want to focus on it You can do it there it is

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One more time, that's castle 50 off at factor meals dot com slash Castle50off. And you're going to get 50% off plus free shipping at factor meals dot com slash Castle50off. Thank you very much Factor. Appreciate you. More than ever. We'll take a quick break and we'll be back soon. Alrighty, in the news, what's going on? Lots, lots, lots of new releases. First off, actually, quick, quick plug shout out to friends of the show. Sheena, over at Albino Moose Games, just released a demo for the new FPS Galvanized, the game

that she's been working on over there. It's old school action FPS with some grappling, some chain pulling and hooking and some of that. I just discovered I don't know how to spell galvanized. G-A-L-V-A-N-I-Z-E-D. Yeah, that was the issue that I made. There you go. So if you are looking for that boomer shooter

quality aesthetic with some grapple hooking and some weapons and swinging and all that fun traversal going on. This is boomer shooting. Big boomer shooting vibes coming off of it. Check it out. Yeah, the demo's out for episode one from Albino Most Games.

So yeah, up to cool things over there after the, and for those who are new, that's of Spooky's Jubscare Mansion fame. Spooky's jump scare mansion Fame All right So what else did we see? we saw Donkey Kong bonanza direct and That game looks really fucking cool. It was great. Yeah

The It looks great. Yeah. The simplest thing, I think, is just the red fraction gorilla as a bit. But no, really, just destroy the world. And I don't know that you're going to be. There must be a limit to how deep you can go into any stage. Yeah, absolutely. But it seems like from looking at it, there's a whole set that is like each layer of

going deeper and deeper into the core is kind of how you're progressing through the world as opposed to just like surface covering too. So, um, yeah, I, I just think it just looks like a classic Nintendo platforming, you know, adventure with good-ass music, fun, probably Odyssey style vibes of you know Vocal tracks kicking in and all that stuff and It's Donkey Kong's Odyssey and he's got fucking Super Saiyan now Like they're Super Saiyan Donkey Kong what the what the fuck what is there to complain about?

I really feel like the this sweet this direct really did a number on me one It looks fantastic and Pauline is there. Ah cute, right? But it also exposed to me a new type of dumb person Which is oh my god Pauline's like a little kid, but cranky Kong is there. What does this mean for? How old Donkey Kong what the time like a genuine new type of a stupid person? Who is it was like worrying about the the timeline of a yes of the Donkey Kong? Yes, people how is Maggie still a baby after 30 plus years and seasons? It's crazy.

It's not real. Cranky represents an idea of an octogenarian ass monkey. Alright? It's a concept. And also they show you Cranky Kong hanging out with Rambi, right? And then they make a point to go, that's an old motherfucker, but look at these plot old ancients right over here And you see like the the the ostrich and the and the the zebra and the monkey with like the real cracking Like no, that's old never mind the like you kind of got a beard and glasses bit You know the real old fuckers are right over there. They're going to give you super saiyan DK triggers.

Yeah, looks fun. Definitely loving the yeah, all the memes of like, you know, the the Kong of us or the sad dad, right? I've now reached Donkey Kong, Dad of Boy and then Wreck-It Ralph energy as well, you know, but essentially just like, yeah, little kid hanging out attached for the ride. Don't fall off, you know, is, that's a fun vibe. And then it looks like the, yeah, there's going to be like music power stuff going on as well, which is sick because, you know she's after singing on in the new Donk City

Themes and everything in you know the last round with Mario and stuff you're like okay Magic Pauline is back in her whole bit is like music you know and stuff so that's cool We've come a long way from Donkey Kong kidnapping Mario's girlfriend, and, I gotta say Crawling up the city block Like, it makes Mario look like an insane person Cause like, wait, Donkey Kong and Pauline have been friends for decades? Bro, they're just hanging out, chill It would, it like, they're, like, that's the, I guess the bit is like Is there somewhere where you actually have him like, just hanging out, crawling up the scaffolding and Mario's this asshole that wants to fucking get in the way and just

You know dude chill man, yeah, they've been friends since like ten years ago Which really is if anything now. We're just heading right back to King Kong We're just going to the source material on it. We're you know it was beauty that killed the beast Yeah, Mario's the fucking piece of shit. You know and and Mario to be the fucking final boss of Donkey Kong Bonanza Wait wasn't Jack Black also? Yeah, Jack Black was in King Kong and in Super Mario, so it really is, he is that asshole. Dude, I want Mario to be the final boss of this game so bad.

God, that'd be great. And for him to just show up and just go ba ba ba ba ba da ba da boo. And then everyone's like, what the fuck is he saying? I don't understand his shit at all. And he's, you know, and you're like, he's a horrible, he's trying to break up the friendship and you're trying to protect her

and he's like, no. I'll save you ah You know the true the true horror of Mario getting in the way, okay? Chris Pratt notwithstanding I guess that my my issue is not with Chris Pratt I don't think Mario should be speaking any known form of human language Yeah, Mario should sound like he does in the Gameboy Advance RPGs where he just says a bunch of nonsense Italian-sounding shit. Bop-a-da-boopies. Uh-huh, totally.

In fact, in Mario vs. DK on the Advance as well, there's a whole bunch of that. Just gibberish Charles Martinet noisemaking, you know? I agreed. That was the best way for him You know cuz he's yes, he's a plumber and yes, you could argue that he's human-shaped

But he really but he's not much more of a person than Sonic or Crash Bandicoot or any other Mascot character and he's fucking weird and not all mascot characters talk you know some are just kind of expressive noise making things that yeah that's all you need you just need an emotion and a vibe yeah whatever you'd call it he's human-shaped in any case that looks pretty cool and I can't believe they're fucking whipping out the like the whole the thing too is like the the amiibos are coming around once again, and I'm like, oh my god, I'm I Forgot I forgot I made a little bag where I shove them up there and then I whipped them out for Metroid Dread

And now you're making you're just be like no whip go find them again To end like none of the little elemental balls dropping it or anything I particularly care about but I was wondering I'm like, oh are they gonna give her the new Donk City outfit? And it's like yes if you buy that amiibo and I'm like you assholes bro. I think I think this is what I think this game has Part of like I don't know if amiibo fatigue or whatever on has part of, I don't know, if amiibo fatigue or whatever on the part of the developers. Because look, every amiibo can get you a singularly colored throwable sphere.

Yeah. What the fuck? Who gives a shit? Go blow the dust off. Exactly. You know? Compare that to the like, drop this on the Star Fox on your Bayonetta and you can get a Star Fox costume. And guns and weapon. You know?

Absolutely. Um. But anyway. That aside, cool for Donkey Kong getting like full proper big ass adventure game that's's been you know kind of yeah, the feeling is that I guess that's been coming for a minute now because you know the the Amazing platformers and side scrollers and tropical freeze and all that stuff that's been going on

Have definitely you know been great, but I've I guess everyone's kind of wondered is there gonna be a full giant open 3d Game again, you know yes Beyond that You know you want to talk about sort of returning to the old school console era vibes Donkey Kong is one of those and fucking Shuhei Yoshida talking about Nintendo Teleported me to 15 years ago. It's insane. He did an interview recently where he basically expressed that he has huge respect for Nintendo

but hopes that Nintendo fans might eventually graduate to more mature systems like PlayStation. I would really like to point out that this is a they've said this over and over from Sony for years and years and years and years. And it's like, yes, I've graduated to a more mature system, the switch to one which contains games I can play with my child because I'm older now. games I can play with my child because I'm older now. And so there was basically him anticipating the response to this type of statement in a way where he's like that yeah he kind of gets the gist of it but like overall between this and there's another interview where he basically said that Sony doesn't consider Nintendo as competition per se.

And the quote there is, Sony see Microsoft being the competition because Xbox is very similar in performance and in hardware, like a high-end console, but Nintendo, well, a high-end console with mature games and such, but Nintendo is very, very different. They're family-friendly, their games are for everyone.

It's not about technology. It's more about having fun with friends and family and having multiple controllers bundled with the hardware. Inside Sony, even when they do business analysis, Nintendo doesn't show up. So there's a competition market share between PlayStation and Xbox. They don't include Nintendo. Not that they're ignoring them, but they don't feel that they're in competition because it's a very different audience. And then to elaborate a little more, in Japan, Nintendo is hugely strong and Xbox almost doesn't exist. I should be careful. I get many hate messages. It's very hard to see where Xbox is, even though PC gaming is becoming a bit more popular in Japan. But it's all about Nintendo versus Sony, I guess in Japan.

With PlayStation, people are working in Japan seeing see Nintendo as competition, but outside Japan, they mainly just see Xbox as primary competition. It's really, it's really kind of funny to see that perspective because I feel like, again, old console wars vibes from, you know, the we're veterans of them. Does he even still work at Sony anymore? I mean, wasn't there an announcement that he left some time ago? I thought he left. So, yeah, former former exec. He's he left and he's just talking about the industry on podcasts and doing interviews and stuff.

he left and he's just talking about the industry on podcasts and doing interviews and stuff. It's an interesting perspective though, just because it feels like a dated view on things. If anything, I would say that the image is definitely, of course, out there because of what Nintendo knows, where their bread is buttered, of course. But when you see the same titles getting ported over on all these multiple platforms and everything, it's mainly just marketing, right? Nintendo markets themselves towards families and younger audiences, but like it absolutely, especially with Switch 2 at this point, when you're looking at things that are games that are going to be releasing in parity with, you know, not necessarily performance wise, but in terms of like generationally with each other.

Console is a console console's a console. Is a console at this point, you know? Delta Rune's coming out, you grab it on PC, grab it over here, grab it on that. Play Street Fighter 6 where you want to, whatever. Like Nintendo knows that their brand and their first party things that they make are all family oriented and such, but don't mistake the, I guess, hardware overall for that per se. But you know if they're mainly, they've also pulled back on PC of course as a secondary advertising platform as well.

He didn't really mention it much in this but the thing that's clear is that like I'm sure looking internally for however the perspective seems or whatever the case is, dollars to dollars business-wise they go Xbox is the main thing that takes money out of our pocket. Focusing on beating them is effort that's more worth it than focusing on beating any other platform at any given time. You know, I'm starting to think, I'm starting to understand what he means by like grow up and mature and move to PlayStation and it makes sense because you look at last of us which is a game that came out in 2013 and 2014 and then 2020 and then

2022 and then 2023 and then 2024 and then 2025 and what they're doing is they're making sure that no matter what age you are than 2025. And what they're doing is they're making sure that no matter what age you are, eventually you'll grow up to being an adult and you can play Sony games. Eventually. Because the same game comes out every year or two. Eventually, over time. Yeah, you might have skipped a year there. I think I skipped one. You might have, you might have, yeah. But like, see, as long as we keep putting out the same adult games back to back to back to back to back to back to back, eventually you'll become old enough

that you can go, oh, you don't need that baby Nintendo shit. Here's Last of Us 2, the remake port of the sequel. Now, the funny part is, one of the things, that is that is definitely the case is that like when Over the years I feel like my my cousin and nephew and niece barometer for the console Generations and what they mean and what they kind of represent to like a bunch of kids and a bunch of people that are a Bit older than me just out they kind of represent to like a bunch of kids and a bunch of people that are a bit older than me, just out there kind of very, very casually. Nintendo continues to mainly be the like,

yeah, this is for my kids or this is for, it's a family box per se. It's not the first thought when it comes to getting the latest whatever like FPS or whatever major AAA has just come out or so. But like that, I would say that I've seen the biggest shift with that with switch, you know, it definitely like did convince or I like have some of those, you know, and this is just anecdotal, but like family and friends and people, whatever.

Like there was an eventual point where they started getting stuff to just play on that as they were using it. And we're like, yeah, you know, being able to use this on the main, the same console is handy. Not as many of those friends have like a big tricked out PC with a video card option for buying games. So for them, it was like, hey, if I have a Switch and I, and you know, like, I don't have a PC option for this, then why not just go for it here?

It made sense for some more mainstream purchases that happened to be on a multi-platform. It has changed more so in this generation than in previous ones. I feel really torn on this discussion because I think the core of the discussion is genuinely stupid. Because I remember the only time in my life I cared about games being mature is when I was a child. And I feel like this entire discussion is us listening to 14 year olds tell us how

cool and adult they are for playing Call of Duty because it has guns and murder in it and how much of a pussy you are 35 year old man for playing Zelda because that shit's gay and stupid but that 14 year old thing is just so fucking stupid but that 14 year old was a former exec of the company that makes PlayStation You know what I mean? That is like, you want to talk about internally being told at the highest levels that Yeah, they literally don't even bring them up when they're in the comparison point sheets It's like, okay, so the perspective is that we just don't think about it there is no there's no concern also astro bot was the best

game Sony put out last year and that that might as well be a fucking Mario absolutely absolutely you know and the big deal around anytime something related to a lot of though a lot of those Sony first party games that are basically like Nintendo in target audience. It's about time and everything Crash related. A lot of that shit overlaps heavily, massively. Not that again not like you know young people and young adults Need to grow up and realize that sometimes at the end of the day

You know revenge being pointless or being a better dad or a better role model or whatever is not inherently More mature than the fact that sometimes you just got to destroy Ganon You do you do like no matter what age no matter when mm-hmm the objectives marker at the top of your screen doesn't say be Better it says kill Ganon And you got to um It's just and this is something we're to like depending on how this kind of Discussion happens like I can see the framing of again of more just like it's not that this is not our competition. It's just that this makes more sense for us to focus on because this is a much more direct you know analog and if you go here you're not going here you're not going to

us right. So if like second cup is talking about like hey every moment we make taking down Starbucks is the best use of our time, as opposed to going after, whatever, the McDonald's around the corner, then I can get that even though McDonald's has coffee as well and people go there for coffee as a preference, you know, or whatever. But if you're like, no,

we're coming specifically after that, I should have said Tim Hortons, but whatever. Point remains, you know, if you just frame it as like, no, it's because's because money spent on Microsoft is money removed from our pockets, effectively. Because again, PC ends up being this side promotional platform that you are in competition with, but you're not being that hostile towards it

because you can also use it to promote. Also, to Shuhei Yosh know? Also to show you, hey, you should if I bet you would like people to grow up and move on to a PlayStation, because like one of the news things we have this week is Nintendo Switch 2 sells the most consoles of anything ever in its launch period and sold like four million fucking units. So like, hey, maybe you should actually be more like Nintendo.

It's moving. Truck full of them got jacked. Yeah, I think between the price stuff and tariff stuff and everything in advance, there was definitely a thought like, ooh, this might fucking land and dud, or at least take a minute. There's only one factor ever that stipulates how many units you'll sell in a launch console and that is are they available to buy.

That is it. I think- Video game retail has been fucked up since like 89 and there's never ever ever ever been enough units for anything to buy with the sole exception of like the virtual boy and the Saturn and the 3DO. Do you think that the importance of the attach rate is now diminished? Do you think the shelf mover, you know, the launch game that is meant to bring you over that you can't get anywhere else? I mean everybody bought the fucking Mario Kart. Mario Mario Kart of that fucking thing Mario Kart is Mario Kart I was not going to and then through fucking peer pressure Contributed and when he got one, you know

I don't mean to be rude to you here, but you like in the time period Yeah, the switch 2s release you are going to play Mario Kart in your home for a very specific tiny baby-shaped reason I Mean, you know, like I said the the yak is a thing was coming around the pipe anyway I was gonna but like yeah, I just I was considering like at some point especially because like with the last Mario Kart I really just got it Played that one time and that was it, you know But no Mario Kart 8 deluxe has sold 68.2 million

The thought like The thought the thought has always been that like you know, what's one system selling game that is gonna make people yeah yeah so that sorry I lost my place over there. That's a lot of money that that that is a lot of money You know what else is a lot of money tell me what's a lot of money The 69 billion dollars it costs Hold on a second. No Hmm the cost of shelving marathon indefinitely. Oh, yeah is a lot of money Definitely is a fun number it sure is um

That word does imply That we don't know when right it there's an it is in why that it implies that we don't know when, right? It is in- It does imply that. It implies that we are not, it is indeterminate when it will return. But it has officially been delayed beyond September 23rd. And they basically said, yeah, they did a presentation for investors this week where they showed off Marathon Sony like investors and it seems like four days later they then went actually yeah no but so that might have been for legal reasons to not I don't know what whatever

was going on with that well we can't show this to the public because of the plagiarism shit so the cost of scraping everything out and canceling all your marketing and replacing it with new things and then can also Addressing the parts where people were not having fun with it Is it just a wash Or do you do they can't it has to come out it has to come out listen Sony spent 3.4 billion dollars Can't it has to come out it has to come out listen Sony spent 3.4 billion dollars

To on bungee so that bungee could tell them how to run their live service division And the pinnacle of that was going to be marathon which like So I mentioned now I mentioned master. I mentioned 69 billion earlier because the quote was we believe that bungee can give us way more than the 69 billion dollar acquisition of Activision and That's before considering not true the the relative vague value of that particular transaction

so Like a billion of those dollars so they can just add proximity chat So there's a statement that that bungee themselves put out that was like we're gonna you know, I have it here actually it's in the marathon discord I don't know how they haven't kicked me out of this fucking thing, but Blah blah blah the passionate feedback around the reveal and alpha playtest Comments and real-time conversations your voice has been strong and clear. We've they're acting like it's fan feedback That's caused this and not Sony saying it from on high, which by the way, the Bungie developers found out that it was

delayed through this announcement from Sony. Like most of them, except for the senior staff, didn't know that they were getting delayed indefinitely. So they're going to focus on blah blah blah, upping the survival game with more challenging and engaging AI encounters, more rewarding ones runs with new types of loot and dynamic events, making combat more tense and strategic, doubling down on the marathon universe with increased visual fidelity aka have to do new textures anyway because we stole it, more narrative environmental storytelling to discover a darker tone that delivers on the themes of the original trilogy. Pro-how-

Adding more social experiences, a better player experience for solos and duos, and proximity chat. How have you not been kicked out by now? I don't know. I don't know. I'm in there. Alright, well- Don't know. I don't know. I'm in there. All right well also Can we take a side? Path here about a type of person. I would like to complain about There is a type of person you're in the Capcom creators discord right mm-hmm, okay? I saw the Capcom creators discord. I'm in the Namco Bandai creators discord, and I'm in the marathon discord I did a couple of the other ones.

I didn't sign up for it, but I think I got signed up for it without signing up for it. And there's like a type of person in that discord that is just so happy to be there that every time a dev note or an announcement comes down, they're just going, oh my God, I can't wait. It's going to be so amazing. Oh my God, it's going it's the greatest fucking thing. I'm so happy to be here like dude shut up Have some fucking class and fucking act like an adult. No you got your foot in the door It's your first time to get in your foot in the door Jesus Christ You're you're very excited about the fact that you're here in official contact in an official manner for the first time ever

There there was this is a make- make or break moment. This is all it's all about this. There was some announcement like a long time ago. It was the Elden Ring preview event for Namco Bandai, where they wanted everyone to be in a group chat to go over the NDA and all the things. And I remember they were like, do you have any questions? And it was like 10 questions about how awesome the game would be and how sick it was and how aw, so sick and then me and Yaners Were like how do we record footage for live streams?

What's the process on that? like like real questions the the the the classic soft softball into slurp noises Question right love that kind of press conference. We do live streams streams. How do we get this preview stuff on live stuff? And then they answered us and then we left. Yep. It's like the only fun, and it's just this fucking thing. I'm like, oh my God. Hey company, I have a question.

Who does your hair? I mean, God. Oh, this sucks so bad know I'm gonna just fucking I'm just gonna go into the fucking So thing and just fucking oh It's just it's non-stop fucking glazing. This is so cringe. Oh my god Fucking oh, I don't know why they haven't kicked me out of that shit anyway anyway Yeah, I mean look we'll see like keep an eye on it as we go Merch over in the other room that I don't want to put on camera because I don't give a shit about it

And it sucks well is that merch is that merch showing off textures by another artist that were stolen Actually, it fucking might be you know the merch that was printed. Oh my you like fuck Yeah It's this shit's so fucking cringe. I can't I can't believe this is this is a real quote 69 billion dollar like any crack that's gotta be for no talking about Activision So okay We know Activision extremely well when you look at the $69 billion for Activision compared to the $3.6 billion for Bungie,

we believe that Bungie can give us way more than a $69 billion acquisition of Activision. That's stupid. Jim Ryan. That's a stupid quote from a stupid person. Like, what are numbers? Yeah, I don't have a fucking business degree. It's still fucking stupid as shit.

You guys have lost more on Bungie than the last call of duty made in a single day. day. And like, again, the thought that it's one thing if it was like, okay, so people were not having fun with it, and there was some design elements were poorly thought out or so. But it's like, the fucking textures were all stolen and now you can't even see it legally. Yeah, no. Is like, that's so brutal brutal you're not allowed to look at all the assets god they can't be sure like okay they say that so I who did that shit is gone so what they're gonna have to like go through the change log

and like okay what's every single piece of the game he touched throw all of that shit out it's fucking nonsense but when we start talking about that level of money right when we were going into Anti-real was the name of the artist when we were going into like anti-real's art getting stolen And I was does it make more sense when I'm like yo just cut the check Like just cut the check and no because that's admitting liability blah blah blah blah blah blah Well if they miss one or whatever the fuck... No, because they still have to have an accounting of all the items. Right, but cutting the check comes with a thick ass contract that stipulates, you know,

okay usage for whatever fucking legal terms. There's no way they would ever admit liability. The game's not out, the game has never received any money They don't have to pay anything anybody like the fact that the artist in particular is just like I'm tired boss like You know like Great all right, whoa that dad asked and a sent me from Josh Sawyer talking about how shitty game development is and sent me from Josh Sawyer talking about how shitty game development is. And basically Josh Sawyer was talking about Dragon Age the Veilguard and the dev background

of his work on RPGs and how what can lead to fucked up shit. So he describes basically that There are games that get you know eight months of delays, but those eight months of delays are one month at a time delays and So everybody's made a bunch of bad decisions but they're like well we don't have time to fix it because it would take two three months to fix it and But they're like well we don't have time to fix it because it would take two three months to fix it and Then they delay it a month And they're like maybe we can clean up around the problem And then they delay it a month

And then they clean up around the problem and then you get to the end of like you've actually delayed the game by like a year Yeah, you could actually fixed everything yeah, yeah But because you didn't know that you had enough time you had to just staple You didn't know that you had enough time. You had to just staple shitty solutions to bad problems you never would have had if you knew you had an extra year. The act of kicking the can down the road doesn't feel too bad because you're never booting it

into the next fucking neighborhood, right? Like, yeah, that's real. Because a veil guard had basically that happen to it. That there were just, here's a quote from Bloomberg, the strict deadline became a recurring problem. The dev team would make decisions believing they had less than a year to release the game, which would limit the stories they could tell and the world they could build. Then the title would inevitably be delayed by a couple of months, at which point they'd

get stuck with those old decisions with no chance and stop to reevaluate what was working. And whatever major changes or whatever is going on, there's a little period at the end where when you submit things or when you're going through that process to each time there's a major submission failure or major issue that is like holding the game up and it has to go back for another round, they're cramming, they're prioritizing remaining issues and stuff that can be fixed while these major compliance issues are being fixed

and cramming those in as priority as well, right? So like basically there's like a polish and repolish phase where stuff that you've determined from a while ago, like if we have time, we'll get around to this, you know, but it can't ever be something that is like massively changing the direction or can have too many cascading effects that, you know, cause another failure of sorts, right? It has to be something that is like very very easy to squeeze in at the end there that you still have time to like reliably QA or so.

So like, let's look at Bungie with this. like reliably QA or so. So like, let's look at Bungie with this. Multiple slow delays does feel a lot less committal and scary compared to a big one. And also, it's easier to tell people that are spending shareholders and investors and all those folks, it's a lot easier to report smaller delays than it is massive ones, right?

Big, big missing the quarter delays are always a problem. Let's take Bungie for this, right? It's like, okay, so most of the team didn't know the game was getting delayed. So they obviously don't know how when it's getting delayed to. So at some point the discussion has to happen. How long is it going to take to get all this fucking stolen shit out? And for a while that answer was, I don't know. So how much time do you guys have to work on proximity chat or duos or the fucking narrative elements? How much time? Do you guys got six months? You guys got a year? Well, let's use another metric. Will it cost more than $400 million? Maybe.

Fucking maybe. Because that's the Concord metric. Yeah. They threw that shit in the trash. So this is where I ask, is it a loss? Is it a write-off? Do we, or if we go, no, it has to come out, you're like, okay, at what cost? So this is where I ask, is it a loss? Is it a write-off? Or if we go, no, it has to come out,

you're like, okay, at what cost? At what point? I don't understand how, I don't understand how anyone looking at this is like, we can turn this shit around in a year or something like that. I didn't think it was gonna... Like I played that alpha and was like, this sucks and would need like more than a year of work to fucking tune up and add shit.

And that was before they have to spend however X many fucking months pulling shit out and double checking it for plagiarism How much of that that project has to be completely done over because they can't tell What is and isn't actually original? I mean I would assume just about every texture like I almost you know And it's and like you can't also just go take anti reals name off of it because you're still stealing It needs to have its own identity like and that that can be proven in court to not be fucking

Crush it killing the vibes and also Stealing the stealing our graders, which is gonna be out before them uh, crush it, killin' the vibes. And also now they got, um, now they got Arc Raiders, which is gonna be out before them, which is like the same fuckin' game, but more impressive looking in every way. Uh, so yeah, there you go. Marathon, delayed indefinitely. We'll see what that means.

I bet you this game's gonna come out in 18 months and be like a polished up version of what it is like right now With like almost no significant changes and we're all gonna go. What the fuck did they even do I? Mean if it is a legally airtight Version where they look and they say we can argue in court that we're allowed to use these textures You're seeing if you're allowed to look at it Then all right it passed some sort of muster, you know what I mean? Because I played like a Destiny game that was in development, which was Destiny 2, and like,

Bungie's production pipeline fucking sucks. Like, it takes them fucking forever to do anything, and definitely double forever to fix any existing problems. I would imagine that, like, whatever nebulous changes, you know, eventually come out, you don't want to leave it in such a place where if Anti-Real decides, actually, nah, fuck this, I am going to try to legally pursue damages. That problem would be something that they could go like well your honor Look, we can show you here that clearly it's this different Like if they only make it a little bit different and still leave room for that potential lawsuit

Those lawyers are not doing their job that legal team is not doing their job, right? So that's a that's a significant enough change I would imagine. One legal team. God damn it, I keep forgetting. I keep forgetting. You keep forgetting. I keep forgetting. You fucking keep forgetting. I keep forgetting. They're talking about lawyers.

They laid them off. Oh, god damn it. You keep talking about lawyers, like there are lawyers looking at this project. I'm sorry, I just, I thought I saw Lionel Hutz for a minute, my bad. They haven't even paid off the people they would pay off for the last plagiarism scandal Hey, I keep I just cuz it just there they are in

arrears for a former plagiarism scandal My bad, you know? I just assume that you see a car, you'll pop the hood, you might see an engine in there. I assume that the company... Yeah, all right. All right. The only way that I can see this game coming out and being of value to the consumer or the game player is if Sony goes in there and kills the suite the c-suite and

replaces them with like people who know how to ship products from other parts of SCA or SCC Potentially I suppose if you're trying to preserve Whatever bungee is to some degree but apparently did apparently wink Bungie's problem has always been that top level of management okay going back all the way to Halo. Okay. The folks that made Concord didn't get that. That basically, the C-suite got killed but then so did everyone beneath it.

Yeah, that turd dropped and was out of the toilet though. Like there was no saving it, it already hit the floor. All you could do is scoop it back up and throw it away. It was too late. All right. Well, you know, there is something to be said about, you know, the challenges that cause you to go back to the drawing board and and avoid getting your ass blown out because of your your team and

thieves a much better reason to go back to the drawing board and change things up is if people play your game and You think that too many people are enjoying it and having too much fun and they think it's too good. This game is really good. This game is really really good. I think I've screwed up somewhere. God damn it says Kojima. I hate that the playtesters are enjoying Death Stranding 2 so much. I gotta go change some stuff because it needs to be more polarizing I just

It's this god, oh, I love it just when you you it's the same It's the same fucker every time every time so in a recent discussion wood kid who Works with Kojima on the music, has been working on a lot of projects together, said there's a key moment where we had a discussion halfway through doing the game where he came in and said, we have a problem. I'm going to be very honest. We've been testing the game with players and the results are too good. They like it too much. That means something is wrong. We have to change something.

And then he changed stuff in the script and the way that some crucial stuff happens in the game because he thought his work was not polarizing and not triggering enough emotions. According to Kojima, IT NEEDS MORE EMOTIONS! If everyone likes your work, it means it's mainstream. It's conventional It's pre-digested for people to like it. I don't want that I want people to end up liking things they didn't even Like when they first encountered it because that's where you really end up loving something

And he's completely right, but what do you what does that not make perfect sense when you go? I fucking I was trucking and having fun I never would have thought that was an enjoyable experience Right you were being a teamster you were porting and walking up mountains and doing a bunch of bullshit and death stranding That nobody while holding a baby on your chest Fuck who the fuck would have thought that would have been so fun? And it was! I have an example. I saw people going, this is stupid, what a stupid idea.

He's so right! And all I can think of, all I can think of is like, how many more decades of arguing about Raiden do you guys want to do? Like, for real. Right. Like for real right how many like are you like really? How many how many how many more years of arguing about whether or not riding sucked? Do we want to go through before you realize that that fucking game is absolute fucking peak? Too many people were enjoying it. I need to go fuck shit up I need to go change it and make someone mad fuck shit up. I need to go change it and make someone mad. You know, if someone's not walking out going what the fuck bro, then I failed. You know what, I, I, there

is a really really good example of a game that is built in a way that will cause many people to argue that would not even be close to as emotionally moving or genius if it wasn't built in a way to cause people to argue. And that is? I don't want to even talk about it. It's that game that we were talking about a couple weeks ago Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay, right. Yeah. Yeah sure right Yeah, which is like yeah that if that game had a really straightforward good ass happy feeling ending I'd be like oh cool. I guess well like now that it's like I want to fight someone over that But now that it's like, I wanna fight someone over that fucking ending. I wanna argue! But like, you remember that clip of the dude playing DMC5 and seeing Dante dancing and going,

Bro, I don't understand this fucking game, bro! And he throws the controller down, right? Kojima is watching that and like, flicking his glasses up to get the perfect reflection, like, Mmm... This is the reaction. I'm looking for you watch much older example Example all right Do you think any of us would still be talking about last of us at all if the ending? Was did not cause many people to feel very different things very strongly no

You'd be like, wow, great game, cool. But there'd be no long-term discussion if people weren't arguing over whether or not Joel was right or wrong. Devisiveness creates interesting discussion, especially when you're on like, yeah, moral tightropes, for sure. And ethical tightrope.

And it caused people to actually think about what was going on in that story rather than just go, and then Joel beat up all the bad guys, the end. Yes. Yeah. No, it is a very fun discussion to enjoy the video game, but then come out the other end of it going, oh, was that right? Was that, you know what I mean? Do you think that was, and then yeah, especially with the example from prior as well.

I also want to say, like, this is the difference between somebody like Kojumbo and Druckmann, in which Druckmann recently came out and went, yeah, by the way, Joel was wrong. They could have totally done a cure. And it's like, shut up, you idiot! You just ruined it! Why would you ever, ever put put a definitive correct answer to that you

fucking buffoon if I remember correctly if I remember correctly like people would stop hounding David Chase about Sopranos. Yeah. And eventually a billion years later, there was a sort of half acknowledgement about- They screwed up talking about it in an interview. It was, yeah, there was an interview and it was a half acknowledgement about it, right? But it was one of those things where he really really tried to just be like

Can you just leave it alone and like no one would it? No one would accept it like some people some people like definitely were like the ambiguity is good and some people are like yes It's ambiguous, but I feel confident leaning one way or so But there's a lot of there's a there were enough people and it was an influential enough show that that like they were just mad At the at the openness of it and never got over it for decades It reminds me of so Kojumbo is in good in good company here because it makes me think about the late great David Lynch Whenever anyone asked him to explain literally anything he'd just be like no no

Watch it again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then and I think about when When people would ask John Carpenter, so who was the thing at the end of the thing yes like shut up? Yeah, the movie that's the what are you stupid you need you need that's the thing the second half is once It's out and everybody's good. You need the wherewithal to just be like eat my ass fuck you No hard no forever and and hold that till you die you need to lynch it up You know I was your safe Tarantino with with pulp fiction in Which he's like I he regret like of that movie There's one part of that movie

He fucking hates and he regrets it where they put a light bulb inside the briefcase Yeah The whole thing decades long what's in the briefcase? Yeah, it doesn't I don't give a shit. What's in the fucking briefcase Nothing's in the briefcase. It's a movie. No. There's a light. There's a light. That was it. That was it Yeah, the human brain cannot accept that the human brain needs to know yeah And I see the quote going up there erase her head is my most spiritual film how so No No, nope

Refuses to elaborate anyway fucking Kojima, amazing, incredible. You'll love to hear it. And yeah, it certainly definitely could be, and is likely, what we're describing, where characters making decisions that are ambiguous or defensible and certain, you know what I mean? It's probably what we're talking about. But like-

When you look at a character act, and you go, oh, well that was reasonable, okay. You move on, you never think about it but I just I love that idea of him just looking at everyone walking out satisfied and going fuck I needed someone to get mad I need someone to be really pissed off right now oh shit incredible so code jumbo believes that friction is where you get sparks yes yes and what death stranding is like taking that idea to the extreme like Code Jumbo believes that friction is where you get sparks. Yes, yes. And like Death Stranding is like taking that idea to the extreme.

Like parts of Death Stranding are like miserable and fucking boring. On purpose. Yeah, when you die and your save file gets deleted in Kojima's future dream game, some people will get mad at the lost time in progress and others will be like, ah, yes, the experience. I truly will sit with that memory forever. It was special because it only existed once. And he'll be like, yes, you did like it.

You get it. You understand. It is divisive. This is what I want. So I think the best example of this ever, ever by far, was in No More Heroes 2. So No More Heroes 2, you're climbing up the rankings to become the extra big cool assassin, and you're gonna go after Alice Moonlight.

Sorry, Margaret Moonlight, Margaret Moonlight. And so you go to a supermarket parking lot, and in that supermarket parking lot, you fight like 400 guys and they just pull up in cars and get out and fight you and then you kill all of them and more cars pull up and they get out and fight you and it's like 15 fucking minutes long. It's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous and it never changes. And the fights don't get any harder. And it's just super fucking padded and pointless and

shit. And by the end of it, you're really, really bored by fighting all these dudes and the fighting has no excitement left for you. And it sucks and it's totally pointless and then they put the biggest most cool and like they put the biggest like custom music boss fight of the entire game right after that so if you ever want to do the margaret fight ever again you have to go through the dog shit fucking parking lot war and i saw an interview a couple weeks after the game came out where they're like Suda Why do you have that gigantic super long fight in front of the the Margaret Moonlight fights like oh? Because I wanted the player to get tired of fighting and to realize that fighting in this video game is totally pointless It actually sucks

Put a cool thing at the end and then it makes you wonder if you ever want to do it again and the player goes, it's not worth it. Imagine. That's fucking amazing. Like imagine, cause here's the thing, other mediums definitely are times where it's like, oh, you turn the page and it is blank, and it is blank for many pages. The movie goes silent and nothing happens on frame, right, for a certain amount of time. Or whatever, like different mediums have different ways of having that, like, we're disengaging with you and we're going meta with it.

How many movies have like a still shot with no change for like multiple minutes? It's like how long are you willing to tolerate this before getting up and leaving? But that, or the, again, or the song that like, you know, goes blank or fuck, you know, whatever the case is, the medium that decides to go antagonistic with the audience, right? Hey, we're gonna have these two characters stand in an elevator with absolutely no animation for as long as you can stand in as a viewer. That's exactly what I was thinking of, right? But video games are the only one that will reach out of the screen and kick you in the

balls and ruin your hands and make your wrists hurt and make you uncomfortable and like physically ail in order to cause that discomfort of all these mediums. It's the one that's going to actually punish you and make it hurt to get this fucking point across. I will give a gold star to David Cage because in heavy rain when you are at the junkyard and you have your gun trained on that gigantic scary black man who's going to eat you, it looks like, and you have to take your drugs, the controls that they want you to pin right on the controller where you have to claw your hands around and it's legitimately really uncomfortable and hard to do and tons of people fuck it up. It actually

does a really good job of like putting you in the character's shoes of like, I can't I gotta hold the gun and I got oh fuck Mm-hmm How many soldiers did Zack take down at his last stand a lot? How long did that go for a while yeah You prove you make your point you know and this is this is the medium This is the medium that can do that that it's it's very it's just it's a thing that video games can do that is that is and that is phenomenal You know what you know who the best to ever do it is The best to ever do it is God of War 3 at the very end when you're just hitting left right left trigger right trigger To punch Zeus's dead body. Right, right, right.

And I remember seeing like, I remember seeing like game facts, message board threads of like how do I beat this? I've been doing it for like an hour. And like, and it's like no, you have to stop. Like you're at the end of a three game, four game revenge trilogy. And like the only way to beat it is you have to stop. You have to stop. You have to stop.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's fantastic. Shout out to video games. Video games are cool. And sometimes when they suck a little bit, they're cooler. Now, let's be careful. Death Stranding 2 might suck shit and he might've gone too far.

Probably not. Well. But who knows? Hey, if something comes out and it sucks, no worries. You can just rely on the modders. Are you sure about that? Or can you I don't like this news story. I do not like this news story. There is not enough Here's the funny part. There's not enough to really say It's all vibes

Okay, so the story is real simple Nexus mods after 24 years of being run the owner is burnt out and has decided to sell the the site and It seems like we have in what he wasn't saying at first who it was and now it's come out that it's been acquired by chosen a company focused on growth and monetization of gaming startups. And there's nothing else to really go on there except for the words I said, which immediately just sound like, yeah, it's cooked. We don't know that it's cooked, but it's cooked. And it might not be, and hey, and if it's not, then that's great, and that's cool, hooray. But it's cooked. And I guess if there's any

mods that you want to get, get them now. You know, make sure that your favorites are available. If you've got any particularly amazing combos going in any of those Bioware games or, or, you know, any of their CD projects or whatever it is just figure your shit out because this is gonna switch hands and who knows what the fuck will happen you know? So nothing has happened yet. Nothing's happened yet. No reason to panic nothing nothing is saying anything is gonna happen necessarily. By every legal and ethical and moral space, the owner of Nexus Mods,

who has done a great job over the years, has every right to sell their website for cash money and get theirs and all that stuff. Especially when they give the reasons, it's not like, they're like, I'm at my limit, right? There not like it's it's all they're like I'm at my limit Right. There's a big talk on that and they're like, yeah, I just personally I'm burnt out. I can't do this, right? I Got it. However, mm-hmm. However This is there's a there's a wrinkle here

mm-hmm back in 2010 in October Back in 2010, in October, after New Vegas came out, I gave Nexus Mods $200 Canadian dollars. The reason I did this was so that I could purchase a lifetime premium membership that was advertised as being good forever. Lifetime and forever mean forever. Uh-huh. Not until you sell it. Uh-huh, okay.

It means until the end of my life. So no policy changes have been you know Do we don't know anything do we don't know that that's gonna be an issue for any reason or whatever yet, right? Nothing has been announced. So you don't know. Um, I Don't believe Any of those types of services anytime you hear about them simply because that's just not the way it feels like the world works is anytime you hear about them, simply because that's just not the way it feels like the world works. At some point, there's always going to be something however long it takes before they go, nah, that was crazy. That was insane. Even when it comes to, I believe

the example that comes to mind is Mark Cuban bought a flight pass that lets him fly anywhere on American Airlines. It was something, it was some crazy, amazing flight pass. And it was supposed to be for life. And they, he and one other person got this incredible thing because it was so expensive at the time. And yeah, it was like an infinite ticket. And then sure enough, through abuse and like a decade plus of it just being used in ways where they're like

weren't intending or whatever, the terms eventually changed and they had to limit it in a certain way. And there was a legal way that they squeezed in a limit to it, you know? So lawyers will always find a way. So if you like, I just just that was a long time ago But like believing that you're gonna get anything as is for life Is like there's no way that would that happens. I just refuse that on principle welcome back pat your current plan in billing

lifetime premium member forever Says it right there. Yeah. Until the lawyers say otherwise. You know, also, I'd like to point out every time I bring up the fact that I bought a lifetime subscription to Nexus Mods, I bought it 15 years ago. And every time people go, man, you got scammed. I've had a premium Nexus Mods account for 15 fucking years, and I use it all the time.

Like, how is that a fucking ripoff? I didn't know that was a service. Yeah, I didn't remember that. Stop being one in 2012! Okay, because the one thing I did read about in the story was that there was a point where there was a service that was kind of like find a way to donate to modders, and there was a service that was kind of like, find a way to donate to modders. And there was a monetary aspect that was involved with,

certain popular modders, you can tip them for whatever, something to that effect. And so they were payment processing for some stuff like that. But overall, this whole thing just became the default main archive and platform of all modding stuff. ModDB, I think, was obviously another big website that I remember getting directed to over the years for stuff.

But yeah, Nexus has been the gargantuan beast. It's hard to imagine that anyone acquiring this would not somehow in some way fuck it up The owner says how many lifetime plans are there because if it's like? 400 people yeah, they would leave that shit alone right well Okay, there's like a million people that have lifetime subscriptions, but there's a lot of other ways They can fuck this up beyond your lifetime subscription right like there. You know there's everything that fucking... What's the Wiki fucking company called? Anyway.

Thing. The people, the fandom? Fandom, right? There's everything that can go wrong in that direction. So, yeah, Dark One, the original owner, basically was describing that he's taking a lot of careful about who he's selling it to and making sure that it's gonna be in good hands and all that stuff.

And it's like, okay, sure. And hopefully that's true and whatever the case may be. But there's just this kind of aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa and start doing all the shit that you'd hate to see. And there's also a period of time where they were aggressively stopping people from archiving mods, I believe, when they were trying to take them elsewhere because they didn't want essentially mod stealing to become a thing. So it gets weird and complicated when

it comes to having alternate resources for particular modding communities, you know. So I went and checked. They actually removed lifetime memberships fairly recently. They removed it in 2021. Well, how's about that? They found legal grounds to find a way around. They stopped offering it. They didn't. They didn't remove it.

They just stopped offering it to new people. Oh, to new people. I see. Yeah. OK. The cutoff date was was in August of 21. OK. Yeah, I mean, I just feel like any time, any company, whatever, I feel like I don't believe the word lifetime out of any company mouth.

I just feel like that's, you can't control the future. You can't tell me you're going to exist. But if you've gotten 15 years of worth out of it so far and it's been worth it then absolutely that hell yeah great great like here's the thing can I what I actually get mad that I feel like I got ripped off no I definitely got my money is worth an on a fucking Nexus mods lifetime premium membership don't definitely but it's annoying because it says forever. It says forever. Forever.

Now the other solution to this problem is that developers can just step up. No. And they can do. You're a fool. Hold on. You sound like an insane person. Hold on. Let me get there.

All right. there, alright? Developers can step up and say things like over at Stellar Blade, where the director says, modders still, modders of Stellar Blade, their firepower is still weak. What? Their firepower is still weak. What?! Up until now, the official content is still better. I want mods that expand the user's play experience. Stellar Blade is called the modders weak! Well that's because they have Danuvo on it. There's only so much you can do oh

man, but also I Saw like a really stupid like you know article that was like 40 ish percent of the mods for stellar blade or goon mods for And I'm like I don't know if you've ever been like the mod database or the fucking Nexus mods for like any RPG Literally ever but it's all it's all creepy sex mods all the way of course now. Here's the thing I didn't realize I guess or maybe I wasn't just maybe I I didn't piece together or know this but When you're like who the fuck is this director? That's crazy, right? What a wild gauntlet to throw out to call them to call out the mods of your game and be like now the officials

Are still killing it and then I see the name young take him and I go. Oh, oh It's you. It's goon lord. It's goon lord supreme. Yeah The artist behind daring people to make hardcore pornography Yes, the goon over the shiniest asses you have ever seen for the last two fucking decades on the internet ah This is where you have been Young take him sense. You know like just I get it now. I see right not sensei He's Korean excuse me, but that I didn't know I didn't know that he was the one in charge, right?

this he's the goon lord and he can say that and pull it off because there's a there is a an empire built on Shiny thighs and and and greased up butts on shiny thighs and and and greased up butts Yeah, no check check the resume it makes perfect sense I get it really funny cuz like I played a good amount of stellar blade and You can't like every single second of you playing stellar blade. You're being gooned at Right, and it's it feels like a guy sits next to you on the bus and starts beating it and then starts elbowing you and go when

are you going to start beating it? Hey come on. But like the game's pretty solid overall in addition to that. That's what's important. It is a pretty solid game Yeah, very important that the game actually be good Yeah, and you know if if you're familiar with the the Magna Carta art style Then it makes the plastic human art style the plastic human art style then you then you get it you get it

Anyway, I just I just love that I love I love yeah I love the developer looking out over at the fucking you know the wild body community and be like nah y'all ain't got shit Comatose, bro, yeah, um and Beyond that I saw one other thing that seemed interesting but also a little bit like this is cool but also not cool so in the same vein of X-Men 97, Marvel has announced Spider-Man 94, continuing where the animated series left off, Radioactive Spider-Blood, but it's a comic run. And I'm like, ahhhh, damn. Right?

I don't think we need even that because the X-Men 97 just goes, yeah, you found her. Well, sure. But just given how good X-Men 97 was, it would be really cool to consider like, oh shit, you can go back to radioactive spider blood and do that too. That would be interesting. And the other part too is I'm a bit confused because I feel like the last time I talked about the end of that show and now we're off

to find the real Mary Jane. And I wanna say someone or some folks told me there was something that never aired or that ended up on the You Can Go Watch on YouTube. There was some sort of conclusion of sorts. So the cliffhanger that everyone remembers, on YouTube, like there was some sort of conclusion of sorts. So like the cliffhanger that everyone remembers, like there was something that came out, I'm confused, you know, because it's like, yeah, this comic is supposed to pick up where I

remember the final episode being, which was the the Madame Web, you know, walk into the into the fucking distance Offers a bunch of stupid nonsense after the spider after the spider carnage arc, you know But it is funny to look at the comic and see like that one cartoon venom with the big lip in before you know like the his big lips and then the The teeth out I'm like, yeah, no venom looks like old 94 venom like that's a particular one spider-man You can see him in a couple different places and you could potentially you know I know what spider-man looks like but that venom doesn't look like any other venom, you know

Yeah, that's that's I I dig the idea I do wish it was animated though that would have been nice Anyway fun stuff Yeah, let's take some letters. Alright, if you want to send in a letter, send it to castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com. That's castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com. Okay. We got one coming in here Ignis says dear Zippy and burgle you know the saying you wait ages for one and then three come along at once

ok never heard that before in my entire life have you I haven't but I can imagine it. I get it. They're talking about triplets! Aren't tag fighters eating good right now? Net Impact, 2XKO, Marvel, 4v4, and Invincible Versus all coming out in the space of a year. Who knows, maybe even an Injustice game will come out with tag action. Isn't that nice for them?

Where are the weapon fighters? Fighting games in general are having a renaissance with all sorts coming out, not just the aforementioned tag fighters, but other sub genres as well. Even 3D fighters having a mini resurgence with the new VF coming, but no one is taking a stab at the weapon genre. Why? Where's the Soul Calibur or even Last Bronx's? In an era when people are looking at the retro PSX games, making all sorts of games seeking to bring back the feel of bygone times, but these just seem to be missing. You want an Advance Wars clone? There's ten of them. You want an old 90s FPS? It's a genre now. Battle Network? Someone made that. Panzer Dragoon Saga? A groundbreaking RPG most haven't played that.

Where's Panzer Dragoon Saga? A groundbreaking RPG that most haven't played and no one has tried on. Bunch of FPS RPGs like Kingsfield. There's a whole bunch now. Fire Emblem, you're eating good. But now I answer, I now answer the question, or where's the thing I like is a popular one, but the real question is what is a game or genre that to this day seems to be ignored and no one's making an effort to bring it back Okay, so there was no weapon fighting genre. There was soul caliber Like there were other games that had you fight with weapons, but those were soul caliber cloning now like shit hitting last Bronx As a secondary on that is a really far steep drop and that is wild I never thought I would hear the word last Bronx today However, I will say no we can jump in and say Bushido blade like I can catch him on this one

I know Bushido blades like its own fucking weird thing. It's a more. It's a it's a one strike hit style game But it's not always one strike. It's not always necessarily You know But it is a weapon fighter and the weapon usage and the matchup of that is a primary and the weapon usage and the matchup of that is a primary part of that game and what you're doing, right? Sam Show is a 2D fighter that has weapons. It's an SNK game, but it's not the same elements per se, but you're arguing a lot of people

with disjointed hit boxes at the very least. Yeah, there's a lot of like a complete, absolute dog shit early access 3D weapon fighters all over Steam if you want to play that complete garbage. There's Deadliest Warrior, which is a true weapon fighter, which actually is fun for some dumb reason, right? That fucking show, that Spike TV show fighting game turned out to be a pretty fun game and it's a real like, I'll put that in the category of like 3D Soul Calibur style games. You know, Hellish Court is one that's around there.

For Honor is, it's doing a lot too differently. I wouldn't put it in that same space. It's not scratching the same itch. But it is true that like, not just a game where, and not just a 2D fighter where everyone has weapons, but like a 3D game where like the weapon matchup is big, the positioning and the spacing and all that stuff is predominantly what the game is about. It's true. There aren't many things doing it like this. Someone might be working on one, you know, but I just, I but I feel like if there was examples

of others beyond that taking off, it probably would have had a resurgence, but it just doesn't seem to be the most popular thing that people want to see coming back out of fighting games. When Soul Calibur does come around, there is definitely a hardcore community, especially in France. It's a huge, there's a huge competitive following over there. You know, Kayane and shout outs to like all those folks in Paris that are like the old Soul Cal heads. But yeah, I don't, but like outside of those kind of like

exceptions, it just doesn't seem to be something that is like in super duper high demand. In the last game in particular, it was cool. It had some cool stuff. It was around for a little bit, but kind of like That big tweet that Harada broke down Describing the difference between team Tekken and team Soul project soul and like why those things went the way they did you know they soul caliber as a team didn't have a Soul Calibur as a team didn't have a single person kind of like fighting to keep it alive with that same thing that Tekken kind of had in a way. They didn't have that resistance even though there were competitors inside of Bandai Namco. So it eventually kind of dissolved.

I can think of a genre that I have not seen in like literally 20 years and it's one of my favorite genres and I don't know why I'm not allowed to play it. So I had a Sega Genesis and I really liked Shining Force 1 and 2 and Shining Force 1 and 2 and then later 3 are strategy and there's also a game we are game but whatever that's not what I'm talking about. There are game but whatever that's not what I'm talking about their strategy RPGs look like Fire Emblem right you go you move your little dudes around on a grid and you kill enemies and then you go to shops and you equip item very similar to Fire Emblem right and the thing that was different about Shining Force was that in between the strategy RPG battles that were extremely similar to

Fire Emblem, you had a main character that moved around on a realistic world map like Final Fantasy or Phantasy Star and you went to towns and talked to townspeople and went to shops instead outside of a menu. You just went to the shop and it was like a regular fucking RPG it's just that when you got into battles it was a strategy RPG okay and I think there's one Fire Emblem game that uses this this format someone in the channel fill me in on what what that is but like that's it strategy RPGs only exist in the, you have a couple of menus and then some story and then you get a grid-based battle.

Disguise like that. Thirteen Sentinels is like that. Every Fire Emblem is like that. Tactics Ogre is like that. Unicorn Overlord is like that. Every fucking thing. By far the closest to this is Unicorn Overlord is like that. Like every fucking thing. Like by far the closest to this is Unicorn Overlord. But you still can't go into fucking towns with that. It's

super fucking weird. I don't get it. It's super cool. I like strategy RPGs. It's really cool to be able to walk around a fucking town in a strategy RPG Extraordinary high effort to... Unless you go like super retro style, you know, with it But, yeah, no, that would be cool It is cool The... I don't know why it doesn't exist I'm gonna say sports games with turbo buttons

I would say sports games that we're playing Midway Can we say that? Can we just skip this part and I suppose you could sport game can you say good but I but I just I feel disingenuous saying that because I'm not paying attention right that's the thing but but like midway style sports games with turbo buttons you know our and like and you know extending that like not just obviously into NBA Jam but like yeah, everything going into the Street Games. Oh, is it rematch up this week?

Cool stuff. Rematch, rematch. Rematch is up this week? FIFU, was that what we were calling it? FIFU, yeah, that's right. FIFU. Yeah. And I guess there was a period of time when we also were like,

yo, what the fuck? Why is no one copying Monday Night Combat? People copy Monday I think I feel like eventually that that yeah That's just a just a MOBA Well, what you see what you see like third-person camera stuff coming around like deadlock and I guess like what paladins was it? Right like you start to get a little bit closer. There was a news story we didn't cover a little while ago how Hi-Rez studios laid off a shit ton of their C suite so they didn't have to lay off like their developers so they could keep

Smite 2 running. How about that? And people are like yeah yeah that's great okay but people weren't paying attention the reason they did that is that a few months a few months ago they had laid off a bunch of their developers also there they can't lay off more developers oh they have no developers oh they just already did that part then so so the only thing left to cut is the C-suite. I see. It's a two-part story. There we go. Yes, that makes sense. Yeah, also the first Ubisoft union in North America, Ubisoft Workers of Canada Halifax, was a thing that happened as well this week. That's cool. Good stuff. You know, I hope that they can negotiate for wages and conditions

that involve getting fucking creepy hands away from from them while they try to work. Oh you know what we didn't cover this on the news but I'm gonna steal the spot to cover it. Did you see the interview about Final Fantasy Tactics the Evil East Chronicles? Oh yes the interview about Final Fantasy tactics that you've released Chronicles Oh, yes, the new content from the war of the lions is not gonna be included in the remake that part not that part Okay, cuz yeah, whatever no the part that's of interest to me is Alright, so why this game takes so long to come out and they're like well We threw all that shit away we didn't have any of it.

And then he then goes on to spending a full paragraph of text defending what I assume used to be his boss going. Well, you know, it was just normal not to keep that stuff back in the day. So, you know, it wasn't to be expected to keep those types of records. So, you know, we had to really work hard to go back and find how to reverse engineer it. And but, you know, all that stuff was thrown away and destroyed. Yeah. So that's what happened with Final Fantasy Tactics. That's why it's taken so long for this to come out, is they threw it in the trash.

They threw it away. I love we lost the build. I love that. That's forever, man. Every time we talk about this kind of thing, I always bring it up and we, and like there's always somebody new who hasn't heard it. It's like, I know for a fact that people have witnessed Japanese companies shredding every file in the filing cabinet and snapping

disks and deleting entire hard drives. The Neo Geo 64. It's shit. Destroy it. Destroy all of it. The Neo Geo 64 games were removed from existence, never backed up, and fucking annihilated. All code, all builds, all memories. Yeah, yeah, kind of incredible.

Because like this developer says lost, that is not true. These things were not lost, they were actively destroyed as soon as the games shipped. Man. Dude, like we lost a couple of videos back in the day on the old channel and I fuck I take that shit

It's so annoying. You know I couldn't imagine I couldn't imagine dude. It killed brawl oh We lost that last one which was I was a Kirby it was a Kirby air ride We lost one there was oh Kirby air ride We lost one there was oh Kirby air ride okay, okay, okay? killed God we kept hemming and hawing as to whether or not we should just record another one the next day But we all felt like shit Because it was destroyed like and well

And you know and you welcome to the beginning of me the backup guy who has a backup Audio a backup video. I will never lose my footage again. Oh did twitch go down. Oh, that's cool. I'm gonna keep playing Oh, did my fucking hard drive explode? Oh, that's cool. I'm gonna keep streaming. You will never stop me again God yes. Yes a hundred percent Okay Another quick one over here All right watch it's shining force three videos in the background here man this game looks like shit Aged badly dear you two have too many alternate titles, and I refuse to contribute

Favorite fictional super weapon sci-fi fantasy whatever anything goes as long as it's a piece of personal, piece of fiction. My favorite is the tongue eater from the Mage Errant series. It's a super weapon developed by a cruel expansionist empire that uses it as a tool for conquest. It devours the language of the people it was used on with horrific consequences as you can imagine. People who only speak one language went completely feral. People who only spoke, who spoke several became less intelligent and more docile. The customs, histories, and entire cultures of people it was used on would just fall apart rapidly."

Ooh, that's fun food for thought. That's a skull face. That's a vocal chord parasite right there. Yeah, but going conceptual. That's a really fun, interesting idea. I know what mine is. I got one. Yeah, it's the Vector Cannon.

Okay, yeah. That's fucking... for the I know what mine is I got one and yeah it's the vector cannon okay yeah that's you know fucking just firing that thing it's a fucking it's a narrative it's just a it's just it's just a massive cool vibe nothing to go wrong with that um I I yes for fucking sick ass height points you're you're that's peak um for the idea of it though I still hold on to from hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy the point of view gun Oh, yeah, that's a good one. I'm it's a favorite. I fucking love it It's a gun you point at somebody and shoot and for a few seconds. They completely understand where you're coming from Just for a couple seconds and they go oh god, I get it. Okay. I'm sorry.

The point of view guns really interesting from a narrative perspective, but it fails to account for people like myself who are stubborn, right? Because I can imagine because I've had scenarios in which people have like brought me around to their point of view. Yeah. And they go, wow, that's crazy. I completely understand how you feel. I't care though. I'm still gonna go which is I'm me though But that's how the gun works it fades off, and you go back to being you But you just have that little memory of going like okay, okay? I get it. I get it I'm still fucking here, and I'm not moving. I get it. You know I find that lovely I find that wonderful it particular scratches all the itches that I have in the back of my head

You know and it read like in the movie when Marvin uses it You know and like a big wave of on we just hits all the bad guys, and they're just like oh What's the fucking point you know it's like yeah, that's it's great. I love the point of view gun Fun so I have a I have a baby story to we can close out the podcast with. So the little man was asking to see me, hey bud. So the podcast went on and when the podcast went on, my little man pointed at you and started going, weee, weee, because your name's too hard to say oh Just cut to the chase you get the first letter and the last letter in there close enough

I like it. I hated it for a console, but I love it for me. Yeah, thank you. That's great. That's good Alright later Have a good week everybody you